I have posted in the past about how much I hate stacks in my competitive matches and how I wished I could play with only solo players. And now that I got what I wished for I can see I was wrong.
Actually I haven’t even played OW2 in about two months, and I reinstalled because I read about the new matchmaking restrictions that would make stacks less common for solo players. And I can say it worked, in probably 30 matches yesterday I checked everyone to see if they were grouped up. I encountered only TWO DUOS during these 30 matches, everyone else was solo queued.
But I must be honest, these 30 matches were some of the worst quality matches of OW2 I have ever played. I thought getting rid of the plat stacks trying to drag their silver buddy up through gold, and the masters smurfs playing in diamond trying to drag up their hardstuck buddies would improve match quality. It didn’t though.
While some of the stacks, especially four stacks, suck when they ignore the solo player and play their own game at least they have some concept of teamwork, even if it’s only within their own stack. While these stacks can be toxic against the solo player, they’re not necessarily more rude than several solo players who all pick one person to gang up on.
With solo players you get way more stubbornness and refusal to swap heroes, and players spite throwing the game if anyone dares to mildly criticize them. I never played with a stack that ran Genji/Junk into Echo/Pharah for 10 minutes straight.
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Imagine typing all that out when all you could’ve done is type out “CAP”. Stacked games will still for the most part destroy your solo experience as an outsider due to the treatment you get in those games (or more like you don’t get any of it). There may be exceptions to this and when they happen it’s really nice, but let’s see the forest beyond the trees here.
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I don’t speak Zoomer, I don’t know if cap is good or bad.
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That alone tells me this is going to be a quality post about how you assessed the state of soloQ matchmaking based on two games.
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Keep reading then and you’ll see you’re wrong.
What has been your experience with the new group restrictions? Feel free to contribute something to the thread instead of worthless “not uh” contrarianism!
Oh okay well maybe you’re just better off sticking to solitaire, tetris and super mario then
You spent over 8 hours yesterday on ranked after two months of not playing?
Playing as soloqueue and finding other soloqueues means you have 4 individual minds, while playing with some stacks means there’s “fewer individual minds”. One has some weakenesses, and the other has some other weaknesses. Some stacks will ignore your existence and make it impossible to coordinate, while some soloQ will play like they’re alone in the game.
My point is the solo queue teammates who are not fun to play with, are more common than the stack players that are unfun to play with.
Well, thanks for saying so. There were so many misconceptions about stacks out there, usually stemming from a few bad experiences.
Stacking in Overwatch should be the best way to play the game, but we’re constantly put into our own special hard mode queue due to some twisted sense of “fairness”. Oh, and we’re not trying to carry that (insert lower rank here) friend. We just want to play with them. The game will almost always matchmake based solely on the higher ranked people, making them an anchor. It’s not pleasant.
At least now they are upfront about us being in our own queue. Can’t say it’s an improvement but at least it’s honest.
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I’m so happy solo players finally realize that even without a stack to blame, they are still the only constant in their miserable losses.
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Yeah, you would think Overwatch, a team based game, would be more accepting of stacks than anything… but nope, a couple of salty solo players ruin the experience for everyone else because they refuse to take accountability that they’re just bad at the game, like OP.
They blame their DPS when they could had just went Dva or Mauga if they were tank to pressure the flying heroes or went Baptiste or Illari if they were support.
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Cmon, you don’t need to dogpile on the OP when they are in the middle of apologizing for their misconceptions about stacking. That’s not cool, and we want to encourage the change that OP represents. This is not the way to do that.
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You know what, you’re right.
Just was frustrated with the stack rule change, couldn’t stand anyone who backed it. I can’t play any other role but Tank with my duo now due to the rule change.
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Yep. Glad you had your epiphany on stacks. Sorry you had to get stuck in horrible games with four selfish people to come to this realization.
Overwatch is a game best played in a group. Solo play is generally a miserable experience. At least in my experience.
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I agree with this with the stipulation of “unless you care about your rank”.
I don’t. I just care about the quality of gameplay. Rank is mostly meaningless to me.
It sucks that match quality has been impacted by the matchmaker, but that’s been true since day 1 and, having played in scrims and tournaments, I’m never going to experience match quality like that through open matchmaking, so I’ve just come to accept the situation.
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My solo experience was fine before. I stopped playing though. My matches were terrible in solo and my group can’t play together anymore with 4 people. We are only 6 divisions apart. It’s just not fun and jade weapons take too long. It doesn’t help they butchered support either.
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There’s the problem of how a stack with 100 hours of teamwork is accounted the same as a stack that just met last game. That’s where the true problem lies. They think they’re balancing by putting a similar SR stack but they don’t have a “have played together with X% winrate together” as part of a complex equation.
How is that any different than placing a person with 100 hours of aimtrainer against someone who’s never practiced aim in their life?
Teamplay is a skill. Communication is a skill. People shouldn’t get sent to the shadow queue for developing and applying said skill.
It’s like sending people into a different queue because it’s not fair that they have good aim.
Conversely, people who don’t develop and apply teamplay and communication skills shouldn’t be rewarded with an easier ranked experience.
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because they have individual SR that doesn’t get a boost due to teaming up? You do know stacks get a “SR buff” when accounting for matchmaking right?