Implementing ranked 2v2s could have a profound positive effect on the game. The player base being small is not a problem either. Introducing ranked 2v2s would without a doubt increase the player base, because it adds an element of cooperation and shared excitement, which adds a major fun factor to the game. More people would be online with their friends, and people would encourage their friends to get the game so they can play together. This would increase not only player activity, but player count as well. Implementation I think your rank need to be team-based. Like for this season a player could be platinum with one teammate, and has a team with another person which is in gold. That would eliminate the problems when taking a new teammate into a match, would encourage more playtime, and would give more of a personal aspect to each team. Furthermore, I think being able to solo queue for 2v2s would ruin many of the benefits of 2v2s, especially its pull effect on new players and the competitive scene in general. Comments from other community members: Nik - 2v2 would be lit and a nice intro for many casuals into ranked and 1v1 Pwn4two - Wouldn't be too bad if it were unshared Dissonant - You can start off a team's rank initially by treating it as the simple sum (or average) of the team's solo queue ranks, but their matches as a team after that will only affect their rank as a team(edited) That way, I might feel less bad about solo queueing without nimzo carrying me, for example I think the cooperation aspect is really important to finding a game satisfying, and the fact that it would also help player base only makes it even more beneficial.
obligatory post of time and resources requirement vs availability yea it would be a neat feature BUT which rts ever managed to get a good ranked team matchmaker? you say the rank needs to be teambased, but members of a team can change for varius reasons ... so how do you want to propperly rate a teammember of a team? or do you want to rate the team as a whole? your implementation of one platinumplayer taking a goldplayer as a teammember and/or a different rated one for another team doesn´t answer this .. what if a plat or uber player wants to teamplay with a silverplayer? should the teamrating lowered down to an average of the 2? "I think being able to solo queue for 2v2s would ruin many of the benefits of 2v2s, especially its pull effect on new players and the competitive scene in general." what benefits? if you have 4 or 5 members of a clan f.e. that have 2 player teams with each member were is the benefit vs players that teamplay with randoms? what about a veteran who takes up 1 to 3 new players to teach them the ropes .. do you want to have each teamcomposition be rated on its own? when you say a players rank needs to be teambased do you say it should be in general? what does that mean for the solo ranked player? does that mean he now gets a lower or different rating because he focuses on soloplay? you say solo players queing for teamplay may have a negative impact on the supposed 2v2 benefits but what about ranked play as a whole depending on how many players may get drawn into ranked teamgames who says that could not negatively impact 1v1 rankedplay considering the small playerbase that we have? hypotheticaly speaking say players migrate from 1v1 to 2v2 ranked meaning players who usualy focus on 1v1 may get even longer wait times as they have now to get any game going ..
The old community stats followed team games and provided a ranking, it can be done. I think a 2 v 2 matchmaker would be an excellent addition. I think pa shines best in small team games. It's certainly worth considering
2v2 is a great idea, but implementation is hard to balance out. Premade 2 players should not be a thing and reason is that good player could play with a bad player and carry him to higher divisions. Some players are so good that they can basically win 1v2 games. Solo queueing would give fair matchmaking by putting the same skilled players in same match but then you would get a lot of RNG factors who you get in both a good and bad way. Premade queueing should, in my opinion, be part only in tourneys on some sort weekly\monthly basis when you can play a team game with your friend but everybody else does as well. Not sure how I feel about shared or not shared army part.
I don't want to sound condescending here: A player being artificially boosted by a higher skill player is irrelevant. Eventually the team will settle into a position that they cannot rise above because of the dead-weight team mate. That would be the effective skill of that team, and they would have been accurately evaluated. The design of the ranked system is what would prevent something like this from happening. • If the starting team rank is an average between each team member's highest rank, then any uber-carrying-a-noob would start at a higher skill level. • Will only occur until they reach levels where having a dead-weight teammate makes you lose matches, and they will stagnate, obviously that's the point of ranked, to find your skill level, and this would be where that team would be rated. • Smurfing happens in every competitive game, it can never be completely prevented, and is expected by players, to some degree in any case. The reason 2v2 ranked should not be solo queuing is for two major reasons: it would detract from the number of people playing 1v1 ranked, which would increase matchmaking times, and, as you mentioned, players will inevitably given some bad teammate and blame the game. A ranked system is intended to evaluate a person's ability. In 1v1s, this is their personal ability. In 2v2s, it's a team's ability. When you're given a random teammate, what is being evaluated is less the ability of the team, and more your personal ability to work in a team with someone you don't know. Furthermore, communication among teammates is likely going to be minimal and limited to in-game chat.
I apologize for being unclear. I proposed that each team has its own rank. This is so that if a highly-ranked player wants to play some matches with a lower-ranked player, he does not have to fear his overall rank decreasing drastically. There is no solo rank for a player, only team ranks, and for back-end calculations, the player's ability is judged by his highest team rank. Each team would start at the average between the ELO of the highest ranked team of both players. This is to prevent smurfing. The team should rise or fall fairly quickly if it's too high or too low, and settle into approximately where that team should be ranked. The uber player being there should not matter. Having an incapable teammate will eventually cause them to stagnate at a rank where that isn't sustainable. And that's the point of a ranked system. I'm not sure if I understand what your next point is referring to. Being in a pre-made team has very distinct advantages to randoms. Most importantly communication, familiarity, and shared experience. The reason I am adamantly against solo queuing for ranked 2v2s is because of the following: • As you pointed out, being able to solo queue will certainly take from players in the ranked 1v1 pool, and will certainly increase the already unshort queue times. • It compromises the point of a ranked 2v2 system. A ranked system is supposed to evaluate the ability of a team of players. Being given a random teammate is not doing that. It's evaluating a single player's ability when he has a teammate. • It is impossible to guarantee a teammate that is competent. A player will always blame the system for given him a bad match. That's not a good atmosphere. • Furthermore, the experience would be very sub-par when communication is limited to in-game chat, if the random teammate uses even that.
Boosting is a thing, cause it will demoralize other lower-ranking players from playing the game mode and make for a farming team for uber teams (killing low ranking and boosting high ranking games). The ceiling of the unbalanced team would be low uber so pretty much top 20 in-game but until they get there they would do more damage than good and for plat up, they would stop playing and it wouldn't matter anyway cause they can't win if they are matched by both players who are the same skilled. I think your approach where you put middle ground of 2 players where one is doing 80% and another 20% of the job is wrong. If teams are made they should consist players of same 1v1 rank. I think that team rank won't be higher in any case from your 1v1 rank it comes to same basics build, scout, adapt etc BUT it plays differently. Which is the point of team games and I'm totally for it. I know that you are actually requesting SC2 2v2s but I have experience in that game with 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4s and I can say that my team games only improved when my 1v1 rank improved, you have to push more stuff how you go up in ranks but pushing towards what is based on game mode (1v1 or 2v2). Example (solo play) 2 same ranks vs 2 same rank players ->Uber Cons If your teammate doesn't want to cooperate on the same strategy\push you are basically fked. You can blame him for losing Pros Fair game Faster queue Example (premade uneven ranks vs solo players) 1 Uber player and 1 silver/gold/low plat player vs 2 silver/gold/low plat players -> high plat\low uber Cons Getting there uber will do most of the stuff, players that get "smurfed on" will hate game mode and when they get to their rank they will stuck not stagnate cause they literally can't push further. Destroying leaderboards, cheating for end session rewards Toxic behavior Pros Its fun to play with a friend Faster queues Example (premade same ranks vs solo players) ->Uber Cons Unfair game in every point Forcing playing in premade to gain better ranks Toxic behavior Pros You play with your friend Faster queue Example (premade uneven ranks vs premade uneven ranks) 2 mixed skilled players vs 2 mixed skilled players ->gold, platinum Cons Basically 1v1 game between better players Unfair if you get (silver/gold vs gold/plat) Long queues Pros Non-toxic behavior Playing with a friend Example (premade players of same ranks on 1v1, premade players of same ranks on 1v1 ) 2 same ranks vs 2 same rank players both premade ->Somewhere where their 1v1 rank is OR above it if they grind it out Cons Long queues Pros Great skilled based games, strategy developing Fair games Non-toxic behavior Playing with a friend Example (premade uneven ranks vs premade players of same ranks on 1v1) 2 mixed ranks vs 2 same skilled players based on 1v1 ->Uber Cons Unfair is it boosting or is it just stomp from other teams Pros Playing with a friend Non-toxic behavior Faster queue I think you are right in most of your statements but you don't look some sides that will come with premade teams. This is all from my experience in playing game modes which you request. I want to make it work the same as you just I see it differently that's why I have given you examples of games with premade and non-premade games. I hope you see how that premade brings unfair gameplay in general and why it should be only part in tourneys where all players are premade and rules are set well. Games should be fair to the consumer so he can get to max rank in any mode he wishes to not forcing him to find another player (buy another game) to max-out rank.
my general point is that i´m not entirely sure having a teambased rank is good idea considering the varius ways teams can be made up .. the focus should be a players individual rank/rating i think .. as bthirteen stated weither premade or random certain setups can lead to a better player carrying the lesser experienced or skilled which can lead to unfair experiences weither you allow a player to soloque for teamgames or not ... obviously a system that builds teams with random ranks gets you games quicker .. a system that considers the ranking of either the teams themselfs or the individual players rank of the teams of which it works out an average rating of both teams may take longer to get a game going same with a system that tries to get teams with each member having same or similar rank/skill .. you could also add a prioritysystem to that for the player to decide what kind of team he wants to play with and what team to play against respectively (same/similar teamrating and/or same/similar rank of individual or both teammembers) still i rather think it should be a option to both solo que for 1v1 and 2v2 than just either having to be in a premade 2v2 team or sticking to 1v1 .. cause those that want to focus on 2v2 once available will ultimately migrate from 1v1 ranked if they played it in the first place anyway ... those that want to focus on 1v1 will stay there .. but what about those that simply want to get a game going while still getting rated for their individual skill? why simply deny/ignore them (especialy regarding potential 1v1 play)? ... even if a premade team may work better together doesn´t mean two randoms of similar skill couldn´t, yes the current communicationoptions are limited but there also could be added options, such as quick macromassages allong with the pingmechanic (specifically for players that may have a languagebarrier) and/or a voicechat if wanted to be used or muted .. a matchingsystem that considers the indivual rank of each player to then get a avarage rating ouf that for a team could be generaly used for any teamgame realy (even if that means longer waitingperiods for larger teamgames) sooo 3v3 could be also taken into consideration ..
