US-STD CTF Open (Season 1)

The hardest part is actually finding a match. Even when there's a daily for it, no one seems to join.

After a few of us spammed 820 for an hour, we finally got two groups of 6. Even then, it took us like half an hour to get the system to match us up.

And to top it all off, after winning the match, none of us even got credit for the Leo daily mission.

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

This is really broken.

I spent 1 hour 45 minutes in queue solo until it was decided to form 2 groups of 6 and queue together. It didn't work until everyone was in an American A3M Sarn encampment. Even then, it took a while for the game to match us, despite having 12 in queue.

We did it twice. After the first match, having some people hit ready for next match while in the arena and others queuing in town caused problems. So we all exited the arena and did the American A3M Sarn thing again.

Each group won one CTF match as duelist, shadow, templar, or scion (as per the Leo daily of today). No one got credit. Leo doesn't think the quest is complete.

For this to ever be viable, as credible competition or entertainment, your matching really needs to be improved:
1. Faster matching
2. More information in the UI (i.e. how many other people are waiting to join)
3. Blue team vs red team selection/preference (i.e. some way to reorganize teams, for when soloers or smaller groups queue). I picture this being done starcraft UMS style, where each player checks their preference and the game fills teams accordingly, using partial randomization if there are insufficient spaces.
4. Cross realm matching, cross league matching.

Point 4 applies to 1v1 Open and 3v3 Open as well. Currently, the matching system will put me vs the same player 4+ times in a row. The other day I would 0/0 draw someone, 7 rounds, game after game, and it kept matching us. We started to just afk or leave. I assume repetitive matching is due to not having enough players queue up (probably because you've separated the playerbase into too many subgroups, based on server, league, and level).

5. Add a concede button.
6. Add a stalemate/draw button that activates when selected by all players.
7. Give us something to do while waiting in a queue. Sitting in the ho and staring at your wonderful decorations until the game matches you can't be the best solution. It's excruciatingly boring with wait times of several minutes or, in some cases, much much longer, when you can't quest, farm, map, or do anything. Add a PVP queue minigame? Remove activity restrictions for non-pvp characters (and then add a 5 second countdown before you're teleported into pvp after being matched)?

8. Add a 3rd tab in the pvp and events window for manual matching. Let people form a lobby and start the game when ready. Player choice and self-determination is good - this option may reduce the number of level 90+ players being matched against level 40's and 50's.

PPS. Do you guys realize how retarded it would be if hearthstone or starcraft kept matching you against the same person over and over and over? While editing this post I have been doing 1v1 open, and I'm now on my 3rd game against the same player, back to back. And this keeps happening. Edit: After playing the last person back to back 3 times, it just put me against another person 3 times in a row (and the rank difference is so great that I lose 0 points when they win, and they gain 1 point). Really bad matching algorithm or really low number of players?

The only acceptable way I've found of queueing is to set up parties and join one person's hideout - otherwise people from different gateways will be creating their own group within the party. While most people are smart enough to queue in the same instances for 6v6, it would be helpful if joining displayed the queued status of all party members instead of "x others in your queue".

Another thing is the visibility of teams within the Ctf arena. While many people have requested minimap improvements for PvE (*cough* player names *cough*), in PvP it's mostly running after people and wondering "can this person kill me before I kill them" and "oops that person with tentacle wings is on my team". Yes, there's a respawn area, but strategies are hard when most matches are over in minutes. The swirling circle underfoot doesn't seem to help when everybody is using the same movement skill with all the mtx and auras obfuscating it.