The problem is premade squads. The problem is especially premade squads that que sync. These squads are usually farm squads. They are power players that spam FOTM and apply the lowest common denominator to win win win at the expense of fun and variety.

When that is all e game has to be then they do it. It is easy to do this when up against the general population that for whatever reason is not playing the same way.

The solution:

Get rid of premades in pubs. Focus on matchmaking filtering out those that tend to group up to keep them separated and solo.

There are two tryhard modes already for these power players to gather against one another.

Pubs should be solo because that is what most players in pubs are doing either because they are new to the game, want to play fast, briefly and casual or want to solo just to do it because that is allowed and is the default way to play games.

Playing solo is still a team game because you are indeedGǪ wait for itGǪ on a team. I play solo and know the game enough to jump around and provide assistence to win the game. I don't need to be talking to others to get what others are trying to do.

A number of times I've seen my efforts pay off. However, to do so meams I had to play in a way I didn't want to have to just to push against the power player, pull out anything as a counter mentality. I'd rather play the role I wanted to in the first place instead of having to pull out whatever instant counter Is going to work to win. It is usually scrubby crap.

Again, the source of this problem is premades. They coordinate and spam and really don't care about any flavor or variety the game has to offer. They could be playing with 8 bit squares for all they care.

For the last three months there has been a never ending wave of threads on matching.

When a lot of people talk about how having a squad of proto on one team and only new players on the other is evidence that the matchmaker is flawed, they are not looking at the big picture. The very first thing any matchmaker does is take connection into consideration. If there are only 16 players of similar connection levels they will end up in a game. It doesn't matter if the oldest and newest player are facing each other they will end up in the same game because of their similar connections. The Dust Population is not large. That means that often there aren't enough players of similar connection for the matchmaker to take skill into account.

Most people imagine that there are always 16 bad players that can always play against each other, and that there are always 16 good players that can be put into their own game. In reality it's usually 16 players of similar connections and very different skill sets.

So while many matchmaking decisions feel questionable we are assuming the matchmaker had more players to choose from. The matchmaker will always pick connection over comparable skill because everyone would rather get into a badly matched game then not even be placed in a game because there's not enough people of similar skill level to them to start a match.

So the matchmaker isn't necessarily messing up because it's not smart it's likely that it's messing up because the active population is so small that outside of peak hours there's not enough players of similar connections to pick and choose people based on skill. It's only when there are more than 16 players of similar connections that skill is even part of the equation.

If dust was perfected and sold at a store i still wouldnt buy it. Iv got my reasons and to be honest i prefer a simple game anyway. Dust is a neat game but its never going to be balanced for a lot of reasons. I wont be around when i moved on to better games and the only reason i play dust is because theres no other game like it. Its unique and sometimes fun but thats it. I might change my mind if i see its final results but i doubt i will. Once i get my new comp and few new games ill look back at dust and say "oh yeah, that game." and leave it at that.

Have you heard any DUST Dev say that the matchmaker favours connection over skill? If not, you shouldn't really be making assumptions.

Besides, I find it hard to believe that the matchmaker would favour connection, looking at all the laggy players from far-away countries I see in matches, and how people can just select what region's server they play on anyway.