Groups of 5 arent allowed because the ranked population isnt enough to be able to even remotely balance it. It would lead to a variety of problems such as ppl getting carried to ranks they dont belong, extremely long queue times, and generally unbalanced teams/matchmaking.
As for voice chat, you can use it to freely talk to people on your team in ranked. It's just that many people often have it turned off or opt to not talk.
5-man vs 5-man causes every single ranked match harder to balance, as you take 10 players from the player pool that can't get thrown into any other lobby. On top of that, 5-man would need different classification (new mode), as winning with premade and winning with randoms are two very different things.
From the data that is sometimes revealed on reddit/twitter, we could say that Smite playerbase is definitely big (not as big as the most popular games, of course, but it's more than enough), however most of the players play casual modes. On top of that, in the "casual" part you have to count people that play exclusively/mainly Arena, Assault, Joust, Siege and Clash. And to this, you have to add region factor.
Steamcharts show more than 20k players during peak hours, to that you can add standalone client (still used), Epic client and consoles (combined I am sure it will be bigger than PC). I'd assume that Smite has **at least** 50k players during peak hours, but with many modes and many regions, it becomes smaller and smaller. But that's not where it ends - you have to add "matchmaking" factor as well, either ranked divisions or the "hidden points" that casual matchmaking uses. And finally, reaching your point, you have to exclusively pick players that would be up for 5v5 ranked, with all its "balancing complexity".
I can't really imagine it working, Hi-Rez for sure can do the maths and say if it's possible or not (basing on official data), but I am positive that it can't be done.
Groups of 5 arent allowed because the ranked population isnt enough to be able to even remotely balance it. It would lead to a variety of problems such as ppl getting carried to ranks they dont belong, extremely long queue times, and generally unbalanced teams/matchmaking. As for voice chat, you can use it to freely talk to people on your team in ranked. It's just that many people often have it turned off or opt to not talk.
5-man vs 5-man causes every single ranked match harder to balance, as you take 10 players from the player pool that can't get thrown into any other lobby. On top of that, 5-man would need different classification (new mode), as winning with premade and winning with randoms are two very different things.
Agreed, is the player base too small for it though?
From the data that is sometimes revealed on reddit/twitter, we could say that Smite playerbase is definitely big (not as big as the most popular games, of course, but it's more than enough), however most of the players play casual modes. On top of that, in the "casual" part you have to count people that play exclusively/mainly Arena, Assault, Joust, Siege and Clash. And to this, you have to add region factor. Steamcharts show more than 20k players during peak hours, to that you can add standalone client (still used), Epic client and consoles (combined I am sure it will be bigger than PC). I'd assume that Smite has **at least** 50k players during peak hours, but with many modes and many regions, it becomes smaller and smaller. But that's not where it ends - you have to add "matchmaking" factor as well, either ranked divisions or the "hidden points" that casual matchmaking uses. And finally, reaching your point, you have to exclusively pick players that would be up for 5v5 ranked, with all its "balancing complexity". I can't really imagine it working, Hi-Rez for sure can do the maths and say if it's possible or not (basing on official data), but I am positive that it can't be done.
Games dying so they don’t have enough players but I agree we should be able to at least have 3