Well, you are making a repeated mistake in logic if you keep on asserting that people who want seperate AT and RT ladders want a "single player" game.

Single player games, by definition, are played alone.

Even a 1v1 match, is not single player because there are in fact, 2 player playing the game. But then again, I don't see anyone here even arguing for 1v1 matches.

I like pantheon matches where there are at least a few people on each side. It makes a more complicated and nuanced game.

What people are saying is what we have now is essentially a "random teams" format and they want to preserve that.

Others want an "arranged teams" format. That is a perfectly reasonable request and should be a high priority goal.

The problem is that arranged teams SPOIL the experience of anyone not on an arranged team who is forced to face them or be on the same ladder with them. This has been the case of every game I've ever played from mmo's to rts's to shooters.

A simple solution is having seperate AT and RT ladders. That's exactly what good competitive game companies offer.

The refrain to this amounts to "that's not practical, there won't be enough people to sustain an arrange team ladder". Well, then that undercuts your argument that it's such a popular playstyle. If it was that popular, and I think it is, it should be able to SUPPORT ITSELF.

A reasonable compromise would be to have one ladder but only match up premades vs. premades. I guarantee if SD allows premades to face off against randoms in any ladder environment, there will be a huge backlash. I've seen it first hand over and over again in other games. It gets ugly.

It's simple.  There should be a seperate pantheon ladder for arranged and random teams.

I guess we can agree to disagree or for you to be talking about somethign completely different then I am lol.

I have a couple buddies who will be playing this game as well. Im sure we will want to play some premade games with us together against other teams. But I personally would rather play against other premade teams. Not some new players mashed together that we roll over. Yeah it may be fun once or twice but then it will get old fast and drive people from the game.

At the same time if I log on one night and my buddies are not on but I want to play a Pantheon game to "Help" my side on the persistent tournament.....Id like to get matched with some other random people AGAINST some other random people so that there is a bit of a chance of a competitive game to have some fun. Not just be matched with 3 random people and get rolled by Ubersareus premade team.

Not once have I or anyone else said anything about 1 vs 1 or single player game. You are the one who keeps repeating this over and over. Do you not understand the concept of people want to play team matches...jsut not always against other premade teams. Its just like any other game type. FPS games...you go on a server playing against a full team of clanmates its not fun. In Wow....you are on a pug against a guild team....not fun. Do I need to continue giving more examples?

Again...I just think there is plenty of room for them to please both sides of the fence here.

How many times do I need to say this to get the point across? You bought the wrong game if you wanted to go online and play with other people by yourself. Competitive strategy games are not and never will be about people just thrown together and told to go. I'm not sure how you can even support a ladder with random teams. There cannot be any support for it other than just that. The whole point of a ladder is the ladder season which theoretically ends in a tournament. I don't understand why anyone would even want to play this game by themselves competitively. Not only will you probably get subpar team mates due to them playing on what essentially will be a noob ladder but it will be frustrating when other people cause your loss.

LOL. Question....on the Pantheon...does it list single players ranking or team ranking?

Warcraft 3 says Hi and did this just fine.

you can repeat yourself over and over, a lot of us don't agree with you. i'm sorry we don't have your superior knowledge. if you keep posting the same thing over and over eventually it might sink in.

One other thing I think we are just not talking about the same thing. Let me make one last attempt to show in some ways we are on the same page actually....

- The Pantheon is a persistent tournament ladder. It is lightside vs. darkside. Its not a clan vs. clan setup. It ranks by individual performance on random made teams. Keeps track of the ongoing light vs. dark results etc.

- Later as they add the ability for actual Tournaments those should be premade team vs. premade teams and ranked with a leaderboard for that purpose.

- Then they have just the regular ladder rankings as they do that takes into account the skirmishes and custom games or whatever.

The only point I and a few others were making is in regards to the Pantheon is keep it so people get matches of the same type. When they do the competitive tournaments thats fine to do premades and all that.

Yes, it's obvious that you don't understand the view point of those who would play in the random team ladders, but they exist and are quite common.

So if there's demand for it, and you're still getting an arranged team pantheon. The question is, why do you so badly want to play against random teams with an arranged team?

Single person. So a single person's ranking is dependent on 2 random other people? What kind of skill is this going to reflect in the ladder? Luck?

Actually Poly...to even further the point....Stardock is already setup for this in a way....look at how they have rankings pages setup... 

http://pantheon.demigodthegame.com/

There is a Pantheon rankings....this would be matched same type teams in Pantheon...random vs. random...team vs. team etc. But it ranks people individually as it already does. This is only records for the current Pantheon.

Then there is top players rankings which just puts everythign together , custom games, skirmish whatever. 

Then there is a Clan rankings....which they dont have up yet. This would be the area though for those other tournaments for the premade clan groups and competitive people etc etc. 

a team should be able to be formed for every game type.  for skirmishes and pantheon, a team should be matched against another team, not a PUG.

Precisely.  This is how it is done in WC3, and that is the ideal.  Have a separate matchmaking system for premades.  It's unfair for pub teams to go against premades, it always causes problems regardless of what game you're playing.

can't wait for team pantheon 

I suppose there's no point in arguing this anymore. I guess it would be better just to wait for the automatch and beat everyone