Guild Wars 2

The ideas I’m going to be presenting here come largely from my experiences with the Chess ratings system, which uses the Elo ratings system to create extremely accurate ratings for competitors.

You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

First off, I’d like to talk about where I think Arenanet has gone wrong with its leaderboard and tournament system:

Account bound leaderboard ranking:

This ranking discourages people from trying out new classes in tournament play. For example, I’m quite good at using my Necro main in Pvp (in the top 1k right now), but if I wanted to try playing my thief, my rating would easily crash to 50% in a day. This brings me to the second point

Match making based upon Pvp Rank:

If I decide to play on my thief, I’ll be matched against people who are rank 20, but I’ll have the experience on my thief of essentially a level 1. Not only is this unfair to my teammates, it’s unfair to me as well because it prevents me from being able to play against people with similar experience or time spent on their class.

In addition, Pvp Rank is NOT a good indicator of total skill, even if everyone only played one class to begin with. This idea that time spent = skill is just not true, everyone has different goals for pvping and different learning curves, as well as initial skill levels. For example, my dad plays chess almost every day for fun, his rating has not changed significantly in over a year, and that doesnt bother him, he just enjoys playing. BUT… with the current Gw2 rankings system he would be probably close to rank 40 or 50 and be getting consistently beaten by people who are much better than he is, and then he would probably quit the game, because getting destroyed is not fun.

In conclusion, I feel that the current system Anet has in place for tournament play is very limiting and forces people to pick a class and stick to it (unlike the main game). It relies on flawed logic for class making, resulting in frequent blowouts and general discontent.

Here is my fix:

First off, we need a character bound leaderboard. This will immediately encourage people to experiment with new classes and also be able to play tournaments whenever they want without worrying about their leaderboard ranking.

Next, we need an Elo ranking system. For example, in competitive chess, people are typically ranked anywhere from 1000-2800. People who are ranked around 1000 are generally beginners to the game, or casual players while those ranked around 2800 are part of the few elite grandmasters in the world and have a lot of respect.

The way an Elo tourney ranking system would work: A player decides to start playing tournaments. At the beginning he has a provisional rating of 1000, and he then has to play a total of 20 games to get a true rating. At the end of these first twenty games his provisional rating is finished calculating and he is placed in a skill pool of the correct level.

For matchups, the system would essentially work to create the closest skill matchup possible based off of rankings, resulting in two teams of equal combined skill level.

My fix does not deal with the inequality between PUGs and teams, but it would allow people of all skill levels to enjoy tournament play on a more balanced level, encourage class experimentation and I think overall create a more positive and respected pvp environment and rankings system.

Please, let me know if anything was unclear and if you support this idea.

1) Character leaderboards: no. This will get abused faster than you can say “go”

2) you aren’t matched by pvp rank. You have a rating. Similar to Elo. They just don’t show you what yours is.

If you wanna test classes, go to hot join. That simple.

Explain how character leaderboards would be abused. If you are thinking people would just randomly disconnect when they are losing, it would be quite easy to put in place a system which simply bans frequent disconnectors from joining tournaments.

Hotjoin…as it currently stands is pretty much just people either duelling or zerging around the entire map. It isn’t very good for practicing point control or finding balanced fights. Most people there are just glass cannon build as well, or at least that has been my experience.

If you are correct about rank not having anything to do with matchups, that is good. But, since rank is account bound rather than character bound, it still prevents people from trying out new classes in tournament play without sending their ranking down.

No im meaning people would keep creating and deleting characters until they had a high record and keep it as a trophy. Plus the coding would be a nightmare. Some people create characters just to rename it too, what about them? No. Character leaderboards will never happen and I’m happier that way

As for hot joins, it’s perfect for zone control. Playing as a bunker, for example, you go to their point and practice staying alive and being an annoying prick. As a thief you practice your burst and escaping 5 people. As a Necro you practice proper prioritization. Etc, etc. you just need to know how to use em dude. Your basically fitting right in as a newbie at a class anyway. Don’t be so proud.

You don’t go into tourneys with a class you don’t know If you are that much about rank. You just don’t do that.

One of the biggest problems with matchmaking rating is people always assume that the players on their team is flat out terrible. I am a top 10% guardian and I go in solo queue in plain gear with the combat healer title and I was consistently experiencing my team saying they got bad players.

I have a friend who is rank 8, but he has 2900 experience in world of warcraft and I frequently play games with him. I don’t find it fair that we should limit the matches based off rank, because rank does not mean everything. It would seriously harm more good than bad, since tournaments are supposed to be team based (wether it be 3 people and 2 pugs or not)

By far this game has the best matchmaking I have ever seen. The matches are near instant, and more often than not you will be matched with people with your same rating.

Play World of Warcraft and experience playing against the same team for 5 matches, and people being carried. It’s so much worse over there, you are seriously spoiled in this game.

I think they are releasing unranked matches when they fix the soloq. If that is the case, that would be a good alternative to your problem.