At the start of this season I decided to record all post-game statistics and select teammates/opponents as “test-cases” to try and see the effects of the matchmaking system.
After a series of lopsided matches over the last two weeks and a lot of salt, I decided to look at the results in-depth. Here’s the thing, the matchmaking algorithm is succeeding in averaging out the teams numerically but failing to create competitive matches.
I’m defining a game as a “blow-out” when there’s a difference of 250+ points . I also compared the results of the matches with a stricter 320+ point difference. I’ve gone through the results thus far using team-score as the main metric because it’s fast and straight forward.
As an example, last week 7 out of 10 matches on Wednesday resulted in games (win/ loss) where the difference was greater than 300 points. That one day represents a set where 70% of games were not competitive.
With a sample of 449 games played and 276 wins, I had a 61.46% win rate. I’ve gone through the stats of 180 games so far and to put it bluntly, I’m done with Gw2 pvp in its current state.
Out of 180 games, 73 were separated by 250 or more points (i.e. 500-250 or less). This represents 40.56% of games being blow outs. Out of those same 180 games, 50 were separated by 320 or more points (i.e. 500-180 or less). This represents 27.77% of games being blow outs. Even with the stricter cut-off, over a quarter of games are blow-outs. I just wanted to mention, I did account for disconnects.
The issues of massive point discrepancies between wins and losses are compounded even more when we look at the points awarded/lost. Losing a game as a platinum-ranked player with teammates who were ranked 1198, 1024, 1213 and 1417 means losing 18 points. The game before, losing with teammates who have 300+ lower rankings means losing 21 points. Winning a game with nearly identical teammates means gaining 4 points. How is anyone supposed to reconcile those differences? Only playing duo Q, queue dodging and match manipulation seem to be the course others have chosen.
Which flows into the next critique, the algorithm’s goal of achieving a 50% win ratio per player. Handicapping players with gradually lower-ranked teammates cripples the chance for competitive games over the long term.
I graphed out the points won/lost per match expecting a trend of “rolling hills.” Instead I’m looking at incredibly sharp slopes and erratic behavior. Winning three to four games in a row for 4 to 8 points followed up by 20 point losses is unfair.
The current algorithm is sacrificing quality competitive matches in favor of faster queue times. Shiny skins, glowing crowns and mini’s are all great but they’re just icing on the cake. Icing doesn’t mean much when the cake has gone bad.
