In World of Tanks, players have asked several times for platoons of 5 (in a 15 on 15 match).
Every time they have said no, because that sized platoon would have too much influence on the outcome of a match. This is an unpopular decision, but a wise one for the health of the game. There are some players in World of Tanks with 75%+ win rates too, and very often they group up together. If 5 of them did, one third of the team would be the absolute best of the best and there would literally be no stopping them.
Now lets look at Star Conflict…
Squads of 4 are already allowed with the total team size of 8. Ooops. 50% of the team can be composed of elites, coordinating together to assure themselves ridiclously high win rate. Right now if you solo queue for Tier 4, you will get in a match with 3 other solo queuers and 4 bots. The other team will consist of a super-elite squad and 4 bots. Guess how that is going to go? Ya, I saw a match today that ended in 1 minute, 33 seconds.
Consider the “PVP spiral” effect and how World of Tanks mitigates the effect of it. When 50% of the opposing team is a highly trained, highly coordinated, voice-comms enabled killing machine what will happen to everyone else 3 months down the road?
Squads of 4 have too much influence on a 8v8 match. It will be popular with those (ab)using it, but it may not be the most healthy thing for the game in the long term.
I like it how it is currently and hate WOT matchmaking cause when i play it with 4 friends it was either 2 groups of 2, or one group of 3 and a solo. I love being able to play with 4 at a time, and if that means i need to get steamrolled every once in a while while going in solo that’s fine by me.
Edit-
And Ive never seen a botter in star conflict and Im tier 3…
b) squad of 4 still is limited to what their ships can do. I went back to t1 a while back to play with a friend who had just started the game, and the lack of all the advanced modules, resistances, missiles that I had started taking for granted and using missiles with really hurt. I still managed to get into third place while I easily achieved first place back when I started.
c) In higher tiers squads of 4 are so common, it balances each other out most of the time
Also I would ask you to please stop comparing this game to WoT. Enough people do it already. This game is NOT WoT. It has an entirely DIFFERENT gameplay mechanic. Things that apply in WoT do NOT apply in Star Conflict. Also I agree with cyrigal that the party system in WoT was horrid.
There really isn’t anything wrong with 4 man squads, mainly because that the opposing team has the chance to have the same thing. I usually play with 3 man squad on tier 1 games, and we do have a balanced win loss. Despite given the advantage of communication. At times squads of 4 in other tech levels lose to a random team. When it comes to corps, squads, teams, ship selection, usually you should take into account that you can do the same thing any other player can in a game.
Though it is understandable, a team with more communication might be more effective than one without. But even so the effectiveness of a player usually determines the outcome of a game and this goes for any game, not just this one.
I love being able to play with 4 at a time, and if that means i need to get steamrolled every once in a while while going in solo that’s fine by me.
Edit-
And Ive never seen a botter in star conflict and Im tier 3…
Ya tier 4 they put a few AI in so you dont have to wait forever…But the problem is you WONT get steamrolled. In a squad of 4, you will most likely be DOING the steamrolling because 50% of the team is highly coordinated…
I am still a lone wolf and not in a corp I got people that will grab me from random corps which I take for rounds of matches, But I would say I play 75% of my matches by myself.
All you have to do help win is talk during matches, I don’t get how people just don’t talk at all . I mean I almost never see people call out game plans or even call out nodes that need help.
Squads has a greater chance to be matched against the other squads. Also squad of T3 has a chance to be matched against T4 random players. Matchmaking value increasing with squad size too. 2ppl squad has less mm value than 4ppl squad.
That might be because the global chat obscures the team chat, that and its hard to notice, I don’t know but it seems like the team text color blends too much with the background. I know there is an option to remove global from team, but why put it there in the first place? It couldn’t be set as separate chat tabs?
Nah a group of folks is not guarenteed to take down the opposing team outright. If its critical to be able to coordinate to win, then these functions should be built into the game.
If its too easy for one side to steamroll the other once some set conditions have been met, then those should be changed as well.
They hould matchs squads vs squads. So in a game of 8 vs 8 it would translate to 4 vs 4 elite players in turn creating a very balaced gameplay…unless your lazy xxxx and like to have the enire squad sniper frigates…
Co-operative play SHOULD have advantages. If you get beaten by a well coordinated squad enough times you start to think that maybe you should get in on that action as well…
FYI our team scored a major victory with roughly 15 kills ahead. Note that our team’s captain wasn’t even part of any squad or corp and their captain was an EVO. Nuff said
If it isnt addressed in some way, the “PVP spiral” will be the outcome.
Although the “Greedy Goblin” theory is widely discredited in WoT, the description of the “PVP Spiral” is dead on (even if you do not agree with his assesment of WoT).
Quote : “PvP games are killed by the “PvP spiral”: the bad players are pwned and stop playing, making the second worst group the worst, who are now pwned and it goes on until no one left but the hard core.”
There is no need to be obsessed about one corp’s stat in this discussion. I never played WoT so I won’t draw any conclusion from that game. My opinion is that, in a competitive game like Star Conflict, restricting and punishing players being organized only hurts the core community. One side being organized doesn’t give that team an insurmountable advantage so much that the other team has zero chance to win. The game already reward individuals largely based on their own performance relative to their teammate.
Ultimately, it’s up to the developers to come up with a system so that nobody from the casual-hardcore spectrum are denied from having fun. I think the first thing that needs to be looked at is the negative reinforcement on the players upon ship destruction. Being killed on battlefield shouldn’t leave a large dent in the players’ wallet at higher tier. Credits being not a currency is another issue due to lack of a trading system is another issue, making losing credits from repairs a purely artificial bottleneck on players’ progression. The penalty from dying in a match should largely stay within that match, such as score for the other team and the dead player having to wait for a respawn timer.
tr;dr: there are many ways to allow both organized players and PUGs to have fun without catering one side on the expense of the other.
I would also like to enforce again: Having a squad on your enemy team, even of more then 4 people doe not mean you will loose.
In every game that I play I actively use the team (global) chat to issue commands/relay changes on the battlefield to players. While doing this I often see an immediate improvement on the part of my team. Yes it takes a little time to type. Yes, I would appreciate some more hotkey commands added into the game. No, no matter how often you repeat yourself, squads don’t imbalance the game. Superior players do. Stop trying to take out the squad system and focus on training/improving your skills.
Mister bold guy, i can read without your bold typing. Nobody is trying to take out the squad system, i just said that. At this moment at least, when you are matched with 3 bots, and 4 guys in a squad in the other team, it means that yes, you WILL loose. I’m not denying that there is a chance to win. But it’s so small, it doesn’t even count, i’m not going to try to play another 3 days at T4 hoping i will beat that team once out of 20 times, or be the lucky extra guy to join them.
What i ask is simple! You have a 4 man squad, you HAVE to be matched with another 4 man squad, nobody is asking you to play alone! What is the problem with that, it’s not fun anymore? If because of the low population you won’t find another team of 4 to be matched against, tough luck for you 4 people! But there should be 8 people online at tier 4 no? Specially if teams are as nice and easy to get as you say. If not, i say again, tough luck! You can’t just farm people all night long.
I think they already did this in MWO online for example. It’s squad vs equal sized squad, not squad vs randoms.
Thank you!
Also, for all the people asking for 8 man teams, or 16 man teams: that’s all nice and sweet, but why not take advantage of the experience of another game, you know witch one. You make a special bracket with a special matchmaker for big team games, like the companies in you know what game You want a team of 8 vs randoms? Are you absolutely insane?
Also, are you telling me to use global chat to organise players? Seriously? It’s hard to see the chat, that’s an interface problem, but let’s get over it. I see some people trying to coordinate, do you know the answers they usually get? They start with S T and end with F U…get it? That’s how it is…you can’t compare global chat with randoms vs Teamspeak/Skype in a corp. Please.
You want a team of 8 vs randoms? Are you absolutely insane?