Aphyrax

It is not devoid of skill. Almost nothing in life is. If I can get punched in the balls three times before crying while you cry after two punches, that is skill on my part (I chose that analogy for a reason as it applies quite well to the current state of 2v2). But it is extremely unbalanced and frustrating and as such has no room in a competitive environment.

But the biggest issue is that some classes are structurally more suited for 2v2 while some are structurally more suited for 5v5. See pally vs druid. As long as you have both brackets, one will always be imbalanced. How many "druids are OP in 2v2" "but pallies are OP in 5v5" threads can one handle? They will never remove either, but at least focus the competitive aspect on one of them. That way we can hope for at least one balanced bracket.

 

Mex

Well, 2v2 strengths translate into 3v3 for the most part (rogue, warlock, priest, druid, warrior) but other classes also gain viability -- for instance mages and ele shamans which don't have the longevity to reach the highest levels can compete more effectively now that they can get both a healer and DPS class to synergise with. Pally and shaman healers have slightly more leniancy when spell locked as there's now a third team mate which can often do something to help mitigate a burst (even if it's just snares or an interrupt).

Yes, 3v3 is comp and counter-comp, but it does allow a lot more classes to compete. As it stands, there are just some classes which have absolutely no recourse for finding a decent team in 2v2.

edit -- re: Aph's comments, I think any sort of competitive, professional tourney (ie cash prizes) should be 5v5. Screw the logistics, that's where balance is best.

 

◊ Kasi

I would be fine with 2s and 5s being considered seperate like that, but the fact is that 2s due to higher amount of players is easier to attain a high rating with, and thus be eligible for the rating required rewards. It's a lot easier for a druid or lock to obtain 1850 in 2s than any class to obtain an 1850 in 5s, which is my issue with the system.

 

Cerylai

2v2 is quite the interesting format in my opinion as you can end up with teams there is no realistic way to beat them.
The queue times have been crazy, 12min average on my home server of Lightninghoof during a "good" time to 2v2.
On monday nights we can see upwards of 15mins per game which, yes is just silly.
I believe the simple way to fix this for myself is to just 2v2 at around 11am server time when more then half of the
server is at work or school. another option is to 3v3 since those queues are VERY short all around.

 

• sadris

It is a lot easier for a paladin or shaman to obtain 1850 in 5s than other classes to do so in 2s, which is my issue with the system. It is a terrible argument with WoW's current PVP "balance."

Back to the queue time issue, one suggested mentioned on the WOW boards was to have 4+ arena maps per instance (separated by a large void, of course). So for example you wouldn't zone into Nagrand arena until there are 8 people who are all queued up. This also has the added benefit of making the /ignore feature be largely unreliable.

 

◊ Kasi

Considering that 5s are about the only bracket paladins and shamans are strong in, I don't really think that is much of a problem. Fact is a lot less people play the higher bracket sizes. Thus there is a less of a spread of points. There is a lot more 2s teams than 3s and a lot more 3s than 5s. Thus getting into 1850 in 2s is just well, a lot easier. Add in there that unlike 5s 2s is almost completely decided by team comps and many classes don't have a team comp that is strong in 2s.

Shamans for instance don't. So what 2s do is basically give the classes who are strong in the bracket a very simple way to getting 1850/2000 to get their restricted pieces. I don't see how someone can argue that warlocks, druids, rogues and warriors don't dominate this bracket and that getting to 1850 with one of the cookie cutter teams is anywhere near close to building a 5s team (which has a lot more different builds) and getting high with that. Imo personal rating requirements for 2s should be higher than 3s and those should be higher than 5s.

 

Valius

I am frustrated with these que times, rather because the duration actually increased by almost double at 11 server on a work night, compared to in the middle of the day on a Sunday. Is this the case for anyone else?

 

monkorn

During AV weekend there are roughly 40 AV games up at any time, thats 40*40*2 people, or 3200. Queue times? Under a minute on Ruin.

If every single one of those people went to 2v2, there would be EIGHT HUNDRED instance servers opened up instead of the 40. That's just inefficient programming, and I really doubt they could throw enough hardware at it to solve the issue.

The issue doesn't need to be solved via new hardware, blizzard only has to put multiple matches in per instance, and somehow come up with a new system to allow that to flow, and perhaps allow observing other matches in the same instance between games.

 

◊ Kasi

It's not just because of how many they are, it is because of the matching system. Apparently it doesn't scale. For those AVs there is no matching. You just queue people in to the first available slot. But for 2v2 you have to look at team's ratings and try to match them up with teams with similar ratings.

 

Irox

That's what they say, yet considering Blizzard certainly don't have their "highly complex matching algorithms" coded by ten years old script kiddies, it's just a plain lie. They make it sound like a whole server farm is non-stop computing for 15 minutes to figure what team is a suitable opponent, which is, in my eyes, quite far away from reality.

I don't have numbers really and I won't make up any either, but there's no way a simple matchmaking algorithm can be this slow, the official statements just indicate Blizzard doesn't care about the issue at all.

 

• Elendril

No, that's not what they say at all. They say that while they're aware of the issue, they want to identify whether it's a long term problem rather than a phenomenon of holidays/start of new arena season. And people have to recognize that yes, if you wait until the last minute Monday night to get your games in before the week is over, you're going to be waiting a long time along with everyone else who did the same thing. I was playing 2s at 10 or 11 on Sunday night and getting 2-3 minute queues. For them to add significant additional server infrastructure to service the last minute prime time demand for a single arena bracket which may drop as the new season drags on isn't "not caring" - it's just smart business sense.

 

• Melador

Yeah, there's just no way that the matchmaking system requires any substantial processing resources at all. It's just not that hard to match up teams of relatively similar ratings. I'm confident I could write such a system that could match hundreds of teams and it would run comfortably on my laptop.

It might be challenging to get it to optimally match teams, but given the number of no-point-matchups I've seen, they're not terribly worried about that. And I doubt many people would complain if there simply weren't enough teams to find good matchups without waiting for a while.

It's the general attitude of: "we're aware of the problem but even though we've cleared half a billion dollars in profit, we're not willing to invest in the hardware to fix an easily scalable problem. Instead, we'd like you to sit through queues of up to 8 minutes for 3v3 and 20 minutes for 2v2*." that has people pissed.

It's just a really crappy way to treat your customers. I don't get the impression that the PvP contingent is nearly as loyal to WoW as the PvE contingent, and making the arena experience this miserable is introducing a big flight risk given that more PvP-centric MMOs that are going to be released in the not-too-distant-future.

Except that this isn't a new issue -- it's been true for 2v2 throughout season 2 and is creeping into 3v3 this season. It's not my fault that I couldn't get everyone together until the weekend/Monday night -- we're generally raiding during the week and since Blizzard doesn't provide cheaper PvP/PvE respecs, most people need to consolidate their PvP time to Saturday/Sunday/Monday.

Fundamentally, providing a crappy experience is almost never a smart business move.

* Both of those numbers are accurate for Vindication last night.

 

mikebro

Honestly, on Ruin it would be easier to get 1850 in 3's or 5's than it would be in 2's. The queue times are so bad for 2's I wouldn't be surprised if the point distribution is around the same if not better in those brackets. Their justification for not upgrading the servers is just crappy PR. Queue times for 2's have been consistently horrible on ruin for months now, long before S3 came around.

Battlegrounds are supposed to match by gear. Truth is we don't know the internal workings of the matchmaking system for arenas or battlegrounds but I really doubt it is causing any sort of serious delays (Read: 10+ minutes) to compare ratings of teams, maybe wait a little to see if a better suited team will come around (We never waited more than 3-4 minutes when our 5's team would queue up at 3AM on a weekday only to go up against a 1600-1700 team for a 0 point win), and maybe some other variables we aren't aware of.

Has anyone noticed when they get unexpectedly fast queues it is usually when going up against teams on the same server as yours? Whenever we get a much faster than expected team they are almost always from Bleeding Hollow.

 

Aphyrax

They abandoned gear based matchmaking in BGs as far as I can tell.

You get faster queues when the other team has been in the queue for a long time and you happen to be the best match. I do not think that both teams will ever get instant queues when everyone else is waiting for 10 minutes, same server or not.

 

Humbaba

The only thing I've noticed BGs matching is premades vs premades, PuGs vs PuGs and partial premades vs partial premades.

 

North Shadow

Wow. I feel horribly sorry for anyone who has to sit in Q's longer than 2 minutes. Here on emberstorm, 2v2 has NEVER been over 2 minutes long. 3v3 I've had at 5 minutes once, but that was due to only 2 other teams Q'ing at 7am.

I couldn't agree more.

 

Mex

The bottom line is that Blizzard is a business and upgrading their 2s servers right now would be a stupid business decision.

Yes, they'll piss some people off, but ~10 minute 2v2 queues for me are still perfectly acceptable, especially when 3v3 and 5v5 both remain at 1-5 minutes, and offpeak queue times are shorter. Not to mention the fact that right now is about as popular and congested as arena is ever likely to get in the foreseeable future.

I just don't see it as a huge problem unless you're trying to cram games in at the last minute.

 

Aphyrax

Some consumers find sitting around for 10 minutes for two minutes of game time unacceptable. I happen to be one of them. And there is absolutely, positively zero reason to believe the queues will go away. They have been this long forever (at least in BG9). And if they do drop then the people who right now don't play due to queue times will come back into the fold and bring them back up.

It is sad that we have been so conditioned to accept time sinks that wasting EIGHTY PERCENT of your playing time is fine with people.

As I have said before, if all it took was going out and buying some hardware, I am sure Blizzard would do it. Hardware is cheap. The problem is likely deeper and has to do with their infrastructure.

 

Mex

Playing on BG9 in aussie peak hours, I've only ever noticed 2s queues over 2-3 minutes right before points update and in the last coupla weeks since S3. I would be willing to bet that the last two weeks have been the busiest since arena's inception. I'd also be willing to bet that by this time next month they will have dropped off a bit again and be on their way back to more "acceptable" levels.

8 minute queues don't bother me at all. WoW is full of "sitting around". I've dealt with 45 minute AV queues all year. I've dealt with being forced to wade through hours and hours of trash mashing the same keys over and over just to get to a boss. Flying around herbing or PvP'ing at Halaa while waiting for a queue to pop isn't a big deal for me, there's always something to do. And yeah, sure, it may be unacceptable for you and a lot of other people but the bottom line is that, regardless of whether it is or isn't true, the current situation is perceived to be temporary, and only affecting a relative minority of the player base.

If the product's really that bad, then don't buy it. For my part, I'm more than happy to deal with the limitations.

 

Mearis

On Sunday, we had 1-2 minute queues at 8 AM in the morning, and around 9 minute queues in the evening. I have no clue about the rest of the day, but I don't think your situation is tipical. I'd kill for 2 minute queues during evenings.

 

Irox

You're right there probably, I wasn't aware of the recent blue posts. Still, for my battlegroup queue times have been above 5 minutes pretty much since the end of season 1, and they wouldn't drop before around 2am usually, on tuesday/wednesday it's just worse. Two-minute queues are extremely rare outside the 2am-8am frame for me, and it's not a S3 issue, only thing happend was queue times rising from 5 minutes to 10 and above.

 

Keline

Why is this thread called "2vs2?

Only 5vs5 is still fast invites.
So they basically denied the problem for months and NOW they blame it on the season start? We've had queues for a very long time now.

And no, we never have 2 minute 2on2 queues as you seem to be blessed with. Especially not Sunday 11pm.

 

mikebro

People need to realize that not all battlegroups are the same. Just because queues never go past 2-3 minutes on your battlegroup doesn't mean that it is the same for everyone else. On Ruin I haven't seen a 2's Estimated queue time shorter than 5 minutes in many months between 6PM-1AM server time with the wait being typically 7-8 minutes these last few weeks. I don't even want to know what the queue time is on Monday, I don't even bother queuing up. Something is wrong when you're alt-tabbed waiting in queue twice as long as you're actually playing. This is not a temporary issue because of the release of season 3. Queues were almost equally as horrible throughout all of season 2. I'm sure some of the bigger battlegroups like Bloodlust and Stormstrike have the same problem.

If they don't have any intention on fixing it, at least let us queue battlegrounds while we wait for arena queues to pop would be nice.

 

Humbaba