YEAH

multiplayer is for team player thats what is all about

number 1 priority imo as soon as connection problems are solved

You have referred to 1 vs 1 a couple times now. Do you understand what we are talking about? NOBODY is talking about playing 1 vs 1 matches. We are talking about you have 4 guys who play together all the time matching up against 4 random people smashed together against them. I dont see how that in anyway is fun for either group and in the long run allienates more people from playing take Eternal_Silence's post as an example. 

Yeah it would increase the matching time for the premade groups but I dont think it would be bad. It would probably just make it so your better off only joining as a group of 2 or 3 max in order to get faster matches. 

yep

actually, custom games are there for organized teams if you want to use that argument. for the health of the game, getting in new players etc, there needs to be random vs random teams. read up what everyone is posting above, you're just dead wrong.

well i dont see nothing wrong to have a ladder for single players and a ladder for premade team, probably its more easier to setup 2 differend ladders with a good system than a single system that cover every aspect of the game in a good way

Once again....nobody is talking about 1 vs. 1

neither am i

im not going read through all the post but Parth needs a the ability for team joining, its very frustrating to play with complete noobs

and just b/c u can make teams doesnt it mean it will be unfair, teams qwould only be matchse up with eachother, if you have ever played COH u know what im talking about...

Yep thats basically what the discussion has been to save you the reading lol.

The fact is that everyone does want an ability to join as a team....but that those "premade" teams will be matched against other "premade" teams and not against the random teams. You can have all the results on the same Pantheon rankings which is fine. Just dont have it so these perfect or pro teams are matched against random teams.

My problem with this argument is you're wanting to make a competitive game less competitive. You're allowing options that essentially will make games easier than others. What do you expect Stardock to do when they want to hold tournaments? Hold separate tournaments for all the separate ladders? Its not feasible. That's the problem here.

@Enternal.. what the hell r u talking about...any ladder that is gonna pickup this game is going to be 2v2 3v3 or 4v4/5v5... any competitive. ladder.. one way to get better is to play better players.. and the pantheon should only match you up with a buncha randoms.. it does sound super carebareish..this  is a competetive team game.. and pantheon with friends is pointless?? and will cause there playerbase to fail??? well im sure sd's not worred since 75% of the ppl who wanna play this r looking for something new/updated do.. so were not going anywhere.. but all u idiots who bought this multiplayer game to play singleplayer.. and against stupid bots.. welll were sad to see u go = / but i highly doubt that many people will be walking out the door anyhoo..and playing 3 friends in vent.. ya its awesome.. its especially hilarous when you make 1 leave and they all follow.. easy win free favor..PS doesn't the pantheon auto match you depending on a  certain skill.. so what's there to worry about even with all randoms.. they'll be equally matched in skill?? if your that worrired about your precious RANDOM insant combat by urself go play skirshmish for that .. the rest of the people who have friends and want this game to go into competitive ladders will keep hoping for some sort of team game...

So by matching premade teams with random teams that makes it more competitive? Please explain. 

Also you think its beyond Stadock/GPG ability to create custom games for teams to join for a tournament and log the results? Hmm I would think they should be able to handle that...what do you think they will do for a tournament anyway? They will in some way have matches with premade game regardless for things like that. This effects that in no way. Its completely unrelated.

To add Poly.....no Tournaments will be premade teams only. Thats fine. I dont expect them to hold a tournament for random teams. Your a bit off topic there. This issue of the Pantheon persistent tournament is a totally unrelated topic to special tournament events.

+1 for teams, besides teams can more or less join right now since you can see who you are connecting to with the connection info button. Just keep trying until you see some of your buddies connecting.

Honestly I think you're panicking over nothing, as long as connectivity doesn't eleminate large chunks of the player base from each other in the future, there'll be enough of arranged teams out there to go around. Most arranged teams play at "peak" game times since it's hard to arrange any group of people to play in the day orin the early morning. If it's really an issue the system can always be tweaked to start searching random teams if absololutely no arranged teams come up in 10 minutes searching.

Keeping the matchmaking like-for-like helps both sides, most people I know who'd play actually in an arranged team wouldn't like to be constantly faced up with random teams who can't put up a fight and only occasionally get to face up against other arranged teams, they're more patient than average to boot. Those few I know who unfortunately would enjoy steamrolling random teams also enjoy trash talking, bitching when they loose and are generally prats.

Yes there's examples of mixed match making out there like red alert but there's also examples of split match making that work better like warcraft 3. Dawn of war 2's mixed team ranked gets plenty of abuse for being mixed, and that's more of a team game than red alert ever will be.

There should be a Clan pantheon, for people to form organized teams. The players would earn points for their clan instead of a particular side, and so they could use any Demigod.

I'm not sure if this is directed at me and my comments or not but I take "@Enternal" to mean me as you are only one letter off.

I get your point. Competitive people want to AT and play on organized teams. That's great. I hope SD/GPD adds that feature. Hats off.

What you don't seem to respect is that there are a lot of competitive players that like to play in a random team format.

It's not hard to have an arranged team ladder and a random team ladder. Warcraft 3 has it and it works extremely well.

There's nothing "carebearish" or non-competitive about it.

When it comes down to it, SD is going to have make some choices and the criteria of that choice will come down to answering these questions:

Will it make our game more or less popular?

Will it sacrifice quality?

Do we have the programming and organization resources?

===

Having both AT and RT ladders will make the game more popular just by the very nature of offering options to more playstyles. As for quality, I don't see any plausible reason why having seperate ladders would affect quality of the game. The only real question is that of resources to maintain and support both. And that's only a question SD can answer.

Don't be mistaken. I want a premade automatch system. And to be frank, the more skilled players generally do automatches in online games. Its just too convoluted to make a system where is separates premades and non premades.

You bought the wrong game if you're looking for a single player type approach here. Again, this game is clearly aimed as a team game. It needs to stay that way.

I find this statement very interesting.

One one hand we are too believe that the core support of a game that will sustain it into the future comes from people who want to play in arranged teams because supposedly this is such a popular concept.

On the other hand we are reminded that if you had a seperate ladder for arranged teams and randoms teams that there wouldn't be enough people playing to support the arranged team ladder.

These two things are contradictory, and although espoused by the same people, don't go together in any logical way other than to say that proponents of AT really nead random players as cannon fodder.

I'm pretty sure a lot of people don't want to be cannon fodder. I can't see SD embracing this.

Adding join as a team should be done to both Skirmish and Pantheon games...

BUT, when it's done they also need to make sure to improve the match making system.  It should when possible match pre-made teams with other pre-made teams.

Because the OP is right in the fact that a premade team will stomp a PUG team.  You don't want to ruin the fun for a PUG player who just wants to jump into a game.

Well, you are making a repeated mistake in logic if you keep on asserting that people who want seperate AT and RT ladders want a "single player" game.

Single player games, by definition, are played alone.

Even a 1v1 match, is not single player because there are in fact, 2 player playing the game. But then again, I don't see anyone here even arguing for 1v1 matches.

I like pantheon matches where there are at least a few people on each side. It makes a more complicated and nuanced game.

What people are saying is what we have now is essentially a "random teams" format and they want to preserve that.

Others want an "arranged teams" format. That is a perfectly reasonable request and should be a high priority goal.

The problem is that arranged teams SPOIL the experience of anyone not on an arranged team who is forced to face them or be on the same ladder with them. This has been the case of every game I've ever played from mmo's to rts's to shooters.

A simple solution is having seperate AT and RT ladders. That's exactly what good competitive game companies offer.

The refrain to this amounts to "that's not practical, there won't be enough people to sustain an arrange team ladder". Well, then that undercuts your argument that it's such a popular playstyle. If it was that popular, and I think it is, it should be able to SUPPORT ITSELF.

A reasonable compromise would be to have one ladder but only match up premades vs. premades. I guarantee if SD allows premades to face off against randoms in any ladder environment, there will be a huge backlash. I've seen it first hand over and over again in other games. It gets ugly.

It's simple.  There should be a seperate pantheon ladder for arranged and random teams.

I guess we can agree to disagree or for you to be talking about somethign completely different then I am lol.

I have a couple buddies who will be playing this game as well. Im sure we will want to play some premade games with us together against other teams. But I personally would rather play against other premade teams. Not some new players mashed together that we roll over. Yeah it may be fun once or twice but then it will get old fast and drive people from the game.

At the same time if I log on one night and my buddies are not on but I want to play a Pantheon game to "Help" my side on the persistent tournament.....Id like to get matched with some other random people AGAINST some other random people so that there is a bit of a chance of a competitive game to have some fun. Not just be matched with 3 random people and get rolled by Ubersareus premade team.

Not once have I or anyone else said anything about 1 vs 1 or single player game. You are the one who keeps repeating this over and over. Do you not understand the concept of people want to play team matches...jsut not always against other premade teams. Its just like any other game type. FPS games...you go on a server playing against a full team of clanmates its not fun. In Wow....you are on a pug against a guild team....not fun. Do I need to continue giving more examples?

Again...I just think there is plenty of room for them to please both sides of the fence here.

How many times do I need to say this to get the point across? You bought the wrong game if you wanted to go online and play with other people by yourself. Competitive strategy games are not and never will be about people just thrown together and told to go. I'm not sure how you can even support a ladder with random teams. There cannot be any support for it other than just that. The whole point of a ladder is the ladder season which theoretically ends in a tournament. I don't understand why anyone would even want to play this game by themselves competitively. Not only will you probably get subpar team mates due to them playing on what essentially will be a noob ladder but it will be frustrating when other people cause your loss.

LOL. Question....on the Pantheon...does it list single players ranking or team ranking?