The Not so Evil Overlord.6

I appreciate the fact that you're being honest about the design philosophy. That being said, if this is the design philosophy within the balance team... I'm terrified for the future of GW2. I appreciate making things viable. I think that's good, as it increases the player choice. But that's not the approach you're taking here. This approach is to reward people less for playing optimally, and penalize people less for playing the game badly. How you build is an aspect of skill. It's one that's very easily shared amongst people, but it's still a skill aspect. Why would you want to deliberately remove a skill aspect from your game? Please Anet, kill that philosophy, but at the very least, don't bring it into the competitive game modes. Bad players who aren't willing to take the basic steps to improve (such as getting a decent build) shouldn't be pandered to.

... Due to the timing of this, I'm presuming you were talking to me, even though I'm not sure if you actually read 90% of what I said. Did you miss the comment about population? 10+ minute queue times isn't a viable solution to the problem. Spending close to 50% of your play time in queue should never be considered an acceptable solution for a game mode. Additionally, I wasn't asking to group with friends, plural, against ungrouped randoms. I was supporting people playing with a friend, singular. The impact of two people in comms vs five people in comms is exponentially different. DuoQ isn't the insanely powerful thing you think it is. Just watch any streamer duo Qing. I've seen skilled duos go through some brutal losing streaks before. Being in comms helps some. But its not what makes or breaks a team. (See my previous post about the times when I lose to duos). Quite frankly, you're blaming the wrong thing for your losses. ... Also, from your verbiage in the opening post, you seem to be saying that you're constantly running into duos. Given that you think its ruining the game mode. Which means you should be getting them on your team just as often as you're facing them. And they'll be facing each other more often than not. That's just basic probability. So, in a nutshell... DuoQ is the current solution to the problem, of letting people play together, without spending 50% of their time in queue. If you want to never play against duos, you'll need to find a solution which solves not just your perceived problem... But also the queue time problem for people playing with friends.

... Why on earth should Anet remove the ability for people to play in a competitive game mode with their friends? Yes, ATs exist... But the downtime between matches in it is long, and they're only available every few hours. This is an MMO. Removing the ability to play with friends eliminates the point of the game mode. Yes, the people playing with friends have a bit of an advantage, via VoIP, and being used to playing with each other. ... If its that big of a problem for you, than join an SPvP guild, make some friends, and get some DuoQ buddies. The solution to your problem is really fairly simple. I think I at least see one SPvP guild advertisement per day put out in Heart of the Mists. ... And to be clear, I mostly queue up solo. But I'm not the sort of person who wants to prevent people from playing with their friends, because I occasionally bump into a skilled duoQ. ... Especially since those matches that I do lose, I typically lose because both people in the duoQ were better than me. And I can't complain about people better than me beating me. (And hey--sometimes I get that good duoQ on my team. Mathematically speaking it should happen just as often for me as it does against me, balancing things out) And for all of the people suggesting that Anet just add in team and solo arena... They used to have that. Unfortunately, the SPvP population isn't big enough to actually support that. And its only shrunk since then. Its not a plausible option. Removing people's ability to play with friends will only continue to shrink the population. If the SPvP population gets a massive surge, then maybe it can be revisited again. But unless that happens... Its not a viable solution.

I just wanted duck in and say, this is definitely still happening. The clear the Modrem event is still sitting at 3/4, and there are no more Modrem left to kill on all of the maps I've been on. And presumably because of this, the beetle isn't spawning. Only way I'm going to be able to get this, is by finding a map advertised in LFG.