Guild Wars 2

Well, it has taken me about 45 minutes to actually post this but..I cannot soloQ anymore what so ever. Leagues are so imbalanced rn with poor players and poor matchmaking. I decided finally that I need to take a break before this PvP meta and leagues actually turn my love for this game into sadness and frustration.

I mean..just today I was doing my thing, soloQ’ing, get into a match vs 4-man premade with 5 soloq on my team. Ok fine, w/e. About 4 minutes before the match ended I ran into a long existing bug, the stuck bug (where you can’t dodge or move, but you can jump up and down repeatedly). Not only was I stuck in place for over 4 MINUTES, we ended up losing the match. And although I had the second highest personal score on my team, and most of the top player awards…I lost 2 pips. 2 pips. Against a 4-man. Where a long-existing bug kittening took me out of the game for like half the match.

So….in my time that I will be taking off from the game, I would love to collaborate with the community on what we can do to start shifting this PvP into something, I don’t know, playable. Let me know what you guys think (constructively) about what we can do, in the probably useless, hoping ANet might see it.

I have noticed that the pips algorithms seem… flawed at the least, and picking numbers out of a hat at worst.
Hopefully the fix the immob bug soon though, since that was a major part of your experience. Come back once it’s fixed?

Phink.9153:

Well, it has taken me about 45 minutes to actually post this but..I cannot soloQ anymore what so ever. Leagues are so imbalanced rn with poor players and poor matchmaking. I decided finally that I need to take a break before this PvP meta and leagues actually turn my love for this game into sadness and frustration.

I mean..just today I was doing my thing, soloQ’ing, get into a match vs 4-man premade with 5 soloq on my team. Ok fine, w/e. About 4 minutes before the match ended I ran into a long existing bug, the stuck bug (where you can’t dodge or move, but you can jump up and down repeatedly). Not only was I stuck in place for over 4 MINUTES, we ended up losing the match. And although I had the second highest personal score on my team, and most of the top player awards…I lost 2 pips. 2 pips. Against a 4-man. Where a long-existing bug kittening took me out of the game for like half the match.

So….in my time that I will be taking off from the game, I would love to collaborate with the community on what we can do to start shifting this PvP into something, I don’t know, playable. Let me know what you guys think (constructively) about what we can do, in the probably useless, hoping ANet might see it.

I applaud you. Rather than just bashing the game, you’re willing to discuss about the future of PvP.

I find that its a lot less stressful to play with an objective other than winning in an environment designed to make it nearly impossible to progress in a reasonable manner. Focus on becoming a better player overall and you’ll find that you’ll enjoy yourself a lot more. I personally count it as a success if I can rack up over 150-200 points during an obviously losing situation (while doing what my class is meant to do, naturally). Once you feel you’ve gotten good enough on your own, there’s no other answer to progression other than making your own pre-made with other competent players.

SlayerSixx.5763:

I find that its a lot less stressful to play with an objective other than winning in an environment designed to make it nearly impossible to progress in a reasonable manner. Focus on becoming a better player overall and you’ll find that you’ll enjoy yourself a lot more. I personally count it as a success if I can rack up over 150-200 points during an obviously losing situation (while doing what my class is meant to do, naturally). Once you feel you’ve gotten good enough on your own, there’s no other answer to progression other than making your own pre-made with other competent players.

That’s kind of what I’ve been doing lately before I decided I just can’t play anymore. I have over 1500 games on Mesmer (my main) so I know the in-s and out-s of the class. It’s just so tough with the current matchmaking to even practice rotations ya know?

I’m pretty much guessing that no changes will come this entire season as ANet does whatever it is they actually do. So I want to take this conversation into what we can do to improve next season and hopefully influence some people to come back into the game.

I’ve thought about stuff like pre-placement matches similar to other games, just to at least give a general spacing at the beginning of a league. So it isn’t a kittening mosh pit of random players of random skills. The only problem I see with this is that, at least in my opinion, if the matchmaking system isn’t improved then you will still see lower MMR players getting carried now and again, placing them in divisions they shouldn’t be in yet. I think this is mainly possible to the fact that, even if you have 4 competent players, if even one member dies early in the game it is so easy for the other team to snowball a map to win. Especially on maps like Foefire and Forest..I mean I think Forest is the easiest map to simply win the opening mid-fight and rotate to both entrances of the enemy team and farm them until 500.

So the problems I’m seeing is kind of this combination of poor systems
– Poor matchmaking
– Momentum swings so extremely losing even 1 player (which I agree, you should get momentum..but not be able to snowball a map 500-80)
– Easily snowballed maps
– A generally non-balanced meta, which in turn kinda wrecks low MMR players, which snowballs a map for the enemy team, and the vicious circle continues

Phink.9153

- Poor matchmaking

This, this is why I decided I’m taking a break. I would love to help beta league improvements and I would even talk with devs. I have over 2k games, but I’m sick of the poor matches. I’m also feeling more and more isolated because I enjoy soloing and it feels like the system is rewarding teams.

Yes, I know it is a team sport, but so is Track and Field. Individual performance should matter for something.

Things I would love to discuss:
- matchmaking
- pip system
- how soloqers can play (thinking GW1 had the right idea here)
- would love to listen to balance debates

I’ll see people in pve and wvw.

Mysticjedi.6053:

Phink.9153

- Poor matchmaking

This, this is why I decided I’m taking a break. I would love to help beta league improvements and I would even talk with devs. I have over 2k games, but I’m sick of the poor matches. I’m also feeling more and more isolated because I enjoy soloing and it feels like the system is rewarding teams.

Yes, I know it is a team sport, but so is Track and Field. Individual performance should matter for something.

Things I would love to discuss:
- matchmaking
- pip system
- how soloqers can play (thinking GW1 had the right idea here)
- would love to listen to balance debates

I’ll see people in pve and wvw.

I think the pip system is a HUGE issue for soloq players and just about anyone actually trying to progress w/ out MMR tanking or running solid 5-man premades. So maybe that’s where we should start this discussion for a little while, before moving onto various other points.

If I can get enough responses on this thread to continue and evolve the thread with constructive evaluation, I will start new threads with the specific topics I want to talk about and edit the first post I made with the links…just so we can be a little organized with conversation and not have 5 talking points all talking over eachother. Let’s see what we can do.

I just love this game too much to see it die a horrible, imbalanced, frustrating death.

Phink.9153:

I’ve thought about stuff like pre-placement matches similar to other games, just to at least give a general spacing at the beginning of a league. So it isn’t a kittening mosh pit of random players of random skills. The only problem I see with this is that, at least in my opinion, if the matchmaking system isn’t improved then you will still see lower MMR players getting carried now and again, placing them in divisions they shouldn’t be in yet.

This isn’t a bad idea. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, a lot of games with an competitive ladder do this for all accounts that are just beginning to climb the ladder, so even if you’re an ESL player, you’ll quickly reach the rank you’re meant to be at unless you intentionally play a lot worse than you’re capable of.

As for suggestions, conquest needs to go or get a duper re-work.

Mysticjedi.6053:

Phink.9153

- Poor matchmaking

This, this is why I decided I’m taking a break. I would love to help beta league improvements and I would even talk with devs. I have over 2k games, but I’m sick of the poor matches. I’m also feeling more and more isolated because I enjoy soloing and it feels like the system is rewarding teams.

Yes, I know it is a team sport, but so is Track and Field. Individual performance should matter for something.

Things I would love to discuss:
- matchmaking
- pip system
- how soloqers can play (thinking GW1 had the right idea here)
- would love to listen to balance debates

I’ll see people in pve and wvw.

Unfortunately player points in-game doesn’t mean anything. There’s no method of calculating solo performance in a match.

Though, player points do show whether or not your team is winning team fights, I would remove the point system in-game entirely and replace it with a
Player Death Total
Number of times a node was capped
Number of times a node was decapped

Matchmaking
Been saying this for awhile, but matchmaking needs to be a whole lot smarter. You can’t just put a Number on a player, call it his skill level and all of a sudden have evenly distributed matches. We all know that certain classes, builds, and team compositions do better in others and snowball the match easier.
Option 1
Choose the pool of players and make a 5v5 match based on average mmr as usual. Have another check system in place to redistrubute players based on team stats. For Example:

• After a 5v5 is set, calculate each team’s total condition damages and compare it to each other’s condi cleanses. So if one team have condi Revs and a Sig Necro, place that sig necro on the other team who has no condi defenses. If one team has way more AoE damages than the other, redistribute this class (the 3 dh on the team) amongst the other team instead. There’s a plethora of ways to implements another check system after teams have been distributed. Don’t say you “lack the tech” Anet!
  Option 2
  Either prevent class stacking or prevent same builds from being on the same team. This would diversify the game and actually make matches more fair. Again, a mmr number on a player isn’t exact science so don’t be afraid to intentionally skewing the “mmr has to be even on each side” mentality. It’s clear that the current matchmaking system is flawed.

Pip System & SoloQers
The current Leagues is fine for premades vs premades but not for Solo players. In fact, the League system feels like it was built just for premades only. I would recommend a “Party Up” option at end of game but… even then… people decline invitations because for some reason they just want to SoloQ.

I feel there should be 10 hotjoin servers dedicated for Solo players only. No leagues and no duo or trio team. Then place a Participation in Ranked Queue for players grinding out games without a team. Maybe have them receive tickets if won 200-400-800 matches @ 53% winrate or something similiar.

Matchmaking
Been saying this for awhile, but matchmaking needs to be a whole lot smarter. You can’t just put a Number on a player, call it his skill level and all of a sudden have evenly distributed matches. We all know that certain classes, builds, and team compositions do better in others and snowball the match easier.
Option 1
Choose the pool of players and make a 5v5 match based on average mmr as usual. Have another check system in place to redistrubute players based on team stats. For Example:

• After a 5v5 is set, calculate each team’s total condition damages and compare it to each other’s condi cleanses. So if one team have condi Revs and a Sig Necro, place that sig necro on the other team who has no condi defenses. If one team has way more AoE damages than the other, redistribute this class (the 3 dh on the team) amongst the other team instead. There’s a plethora of ways to implements another check system after teams have been distributed. Don’t say you “lack the tech” Anet!

I like this idea, but I don’t know how long that would actually take to put into the game and get it balanced. To equally balance between 10 members it would have to go through; weapon sets, traits, utility skills, sigils, runes, and amulets, for all 10 players. I don’t know if that’s difficult or easy as I’m not a game developer or programmer but it seems like a lot to balance before every match. I might be slightly missing your point though too, I apologize if I am.

Option 2
Either prevent class stacking or prevent same builds from being on the same team. This would diversify the game and actually make matches more fair. Again, a mmr number on a player isn’t exact science so don’t be afraid to intentionally skewing the “mmr has to be even on each side” mentality. It’s clear that the current matchmaking system is flawed.

I’d agree with that preventing class stacking this in that it will diversify the match. But it still doesn’t fix the problem of MMR tanking and low MMR players being put into matches above their skill level, causing the enemy team to snowball a map after one mid fight. Even if there were 5 different professions, it wouldn’t balance the mechanical skill of newer or lower MMR holding back teams due to proper rotation, etc.

Pip System & SoloQers
The current Leagues is fine for premades vs premades but not for Solo players. In fact, the League system feels like it was built just for premades only. I would recommend a “Party Up” option at end of game but… even then… people decline invitations because for some reason they just want to SoloQ.

I feel there should be 10 hotjoin servers dedicated for Solo players only. No leagues and no duo or trio team. Then place a Participation in Ranked Queue for players grinding out games without a team. Maybe have them receive tickets if won 200-400-800 matches @ 53% winrate or something similiar.

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A party up option would definitely be interesting and maybe push more players towards group play. I see a problem with this in that if a team of soloq players who grouped after a win against other soloq players will start facing other pre-mades who might be on ts and stuff, leading to more stomps. But maybe there can be a separate matchmaking for soloq players who group and guild groups?

For soloq I feel like if a group of random players win together they should be given the option to continue playing together. This is win/win. Anet gets their team focus and soloq players have the option to go it alone or are be paired with people they just happened to click with.

I don’t maybe it’s a stupid idea.