Mystere, on 08 January 2017 - 08:53 AM, said:
If 10/12-mans are actually rare these days, then what is the fuss all about?
Well, a couple of 4-5man teams are generally
much nastier to deal with than a full 12-man these days, if they use their tonnage. Even getting up to 8 or 9 can be frustrating as you run into small teams that are stocking up with Kodiaks and the like - it's not terribly uncommon to see no 'mechs lighter than a Heavy on some teams.
Again, the only reason I would rather like to see how pairs in the solo queue works out in the current environment is that it would make it easier for me to mentor newer players and get buddies into the game to see if they like it. Imbalances in team cohesion caused by such a situation should be minimized by the availability of voice chat and perhaps some extra matchmaking rules which fall short of truly separating the player base (a hard-coded limiter preventing a team with a tier 1/2 matching with a tier 5, or a restriction on the number of pairs per team, for examples.) But we should also recall that we
had pairs in the solo queue in times past, and that the devs went away from that for a reason - the major caveat being that now we do have larger teams, and Faction Play to act as the final, no-pads arena.
I'd suggest that if we ask for it (or if PGI is considering it, because why else are we beating this dead horse?) we should strongly suggest a trial over a set period of several months, then a re-evaluation of its impact via game telemetry to see if it stays or goes.