Heres to you Epic.

[S0uth3rn R3b3l]

Ok, everyone is talking about how joining a room with a team is cheating. How is it cheating? Isnt the whole point of Multiplayer in Gears of War about TEAMwork. Why would it matter if I joined a game with some of my buddies? Im going for the series of tubes achievment because I never hosted a game when it first came out because I didnt want host advantage, but now I have to get it, but thats a different arguement. Why is Epic so worried about people who join rooms with friends, and not people who roadie run/shoot, glitch out of maps, and use hacks. I thought that would be the main thing addressed in this patch. This isnt a thread about how I am mad that they took out host name, I just dont like they did, when there are more major issues out there than people playing with friends. Isnt that the whole reason we have a friends list on XBL. I play ranked and player matches with my friends. The only reason I play ranked is that we try to see who can get achievments first and who is higher in the rankings. Between me and my three friends who I play with we are only seperated by like 25 spots on the rankings. Well, there is my rant.

[ViRUS 85]

Stop crying about not being able to play with your friends.

[T35513R]

I think that probably one of the issues is having people join a room with their friends, join the opposing team, and then deliberately sabotage the other team to help their friends get points.

[binard328]

Player Match all the way. Don't have to worry about this "problem".

[TooMuchButtHair]

It's not cheating at all - it just creates an enviornment where one team is almost guaranteed to win. Hell, I've team-stacked since the day I got the game, and in all honesty, every time we stacked, WE WON! It actually got so bad that we had to start games that were 3-4 (my team being the one with 3 people), and we would have to ask anyone new to the game to leave. We needed a damn challege - to us, winning was only fun if the other team had a realistic chance. We liked the feeling of actually having to try for a victory.

That speaks volumes to the people who we were playing against - that couldn't have been ANY fun to them, could it? And I KNOW we weren't the only people doing it - a lot of people were. You can still play with your friends in player matches, so don't worry much about that, and when you want to add a little to your stats, you can just play some ranked matches. I don't really think it's that big of a deal...

[S0uth3rn R3b3l]

Stop crying about not being able to play with your friends.

Well, i would much rather play with people i know than with randoms. And me and my friends i play with on ranked all go to the same school, so its not like i added someone who was insanely good, because they arent. we are about average players.

[NullPointer256]

One thing to keep in mind is that your "rank" is supposed to represent your progress in playing random pickup groups, NOT the kind of play you get from stacking a team with friends.

If and/or until Epic puts in some kind of party system there is no "rank" that fits what you describe.

[binard328]

I wouldn't worry too much. Mark already said that this isn't the first update that they are going to implement. I'm sure they'll have a party system down the road.