Official - Team Feature will be disabled next update

Hi all-

The Teaming feature was one of the more requested features the community had asked us for. However, seeing it in practice we agree that it is creating too much imbalance given the current audience size. We understand your frustration. We will disable this feature for the near future in the next update.

Sometimes things that seem like great ideas at first have unintended consequences. Thanks to everyone who offered constructive feedback on it, we are always listening.

Being able to play with friends is a great thing, but not when you got elites vs noobs.
How about adding Team up option at the end of a match? So that if you find some people you want keep playing with you can, but you can’t just pre-pick your team from the start?
Also what about a Rematch option? Some games that are really close, I’d like to try again. See if I can beat the other players on a second try?

The other thing good about teams is that no one gets a ship they don’t like or aren’t good at. I’ve seen players leave a match when there is only 1 ship left. How about being able to select a ship you like, and if all the other match making settings line up (however you assign players), you’ll be able to start with the ship you like? Not to say that its guaranteed, but a way for players to have a chance to get what they’re good at.

Hmm, too bad about the end of the teaming feature. Will there be any real balancing of non-team games btw? I love my high rank with the minor exception that I am always teamed with the absolutely new and fresh nubs. Will there be any change to this?

for the end of team feature blame only yourselves. as for the balancing it is fine as long as ppl dont intentionally swap teams and so on. it works good.

“Teaming up” needs to be only for pre-set matches, such as guild vs guild. 2-3 friends who want to lay the smackdown on everyone else game after game is a little unbalancing.

EndGames, rather than remove the teaming feature completely, would it be possible to use it to set up an enemy team as well? I mean, could you make it so it’s more of a ‘custom match’ sort of thing, where you determine your allies and enemies, rather than sticking you in the normal queue?

Thanks!
-TAO

Although I completely understand teams can be unfair, I would also like to see teams stay in a “team vs team unranked match only” kinda way

The team invite option should only be 1 friend at a time so the max will be a pair of players, not a whole team.

No, no, no you dont know we “frustation”, my frustation it’s just because I’m at number 1 of the leaderboards, I get to play with a noob team, against good players, what kind of joke is this? So whenever I have to play with noobs, because I’m a good player and I can make my own against other good players mid-May? As they lvl up and becomes harder to kill thanks to my team noob?
Please!! , until they fix the poor ranking system.
Thats really frustrating! if u want put some guidelines to use the team up, its ok, but not take it away!

ill suggest a compromise: live battle stays the way it was before, no teams. for everyone that wants to play with friends, create a lobby room where players can join a custom game and pick and swap sides. the custom room gives you no stats and only half the bang to prevent exploits. thats the best option for everyone :)

Originally posted by Voydwalker:

ill suggest a compromise: live battle stays the way it was before, no teams. for everyone that wants to play with friends, create a lobby room where players can join a custom game and pick and swap sides. the custom room gives you no stats and only half the bang to prevent exploits. thats the best option for everyone :)

Agreed.

funny. i knew exactly that that would happen.

First of all, for those that don’t know me, i haven’t use teaming option even once since it fully kills game balance.

That said, i think that removing this function from the game is bad solution of the problem. Disabling it until the team-balancing issue is solved is completly different matter. I know that having newbies in team is annoying (sadly, im one of those raging players that tend to whip-out on them when they REALLY stupid things) BUT what is even more annoying is waiting in queue for 4 minutes to end up facing pre-made team of 4-5 ppl while having newbies on your side. Disconnect. Wait. Re-queue. Face another team. Repeat all those steps.

I don’t know maths behind the ELO rating based match-making system, but i guess there should be hard-coded limit for difference in ELO ratings between players in one match. I often happened to play versus level 2-3 commanders (myself having commander level 27) and i guess that their rating couldnt have been too high. And if it was close to my rating, then i guess you should try using Glicko’s algorithm which is improved ELO.

Second of all, consider inserting additional formula for the match-making system. If players are teamed pre-match, ELO rating of the teamed players are multplied by 1.x (where x is the number of teamed players) for the sake of checking team balancing. That will make teamed players wait longer (if they are from the top of leaderboard) but MIGHT solve the problem.

I know that it all sounds complicated (probably due to my terrible english), but i could write down an example if needed.

I think that if you are going to remove teams, then you need to remove the “searching for equally ranked players” matchmaking as well. I am in the top 10 and as anyone in the top 10 knows, the match making is broken. How the match making balances teams for us is the following:

Team 1:
Top 10 player
Unranked player with Ops
Unranked player with Ops
Fresh player with no Ops
Fresh player with no Ops

Team 2:
Rank 20-50 player
Rank 20-50 player
Rank 20-50 player
Rank 50-100 player
Fresh player with no Ops

Nearly every game I have played since the new matchmaking system has come out with a setup almost exactly like this. It things because I am a top 10 player, matching me with noobs and throwing a bunch of good to decent players on the other side is balanced. It isn’t. One player can only do so much. You can ask anyone in the top 10 and some even in the top 20, the matchmaking always does this which basically means when teams leave, we will lose pretty much every other match without a challenge to the other team. In my last four games, I have completely soloed the other team’s base, wiping out every turret and most of their batteries/emitters by myself. I’ve also been the only positive player on my team. Then I lose because I have no less than 3 players on my team with 10+ deaths. I’ve been told in each game that without me, the game would have been a pushover, but as I said. A single player can only do so much.

In short, I agree teams are broken and likely should be removed because of balancing issues, but! If you are going to remove it, remove the new matchmaking system as well.

to these high lvls being struck by the unfair matchmaking, could you please try not to sound like you are whining?

it honestly sound like you want 5 awesome people to be your team …, try for one second to think how many you would get to quit playing this game?

oh and one last thing .., i wonder if the current ranking system is any good. To me it seems like a bunch of good to decent guys just ganged up and collected a high ranking. Kinda hard to tell if it’s skilled people in the top, or just some people who have beaten up more noobs than others (which btw is no feat).

I wouldnt go as far as saying that every game looks this way. It higly depends on number of people in-game, which differs from 50 to over 200 depending on hour. Still, situation that you gave as example happens way too often, even in 3v3 games.

ELO rating is good for either bigger population of players, or smaller population with somewhat even skill. I know that making any changes in the formulas are VERY complex as it has great impact on balancing, and making teams random won’t really help the situation, as they will still be pretty much unbalanced.

I’m pretty sure that devs are considering different approaches to the problem, since they have stated that they are aware of it. But have in mind that every match-making system is nothing more than crapload of complex mathematical functions, and adjusting it to given playerbase is more complicated than it looks, believe it or not.

Not every game is, just every game I’ve played since the new matchmaking system was released. I have not won a single game solo since the new match making release came out despite being positive and wiping out most the enemy base solo in every game. When I team, even with a single person I have not lost. Give me ONE good player and I’m happy. Myself and luciella teamed yesterday, just the two of us and were good. I’m not asking for loaded teams, I’m asking for more balance.

Masa, the best player this game has despite what the rankings say, said it best. The new matchmaking system punishes the better players. It is one of the main reasons he quit because he could not win matches where he was virtually alone. Like I said, if we have this new match making system, teams or at least PAIRS are almost required for higher ranked players. Otherwise we lose every match. When your team is a combined 21-43 and one player is 18-0 by herself, there is something wrong. I wouldn’t mind if it were just one game, but this is consistent. Every game I’ve played solo, I’ve died 0-1 times and have had 8+ kills, plus have gotten around 120+ B! a match from destroying turrets/batteries/emitters and still i lose because of the players the flawed match making system works.

Then again, I wouldn’t even mind that. I wouldn’t mind the losses because of how well I’m playing, but the new ranking system is completely based on wins and losses it seems. I can have a perfect game and lose and lose 10 elo points, but I can have a bad game and win and get 3-5 elo points. The game is no longer based on the skills of individual players, so high ranked players being shoved into these bad matchmaking situations is punished the high ranks because they simply cannot win a match alone. Something has to give. Either keep teams, but reduce it to where you can only team with one other player, reset the matchmaking to where it was originally to give everyone a fighting chance, OR change the ranking system back. That would mean I would drop 30-40 ranks, but then at least I would have fun because I wouldn’t have to worry about losing due to bad teams. I could simply do well in the game and be fine. Right now, it’s lose-lose for anyone who is good at this game.

starcrossed .., i couldn’t help but wonder why you are still “high ranked” if you lose every match?

oh andplease remember that whatever you request would also be used against you. If you want a strong team, expect to be against another strong team. Then you will probably not have 18-0 or whatever you do now.

Your aqrguements would also come across a lot better if you think a little less about yourself. While you may be a good player at this game, it’s not certain there aren’t alot more with similar skills.

Myself i think it’s kinda cool that at some point people will start losing because of being in a badly ranked team. As it is currently, maybe you should see it all as a challenge. The higher ranked you get, the harder the game will be.

Oh and just have a few things to say then i’ll not comment anymore in here..
- Remember the ranking system is the same for everyone. Nobody is having an easier time than you are.
- Winning every match would make the game boring. Get used to losing sometimes.

Well, to answer your question: I dropped roughly 30 elo points earlier playing solo. I teamed with two other players and worked my way back up. Teaming was the only saving grace that kept me from dropping completely. Still, this has nothing to do with rank.

The fact is, this is a team game. Each player is only as good as their team is and I myself am not one of the best. I think I am a middle of the pack player, roughly ranked 30ish. I am a decent player, not a great player. That leads to my problem. The way the rating system is now, I am forced into matches where I am facing against several other decent players and put with a bunch of no ranked players because I am high ranked. This is a flaw in itself. To be honest, I’ve completely stopped playing because I will have to lose roughly 20-30 games in a row before I get to where the matchmaking is putting me in games where my team has a chance to win. I am not a good individual player, but a team player who does everything possible to push my team to a win, but a single player cannot win a game by themselves. My complaints have nothing to do with the rankings because I admit I should be nowhere near ranked where I am, that is a fact. In that same mindset though, it will now be impossible for me to enjoy the game because of the sheer amount of games I will have to lose just to get semibalanced teams again once the team function is removed.

That said, I spoke to EndgamesRyan earlier about it and he admitted that the mathematical algorithms in the matchmaking was flawed, which is causing exactly what I am complaining about here. One of the Devs admitted to this issue and said they are working on upgrading the algorithms, so really it’s pointless to argue about.

How can rank 30 be considered middle of the pack? Never mind the rank 5 your at right now. There 100 places on the leader board, and a lot more players then that.

The problem might be just who is available at the moment. If the only players looking for a match at the moment are you (rank 5), 3 players rank 50-100 and 6 noobs; then of course you’ll end up with 4 noobs. In that case it’ll all depend on if your team is kids who haven’t read the rules or player this type of game or if they’ve played something similar.

When there is on average 100 players in this game at any one time, 50 or so being noobs, the other 50 returning players, 30 is around middle of the pack.

And actually, that is exactly the problem keynup. That is why the matchmaking is flawed as a whole because really, a rank 10 player isn’t that much better than a rank 40-50 players and in some cases can be worse. As a result, when the matchmaking tries to balance it out by ranking, you end up with one decent to good player against three. As I said, I’m not complaining because of losing matches, I’m complaining because matchmaking is so flawed that I would have to lose 30 or so games before the matchmaking starts putting a second decent player on my team. This is why i am in support of reducing teams to two players per team, that way there are more teams, matchmaking can balance easier, and no player will be left completely shafted because of the matchmaking system.

Our final decision on this was to leave the feature in, but restrict it to 2 players max for the time being. This will be implemented in the 10.05.5 release.

sweet I can totally win a game if I have at least one reliable teammate to back me up :D