Guild Wars 2

Judged because of your pve level? Hahahhahaha. Haven’t encountered that one, yet….

I’ve personally been fairly frustrated lately because of the bad matchmaking. Many, many times I’ve been put up against dragon and phoenix level players (I just barely reached dolyak) who absolutely destroy my team. When one side wins 500 to 15 you know it’s more than one side just playing a good game.

In the end: the matchmaking SEEMS completely random. Whether my team absolutely dominates, gets dominated, or has a fun fair game doesn’t seem to follow any pattern. They all happen regularly. It makes PvP more of a dice roll than a skill competition.

The worst part is that I WANT to love PvP, but at this point the MMR system and terrible final rewards on the new tracks are really holding it back.

Justin. Toxic behaviour like that has little to do with ranks shown. It has a lot to do with “inappropriate pairing”. Like last game we had Misha a current top 3 on the ladder and member of 55 hp monks (probs the best team in eu atm) … and we had a guard in the percentages who sat in canonshots on an empty point on skyhammer untill he died.

Your matchmaking pairs ppl who dont even know they can weaponswap with guys that win ESL/pax tournaments. Isnt that the idea of a matchmaking system….to seperate those types of players?

I think Anet is following this strategy:

1- more players in spvp
2- after that we impove mmr system and we’ll introduce seasons&ladder.

So basically this patch is good to attract new players, i hope mmr improvement and seasons&ladders will come “soon”.

And i think hiding rank is a good idea, in the past rank created a lot of confusion and basically it means nothing, but instead of rank, i’ll show MMR for everyone.

I don’t really understand why anet don’t show mmr ingame (and in leaderboard too).

Justin ODell.9517:

We are working on changes to matchmaking

SOON!

Until I actually see you A-net employees being the ones “mentoring” I don’t want to hear how we should. It was frustrating enough before, it’s twice as frustrating now.

You guys create this toxic environment. Remember that.

@sgman
I have the same problem, once my team (I walk with guild most of the time on team arena, although we started do some pvp after patch so we are not experienced pvp’ers, but wvw and pve’ers for sure ) won when enemies had 5 points… And than we get teams with champion phantom, champion … etc. and you can actually see they played alot as team and we lose feeling like kitten kittens…
We have a lot of unfair matches with some kind of PRO, we want a fair macthmaking with people on the same level of pvp awerness as my team is.

You will only get matched with ppl of your MMR if they are all in queue at the same time. If thats not the case the system will grab anyone else.

In my opinion it’s broken, either becouse of influx of new players in pvp after-patch or patch destroyed it.

Some people like me, love pvp and what I love most is winning. Pvp right now is unfair because anyone who queues up in solo queue is put into the game regardless of their skill level making it suuuuuper frustrating for the players who know what they’re doing and this needs to change because I hate being put into a team full of scrubs which is 90% of the time -_-

Justin ODell.9517:

Matchmaking has not changed. We stopped showing ranks because they were being used incorrectly (as if they implied skill rather than time invested), causing a toxic environment where players felt justified (wrongly) while harassing each other.

We are working on changes to matchmaking, but those changes are unrelated to the decision to not show ranks.

That said, there has been a huge influx of new players, and this is likely what you are noticing. They are likely going to need some time to learn the ropes and figure out how to play. May I suggest taking a patient, mentoring approach?

Justin, please pass along to the development team that achievement points need to also be hidden. People are using, incorrectly (as if they implied skill rather than time invested), causing a toxic environment where players felt justified (wrongly) while harassing each other. Constantly being called a newb or being harassed that I joined an instance with no gear equipped is making me not want to pve…

Why not just introduce Unranked SoloQ and Ranked SoloQ?
The ranked ones are having an impact on your MMR – and I would suggest not letting players in below a certain amount of games in unranked
The unranked ones are free for everyone – they don’t have an impact at all. Here everybody can join and gain experience – and prepare for the Ranked ones.

I think also skilled players would jump into unranked matches from time to time to test new builds e.g.

I would do the same thing for TeamQ as well btw. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a ranked TeamQ where you jump in with your Team and play – and then when they go offline enjoy being paired with strangers with equal skill level to play for fun Unranked games.

I think this would actually already improve a lot. The tweaks to MMR will improve the system even more.

style.6173:

A few comments on all of this…

1. Ranks should have NOTHING to do with mmr.
2. mmr is gained too quickly. That is the issue with the matchmaking
3. Decay needs to be permanent and not just a leaderboard item. Seeing someone go from 20% to 93% in one game is ridiculous.

I agree with 1 and 2, but not with 3.
If the decay would be permanent you would really hate to have hollidays…

The mmr gain/loos should be based on the amount of matches you have played already. Meaning: Big jumps if you have done just a few matches and very small jumps if you have a lot of matches.
I still dont understand why i drop hundred of ranks, if i loose to low ranked opponents because of dc, 4/5, bad teamcomposition or just bad teammates.
Thats not very #esports

style.6173:

A few comments on all of this…

1. Ranks should have NOTHING to do with mmr.
2. mmr is gained too quickly. That is the issue with the matchmaking
3. Decay needs to be permanent and not just a leaderboard item. Seeing someone go from 20% to 93% in one game is ridiculous.

This is definitely a good solution to the problem.

Justin ODell.9517:

eleshazar.6902:

So say example A of your algorithm failing:

List at start for a 3v3 (20, 5, 4, 4, 2, 1)

According to your algorithm the team comp would look like this at the end:

Team A: (20, 2 ,1) = 23
Team B: (5, 4, 4) = 13

Seems fair right? There has to be more to your algorithm for Solo Q because this one seem awfully barbaric…

That’s the team shuffling algorithm. Which happens after 10 players are gathered using the matchmaking algorithm.

Obviously the matchmaking algorithm should try to prevent that scenario from happening at all but if for some reason matchmaking fails so bad as to create your scenario, do you see any other combination that would be more fair?

yea in this scenario the only remotely fair setup would be a 2v4 >.<

Justin ODell.9517:

Solstice.1097:

yea in this scenario the only remotely fair setup would be a 2v4 >.<

Is this something the community would like to see? I could definitely do that, but I’m worried how it would be perceived by those actually playing the game.

Also, in that scenario, even if we stacked everyone against the 20 the numbers would still be on the 20’s side, even though the game mechanics would pretty much guarantee a loss.

Yes there is a fair solution: Throw them back into the queue to have a new grouping chosen. A match like that should never take place, because as you alluded to, it will never be fair.

Personally I don’t understand how the MMR is failing as badly as it is. True you guys have hidden ranks (which I agree after a certain point, say may 30, are pointless), but it isn’t hard to tell by actions (such as 3 people on your team running home and staying there for cap) or stomps (someone using a deer finisher), or titles (someone wearing Gladiator) that the skill levels are not being matched up fairly in the least. I honestly had someone in my match in Solo Queue ask where they can farm achievement points in pvp. It was their first ever match, and they stood on the sideline the whole time because they had no clue what to do. Needless to say we lost 500 – 34. That match should have never happened. And it isn’t a rare case. It has happened to me even more frequently after the patch than it did before. Every match I’m thrown in in Solo Queue is completely one sided. Either my team dominates the other team by 400 points, or they dominate us by 400 points.

It’s hard to take stock in your algorithm when that is consistently happening. Maybe you aren’t putting in enough of a time wait before expanding the MMR range of a player. I recall an Anet person (Josh?) saying that the longer you are in the queue the wider the flexibility of your MMR range. In other words if I start being able to accept others on my team between 10-12 it eventually can expand to 1-21. Or maybe it is caused by the last minute grabs. I know that when someone leaves a roster, or leaves a game right before it starts, the system grabs someone fast to try to not have a 4v5, well I have a feeling it grabs pretty quickly and doesn’t wait at all which would lead to high variance in what is actually grabbed.

I don’t know that I have a perfect answer, but right now the match making just seems terribly flawed and needs to be reworked/tweaked big time.

EDIT: Something your post just sparked in my mind. Are you guys tallying team MMR using mean or median? I think that could be a huge flaw if you guys use mean. An outlier can pull that number to look falsely high when (as you use in your example) just having a 20 on a team doesn’t make up for having a 2 or a 1. In order to properly rank the team’s MMR I definitely think you should be using the medium MMR and not the average since the outliers can totally mess that up. Not sure which you use…

Justin ODell.9517:

Solstice.1097:

yea in this scenario the only remotely fair setup would be a 2v4 >.<

Is this something the community would like to see? I could definitely do that, but I’m worried how it would be perceived to those actually playing the game. People complain about the 4v5 often, this would be doing that on purpose.

Instead, have you considered offering a handicap in terms of points per objective and player kill? Higher ranked players should be worth more points when killed. They have the skills to stay alive and to pick their fights, so taking them down should be more rewarding. Novice players on the other hand may run in to get slaughtered due to their inexperience, so they should be worth less points per time killed. This system was once used in the battlegrounds of an mmo that we all know, but shall not be named. Killing High Warlord was worth a lot more points than killing Legionnaires.

Realistically, a player in the top 100 can usually 1v2 against two players ranked below 90% and win without much difficulty. They could put up a reasonable fight even in a 1v3 situation if the opponents were below 80% rating.

Another (or additional) handicap could be to give more points per captured objective per minute held for the lower ranked team, since they will have a much harder time holding the points and decapping points vs the experienced team. This could also be used in situations where there are forced 4v5s.

Just, as a theoretical test, 4/5 players = 0.8 team efficiency. What if the team with 4 players got points at the rate of 100%/0.8 = 125% from captured objectives to compensate for being a player short? This would require the team with 4 players to hold objectives for slightly less time in order to win. It wouldn’t even things out completely, but at least it would make those close games where the score has been 380 vs 500 in a 4v5 a lot closer (380 × 1.25 = 475 vs 500 assuming it was all from objectives and not kills).

Kharr.5746:

Justin ODell.9517:

Solstice.1097:

yea in this scenario the only remotely fair setup would be a 2v4 >.<

Is this something the community would like to see? I could definitely do that, but I’m worried how it would be perceived to those actually playing the game. People complain about the 4v5 often, this would be doing that on purpose.

Instead, have you considered offering a handicap in terms of points per objective and player kill? Higher ranked players should be worth more points when killed. They have the skills to stay alive and to pick their fights, so taking them down should be more rewarding. Novice players on the other hand may run in to get slaughtered due to their inexperience, so they should be worth less points per time killed. This system was once used in the battlegrounds of an mmo that we all know, but shall not be named. Killing High Warlord was worth a lot more points than killing Legionnaires.

Realistically, a player in the top 100 can usually 1v2 against two players ranked below 90% and win without much difficulty. They could put up a reasonable fight even in a 1v3 situation if the opponents were below 80% rating.

Another (or additional) handicap could be to give more points per captured objective per minute held for the lower ranked team, since they will have a much harder time holding the points and decapping points vs the experienced team. This could also be used in situations where there are forced 4v5s.

Just, as a theoretical test, 4/5 players = 0.8 team efficiency. What if the team with 4 players got points at the rate of 100%/0.8 = 125% from captured objectives to compensate for being a player short? This would require the team with 4 players to hold objectives for slightly less time in order to win. It wouldn’t even things out completely, but at least it would make those close games where the score has been 380 vs 500 in a 4v5 a lot closer (380 × 1.25 = 475 vs 500 assuming it was all from objectives and not kills).

That’s not a good idea at all…The devs have already said, and it’s a well known fact, that rank does not determine skill. You could have a high ranked player feeding the other team, and your team would get screwed over. I’d never want a system like that…I’d just leave PvP altogether if something like that happened. All my hard work, just to make it easier for the other team to get points…no way!

Justin ODell.9517:

May I suggest taking a patient, mentoring approach?

I have been a pretty hardcore pvper since release and I feel like this is always Anets suggestion, but, you know, sometimes I want to get on this game and not have to deal with “mentoring” someone on my team every match.

Justin, the number one thing you can do right now to improve match making is put a rank limit on rated queues, and start out new players with a much lower MMR.

As someone who just started PvP my experience with the matchmaking was very positive so far. I played about 20 games, only play solo arena, no game so far seemed terribly unfair, challenging yes, but not unwinnable. There were some games with players that seemed a lot more experienced but it wasn’t really a issue, nobody got blamed and team strength was balanced.

I got matched against 5 thieves the other day. Brilliant

Justin ODell.9517:

Solstice.1097:

yea in this scenario the only remotely fair setup would be a 2v4 >.<

Is this something the community would like to see? I could definitely do that, but I’m worried how it would be perceived by those actually playing the game.

Also, in that scenario, even if we stacked everyone against the 20 the numbers would still be on the 20’s side, even though the game mechanics would pretty much guarantee a loss.

How about some sort of system to automatically pull another party member when a person leaves before a match starts in solo/team queue? Since it’s a queue already.

the main issue that I see is the starting MMR is just too high, and the post-match variation is just too high. reduce both of those significantly and you’re probably in good shape.

Justin ODell.9517:

snip

Alright well I went and voted in that poll ;-). For the record I said long time for good MMR. I’m thinking that waiting five minutes for a good match isn’t that bad. Especially if things are added to HoTM to do while you are waiting. I think the time in queue seems longer now because there really is nothing to do while you wait.

As to your second point: I think the key thing is that you said you excluded the “warming up” MMR. After hearing about this in several places I think that is probably the reason why so many matches right now are unfairly paired. There has been a decent sized influx of new players to pvp with the April 15th patch, so we have a lot of people with artificially high MMR floating around. True they will get pushed down as the system learns what their skill level truly is, but in the meantime the matches are turning out to be unfairly matched in those situations. And I don’t think that I’m just imagining unfair pairings when as I said you have three people run to home and all of them sit their waiting for it to cap so that they get points. (Also having people come in asking how to get achievement points, literally their first ever PvP match and they don’t even know how to cap a point).

And to your last point: I guess we have to agree to disagree here. I think that the dangers of using a mean far outweigh the dangers of using a median.

For example in Team Queue:

Two teams MMRs A:(1, 15, 5, 6, 100); B:(35, 30, 32, 25, 33).

A: Mean = 25.4 Median = 6
B: Mean = 31 Median = 32

While mean makes these two teams looks pretty similar in MMR the fact is that team B is guaranteed a win here. One extremely good player cannot carry a team that is as low as his team is. Meanwhile the other team is filled with 5 average players that may not be able to beat the 100 person 1v1, but they can easily 3 cap against that team regardless. Meanwhile the median value shows pretty clearly that the team with an MMR value of 6 can’t compete with a team with an MMR value of 32.

I’m sure John Smith, your famed economist, could figure out which is better in this case (who knows I could be wrong and he says mean is by far better and I’m and idiot for thinking median was the right choice). Those economists were always better than us computer scientists at that statistics stuff. ;-)

the matchmaking system is fine, it’s the MMR that is broken and wrong. If people’s MMR was somewhat accurate the matchmaking would do a fine job. MMR is so INACCURATE because new players start too high and there is too much post-match MMR change.

Why would you ever permit a system where a rank 1 would ever be on the same team as a rank 100?

I don’t understand why these matches are not bracketed with rankings. For example, only group up players who are ranked 1-20, 5-25, 10-30, etc. Depending on the player pool, expand or contract that. Maybe even make it scale to a larger pool the higher the rankings. I don’t know; I’m not privy to the inside numbers, but do something different.

I’m only rank 44, but I find it infuriating being constantly paired with people who are brand new to PvP. I’ve paid my dues. I know the maps. I know the timing. These guys just follow other players around, cap points and leave, fight off point, and die easily. I find myself getting angrier and frustrated and I end up saying things in chat that I regret. I play now just for the rewards, and i stop playing when the rewards don’t outweigh my anger anymore.

Of course, part of the terrible aspect of PvP is the lack of build diversity, but that is another topic altogether, but it does affect general matchmaking.

I’m not here to teach others how to play; pay me for that. That’s what a pvp guild is for.

Justin ODell.9517:

We stopped showing ranks because they were being used incorrectly (as if they implied skill rather than time invested), causing a toxic environment where players felt justified (wrongly) while harassing each other.

yet…pvp has become a more toxic place now with more harassing…i hope block lists don’t have a cap because mines been growing like wildfire lately.

What if you scaled the matchmaking/deviation rating by a % based on the # of games played?

e.g., % scaling = 100-100/(1+x/10), where x is number of games played.

With this example, your scaled MMR would start at 0 and be at 23% after 3 games, 50% after 10, 75% after 30, 90% after 90. This formula is just an example, and anything with a similar curve would suffice.

This way someone with 5 games played and 1500 MMR would likely not be matched against someone with 500 games played and 1500 MMR.

Spurnshadow.3678:

I got matched against 5 thieves the other day. Brilliant

That’s nothing… I ended up in a match with 9 engineers and me (necro). But don’t worry, i’m sure engineers are balanced and it was just random…

On topic, I have found myself getting destroyed by dragon players left and right in solo queue. I’m only rank 21, yet almost everyone I play with has champion titles and is rank 60+. I feel like i’m bringing my team down as I just don’t have the experience, and am so outclassed by some of these players that I can’t even learn because I am dead in 4 seconds.

I have no idea what the system is, but I think it should be tied to rank and not to win/loss ratio like it seems to be.

Justin ODell.9517:

Kharr.5746:

Instead, have you considered offering a handicap in terms of points per objective and player kill? … snip …

A handicap isn’t a bad idea either, and would be a good topic for another thread.

This is probably the worst idea to be honest.

I thought we were talking about a competitive PvP game-mode, not a hold-your-hand-everyone-is-a-winner type thing.

The team queue is also broken. Yesterday I saw a matchup of a premade “outplayed by children” (one of the top 4 NA teams) vs 5 pugs.

How can that even happen???

I would be happy if matchmaking stopped putting all the same classes on the same team. I think the current system is working just needs a tweak. My suggestions is to balance out the classes as well. Not sure its possible to make the current system check class and balance it out the best it can but I think this would fix most of the issue here. usually when I get a lopsided match its because I am on the team with 4 thief’s or a team of all mesmers. Class balance in these games is essential for a balanced game.

style.6173:

The team queue is also broken. Yesterday I saw a matchup of a premade “outplayed by children” (one of the top 4 NA teams) vs 5 pugs.

How can that even happen???

I have been in a pug group and done this many times. Just cause your a top team doesn’t mean you never lose. When I play teams like this me and my friend sit on there home point adding pressure to the pre made they didn’t expect. but this had nothing to do with the topic they got paired with people there own MMR.

Pairing does need an overhaul or something

5 vs 5 majority of the game from the start…. and look at the score – 500 – 8

luckily this time i was on the winning team but its frustrating for the loosing team loosing this badly. its not even close.

Drafigo.4690:

style.6173:

The team queue is also broken. Yesterday I saw a matchup of a premade “outplayed by children” (one of the top 4 NA teams) vs 5 pugs.

How can that even happen???

I have been in a pug group and done this many times. Just cause your a top team doesn’t mean you never lose. When I play teams like this me and my friend sit on there home point adding pressure to the pre made they didn’t expect. but this had nothing to do with the topic they got paired with people there own MMR.

Actually no. The pug rankings were all in the 80% while outplayed with children were all top 25.

i dont think its reasonable to limit to “no more than 1 of each profession” however I do believe it is reasonable to assign light armor = 1, medium = 2, and heavy = 3, and every team must have a combined armor rating of between 8-12

In all honesty. GW2s MMR system is the worst thing ive ever seen in any competetive online game.

In fact i challenge anyone to find a mainstream game that has worse matchmaking systems.

In what online game can you play ladder games and fight top 3 ppl within 2-3 games?

Here’s more proof of how bad the matchmaking is. Not even remotely close match, and this is my second one today. The other team had 3 rank 80s and we had someone stomping with a bunny finisher. How is this even remotely fair?!

eleshazar.6902:

Here’s more proof of how bad the matchmaking is. Not even remotely close match, and this is my second one today. The other team had 3 rank 80s and we had someone stomping with a bunny finisher. How is this even remotely fair?!

PvP shows PvE level in the party UI currently…

eleshazar.6902:

Here’s more proof of how bad the matchmaking is. Not even remotely close match, and this is my second one today. The other team had 3 rank 80s and we had someone stomping with a bunny finisher. How is this even remotely fair?!

BTW, I use my bunny finisher because 1) I think it’s kinda cute, and 2) I wan’t people to think I suck.

infantrydiv.1620:

eleshazar.6902:

Here’s more proof of how bad the matchmaking is. Not even remotely close match, and this is my second one today. The other team had 3 rank 80s and we had someone stomping with a bunny finisher. How is this even remotely fair?!

PvP shows PvE level in the party UI currently…

I wasn’t talking about the levels, I was talking about the score being what it was. No fairly matched up game, where everyone is present, should have a score like this. Sure 100 points difference is possibile, but when the end of the game has a 300+ difference and everyone was playing? There is something wrong there.

And I get that some people use the finisher that is below their rank, so I only put so much stock in that. But I put a lot of stock in their actions/tactics.

ughh im quitting this game after pvp. so frustrating. Just had an argument with an annoying guy and I lashed out. Will most likely get banned anyway.

I am sick to death of getting paired with idiots. The opposite team had all 3 points. I was fighting 3 of their team members (i am a bunker build) so lasted a fairly long time for my team to at least cap some areas. they capped nothing during this time and i must have bene fighting for a good few minutes.

I get called a pve noob and that i suck because I was fighting 3 pepople away from their point. Although i have only been playing for 2 months, i have only levelled my character through pvp and not explored any of the worlds, dungeons. I am far from a noob. I know to fight on point…. but when its their cap…. the opposite is true.

After, when we finally capped something, I’m the only one fighting on point and defending. by this time most my team are afk. I will prob get banned for some of the things I said after getting called a noob. But this anger has been built up after countless of pairing errors and I cannot take this game seriously any more. The pairing system makes me way to short tempered. I know I can never get away from abusive players but these arguments can be prevented by appropriate pairing.

I will possibly return when a new system is in place.

Pairing now would be: 20 8 6 3 2 vs 11 7 5 3 1?
I don’t think that’s balanced at all.
I would make it something like: 20 11 3 2 1 vs 8 7 6 5 3

It would match 2 or 3 best players with 2 or 3 worst while the other team is average. That’s the best way.
This is what it would look like:

Team A
2 good players, 2 bad players, 1 medium player
> 2 good + 2 bad = 4 medium
> + 1 medium
> A total of 5 medium players

Team B
5 medium players

In theory that is a good matchup because both teams will have 5 medium players on average. Of course maybe those good players in theory could carry their team to victory, but also those bad players could be really bad and lose it. I think in average it is the best possible matchmaking.

Now about new players: We can’t know if they are good or bad, chances are probably 50/50, that’s why they should be considered as average players rather than bad (if it’s their first game) or good (if they had few lucky wins in their first games).

JUSTIN! let me know what you think!

Rezz.8019:

Pairing now would be: 20 8 6 3 2 vs 11 7 5 3 1?
I don’t think that’s balanced at all.
I would make it something like: 20 11 3 2 1 vs 8 7 6 5 3

It doesn’t use the first example. I can’t remember the exact formula right now, but Justin spelled it out a while back. Something like 1, 4, 5, 8, 10 vs. 2, 3, 6, 7, 9. The team with the highest-ranked player also gets the lowest.

I don’t think it would be wise to use your second example—putting positions 1, 2, and 3 on the same team would likely lead to utter domination despite their lower teammates.