Guild Wars 2

I’m still confused here, what determines whether you’re put on the winning team or the losing team these days? I can’t seem to get placed on the winning team most of the time, which means that whenever I do get a pip or two, they’re almost immediately wiped out. Is there any trick to getting placed on the winning team more often than not?

The system tries to force 50-50 win-loss via mixed-MMR teams. The only way to consistently be on the winning team is to be better than your MMR suggests, as it will then pair you with better players who are expected to carry your incompetence. However, you won’t be incompetent, and thus the match will likely be a blowout in your favor.

For an example of this theory, try and find the recentish thread here from the guy who inherited an account from his friend who was teribad at PvP. His main account is still in Sapphire and losing very frequently, while the bad-MMR account sailed to diamond with 80%+ win rate. Same player. Same profession.

So in order to advance, you have to convince the system that you’re way worse than you actually are, and if you play your best in every match then you will never advance? Seems fair.

You can also occupy a spot where you play your best every match, but where MMR still doesn’t reflect how good you are (I’d suggest that many/most ESL players fall into this category).

There are also other ways to advance. Queue with friends, and make a concerted effort to dodge any other teams that may be queuing at the time so that you get matches against uncoordinated players.

Or queue Stronghold, and farm the randoms who aren’t smart enough to unselect it as a mode preference (and almost invariably have no idea what they’re doing in Stronghold).

I’m not sure intentionally tanking your MMR will even be very easy. I’d imagine that they factor in long-term trends, and those trends are much more impactful than short term trends. So if you have high MMR, tank it over a week of intentionally throwing games, and then start winning again, your MMR will probably raise back quickly to the high level it was at.

But of course, you’re right. Season 1 style matchmaking is pretty terrible, and it’s even worse when Season 1 style pip mechanics are not in place.

Ohoni.6057:

So in order to advance, you have to convince the system that you’re way worse than you actually are, and if you play your best in every match then you will never advance? Seems fair.

Pretty much the whole reason this Matchmaking is horrible. In a pip based system, there is no reason MMR should ever be used to match up people. It should solely be based on a range of pips.

Though I have a feeling I will cruise to higher leagues this season because I tanked so many games playing thief in order to get my 10 wins for achievement points (already have the backpiece, just need to get the achievement points). The classes I’m saving for the end are my good classes so I will cruise through them so easily.

But of course, you’re right. Season 1 style matchmaking is pretty terrible, and it’s even worse when Season 1 style pip mechanics are not in place.

Well I remembered I really enjoyed season 1, because even though I’d often be put into hopelessly unbalanced matches, like with this season, at least if we managed a decent score you could still get a pip or two. This season I still haven’t managed to gain a single tier, because every win is immediately followed by a few losses. I’m not really sure why they thought anyone would enjoy that.

Something strange i noticed:
- in lower and higher tiers of division i get absolutely garbage games.
- in mid of division i get lot of relative easy games o.o

I just can’t seem to advance.. the more days that pass still stuck in ruby the more worrisome it becomes because I need to cross to Diamond to finish my achievements.

Elementalist Owner.7802:

Azoqu.8917:

In a pip based system, there is no reason MMR should ever be used to match up people. It should solely be based on a range of pips.

This. Why can’t they do this? Isn’t a MMR system just more work for them? No reason good players should have to systematically carry bad players… But of course, ArenaNet will make this happen because everyone, even bad players, deserve to be legendary division right?

This season, it’s a grindfest to get legendary rather than a challenge of skill. Just as ANet wanted.

How do you determine who’s a good and who’s a bad player,and I mean this from the match maker’s point of view.
If the match maker tries to create closely matched teams,it’s the players that can really “carry” the less potent players in their teams that will advance.
In seasons 2 and 3 a lot of players got carried themselves by the MM.
You don’t want to carry,I don’t want to carry,no one wants to carry.
The solution to this is a 50/50 MM,that spreads the carrying as evenly as possible among the players.

It’s very easy to determine who is a good player and who is a bad player with proper matchmaking. Forcing good players to carry bad players, that is forcing 50/50 MM, is not a good way to do this, nor is it a good solution.

They could literally just create teams of random players within a certain pip range, and voila, you have a better system than we currently have. And this system is one that sorts players by their skill level. Good players have a higher chance to win their games, and bad players have a higher chance to lose. Players that are better than average in a certain pip range will advance quickly, those who are average will advance more slowly (because comeback and winstreak pips exist), and those who are below average won’t advance.

What you end up with is, after an initial adjustment period, a nice even gradient of skill from Ruby to Legend. I don’t include anything below Ruby, because the safety mechanics mean anyone who plays enough games, no matter how bad they are, will hit Ruby, thus making it the first “real” division in terms of sorting players. Obviously, the gradient would be better if Amber-Sapphire were also real divisions.

I dont really understand what they wanted. Maybe they made the system so everyone regardless of their skill level or competence will get to legendary so they can have rewards, wouldnt be the first time they make something casual friendly. But they mentioned making divisions reflect skill more in the upcoming seasons so it doesnt really make sense.

Frostball.9108:

I dont really understand what they wanted. Maybe they made the system so everyone regardless of their skill level or competence will get to legendary so they can have rewards, wouldnt be the first time they make something casual friendly. But they mentioned making divisions reflect skill more in the upcoming seasons so it doesnt really make sense.

Well, in their words: “This change may widen the skill range of players in each division, but we feel that increased match quality is worth the trade-off of reduced prestige for this season.” ( https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Season-4-Ranked-Matchmaking-Change/first#post6279895 ).

I think they are aware that players will get to Legend more easily.

So, in my opinion, they are not contradicting themselves when they say they want to make divisions reflect skill in the upcoming seasons. According to them, this change is aiming to increase match quality until the other changes are finished.

I’d really love for them to define what makes a good quality match.

Because match quality this season seems pretty garbage, with most games still being blowouts in favor of one team or another, and having to play around incompetent teammates that don’t even understand what’s going on in the match half of the time.

I notice this:

When I hit a win streak, I stay on the win streak “getting good matches or at least balanced matches” so long as I am the top scorer and win the match. As soon as I lose a single match or score low in the end results, I notice the match making quality goes down tremendously and I start getting difficult to impossible to carry matches. There are three ways I’ve noticed, to break a server granted streak of bad match making:

• Play through it, which is painful because it generally will keep you on the bad given match streak until it puts you back at 50% win rate. Then it eases up again and gives you balanced matches or if you are under 50%, it gives you easy matches.
• Stop playing for a couple of days. Not sure why this has anything to do with breaking the server granted streak of bad matches but it always seems to work for me.
• Immediately go find a 5 man team and get some wins before solo que’ing again. No idea why this would matter but it seems that when you tag a few wins with a premade, the server resets your current win/lose streak tag for solo or something. Seems to work for me.

I notice that progression is all about riding that win streak as long as you can and I’m not just talking double pip gains, no. I mean the actual match making eases up and doesn’t toss you so many ridiculously difficult match ups if you just keep winning and make sure your personal score is high at the end. It seems to repeatedly toss you on the winning side “the team that by server recognition, should win the match” if you just get a high score and win. All of your matches become more balanced and easy this way. The problem occurs when you lose that one match and scored less than half of the top scorer on your team. Then you’re put on the kitten list and g’luck catching win to get out of it.

I have no dev spoken evidence to support this perspective but trends I’ve seen during this season seem to support that it’s true or at least in the right direction of something that is true.