It really is time for duo queue to be removed [Merged]

[Master Ketsu.4569]

An alternative solution that has been pointed out before is to just change how matchmaking for duo-Q works past plat 1 / 1500 rating. 

Averaging out ratings for duo Q makes sense for the casual silver/gold players who just want to play ranked with their friend. But it's an absolutely full throttle pants-on-head braindead tomfoolery way to do the algorithm for when things start getting competitive, which roughly happens once you reach plat. This incentivizes heavy alt-abuse, both on the side of throwing matches and sniping down other players, and then breaking the algorithm by letting people in the top 100 duo with a silver tanked alt, rewarding them for their match manipulation with even easier matches.

So the solution is simple:

If one player is above 1500 rating, it should treat both players in the duo as having the highest rating between them instead of the average, and then adds 5 points for each division to make up for the advantage of duo comps.

Examples:

1300 rated player duos with 1400 rated player: matchmaker sees this as 1350

1300 rated player duos with 1500 rated player: matchmaker sees this as two players with 1505

1300 rated player duos with 1600 rated player: matchmaker sees this as two players with 1610

1600 rated player duos with 1700 rated player: matchmaker sees this as two players with 1715

This allows Duo-Q to still exist without it being such an obvious and easily exploited advantage, and changes nothing for casual players. The only people who would complain about such an algorithm change are the people who are currently alt-abusing/throwing matches/etc.

 

 

 

Edited June 6, 2023 by Master Ketsu.4569

[ToffeeLatte.8243]

I almost always play in duo q, I don't really enjoy queueing ranked without it because at least if the match is miserable I got someone to joke with.

 

With that said it should work like how other games do, if I'm in a duo q then the other team should have one that matches us in MMR. Having one team with two duos Vs one with none is categorically unfair.

 

Also in games you can duo I am typically used to it taking the higher rating of the pair for matchmaking purposes, here it apparently does not which is also wrong.

 

A leaf should be taken out of leagues book here too, bronze/silver/gold should be the only places you can duo, from plat onwards you're on your own, else what you effectively create is the issue league used to have where queueing solo in an elo full of VC duo partners was suicide in many cases to the point you had to duo.

Edited June 6, 2023 by ToffeeLatte.8243

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

8 hours ago, Master Ketsu.4569 said:

So the solution is simple:

If one player is above 1500 rating, it should treat both players in the duo as having the highest rating between them instead of the average, and then adds 5 points for each division to make up for the advantage of duo comps.

It still wouldn't be fair. A 5 point disparity is not nearly enough to make up for the massive advantage DuoQ presents on its own over SoloQ players. A 100 point disparity would not be enough, and may as well be a 5 point difference with how painfully low Ranked's population has dwindled.

The solution is honestly simpler than that. It is to remove DuoQ or split it away from SoloQs. No jumping through hoops and tweaks to the matchmaking algorithm will ever correct the injustice that is 2 against 1. The only real solution is to ensure that it does not ever happen, and those are the only two ways in which it is possible. That I can think of anyway.

6 hours ago, ToffeeLatte.8243 said:

Also in games you can duo I am typically used to it taking the higher rating of the pair for matchmaking purposes, here it apparently does not which is also wrong.

 It is a small betterment at best. DuoQ; even when it doesn't absolutely break matchmaking, is still an advantage over SoloQ players and advantages do not belong in any sort of competition. Objectively speaking; it cannot ever be fair or just, it can only be made slightly less exploitable. A temporary solution at best as games like Overwatch 1.5 are quickly discovering.

Remove DuoQ or split it into its own separate Ranked arena/ladder, or give us another solution with some permanence if you happen to think of any.

[Saiyan.1704]

Oh there's already a thread about removing duoQ... I'll just bump it because it's going to be the same ol' conversation. DuoQ needs to be removed completely or repaired because duoQ averaging ratings in Plat1+ matches is just broken.

[Eddie.9143]

bump again. lets go anet it's unanimous. no duo q in ranked. 

[whooot.5784]

On 5/1/2023 at 4:43 AM, yorkey.4215 said:

With the declining PVP population, the problems caused by allowing duo-queuing in ranked is more evident than ever.

 

For the uninitiated, here are the issues it causes:

 

1. Duos inherently handicap the matchmaker when trying to create balanced matches.  Where a more balanced match would have existed by splitting two good players onto each team, it forces the matchmaker to put them together on one team.  This would not be as much of a problem if the population weren't so low that the matchmaker can rarely find another good duo to balance out the teams.  So when two 1700+ rating players duo queue together and the queue has gone on for 5, 6, 7 minutes+, the matchmaker can do nothing but put them together with three 1400 rating players against a team of five 1400 rating players (just an example, but generally what happens).  Yes, if you're one of those people crying about going against MAT winners in your gold match that ended up 500-0, this is exactly what happened.  

 

2. What's worse, even semi-good players will start queue dodging when they know a duo of good players is queuing.  Say we have a plat 1500 player - he knows that a duo of 1700 streamers are queuing.  The 1500 player will more often than not choose not to queue at the same time because the odds are he'll be placed against said 1700 duo and have no chance of winning.  He would be MUCH more likely to queue if it were solo-queue only because he then knows the two 1700 players would be on separate teams and he'd have a chance to make an impact on either team.  This throws the match quality further off for everyone. 

 

3. Even more nefarious, there are some players who will abuse duo queue to get favorable games.  The matchmaker looks at a duo and takes the AVERAGE of their rating when putting together teams. So two top players can take advantage of this by having one player get on an alt account that is much lower rated and so they get better players on their team.  Some will even go out of their way to abuse this by throwing games on the alt account to keep its rating low, so that they can keep boosting their main account. 

 

All of these things absolutely happen with every ranked season, and anyone denying this is an absolute liar.

 

And yes, I've been around long enough to know the history of how duo-queue was allowed to stay because top players wanted to play with their friends. 

 

Anet should pay attention though because the things above lead to a vicious cycle that causes the experience to become ever worse for the general population.  Again, none of these problems would be so bad or exploitable if the population was even somewhat higher.  But CMC or whoever, the population is so low now that you really have to re-evaluate.  

Best post for this subject, elegantly explained. Bro said it all

[ccccc.4963]

On 4/30/2023 at 11:43 PM, yorkey.4215 said:

What's worse, even semi-good players will start queue dodging when they know a duo of good players is queuing.  Say we have a plat 1500 player - he knows that a duo of 1700 streamers are queuing.  The 1500 player will more often than not choose not to queue at the same time because the odds are he'll be placed against said 1700 duo and have no chance of winning.  He would be MUCH more likely to queue if it were solo-queue only because he then knows the two 1700 players would be on separate teams and he'd have a chance to make an impact on either team.  This throws the match quality further off for everyone. 

Throw games when you match with anyone playing ladder >>> the game

 

So wacky being a soloq player who matches with p2 duo vs p2 duo and you low roll the duo that plays for 16hrs a day farming +2s and orbiting narus twitch 

Edited December 3, 2023 by ccccc.4963

[Eddie.9143]

Bump

[porkchopMCgee.6193]

On 4/30/2023 at 10:43 PM, yorkey.4215 said:

With the declining PVP population, the problems caused by allowing duo-queuing in ranked is more evident than ever.

 

For the uninitiated, here are the issues it causes:

 

1. Duos inherently handicap the matchmaker when trying to create balanced matches.  Where a more balanced match would have existed by splitting two good players onto each team, it forces the matchmaker to put them together on one team.  This would not be as much of a problem if the population weren't so low that the matchmaker can rarely find another good duo to balance out the teams.  So when two 1700+ rating players duo queue together and the queue has gone on for 5, 6, 7 minutes+, the matchmaker can do nothing but put them together with three 1400 rating players against a team of five 1400 rating players (just an example, but generally what happens).  Yes, if you're one of those people crying about going against MAT winners in your gold match that ended up 500-0, this is exactly what happened.  

 

2. What's worse, even semi-good players will start queue dodging when they know a duo of good players is queuing.  Say we have a plat 1500 player - he knows that a duo of 1700 streamers are queuing.  The 1500 player will more often than not choose not to queue at the same time because the odds are he'll be placed against said 1700 duo and have no chance of winning.  He would be MUCH more likely to queue if it were solo-queue only because he then knows the two 1700 players would be on separate teams and he'd have a chance to make an impact on either team.  This throws the match quality further off for everyone. 

 

3. Even more nefarious, there are some players who will abuse duo queue to get favorable games.  The matchmaker looks at a duo and takes the AVERAGE of their rating when putting together teams. So two top players can take advantage of this by having one player get on an alt account that is much lower rated and so they get better players on their team.  Some will even go out of their way to abuse this by throwing games on the alt account to keep its rating low, so that they can keep boosting their main account. 

 

All of these things absolutely happen with every ranked season, and anyone denying this is an absolute liar.

 

And yes, I've been around long enough to know the history of how duo-queue was allowed to stay because top players wanted to play with their friends. 

 

Anet should pay attention though because the things above lead to a vicious cycle that causes the experience to become ever worse for the general population.  Again, none of these problems would be so bad or exploitable if the population was even somewhat higher.  But CMC or whoever, the population is so low now that you really have to re-evaluate.  

Oh lawd here we go again with this...

 

[porkchopMCgee.6193]

On 5/1/2023 at 4:18 PM, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

 

I want to play with friends, but I understand that playing with friends should exclude me from the soloer queues, or split us. I don't always have to play on the same team as friends to play with them (though, I'm aware the latter will be used by some particularly desperate groups to wintrade, so-)

 

If people were more concerned with playing the game because its a game and for fun instead of desperately trying to hoover up a single drop of clout, we wouldn't have to build guardrails in, but alas.

 

 

I wonder if half of any of these people that are saying soloq only, have even tried to find someone to duo with. 

But anyways just play the game for fun, and stop worrying what other people are doing.  Cancel culture getting out of hand.

 

Also, anet stopped caring about pvp. Y'alls tears are going to an empty void in the mists.

[porkchopMCgee.6193]

On 6/5/2023 at 8:12 PM, Master Ketsu.4569 said:

An alternative solution that has been pointed out before is to just change how matchmaking for duo-Q works past plat 1 / 1500 rating. 

Averaging out ratings for duo Q makes sense for the casual silver/gold players who just want to play ranked with their friend. But it's an absolutely full throttle pants-on-head braindead tomfoolery way to do the algorithm for when things start getting competitive, which roughly happens once you reach plat. This incentivizes heavy alt-abuse, both on the side of throwing matches and sniping down other players, and then breaking the algorithm by letting people in the top 100 duo with a silver tanked alt, rewarding them for their match manipulation with even easier matches.

So the solution is simple:

If one player is above 1500 rating, it should treat both players in the duo as having the highest rating between them instead of the average, and then adds 5 points for each division to make up for the advantage of duo comps.

Examples:

1300 rated player duos with 1400 rated player: matchmaker sees this as 1350

1300 rated player duos with 1500 rated player: matchmaker sees this as two players with 1505

1300 rated player duos with 1600 rated player: matchmaker sees this as two players with 1610

1600 rated player duos with 1700 rated player: matchmaker sees this as two players with 1715

This allows Duo-Q to still exist without it being such an obvious and easily exploited advantage, and changes nothing for casual players. The only people who would complain about such an algorithm change are the people who are currently alt-abusing/throwing matches/etc.

 

 

 

Actually some people just like to play with a friend. 

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

3 hours ago, porkchopMCgee.6193 said:

But anyways just play the game for fun, and stop worrying what other people are doing. 

Also, anet stopped caring about pvp. Y'alls tears are going to an empty void in the mists.

Massive hypocrite triple-posting on an 8 month old topic. Here whining for duoq when you already have it and have for 5 years. Have to wonder why you're here tripping over forumies instead of out there having fun then. Get out there and enjoy your game, yes?

2 hours ago, porkchopMCgee.6193 said:

Cancel culture getting out of hand.

"Cancel culture" 😂yuh cancel culture in guildie pvp be wildin frfr

That's why absolutely nothing has been canceled in 5 years 🤤

2 hours ago, porkchopMCgee.6193 said:

Actually some people just like to play with a friend. 

ok then split the queues into 2 diff arenas. One for solos, one for duos/teams. That's how you find out if it's really about playing with friends or about ganging up for the advantage and it doesn't cancel anything.

[porkchopMCgee.6193]

2 minutes ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

Massive hypocrite triple-posting on an 8 month old topic. Here whining for duoq when you already have it and have for 5 years. Have to wonder why you're here tripping over forumies instead of out there having fun then. Get out there and enjoy your game, yes?

"Cancel culture" 😂yuh cancel culture in guildie pvp be wildin frfr

That's why absolutely nothing has been canceled in 5 years 🤤

ok then split the queues into 2 diff arenas. One for solos, one for duos/teams. That's how you find out if it's really about playing with friends or about ganging up for the advantage and it doesn't cancel anything.

I didn't say this gw2 cance culture  was successful lol

Edited December 4, 2023 by porkchopMCgee.6193

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

Just now, porkchopMCgee.6193 said:

I didn't say this gw2 cancel was successful lol

then how is it "out of hand"? 🤪

and why do you care?

[porkchopMCgee.6193]

4 minutes ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

then how is it "out of hand"? 🤪

and why do you care?

Why do you care too much?😜

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

2 minutes ago, porkchopMCgee.6193 said:

Why do you care too much?😜

I'm not the one who brought it up, but now that you've stuck your tongue out at me virtually, I will be informing Builderman himself of your heinous offenses. ☝️😡✋

[porkchopMCgee.6193]

22 minutes ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

I'm not the one who brought it up, but now that you've stuck your tongue out at me virtually, I will be informing Builderman himself of your heinous offenses. ☝️😡✋

Now I'm offended that you're offended by a friendly emoji

[Last Crab.6054]

Anet should know that duo Q needs to be removed,and that a massive majority wants it gone, but that is hard when players have jobs at the company and the one who can listen to the majority is friends with the cartel.

There is no way on on earth, with the amount if threads over the years, and most recently, that they wouldn't acknowledge the cries, if they were not letting it ride.

Awesome 👌 

[Last Crab.6054]

It's hard to know what is balanced when Leg1s face gold 1s, or when Plat2s face silver 1s.

You THINK specs are unbalanced, bit more than likely you were facing someone way better.

Don't let your EGO blind you.

If most of the problems that hit the threads were an ISSUE, they would be the meta.

Campaign with me here and on Reddit to get anet to be impartial, and fix the mode.

Balance is SECOND to this 

[Last Crab.6054]

Amendment: Playing a homegrown DK build doesn't strengthen your case.

[porkchopMCgee.6193]

8 hours ago, Last Crab.6054 said:

It's hard to know what is balanced when Leg1s face gold 1s, or when Plat2s face silver 1s.

You THINK specs are unbalanced, bit more than likely you were facing someone way better.

Don't let your EGO blind you.

If most of the problems that hit the threads were an ISSUE, they would be the meta.

Campaign with me here and on Reddit to get anet to be impartial, and fix the mode.

Balance is SECOND to this 

Lmao. You care too much about something that doesn't really matter in the end.   

[Eddbopkins.2630]

Unfortunately you just can't fix low population.  And because of that the match make is unqualified to make balanced matches. 

The real question in my mind anyway is how to increase the population by a factor of 10 at all hours.

[Sahne.6950]

2 minutes ago, Eddbopkins.2630 said:

The real question in my mind anyway is how to increase the population by a factor of 10 at all hours.

Increase Gold rewards! 

Cant imagine how many bots  new players this will attract.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

10 minutes ago, Sahne.6950 said:

Increase Gold rewards! 

Cant imagine how many bots  new players this will attract.

More account bound rewards with no gold value.

[Eddbopkins.2630]

I don't play pve at all. But if there was something that gave you a boost in the pve world after winning a pvp game or two that might incentavize me to do some pve, and might make pvers want that pve buff of some kind. Making them pvp a little more maybe?

Edited December 5, 2023 by Eddbopkins.2630