If a particular Dev wants to encourage PVP play I should not wind up against him and his premade 5 times in a night on the same map. Particularly when only one of those times was I there from the start. Try shaking it up a bit if you are winning and go to the 8v8 and take a couple randoms. Camping a map (especially now that there is only one of each type due to rotation) and beating people over and over does not make for fun play. Your position does not allow you all the leniency the average player gets. Four times dropped in when there was not even any sense in leaving the start area before it ended.
^Got rolled by Iconics I guess. It's ok, it happens to everyone from time to time. A team of their "top players" are better than some folks realize.
Its not about getting rolled by them, that's actually ok, they were good. It's the fact that a developer, who wants to increase deserter penalties, was among them. And they stayed in one map facing pugs for at least a couple hours. This locks any of their opposition from winning and advancing for the duration of their stay there. A developer does not have the luxury of being one of the boys at all times and doing this because they do represent the company. This developer should also consider how this will affect the workload they will receive as they need to adjust to the now shifting playerbase because the game's target focus has changed too. One problem with the ELO system is that when a group forms it can throw it off because unless they are pitted against a pug with a combined ELO similar to theirs it is not a good fight. In order to do this you need a very large pool of players active at that time in the queue. Unless the matchmaking system wants to let teams wait until there is a group that meets the necessary requirements exists these single player pug teams will keep facing the same pre-made group. (of course this dev wont see that because he is in the pre-made group) DCUO's desire to make the highly competitive e-sports version of PVP is clashing with the MMO version that already existed. Here is where all the friction is coming together. In many PVP games ranked, or ELO matches do not permit teams to enter into the same ques as singles, to limit stacking. DCUO has not yet implemented this, they still rely on a single pool per map, which is designed to push matches through as quick as possible. Part of my resume includes event management and PR. In the end you need to let your participant's feel good about themselves. Running the smackdown on people because good players want a dev on their team is not going to do that.
Mostly all good points, but my guess is Iconics' pre-made would've been knocking out pugs whether Spytle was in it our not. Also" staying in one map" for a couple of hours is related to the map rotation (probably better discussed in other threads), not whether or not a Dev is interacting with the player base by running pre-mades with a league. Are you suggesting they should've made someone sit out so they could run two 2s teams or a 4s team? I'm not sure what an alternative is. I agree about how grouping can throw off the ELO mechanics. I've often wondered if the leaders rank had more weight than the rest of the team.
Actually my suggestion is that they move to the 8v8 so at least 3 players will have a chance with them. Facing each other is a sign of players who like real competition, but that does not happen often with league concepts. But you are right Iconics probably would have been doing the same without him.
