Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone,

Recent changes have made me wonder about Arenanet’s overall goals for PvP. We saw the introduction of the map vote system and the ready check system, both of which have been great for the game. Queue times are also a bit shorter. However, we also saw the removal of solo queue and the addition of a leaderboard which by any normal standard made the old leaderboard look good. In addition, matchmaking is now frequently pairing teams of solo players against full premades. Class stacking and imbalanced compositions seem to not have changed much either as was initially promised.

I would contend that from a competitive viewpoint, the state of PvP is actually worse off now than it was before the infrastructure patch which made these changes. Unranked queue is definitely great for beginners and people from other areas of the game who want to hop into PvP with friends. Yet, a lot of these people never intend to take the game seriously, gain leaderboard standing, or even watch tournaments. In my opinion, most of the viewership of esports games like LoL or CS:GO comes from solo players who enjoy laddering but who simply don’t have enough time or commitment to join an actual team. They have a very strong understanding of whatever game they play, but don’t belong to a competitive team or organization. Their primary means of competition and improvement for the average player comes from solo queue.

That said, I believe that the same also stands for Guild Wars 2. Sure, the ideal scenario for becoming competitive in this game would be finding a group of 4 great friends and all improving together every day in Team Queue. This just isn’t a reality for the large majority of players. If you look at current teams right now, the top teams have basically been playing together since the game came out. The newer/second tier teams have quite a few players from solo queue in them. I’d be willing to bet that the majority of tournament viewership for this game over the course of its existence was players with some amount of investment in solo queue as well.

In addition to solo queue being a practical necessity for a competitive game, a functioning leaderboard system is also pretty much mandatory. Most people aren’t going to want to take a game seriously if they have literally nothing to show for it in the end. This has always been a big problem for GW2 PvP: how to tell if you’ve actually improved, how to tell who is better/worse than you are, and finding a reason to continue to play hundreds and thousands of games with hardly any rewards or prestige tied to it. The fact is that the current leaderboard system is not a leaderboard. It’s entirely dictated by how much you player (as seen by the 40%-80% win ratio spread in the top 100 players). The only people this is an incentive for are either people who don’t realize the leaderboard is not skill based, or the people hoping to trick people into thinking they are skilled based on a phony leaderboard ranking. Then there are people who just play tons of games and don’t care about the leaderboard at all, which is fine.

Not having a working leaderboard or visible MMR system also incredibly hampers the ability of players to find similarly skilled/like-minded players to form actual teams with. It creates an atmosphere of ambiguity as well which leads to more trash talking and toxicity in general. It is almost a certainty that if the game had visible MMR, you’d see people in HotM using solo q rating/ranking to create pick up groups of similarly skilled players. This in turn would eventually benefit the top echelon of PvP teams when some highly skilled groups of solo players converted to tournament teams.

You should read my post, but tl;dr:

1. Ranked Solo queue is necessary for building a tournament viewership and fostering competition among newer players.

2. A working leaderboard is a must have incentive if the game aims to become competitive.

3. Visible MMR would lead to an increase in the number of actual teams. It would also lead to a less toxic community.

As much as ANet is putting money into tournaments and stuff, all of their game changes seem to have no intention of forming a competitive community. Besides the obvious “they haven’t put in a balance patch in a year”, it seems they want to close the gap between experienced and new players. Skill differentiation is necessary for competitive development, we must trust our new players to learn the tricks of the trade.

Sidenote, somewhat unrelated I guess (working off my last point). If I see something I haven’t seen before, ie. an interesting teleport, as a player I would remember this cool trick and perhaps even search for more. Advanced mechanics are not a bad thing, look at every other competitive game (DotA with orbwalking, CS:GO switching guns after shooting, even something like wavedashing in SSBM). Removing these things is just harmful, it prevents the player from exploring game mechanics and warping them to play the best.

Basically, the few hundred players that actually care about the competitive environment is not enough for ANet to dedicate resources. And it’s a catch-22 since we’re not going to get more people that care without the obvious fixes that we need, hence what you already posted.

Wilco.1458:

As much as ANet is putting money into tournaments and stuff, all of their game changes seem to have no intention of forming a competitive community.

I definitely agree. The increased tournament schedule with ESL support and the WTS series is great. But it would be even better if it felt like the actual community was going somewhere in terms of competitiveness. Right now the game still feels stagnant, even if we’ve seen a increase in twitch viewership

Consider that the players who want to be competitive will pay attention to the competitive scene. That’s why there are competitive out there.

I disagree with your analysis. The way to build competition is having automated tournaments that only full parties can enter. Maybe 4 to 8 teams that run all the time provided enough teams are on to fill up spots. Make them reward gems or a quantity of gold worth players’ time.

You want bigger and better tournaments then it has to start with providing players in game with an incentive and actual experience.

The MMR system does nothing particularly for building tougher competition in actual tournaments.

SobeSoul.6910:

I disagree with your analysis. The way to build competition is having automated tournaments that only full parties can enter. Maybe 4 to 8 teams that run all the time provided enough teams are on to fill up spots. Make them reward gems or a quantity of gold worth players’ time.

You want bigger and better tournaments then it has to start with providing players in game with an incentive and actual experience.

The MMR system does nothing particularly for building tougher competition in actual tournaments.

Lol, that’s funny since the game had this at the beginning and it failed miserably.

SobeSoul.6910:

I disagree with your analysis. The way to build competition is having automated tournaments that only full parties can enter. Maybe 4 to 8 teams that run all the time provided enough teams are on to fill up spots. Make them reward gems or a quantity of gold worth players’ time.

You want bigger and better tournaments then it has to start with providing players in game with an incentive and actual experience.

The MMR system does nothing particularly for building tougher competition in actual tournaments.

That’s what they had when the game launched. 8 man tournies were the only way to play competitive PvP, I don’t even remember there being hotjoins (definitely no arenas). It was fun, but the queues were long especially if you went out first round. And while I really enjoyed this system, it did have its flaws and it’s probably best they got rid of it. If we want to bring something like that back, we need baby steps. First we need to get more people playing, then we can start branching out into more sophisticated ideas.

infantrydiv.1620:

SobeSoul.6910:

I disagree with your analysis. The way to build competition is having automated tournaments that only full parties can enter. Maybe 4 to 8 teams that run all the time provided enough teams are on to fill up spots. Make them reward gems or a quantity of gold worth players’ time.

You want bigger and better tournaments then it has to start with providing players in game with an incentive and actual experience.

The MMR system does nothing particularly for building tougher competition in actual tournaments.

Lol, that’s funny since the game had this at the beginning and it failed miserably.

And how exactly has the different implementations gone since then?

The only way to get better competition in a team game is to construct a format where teams thrive in. Ranked really isn’t that.

Wilco.1458:

Advanced mechanics are not a bad thing, look at every other competitive game (DotA with orbwalking, CS:GO switching guns after shooting, even something like wavedashing in SSBM). Removing these things is just harmful, it prevents the player from exploring game mechanics and warping them to play the best.

Wavedashing was a physics exploit left in the game as according to Masahiro Sakurai it did not affect gameplay to a significant degree. Ssb4 does not have wavedashing along with L canceling as it increased the skill gap too much.

Switching guns in csgo was more or less a habit carried over from cs and later css from an accumulation inaccuracy bug along with being able to fire the awp faster. It is mainly used in csgo to keep apm high that can get you killed when overused at the wrong times.

Orbwalking in dota was again an exploit that allowed players to more or less cancel animation delays along with being able to be ignored by enemy creeps and towers as it was built on the warcraft3 platform. LoL being build on a custom platform does not retain the same effect of being ignored by enemy towers, but does retain canceling animation delays mainly due to it expanding its relatively small skill gap that rewards players for not being lazy. This is not taking into consideration strategy as part of its skill gap.

The best example is to simply compare the aftercast delays on gw1 and gw2. Gw1 had consistent “advanced mechanics” while gw2 has no consistency, and even more so, contradicts the quickness mechanic. It basically makes an already large skill gap even larger due to all the bugs and inconsistencies.

Good topic i agree with OP, basically there is no reason to go in unranked/ranked now for veteran players, solo or with a team.

My priorities

1. Leaderboard improvement. How it is now, it’s useless 100%. The old leaderboard in comparison was really better because it showed better the player skill level (but it had other issues). It needs a rework to show better progression in skill and not only in time grinding.

2. Rewards. Always the same problem. I think Seasons are the way to go but rewards need to be better than Test Season. We did a lot of examples in old topic.

3. Stuck in the Mist while queing. Another big issue that needs to be addressed.

4. Different roster size against each other. Another big issue that has important extremes, like soloqueue vs full preamde. I hope more players with HoT can invite Anet to use hard filters to match compatible rostersize how we can suggested in other topics.

Basically this, we don’t forget a too slow balance meta changes and pls split queues with Stronghold and other gamemodes with HoT.

infantrydiv.1620:

In my opinion, most of the viewership of esports games like LoL or CS:GO comes from solo players who enjoy laddering but who simply don’t have enough time or commitment to join an actual team. They have a very strong understanding of whatever game they play, but don’t belong to a competitive team or organization. Their primary means of competition and improvement for the average player comes from solo queue.

To me it makes no sense why a solo player needs access to leaderboards for a team oriented game.

The type of laddering needed for solo players that would benefit the game the most is the return of the gw1 infrastructure of random arenas. It creates an in game tournament system before solo players are moved up into team arenas. To me it provides more of a gratification winning with the same 4 other solo players X amount of times in a row before moving up to team arena than a numbered brick on the wall being disbanded after every match.

Unfortunately, with no ladders there’s no team arenas because there’s no players due to there’s no ladders so there’s no team arenas so there’s no soloq. Thus, ladders may not be built right and the return of soloq may never return.

MarkPhilips.5169:

Good topic i agree with OP, basically there is no reason to go in unranked/ranked now for veteran players, solo or with a team.

My priorities

1. Leaderboard improvement. How it is now, it’s useless 100%. The old leaderboard in comparison was really better because it showed better the player skill level (but it had other issues). It needs a rework to show better progression in skill and not only in time grinding.

2. Rewards. Always the same problem. I think Seasons are the way to go but rewards need to be better than Test Season. We did a lot of examples in old topic.

3. Stuck in the Mist while queing. Another big issue that needs to be addressed.

4. Different roster size against each other. Another big issue that has important extremes, like soloqueue vs full preamde. I hope more players with HoT can invite Anet to use hard filters to match compatible rostersize how we can suggested in other topics.

Basically this, we don’t forget a too slow balance meta changes and pls split queues with Stronghold and other gamemodes with HoT.

I think your priorities are wrong. 1st priority to you is LB’s? Really?

First off, Bringing back Solo Q will not help the competitive team (<Key word) sport. Better rewards in PvP would result in more player base which could (<Key word) add to the competitive scene. The main reason why the competitive scene isn’t that big is because of the lack of rewards for doing said tournaments. Team (at any level) that are not already in the scene, don’t feel it’s worth the time (months) to greatly improve to be able to compete. The first place reward needs to be higher and then tier it down for more ranks. Start slow and work your way there. Start paying out top 6 in ESL and top 4 in others. Then move to 8 and 6 and so on. They are not adding further rewards because the amount of teams is small. They don’t want to pay out 80% of the teams that join. Bring the rewards and more teams will join, then you do it again and again and watch the scene increase in size. If ESL started paying out the top 6 when there is only 7-10 teams joining up, you don’t think more teams would join? Then you start having 12-15 teams joining up and wanting to get better to get paid. Then you move the payout higher and you get 17-20+ teams joining up. Then before you know it, WE ESPORTS! Quarter million dollar world tournies! ZOMG

If they are waiting for the team count to increase before raising the rewards, they are doing it backwards and it will go no where. Heading for 3 years into the game and there is only 7-10 teams that play each week. Yes there is more out there but not every team plays every tourney; except maybe Abjured.

1. Solo queue is not needed
Before the change to practice/play/compete, solo queue had a long queue time and matches came down to which team had the least bad players. The leaderboard for it was laughable (team was somewhat respectable). Why would bringing it back be any different?

The complaints about fighting premades are very exaggerated. A lot of times it’s partial teams with solo players mixed in. Matchmaking could still use some tweaks, but is it bad for solo players and small groups play a lesser rated pre-made? If you’re trying to be a lone wolf while pulling a out a win for your team, then the mentality is misplaced. It’s a team game and working as a team is part of the game.

Solo queue also isn’t needed to encourage casual PvPers to play. The game just needs a system which can match casual players against similarly skilled opponents. A close match will keep people coming back, and that can be accomplished without a solo queue.

2. Leaderboards which reflect skill are vital
We need a leaderboard which reflects skill. The current system favors time played and only the people who have lots of free time care about it. There’s no incentive to become a better player. If you want to value time and skill, that’s fine, but skill should be the dominate factor.

3. A visible indication of rating is needed
Players should have a general idea of how good or bad another player is in-game. It doesn’t have to be raw rating. It could be some division of players into buckets. For example, top 1% is platinum, next 5% gold, etc. Like a skill-based leaderboard, it allows players to gauge their skill against others and give them a goal outside of a few more champion bags or a piece of armor.

My Additions

• Change the amulet system. Stat rigidity is a roadblock to increasing the PvP population. Casual PvPers want to run the same or similar build that they use in PvE or WvW. Sure, it may be terrible for PvP, but let them find that out for themselves. If they can’t try what they’re comfortable with, they just don’t try it.
• More frequent balance updates. The idea of shaving was nice, but shaving once every 5 months doesn’t work. Aim for a two month cycle. It’s enough time for players to overcome the initial reaction and look for counters or alternatives while preventing the environment from languishing for months.
• Address the matchmaking and idle time. I’m not sure what it’s like for most players, but I tend to sit in queue for ~7 minutes and get terrible matches. The global average is always ~2 minutes, so it must be working for some people. Sitting around in HotM doing nothing and then have a terrible match are big turn-offs. Consider merging unranked and ranked if it would improve queue times. Cutting down on the “ready up” time would also reduce dead time.
• Build Templates. These would be helpful for allowing players to adjust to their team’s composition and also useful to educate newer players. Even if it has to start as a partial implementation like trait templates, it would be very helpful.

There won’t be a competitive community without a fun and competitive game mode! Conquest and Stronghold are both neither of these things!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

GhOst.4019:

MarkPhilips.5169:

Good topic i agree with OP, basically there is no reason to go in unranked/ranked now for veteran players, solo or with a team.

My priorities

1. Leaderboard improvement. How it is now, it’s useless 100%. The old leaderboard in comparison was really better because it showed better the player skill level (but it had other issues). It needs a rework to show better progression in skill and not only in time grinding.

2. Rewards. Always the same problem. I think Seasons are the way to go but rewards need to be better than Test Season. We did a lot of examples in old topic.

3. Stuck in the Mist while queing. Another big issue that needs to be addressed.

4. Different roster size against each other. Another big issue that has important extremes, like soloqueue vs full preamde. I hope more players with HoT can invite Anet to use hard filters to match compatible rostersize how we can suggested in other topics.

Basically this, we don’t forget a too slow balance meta changes and pls split queues with Stronghold and other gamemodes with HoT.

I think your priorities are wrong. 1st priority to you is LB’s? Really?

I tend to agree with him, LB’s would be my 1st priority too.

From my point of view, for competitive players it’s very important to see how they improve, recorded in objective numbers. In LOL you can see how you improve by climbing up the leagues, here you see nothing to show if you improve or grind the same level forever. You rely on your feelings and what your friends say, which is pretty much subjective.

Rewards are important of course, but they might be a motive for players on higher level. For the beginners and less experienced players, who are still far away from competing in tourneys, the most important thing is to see if and how fast they become better comparing to the others around their level. That’s why I think LBs are very important, and even would suggest profession LBs, when you can see your place among the other PvPers of your class.

Some ideas/thoughts/stuffs: A lot of other points have been brought up already and I might repeat somethings already said.

Holy balls this was a long post, some more important stuff in this tried to break it up so there wasn’t a wall of text.

Personal story (can skip this part least important): I started PvP’ing around August 2013 (i think somewhere around there), and I was in the pursuit of the shark finisher cause it looked kittening sick and I was amazed by it cause of how exclusive the finisher was. I spent all my time in PvP hours upon hours and I get to about rank 52-53~ and they changed the ranking system. At this point I was already enjoying PvP but was extremely disappointed that I was basically handed shark finisher and people who haven’t spent nearly as much time as I have were handed the rank I had. So, at this point there was really nothing for me to work towards in PvP so I played PvP more casually and went back to WvW’ing/Obsidian Sanctum GvG’ing. I didn’t really get back into sPvP until I wanted to compete in tournaments. I played it on occasion but I didn’t have anything to work towards long term or anything that I could show off.

We need something to show off cause dragon rank means jackkitten right now, in most games getting to the highest PvP rank takes years and if you play for about 3 months of consistent pvp you’re rank 80. Once you’re rank 80 what do you do now?

There’s no prestigious PvP skins, Glorious Hero’s Armor, is just like the Glorious set with little blue Gems on it. (Not exclusive)

Alright, no cool rank (passed a 3-5 month period), let’s check titles, alright… there’s titles linked to the 80 ranks and champion brawler, (10,000 wins) that’s a prestigious but nothing really in between r80 and 10,000 wins to work towards.

Now, the most important part of PvP, who are you better than? Leaderboards, right now the leaderboards, as everyone is aware of, is just a grindfest of who can play the most games and win about half of them. No kitten = no competitive game.

So there’s not much for PvPer’s passed r80 for most people, people want to beable to show off progress and show off their kittens which is impossible in this game.

Need an MMR rating with the leaderboard that reflects somewhat of skill. Also, having that leaderboard accessible INGAME this is huge even the current leaderboard if it’s accessible in game people will be more inclined to attempt to climb it. This is HUGE!
And it makes player networking easier, if you see a name on the leaderboard you might want to recruit them for your team since it actually means something and if you’re a player who is looking for a team and managed to get ranked high on the leaderboard you can use that to get your foot in the door etc.

Some suggestions:

Create prestigious ranks/titles to show off long term PvP play (not necessarily skill based entirely) but a longer progression of ranks that allow you to have access to more weapons/armor skins are you progress(not these PvE reward tracks). Or even skill based ones which you can ONLY get by placing 1st in specific tournaments or dealing with the leaderboard. These skins MUST remain exclusive to PvP and not have a short cutt-ed version available through reward tracks. This allows other players to see that “Oh kitten, that guy has to be high ranked cause of all his 1337 sweg gear” giving a sense of prestige to the gear. Same concept applies to rank finishers and titles. Potentially adding ranks, adding ranks in PvP isn’t the same as PvE since the rank only shows off PvP dedication and time commitment.

This would require a rank overhaul potentially (below)

This is just a couple ideas, could work, maybe not.
Remove hotjoins but leave arenas for people who purchase them, create a practice button, that throws you into a match instantly (with max of 2 friends for a total of a 3man party) and if the match isn’t “full” yet put some bots in there that aren’t complete idiots and run meta builds until the spots fill up. Have these game not grant RANK points but will grant progression towards dailies, reward tracks and account wins (not leaderboard wins). This way players are still being rewarded for playing but not towards their PvP rank(this would also apply to any custom arenas). This removes any possibility of rank farms on hotjoins etc.

Changes to unranked: – Making it more similar to solo queue –
Don’t allow anyone passed a 3-man party to queue up for unranked (hell, I’d even say anything passed a 2man queue but I feel like that’s me pushing the bar a bit). This will make it so players aren’t getting stomped out by full premades every game. Have these matches grant rank points and the reward tracks etc.

Tldr: Read the kitten post, some points you might like other eh, w/e.

I also realize some thing I list or suggest may be a stretch but some concepts in here could be very useful to growing the PvP scene.

Acandis.3250:

Soon…™

Exedore.6320:

1. Solo queue is not needed
Before the change to practice/play/compete, solo queue had a long queue time and matches came down to which team had the least bad players. The leaderboard for it was laughable (team was somewhat respectable). Why would bringing it back be any different?

Except soloq wasn’t removed because it wasn’t needed it was removed because queue times for team arena were too long because there are no ladders. Furthermore soloq does not need leaderboards it needs an in game tournament system that was like gw1 RA were after so many wins it dumps you in TA.

TA also needs an in game ranked tournament system for ladder rewards with a better leaderboard. That would mean an unranked version for people to play with friends while custom arenas get changed to guild halls. Except that may never happen and not because it isn’t needed.

Agree with 2 and 3. I feel 1 is overblown. I solo queue rated a lot and always check to see who is grouped on the opposition. I rarely face more then a duo on the other side and the majority of the time it’s all solos. That’s not to say it couldn’t be tightened up more I just question we need the old solo queue back. But massive improvements to 2 and 3 are absolutely essential. Right now there is almost no way to know if you are improving as a player and to get an accurate assessment of how good you are at any moment and how good the opponents you are facing are unless they are well known players. One last thing rewards for pvp still stink.

Wilco.1458:

As much as ANet is putting money into tournaments and stuff, all of their game changes seem to have no intention of forming a competitive community. Besides the obvious “they haven’t put in a balance patch in a year”, it seems they want to close the gap between experienced and new players. Skill differentiation is necessary for competitive development, we must trust our new players to learn the tricks of the trade.

Well, Anet did nerf some really braindead meta builds like spirit rangers and Hambow warrior. Celestial builds are still easier to play than some others, but they are nowhere as stupid as old meta builds sometimes were. In addition, having characters with so many different mechanics necessarily leads to some professions being a lot easier. It’s a MMO after all.

Amstel Steel.2058:

Except soloq wasn’t removed because it wasn’t needed it was removed because queue times for team arena were too long because there are no ladders. Furthermore soloq does not need leaderboards it needs an in game tournament system that was like gw1 RA were after so many wins it dumps you in TA.

Is this NA specific? In EU, soloq queue times were insane, because most skilled solo players played in ranked, to avoid the lame rotations and bad matchmaking you had in soloq. I had 10min+ queues in soloq, and insta pops in teamq. And I didn’t even mention the 4v5 one match out of three. The choice was easy.

Building A: Competitive Community
Building B: Guild Wars 2 Community

I agree with OP 100%.
Redesign the leaderboards and make rating visible to other players is pretty much essential. People/Teams have nothing to grind/show off for anymore. Sure the tournaments are really good, but outside that there is nothing.
WoW is a perfect example of a functioning leaderboard system. You could easily see what players/teams were the better ones by looking at their rating.

Sorel.4870:

Amstel Steel.2058:

Except soloq wasn’t removed because it wasn’t needed it was removed because queue times for team arena were too long because there are no ladders. Furthermore soloq does not need leaderboards it needs an in game tournament system that was like gw1 RA were after so many wins it dumps you in TA.

Is this NA specific? In EU, soloq queue times were insane, because most skilled solo players played in ranked, to avoid the lame rotations and bad matchmaking you had in soloq. I had 10min+ queues in soloq, and insta pops in teamq. And I didn’t even mention the 4v5 one match out of three. The choice was easy.

I honestly don’t know. It’s been awhile since I actualy played so lately I only act like I know what I type.

As it stands, yes this game doesn’t need a soloq. I still feel the gw1 RA system of going on a winning streak was better for the demographic the op was describing versus the current lederborsd system.

I’m actually curious now if having the current unranked queue go on match winning streaks could work well or not. Then again I’ve been curious of how this games infrastructure would end up working for years so it’s all speculation.

infantrydiv.1620:

Hi everyone,

Recent changes have made me wonder about Arenanet’s overall goals for PvP. We saw the introduction of the map vote system and the ready check system, both of which have been great for the game. Queue times are also a bit shorter. However, we also saw the removal of solo queue and the addition of a leaderboard which by any normal standard made the old leaderboard look good. In addition, matchmaking is now frequently pairing teams of solo players against full premades. Class stacking and imbalanced compositions seem to not have changed much either as was initially promised.

I would contend that from a competitive viewpoint, the state of PvP is actually worse off now than it was before the infrastructure patch which made these changes. Unranked queue is definitely great for beginners and people from other areas of the game who want to hop into PvP with friends. Yet, a lot of these people never intend to take the game seriously, gain leaderboard standing, or even watch tournaments. In my opinion, most of the viewership of esports games like LoL or CS:GO comes from solo players who enjoy laddering but who simply don’t have enough time or commitment to join an actual team. They have a very strong understanding of whatever game they play, but don’t belong to a competitive team or organization. Their primary means of competition and improvement for the average player comes from solo queue.

That said, I believe that the same also stands for Guild Wars 2. Sure, the ideal scenario for becoming competitive in this game would be finding a group of 4 great friends and all improving together every day in Team Queue. This just isn’t a reality for the large majority of players. If you look at current teams right now, the top teams have basically been playing together since the game came out. The newer/second tier teams have quite a few players from solo queue in them. I’d be willing to bet that the majority of tournament viewership for this game over the course of its existence was players with some amount of investment in solo queue as well.

In addition to solo queue being a practical necessity for a competitive game, a functioning leaderboard system is also pretty much mandatory. Most people aren’t going to want to take a game seriously if they have literally nothing to show for it in the end. This has always been a big problem for GW2 PvP: how to tell if you’ve actually improved, how to tell who is better/worse than you are, and finding a reason to continue to play hundreds and thousands of games with hardly any rewards or prestige tied to it. The fact is that the current leaderboard system is not a leaderboard. It’s entirely dictated by how much you player (as seen by the 40%-80% win ratio spread in the top 100 players). The only people this is an incentive for are either people who don’t realize the leaderboard is not skill based, or the people hoping to trick people into thinking they are skilled based on a phony leaderboard ranking. Then there are people who just play tons of games and don’t care about the leaderboard at all, which is fine.

Not having a working leaderboard or visible MMR system also incredibly hampers the ability of players to find similarly skilled/like-minded players to form actual teams with. It creates an atmosphere of ambiguity as well which leads to more trash talking and toxicity in general. It is almost a certainty that if the game had visible MMR, you’d see people in HotM using solo q rating/ranking to create pick up groups of similarly skilled players. This in turn would eventually benefit the top echelon of PvP teams when some highly skilled groups of solo players converted to tournament teams.

You should read my post, but tl;dr:

1. Ranked Solo queue is necessary for building a tournament viewership and fostering competition among newer players.

2. A working leaderboard is a must have incentive if the game aims to become competitive.

3. Visible MMR would lead to an increase in the number of actual teams. It would also lead to a less toxic community.

100% agree. Best post ive seen on these forums. I can speak for the eu scene and say that before december many teams would pop up and practice in team queue. Now there are no teams beyond those who have been going for ages.