JOIN LIGHT SIDE NEXT PANTHEON.  It's a functional solution.  If you do that, you will get games going reasonably quick.  That's what I'll be doing. 

If you were going to guess which side would have the longest queue, the best bet would be going with whichever one has fewer DGs, but lo and behold:

Ancitipating which side is going to have a shorter queue time is NOT a functional solution, it's a damn coin flip. How many OTHER PEOPLE are sick of waiting? How many of them are going to go light to avoid the wait times?

The correct solution is simple. Remove the light/dark distinction. The burden of fixing queue times is not the player's to bear.

/signed

Not true the 1 v 1 isn't happening waited almost a half hour for 2nd light player last night when it was 9 dark 1 light

• The mini-tournaments are fun and there are a lot of players who enjoy them
• The demigods have a light/dark theme which the Pantheon highlights
• A UI change would need to be implemented to remove pantheon and bring back Skirmish
• Another UI change would need to be made to add Occulus and DA to the Skirmish list
• A standing portrait of DA/Occulus would need to be made (recall how Skirmish looked before)
• Skirmish wasn't popular and the's no guarantee players would use it
• The Pantheon website would need a significant change
• Many players just like Pantheon in general and you'd risk disenfranchising them

Again, I don't necessarily find all those compelling, but those are likely the reasons why it hasn't been changed.

What I would really like to see happen is for them to just allow light/dark to fight against each other and for players to earn points for their team, like a sort of fantasy football type approach. So say a side with UB/Oak/DA beats Rook/Regulus/Sedna, and respectively they get 190/75/125 and 40/40/90, then light would get 75+40+40+90, and dark would get 190+125.

Now that might not be as compelling to some people who really like the light vs. dark setup as-is, but I think that the problems it would fix outweigh the severity of the issues it would raise, and personally I think it would be fun to try to have an ulterior motive to get more kills, assists, citadel upgrades, etc. so that you beat that dark/light player on your team and contribute more to your side's pool.

But the main reason why I keep repeating this suggestion is that I *think* it can be done completely on the backend by Stardock without requesting UI changes or assistance beyond a green light from GPG.

// egads!

Btw. I am also tracking the Pantheon queues independently now:

Not really a coin flip this time.  Most active players will be on dark.  DA almost guarantees that this time around.  It's not a DESIRABLE solution, but its one that will work for now.  No need to get me going about dropping light/dark distinction again.  I still think they should do that, of course. 

How about an option that allows you to change your side? 

I still think re-enabling skirmish would be the best solution.  At this point, all of the people stuck waiting for a game on darkside would surely play skirmish mode to get a game going.  This would lead to another drop in people playing pantehon, but would give us auto-matches.  Don't think SD is going to turn it back on though. 

I'm all for obscenitor's idea, especially if it didn't require much work from the pubs. 

The solution is easy as I see it, pick a light side and a dark side character on the pantheon screen (2 characters should be optional, you should still be allowed to only pick 1 if you really want a dark/light game, but then you wait). Whichever one gets in game first is the side you fight on. This will still allow light/dark sides and will get you in game fast.