Alright; responses, responses, in a topical format—
Rank;
In the current format, Rank works as a metric for the amount of play, rather than the quality of play. As such, it doesn’t have a lot of use for dictating match making. Far too many other variables come in to play. But lets presume it does, just for the sake of argument. I’d propose that balancing qualitative rank between teams, so that each team shows overall equal prowess, makes a much more important standard than individual matching. Players often feel much more flustered by whole matches going sour than by poor 1v1 performance. So long as you can keep a proper sense of power balance throughout the match, divided along each team, the individual player matchmaking can take a back seat.
GW2 vs FPS;
True, you cannot equate the two styles. Cogbyrn already made a very acute illumination of the details why, so I’ll skip that part. Sufficed to say, it doesn’t really matter. Regardless of your favored mode, FPS games have set the gold standard for Hot-Join enjoyment, and I find no reason why an MMO cannot replicate that success. Granted, GW2 definitely has not achieved that mark yet, in terms of game play and reasons to pick a particular server. But plenty of opportunities for solutions exist.
Zerging & Hot-Join;
Find a RPG PvP map which does not promote zerging in some fashion (rhetorical, please don’t start a tangent argument based on that sentence). Like Nevir points out, the problem of GW2’s zerging lies not in the outlay of the map or goals. But GW2 seduces this play style into its game with the FPS style hot-join servers. When you force the players to prioritize the map’s goal (ie, winning), they adopt better strategical behavior. When you allow to ignore map goals with no negative impact on the sensation of winFning, the game will inevitably turn Deathmatch oriented.
That said, I’ll claim that the Hot-Join system, and the resultant zergs, are A-OK. Two reasons: first, primarily, because the game includes free tournaments as a locale for players who wish to prioritize map goals over deathmatch (though I would absolutely argue in favor of qualitative match making, pug vs premade included, for free tourneys); second, because H-J servers do include chaos. Team scrambling is a far more effective equalizer than match making over the course of multiple games. And since H-J isn’t necessarily invested in the arc of each individual game, I say the system needs no change.
And at the base I stand by the fact that many elements exist that neither chaos nor matchmaking can adequately cover: player dedication and mood, build advantage, team composition, and quality of communication. These aspects, if at all possible to quantify, will require enormous UI and architecture changes to appropriately accommodate. And if anything, the best matchmaking only serves to illuminate the problems of equalizing those elements.
Free tPvP;
Hot-Join is not wrong, or a bad choice, or a poor construct. It doesn’t even constitute a difference in casual or hardcore or professional styles (which themselves do not necessarily describe whether players adhere to map goals or not). It’s just a fundamentally different approach to sPvP. If that approach doesn’t float your boat, as seems to be the case for many of you, that’s totally okay. But I get the feeling you’re all going in to hot-join expecting an experience that it does not want to provide, and therein lies the source of these complaints. You should go play free tourneys; I think you’d feel a lot happier about life in general that way.
@Nevir:
Your statement made a solid platform for my soapbox, that’s all. I apologize for taking your topic in a new direction.
(edited by Pinder.5261)