With ranked getting into full swing again can we reassess the limits that were imposed to queueing i.e. solo, duo and 5 man (with 5 mans only being put against other 5 mans)?
Personally I queue with friends and don’t try to get a super-stack going and we can get fairly tough fought games, or we end up going against other 5 mans that are way out of our league. Due to the smaller population of 5 man teams in ranked, we will inevitably end up going against these same teams and, in effect, end up feeding them ranks with no real competition involved. (E.g. We could be a mixture of Silver ranks and still be put against mid high Golds or teams that have competed and won tournaments like fE).
On the other hand, if we don’t have enough players to make a 5 man we’re limited to duo queue max which means one or two of us can get left out which is awkward as we’ve been playing socially for a while in pubs and the like.
In other games with comp mode (CSGO, OW, etc), they allow stacks to go against mixtures of other players and their playerbases dwarf ours. Both the aforementioned games could afford to limit full stacks to only play other full stacks yet they manage to mix and match teams based on skill for a more competitive experience. Our community on the other hand, is tiny by comparison and we’re segregating the playerbase even further. By no means am I looking to be able to stomp a bunch of solo queue bronzes, but it’d be nice to get the full 5v5, FF on experience with friends while we are still learning this format.
Could the search algorithm be opened up to search for 5 mans as a priority and if none are available with the same skill level, start moving down the list of potential team make ups?
For example, we are queueing as a mixture of mid to high Silver level players with a 1 to 1 win/loss ratio. The search parameter would search for a 5 man team and the only other available is a mixture of high Golds/Cobalt players. Due to there being such a high discrepancy in skill it will move down the list and look for a 4 man team and find a much higher level ranked player such as a Cobalt and place us against each other. The team with the 4 man plus solo would have their ELO weighted in their favour that if they do win, they’d gain slightly more rank than usual and conversely, the 5 man would lose more rank if losing.
This can go all the way down mixtures of teams until a suitable match is found where the less people that are in a party together that are going against a 5 man would have a higher skill to compensate. Although this doesn’t seem to necessary as we have VOIP in game and so the teamplay ability is there for both teams, it would give the higher skilled players an incentive to solo queue and carry teams with the chance to gain more rank per win. This will also help the higher level players find games and reduce their queue times which means there would be less need for “smurfing” and using alt accounts just to find a game.
TL;DR – Open up queueing completely to allow anywhere between 1 and 5 members in a party and reward smaller teams going against 5 mans with increased rank gain.