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Group city solo queuers into 2-2-2

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Omegus
Posts: 1373

Group city solo queuers into 2-2-2

Post#1 » Mon May 25, 2020 10:43 am

tl;dr

When using solo queuers to:

a) Back-fill an existing city siege instance due to quitters/disconnects,
b) Fill up the remaining spaces in a new siege after combining some premades together, and
c) Grouping 24 solo-queued people to start a new instance

Please have the matchmaker try to enforce a 2-2-2 composition where possible to help create more balanced warbands.

The Current Situation

At the moment solo queuers seem to serve 2 purposes in city sieges:

1) Backfill for people who crash
2) Filling up city siege instances up to 24 players. This can include the entire warband being 24 solo queuers.

Due to the population difference between Order and Destro, solo queuers are far more likely to get into city sieges on Order than on Destro. This is because Destro players have to form large premades (24man to 12man) to have a chance of getting into the city as the matchmaker prioritises larger groups first over smaller ones. In addition, due to the surplus of players the people who form these warbands can afford to be picky with who they include which usually means that even a full 100% PUG warband formed by inviting people in the LFG channel will still likely be a 2-2-2 composition.

On the otherhand, as Order can queue up solo they often do so. Due to population difference in terms of roles this usually means that Order solo-queuers often end up
grouped together in a 24-man instance where they have an excessive amount of DPS players, meaning the 2-2-2 tried and tested composition is ruined. As Destro PUGs - who have the same coordination as solo queuers - are likely to be in a 2-2-2 for the reasons given above the Destro side is often at an advantage by having a better distribution of classes.

A sarcastic and dismissive response to this situation is that Order can group up of they want to. The difference is that Order don't need to group up to get into cities where-as Destro do, and after 3 months of cities we have seen that there are still a large group of players who will queue up solo because they can and then have a terrible experience. This used to be my reply (and still is with no alternatives in place), but I've thought of something that might make the situation better for everyone.

The Proposal

I propose that when the city siege matchmaker starts pulling people from the solo queue, it does so with the intent of trying to make the resulting 24-man group 2-2-2. This 24-man group can still end up facing anyone - I am NOT proposing PUG vs PUG and premade vs premade. I am just proposing that the matchmaker tries to make balanced warbands out of solo queuers. How it does this will vary depending on the situation:

1) Backfill: when finding someone to back-fill the existing role distribution of the group is calculated (number of tanks/dps/healers). It will then take someone from the solo queue with the same role that is lacking the most people. If there is nobody available in the solo queue for this role then it will pick the next needed role, and then finally the least needed role. It should NOT wait for the correct role to be available as the #1 priority is to get the group back up to 24 people. If it can be the right role then great, but if not then 24 people is still better than 23 or less.

2) New instance (filling up the spots): the matchmaker will group together premades as it does before, i.e. a 12-man with a 6-man and another 6-man, etc. This doesn't change and it will NOT look at role distribution when making groups of 24 from premades. We should assume the players in a group know what they're doing and also the complexity of this goes through the roof and can lead to very long waiting times. When the matchmaker needs to fill up the remaining spaces then it will do so by first working out how many people of each role are currently grouped and then use the solo queue to fill up the roles needed the most. Unlike Backfill the matchmaker doesn't need to immediately on to a replacement and can instead wait a while for the right number of people of the neede role to be available. After a certain timeframe it can give up and just fill up with whoever is available and launch the instance.

3) New instance (full PUG): the matchmaker will grab 8 heals, 8 dps and 8 tanks from the solo queue, put them together and launch an instance. It doesn't need to rush this and can wait right until the queues close to try and make a balanced 24-man. Once the queues closed it becomes yolo time and the matchmaker tries to make 24-mans balanced but will back-fill with anything just to get as many people still in the queue into an instance.

Questions and Issues

1) One side could end up stacked with RDPS.
Personally I consider this a seperate issue for the devs to look at. Some classes on both sides have low viability in city sieges and this is a class balance issue. This proposal is not designed to fix that, only to try and cut down on the number of 12+ DPS instances that get formed.

2) Should RDPS and MDPS be treated differently when forming 2-2-2?
Personally I say no. Certain RPDS classes are perfectly viable and are as desired as MDPS. Both sides have undesirable RDPS classes.

3) Won't this likely lead to Order having 1 or 2 instances filled with nothing but DPS when the queues close?
Likely yes. But out of 20 city instances I'd rather see 18 of them with 2-2-2 and 2 with a million DPS than have the majority of instances be DPS heavy which will negatively effect a lot more people. If Destro end up with a solo queue warband (it does happen, just less often) then one of those could be full of DPS as well. **** happens.

4) Sieges could take slightly longer to start.
Likely yes, but most people should be used to having to wait up to the full 30 minutes for a siege to start. The important thing is that when the timer runs out the matchmaker launches as many instances as possible even if it can't balance the warbands perfectly.

5) Where should solo queuers be placed first?
In the order I listed in the Proposal. Backfilling existing instances is the first priority, then topping up merged groups, then 24-man full solo groups.

Additional Thoughts

Like ranked mode it would be good if there was a command to show the number of solo queuers by role for the city. This would allow people to see if it's worth queueing on a certain character and/or consider swapping to something else. It won't work for most people but it's useful for those who might swap for a chance at a better instance.
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Mozlei
Posts: 35

Re: Group city solo queuers into 2-2-2

Post#2 » Mon May 25, 2020 11:23 am

I really like this idea - one would hope that soloers (particularly Order...) who experience being backfilled into something organised might finally see the light, and decide its actually viable to put some effort into compete - rather than just go 'omg destro always wins cities' and settle for their 3 participant crests.

Yesterday I had probably the most fun /evenly balanced city I've had on RoR in a pug wb, set up as 2-2-2 but without discord (trying to call morale dumps in chat mid fight was interesting but somehow worked!), and making this experience available for those who are frustratingly resistant to putting any effort into grouping can only help
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