You know, I wish they'd do something like WoW arena, where only premade games are ranked, all else are considered skirmish and they don't get ranked. How is the game supposed to be competitve if you are getting randomly matched with other team mates?

I wouldn't mind a premade if I got to paly along side some of those PUG stars I look out for.

It's that guy that joins that only has 4 complete games to his name that I know I'm going to loose no matte rhow hard I try and simply leave the lobby... 

Clearly starting "Premade" is a nice gesture but we know why you don't... cause no one else would join.

http://classic.battle.net/war3/ladder/w3xp-ladders.aspx?Gateway=Northrend

You're nuts if you don't think the random team ladders are competitive on that game, but it's only competitive because the ranking system isn't cluttered and confused with a bunch of other game types.  Currently pantheon is a total grab bag on skill level because ratings are so borked from custom games, there's not a large enough playerbase to pool from to match accurately, and your odds of getting a proper pairing are significantly reduced by the light/dark segregation.

That doesn't mean that premades are pros and pugs are casuals/noobs.

Also on WoW you have plenty of 1000-1800 rated teams which would never be considered pros and they exist on the same ladder as the 2700 rated players.  I really think there's a false dichotomy between pros and pugs and it's acting as a disincentive for the devs to implement a system which would accomodate poor quality premade teams.

I mean logically all players should gravitate towards at least dabbling with premade teams.  If you play enough online it's inevitable that you're going to meet people you like/respect and seek to play with them again.  It's just that currently doing so requires external communication software, increases the wait time on games, makes you reviled by a major part of the community, and lowers the competitiveness of the games you actually do play.

Fix those issues and you'll see the absurdity of the current system subside.

It did not matter whether they are on the same ladder or not, the way the system works now is that it matches your team based on the team match making rating (MMR) not your actual rating. So when you start at 0, you may very well be matched against the rank 1 team (happened to me personally).

I don't know, but maybe playing with randoms who are decent might be good enough in a game like DG, but I know for a fact that unless you played in the same team for awhile and practiced your strats well with your team mates in some of the games I played (10s of FPS games and MMOs), you'll never be in the top 1% or so.

P.S. I'm posting from a diff account than aymanra coz the forum refuses to log me on.

I don't feel you quoted the rigth part of my post.  The point you quoted is tangential to what I think we actually disagree on.  My example of a competitive non-premade ladder system is Warcraft 3, not WoW.  The reason why I talked about WoW rankings is that many times I've heard people talk about premades as though only pros are interested in them, which I don't believe is true.

Frogtboy had gone so far as to say only about 5% of the popular online at any time is premades and many premade players have expressed the belief that premades are pros, and I just think the difficulty of coordinating a premade with the current system is skewing those numbers and perceptions.

I love going up against premades with voip, this game is so awesome with good competition however....

the moronic randoms that come in to the pro labelled lobbies you get for teamates more often than not (9 out of 10) make me curl up into a fetal position and cry.

As someone mentioned earlier if a host titles it premade that host will be lucky to get a game going.

There are a ton of viable solutions already offered from the Epoch 3 Frogboy thread that I dont need to rehash here, but all we can do as the playerbase is sit on our hands and hope 1 of the good ideas gets implemented.

note: most of the premades are horrible and are very beatable

Salute: AtA44Max, Ivorgor and the handful of good players I get lucky enough to group with once in awhile to play against them.

danomanox, IMHO, you should quit demigod for a while, go out, drink some beer/soda, make some friends, convince them to play Demigod and you can make your own "premades".

Cheers.

bleh, what a garbage community, im with frogboy, fuck this shit.

As long as the title gives some indication that you need to be a good player, I am okay with that.  The shame of it, however, is that really bad people join games with "PROS only" in the title, ruining it for the good puggers who join those games.  There is no fix to this until we get some type of information in the lobby indicating skill.  I am more than comfortable taking on a premade if I know that my teammates are competent.  But if my teammate has a 5% win rate, it doesn't matter how good me or the remaining teammate is.

And yes, it does ruin the community.  Which types of players are likely to join premade games?  The people that don't know any better - i.e., new players.  New players get stomped repeatedly and then quit without realizing they were even playing a well-oiled premade.

Premades are playing this game the way its meant to be played. If you aren't premade, you have no room to complain. Either find a premade or deal with the natural difficulties of being a pug. 

If anything is killing the community, its:

1. GPG not including basic features to support premades (team automatch, clans, friend system, replays)

2. Whiney puggers like the OP who think they are entitled to something. 

Individual players have every bit as much right to play in random teams as you do predetermined teams. Insulting them for simply wanting to know what they're up against is completely uncalled for.

I want to play a good game, but putting "premade" in the title leads to 20+ minute wait times, which is unacceptable. Premades want a game and could care less that pugs want to know what they're up against. Pugs want to know what they're up against and could care less that premades want a game. If GPG would just implement a team automatch system, neither group would have to put up with the other, and this entire ridiculous argument could be circumvented. 

I don't suppose SD could crack the whip on that, or something? 

I actually expect 90% of the customs i join to be a group of friends just bashing noobs

Its the games that claim to be "no premades!!" hosted... by a premade team. My rank is shot anyway... but i still think this is in no way fun. Do these premades really enjoy the lack of challange? Id rather wait 15 minutes to get a good match, then join any "noobs only" game and own face without effort. I guess stats padding hasnt died just yet

This is some mad circular logic you've got here !

We don't put premade in our game title because pugs will not join the game and premade teams do not look for premade games because it's too much work finding them because we don't put premade in our game title ...

In theory:

1) Premades wants an edge over Pugs to win.

2) PuGs wants an edge to know if he has a chance, and they think against a premade the chance diminish.

In reality, imo,

Point 1 - Is true, but not to every premade.

Point 2 - Always true

conclusion

Why PuGs have GPG and SD to defend them, and premades don't?

Why playing with friends, or playing to win, is wrong in DG?

Why a PuG don't find a m8 to play with? (I'm brazilian and I have 3-7 US players that would/did played with me as a premade, so, no excusse, m'I wrong?)

3 Questions... some1, honestly, answer me (no sarcasm, I don't want to be rude to anyone, sorry if I was).

As someone who regularly plays pugs(I dont even know what this term means), I'll give it a go.

1. I don't think pugs are getting any more defense then premades, only that you should be honest in your game title.

2. It's not wrong and I don't think thats the question - however, some people seem to have the opinion that if you've played with people before then you're a premade, even though you're not some extremely experienced team, my definition of a premade.

3. I'm sure overtime people who play pugs will develop friends. Personally, I don't play a lot of games in one sitting thus don't see the same people too much. I also like to be able to get online and hop into a game without having to find other people. The last point could definitely be helped with better friend options.

Well im not even going to finish reading this whole forum but im just adding a comment for the people who are asking "wtf are you talking about PUG and premade"

you are using terms that dont apply to the game IMO. PUG (pick up group) comes from WOW or possibly other MMOs and really doesnt apply here as the roles of the characters arent really that tight as to prevent success without massive coordination and you arent "picking up" anything.

now premade, fine... it may apply but the result is far from amazing. being on the same page via VOIP and practice is great. But thats not a premade.

Team work and premade teaming is different in the sense that a premade is strictly set up in a way that requires a strong "set in stone" strategy which wins often or in most cases is nearly impossible to overcome without also being a premade opponent.

for example, in WOW a typical premade would involve the best possible set up of characters, gear and group make up. The issue here is that standing against it you will fail no matter what you do and your enemies dont really do anything but steamroll you. (as in they just stick to a static strategy that is unbeatable - no RTS)

The truth is that most premades were successful because people give up. My guild was a bunch of people who really didnt PVP much but we'd queue to crush a premade (prior to Xserver BGs this was easy to pull off) just for the challenge. All the premades we played against would follow a strategy to the letter and we would use it against them. Try being dynamic every now and then.

now what im getting at is you are playing the wrong game if you want to complain and have everything get nerfed for you. blizzard is over there. If you find a class OP or someone glitching fine. But complaining that you join other hosts games and have to play by their rules is wack.

Host your own games - Make your own teams - Learn to play

-SiN

For about the same reason that if you're a chess player of level 1800 and are looking for an interesting game, you'd much rather have your opponent say "I'm level 2200, there's no way you'll win like that" than "trust me, all should be well" only to be completly owned after that and having the feeling you lost time and got abused in the process.

Also, PuG means Pick up Group. A term I saw much more often in MMO games to compare a group made from known players (which means probably a good skill level) compared to grouping with completly random players you picked up on the way which can often end up in a complete disaster because of even one single bad element.

Nice posts after mine. Thank you for the input guys.

We have here, on this topic, a lot of ppl that play as "premades", so, ppl, we r not a small group, try to put "Premade" on the game title, you/we might get surprised and be able to fill slots and play the game.

I agree that this shouldn't have to occur, as Stof25 said, playing chess with 1800 against a 2200 can be very frustraiting. Usualy a game has a "rank" that tells u right away the "stat", like 2000 for chess, and what nots, so we can find a suitable match and enjoy the competition, in DG we don't have it. Not every1 wants to play a high skilled player to "learn" with the pros. Much of the times they will fell, as steamrolled, wont learn a thing, and will curse our future generations. No good in that.

That being said, other than to agree that SD and GPG is not defending the "PuGs", we are the ones that r causing the "disturbance in the force", lets try to make things better, at least, lets try it. What is the worst that can happen?

Ps. I know this game has to have matchmaking, but we don't have it.

I (almost) can't blame most of the outraged turbonerds in this thread for missing the point.  The OP has all the clarity of a fart in mud.

The problem isn't that premades mutilate pugs.  That's what's supposed to happen.  They have familiarity, teamwork, and on rare occasion, even a plan.  The problem is that premades are rewarded for eating pugs all day and have inadequate incentive to fight other premade teams.  If you guys want to talk tough shit about how xtreme your internet gaming is, play other competitive players.  Any three idiots who have played together five or six times can steamroll every pug that comes their way.  No, don't feel secure.  Don't think I'm talking about those other premades. Yeah, I'm talking to you.  You're one of those three idiots.  There's nothing challenging or educational about hosting games for the express purpose of farming the blind, the deaf and the dumb.  It's like going hunting for cows with an assault rifle.  You could put on a blindfold and fire the thing with your buttcheeks and still take home steak.  That's how dumb all of this is.

The only way to get a real measurement of a team's skill is to pit them against teams of similar ability.  Until this game forces that in a reasonable manner, there will never be any competition to speak of.

There's one other point that hasn't been brought up yet.  Sometimes when I join a premade game titled something like "pros only" and someone who's on a 14 loss streak (sadly that number isn't made up) the host will just kick them.  When the next noob joins he gets kicked too, and so on and son on.  Eventually we get get two other pugs with decent stats and have a good game, or at least a nice shot at one.

This is exactly what happened about a week ago and eventually my team filled up with lethstang and another guy whose name I forget, and we beat a premade that had two top 100 players on it.

If you're a premade and you title your game "good players only" that's good enough for me if you're willing to kick the dudes with 4-40 records. The solo players who are actually decent will appreciate you for it and anyone who comes to the board to complain about getting kicked will get laughed at.

The overriding fact here is that all of this could be prevented by a arranged team + random team automatch mechanisms. I would accept something designed explicitly to mirror the system Battle.net uses for TFT. In that case all the "premades" get to play with their friends, against other premades, so all is fair. All the pubs get to play with other pubs against other pubs, so all is fair. 

In the absence of such a system, players are left to govern themselves, and let me tell you that is not a recipe for success. Custom games count on the ladder and give plenty of xp even for beating bad players, which means there is actually incentive to pubstomp. Joining other premade's games is sketchy because the host can just leave to cancel the results if things go badly, so there is incentive to not join another premade's game. Putting "premade" in the game title only leads to 20+ minute wait times because pubs are scared of you and pre's either don't trust you or would rather pubstomp for the reasons I mentioned before. This means there is incentive to not put "premade" in the game title.  

Pre vs Pub is not fair, everyone agrees on that. But the lack of matchmaking mechanisms, combined with the current system of incentives, make it incredibly unlikely that pre and pub teams can coexist without ticking eachother off, which has led to the predictable result of an endless stream of pre vs pub forum threads. Therefore every time someone complains about premades, they are misattributing their complaint. The actually deserving target of all the criticism is GPG and its lack of matchmaking support. 

I totally agree with this.  Here are the fixes in simple terms.

1.  Need arranged team rankings, and seperate solo (pug) random team rankings.

2.  Need to fix the host exploits, until then stats are meaningless.

3.  Need to make custom games not count towards rankings.

Why do you think that is?  It's because PUGs do not want to play premades.  It's also because premades avoid playing other premades.  Call me cynical, but my guess is that a premade automatch system would not get used much.  You'll get 2 or 3 premades that dominate all the other premades, which will force the dominated premades to go back to PUG stomping.  Can't tell you how many other titles I have seen this in. I hope I am wrong though.

I'd much rather see a Pantheon option that allowed premades to join Pantheon games, provided that Pantheon games actually matched people based on skill (which is a small component of a match now).  Premades would end up playing PUGs that include players that can actually play.

I believe I answered this, in fact I did, in the very next sentence after you stopped quoting me:

"because pubs are scared of you and pre's either don't trust you or would rather pubstomp for the reasons I mentioned before"

The way to fix this is as RobWild said: implement the automatch system while simultaenously pulling the rug out from under custom games (make them no longer count towards rankings) so that if people/teams want glory/recognition/rank, they have to play in the ladder.

That system sounds completely inferior to a system of adapted TFT-style matchmakers + ladders.