Hot Take: Remove 2v2 Duo

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

28 minutes ago, Luthan.5236 said:

Of course ... if the 2 duo queue fights vs. another premade duo of 2 ... it is balanced. But on the other hand: If they fight vs 2 randoms (both queued solo) ... the win is almost guarantueed for the duo queue. In 2 vs. 2. 

Its like that everywhere. In any medium where a group of 2 or more coordinated people can go against people competing individually.

I get its easy to ignore if you're only playing for pips. Its boring and uncompetitive if you're playing for the game part of the game though.

28 minutes ago, Luthan.5236 said:

On the other hand: In 5 vs. 5 if both teams have a duo ... it also is balanced.

No it isn't. 

A coordinated premade team always has an advantage over soloQs who play entirely at the mercy of RNG, whatever they're handed.

This would be the equivalent of drafting players for a high school basketball game, and allowing one team to actually pick their players while the other team gets all of theirs assigned randomly.

You either do it totally randomly, or you let both teams pick and choose. Anything in-between is a mockery that belongs in a Ben Stiller movie. 🤡🎺

49 minutes ago, Luthan.5236 said:

But if only one has a duo the one has an advandage ...

Of course this will still happen all the time, because the population is already small, and the population of players that SoloQ is way higher than the population of DuoQs

Both in general, and active at any given time. The only people who really DuoQ are low ranks just having fun with it, or the very top ranks using it to abuse the soloQs and the aforementioned low ranks.

49 minutes ago, Luthan.5236 said:

that is smaller than in 2 vs. 2 since the other 3 can balance it.

No, they cannot.

Just like you're here complaining about your 1, singular, randomly assigned teammate in 2v2 not being able to do anything to a DuoQ'd sweatstack, the same can apply to those 3 randomly assigned teammates in 5v5.

Let's do some basic math. Probability.

If I have 2 apples, one rotten, one fresh, and I drop them into a bag, then reach my hand in to randomly pull out an apple, I have a 1 in 2 chance or 50% chance to draw a rotten apple.

If I have 5 apples, 2 fresh, 3 rotten and I do the same test, I have a 60% chance to draw a rotten apple.

More apples means more rotten. The same applies to 5v5 and 2v2. You have a much higher chance of getting an imbalanced 5v5 match than you do a 2v2 match just by default.

49 minutes ago, Luthan.5236 said:

This also taking into account that the matchmaker tries to generate teams where the mean score is similar for both.

Tries being the keyword here.

And that's also abusable with DuoQ because smurfing and no rating cap for DuoQs. A silver at 1000 rating could queue with a plat 3 at 1700 rating and that would bring their effective MMR to 1350(gold 2)

49 minutes ago, Luthan.5236 said:

I certainly got - at least in gold rating - pretty often the case that the duo seemed to overconfident ... team with the duo queue losing. (They also tend to try to "command" other players ... getting angry if not the remaining players of the team play according to their strategy.)

Yeah because they're spoonfed wins by being allowed to DuoQ. Its ego inflation so ofc they're going to be toxic sweatlords.

49 minutes ago, Luthan.5236 said:

So ... therefore the impact naturally is stronger in a 2 vs. 2.

It isn't. Not on any planet.

OP is right about some things, but too radical in other places to take seriously.

2v2 was DoA because of merged solo/DuoQ which has been the larger issue, the bigger picture since it came back, all the way in season 13, 4 years ago. I say this with no exaggeration whatsoever; DuoQ effectively dealt the deathblow to Ranked sPvP, it and the top do-nothings that cannot play without it.

[Luthan.5236]

Well ... you can' t have a "coordinated premade team" vs. a duo queue. Since the other team can have only a duo queue (or at max 2 duo queues) ... and not 5 people that queued together. (Since queuing 5 people together is not possible.) So I guess we can ignore that.

For the other part: This solely relies on having a higher probability of getting imbalanced matches (one team with a duo queue while the other has none) in 5 vs. 5 because of the population and that mode needs a higher amount of players. For the individual player queuing up solo ... the 2 vs. 2 might be worse here though. You know for sure that your team has no duo in 2 vs. 2 (if you queue solo) ... and for the other team the matchmaker only has to get 2 players out of the population. Now the total population might be a lot lower ... with less people even playing 2 vs. 2 at all. Then again: Those more likely to play it "serious" ... and actually trying to duo queue - might be higher. (Of course then it can be countered in 100 percent of the cases if you just duo queue yourself. But that would force the player to do so. Some just want to queue solo to quickly get a match.)

The matchmaking with the rating and the platin+silver example: This is only a problem if the platin is super strong being able to 1 vs. 2 or 1 vs. 3 the whole enemy team. If 1700+1000 (=1350) gets queued vs. 1350 everyone on the enemy team . .. they actually should be able to take the 1700 guy out in a 1 vs. 2 while he should win every 1 vs. 1. (Them noticing this and grouping up to do so.) I think this is a matter of how combat and skills are designed. Previously people complained that you could just do a lot of CC + damage at the same time. So they nerfed stuff. (Removing damage from CC.) Should be designed more in a way that numbers also can have an advantage.

But then those "combat purists" will complain if 2 average people can have just "luck" when they are able to kill a more skilled guy.

The way you see it ... they only can allow solo queue then. (Allowing more would even mean bigger problems - if the 3-5 people were allowed to queue as well.)

I wonder though ... why it never occured to them to just either allow 1 man queue or no restrictions. Why exactly 2? Seems like random/arbitrarily chosen ... because some people complained they could not queue with their friend and they wanted to allow it for at least 2 friends. Tournaments afaik require 5 man premade to queue up. They should promote tournaments for premades groups more. Never really played one. (I actually would prefer if queuing solo was possible there as well. I mean there is time before matches that is meant to coordinate with others - for the random people. If they are able to use the chat.)

Edited December 7, 2022 by Luthan.5236

[ButterPeanut.9746]

People are forgetting the most important part of a 2v2 offseason ranked for two weeks. Duo queue will not, and should not be removed simply because playing with a friend is more fun than playing solo with a person you don't know. Fun = how this is mode is designed. The level of imbalance and the problems that arise are secondary to the fun factor. 

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

14 hours ago, Luthan.5236 said:

Well ... you can' t have a "coordinated premade team" vs. a duo queue. Since the other team can have only a duo queue (or at max 2 duo queues) ... and not 5 people that queued together. (Since queuing 5 people together is not possible.) So I guess we can ignore that.

Yes, you can put words in my mouth and ignore what I write and I invite you to do so because its really difficult to piece together what you're trying to say or respond to into a coherent thought.

That being said, I honestly have no idea what kind of statement you're trying to make here. I tried if that's any comfort.

14 hours ago, Luthan.5236 said:

For the other part: This solely relies on having a higher probability of getting imbalanced matches (one team with a duo queue while the other has none) in 5 vs. 5 because of the population and that mode needs a higher amount of players.

Again, that's not the only way in which DuoQ is imbalanced, broken.

That's just the most obvious, go-to example. One team having a DuoQ while the other doesn't, or even one team having 2 duoqs and 1 team having none(that happens a lot too)

DuoQ itself is imbalanced like I said because you cannot evenly divide teams of 5 into sub-teams of 2 people. There will always be Soloqs that play at a disadvantage.

14 hours ago, Luthan.5236 said:

Then again: Those more likely to play it "serious" ... and actually trying to duo queue - might be higher. (Of course then it can be countered in 100 percent of the cases if you just duo queue yourself. But that would force the player to do so. Some just want to queue solo to quickly get a match.)

"in 100 percent of the cases" 🤣get real

The very top ranks are usually occupied by duoqs that you hardly ever even see because they're sniping bots and pure soloQ teams at 4 or 5 in the morning, intentionally avoiding other DuoQs, which are a lot easier to queue dodge than some rando soloQ.

And that's a big if to put so much confidence in. The average DuoQ is just playing for fun, they stand 0 chance against a coordinated, cheaty sweatstack of any size. Could be 2, 3, 4, or 5. The top players are going to be handed a free win regardless. That's what merged queues do to 'competition' because they're by design, uncompetitive. This is something Ben P openly acknowledged when DuoQ was added back in for season 13.

14 hours ago, Luthan.5236 said:

The matchmaking with the rating and the platin+silver example: This is only a problem if the platin is super strong being able to 1 vs. 2 or 1 vs. 3 the whole enemy team.

It isn't when that silver is a smurf, or some rando account being boosted by somebody playing on it who is much better than the actual account owner. And it wouldn't be 1vX, it would be 2vX which I think is important to preface with.

So you have 2 top players, queuing into a division they shouldn't be in, at off-times when peak-player counts are at their absolute lowest, with coordination that may or may not be present on the opposing team at all.

Absolutely they could and do win 2v3, 2v4, even 2v5 because its easy. They're skilled enough to where(arguably) they wouldn't even need cheese tactics to do this. The fact that they do incorporate cheese tactics makes this an everyday reality, not some shocking 1-off occurrence. Especially once you enter plat and this becomes an occurrence in every 1 of 5 games played.

14 hours ago, Luthan.5236 said:

If 1700+1000 (=1350) gets queued vs. 1350 everyone on the enemy team . .. they actually should be able to take the 1700 guy out in a 1 vs. 2 while he should win every 1 vs. 1. (Them noticing this and grouping up to do so.) I think this is a matter of how combat and skills are designed.

ok 😂 

They still shouldn't have to. People at 1350 should be going against other golds, high silvers, and low platinums. They shouldn't have to deal with grouped top-ranked sweatstacks period, and sweatstacks should not have to deal with them. That ruins the competition at every level, just turns Ranked into a boring pip-farm

14 hours ago, Luthan.5236 said:

Previously people complained that you could just do a lot of CC + damage at the same time. So they nerfed stuff. (Removing damage from CC.) Should be designed more in a way that numbers also can have an advantage.

Game balance doesn't matter for DuoQs

The advantage of being able to point at an enemy player and say "gang up with me on this one" is exclusive to DuoQs.

SoloQs have to guess the intentions of their randomly assigned teammates while also dealing with the woes of having randomly assigned teammates.

No balance patch is going to fix that. The only way to fix that is to ensure Solos and Duos do not compete on the same competitive ladder. To acknowledge that they're holistically very different ways to play.

15 hours ago, Luthan.5236 said:

But then those "combat purists" will complain if 2 average people can have just "luck" when they are able to kill a more skilled guy.

Again, you mean more skilled guys since DuoQ is 2 people. Its true that numbers don't always beat skill, but they have both in this case.

This wouldn't even be a discussion if people would be content to just stay in their lanes. Solos only vs other Solos, teams only vs other teams. There is no luck in true competition. True victory need no explanation, true defeat allows none.

15 hours ago, Luthan.5236 said:

The way you see it ... they only can allow solo queue then. (Allowing more would even mean bigger problems - if the 3-5 people were allowed to queue as well.)

That's not the way I see it.

The way I see it is queues can be any size, so long as the queues are separate. SoloQ always has the right to exist, being the most popular and easily-accessible, but those Solos should only be matched with and against the other solos.

The problem with teams is not the teams themselves, its the fact that they can go against people playing at a clear disadvantage, roll over them 500-50 and then talk mad kitten behind some fake, inflated rating. If teams went only against other teams and they were still able to do this, then I wouldn't talk kitten back because there would be no question.

15 hours ago, Luthan.5236 said:

I wonder though ... why it never occured to them to just either allow 1 man queue or no restrictions. Why exactly 2? Seems like random/arbitrarily chosen ... because some people complained they could not queue with their friend and they wanted to allow it for at least 2 friends.

This I actually agree with.

I can even tell you who whined to have it put back in: The wintraders, the match manipulators, the abusive sniveling jokes we call top players. They don't want fair and balanced competition, they want to stomp noobs.

They could have cried to have queues of any size added back in, yet they fixated on DuoQ, why? Because DuoQ specifically has the most control over matchmaking. Leaves space for soloqs which are easy to beat in a group and it also means the greatest competition you'll ever face is at most 2 people, infinitely easier to manage than a team of 5 people.

15 hours ago, Luthan.5236 said:

Tournaments afaik require 5 man premade to queue up. They should promote tournaments for premades groups more. Never really played one. (I actually would prefer if queuing solo was possible there as well. I mean there is time before matches that is meant to coordinate with others - for the random people. If they are able to use the chat.)

Which is also exactly why they should not do this. At least ATs still have the potential; if not the playerbase, to be the sole competitive mode.

But I guess even that has to be another boring gold farm. 🙄😴 Agents of entropy, I tell ye.

[Avatar.3568]

Just Play better, than you climb solo too.

 

[Zombiesbum.3502]

On 12/7/2022 at 1:21 PM, ButterPeanut.9746 said:

People are forgetting the most important part of a 2v2 offseason ranked for two weeks. Duo queue will not, and should not be removed simply because playing with a friend is more fun than playing solo with a person you don't know. Fun = how this is mode is designed. The level of imbalance and the problems that arise are secondary to the fun factor. 

There is unranked if you want to play with friends. Granted you don't get pip rewards, but that's another matter for another topic. Ranked is not there to chill out with your friends, and actually, those duos are usually not a problem, it's the duos that pick the strongest combination of classes and really try to win games. And I'm guessing these aren't the players you are describing, right? But these are the players that ruin the game mode, not that it's their fault, they are just playing the system, but what I'm saying is that system is flawed.

16 hours ago, Avatar.3568 said:

Just Play better, than you climb solo too.

It seems like you want some attention, but what you posted is not an argument. 

Edited December 9, 2022 by Zombiesbum.3502

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

17 hours ago, Avatar.3568 said:

Just Play better, than you climb solo too.

Gr8 b8 m8, r8 it 8/8

[ButterPeanut.9746]

1 hour ago, Zombiesbum.3502 said:

There is unranked if you want to play with friends. Granted you don't get pip rewards, but that's another matter for another topic. Ranked is not there to chill out with your friends, and actually, those duos are usually not a problem, it's the duos that pick the strongest combination of classes and really try to win games. And I'm guessing these aren't the players you are describing, right? But these are the players that ruin the game mode, not that it's their fault, they are just playing the system, but what I'm saying is that system is flawed.

It seems like you want some attention, but what you posted is not an argument. 

No I was specifically talking about people who try to win with a friend. That is what is 'fun'. I'd also argue they also could just removed unranked instead of what you are describing. 

[Zombiesbum.3502]

14 hours ago, ButterPeanut.9746 said:

That is what is 'fun'.

Your fun may just be at the expense of someone elses fun. That's what happens when things are unfair.