Guild Wars 2

Gw2 match strategy and team combat tactics get a lot deeper as you begin to master them.

It’s much like the game of chess, I think.

And I believe the skill difference between casual solo players and a coordinated team on voice communications ramps up exponentially. It’s not a “linear” increase as communication and experience increase.

That’s why I personally believe it is essential to keep the matching at a strict level, regardless of queue time. This game is too deep for anything else.

There is no point, ever, to matching grandmasters with new players still learning the game.

Learning comes in 2 stages, and each takes time:

First, there is gaining the basic ability to use your class skills properly.

Second, there is knowing where to be and where not to be, in order to win the match. And you have to make a lot of good decisions in a match if you are playing an evenly matched, talented team.

If necessary, open some free custom arenas only for high MMR people and teams to enter… so they have someone challenging to play when no one at their high level is in the queue.

I am hoping that by February after the test season, this is all worked out so that people can find a fun match 90% of the time.

removing players from the pool by offering them custom arenas isnt a solution. you will merely isolate a section of the playerbase and cause drift in their mmr compared to the rest of the playerbase. league of legends faces the same issue. occasionally new challengers approach, but the old teams just roflstomp them because they have no tournament experience and there isnt a good way for the new team to get that experience since solo queue is the universally accepted measure of skill, as opposed to the 5 man ranked queue. they have to resort to custom game scrims just like you suggest because they cant get the required experience any other way. its a positive feedback loop. positive feedback loops are almost always bad.

Strict matching creates a “bracket” for high skilled, top-tier team players.

They are only given matches in their Super Platinum bracket.

Seems fair to me. Brackets are standard in all serious games.

And with the 45 min queues in this bracket, those top players start intentionally tanking rating so they can actually play. At least, that’s what happened in Wildstar. I’m not sure either game’s population can support brackets just like the major esports games.

Would it be so bad to have teams of above average players paired with 1-2 grandmasters on each team?

The game will lose its most dedicated players.

Ryan.9387:

The game will lose its most dedicated players.

I cannot see how the answer is 500-0 games for them, demoralizing new players and casual players.

Playing against people higher than your own rank is crucial to improving yourself and overcoming those obstacles. The best PvP thrills are when you know you killed a player who is presumably better than you.

People just need to accept that there are winners and losers in PvP, and the system will try its best to make sure you get a 50/50 win rate, just give it time and it will place you in the proper brackets.

Laserbolt.6731:

Ryan.9387:

The game will lose its most dedicated players.

I cannot see how the answer is 500-0 games for them demoralizing new players and casual players.

Neither is an answer.

Chase.8415:

Playing against people higher than your own rank is crucial to improving yourself and overcoming those obstacles. The best PvP thrills are when you know you killed a player who is presumably better than you.

People just need to accept that there are winners and losers in PvP, and the system will try its best to make sure you get a 50/50 win rate, just give it time and it will place you in the proper brackets.

Right, matchmaking should be strict to enforce “brackets”. I agree.

The “thrill” of killing a top player 1v1 will be a long time coming for a casual player. And if it ever does happen, it will be because the top player screwed up. Not because the casual is as good as the top player.

“Playing against people higher than your own rank is crucial to improving yourself”.

No, I’d say WATCHING streams of top players and teams improves your ability… because you can replay and analyze and think about it.

In game it happens so fast, and with no combat messages to look back on, new players never really know what and when you did something wrong and how you could avoid being killed by that class in the future.