Platoon Size

[PlantEarly]

Hello.
The very first online tank game that I played - for 2+ years before it went offline - was Ground War Tanks [hereafter GWT]. Going on 10 years later it also remains the best tank game I've played. That includes Armored Warfare, 3 junk games by Extreme Developers, War Thunder, WoT and now WoT Blitz.

One of the main reasons that GWT remains the best is that platoon size was 6, and teams were 9. If you were in a corps/clan there, you could queue up to battle with up to 5 of your mates on the same team.
Yes, it did mean that being in a corps/clan had extra benefits. But individual players not in a clan could still compete.

Can you think of a good reason why WoT Blitz platoons can't be increased to at least 4-5 players each?

[76561198365326053]

Look it up on official Blitz and WoT PC forums (on WG). The developers did discuss it in length in several different posts. If i remember correctly, they mentioned balance related issues.

I dont know the mechanics behind but in DoTA2, all 5 members of a team can be in one party. In League of Legends, normal matches can have all 5 in one team, as a single party. However, League allows only 4 player party for ranked matches.

[PlantEarly]

Thank you, Imr.Qns.
I did a blanket search here for variations on "platoon" and no joy. Didn't think to look @ WoT PC or official Blitz - but I will.
I'm not familiar with DoTA2 or Lge of Legends. But they sound like pretty good games if they have a decent size for platoons.

Since you sound like you've been around the track, aside from doing extra source code editing, can you think of a good reason why platoons should not be larger in Blitz?

Tx again!

[76561198365326053]

Im just a casual player, not a developer etc. From what I can remember, they mentioned no. of players online for a particular tier and types of tanks they are queuing with, as the most important factors. The diversity based on 10 tiers, 4 categories of tanks (Lights, meds, heavies and TD's), vehicle module research, individual skill rating etc etc... it just becomes impossible to distribute both teams based on all-five party system from a pool of 100~200 players in queue. For example, if five player party takes only TD's... and there is not a single TD player queuing at the time for that tier, how can it be matched in a balanced way? The possibility of 5 players (separate or in team) picking suitable / matchable TD's for that particular tier, with matching module/crew research, and having reliably close personal skill rating... you can see it it just not possible when about 100~200 people queuing for all 10 tiers. You also have to consider how many tiers are allowed in a party. Blitz is +1/-1 mostly but +2/-2 is still possible.

When it comes to Blitz, the no. of players online on EU server fluctuates between 8,000 ~ 12,000 most of the week, (peaking as high as +43,000 in my memory). But no. of players in queue stay mostly around 100~200. Based on my observations, tier1~4 and tier8 are usually the most populated throughout the week. On some days, certain other tiers may be more populated.

As far as I have checked DoTA2's numbers these days, they bounce between 200,000~500,000 most of the week. Even with that, their forums have lots of complaints about longer queue times even for single players.

And for league of legends, I have read the numbers to be 3 million users online per day on EU west server only. This was from December 2018 I think (op.gg). No wonder it is not hard to find a balanced matching team for an all-five party. Check this website:

{LINK REMOVED}https://www.op.gg/statistics/tier/

Take a look at their system of skill levels (called Tiers) and how many unique players (called 'summoners') are in each tier (and its sub-tier). First six tiers are further divided into 4 categores (making a total of 27 tiers/levels). For example, Bronze is the second tier, further divided as Bronze IV, Bronze III etc upto Bronze I. Here is the no. of unique players in each Bronze division:

Bronze I 178,946 (6.12%)
Bronze II 131,524 (4.50%)
Bronze III 105,076 (3.59%)
Bronze IV 85,122 (2.91%)

Thats just one of 9 tiers.

[Raviel]

That would be relevant if they tryed to balance it.

Most of the time when i check platoons in my games its like:
Enemy team: 2 platoon members both ~70 win rate 1200+ average damage.
My team: 2 platoon members both 43ish win rate 300-500 average damage.

Enemy team's platoon carries them for a win.
My team platoon carries us to a loss.
It literally makes no sense for 2 people who are well below average players to team up. They both could get better teammates in random fashion and would win more but they still do it.

While in rare cases it might be possible to carry 2 useless platoon mates and even beat 2 70% win rates ones. If they were any more it would be free wins/loses based on platoons you get in your team.

The matchmaking is toxic enough as it is. So please no increasing platoon size.