Queue with ROSTER (instead of a single char)

[mynban]

I was following the discussion around premade vs pug structure, and I couldn't help but think how much of a difference a certain update in League of Legends made in terms of pug team balance. Pre-update it was practically 5 random players vs 5 other random players (usual pug queue). But LoL has certain roles, and players have certain preferences for those roles. Absence of certain roles such as a dedicated support for bottom lane dps, or a tanky top lane, or a dedicated ganker jungler; immediately results in high probability loss. The update simply added a prefered role select into queue menu. You would choose your primary prefered position, and a secondary one. Once game finally finds 10 ppl where both teams have all roles filled, it starts.

I know this system is impossible to implement in current RoR system, where ppl log as a certain character on their roster and queue. However I also know many players are happy to switch to a different toon, if it means better compositions or higher likelihood of more scenario pops.

I was wondering from a technical point of view would something like this be possible?

When you queue, on the queue window players see other characters they have on the roster. And if they tick any of them, and then queue; it will mean currently logged character is the primary preference for SCs, but if need be they would be happy to join the SC with one of the ticked characters (even ones from other faction!)

Technically speaking, fetching the roster array mustn't be too hard for currently logged account to display roster character names on SC queue menu. And if game decides that one of those ticked (not currently logged) chars needs to go in battle, game does an instant log out (without 20sec), then automatic log with the chosen ticked character, where they are directly teleported to SC. All those functions must already be available in the system, it is just a matter of writing a new function that chains them.

One issue I can see is loading times for logout>login>teleport as opposed to just teleport. Maybe we can slightly extend the 60sec timer before match kicks into 15:00 to ease that?

Anyhow just some food for thought. Thanks a lot!

[Avanos]

I'm sure this has been suggested/asked hundreds of times.

Avanos: Is there a way to balance SC so that there is a 50/50 chance to win?
Avanos: instead of one side winning 95% of the time
Avanos: and dont tell me to just make a premade - that isnt the solution
Avanos: there should be a way to change the algorithm for matchmaking to make sure that each group has a min number of healers, tanks, dps

Just quoting a gm here:

"No, that's not how pvp works"
"You are living in a different world where there are hundreds of people waiting in a queue for a scen pop"

Currently the best way to even the odds is to make a premade and get on comms with each other.

I am happy that they finally sorta "fixed" discordant queues - but I still think there is plenty of opportunity for abuse there.

[Bosli]

I don't think the server would be able to set another character into the queue and reserve it's spot while you log out and back in, that's probably the biggest technical problem. Getting your character list into a selection menu shouldn't be that hard, as you said.

The biggest problem (which we already have), is that you get a bigger delay between the pop starting with a countdown until all players are in (or decline the invite, and replacements getting a pop). It's already pretty normal that at least one player / duo / premade on at least one team joins at the last few seconds because they were roaming and in combat, or some other reason, and they are not loaded in before the first fight happens. That first fight, players are almost never smart enough to skip if they are outnumbered, even if they are only half numbers, which often leads to respawn-desync and continuous feeding, and/or players already giving up and wait at spawn. Since you would still want a certain delay of getting out of RvR combat etc. and have to wait for players to log in, then the preparation time would need to be an extra 1 minute at least + the get-out-of-combat-to-relog timer. Also, filling a match while it's running would be a disaster if one team has more players logged in on their selected character.

An easier and less problematic solution to let players balance the archetypes is to implement a player-counter similar to ranked solo of how many of each archetypes per team are in queue and in a match. This still doesn't give you the correct idea of what could be missing in the match that pops next, but you could see what's missing/lacking overall. However, you can kind of already check this either with /who or the killboard, which takes a bit of clicking through. Check the last 2-3 matches of your tier, and see what was maybe missing in the team you want to play.

[Tesq]

A) This is a good idea
B) implement pot timer save when you swap char and this is perfect.

By haveing 3 archtype you can fill any role. Please do this..

[rejndjer]

It's already pretty normal that at least one player / duo / premade on at least one team joins at the last few seconds because they were roaming and in combat, or some other reason, and they are not loaded in before the first fight happens. That first fight, players are almost never smart enough to skip if they are outnumbered, even if they are only half numbers, which often leads to respawn-desync and continuous feeding, and/or players already giving up and wait at spawn.

this tbh, you just nailed the essence of scenarios.

[Phantasm]

It's already pretty normal that at least one player / duo / premade on at least one team joins at the last few seconds because they were roaming and in combat, or some other reason, and they are not loaded in before the first fight happens. That first fight, players are almost never smart enough to skip if they are outnumbered, even if they are only half numbers, which often leads to respawn-desync and continuous feeding, and/or players already giving up and wait at spawn.

this tbh, you just nailed the essence of scenarios.

Agree, so many scenarios are lost because of that. There should be implemented solution from ranked, scenario loads when everyone with a pop accept scenario invite and show up in scenario map at same time.

[Ashoris]

It's already pretty normal that at least one player / duo / premade on at least one team joins at the last few seconds because they were roaming and in combat, or some other reason, and they are not loaded in before the first fight happens. That first fight, players are almost never smart enough to skip if they are outnumbered, even if they are only half numbers, which often leads to respawn-desync and continuous feeding, and/or players already giving up and wait at spawn.

this tbh, you just nailed the essence of scenarios.

i agree with that, but it also shows that even the obvious things to do (like waiting for some seconds) is too much for the majority of the people .

I just dont want to blame the "system" for that - its obvious fixable with a minimum of awareness

[Cyrylius]

From my anecdotal experience getting into 6 heals 3 tanks 1 dps scenario doesnt mean if i relog dps i get any heals or guard

[Martok]

I was wondering from a technical point of view would something like this be possible?

The current server population doesn't support any change which would have any affect on this issue.

[mynban]

It's already pretty normal that at least one player / duo / premade on at least one team joins at the last few seconds because they were roaming and in combat, or some other reason, and they are not loaded in before the first fight happens. That first fight, players are almost never smart enough to skip if they are outnumbered, even if they are only half numbers, which often leads to respawn-desync and continuous feeding, and/or players already giving up and wait at spawn.

I think you really spot on with that! And yes this alone is a big enough problem. Which made me think, how come I never had this issue in other PvP games with queue system. Then I realized how RoR generates the SC instance the moment it findsenough players, and hitting join just sends you in. Whereas other games wont generate the instance until enough players hit the join button, and if enough players dont hit it before timer, instance doesnt start and players are placed back into queue. Already made a suggestion on that here, thanks for pointing it out!

I don't think the server would be able to set another character into the queue and reserve it's spot while you log out and back in, that's probably the biggest technical problem.

I don't know the code, but I am assuming the way character spot is reserved in the SC must be based on placing that character._id into some property in the SC instance object. In that sense regardless of whether logged or not, game should be able to pass the ID of the character for spot reserving. But then again I have never seen RoR code and dont know how it really works and whether it would be possible.

The current server population doesn't support any change which would have any affect on this issue.

But, that's the whole point of this suggestion; it multiplies the pool of available characters, with exact same (small) number of players in queue. If it is technically possible, every match would become 2-2-2 (assuming each player has one dps, one healer, one tank on their roster), even if there are only 12 players in queue!