Community Thoughts About Solo-Queue Rated PVP Content?

Community General Discussion
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I’ve always thought that solo-queueable rated PVP content was a very popular request from the player base, and I heard a lot about it in the past, but conversations about it have dwindled. I’m curious, has the playerbase moved away from wanting this?

Or is it just that the advocates of it have left the community? For myself, I find it a challenge to play with consistent partners and take part in climbing the PVP ladder, although I love the competition and WOW PVP gameplay.

As an example, partially because of the lack of this feature (and the gear grind for a fresh 120 doesn’t help either), I find it hard to maintain interest in WOW PVP and my sub will expire in a few days – thus silencing my voice on this topic too (but yeah, I may come back again depending on life situations).

I’m curious about whether player perception on this topic has shifted. Some ways this could be done could be:

  • Just allow players to solo-queue (or with having less than a full group) into the current RBG system and be matchmade against other solo-players or groups, a la Overwatch
  • Create a new bracket/format, such as 6v6 RBGs, which can be queueed for solo or in small team sizes (e.g. max group size of 3), and be matchmade against other players, a la some of FFXIV
    - Other ideas?

Common complaints and responses:

  • Solo-queuers would just get stomped by groups: Most games that implement mixed queueing (solo-queuers with groups) also have an MMR adjustment based on the size of your team to balance this out
  • WOW is an MMO and thus you should have to be in a group: Note that the other major MMOs (FFXIV, GW2) also have solo-queueable rated PVP content, but unfortunately don’t have the great PVP gameplay of WOW. A large portion of WOW is already soloable too (e.g. WQs, most of main storyline, lots of the upcoming SL features). Also, this provides an opportunity for solo players to discover other players of similar skill to play with and could benefit the community.
  • There will be griefers/trollers: Many other games address this issue with solo-queue by having strong rating penalties for players that behave like this. These players will also naturally migrate to the lower ends of the rating pool.
  • You will be placed on a team with an underperforming class/spec or comp: This is just as likely for the other team too, but law of large numbers says that on average you will be at a disadvantage or advantage vs the other taem about 50/50, thus making it fair. Team composition (in terms of healers vs dps) are often enforced by having x healers per y dps.

What do you, the general WOW community, think about solo-queue rated PVP content?

1 Like
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Savix has convinced me that a solo que would be awesome. So I support it.

I have had reservations about wanting it in the past but I there is a significant amount of players that would benefit from it.

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I can’t think of a single scenario where something like this would function even remotely close to what you hope.

It’s just not that kind of game.

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Please say the failures you see! I’m curious.

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How would you possibly create a fair environment if one team manages to get a bunch of geared to the teeth, multiple rank one gladiators and the other side gets fresh 120s? Creating a mmr based around ranking alone would not solve this problem.

People would queue in, see that their team has rubbish geared players and it would do more harm than good to the PvP environment.

Class balance is not good enough, and comps need to have synergy between specs to do well in any kind of PvP content. Some specs work amazing with one and have absolutely no synergy with the other. Blizzard would need to create an entirely new formula which they do not have the resources for.

There is already the LFG tool and for PvP and at least you can cherrypick the class you want for your content through there.

I admire your passion to create this kind of post but WoW is not the kind of game this would work.

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If it was solo queued 1v1 rated or something, I’d probably be more interested. But I wouldn’t like the idea of getting queued into a group of random strangers. That’d be even more nervewracking than just forming a manual team.

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Unenforceable. While griefers & trollers will stick out, anybody deemed as under-performing by others will be considered to fall in these categories. It is entirely subjective. That other solo player(s) might be having a bad day or less skilled.

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Bad idea.

As I told someone earlier on the Classic forum (a thread about wanting the party queue button removed) you’re playing an MMORPG. A massively multiplayer online role playing game.

The normal human instinct is to organize for success because it’s rewarding. Atypical people in full isolation all the time don’t understand this. So they hit the queue button and walk into premades and get steamrolled.

Now you could rig it so you can’t queue with a party nor raid but people would still find a way to organize their queue. So they would still be a premade.

As Shardling says a 1v1 would be the only way to really do it. Once it becomes a team thing the idea is to organize for success.

1 Like
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I think this would be fine; in fact I would want this to happen. Those players should play and get high rating in this format as well. It looks like you’ve played some rated PVP content: you know you get matched up against players with similar rating. The scenario with multi-class glads going up against fresh 120s won’t happen (unless it’s the first game either side are playing in this format), because they’ll be at different ratings after the first game (just like all other rated PVP content in the game today).

I think the people who would be in the situation would be much more likely to be the players that have poor gear or have a bit of skill to develop. In this case, again, I think it’s desirable that they get grouped with (and against) players of similar gear (i.e. poor gear). It makes for a more even match for both sides!

Completely agree with you that class balance is not the best, but if we’re to wait for class balance for any sort of rated content, then we shouldn’t have any rated content at all. Perfect class balance is simply unachieveable and is a separate factor from this, imo. Synergy is, I agree, an issue, but one that will be balanced across both teams, because both team will, on average, have the same amount of synergistic and non-synergistic classes on their teams.

I think this is part of the problem though – players that are the wrong class today are nearly entirely excluded from this sort of content. This would be a way to bring them in!

While I disagree with you on this, thanks for engaging thoughtfully :slight_smile:

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I think that this isn’t an entirely community based problems, some classes are simply not as good as others. Certain classes and comps bring atrocious sustained damage but every three minutes have an extremely high chance if coordinated properly to kill a target if coupled with another certain spec.

It’s not like bad classes/specs can’t do well or aren’t picked, they are just picked when the synergy there can exist. How would you suggest communication to work in these games? A lot of high rated PvP is done with communication over voice. At least if you pick up someone in LFG you can get on discord with them first before doing anything.

I agree, but before they spend time implementing something like this I’d prefer to focus their resources on balancing the game first.

What you’re suggesting about it’s okay about people being on the good team just as much as the bad team would just gatekeep everyone at 50/50 win rate, which is bad for the game.

Good teams should be able to flourish.

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I think it’s okay for players to be underperforming, as that occurs on occasion for all players in all sorts of games with rating. Bad performance just means you’re more likely to lose and thus lose rating, and that’s completely normal in rated content.

It’s the more direct/extreme version of griefing/trolling that’s a problem. It’s interesting because there are other games that are able to handle griefing/trolling in this manner (other Blizzard games, in fact!) so I’m not sure where the challenge in WOW would be for this particular challenge. Even if it went uncorrected/unpenalized, what would happen is that that player that did the griefing would lose rating because they caused their team to lose, and it would be unlikely they’d be matched with the same players as they were before.

They would tank their rating, and I think that’s the outcome we would want anyways.

Apparently can’t make two consecutive posts in same thread without a reply?

I agree that’s it’s not primarially a community problem (although I think there is a psychological factor involved, when players think something isn’t meta, they stop inviting that class to groups as much, but that’s besides the point). I think it comes to matter of preference of how much you think class synergy should be rewarded in game.

Currently, it’s strongly rewarded because you can pick-and-choose your teammates. But in this mode, I agree that it would be more random. I don’t mind this randomness because it’d be fair for both sides (both sides are subjected to the same amount of randomness).

All rated content has an element of randomness – in our current system, it’s more on who you’re faced against (and whether your selected comp counters or is countered by the other team’s comp). In this system, there’ll also be the radomness of what your own team comp is.

I think that’s a fine addition/compromise for being able to include players of classes that are generally excluded from PVP content (and not just because of synergistic/non-synergistic factors – they are just PVP classess that are simply not desired in teams regardless of comp in some seasons!) But I understand if you don’t prefer/like that.

I think this is also another difference that there would be in this game mode. Today, part of the effectiveness of a PVP team is based on what other good PVPers you know. You could consider that your “friend-skill.”

With solo-queue, you’re right that this would go away, but instead, another type of skill would emerge – “grouping-skill” aka your quick-leadership ability and ability to gather players into your discord (or in-game voice chat – that works doesn’t it?) and quickly set up communication to coordinate plays.

It’ll certainly be different than what is done today, but it’s a new mode after all, and I don’t mind these differences and the variance that comes with it.

The game has been around for many years, and balance is not achieved. It’s not their fault; it’s a changing game and again, we can never have perfect balance as long as there are different classes, and we have so many classes and specs! The amount of resources they would have to expend to make balance such that people would be satisfied would be infinite.

I’d rather them spend some resources on striving for better balance, but a lot more resources on introducing new/interesting/novel content. Especially something that I think would be as fun as this!

But this is exactly how rated PVP content works today. Players have (and should have) nearly a 50/50 win rate against others when their PVP rating stabilizes. Until the stabilization, they will have >50% wins (until they reach their “true” rating). Good teams (and with the change, solo players) would flourish just as they do today.