U can't assume that from HoN. HoN is on beta and many features will be added that will change this felling b4 the sales of the game. Like matchmaking, and team/clan ladder. Try another game.

I'm sorry that I didn't articulate my point well enough (indeed, at all).  Pubstomping is something inherited into the HoN lexicon from DotA, which obviously predates Demigod.

I don't have anything particularly against teams who want to play the game (except when they are intentionally shady about it, or there is a specific venue for team fights that they are avoiding).

WoW is an interesting reference here because it has two PvP systems in it, one which suffers from premades and one which does not. The one that does is the one with a very, very simple matchmaking system (roughly tries to match up by ilevel if that means anything to you) while arenas have a ranking system and consist solely of premades.

Even though people hate premades in WoW's BG system you can still multi-queue or just quit and not have to deal with it without any marks on your record (since no such record exists).

It really just goes back to the lack of matchmaking. You didn't see people complaining about premades in Warcrat 3 and you probably won't in HoN if they implement a similar system there.

WoW lets you do that too if you want with the skirmish system but I've never heard of people who just killed random pubs in there over and over in there, they play the automatch ladder games.

I think the seperation of DotA from WC3 is way too large in the minds of many of the old DotA fans. It was just a WoW mod and it had many limitations because of it. It was impossible to add the incentives that lure skilled players away from that kind of behavior. WC3 standard gameplay didn't have that issue and neither would DG if it had in-game stats and matchmaking like WC3 did.

You tell'em shooks!

It's a part of every competitive team game, TF2 and L4D being the examples that spring to mind most readily. But it's not the frequency with which the players play together, although that certainly helps to some extent, its the GPG totally dropping the ball on VOIP in the game. If you join a L4D team game vs a premade, they have some advantage, sure, but they don't have the OVERWHELMING advantage that a team with voice chat has over a team trying to type.

And Vex is exactly right. People need to actually read the lobby they are joining. If you join a game and you see everyone saying "It's like that game we played against Mr. X and he did ....." THESE PEOPLE PROBABLY PLAY A LOT! If you're a noob, get out! I remember who's stolen my lunch money before, and I don't walk down his street if I can help it.

It's gotten to the point for me where I'll jump on DG and head into the custom game lobby. I see the usual titles: 'no noobs', 'be good', 'pro only' etc. etc, and in the lobbies I see the same 'teams' that play. I've gotten into the habit of checking everyone's stats that I play with or against. I find myself asking players to leave because I deem them 'not good enough' based solely on their stats. Even being polite about it, they still get angry 9 times out of 10. Wait around 10-20 mins waiting for players 'good enough' to join. Get tired of waiting, take whoever joins, lose or game crashes or someone quits within first 5 mins because they get killed. Rinse and repeat the rest of the night/day/morning, whatever it is for you.

Another issue I think is: What makes a player pro? Or elite? It's a broad definition. I consider myself pro. My win ratio isn't all that but that's mainly because I have no 'team' and I play at random times.

Another thing - If you're a premade, at least put that info into the lobby title

I don't care about my win ratio, honestly. I play against premades all the time. What I do care about is all the time spent/wasted trying to get a game together only to have it crash or fall apart within the first few minutes. I understand the crashes and such have no real bearing upon the topic started here but it is all relevant. It all ties in together. And it all makes for a really bad first impression for a percentage of new players.

One weak link in this game destroys the team. Sad, but true.\

I tend to ramble, even in verbal conversations as well. That's why I tend not to post alot heh. It took me like 30 mins just to type this because my thoughts are as flitting as the wings of a butterfly. Wow, a simile, that's awesome.

-peace-

By the by, a simile is a figure of speech comparing two unlike things, often introduced with the word "like" or "as". But you are right, I totally missed the point of the topic. Oh well, further evidence that I shouldn't even post at all lol. On topic: Man I had a clan back in the day AoE and msn ZONE. We did premades all the time, but I can't recall the animosity being this bad back then though.

I have simular feelings Tugor.  I've gotten to the point I've logged onto online; look at the list of games; remember that it may take 30 mins to get into a game that won't last more than 10 mins, and that those 10 mins may be full of cussing, bad sports, and rage quits.  So I go offline and do a solo game with the AI (at least they don't RQ).

My latest attempts at onine resulted in my getting kicked out of the game because I "may" have been the one that brought the ping up to a horrible 300.  I was not the one, but still got kicked even though I stayed/supported the original host to help him get a friendly 5v5 going.

Next game, I spend 5 mins trying to convice people on the "other" team that my team is not a premmade (I had never played with them before).  They just REALLY need a "Random Teams" button to solve all this paranoia.

Then when I do finally get into a game, a player quits after his second death (RQs mess up a majority of my games), and then I get flack from a player on the other team for playing way better than I/my rank suggests.  I even tred not using ANY spells/abilities, just the basic attack to give the other players a chance (they were obviously new); still got flack.  It's not my fault I have a 90% lose rate "because" of RQs on my teams and the host-quit exploit (and just from plain Ol losing fair and square).

I'm pretty much staying away from online till 1.2, and if 1.2 does not have some sort of unranked area, I still may stay away.

omfg you damn noobs, get a premade and stop bitching. its a team game, get a team. at the highest level this game is played with and won by teamwork.

pro is determined by how good the good players think you are. who are the good players? the people that hang out in a certain channel on the IRC thing that the bad players dont know about. to all the people in that channel. stop being frigging bad, stop complaining, and get a team. and stop joining my pro games if you suck.

Thats to bad Paladin we had some GG's if I remember correctly.

This has been said so many times, you could just make a bot that post that in every thread. Yet it missed the point, and starts to get old.

Even if it is possible that there are players out there that think that this is not ment to be a team game, I'm  certain they are very few indeed. I for one like to meet new players when I play. I don't have a team and I don't intent to be serious enough to ever get one, and I don't care about stats, I however enjoy an even fight.

I played custom and have a horrible stats, under 50% wins. When I got fed up with meeting only teams I started to play Skirmish. Yes, you run the risk of having AI in them, and you have to wait a long time to start a game, because all the people that would like to play in random teams are in custom games, complaining about teams.

On top of that people dissapear from Skirmish when Pantheon starts. I have a suggestion how to fix all this, but I don't think anyone would listen. Everybody's to buzy insulting each other with one-liners.