Guild Wars 2

ANET needs to reset MMR, game-wide.

The past three seasons of smurfing and deliberately unequal matches have created very large MMR differences. This has more-or-less created a caste system and predestined matches. Players realize this and many have stopped playing.

As a result, I don’t believe that any matchmaking system will be capable of avoiding streaks. The streaks will increase the differences and the issue will continue to snowball.

In addition; ANET needs to forbid f2p accounts in ranked.

They are used too often as a neosmurfing method. Players laugh as they farm and “Noob stomp.” The problem is that this is very detrimental to the game.

Ithilwen.1529:

In addition; ANET needs to forbid f2p accounts in ranked.

MMR Hell kitten.

Please, don’t ask for LESS.

ASK for MORE.

New account, or not. Everyone should start at low MMR to not wreck average one.

Ok, the idea of MMR reset AND starting f2p accounts at a low MMR might be a compromise. I don’t trust that this would be well executed. Still, done right, it might work.

Ithilwen.1529:

Ok, the idea of MMR reset AND starting f2p accounts at a low MMR might be a compromise. I don’t trust that this would be well executed. Still, done right, it might work.

Where is your proof that people are smurfing on f2p accounts?

I posted multiple screenshots of an ESL player doing just that, in a prior season. I don’t think there’s really any question that this is happening.

In fact, quite a few posters on this forum have talked about doing exactly what I describe.

I smurf lol …. i smurfd soo much im literally turning blue
…actually please help me… Im thinking this could be a serious medical issue

Players who quit ranked for reasons like having finished wings/achievements, poor matchmaking, these things are not any justification to reset MMR or ban F2P accounts from ranked seeing as these don’t improve the experience of PvP in gw2.

Resetting MMR is a game wide event, affecting match quality for everyone, it’s not about what the developers can do to to fix help only those that massacred their MMR by grinding 400 losses on safe-pip spot solo queue in early season.

Banning F2P accounts from PvP is a pretty big move for a business like ArenaNet, one which absolutely does not benefit them or the quality of matches. This is because players solo queuing through the progression a second time on an inferior build, that’s one, extremely rare, and two, not affecting match quality in any quantifiable way. If you think it is, please present your evidence to necessitate your suggestion – sighting a pro league player in season 2 who rekt you on a Smurf does not necessitate a change that will affect thousands of F2P’rs

Ithilwen.1529:

I posted multiple screenshots of an ESL player doing just that, in a prior season. I don’t think there’s really any question that this is happening.

In fact, quite a few posters on this forum have talked about doing exactly what I describe.

You have “screenshots of AN ESL player…” That’s your evidence to support your position? A single ESL player and you want the community to believe it is as pervasive as you suggest. I don’t understand this kind of thinking.

To be clear, there is a question of whether or not this is happening. Absent substantial evidence, an implication simply doesn’t become reality.

Scenario;
- Me, above average player, 65, 70, 78% winrates to legendary in 3 seasons. Obviously decent MMR. I Mostly got competent teammates and had not much trouble.
MM
- Season 4 MMR is reset. I face players of mostly below my skill level. I breeze through divisions again.

Unless I misunderstood your suggestion, this would solve nothing. In fact, below average skilled players would complain more for getting matched against better players even if its for 1-2 weeks only.

Isn’t what you want really is some tool to enable you to adjust your MMR because you feel it’s not where you think it should be?

In all honesty, I felt the same way earlier on this season, then I got great matches in Diamond, hit Legend in 226 matches…kept my pre-season win rate which is really just average…55% about…out of season and in season…

For sure my learning curve has been steep and I had no clue in the beginning of what MMR was or how it could impact me, so seeing no point/difference until seasons began, I didn’t really care, and had lots of losses as I was still learning classes and game mechanics, and testing things out…I mean there was only a name difference in my eyes between unranked and ranked…rewards were the same, and then there was practice mode…

So does is this trail of noobness impacting me today?

Is my value as a player still reflected with what the MMR thinks I am, could be, could not…

For some reason, mainly mentality of some players I believe, Day time have given me great matches, with great cooperation while prime time has given me horrendous matches with a lot of bickering…is that also related to MMR? I mean seriously, is there a link?

akaCryptic.2389:

Unless I misunderstood your suggestion, this would solve nothing. In fact, below average skilled players would complain more for getting matched against better players even if its for 1-2 weeks only.

It would give a temporary boost to the win rate of bottom-o-tha-barrel MMR players

It would alleviate all the QQ threads for a while then they would have no one to blame but themselves for getting crap MMR again

Just ask them to reset

I support this just because I want to see what excuses people will come up with next.

Reset or no, bit interaction will do the trick

reset MMR = NO
ban f2p account = NO

there are way to better the game and none of this solve it.
1) a better MM would be better.
2) double the required rank to enter ranked matches to maybe rank 40 instead of 20?

Lord? all scenarios are said last year’s. What’s in a name if they don’t listen

MMR does not need a reset, instead low MMR ppl should not play with high MMR ppl in matches or against. Make matches High MMR vs. High MMR and low vs. low. Otherwise games are either blowouts or u have to carry bad ppl. Remove devisions or increase it up to many different so MMR can spread more.

I’d like to see some stats on matchmaking from a while ago to answer a couple questions.

Like how much impact does a high MMR player have on a match of low MMR players…
I mean like:

1 high MMR player w/9 Low MMR players;
2 High MMR players w/8 Low MMR players
…
2 Low MMR players w/8 High MMR players
1 Low MMR players w/9 High MMR players.

Same test results with different standard deviations for MMR ratings
With some % win rates of different matches.

How your Matchmaker actually does versus expected results, and if there is too much deviation, can you identify with the data where the deviation comes from?

As we have seen in some other post, Time was a factor that wasn’t very well taken into account on overall game-play throughout the season with the reasoning that better players would move past the rabble quickly to leave them fighting among themselves. Which was later changed to a bump @ startup.

I don’t know exactly how the time issue fared regarding this for the current season, but there is the other factor of how your MMR works.

Does your current MMR have too long or too short a lifespan to enable players to feel they are where they belong? How many matches is the current MMR based on? is it a Moving average ? of how many games. Does my “noobness” from 1500 matches ago for example still follow me now that I grasped the basics and starting to explore the more elite aspects of it?

How quickly can I turn my MMR around if I get winning streaks?

Does losing represent as much to MMR as winning?

How are matches Weighed when the MMR is different and how does it affect my MMR in return, win or lose?

These things could help increase understanding and placed in the FAQ/Wiki after for ease of access.

Anything else?

y lol i’d like. Look at Wvw they have poll’s they have interaction we have nothing

I don’t get it, all posting what you like but zero interaction. First thing you should be asking for someone from Anet to interact on pvp forum

you mean me?

Well true, but you also do it all so well

I think the answer lies more within removing the Team A (higher MMRs) vs. Team B (lower MMRs who have been outperforming). This single function alone is responsible for most of the funky match making.

The algorithm in ranked should function just like it does in unranked, where it takes an average party MMR and pits it against another average party MMR. This is clearly a better system for competitive play and rather than encourage segregation as the current ranked algorithm does, it will encourage players of different skill levels to play together again.

Of course the division system would need to be altered a bit but the above is the answer for “how to fix our diminishing community?”

You are missing a point. Many players’ MMRs, ( including mine,) have been unfairly tanked by matchmaking.

The margins are so large now, I doubt any matchmaking system can make fair matches if it relies on MMR. The means to solve this is to reset MMR.

I realize that a portion of the players are enjoying long win streaks and believe that it is due to “skill.” The reality is though that competition needs to be fair or it is not competition.

Again, I absolutely cannot wait for this to happen. I really look forward to seeing what excuses people will come up with then!

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

reset MMR = NO
ban f2p account = NO

there are way to better the game and none of this solve it.
1) a better MM would be better.
2) double the required rank to enter ranked matches to maybe rank 40 instead of 20?

Have to disagree with 1, sorry. Matchmaking itself is fine. Its actually pretty much perfect atm.

However, to get that nice matchmaking algo to work properly, EVERYBODY needs the right mm-rating. Which nobody really has, except of a few pro-leaguers.

Because of seasons we now have three gravitational pull zones:
Low – mid – high.

Tenacious grinders and long standing mid-rangers gravitate towards low.
Every casual player ends up in mid.
New accounts of old players end up in high.

This has several reasons, all already pointed out numerous times here on the forums. Im not gonna repeat them.

Solution →
1. Soft reset after each season and
2. Statistics should also be part of calculation of mm-rating, especially how often someone died, kills, double caps, healing, dmg.

As to your number 2:
Either rank shouldnt be able to be farmed in custom arenas, or… which would actually be way better… change to 150 played UNRANKED matches with profession, before allowed to play this profession in ranked.

Yes they should change the matchmaker to get rid of MMR grouping.

That’s hella different from this thread which is about resetting MMR and banning F2P from ranked. Resetting MMR and leaving the matchmaker will just be a repeat where the same players will tank the exact same way again

From the sound of all your threads Ithilwen, Anet really wants you to lose your pvp matches.

On the smurfing subject, I’m a bit confused. Hasn’t the forums mutually agreed that Eltie Specs are OP compared to core specs? And is it not true that f2p accounts do not have access to Elite Specs? So then this would mean that anyone “smurfing” on a f2p account would be at a severe disadvantage and would drag their team down, unless they paid for HoT, but at which point they would no longer be f2p accounts and thus banning the f2p accounts would accomplish nothing?

Totally confused here on this.

I thought smurfing was only done in S1 since it made the high tiers face lower tiers so they would progress to legendary easier/faster, so by that concept smurfing is not rerolling an alt acct f2p since the whole point is different

Chaith.8256:

Yes they should change the matchmaker to get rid of MMR grouping.
(…)

You want to get rid of mmr? Or do you want to go back to unranked matchmaking? This sentence confuses me.

The current ranked matchmaking fits better to a ladder system, however it – at the same time – results in longer queues. So it kinda is a trade-off. For a big playerbase I think the current matchmaking is more fair overall during seasons. For the current playerbase however, maybe the long queues are causing too much frustration.

Getting rid of matchmaking all together would be foolish, its the only thing that gives soloqueuers a fighting chance against premades. If you want to get rid of matchmaking, you have to go back to team arena and solo arena. Which in turn will result in longer queues for premades (not that I care, but there it is).

He means get rid of the MMR portion of where it groups player based on MMR I believe

MMR grouping is when players are grouped with alike MMRs in the pip range, resulting in players rated 7, 7, 7, 7, 7 vs. 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 instead of randomized or equalled out MMR scores per side.

There was just never any need for it, nobody wanted this, just kind of created a flawed matchmaker when it was already hard enough to accurately predict & match odds of winning when the sides were even.

Chaith.8256:

MMR grouping is when players are grouped with alike MMRs in the pip range, resulting in players rated 7, 7, 7, 7, 7 vs. 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 instead of randomized or equalled out MMR scores per side.

There was just never any need for it, nobody wanted this, just kind of created a flawed matchmaker when it was already hard enough to accurately predict & match odds of winning when the sides were even.

Thats unranked (or season1) matchmaking, and it resulted in quite some heat from good players on the forums, because they were constantly placed with bad players. If I remember correctly, Helseth was one of the most outspoken ones about that being bad and totally not suitable for a ladder system, since it allowed for grinding.

Back then it matched purely on group MMR, instead of being based on pip range first, and sorted by MMR second. The grinding problem was fixed without even touching matchmaking, doing so was an over-compensation.

What’s worse for competition than having a bad player or two guaranteed on your team? Having a team stacked full of the bad players or good players in that pip range.

Tanking mmr however, would then be a thing again.

Except if anet would lock mmr somehow, if you loose too many matches in a row…. or removes safety pips… or makes them crumbling, so that if you loose 3 times, you loose your safety pip.

Also, Im quite sure, piprange always was a thing, starting with season1… however I could be wrong there, since I missed start of season1.

Chaith.8256:

Back then it matched purely on group MMR, instead of being based on pip range first, and sorted by MMR second. The grinding problem was fixed without even touching matchmaking, doing so was an over-compensation.

What’s worse for competition than having a bad player or two guaranteed on your team? Having a team stacked full of the bad players or good players in that pip range.

This is why I asked earlier to be able to see some data, and some test results…For all who don’t really understand this or how much an impact “X” amount of “goods” or “bads” in team will affect the outcome of your matches in a given situation, it would be something fairly easy to see and understand.

Would help get common ground, understanding, and abolish speculation about what’s going on behind the scenes with the matchmaking and all…

What reason is there to keep any data of this kind hidden anyways? Lots of interesting information can be gained from this.

Again, my point is that because of the past 2 and arguably 3 seasons, the MMR range is very large. There are also probably a majority concentrated at the extremes.

For that reason, any mmr based match making system is going to have a very difficult time. Therefore, ANET should reset MMR, game -wide.

Vicky.4563:

I support this just because I want to see what excuses people will come up with next.

Here’s some things you might hear https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc0N8LJueZ8

(Different game, but amusingly accurate) =P

I’ve seen Diamond and Legend players that didn’t have the skill to be in Sapphire and I’ve also seen Ambers that could very easy play in Legend. But MM being what it is has created an environment that is stupidly wrong, anyone that denies this has simply glided through unchallenged thinking they have elite skills. They are also often the most vocal about this whole thing believing that “noobs” are undeserving of even participating. I swear if this game had reasonable MM half the people or more in the higher tiers would never have gotten there. At this stage I don’t believe that there is any fix for this other than those players that are stuck or endlessly struggling to just quit, there is little to no incentive in ranked for the unskilled or unlucky. They’re just feeding the higher MMR players wins and helping them achieve goals they can’t reach themselves. Quit ranked and let the elites battle themselves, let the queue times stretch and make them earn their wings rather than being fed.

Ithilwen.1529:

You are missing a point. Many players’ MMRs, ( including mine,) have been unfairly tanked by matchmaking.

The margins are so large now, I doubt any matchmaking system can make fair matches if it relies on MMR. The means to solve this is to reset MMR.

I realize that a portion of the players are enjoying long win streaks and believe that it is due to “skill.” The reality is though that competition needs to be fair or it is not competition.

I hear ya, I’ve been tracking the same exact problems amongst many players, for many years now. But without writing a thesis on this, I can say that resetting the MMR isn’t going to change anything. The MMR is the way it is because of the system’s function as an end game result. You would need to change how the algorithm works to prevent the same MMR results from reoccurring in the exact same way.

Besides that, we should be more concerned with why some accounts are frequently given good matches and some other accounts are frequently given bad matches. The issues is real. I have sat at other people’s houses “a couple of them that own multi accounts” and reviewed their match histories with them. It’s interesting to see a single person provide proof that they are struggling getting through ruby on one account but managed to reach legendary in less than half the time on another account.

This isn’t your typical case of “ancient main account MMR vs. new account MMR” no, both of these accounts were created roughly at the same time and it would seem that one account is favored within the algorithm.

We’ve heard plenty of other users post in this forum who have experienced the exact same thing. Something is seriously unfair and just plain wrong with whatever happening to cause this effect and this is what the community should be focused on figuring out. Arena-net included.

I honestly don’t care about a overall reset, nor would the other good players, it is just an inconvenience to do so (more hurdles to go through). Since Ithilwen apparently got better from the last video they exposed themselves to, I would appreciate another video at your current “mmr hell” so we can critique your gameplay so you can improve further. MMR hell for the most part is an excuse for 90% of the people raging in forums, post your gameplay then make claims to carrying or being stuck in “hell”.

There are A LOT of players, that the system thinks are as good as me, that have zero map awareness, cant position themselves, and dont even know how their build works.

The reason for this is quite easy, though.

1. Getting carried
Up to a certain level, you dont need map awareness. If you have one good roamer on your team, you can really ignore everything around you. Of course, that good roamer has the match of hell for him. But still, if he/she wants to win, they have to carry.

2. Past bunker builds
They resulted in people never really thinking about positioning themselves. Mercenary necromancers are my favorite example for that. And before that… bunker guardians, bunker mesmer, bunker eles, you name it….
A lot of players still play positioning-wise, like they did before removal of bunker builds and increase of splash dmg and increase of aoe cc. Running on point, never leaving point, dieing to splash dmg.
You have to play smart in the current meta. You have to bail and leave a point if you get too much heat, you shouldnt pile up at all, best to rotate onto point one by one, fighting on edge of point instead of on mid of point.

3. Metabattle + Profession achievements
While it does help good players to switch fast betweent professions and gives a nice overview of current metagame…. it also causes bad players/new players to just drop in, copy build, queue for ranked. Without knowing the build. Without even knowing the profession. Most dont even think of trying rotations on golems first, then doing around 10 unranked before queueing ranked.

4. Premades
Being on voice chat while pvp’ing gives a huge advantage, especially to players with zero map awareness themselves. Problem with that is, those players dont learn map awareness by getting told where to go.
At the same time, that perfect teamcomp of premades gives another advantage, especially because you can create easier +1 situations by coordinating via voice chat. Resulting in players that arent really that good at their professions to win matches, though they cant win 1v1s at all.

Solution to all of this is quite simple actually.
1 -> personal statistics have to be reflected somehow into calculation of mmr at end of match, especially amounts of deaths, kills, dmg, healing and caps
2+3 -> Professions have to be unlocked for ranked by playing 150+ unranked matches
4 -> Separate mmr for premade-queueing and soloqueueing, with premade-mmr being calculated like mmr right now is, solo-mmr as mentioned above

And on topic:
Resetting mmr (soft or hard reset, doesnt matter) will only help accounts with thousands of ranked matches that got good sometime during the last few hundreds or so. It wont make players magically good. And it will not resolve the issue of getting carried to a high mmr.

Chaith.8256:

…it’s not about what the developers can do to to fix help only those that massacred their MMR by grinding 400 losses on safe-pip spot solo queue in early season…

The shade of it all, lmao

Didn’t you say you made a F2P account Ithilwen? What’s your w/l ratio on it?

That would be the best way of seeing how badly the MMR is impacting your main account.

@ zynt No I have two paid HoT enabled accounts. I have teamed with diamond and legendary players and held my own in there matches.

Again, back to the point. Any matchmaking system that is put in place will be crippled by the already huge MMR differences. The MMR needs reset.

Solo queue would be a big help in addition to a reset of MMR.

@trevor boyer

It goes without saying that a system designed to create fair matches is a prerequisite. I cannot fathom why anyone thought that deliberately unfair matchmaking was competitive or fair.

All of those changes need to be made.

To be honest, that will make your experience even worse. You will get even more lopsided games than you currently do.

MMR is not the culprit of bad games. The matchmaking algorithm is.

That was the season before this. I’ve spent considerable time and some formal training getting better since then.

Ithilwen.1529:

That was the season before this. I’ve spent considerable time and some formal training getting better since then.

Can we get an update to it?

Exciton.8942:

To be honest, that will make your experience even worse. You will get even more lopsided games than you currently do.

MMR is not the culprit of bad games. The matchmaking algorithm is.

That’s what I was thinking. Resetting MMR isn’t going to change how MM works. There will still be pre-mades vs solo etc.

It’s funny how you use anecdotal evidence and more or less made up “facts” to prove your point. Seriously, most of the things you present as facts in this thread you have no way of knowing unless you literally work at Arenanet. Since you obviously don’t, we can only assume that these facts were rectally extracted.

That said, I wouldn’t be against resetting MMR. I wish they’d just get rid of pips, do matchmaking purely by MMR and have each division be represented by a certain MMR range. It’s how most other competitive games do it. Banning free2play accounts from sPvP is a terrible idea though.