There are dozens and dozens of team based online mutiplayer games out there. Nearly all of them match groups and solo players into the same queue, and in most cases, this is done totally without issue or complaint. Warcraft III is the rare exception.
The issue players experience in the game, which is totally understandable, is the groups solo players tend to meet are usually much higher in skill level in multiple ways- mechanical skill, game knowledge, and coordination. But not all groups are highly skilled players, and you can easily see this to be true in any other multiplayer game. So why is Warcraft III special in this regard? Iāll tell you.
Warcraft IIIās āArranged Teamā system is fundamentally flawed.
It is not simply that grouping has advantages. Warcraftās team system is set up in such a way that basically forces people who enjoy playing together to āsmurf,ā or misrepresent their skill level to the matchmaking system- both intentionally (abusively) and unintentionally (just by the system being defective).
Most other multiplayer games simply have players form a party and queue together. Thatās it. No seperate rating, no stats kept as a team, you just pick friends to play with and go. This works fine because, if the grouping proves beneficial for the players involved, their MMRs will rise and they will face stronger opponents. And then if they subsequently play solo and lose, then we know they only rose because of grouping and they will fall back down. Becuase of this the majority of matches will appear normal, and only a few matches may be lower quality due to a mismatch between rating and actual skill.
So whatās wrong with Warcraftās system?
Because Arranged Teams are formal groups that have their own stats and MMRs kept for them, every time you play with different people (even if you play with 3 of the same people and invite 1 new person!), a new team is created. This new team is treated as if nobody in it has ever played a game before, and this has multiple negative effects:
- Your MMR is reset back to the default starting value of 3500, regardless of the MMRs of any of the players in the group
- Your MMR is hidden as you go through placements again
- Because of the above, if you play with many different people, you are constantly starting over and constantly in placements, which masks the true skill level of your group.
- Even though a recent patch added weighting to group matchmaking, because of the above, the intended effect of this change is never realized.
The solution is simple: Remove the Arranged Team system entirely, replacing it with simple parties, and rely solely on individual player MMRs, possibly in combination with the weighting already being applied. I donāt think most anyone particualrly cares about their stats on a per-team basis and wonāt terribly miss team-specific record keeping. The Arranged Team system as it currently exists not only encourages smurfing, it all but forces players to smurf.
This is why AT vs RT matches seem so unfair- because almost ALL teams are literally smurfing, and it isnāt even necessarily intentional. Unless you VERY regularly play with one specific group of players, your Arranged Teamās stats will never truly reflect the groupās skill level.
Removing formal teams from the game will likely solve this problem very quickly. Players who do well in groups will rise in MMR and face stronger opponents, queue times will decrease for everyone (compared to when AT/RT was disabled), and smurfing will become dramatically less frequent. (It canāt be eliminated entirely due to multiple accounts, but especially players who just want to play with their friends and never intended to smurf will no longer be doing so). It will also significantly reduce the frequency with which players leave games early on, because seeing an obvious newly formed Arranged Team on the other side trips red flags in players that say āthis match is already a loss, why bother playing it?ā. But the reason this happens is becuase players who SHOULD be at a significantly higher MMR can effectively reset their MMR at any time by playing with a new group of players, which makes them look like noobs to the matchmaking system even though theyāre really not. Fixing the system prevents this from happening and makes games with groups far more winnable.
Why an āopt outā option is not needed, and potentially a negative thing
Removing forrmal ATs will almost completely fix all perceived fairness issues in team games. I expect that in most cases, players wonāt even notice that there are groups in their matches.
Adding an opt-out option seems like a nice idea on its face- and I agree that itās still likely at least a little better than the status quo. But adding an opt out option brings issues of its own-
- Opting out effectively creates two queues, splitting the playerbase.
- If people end up favoring the opt-out option, then people who want to play with friends will still face unacceptably long queue times.
- If people end up favoring not using the opt-out option, then the people who DO choose to use it will face longer queue times.
People rage and complain about bugs and broken systems in this game all the time and demand them to be fixed. The Arranged Team system is broken in multiple ways, and Iām asking for THAT to be fixed. Fixing the system so that friends can play together without breaking the game is like a doctor treating a wound; whereas simply letting players āopt-outā leaves the broken system in the game and gives players the option of avoiding it- like applying a band-aid over the wound instead of properly treating it.
This is hilarious! I predicted exactly all of that āsolo RT vs. premade ATā mess some months ago, when they published the PTR patch notes and announced theyād allow this non-sense again. And now it is the same situation again like it was some years ago.
