Organized team play is a bit difficult to set up properly.

[squidd]

Occurring a number of times now, a group of friends and I have come together to play organized team matches in 3v3 or 4v4 format in Team Annihilation mode. The Oro scoring system is super fun in this mode when mixed with organized teammates, strategies and a competitive environment. The issue with setting theses matches up, however, is that getting the right team members together is very difficult with the current UI options and match auto-start and auto-balancing. I believe there should be some better way to organize teams before starting a custom match so that constant joining/leaving of the server/session is not required to properly set up a match with specific players on either team. Current "switch teams" method available in invite only lobbies is not enough, as it can only be done until the match starts, and the first match is then wasted as all players accept invites but are tossed on random teams.

One solution I can think of off the top of my head is a "ready/unready" button for invite only matches, but this may not always be applicable and may not be the correct approach. General invite only matches may not always implement the use case of organized teams, and therefore a required "ready" indication may not be ideal as a blanket solution.

Perhaps a "custom match" option is a better solution. This may allow players (and maybe dedicated servers as well, if we had a server browser) to set up a match with specific settings and features, such as, for example, public, solo or invite only, normal or variant modes, Annihilation or Team Annihilation, etc. This customization ability would be immensely beneficial to the "play with your friends" notion as well as the competition potential realized by such an addition.

Maybe another solution is the ability to swap teams mid-match, coupled with a spectator mode, which would allow players to swap to a spectator position and open a spot for teams to balance manually. The spectator mode, as detailed in this thread, would satisfy a number of strong points that Conclave is ready to accept to grow as a game mode. This application is one more potential usage added onto that which is described and discussed in this thread. The ability to swap to a spectator position would be helpful in organized team play.

What thoughts or opinions do you have on this topic? If you haven't come across this situation yourself, would you be more inclined to do so if such a feature was implemented so to make it easier to get together with some friends as a team and compete against another team in Team Annihilation? Discussion on this topic is great in my opinion and I'd love to hear more input on this notion.

[(XBOX)The Repo Man151]

A dissolution of the lobby timer outside of public matches would also be helpful too. It sucks having only 15 seconds to make sure everyone is on the right team.

[NNKanell]

Add a map selection in private lobby.

[(PSN)Xx-Ribbium-xX]

Host migration currently breaks up current public premade matches which is a pain especially when you want to play with 4 friends.

Also inviting people into an empty lobby automatically places them on your team which can be annoying so maybe we should get a more specific invite types?

[Theroxenes]

As the person who has been hosting these organized 3v3s, it is an extremely frustrating system. People need to be invited in precise order to end up on the right team, and even then the auto-balance sometimes completely ruins it after a match, requiring everyone to leave and the invite process to start over. Another, more core issue is that the only way to have a truly private lobby is to use P2P invite-only mode. Clan-only servers are nice, but we had people popping in through our friend lists and disrupting the matches.

I'm not sure what the best or most feasible solution would be, but I know I have a favorite: a properly private server instance that only the server host can join + invite to. Of course, this would not do anything for consoles or some of the other problems with organized team play, but it would be a step in the right direction.

[Triplinster]

I agree. We NEED a way to properly organize custom TAs. Also Spectator mode and map selection would be nice.