Guild Wars 2

I have not been happy with Anet’s MMR system, from the start. It certainly seems to favour some players over others and it’s not their skill level that determines that.

But that’s not what I am here to talk about.

You see I find myself battling with myself when I PvP during seasons. At certain points in every season I find myself in a place where the MMR is trying to force loses on me, as it’s designed to do. But if I continue to win I get placed on teams with worse and worse players.

Just got out of a match with a player that “akitten” 2mins after the match started on Temple, the best map for a come back… urgh, I can’t get started on my war stories…

Anyway, every season has it’s losing streaks with some of mine being up to 15-30 loses strong. Soul-crushingly demoralising with about 60%+of those loses down to bad luck or simply avoidable loses.

By bad luck I mean, things that are outside your control because it’s random or in someone else’s control.

Lets be real, sometimes you just lose. Sometimes you lose matches you should win. It’s the nature of a game/sport. But for a system that tries to force a 50% win rate it seems to fail a lot when it comes to “giving” wins back. I don’t get win streaks that match my losing streaks.

I have had to accept that during seasons I cannot play the builds that I find fun to play, I have to play builds that I can carry on. I have to assume that my team mates are terrible and think about what I can do to help the team overall. Even if I am the only one on my team thinking that way.

I have to discipline myself with the amount of games I play because those losing streaks are so frustrating! So I cap myself at three loses to minimise the damage of these bad nights.

The problem is that I ACTUALLY want to play! I enjoy pvp (on some level) but I have to choose, suffer the ridiculous losing streaks of past seasons or stop playing.

I find myself wanting to play GW2 but logging out and doing something else because its just too painful having pips melt away because… other people… other people and their bad attitudes. : (

I was excited when I heard that GW2 was introducing divisions because I thought I would be paired and grouped with people at my skill level. I would be too good to be with noobs but too bad to be with the serious contenders. But it doesn’t feel like that at all. Instead, I seem to go from being utterly destroyed to destroying and back again, topped with a couple of massive losing streaks just to make sure I can’t get away from those people who hold me down. Looking at you Mr.AFKer

I feel like I have built myself into a mental trap that I have not experienced in any other PvP setting that I have played in. I want to play… but I can’t… cos’… other people… on my team… seem to…. want to…. nose-dive my teams best chances of winning.!? : (

They’re introducing a new ranked system next season. Whether it’s better or worse we’ve yet to see; but it’s different.

In the mean time all I can say is try finding some people to play with; it will reduce the number of variables which could be occupied by toxic players.

With this season they’ve matched up teams to have equal MMR. What this means is that while your team may have some terrible players, the opposing team also has some players that are not as good. You can often identify these players and exploit them. This is totally anecdotal and doesn’t happen 100% of the time, but I can often point out 1 or 2 poor players and good players on each team. If you’re losing consistently, chances are the better players on the other team have already done this to your team mates.

I’ve won games because of this. I’ve also lost games because of this; I may win every encounter I engage in but my seems to lose every encounter I’m not in. And I’m not being arrogant either, some games I’ve been that person, and I get repeatedly outmatched and outplayed.