devtrackers.gg
I'll admit, that was a poor choice of words on my part. I just meant it'll probably not be addressed because Frank views it as a strategy.
In fact, I don't and I avoid Solo SD as much as I can because of it. 🤷♂️
When I talk about this topic I typically talk about the fact that there's no concensus on the topic. Not within the dev team and not within the community either.
Why is that? By definition the ultimate goal of Battle Royale is to be the last person standing. There are no caveats to this. So if Showdown is a BR mode, shouldn't that be the goal?
And if that's the goal - wouldn't teaming be a strategy?
Once again, I personally (as a player) don't like teaming. It's infuriating and annoying.
We've tried different alternatives to see how the community actually reacts to changes - not the vocal minority on socials, but the actual lion share of our community based on ingame behavior.
Showdown+ yielded minor improvements on teaming but on high levels (800+) teaming was as present as in regular SD but people were able to gain more trophies. Also after an initial update, the majority of players preferred regular Showdown.
Other variants (Lone Star, Hunters) don't have significant teaming, but the last hit impact obviously makes a good chunk of our player base dislike it. In other words and more practical: the vast majority of our players prefer SD when they can choose freely between those modes.
Will we stop trying to change behaviors? Likely not. But it is clear that it's not an easy problem to solve by game design.
Personally I think the bigger issue is that SD players who potentially only ended up high in trophies because of their teaming skills "pollute" regular matchmaking for 3v3. Potentially something we can address once we're getting to matchmaking improvements as talked about in Brawl Talk.