Does anyone know why headquarter arenas are so hard to get into? I queue for them everytime I play and have never got one. I know 16 players is a lot, but it should still be a lot more common than it is.
The game prioritizes getting people into an instance. If you are queued for multiple group size matches, you will usually end up in the smallest group size match. So at worst case, you would need 16 people who are only looking for 8v8 maps. A few of those 16 could have something else selected as well, but if enough people exist to go into a smaller map, they end up in that smaller map. So you could have 15 people ready for an 8v8 match with 3 of them also queued for 2v2. If someone else shows up with 2v2 selected, now you only have 12 people ready for 8v8.
Oh ok I get it now. I feel like it should be the larger instances that the algorithm favors because the smaller ones would be easier to get into even without being favored.
The problem there is how long do you wait? If you had 15 people ready for 8v8, with 3 of those also ready for 2v2 and someone else queues for 2v2, you would have to define some kind of time limit to populate the 8v8 before starting the 2v2 match. Otherwise no PvP instance would start. This may already be the case, because we do have some delays in certain situations like cross faction (the game prefers groups of the same faction, but will form a group with the opposite faction if there isn't a full group after a short wait). It's probable even with the delay that 8v8 matches would be hard to come by.
