I did some research and testing and the best way to climb the divisions with your current account is not tossing games but waiting that people get past you and you get your new win streak if you had one earlier. This brings up the other problem. You might not have a win streak for a few days because you have your mmr in tier system. I understand that this system is for the new players but it makes more damage than good when higher mmr players are spending more time against and with new players.
Let’s assume that the following players are high mmr players and half of them are pro league players.
These guys would face same mmr opponents from the beginning of the leagues in amber which is approx 50/50 in matchmaking (most of the high mmr players have a winrate of 55%-60%). These guys would face each other in queue constantly in amber. This system forces them to do 3 things if they want to advance to their own division.
- First thing is to group up and this is the thing that happened and is still happening. Make premades and win matches. This causes them eventually have 2h queues until enough people reaches their level or until they face each other all the time.
- Second thing is to wait. This makes those people who want to advance fast go out of your way so that hey can get easier matches against the highest mmr people in amber which is very different from diamond/legendary mmr.
- Third thing is to get a new account. This is the most efficient way to climb currently due to the mmr in divisions. If you buy a new account you don’t have a mmr and you face the lowest possible mmr opponents due to the divisions at first. At the end of the division you face the highest possible mmr of that division before you get to the other division and you are against the lowest mmr of that division. Top players could easily skip the matches and advance to diamond/legendary to show their real level in Guild Wars 2 surprisingly fast if we assume that there are people in diamond/legendary at some point of the season.
The system itself seems to be fine in a way and after a while but the thing that’s a bit off is that people can’t be in their own divisions fast enough. For this system to work properly it needs people to advance to their own divisions. If people have this 50/50 matchmaking system the advancing happens too slow. The only thing I would do is the mmr reset for each season. Every other competitive game does mmr reset for each season, why is there no mmr reset in Guild Wars 2?
The other thing i wanted to talk about is gvg. We have this amazing guild ladder showing rating and rank and it’s awesome. There’s only 1 but. Where is the gvg? Guild teams are facing pugs/premades instead of teams from the guild ladder. I played Guild Wars 1 and I don’t remember facing random arena pugs or team arena teams in guild vs guild matches. This is the weirdest thing so far I’ve seen in Guild Wars 2. The guild ladder should ignore the divisions/mmr and use only guild rating for matchmaking.
At least the system could make it so that guild teams are always forced against other guild teams in 3v3, 4v4 and 5v5 based on their guild rating and rank and the rest of the players in 3v3 and 4v4 are picked by their division rank. Also make guild teams start at certain rating and then set the rating and rank based on that first match. This is only better for balance and it creates a real competition between guilds as well as practice for the pro leagues.