I know it's a dead horse and there's a vocal group that will oppose it . The biggest way to increase participation is to have a two tier system. Solo only and a mixed que for solo group play.

The majority of players who hate GSF would give it another shot or not drop out if the premade farming was reigned in. GSF is going the route of wow's pvp before blizzard implemented twink only brackets. Interestingly the players who so vocally shouted on thier fourms that all they wanted was good competition quit playing when that's what they got...

Playing against equal compitition and not being fed noob food.

Really you have to wonder how many people it takes asking for this to be heard over the few people who insist on having their advantage and entitlement to group up against newer/lesser geared players preserved.

I would even support, a feature where I just would not be inserted into matches against groups. This would at least mean while I was playing the rest of the game, I wouldn't have my time wasted by going up against someone's "Troll Team".

The population is not big enough to support a ranked queue per server, meaning "solo queue only" will be the only viable queue. This means you can no longer play with friends (never mind if you're VOIP double premade or not). Absolutely guaranteed to destroy the GSF population.

Cross server or incentivising people to participate to enable proper matchmaking is the way, not banning groups in Gsf.

No, this would increase queue times as lesser players would choose the easier option. If we had a two tier system, it would have to deliver two tier rewards.

Ex: You'd need a tier of upgrade that you could only get by queueing "for real".

The simple fact is, this game uses the same logic as the ground game, and all of WoW, and old Warhammer, p. much everything.

Queue with friends to have the best time. Or just come here and cry forever because you don't know how to play as a team. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

The population is not big enough to support a ranked queue per server, meaning "solo queue only" will be the only viable queue. This means you can no longer play with friends (never mind if you're VOIP double premade or not). Absolutely guaranteed to destroy the GSF population.

 

Cross server or incentivising people to participate to enable proper matchmaking is the way, not banning groups in Gsf.

which if they did that their current match making system would solve the pugs vs premades problem and BAM we dont need this to begin with.

I am not getting dragged into this, just sufice to say. Stop.... just stop. Its never going to happen, they consider this game to be a non competitve game and as such no ranked play will be made in the near future. We already asked for it, its not coming so just stop this fight has been going on to long every one already knows all the in's and out's of it and the line is clearly drawn between people who only ever solo que and people who play the game in every way as to which party has the bigger junk and who is or isnt retarded or evil or what have you.... its a waste of time.

The population is not big enough to support a ranked queue per server, meaning "solo queue only" will be the only viable queue. This means you can no longer play with friends (never mind if you're VOIP double premade or not). Absolutely guaranteed to destroy the GSF population.

 

Cross server or incentivising people to participate to enable proper matchmaking is the way, not banning groups in Gsf.

Please calling them groups is far too nice. What needs to be prevented is ganging up on people. You can run days without seeing a balanced match in this game, and that is poison for anyone who actually enjoys a good game or any kind of sportsmanship. It's the reason most people seem to give this a try or two and then drop it like a hot potato.

Please calling them groups is far too nice. What needs to be prevented is ganging up on people.

Lol! Teamwork unfair, nerf needed. The general brass network brings you the same story every night.

You can run days without seeing a balanced match in this game

I can run days in WoW random BGs, SWTOR warzones, this, Starcraft, Hearthstone, and Halo and not see any balanced games, or I can get a bunch that are close and good. It's not because of groups.

It's the reason most people seem to give this a try or two and then drop it like a hot potato.

You say, without evidence, for the eighty millionth time. I still don't believe you, and no one really should.

I know it's a dead horse and there's a vocal group that will oppose it . The biggest way to increase participation is to have a two tier system. Solo only and a mixed que for solo group play.

 

The majority of players who hate GSF would give it another shot or not drop out if the premade farming was reigned in. GSF is going the route of wow's pvp before blizzard implemented twink only brackets. Interestingly the players who so vocally shouted on thier fourms that all they wanted was good competition quit playing when that's what they got...

 

Playing against equal compitition and not being fed noob food.

1

Really you have to wonder how many people it takes asking for this to be heard

2 people, and maybe a handful of others, but definitely no more than the number of fingers on 1 hand. And out of those, 4/5 are newbies that just didn't find friends to play with yet, and the fifth is... the General who, as Verain said, sings every song every day in every thread.

I see 2 possible outcomes if this was implemented (thankfully it never will be):

1) All the vets quit playing because they can't play with friends which leads to much longer queue times and, in the end, no one queueing anymore

2) People in a group queue at the same time and you have it the same all over again. The ONLY time this MIGHT help is if it's a wargame, then it might just separate that premade, but making a completely separate queue and killing what we have now is definitely not worth the resources it requires.

As many have said before, the some of the possible solutions are ranked queues or cross-server queues. In the case of the first, we'd require a whole new tier of upgrades and special rewards plus we've already heard that's not going to happen any time soon. In case of the latter, well, the same as the first: we already heard it's not going to happen any time soon.

Please calling them groups is far too nice. What needs to be prevented is ganging up on people. You can run days without seeing a balanced match in this game, and that is poison for anyone who actually enjoys a good game or any kind of sportsmanship. It's the reason most people seem to give this a try or two and then drop it like a hot potato.

I can say with confidence that the only poison in GSF is "Brass" flavored Seriously do you ever get bored of trolling the forums?

I would be all for a ranked queue with additional rewards, but time and time again we have been told no by the dev's . As it stands (whether you believe it or not) there are not enough players to support a ranked GSF queue and a solo GSF queue.

Do a search on your server, there are likely 1-2 games at off hours and 3 maybe 4 on peak hours. This is a far cry from even the ranked ground queue (which you can see people begging for others to queue, and thats with a large player base)

Sorry to say the same old tired lines, but ranked probably will never happen and if its possible thats only when cross server happens (if ever) A change like this alienates the veteran and group oriented base from GSF which will only reduce the population not increase.

And lets please not forget that this is a mmorpg, the friends system is robust and easy, groups are easy to find etc... you don't have to join a well known preform group, but whats stopping you from grouping with other like minded pugs?

Removing teamwork from the game is not a good idea IMO

There is actually an interesting discussion to be had here--unfortunately it is difficult when both sides have juveniles and trolls.

The devs said Thursday that players who have played 10 or fewer games are never put into 12v12 matches, so as to give them a gentler entry into the game.

I think a similar concept could be done regarding solo queues. For the first X games or before a player has earned Y total requisition, do not match them against any groups. That way, their early matches are likely (but not guaranteed) to be more even, and their initial experience more forgiving.

This would not help anyone permanently stay out of games that contain groups (unless they keep creating new GSF alts), but it could improve accessibility of GSF and thus (hopefully) increase participation.

Though I think any kind of grace period, be it for groups or 12v12 games, needs to be more than just 10 games.

Maybe a better solution would be to just remove the que priority for groups. That way match making could just assemble teams based on experience rather than having to worry about giving certain que types priority even if it costs team balance. It seems to me anyway that one of the reasons we get imbalanced matches is that match making has to give premades que priority which might mean that it passes up 4 solo ques who might have made the match more balanced in order to get a premade into a match sooner.

I don't honestly see why it'd be bad to give everyone equal que priority since it doesn't seem like shorter que times for premades really makes the game fun for anyone if it results in one team getting steamrolled (the vet premade lacks enemies that will actually give them a decent challenge and newbs are driven away by getting steamrolled). Another perk would mean that since everyone's que time would be the same newbs would be in a better position to earn req to level their ships up by getting into more matches (assuming here that currently average number of games premade que priority gets is greater than a 1:1 ratio with the average number of games a solo que could get in a similar time frame).

The simple fact is, this game uses the same logic as the ground game, and all of WoW, and old Warhammer, p. much everything.

The same broken logic as other PVE games. PVP oriented games such as Guild Wars do not explicitly addressed by this logic. And with good reason.

But Solo Que is not the solution. Cross server it is. At a higher pool of players the matchmaking would probably work for substantially the satisfaction of all.

Solo que when there is insufficient pool of players will only cause that "sync" premades in solo games. This has long been happening in the solo Rated PVP and makes it, ironically, despite the name for PUGs unplayable.

Firstly i support a ranking system BUT it has to be done right and i doubt it will be comming any time soon.

The top 3 things that would solve most issues is:

1) a proper tutorial so newbies learn the proper basics of each class, game mode, map etc.

2) Proper match making (this is not a numbers issue on red eclipse, ive seen games where 8 pro's one side, 8 newbies other team from same faction) this is a bug and needs fixing.

3) proper tactics, if you cant learn tactics etc then you best not to even try GSF, ive seen some premades when i solo queued and because there was a few of us that solo queued and know the game well we actually had one of the best games ever in a domination 990-1000 i dont mind loseing games like that

I solo queue, and i group with friends, this is a MMO why shouldnt i be able to group with my friends at times? nothing stopping you doing so. and most of them friends i group with are not guildies, we all come from different guilds and guess what we actually whispered each other and started talking, suggest more try it and stop crying their losses on premades i dont and i spend half my time solo queue and by far does not mean a loss when u come against a premade, what dont help is people quitting moment they see certain people that is what helps a premade win.

Learn the game, learn every ship class, its strengths, weaknesses and for god sake get a clue i see so many groups banging their head against a wall of gunships, try attacking behind it actually works. Most of these things come down to the 3 things i listed.

The same broken logic as other PVE games. PVP oriented games such as Guild Wars do not explicitly addressed by this logic. And with good reason.

Except that this is how the PvP part of those PvE games work.

And what other games work like this?

Starcraft, if you queue solo in a game larger than 1v1, you can go against a group. That's no "pve game", whatever that means here.

LoL, same thing.

What do these games do in common? They try to match groups versus other groups. If I queue alliance side with a group, I almost always get an enemy group on the other side. Just like in GSF, it's only a fraction of each team that is set up like that.

So why doesn't GSF do that?

It probably does. The difference is, again, matchmaking in WoW is much easier with battlegrounds launching every few seconds. GSF, lacking cross server, can't do this trick as effectively. In fact, if you DO have two groups queueing, they can easily get cross-hatched and not play each other once in a night.

So no, no one gets a "solo queue only" option. Because all that would do is punish veterans. Which is way worse than "punishing" newbs- the newbs can, after all, get better, group up, and not be newbs any more. If the endgame is sitting in queue waiting for three other premades to log on and queue at the same time, obviously that won't work.

But Solo Que is not the solution. Cross server it is. At a higher pool of players the matchmaking would probably work for substantially the satisfaction of all.

Totally agree. Which is why these threads are so silly. "Protect me from good players, I shouldn't ever have to fight them" is a whine we see over and over again, with different restrictions. It simply won't happen. The game is too thin without cross server.

This has went better than I'd hoped with some good ideas. Close games are much more fun even if you loose. I do agree cross server would be the best answer, but we've been told no\ not any time soon.

I think equal que priroity may be a good step & want to add an idea. Adjust the match making for people with out a mastered ship. Would have to be tied to a certain amount of req so it's not exploited. A real tutorial would be huge gain as we'll.

Verin my intent was not a,"protect me thread." Playing against strong competion is fun, educational, & makes you a better pilot. Getting / giving curb stomps less to know fun. I do enjoy GSF to the point of leveling some alts to look for a more active community. My intent was wanting more people to play.

The vet pilots that are active posters are a true resource to the community, but we all need to remember that most players never come to the forums. I've suggested a link to the gsf posts about ships & tactics be added to the tutorial .

Here is some QQ getting curb stomped because you are effective at all is like getting a colonoscopy ....

So no, no one gets a "solo queue only" option. Because all that would do is punish veterans. Which is way worse than "punishing" newbs- the newbs can, after all, get better, group up, and not be newbs any more. If the endgame is sitting in queue waiting for three other premades to log on and queue at the same time, obviously that won't work.

I find it quite amusing that there already are veterans in GSF that just half a year old. My sense of time is because another ...

There is no problem of "veterans" vs. "newbies". I play PVP primarily as a PUG (yes, the guild name has a meaning) and that since many years.

It's nice to play in a pre-composed group and it's nice just to be surprised by the group composition.

Close games are fun, unbalanced boring. Functioning Matchmaking ensures balanced games. Without cross server it does not work, so it is clear what we should urge Bioware.

The already small GSF player base to fragment by separate game modes makes no sense. This only leads to increased waiting times for all.

No, this would increase queue times as lesser players would choose the easier option.

Solo players = lesser players ? Interesting.

If we had a two tier system, it would have to deliver two tier rewards.

Game rewards are generally calibrated as rewards/time there would be no compelling need to to change this up unless the match times were significantly different.

If anything having a solo queue could allow rewards to be increased, if the average length of matches were longer.

The rest of your post is nothing but flamebait and wishful thinking.

Simul-queue with friends and more then likely you'll end up in the same game against the opposite faction.

And since all us VOIP folks are evil, lets say it does put us in a same faction match. Lets say... 3 on one side, 1 on the other. Nothing stoppin' the one from throwing the match, or letting the other side know where you're at cuz y'know... evil VOIP right?

I doubt the system realizes if a match is in progress, because it's not going to assume those people are going to requeue.

End result is probably a fairly low percentage of matches being more balanced, with the majority being the same as it is now - but with the added benefit of possible longer queue times and annoyed groups.

In the stream, the devs said GSF was a TEAM game. Solo queuing is kinda counter-intuitive given what the dev's have said.

Adorable. If you have noticed that you do not care whether as PUG or Premade always play in TEAM? The only difference is that you pick you as Premade 3 of up to 11 other players before.

We experienced this premade "farming" issue late night this past weekend when the population was low. Instead of rage quitting, I rolled a new other side faction game and won in a completely unfitted ship, while still giving my poor frustrated farmed team a few easy kills.

INSERT CROSS SERVER GSF PLUG #999,999

For the FIRST time, I experienced matches against the SAME FACTION this past Sunday night. After so many dozens of games, I didn't know it was possible. Even though I was happy to lose to future PUG teammates, it really does throw the "gear" upgrading to one faction if they have more population.

Guess what BEATS VOIP? LAN gamers sitting next to each other physically! Works best for 2-3 players so you can glance at each others screens, but the physical excitement energy and lack of having to push to talk is the best.

I would suggest open skype chats for others, BUT you must realize that Skype is a huge bandwidth sucker. Before we got FIOS, we banned skype from the house.

If you are landing in matches with the same players over and over, why not invite them to a group and your VOIP? Never hurts to ASK

Unfortunately there is really no way how to stop premade even with only SOLO queue. But these arguments are really amazing:

And since all us VOIP folks are evil, lets say it does put us in a same faction match. Lets say... 3 on one side, 1 on the other. Nothing stoppin' the one from throwing the match, or letting the other side know where you're at cuz y'know... evil VOIP right?

Confession that for people playing as premade is sportmanship really unknown word or direct threat?

End result is probably a fairly low percentage of matches being more balanced, with the majority being the same as it is now - but with the added benefit of possible longer queue times and annoyed groups.

Why annoyed groups? Because premade would be forced to play against another premade? Or because it could turn out that premades are on the most servers just minority annoying all other players? It is not dream of premades to play against challenging opponents and not bunch of newbies?

Confession that for people playing as premade is sportmanship really unknown word or direct threat?

 

Why annoyed groups? Because premade would be forced to play against another premade? Or because it could turn out that premades are on the most servers just minority annoying all other players? It is not dream of premades to play against challenging opponents and not bunch of newbies?

Neither a threat or any thing else, just an honest assessment. If people want to play with friends and the queue for grouped doesn't pop, what do you think is going to happen? They're going to circumvent not being able to play. And they're going to be annoyed that they had to do so. I honestly don't care if you think that's being a good sportsman or not.

I don't know any groups that queue (and I've been invited to most of them on TEH at some point) that prefer matches that are lopsided gankfests. And if there is room, most will take you along with them. You could be playing your first match ever and you'd still be welcome.

I'd rather play skilled group vs skilled group for all my matches, so long as I actually got to play. I'd much rather there was cross server queues and the matchmaker worked well. Matches where there was never a challenge to begin with aren't any fun. You can only fly that unmastered ship that you really weren't interested in so many times before A) you throw your hands up and fly what you enjoy and B) the damn thing is mastered.

Neither a threat or any thing else, just an honest assessment. If people want to play with friends and the queue for grouped doesn't pop, what do you think is going to happen? They're going to circumvent not being able to play. And they're going to be annoyed that they had to do so. I honestly don't care if you think that's being a good sportsman or not.

I don't know any groups that queue (and I've been invited to most of them on TEH at some point) that prefer matches that are lopsided gankfests. And if there is room, most will take you along with them. You could be playing your first match ever and you'd still be welcome.

I'd rather play skilled group vs skilled group for all my matches, so long as I actually got to play. I'd much rather there was cross server queues and the matchmaker worked well. Matches where there was never a challenge to begin with aren't any fun. You can only fly that unmastered ship that you really weren't interested in so many times before A) you throw your hands up and fly what you enjoy and B) the damn thing is mastered.

So it is OK when solo queue are annoyed because they are overtaken in line by premade waiting as group queue? They can then sabotage match because of that?

Please stop argumenting with "playing with friends". It is obviously fiction which you have already confirmed or is anyone who is incidentaly taken to group (and playing first match) immediately your friend?

Matches where was never a challenge aren´t fun? So that´s reason why premade fly so often with GS and bombers against strikes and scouts. Because it is challenging