Five stacks are steamrolling the competition in CS2, and players who are solo queuing Valve’s new Premier ranked mode are at their wit’s end this week. As a result, players are begging the developer to even the odds for a large portion of the Premier matchmaking community.
People suggested Valve integrate solo queue-only searches, thus pushing anyone in a duo lobby or higher into a separate queue, similar to that in other competitive modes in titles like League of Legends and VALORANT. This means solo queue players would be in matches against opposition who are also playing on their own.
While some players noted the likelihood of extra queue times via a Sept. 12 Reddit thread, it seems the community believes it would be worth it in the long run.
Players in five-stack lobbies typically have an edge when battling it out against solo queue gamers. This is due to the higher level of “communication and coordination” that stacked lobbies tend to possess. The majority of players queuing together tend to use third-party apps like Discord to talk strategy and make callouts about enemy positioning—information critical to finding success in Counter-Strike.
Since CS2 has been available to the wider public for roughly a week, fluctuating Elo in the new Premier system has also added to this difficulty. Players have encountered teammates with dramatically lower Elo when stacked against a five-man lineup, only making things worse.
This means Valve might have to take a page out of Riot’s book once again. VALORANT has had a system in place for this issue for quite some time. Counter-Strike’s rival game forces five-stack lobbies to wait longer in order to face other large groups of gamers. This seems to be the feature that CS2 players are vying for.
Let’s not forget, CS2 is still in its beta form. There’s a long list of bugs and issues waiting for Valve’s attention before its full release.
It’s unlikely that this issue will be fixed soon, but with any luck, it’ll be there when CS2 eventually makes its way out of beta.
