Guild Wars 2

There has been a sentiment among many people i’ve seen post on this forum about how placement matches “screw over” some players by putting them at the wrong rating (usually lower than they believe they should be) and them finding it difficult or impossible to raise their rating.

What i’m wondering is, for those who believe that the placement matches are an unfair and badly designed system, what is your alternative solution that would do roughly the same thing?

Now, i’m going to be completely upfront about the fact that I am biased towards saying that the current system is probably the best one there is (not that it is always right, but that it does what it needs to do effectively and that there aren’t many better systems.) I’ve played CS:GO and Dota 2, and I felt in both of those games that I was placed fairly close to my “true rating” and the same is true for my calibration in GW2.

Basically, if you have an idea for a better system to replace placement matches, or if you would want them removed altogether, convince me. I’m really genuinely interested to know what ideas people have here.

Polismassa.6740:

There has been a sentiment among many people i’ve seen post on this forum about how placement matches “screw over” some players by putting them at the wrong rating (usually lower than they believe they should be) and them finding it difficult or impossible to raise their rating.

What i’m wondering is, for those who believe that the placement matches are an unfair and badly designed system, what is your alternative solution that would do roughly the same thing?

Now, i’m going to be completely upfront about the fact that I am biased towards saying that the current system is probably the best one there is (not that it is always right, but that it does what it needs to do effectively and that there aren’t many better systems.) I’ve played CS:GO and Dota 2, and I felt in both of those games that I was placed fairly close to my “true rating” and the same is true for my calibration in GW2.

Basically, if you have an idea for a better system to replace placement matches, or if you would want them removed altogether, convince me. I’m really genuinely interested to know what ideas people have here.

Here’s the thing. As far as I’ve seen, placement doesn’t just screw over players, it elevates others. They are far too random and inaccurate and distort the matchmaking. They also distort peoples’ perception of their skill. You cannot place people on ten matches alone. If placement truly worked and did what it was supposed to, WHY is there all this fluctuation? WHY must we wait until the system stabilizes? Of course, since this is the first season with the new league system, I can understand why it was possibly necessary.

I suggest to get rid of it. You can place for next season according to the mmr of the current season like seasons 3 and 4.

I agree with you that this system is the best one there is, but the placement games messed it up.

Is all about if u are lucky and meet a team that know who to do pvp or not

JTGuevara.9018:

If placement truly worked and did what it was supposed to, WHY is there all this fluctuation? WHY must we wait until the system stabilizes?

Every single MMR system needs some place to start. Nobody in their right mind would say that placement matches are always going to give you the perfect rating to match your skill level.

Your suggestion of having the previous season’s MMR determine the starting point sounds good in theory, but you’re not taking into account players who either take a break from the game, or players who don’t play ranked PvP. Perhaps for those who do play ranked and receive a rating during the course of this season, the next season could take that ranking into account, but for players who did not, where do they go?

The unfortunate fact is that some system that gives a rough estimate of a player’s rating is necessary for this system.

Polismassa.6740:

JTGuevara.9018:

If placement truly worked and did what it was supposed to, WHY is there all this fluctuation? WHY must we wait until the system stabilizes?

Every single MMR system needs some place to start. Nobody in their right mind would say that placement matches are always going to give you the perfect rating to match your skill level.

Your suggestion of having the previous season’s MMR determine the starting point sounds good in theory, but you’re not taking into account players who either take a break from the game, or players who don’t play ranked PvP. Perhaps for those who do play ranked and receive a rating during the course of this season, the next season could take that ranking into account, but for players who did not, where do they go?

The unfortunate fact is that some system that gives a rough estimate of a player’s rating is necessary for this system.

I haven’t thought about the breaks. Thanks for catching that.

Then the only other suggestion I really have is to replicate the league system in unranked. You would have an unranked leaderboard and use THAT for league placement. It’s really the only thing I can see working.

Placement matches should be after 100 matches, not 10.

Mmmm love those 10 placement matches. It really puts you where you belong.

Maybe tweak ANET’s algorith in calculating mmr placement or bring back win streaks even if they start at 5+ wins so others can get out their mmr hell easier. Speaking of dota 2 my mmr placement there put me in 2.5k bracket but i can play with the 4k+ mmr bracket well using my friend’s account. Long story short there are people out there like me who have bad luck in placement matches and people like us need a bit of help getting out of the lower brackets like what i just said perhaps winstreak bonuses would help alot even if ANET don’t fix mmr placement matches

I’d add extra matches before an official placement. Show a provisionnary placement after 10 matches and count the next 30 matches towards placement as well with no extra weight carried by any match in particular. Remove the matches that might seem aberrant and then give a placement according to the remaining data.

Aberrant matches would be matches with a DC in any team, a match with a player being idle for too long (movement only not counting as breaking idle status), and matches where a player seems to be manipulating match result.

Out of 40, you might get ~30 good matches in average, that is I expect 15-25% of matches played to have some kind of aberrant situation for some of you, if my experience is any indicative of anything.

Once placement has been locked, then move on with regular progression.

that is win more vs higher mmr, lose less vs them and win less vs low mmr lose more vs low mmr.