The blog post about sPvP Leagues is out: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-pvp-leagues/
There is a TL;DR below at the end.
This still doesn’t solve some of my fears about it and last iterations of the point system Test Leaderboard. One of the main problems it had was its “farm nature”, as we could see people with, for example, 400 matches and a 48% win rate on the top of the Leaderboard.
It’s true that in the Second Test Season the top players on the Leaderboard were well above the 50% winrate mark, proving the changes they made were valid. But I will explain my fears on this topic in Leagues.
Okey, we have 6 different Divisions, from Amber to Legendary Division. This means that “Ranked Playerbase” should be distributed “equally” between this Divisions, showing different skill levels in each of them.
We can say, Amber has players with a MMR of 2 (out of max 10, for example). In the end, Legendary should have players with a MMR of 9 and 10 or rather the top MMR players. Middle Divisions should have all the other MMR players distributed. Sounds good, in this case Legendary Division, the very top of the League system will showcase the best players in the game, this will give them recognition!
But… the blog post didn’t say explicitly anything to solve this “farm it” problem. Of course, people with less than 50% win rate, won’t go to upper Divisions, because you can lose tiers and all.
The problem lies: If a guy has a MMR of 4, ideally he will get matched with other MMR of 4 players. If this guy is slightly better than the others, he will have a win ratio above 50%, letting him advance into other tiers and Divisions… until he reaches Legendary Division, where supposedly the top players should be.
That player is good, he has more than 50% win ratio, but he’s still a MMR of 4 (that will grow obviously because he has a win ratio above 50%) in Legendary Division.
Therefore, I don’t know if my suggestion is already in the system they want to put on Leagues but Matchmaking should take into account both player MMR and Division.
If Matchmaking takes into account Division, this will stop players from farming matches and start growing skill-wise, because they will get stuck at one Division. If you have a MMR of 4, but you are in the Diamond Division somehow, you will get matched with people on that Division, which should have a MMR of 6 or 7. Those guys should win over the lower skilled guy, making him drop and forcing him to get better if he wants to go higher.
In the end, this are just initial thoughts/fears on the sPvP Leagues feature and its implementation might prove me wrong.
TL;DR :
- The farm nature of previous Ladders can still be preserved into the League system. (Bad Thing)
- Players below 50% winrate should not get high into Divisions. (Good Thing).
- Ideally, Legendary Division should showcase the most skilled players (Good Thing).
- As the blog post sounded, a guy with a MMR of 4 could get into Legendary Division (Bad Thing).
- If this is the case, Matchmaking should take into account current Division to stop this (Suggestion). Obviously, in the case this isn’t already implemented.
So yeah, just some initial thoughts about the announcement. Discussion is welcome!
P.S.: As I said, tying Matchmaking to Divisions may not even be necessary and I’m just over-exaggerating this!