You can play with smaller groups. You dont have to stack the teams so heavily that the game becomes unfun for everyone involved. its retarded and the only people defending it are the ones who actively do it and ruin the game for everyone.

We should totally add voip back in. This won't be the magical cure against pubstomping, but at least you would have equal tools

Voip doesnt make it even remotely fairer. Coordination from a group is far superior to coordination between masses.

This whole thread is pointless because it fails the address the real problem. The low and unevenly distributed population of this game is at the lowest end of a healthy communitybase. No matchmaker or restriction will make it fair and nothing but fresh blood can change that.

Guilds or organizations have in many games a vital role. They keep and bind players even if there is a balance issue or a phase with a lack of content. Additionally they buffer alot of the negativity inside their communities away from official forums and they give people an (for the developers completely free of cost) additional incentiv to play like in guildevents (planetfalls and training), player organized GvG events, Lore-events or even the additional immersion of roleplaying. Additionally those players usually tend to create alot of free content for their social group which then soon becomes free content for the whole community. The first wow-questing help guides or skilltress or even on this forum the supplycrate lists were initially guildcreated and opened up to the public. By doing so they actually did freelance work for the developers who would have had to add these QoL improvements themself, since the playerbase would sooner or later ask about it or request it.

If you really think a VOIP would drastically change anything I am afraid to be blunt: you are delusional.
That organized clan groups win over pugs has little to do with how they communicate. Voice communication is undisputably one minor pillar of their success (although ive seen groups winning matches with maybe 20 voicelines on discord and mostly from the lead - something which could have been done by typing and pinging) but the others are coordination (someone goes dedicated AV, someone drives the tank and someone rearguards for little xp a point, people flank or breach from various entrances etc) and the fact that they most likely played 20h+ together and know the best spots in a room or how to spread out and to flank together (and i have been on the receiving end many times and admired that). Last but not least the final pillar is command. In a clangroup the leader gives the orders and people follow them without much hesitation or they won't be part of the group for long. The basic concept of C3. None of this will work in a PuG. Because frankly put VOIP will be abused and as soon as i mute the first person because he acts out, because i dont like his voice or because he plays music or has issues i manually generate a disadvantage for my team. PuGs often enough dont follow typed out orders, dont follow pings and will always do what they think is best because there is no social pressure or exspectation for them to behave in another way. The next game is just 15 minutes away and if we lost it was the fault of the 14 other strangers, damn them.

The very same discussion turns up in every game. You might want to read what ghostcrawler (former lead designer of WoW and now a riot employee) has to say about catering the masses by adding unhealthy features. Wow tried to do that for many years to the point where they learned that you can not level the playingfield by offering all the tools if the players dont pick them up. But i dont want to digress on that further, it would be a whole new discussion about catering guilds or catering single players or how to "enhance" playerquality while diversifing game difficulty.

The ugly truth is that in an ideal EC world premade groups should be matched against each other and it should be filtered by size and playerquality, so Joe Rank 1 with 5 buddies doesnt get stomped by 6 rank 6 clanstack veterans. EC can not provide the necessary base for this system. If you would filter out the OP's example WP group of 15 to wait for another clanstack it would mean that they could be unlucky and wait for hours (assuming they would do so), because it would be also unfair to match them against 10 premades and 5 pugs or any other number which doesnt match them exactly and would hence summon the next post of this fashion. But it would not be just their disadvantage. In the current dire situation it would also exclude 15 players from the opponents list of LSM. This problem would occure 100 fold, since at a certain number the amount of premades are not that common as the majority is 3-10 guys. This means that even soloplayers will (rightfully) whine that it takes them 15 minutes or more to get a match or that they are always getting thrown in with 14 rank 1 players.

Matchmaking in the current system is at a point where you can not improve it because you have a lack of material to do so and yes it might suck but maybe you should consider joining a guild yourself?

Why does the community need to cater unsocial behaviour? It is not like guilds in EC require raidnights, 40h preparations, an itemlevel of 5000, a special set of dedicated skillsets or anything else. Most are lean back communities which have a discord and offer you the opportunity to chat with some likeminded people or the option join up with them on the 1-4 event nights. Nothing mandatory. You are not even required to read their discord, participate in any discussion beyond your liking or talk to anyone per se. If you can't bring up this lowest level of social engagement, maybe singleplayer games are more your thing? How would you coordinate ingame or via VOIP with this approach?

Even further on this point, why dont you organize a group of 5-6 friends on your own? You dont even need a guild for that just steam-friendship, thats like penguin does it and some other guys i know. Discord is free? or there are various clans and guilds out there which offer their systems to small communities. Or you could just hang out in the various free EC community discords like Eye of Terror for CSM. There you can join factionwide ops with voicecom support. The orks and LSM (coalition) have something similar, not sure about eldar tho. Only requirement is to register a nickname and to install discord. Just saying the tools are all there, pick them up.

Why should you turn down player 6/7 and tell them to go solo? What would happen if the matchmaker matches 3 5man premades because they queque up at a similar time vs your group and those guys are actually able to join the same voicecom because i.e. they are all from a coalition of loyalists or eldar. Maybe even 3 WP stacks accidentally getting thrown in together? Or would you not see the very common saltmine of "pugbashing" even if one side only had 5 clanmembers of the same clan and was winning?

No matchmaker can control if the players know each other, how well they will work together or if they can abuse the system if they want to. Especially not a matchmaker as limited as this one. We are not talking about 100k players playing simultaneously. Half my eldar and ork matches are not even full before they start and the full 15 players load in when the first point is captured.

The guilds dont conspire to ruin your fun, they want to enjoy the game as much as you do. PuB-stomping gets old very fast, i mean i guess it is hard to imagine. Many guilds are actually fishing for other Clanstacks, i know Lash does, but since the matchmaker has its own mind and you cant generate fair matches by yourself you get what you get.

However having 10 friends and not beeing able to play in that format in an advertised "mmo"-multiplayer game feels kind of funny, especially since guilds offer no other perks.

If this game was intended to be only an arena lobby shooter then perhaps there would be an argument to artificially limit warparty sizes. This game has a greater scope however and intends to grow to larger maps. Hopefully battles will take longer and solo players and warparties will be able to come and go across different maps in a freer fashion. With this in mind and understanding that this is meant to become an MMOTPS (Massively multiplayer Online Third Person Shooter) a social experience is what a game of this nature strives for.

Large battles will not always be fair with different amounts of players dropping in and out of the matches continuously. At some points your team will have the numbers advantage at others it won't. Currently tested match sizes have stood at 60vs 60 but performance and network issues have been a blocker and so map pop has been scaled back until a solution is found. Current war party sizes have been INCREASED to 30 people. That means potentially 30 player clanstacks. It is up to the community to organise how they wish to approach team coordination. as LordSloth above me said the tools are there but even VOIP will not save a team of lone wolves if they do NOT wish to coordinate and are anti-social in their nature. That will always be the greatest disadvantage of solo players.

There will also be a time when you may be horribly outnumbered by a team and will be thankful for that organised clan as they drop into your match and help turn the tide. Also know that not every guild is competetive, many people form social groups to play for fun and want to play with a large group of friends and include everybody, why should Barry and Nigel have to sit out and queue themselves just because some fake limit is placed on a match where skilled single player anti social lone wolves want to exploit weaknesses by dominating 3 uncoordinated seperate warparties. The same argument about pubstomping can be turned around just as easily at a merciless lone wolf predator who clanstomps organised groups into shameful defeat. Why should a player such as this lobby the game designers to make a game fairer for their exploitative playstyle just because they want to keep things on a smaller scale so that they can win without organising and playing as part of a larger more organised team?

The point is that this is a multiplayer game and is not designed to be a small scalle arena lobby shooter for ever. That is why there is no need to ban clans from 30 player warparties. Players have to realise that there is more content planned and as such battles will get larger and by their nature will NOT be fair all the time. That will be its beauty. A dynamic everchanging battle which ebbs and flows almost persistently - the eternal crusade.

If a person does not like the eventual direction the game IS going then they are free to uninstall and clanstomp their way through a sea of generic anti social lobby shooters where friends are limited to playing in small groups to even the playing field. If a game is going to stay in that model then such a 'fair' system of matchmaking is understandable.
Eternal crusade is not going to stay a lobby shooter and is actively encouraging large groups to form up warparties together. This is NOT to pubstomp but to enjoy the joy of combined arms gameplay with real people on a higher level of play. This is not a mistake nor an oversight on the Developer's part nor anthing that needs to be changed. This is not a moba or a 5v5 arena game. It aims to have a large amount of players in small and large maps fighting over continental territory. Those mechanics are not yet in but they are being developed.

Eternal Crusade is growing. Large maps most probably already exist. War in the 41st millenium is grim and dark.

I like your post and this is what I hoped it would bring : Arguments and discussion. I admit the whole point was sort of a click bait, but I felt it was important to bring this into light as the chat in these matches were you face a full premade is filled with concerns, discomfort and ends up with players leaving.

I dont think VoiP ingame would kick this game in the right direction in terms of premade vs random, but I strongly feel that guilds who turn up with a set of 20 guildtags ready to faceroll over said randoms is not helping this game either.

That being said, I am working on a guild for those who would like to join with the terms I have mentioned earlier in this thread : small size squad of no more than 10 ( hopefully 5 ) to bring some sort of fun for those that would enjoy it.
Then again I have only 1 member on steam pkaying this game and we usually play together.

Still I do hope that the devs will work on the MM system to improve those big GvsG matches.

Sidenote: Blizzard had the community and an engine that allowed addons and they have implemented a huge ammount of community created addons into the game at a later state.

You can't nerf Skill And you shouldn't!
But i know a lot of chaos dudes who would gladly form up a squad and coordinate together, but they can't at the moment. I mean, whenever they gather in the Eye of Terror and coordinate over Discord, they are allready at least an equal match to known guilds

VOIP would help - so some people won't use it for fear of hearing bad things.
Personally I'll mute the bad people as they crop up.
Plus we aren't a large community - most of the ass hats will be easy enough to remember..

Yes, full stack pub stomps aren't good, but a lot of us would perform better against them if we could quickly pass info between the team.

Stuff like - 'Behind you Bob!' is much more effective over voice than text!

Is it so hard to Guild to try to limit themselves with 10 people max warparty (that may well be draft in the same game)?
10 people is good enough to practice, make some tactical training, test and modify tactics, and have a fair chance in a 15vs15 game to win whatever happened.
I know as a guild member (even if not active rooster now) that we wanna play together, but survival of the game is more important, don't you think?
That will maybe demand from all big guild learders to reunite and i don't know, maybe create a charter of good use?