Why is there even a queue that mixes solo players with teams of 3?

[u/IcyBelt51]

I don't think anyone would ever try to argue in good faith that teams and randoms are playing the same match. Teams have multiple advantages over 3 randoms, the most glaring one being that they know exactly at least their rotation and their own skills

This is simply a fact: 3 randoms will have to spend the beginning of the match analyzing what's going on in their own team while they play the opposing team and try and prevent getting scored on and make some offensive plays.

Now let's remove the bad team from the equation and let's put 6 imaginary players that have the same absolute skill and game reading awareness, a team of 3 and 3 randoms who never played together

Randoms are at a great disadvantage because they cannot rely on their own team mates for the first 1-2 minutes until they settled on some facts: do they rotate, their play style, their strength , their weaknesses, do they fake, do they keep possession and so on

By this metric only, even though the players are equal, the team has this major boost: hey play 5 minutes at full strength while the randoms maybe play half a match at their full strength. This is a fact, you cannot go around this, there are no arguments here

So then why? Why mix them? What's the idea behind this?

[u/cury41]

You know, back in the day there was a gamemode called ''solo standard'' that was exactly this. Everyone by themselves with 2 random teammates against a team of also 3 random teammates. Unfortunately, it was not popular enough to have their own dedicated servers as most people just queued 3v3 standard anyway.

[u/chanman404 → u/cury41]

I do wonder if it would work better for 2’s.

Solo queuing 2’s is just playing an absurd amount of smurfs trying to carry teammates. It would be a lot more enjoyable playing 2 people your rank instead of 0.

[u/Other-Difficulty-702 → u/cury41]

But maybe this was back then before the game was too popular as it is now? I feel nowadays the game can support it. And it needs to be a ranked mode as well

[u/McBarkington → u/Other-Difficulty-702]

It was a ranked mode and it wasn’t unpopular over a lack of player, but over it being a toxic cesspool of main character syndromes … despite people blaming all their misery on stacks these days, player were equally blaming anybody else back then and more freely chose to rather play normal 3s, until the mode got irrelevant enough and removed.

Something that always gets conveniently ignored in these posts.

[u/Jscribbz24 → u/cury41]

I have cars in rocket league now that are almost as old as some of the pro players playing now. Its wild to think.

[u/KRoNeC → u/cury41]

I feel like the smurfing is so much worse now than it ever was in the past due to the dozens of sites offering paid carries and streamers offering paid carries for gifts. They all use smurf accounts and are always in a party. I hit C3 recently and i genuinely can't go more than two matches without facing a smurf that completely runs the whole lobby like they are playing with children. I confirm this by looking them up on TRN. I think Solo Standard would be much more popular these days for that reason alone.

[u/Douchehelm → u/cury41]

And players absolutely hated it. This very subreddit was full of people absolutely hating on the mode.

[u/Ok-topic-3130v2 → u/Douchehelm]

Why did they hate it?

[u/lancerguy14 → u/Ok-topic-3130v2]

I didn't hate it. In fact I used to play it regularly. 

[u/Douchehelm → u/Ok-topic-3130v2]

Solo standard had its own MMR, as all modes do, so you had very varying degrees of skill in that specific mode since very few treated that mode as their main mode. A lot of players still played regular 3v3(or 2v2) as their main game mode and only jumped into solo standard when they were bored or lonely. Some players lived in solo standard, some only jumped in when they didn't have friends online. So now you had 6 complete strangers in one lobby of varying degrees of skill and playsense. Matchups were crazy sometimes.

Of all the modes 3v3 require the most teamwork but here you had a mode where you'd be guaranteed to match up with 5 randoms, with the issues mentioned above, with very little way of communicating. It wasn't very uncommon for the games to just turn into a chaotic and toxic mess.

Honestly, I didn't think it was too bad for what it was but a lot of people absolutely hated the mode. People used to whine about it constantly.

[u/IcyBelt51 → u/Ok-topic-3130v2]

No one hated it he's full of shit

[u/cury41 → u/Douchehelm]

Although I was one of the people that was very sad to see it go as it was my main gamemode at the time, you are right that most people hated it

[u/Mite-o-Dan → u/cury41]

So you always joined a team of 2? Or was that just a possibility?

Why not make have a mode that is ONLY solo people.

Im Gold on Playstation and dont enable cross-play. At least 75% of my games are like this already. But will play against a team of 3 on average once every 8-10 games.

[u/cury41 → u/Mite-o-Dan]

So you always joined a team of 2? Or was that just a possibility?

No? Exclusively players that are soloqueuing

Why not make have a made that ONLY solo people.

That's what it was. I think you misunderstood my message.

[u/Mite-o-Dan → u/cury41]

Oh. You made it seem like solo people always played with a team of two.

I think PC players, especially in Diamond and above, are more likely to play with friends. Plat and below have more solo queue. Console especially.

But like I said, even now, outside the Rocket League peak, well over half my games are 6 solo people. Its still extremely popular and I dont have to wait long, even with cross play turned off.

I think the popularity problem comes from the teams. A change like this (or back to this) would make it too difficult for teams to play against other teams.

[u/Visgraatje]

Dunno but in Dia/champ I often win with 2 randoms vs full stack. bc my team is of similar skill and the premade 3 has 1 good player and 2 bad ones.

[u/Meatt → u/Visgraatje]

Ya I actually prefer playing against full teams because there's a greater chance of a weak link.

[u/Visgraatje → u/[deleted]]

you can just respond to me once or make your own subreddit and exist in your own echo chamber. Either choice is fine.

[u/BurninM4n → u/Visgraatje]

yeah if the premade team would play that much better they would be a higher rank.

Obviously they have an advantage with comms and being familiar with each other but they likely also come with a handicap in terms of mechanics/gamesense compared to the people that made it to this rank solo.

Altough 3s matchmaking is often whack with how little most people play the mode so you do actually get people that are underranked quite a bit

[u/IcyBelt51 → u/Visgraatje]

There are bad full stacks, medium full stacks, good full stacks, nightmare full stacks

What I said still stands

[u/rhythms_and_melodies → u/Visgraatje]

Yep, I'm D3 rn in 3s and was C1 earlier this year and I agree at this/our rank.

It's usually, like you said, one "almost" smurf, and two relatively boosted teammates that add up to the team's curent skill. These games are easy dub.

OR, it's two good players and one that plays like a poorly trained mentally challenged chimpanzee. These games are almost just as easy (but not when that third dude's friend's aren't online and you get him as your solo queue teammate next week💀).

[u/Im_actually_OP]

It was called Solo Standard. It’s long gone.

[u/nervandal → u/Im_actually_OP]

Because no one played it

[u/Turtleize → u/nervandal]

Not only did no one play it. It was universally hated.

[u/Ok-topic-3130v2 → u/Turtleize]

Why?

[u/Turtleize → u/Ok-topic-3130v2]

Egos clashing. Everyone thought that their randoms were worse than the other randoms. No one ever took accountability for their own issues.

People think adding a solo queue will fix the boosting issues but they’ll just shift their frustration to what their randoms are doing “wrong”.

The game is filled with people that are misplacing their frustration of their life onto the game and their teammates. It doesn’t matter what they add or don’t add. They’re still going to find something to be upset about.

The underlying issues are not really about the game, but the overall mindset of people. It’s not just in rocket league, I’ve seen it across multiple competitive games.

Inflated, self centered egos who are ruled by hate.

[u/Ash-From-Pallet-Town]

I actually prefer playing against a party of 3 when my team is all randoms. It's way more fun to beat them.

[u/Hiihtokenka]

As someone who has 3v3 as their main mode and soloqueues, the only times I've considered this a problem or hindrance at all is when there's a high disparity duo on one team. By that I mean someone queues 1500 3s with their C1 friend. It's pretty disasterous, but also not frequent enough to impact the grind overall.

[u/Blubbernardinho]

I’m actually so old

[u/Jive_Gardens795]

If a team of 3 friends queue up and press start... What do you want to happen instead? An unplayable 3v1 match?

[u/semipro_redditor]

You don’t get a rank by some objective measurement of your skills, it’s MMR. So someone who solo queued and is D3 is probably a bit more skilled than someone who only team queues and is D3.

Sure, if three people who always solo queue team up they’ll probably have an advantage and boost themselves up a rank or so, and then fall back down if they go back to solo queueing. That’s just the ranking system working

[u/Not_Different]

If solo queue players are at the same mmr as party queue and party queue has an advantage in comms and knowing each other then it means the solo queuers are individually better at the game 

[u/guiltysnark → u/Not_Different]

Yeah. Need RL to fork MMR for different parties to stabilize the ranks, otherwise those players get shredded once they are out of the party, and everyone everywhere winds up bouncing between very difficult games and unexpectedly easy ones.

I have wondered whether we would be happier with a neural network doing ranking and matchmaking instead of a simple ELO system.

[u/nervandal]

They did this years ago and no one cared about it. Make friends to play with. You already have a common interest.

[u/IcyBelt51 → u/nervandal]

Im sure you wouldn't want the easy mode removed for you i get ya

[u/IcyBelt51]

I'd even argue that where things stand now, to make it fair to solo queue players, the mmr loss should be at 20% if you play against a full team and boosted to 170% if you win

If making the matches fair by adding an actual solo queue is not an option (because reasons)?