Tho I'd love to see a "GvG Matchmaker" that tolerates a 3 player gap. The game is locked to the guilds that are currently queuing (meaning a player of the guild may join if the gap isn't extended beyond 3). It enables guilds to practice against each other and in unfavorable situations. That'd be awesome.
Dear Shivan, there are multiple reasons. Let's just start off by stating that being in a guild against PUGS is playing the game on easy mode. Premades have a lot of advantages compared to PUGS. The instant voice communication. The experience and choosing of team members. The ability to in most games start with overwhelming numbers compared to the opposition, and finally relative cohesiveness allowing for death squads leveraging numbers on every point. Even if PUGS got voice communication, they would still get rolled over. Granted, all guilds lose sometimes to PUGS yet its fairly rare unless the guild is bad. Sometimes there are even numbers, but then the leveraging begins. See, despite what most guilds think of themselves there aren't really any tactical insight to them. They zerg. All of them moving together into a point at once, always facing half or less of their numbers, then taking the point. Once they've done that, they move to the next, then the next. If defending, the first point about to be captured is rushed by the entire team and PUGS seem to lack an understanding of attacking more than one point at a time, so they easily lose. Even a guild like DLB that goes over some tactics, only do this simple tactic with an exception to it like always having someone being in a certain position and little else. Just that tiny detail puts them quite a bit ahead of guilds like yours, PG. It's only when you get skilled individuals in the PUG, that aren't outnumbered, that you stand a chance, and even then you're at a disadvantage. More so with some factions than others. However, there is not too much we can do about it unless you leave the queue against them. I find it a bit humorous that most people that complain about the Eldar and make a grand show of leaving the queue against them are at the same time guilded and have no issue rolling over PUGS with 15-man guild squads. I've tried for hundreds and hundreds of games to support PUGS and lead the way, but I even start to lean towards giving up against guilds. At the moment I still play against them except a few whom are incredibly toxic towards PUGS, wagering that I don't need that negative experience in my gaming time. What BE really should try and do is to expand upon the Guild vs Guild mode. Having them arrange those matches is inefficient, as they no doubt know, and one can only hope that it eventually becomes an option where guilds can just queue up against other guilds. That's a fairer matchup, and it would promote guilds actually thinking strategically and tactically for once.
Huge guild stacks have a severe negative impact on the game for randoms. Lots of players leave a match immediately as soon as somebody notices 8-12 members of the enemy team are sporting the same tag, because odds are its gonna be a stomp. Sure, occasionally the PuGs win against the guild stacks, but thats maybe a 1/10 game scenario when the stars align and everyone's various patron deities happen to be paying attention for that 20 minute stretch. Getting stomped because the other guys have voice chat and can react and coordinate immediately in any situation isn't fun when you're playing solo, so why would you stick around?
This is the only fair way to go about it. They should let guilds set up their own "challenge" maps at will while keeping "random queue" capped at parties of 5-6. Not sure the right number since match sizes vary but even with reduced party sizes you'll still get guild stacks. You boys remember before war parties even worked guild members would just queue at the same time and almost always get into the same game? Hell that's even easier to do now with the way the map works. No matter how you slice it you're going to run into an organized group. So, I'm not against de-incenticizing big guild stomp forces in normal queue but it's still gonna happen no matter how many balances you try to put in.
You may be surprised if you were to sit on voice comms with some of the more recognizable stacks. We do police unsportsmanlike conduct. We do break up into smaller groups when the opposition has proven to be exceptionally poor. We do actually care about the solo player experience. However, to expect us to never stack in order to live up to your standard of fair play is for lack of a better term, self-centered and also just as inconsiderate as you may think stack players are acting toward solo players. If we load into a game, and half of the LSM players just quit, usually we'll intentionally sit back and prevent our team from capping until the population evens out. Or, if we load into a ticket map and notice that a significant portion of the other team hasn't loaded yet, we'll either sit back or move into the point and actively prevent anyone from capping. We also welcome damn near anyone who wants to play with us and will help show them any tips and strategies they might not be aware of. Hell, anyone who can be respectful and considerate toward others is welcome to join our voice comms even if they aren't playing or have no intention of joining our guild, for the sake of fostering a a healthy community and facilitate the transfer of knowledge, experience, and research to anyone who wants access to it. As for those large 10-15 man stacks that you see pop back to back, those are usually squad practice days. We aren't running in big stacks to beat PuGs, we are running in stacks for training and practice for things like Campaigns and GvG streams. Without the capacity to practice with a full force, we give up our competitiveness for these things. And I can tell you that we already know a Black Crusade is being planned to begin the moment the next campaign goes live. A few of us are debating which faction to support once that happens, and if we decide to go non-CSM you really are going to want groups like us to help offset their half a dozen to a dozen full stacks of CSMs aiming to win as many battles as quickly as possible without any quarter or mercy for the sake of wining RTC faction wide. And trust me, those guys are no joke. If we just run around and half ass until the moment it comes time to face them, we will get steamrolled nearly as bad as pure PuG teams. Many of us believe that this was a huge factor which prevented the LSM from achieving their campaign goal. Quite simply, not enough competitive groups specifically aiming to score as many victories as fast as possible to further their cause. We'd rather do this against other stacks, ideally people who are better than we are. This tend to only run for a few hours each week. Sadly we ONLY have access to the same battle now queue as most solo guys are using. Even worse, the games population is still too low to reasonably separate the queues. In any given night we see the total game population at around 400, with 200ish LSM, 120ish CSM, 50 Eldar and 30 Orcs. When each match is 15 to 30 per side, that is just not enough people plain and simple. We try to do these things when other guilds are running their own training ops to increase our chances of popping into a game with them. Friday evening and Sat being the most common. If you really want to avoid those stacks you could always ask someone in one of the organizations when they are running their ops and possibly queue specifically against a different faction. And, as has been mentioned before. This issue is no where near as bad outside of the LSM faction. It is far from uncommon to see Eldar and CSM PuGs beat opposing clan stacks. Orcs generally can care less as long as they get to get in the dakka and choppa fun, but still regularly gives us a run for our money stack or no. LSM are the only side that consistently under performs and under utilizes the strengths of their faction. And I find it hard believing this is an OP or UP issue, as we have no issue whatsoever performing just as well using our LSM toons as we do on any other faction.
Premades are totally fine as soon as we non-guild-scrubs get VOIP back and we'll kick your ass again. Until then I'll hate premades, because they usually got an unfair advantage (TS or similiar).
I have frequently been on both sides of the equation, and the only problem is it's taking forever to re-implement Voice Comms. In many ways I enjoy beating a Guild stack alongside PuGs more than as part of the horde. Though I got to say, Chaos guild comms are like 90%+ totally unrelated to what's going on in game.
