Guild Wars 2

So this is a simple question; how do we grow the PvP community (devs AND players). In NA the community is small enough that I will recognize 90% of the people in each match. I have a few thoughts in each category:

Devs:
1. People need more incentive outside of a daily that takes 10 minutes to complete. The hardcore PvP community that play day in and day out make only a few gold an hour. The reward tracks are an awesome improvement, but still not enough.
2. Be more transparent and communicate with the community.
-Bug fixes
-Releases
-Algorithms for leaderboard points and matchmaking
3. Fix all these bugs in a timely manner, downed bodies would run across the map and went unfixed for a very long time.
4. Actually punish people that are getting constantly reported for throwing games. If you need help analyzing all of this data I would love to help (fellow dev here)

Community:
1. We are awful humans. No one is welcoming to new players. People throw matches, people argue within teams. No one wants to join our community, and if that is the case then the devs can’t help us anyways.

They have created this environment and only further encouraged it by continuing to force new players into the game without a proper tutorial AND then by matching them with/against veteran players.

the problem is anet focusing on the wrong things.

they need to focus on making pvp fun, when something is fun, people will continue to do it and even tell their friends to try it, someone said it like this

1 make it fun
2 more players pvp since its… fun
3 better population means better Q times
4 better Q (and more people) means more people will try to organize as teams
5 more teams means more competition in the top tourneys
6 more competition + more people can increase the drive for people to actually watch the matches
7 more people watching matches means we can start to think of esports again

they thought they have a good game, so they can skip 1-6 and just start at 7, but it doesn’t work that way. i think the pvp in this game after 4 years shows that

They are actually punishing people that do initiative to form pvp teams, guilds or subreddit into the pvp forum section.

Alienating the leaders of a community is surely a reason we don’t have much “leadership initiative” around the game.

The pvp players come over that forum and don’t go into other section.

So, for a starter they should encourage spvp leaders to create communities where PVP players go read: “into the pvp section of the forum”.

-Communication..

There is barely any Dev talk on the Forums.
All Anet does is reply on some silly funny reddit stuff.

-More balancing

Start with that

Hire more employees.

nicknamenick.2437:

-Communication..

There is barely any Dev talk on the Forums.
All Anet does is reply on some silly funny reddit stuff.

-More balancing

Start with that

I could go into the mathematics (discrete combinatorials) of balancing this game, it is not straightforward nor simple.

JordanJD.3209:

nicknamenick.2437:

-Communication..

There is barely any Dev talk on the Forums.
All Anet does is reply on some silly funny reddit stuff.

-More balancing

Start with that

I could go into the mathematics (discrete combinatorials) of balancing this game, it is not straightforward nor simple.

I could do some math for you.

More balance patches > Quaggans & Loot chests

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

JordanJD.3209:

nicknamenick.2437:

-Communication..

There is barely any Dev talk on the Forums.
All Anet does is reply on some silly funny reddit stuff.

-More balancing

Start with that

I could go into the mathematics (discrete combinatorials) of balancing this game, it is not straightforward nor simple.

I could do some math for you.

More balance patches > Quaggans & Loot chests

Stay in school children or you end up with people like this…

Continuing on trying to be productive, feel free to offer solutions to Anet outside of saying balance patches are needed. If you keep getting rekt by a single class then use that class and be a god tier, s class beast.

Pyriall.1683:

Hire more employees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%E2%80%99_law

This is a really good explanation as to why that hurts and does not help. Whereas there is an opposite idea of removing 90% of developers and letting the remaining 10% finish the work. I would not want to see any devs lose their jobs though

Pyriall.1683:

They have created this environment and only further encouraged it by continuing to force new players into the game without a proper tutorial AND then by matching them with/against veteran players.

Don’t forget those players are already angry from being forced to rank up on characters they don’t know how to use for achievements.

My suggestions would be something about match making too, it’s horrible.

Also the Dishonor system, as an Aussie, if I dc, my net is no where good enough to make it back in 1:30 minutes… So quite often I find myself returning to the game, winning and getting dishonored which always results in logging off and playing another game.

JordanJD.3209:

4. Actually punish people that are getting constantly reported for throwing games. If you need help analyzing all of this data I would love to help (fellow dev here)

Community:
1. We are awful humans. No one is welcoming to new players. People throw matches, people argue within teams. No one wants to join our community, and if that is the case then the devs can’t help us anyways.

These two points to me are pretty crucial. I have at least a hundred people blocked for throwing kitten and throwing matches.

Here’s an example. For several games in a row, either my team or the enemy team got the same guy, who refused to play for arbitrary reasons. We all know what these are, things like “I don’t like our comp, we only have a two cap, we lost a beast so were gunna lose.” The majority of us reported him, for each game. I ended up blocking him as did most people in the games. I had a game with him two days ago. He threw the match again, just camping out in home and from what I can see from the others whom I haven’t blocked, he was berating players on our team the whole time.

I looked up how they determine banning and found they use a report/time function, which won’t ever cause a ban in a pvp match due to their system to determine it, source is here . If all nine other players submit a report to a player there likely won’t be any action taken as thats a 9/10min intervals maximum, which doesn’t seem to be enough. I’d also assume they use machine learning to determine the abnormal numbers, which will be heavily skewed by gold sellers as they tend to be in areas of high population density and get reported by everyone in the map nearly simultaneously. (I am assuming all report functions share a common system). If my assumptions are correct then a fix is needed badly.

There’s entirely too much work to do at this point to make PvP in this game successful. They’d need to redesign the bulk of the animations to be obvious in their functionality and intent to those playing and spectating. Not the particle effect explosion we have now with endless aoe skills laid on top of one another and masking the instant cast nonsense. People want to see the action and we haven’t seen it in this game for years.

The structuring of the ladder is also entirely wrong. It should not be seasonal, placement in it should not be tied to the seasonal rewards, and it should not be based on farming matches. And it most definitely should not prevent people from falling back down the ladder – this might be the worst of it as it actually effects the matchmaking (which is to say, the “playing experience”) egregiously. This is possibly the biggest hindrance to seasonal PvP at this point, as it straight up changed the entire feel of the game once you reach Ruby tier 1 and hit the pile up of terrible players who are stuck and unable to fall back down the ladder to where they belong.

Not to mention that they’ve ignored the calls from players to fix the personal scoring so that it actually follows the logic of winning the match. Something we’ve harped on since release. It’s now, what, year four since release and I’m still explaining to people in Ruby and Diamond that their personal score will not win them the match.

The PvP in this game is not logically planned or executed. It’s a mess. It’s not even really PvP at this point. It’s a PvP game mode in a very casual game for casual people who don’t necessarily want to test themselves against others and work to improve but would rather farm the shiny’s out of endless loot boxes.

These just aren’t problems you can fix in the game at this point IMO. You’d basically be remaking the game. And if you’re going to do that you might as well just make a new game.

The is the fact that there are no actual pvp devs. The only thing devs related to pvp can modify are the amulets, thus it is only logical that pvp balance has always been all over the place.

JordanJD.3209:

nicknamenick.2437:

-Communication..

There is barely any Dev talk on the Forums.
All Anet does is reply on some silly funny reddit stuff.

-More balancing

Start with that

I could go into the mathematics (discrete combinatorials) of balancing this game, it is not straightforward nor simple.

Did i say its simple?

You ask how do we keep pvp community alive..
I say more communication and balancing whould be a good start and than you reply with its not simple…

Uhm ok. well maby a Dev could talk on the forum and start talking and let them see they care.. is that hard? then comes the balancing, sure they could make mistakes but thats why they need to do more balancing in between not this 4 times in a year lets shift meta and be done with it style.

1. Encourage guilds & teams, currently there’s nothing that encourages people to form pvp guilds & teams. You could say pro tournaments are that, but overwhelming majority of your players can’t compete at that level. So they simply don’t bother. This game mode can use a competitive mode that allows full guilds & pre-made teams to fight against each other. Mashing soloQ’ers and pre-mades together don’t work, you end up frustrating everybody as a result.

If you want more teams to play at a competitive level, and create more competition in pro tourneys, you need to start from the bottom. And really, in all MMO’s, guilds are often the reason why people keep playing certain games. Even when people get bored or tired of a game, they often continue to login for their friends & guildies.

Btw GW2 used to have an organic GvG scene. It was very active, lots of guilds were involved in player created tournaments. They helped make WvW a very action packed place, full of fights, and they did it mainly for fun & bragging rights. We’re talking about guilds full of players interested in Guild vs Guild gameplay. But Anet refused to acknowledge them and failed to provide them a proper competitive game mode, most of them have left the game by now. All they wanted was a competitive 15v15 GvG game mode.

2. Online ladder & stats system. I always find it hard to find info on anything with GW2, be it the builds certain teams use, or stats of individuals/teams. You look at other games, you see detailed stats of a lot of things, including builds. Example: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/pvp/leaderboards/3v3

This game really can use a proper ladder/ranking system, with ways to view the builds people use. People who are competitive minded care about stuff like these more than legendary wings. Even old games like DAOC had camelotherald for people to see, that thing drove players to compete every day.

3. More game modes than Conquest. Conquest gets stale. You want to keep people’s interest so they keep logging in. But if all I have to look forward to is Foefire or Coliseum conquest gameplay, some nights I simply opt to play other games. I’m hoping to see 2v2 & 3v3 arena tdm, 10v10 capture the flag, 15v15 GvG, etc.. You give people options & choices, they’ll login and play more.

4. More things to occupy people’s interest when they aren’t in the game, such as live gameplay streams, class balance discussions, more pvp talk, dev Q&A, etc.. During HoT beta you had class balance devs go on twitch streams once a week to talk about skills, balance, what they’re considering, what they’re adjusting, etc.. Thousands of people tuned into watch these. These things disappeared, and now we’re back to hush hush play your season no matter how badly balanced things are, and we’ll surprise you with some changes quarterly once the season is over. We definitely can use more balance talks & tweaks more often.

We used to also see more of the pvp devs we know, they did more Q&A on live streams, they showcased the pvp game mode, certain pro players were also more involved and were asked to talk on the live streams. These are all gone, what happened? All I’ve seen in the past few months (outside of pro tourney) were PvE chat related to LW3. Which btw, I hope Anet realizes there are even less viewers that watch these PvE-related streams.

Even if you think you’ve showcased PvP game mode before, you got to remember new players are always coming in. You also got potentially new interested gamers that aren’t playing GW2 but may become interested. So these PvP streams & talks need to continue on a more regular basis.

That’s all I can think of for now. There are more but I’ve typed enough.

This is all on Anet, they got rid of actual levels. I was level 55 before the big level patch which put my right at 80. Way to make PvP convenient for the casuals. Then they get rid of unique skins for PvP. What is the purpose of PvP?

Literally there is no reason to PvP other then fun and the meta isnt fun. No real rewards, skins, trophys for the guild hall are crap compared to basic ones from dungeons.

I have over 8.5k games and i dont have nearly as many games played as these ESL players and to top it off they scrimmage for hours a day. Whats to keep any of them around outside of the ESL? Whats the point of having PvP without a leader board? Whats the point of a Guild Rank Challenger when a team can go 3-0 and get 3rd place? Seriously there was a team who played around 100 games and was 65-35 or something and they didnt place in the top 5.

Players have done everything possible to keep it alive with core 1 vs 1 tournaments, 2 vs 2, 3 vs 3, and storm is still running AG 5 vs 5.

Anet is the reason the community isnt what it could be. Catering to casuals, PvE heros, and then treating the PvP players of GW2 as the Cinderella of the house. This community is pretty darn good, simply ask the question.

Whats the incentive to PvP for a period of time?

I’ve been on this train for 4 years.

Devs: First off, the devs need to really get down to business and balance pvp on a regular basis and separate from the other game modes. The separation is so players in other game modes don’t get hurt. This goes double for the elite specializations, which ran roughshod and kitten broke pvp. Elites are way too strong and rewarding and generally don’t take much skill to play compared to the old specs. The power gap is THE one thing that is driving away players for good, new players and veterans alike.

Also, re-do the league system or abolish it. The pip-based progression is a grind. It takes LUCK to advance NOT SKILL.

Community: For starters, STOP blaming the community. The reason for all this toxicity is the lack of balance and the league system. These are the two things that agitate players the most. Stop blaming “casuals”. There are no casuals. There are no new players. They’re GONE. They got blown out by post-HoT balance and the league system that was catered to them, not their fault. All that’s left are the pros, the hardcore, the tryhards and a pittance of vets that are just desperately trying to keep this alive. Blaming and scapegoating other players will GUARANTEE that no new players ever show up again. Casuals and competitive players played without much problems in the past, thanks to separate arenas. Put this at the feet of the devs.

Good players, in solo queue, are FORCED to carry the worst players ever in PvP. And it doesn’t matter if I am witness to it or your cousin fourteen times removed witnesses it…Everyone can see it easily. Pros stream it and scream about it.

They don’t know how to address it. They STRONGLY believe good players should have to be miserable and should be forced to carry the less-experienced instead of playing with equally-skilled teammates and versing the equally-skilled opponents for good matches. Because it’s the default “system” that many games come with…little do they know that almost all successful competitive games/modes don’t use it.

Players say this and play like that.
Devs do that and fix it like this.

Sadly, we are never on the same page because there is such a gap between skill levels that this PvP mode will never have justice. Yes. Who doesn’t enjoy playing their hearts out for a bunch of PvErs going for achievements. Is that what’s killing PvP…PvE marketing?

And game has the decency to put solo queue players with premades like equals. Lovely.

Plus, I think they should wipe ranked stats per season.

STEP 1: Keep the community alive by continuously having different in-game events.

FIRST IDEA – In-game ranked team-only tournament. This should happen during Pro League’s off-season and Ranked’s off-season. This should encourage the formation of teams or generally encourage more teams to participate.

SECOND IDEA – Restructure divisions to all have leaderboards based on MMR. This won’t necessarily grow the community but it will keep it competitive. It will keep people playing not necessarily to get to Legend but to be the best in their current Division whilst also trying to get to Legend.

THIRD IDEA: Give us Automated Tournaments that are better than Guild Challenger League:
I don’t think the Guild challenger League is doing much to invigorate participation in GW2 pvp. And to fix that, I’m suggesting anet create an automated tournament outside of pro league, that has smaller rewards than Pro Leage but more significant than it currently is. How do you achieve this ‘more significance’ thing? Well, remember that authorized shoutcaster program that you were running before? Yea, do that again but this time, notify casters about Automated Tournament matchups based on the High MMR teams playing against each other.
The casters who are available will cast these games on twitch, building themselves a fanbase, whilst also promoting GW2 pvp, whilst also giving good players some exposure, making those players confident enough to play in things like Pro League… does that sound like a win-win to you? ‘Cos it sounds like a win-win to me.
Also make the first place rewards $500 and a legendary weapon of your choice that isn’t account bound (so it can be sold – this may not seem important but it is!! Think about it!), Second place can be $250, gems or a combination of those two things and third place could be just gems and gold. Just make the rewards miniature versions of the pro league so if these players never compete in pro league, they can at least feel like they are getting something for their time.

1) Bring back auto-tourney (paid tournament) for TEAM QUEUE ONLY

2) Bring back the MYSTIC FORGE for the paid tournament chest, for a PVP skins system

3) Put more rewards to buy with the league ticket grinds, i.e.: Paid Tourney ticket and some component to create PAID team tourney on MYSTIC FORGE.

4) Bring back QP from paid tourney and the best TEAMS compete each month for gems pools.

Those three things where into the game in 2012 and it foster a community of “teams” that compete hard to get enough QP to make the montly “auto-tourney” where you could win GEMS and get them NOW (not 4 months later…).

Best of all, “all the code is somewhere in SVN, so the proposal is cheap to do”.

BTW, PRO-LEAGUE did kill the NA weekly ESL cups. That ESL event was way better than PRO league, because any team could try it. It was way easier to try the competitive path than it is right now.

It’s why I think, that bringing back paid tourney would help the community to forge more competitive teams. For something they can work over to have great rewards in doing so.

sephiroth.4217:

Pyriall.1683:

They have created this environment and only further encouraged it by continuing to force new players into the game without a proper tutorial AND then by matching them with/against veteran players.

Don’t forget those players are already angry from being forced to rank up on characters they don’t know how to use for achievements.

My suggestions would be something about match making too, it’s horrible.

Also the Dishonor system, as an Aussie, if I dc, my net is no where good enough to make it back in 1:30 minutes… So quite often I find myself returning to the game, winning and getting dishonored which always results in logging off and playing another game.

Matchmaking is huge I agree with this, we need to implement the ELO system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

I don’t know if anything can be done about dishonor in your case unless they can detect a drop in connection (which can be faked out by removing ethernet cable from computer as well)

nicknamenick.2437:

JordanJD.3209:

nicknamenick.2437:

-Communication..

There is barely any Dev talk on the Forums.
All Anet does is reply on some silly funny reddit stuff.

-More balancing

Start with that

I could go into the mathematics (discrete combinatorials) of balancing this game, it is not straightforward nor simple.

Did i say its simple?

You ask how do we keep pvp community alive..
I say more communication and balancing whould be a good start and than you reply with its not simple…

Uhm ok. well maby a Dev could talk on the forum and start talking and let them see they care.. is that hard? then comes the balancing, sure they could make mistakes but thats why they need to do more balancing in between not this 4 times in a year lets shift meta and be done with it style.

Communication is simple, the balancing is not is what i referred to. Thank you for replying.

How do you keep it alive? It is killing itself. Its a meta-biased cyclone of toxic psychopaths who will outwardly rage at you for even playing a build that isn’t the top Metabuild for your class. Be it on your team or otherwise. People who will rage in full caps over the notion that you dare play something that isn’t the standard, on top of the fact that everyone screams at each other if they start losing.

Pvp is a septic wound. An ocean of free floating hostility fueled by rage induced tryhards who will whisper you and then immediately block you to avoid retribution.

You can’t fix it. Its a societal decay of the utmost degree. And as a result, these morally bankrupt troglodytes will completely destroy the pvp scene until its as toxic as league of legends.

- bring back the old leaderboard system (so mmr can be more accurately fathomed and grouped) however the elo algorithm sounds more accurate

- make skills and traits pvp-exclusive (so classes can be fine tuned w/o affecting pve/wvw)

- more game modes and more diverse maps outside conquest mode (since deathmatch is dead and sronghold is clinging on but slowly dying )

4: allow personal servers to be modded (can be a huge attraction for casual play)

cyberzombie.7348:

- bring back the old leaderboard system (so mmr can be more accurately fathomed and grouped) however the elo algorithm sounds more accurate

- make skills and traits pvp-exclusive (so classes can be fine tuned w/o affecting pve/wvw)

- more game modes and more diverse maps outside conquest mode (since deathmatch is dead and sronghold is clinging on but slowly dying )

4: allow personal servers to be modded (can be a huge attraction for casual play)

the mods idea got my attention, what kind of mods are you thinking?

JordanJD.3209:

the mods idea got my attention, what kind of mods are you thinking?

well pretty much anything i can imagine from tf2 and other half life servers but here’s some of my thoughts

-map designs
-perma quickness/aclairity
-x5 damage mods
-healing negation
-condi negation
-power negation
-cd removal
-amulet mods

Allure.1249:

How do you keep it alive? It is killing itself. Its a meta-biased cyclone of toxic psychopaths who will outwardly rage at you for even playing a build that isn’t the top Metabuild for your class. Be it on your team or otherwise. People who will rage in full caps over the notion that you dare play something that isn’t the standard, on top of the fact that everyone screams at each other if they start losing.

Pvp is a septic wound. An ocean of free floating hostility fueled by rage induced tryhards who will whisper you and then immediately block you to avoid retribution.

You can’t fix it. Its a societal decay of the utmost degree. And as a result, these morally bankrupt troglodytes will completely destroy the pvp scene until its as toxic as league of legends.

Haha! Correct! All that’s left are a handful of vets and the tryhards.

JordanJD.3209:

sephiroth.4217:

Pyriall.1683:

They have created this environment and only further encouraged it by continuing to force new players into the game without a proper tutorial AND then by matching them with/against veteran players.

Don’t forget those players are already angry from being forced to rank up on characters they don’t know how to use for achievements.

My suggestions would be something about match making too, it’s horrible.

Also the Dishonor system, as an Aussie, if I dc, my net is no where good enough to make it back in 1:30 minutes… So quite often I find myself returning to the game, winning and getting dishonored which always results in logging off and playing another game.

Matchmaking is huge I agree with this, we need to implement the ELO system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

I don’t know if anything can be done about dishonor in your case unless they can detect a drop in connection (which can be faked out by removing ethernet cable from computer as well)

Nothing can be done about it, we need the dishonor system to stop actual abusers…. It doesn’t happen much which means the dishonor timeout is always less than 6 minutes, but when I have a coffee next to me and keen to play games I become very impatient and just play something else.

- Community has put countless threads on the forums wanting 2v2 and 3v3 deathmatch, we get stronghold, a gametype with literally no critical thinking involved that hardly anyone asked for.

- Leagues seem to be just as bad as when they started, showing no player skill

- Community asks for more build diversity out of seeing the power creep of the expansion a year ago. Instead every patch they remove and add amulets because they the pvp balance team doesn’t have the power to run their own game mode, so they take away and remove amulets in a desperate attempt at whack a mole balance.

- Community asks for better rewards, still nothing compared to pve

- Hardly no dev feedback except the select few poor optimistic souls “you know who you are”

-And on and on we go

Despite the very slow crawl forward the majority of the developers are honestly out of touch with the community that once was. Many others myself included have repeated the same crap on what needs to change with no avail. Maybe they’d get the message when nobody is left. I’m glad to I haven’t tortured myself with false promises by leaving the game in season 1.

Countless

It’s all up to the Devs to save their game at this point. Without Dev action, anything the community does is for naught. The community needs to drive them toward fixing the right things instead of leading them astray.

Developers

• Nerf Power Creep Elite specs are the biggest offender, but stat creep and increase in trait power from the June 2015 patch contribute as well.
• Stop balancing with amulets You can’t do it. Removing one to kill a powerful build ends up killing a few others, yet the same build remains in play with a different amulet. Put a proper stat system into PvP and fix balance by changing the overpowered abilities.
• League System Progression-based leagues have proven to be terrible time and again. Drop it and go with a skill-based league. If you want to have progression, then make it done through achievements and games played, possibly with a bonus to progression in higher skill levels.
• Rating and Matchmaking The algorithms are pretty terrible. Removing separation based on league will help, but the approach needs an overhaul.

Community

• Stop asking for new formats We had deathmatch in Courtyard, part of capture the flag in Spirit Watch, and then Stronghold. None have been close to working; it’s time to stop trying new things and fix stuff that’s closer to working. ANet has a bad habit of leaving things half-complete and going on to something else. Stop encouraging it.
• Solo Queue Stop asking for it. Vote “no” in the upcoming poll. It’s a waste of time. If their matchmaker worked properly, this wouldn’t be an issue. It’s just diverting resources instead of fixing a real problem.

Fixing their trash matchmaking would be a start.

Allure.1249:

How do you keep it alive? It is killing itself. Its a meta-biased cyclone of toxic psychopaths who will outwardly rage at you for even playing a build that isn’t the top Metabuild for your class. Be it on your team or otherwise. People who will rage in full caps over the notion that you dare play something that isn’t the standard, on top of the fact that everyone screams at each other if they start losing.

Pvp is a septic wound. An ocean of free floating hostility fueled by rage induced tryhards who will whisper you and then immediately block you to avoid retribution.

You can’t fix it. Its a societal decay of the utmost degree. And as a result, these morally bankrupt troglodytes will completely destroy the pvp scene until its as toxic as league of legends.

How I wish I could upvote you more than once.

i think pretty much more interesting people just need to put out content

So i’ll put in my two cents, which can then be flamed. As in game so in forums. The only healthy pvp community i ever saw, which was fun to play with/helpful to new players and a good mix of pros to medium talent, had a zero tolerance policy. where a player was banned permanently over their first social violation. I admit that i am unsure if it was only friendly players left or people too scared to be toxic. but either way the result was amazing/refreshing. the same game changed it’s policy 1 year in, in favor of a higher player base. and when that happened it all joined the rest of the toxic communities out there.

on a nonsocial aspect:
1. A class or build is not over powered simply because YOU can’t beat it.
2. A class or build is not under powered simply because YOU can’t win with it.
3. There is no magical programming code line that forces players of “equal skill” to login when you are on/queue up for your pvp mode. programming code does not over ride free will.
4. There can be no balance without counter balance. If high dps amulets/builds are around then builds/amulets high in damage reduction need to be around.

When people complain about match making, they aren’t complaining about wanting perfect balance, they are complaining about super lopsided matches.

Example:
The other night I was duo que with a buddy and we were joined in to a team with one pro player and two other veteran players that I see around all the time. We were put against a team of clearly inexperienced players and the match resulted in us winning 500 to 0. Why would the algorithm ever allow this to happen?

~ That is what people are complaining about.

Exedore.6320:

It’s all up to the Devs to save their game at this point. Without Dev action, anything the community does is for naught. The community needs to drive them toward fixing the right things instead of leading them astray.

Developers

• Nerf Power Creep Elite specs are the biggest offender, but stat creep and increase in trait power from the June 2015 patch contribute as well.
• Stop balancing with amulets You can’t do it. Removing one to kill a powerful build ends up killing a few others, yet the same build remains in play with a different amulet. Put a proper stat system into PvP and fix balance by changing the overpowered abilities.
• League System Progression-based leagues have proven to be terrible time and again. Drop it and go with a skill-based league. If you want to have progression, then make it done through achievements and games played, possibly with a bonus to progression in higher skill levels.
• Rating and Matchmaking The algorithms are pretty terrible. Removing separation based on league will help, but the approach needs an overhaul.

Community

• Stop asking for new formats We had deathmatch in Courtyard, part of capture the flag in Spirit Watch, and then Stronghold. None have been close to working; it’s time to stop trying new things and fix stuff that’s closer to working. ANet has a bad habit of leaving things half-complete and going on to something else. Stop encouraging it.
• Solo Queue Stop asking for it. Vote “no” in the upcoming poll. It’s a waste of time. If their matchmaker worked properly, this wouldn’t be an issue. It’s just diverting resources instead of fixing a real problem.

Your overall idea of “fix what is there instead of making new content” is perfect. I could not agree more with this. Thank you!

Trevor Boyer.6524:

When people complain about match making, they aren’t complaining about wanting perfect balance, they are complaining about super lopsided matches.

Example:
The other night I was duo que with a buddy and we were joined in to a team with one pro player and two other veteran players that I see around all the time. We were put against a team of clearly inexperienced players and the match resulted in us winning 500 to 0. Why would the algorithm ever allow this to happen?

~ That is what people are complaining about.

This is well understood by the community and I am guessing at this point by devs. I am sure it is not trivial to implement a more accurate system. My quick two cents on this topic is people want:

1. super fast queues
2. perfectly ‘equal’ matchmaking on teams

But having both of these I am sure is extremely difficult, and I would say mainly because the community does not have the numbers to support fast queues at all skill levels.

JordanJD.3209:

nicknamenick.2437:

-Communication..

There is barely any Dev talk on the Forums.
All Anet does is reply on some silly funny reddit stuff.

-More balancing

Start with that

I could go into the mathematics (discrete combinatorials) of balancing this game, it is not straightforward nor simple.

Oh, is there continuous combinatorics now? Color my graph surprised.

Trevor Boyer.6524: When people complain about match making, they aren’t complaining about wanting perfect balance, they are complaining about super lopsided matches.

Example:
The other night I was duo que with a buddy and we were joined in to a team with one pro player and two other veteran players that I see around all the time. We were put against a team of clearly inexperienced players and the match resulted in us winning 500 to 0. Why would the algorithm ever allow this to happen?

Warlock: the algorithim that can only take the players that are online and queued up for your mode. like i said anet can’t make players out of thin air. i had 1hr 45min queue times this last season, because it was matching within divison. last season it was matching outside division and queue times were better but too many complained about the equal skill thing and so 2hr(basically) queue times occured(again). matching outside of divison has to happen simply because of player pop. online at any given time.