It doesn't bother me tbh. I prefer ranked and just play pubs for practice or if I am too tired to accomplish anything in ranked. If others want to screw around this is the game type to do it in.
Rocket league does this and it's the reason I don't play anymore.
RL's matchmaking routinely kicked my friend out of matches after they've completed. Everything I go leave a match to join him (since I have the audacity of wanting to play woth my friend) RL would punish me and say I can't join another match for 5-10 minutes.
Doing this for ranked? Sure I get it. Everyone that signs up is supposed to be committed to trying. But unranked is supposed to be more casual and less commitment. If I have to leave a match prematurely to handle something irl real quick then come back, or if their netcode kicks my friend out and i want to join his match I shouldn't get punished for that.
I don't mean a system that blocks you from playing, I just mean you can only rejoin the match you've left but can't start a new one. If you (or your friend) gets kicked / disconnected you can join the same old game again, just not start a new one until you squad is wiped (or you haven't been resurrected for let's say 3 minutes.
In ranked I usually duo with a friend of mine on comms in discord, while muting them in game and still talking there (for important calls on push to talk). Sometimes 3-q as well but usually duo. I feel like it’s a lot easier to work as a team instead of 3 silent guys if you guarantee at least 2 of you will talk/cooperate.
It’s helpful to just lock in 1-2 POIs per ranked map and always land at the same spots, I feel like it very much decreases the variance per game. I do harvester/maude on WE, hillside on KC, estates/elysium on Olympus, terraformer/divide on broken moon. In past seasons it was ideal to land with 1-2 other teams (depending on POI) and secure 3 kp early (either by 3rding or isolated 3v3, not a contest) and then 3 more KP from one more third on rotation prior to playing hard zone.
This season it honestly has shifted to so passive that rather than exclusively thirding on rotation, you can usually take relatively isolated fights. If people are thirding you can just run and rotate late because they are much slower at it than previously (ie whatever season, I think 12, had kc last in rotation). So usually macro strategy is full loot POI then craft nearby if possible, often opting to go fight the 2 teams that landed at the POI where the crafter spawned. If loot is terrible and no crafter accessible, then look to third and/or poke teams near edge, but not ideal. This season with evac towers and heat shields and crafting banners and less aggro on drop, you’ll have decent white meds to tank zone if you need to, to either finish a team on edge that ran into zone, or to heal and rotate around a team gatekeeping you after a fight on edge. I think it’s much better to fight and get purples/reds than play hard zone, at least it’s a lot more fun and the downside is climbing slower if you mess up rather than not climbing at all (this season).
This is the way. I find without comms on discord it is very hard to get out of silver unless you are trying to rat your way through the game. the team component is also what makes this game great, so having a good group you know how to play with is huge. Muting in game is the key also otherwise you get an echo.
It does seem like a lot of reasonable strategies start from having some level of voice comms and other people to play with. I play on the Tokyo server so that's always a big challenge, very few people comm on there, and even if they do the language they comm in can be variable. Finding a team to play with maybe is the only real solution in a way...
I like the idea of having a go to POI. I also tend to land harvester in WC and hillside on KC, as those feel pretty under rated and don't have a lot of people dropping on them. I never really nailed that down on Olympus or BM. Getting contested is rough without comms and random team mates though, given how chaotic fights are off drop. One downside with Harvester is how easy it is to get split on it for sure, I always feel like I struggle off drop on harvester.
I used to try map room on KC but also struggled with contests on that one, I think when playing solo with no comms POIs with a lot of vertical seperation can get messy. It's easy to get isolated on high/low ground unless your situational awareness is excellent.
I like the idea of looking to craft nearby. That's sounds like a good idea for adding structure to early-mid game.
A lot of times I find that in the current ranked meta though I usually die to getting suddenly pushed by some team, and the double SMGs can dig you out of some nasty situations in those cases.
That said lately I'm running a lot more flatline/r99 or nemesis/r99 rather than the double SMG set up. 30-30/longbow + car/r99 if it feels like the game is going to be pokey.
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