Guild Wars 2

Can confirm my team has been running into lots of 5 solo groups

Match me vs good people. Make me struggle for each kill. I don’t watch matchmaking handicapped because people don’t like the teams they face. MMR will sort it out anyhow.

Unranked play should never have any possibility of a solo player meeting a premade of any size.

Yes I know almost all other MMORPGs also do that, but that’s why PvP is bad in those MMORPGs.

TBH the system foro soloQing i liked the most already exists in Guild Wars 1 Random Arena. That system with a fix that minimizes sync entering success and you’ve got a perfect solo arena imho…

Justin ODell.9517:

style.6173:

1. The matchmaking. It is not good. Teams are unbalanced in terms of skill level.
2. Team vs pug. This seems to be happening a lot more than the past. I thought the whole intent of this was for solo people to play together and team people to play together.
3. Lack of solo only play. I’ve yet to see 5 pugs vs 5 pugs. In the old system, I saw that all of the time in solo queue (obviously) and probably 50-75% of the time in team queue.
4. Courtyard. Due to the team vs pug issue I mentioned before, it just snowballs quickly
5. Spirit watch/skyhammer. I did team queue in the past just so that I never saw those maps. Now they are forced on me. I have 2 options: play something that isn’t fun or get dishonor. Bad choices
6. Integrated leaderboards. Will benefit team players more than solo players. There is no way to avoid that. Integrated = bad.
7. On some characters (this one for example), I can’t even queue for maps. I need to log into a different account to even play. I get some error code

Hope that helps.

Thanks. Follow up questions. Anyone else feel free to answer as well.

1) Is this something you’ve noticed primarily in one arena vs the other?
2, 3) Are you willing to wait longer for a match if it greatly reduced the odds of this happening?
7) Does it only happen on just one account, or does it just happen more frequently on that account?

I’m wiling to wait 30 minutes if I can avoid this, and I’m willing to wait 1 hour if you let me choose what map I play and what I don’t want to play. I mean, it’s a game that supposedly let’s you play the way you want, and still I’m using money for gems so that I can play 10 matchs of skyhammer in a row and loose them all because I don’t even want to try after the 3rd skyhammer in a row. Even when it gets only 1 vote it gets selected wtf? I want check boxes so that I can choose which map I want to play, not to play what other people want. I want checkboxes so that I can stare happily at my que time growing hours and wasting my free time so that I can play the map I like. I don’t care. I don’t care about the other maps. I want to play 1 map in particular or maybe 2 if I’m feeling like it, I like to wait for stuff I like so that I can enjoy it. I don’t like to try and miss, try and fail, try and suck kitten I have to play instantly without quitting a map I hate because you force me to play a map I hate and that I can’t even afk because I want to help even though I know I’m gonna loose 8 out of 10 times because I suck because I’m feeling sad, trapped because I can only spent my free time no a video game that I like a lot but never lets me play the way I want because I don’t have a checkbox that lets me choose which map to play and enjoy and have a happy time waiting while my eyes burn and do nothing with my life but I’ll know I’m waiting to do something I like with people with the same skill or at least having fun loosing because I’m playing the map I want and not some random map I hate.

The current changes are not very good. I quite enjoyed soloQ removing it was a big mistake.

Justin ODell.9517:

Lopez.7369:

Didn’t ArenaNet say that the last team arena system evaluated for team size as well? It’s weird that this new check is being rolled out as if it’s completely new — unless it is new, because the developers were lying to the community before.

The old matchmaking did not evaluate for party/roster size at all, which is why we created solo arena.

You’re entitled to your opinion, but I don’t think it’s been a disaster, we just need to tweak the configs… which is something we expected would need to do. This is why the beta ladder will start the 16th, and not today.

Tweak all you want, Im still unable to do ranked/unranked. because your fancy new ui banner wont play an animation so i can enter a que. been this way since the patch hit.
And im missing alot o stats on my pvp page ontop of that.

So to me, this is a disaster.

dont forget all the ’’other’’ good people are playing ranked now so theyre going to be joining too its going to take a while for the match making to settle how about lets give it a chance before you start complaining about the best change in gw2 pvp for a long time.

Justin ODell.9517:

style.6173:

I never thought I’d say that I miss the old system, but wow. This new system was NOT ready for prime time. It is not fun.

Can you elaborate? We have plenty of things we can tweak to improve matchmaking now, so qualitative feedback is useful.

When you see guild tags on all 5 of the players. And you realize your pugs w sub 80s doesn’t stand a chance.

2 2 1 or 3 2 teams are more than able to match 5 teams, allowing for a little grace to penalties etc.

There will always be a chance factor in matchmaking, and smaller teams may need that penalty help as compensation over time..

Good players don’t need TS anyway, most rotations are pretty obvious, as is when to disengage. The main thing is being matched with other experienced players.

What would NOT be good is one experienced player and 4 new solo q players vs a team of 5 new players. Whether they win or lose this is NOT fun for the player that isn’t new….

I cannot stress enough how not fun this situation is… :p

Sebastian.4610:

Justin ODell.9517:

sendaf.8375:

If you have a team of 5 people, chances are they are organized. They cover each others builds and may be on TS together. Now this very organized build is facing 2 groups of 2 man teams and a solo player. Sure even if the 2 man groups are perfectly synchronized together, they don’t know whats going on with the other 3 people on their teams. The 5 man team has a huge advantage….

Not super experienced in TPVP so please correct me if this is wrong but this is how I see the problem at least….

We understand that perfectly, which is why the new system takes party size into consideration. How much it does this is configurable. It seems people want it to be stricter. I’m cool with making that change, I just don’t want jump the gun and knee jerk some values based on initial reactions that could be because by unknown expectations.

Well for starters a person queued alone should NEVER be placed against a 5 man premade.

honestly best option is to make solo Q separate again.

I disagree. Like the MOD said, it’s a little too soon (months soon) to jump the gun when everyone of the same ranks are fighting for a place on the leaderboards.
As for being strict against premades and solo players, make it so that you lose very little to nothing against premades and winning gives you a huge payout.

-Solo players have better odds playing against other solo que’d players, even at low rank.
Higher ranked solo players have better odds playing against duo or team que’d players.

Team que’d players have better odds playing against other team players, even if those players are lower ranked. Triple premades should supercede, duo players, superseding solo players, etc. Both needing a +1 filler should always pick a higher ranked solo player.

An all solo team against a full 5man teams can give (should give) a HUGE payout if won, a big payout if in the 400 point margin and a null paying in a 300 point margin.

Reasoning
Spvp rank never meant anything… by default spvp is so dependent on your team that the top 20 spvp players are always changing on a weekly/monthly basis. And there were a LOT of solo players in spvp. Some even trolling, running around the map after a mid wipe because they suddenly “give up” (so many of these people). However, if you’re actually a high ranked solo player, there’s a better chance you’d be teamed up with other higher ranked solo players, with duo’s, and even low ranked premades.
Where losing a match against premades isn’t that much of a big deal, yet, it can be very rewarding.

In the long run, solo players will have their own rank and/or spot on the leaderboards while premades will take their top spots as usual.

It’s day 1, I agree is too early to jump to conclusion, I was used to solo TeamQ and never noticed too big of a difference on my matches compared to SoloQ, just people more used to play on 2 points and rotate on 3rd if necessary.

I also like the fact that I could easily find matches solo or duo, will hopefully try with a team soon.

What I really dislike is that I found myself in bad team composition several times.

I mainly play guardian and engineer. When queueing with engi I never ever found a guardian on my team, but found several fellow engineers.

“Ok, let’s queue with guardian” → all matches with at least 2 guards -.-" One with 3 (which we actually won )

So, please fix composition, I would wait slightly longer to avoid bad composition (= redundant classes)

But I want to play it more before saying “good or bad”, same for courtyard, up to now it’s a no go, but I want to play it more tbh, btw we really need templates

I really love “Unranked”, I personally would never play it, but to my anxious friends seems a relief not to think about rank and just play (even if now technically all matches are unranked, I’m talking in prospective).

Having too many Queues can divide player base, I would stick with the system for now and test season, conclusions will be drawn after that.

TL;DR for devs: fix class composition please, having 2 modes means we ABSOLUTELY NEED TEMPLATES, rest will be tested more

Justin ODell.9517:

You’re entitled to your opinion, but I don’t think it’s been a disaster, we just need to tweak the configs… which is something we expected would need to do. This is why the beta ladder will start the 16th, and not today.

Your update made me unable to play the game…. I tried to play…. gave up…. went to sleep…. woke up and tried again…. still nothing… not even a reply to the many people getting this error…. Maybe in the long term this system will make pvp a better place; but the launch has certainly been a disaster.

Why are you trying to reinvent the wheel? Anet already had an amazing pvp system in GW1. The fact that people have asked for the return of random arenas and team arenas multiple times on this thread and since this game has launched should tell you something….

Here’s some qualitative feedback. I have lost all of the past 8 matches or so. In every case, I was matched against 1 or more pvp 80’s. ( I’m level 59 ) .

I wonder why anet believes another player 21 levels higher is a fair match?

A number of times it was also against a team that I suspected of being pre made, because their coordination was fast enough to preclude reasonable typing. Also they are frequently in the same guild.

I honestly don’t get what was wrong with the old system of SoloQ, TeamQ & Hotjoin. It would of been perfect with the new ready system etc.

sendaf.8375:

Why are you trying to reinvent the wheel? Anet already had an amazing pvp system in GW1. The fact that people have asked for the return of random arenas and team arenas multiple times on this thread and since this game has launched should tell you something….

It tells me the population is at an all time low and sacrifices need to be made. Sad really, but, its whatever. Who else thinks a year or two from now soloq will be reintroduced?

Wasn’t the old system what players were always looking for? Anet please take a look at other games with succesful matchmaking systems and take note of them…

What i would suggest is to add duo queue into solo queue and bring back old team queue. Its ridiculous that solo players will pretty much have immediately disadvantage due to unfair teams. Also having solo queue will add more competition to casual players and thats what u need really…

The main goal they’re trying to make is have it to where SoloQ can push you up the leaderboards just like TeamQ could. Or at least help you accomplish a rank or two in that way. They wanted it like this to begin with but:

Justin ODell.9517:

The old matchmaking did not evaluate for party/roster size at all, which is why we created solo arena.

I just hope all the data they collected from SPvP helped for their new algorithms that finally enables them to merge the two together.

I don’t understand why people desperately want solo que when the ranking on SPvP didn’t mean a kitten thing… If they fix the system where they want it, it doesn’t matter.

All I know is that I’ve played 10 games since the new system, coming from kitten win rate under joining without a team in the old team queue system, and 5 of those games have been 50-500 for the other team, and no other game has had my team go above 200.

Now I might have suddenly suffered an aneurysm and am dragging the rest of my team down, or the matchmaking system has been completely broken.

You can ‘wait and see’ all your want, but I’m quitting tpvp for the next few months. Hopefully you fix it before killing the already minuscule pvp playerbase.

Justin ODell.9517:

Can you elaborate? We have plenty of things we can tweak to improve matchmaking now, so qualitative feedback is useful.

I do like the voting system. Dang all of you that vote for Skyhammer.
However, I have two beefs with the new system.

1) I don’t like having to go to the mists to queue up. Its boring! Yes it is a quick pop now, but will it remain that way. Maybe add more stuff to do in the mists or add dueling. Just give me something to do there than what exists.
Or allow us to queue from anywhere again and give a shorter window to join/accept. This imo is the simplest solution.

2) Soloq and teamq should be separate, especially in ranked matches. I only played a few matches yesterday and none of them were close battles, very lopsided. soloq used to have way closer matches more often.

Justin ODell.9517:

sendaf.8375:

If you have a team of 5 people, chances are they are organized. They cover each others builds and may be on TS together. Now this very organized build is facing 2 groups of 2 man teams and a solo player. Sure even if the 2 man groups are perfectly synchronized together, they don’t know whats going on with the other 3 people on their teams. The 5 man team has a huge advantage….

Not super experienced in TPVP so please correct me if this is wrong but this is how I see the problem at least….

We understand that perfectly, which is why the new system takes party size into consideration. How much it does this is configurable. It seems people want it to be stricter. I’m cool with making that change, I just don’t want jump the gun and knee jerk some values based on initial reactions that could be because by unknown expectations.

FYI I think that change would be a huge mistake. When you duo queue playing against a premade really isn’t so bad. In addition, duo queueing and getting matched against terrible premades because the system is making you play worse people to compensate for them being a premade is terrible game play. It is just a stomp session.

Eurantien.4632:

I disagree. I would prefer to play against good players even if they are using VOIP. You can ALWAYS play better and make that “unviable” build work. Just got to have good awareness, positioning, and teammates.

Exactly.

Just my 2 cents:

This patch has fixed many issues that were the bane of me; 5v4/ terrible match making/ bankers in HOTM/ Map selection(skyhammer)….generally good job Anet,

HOWEVER,

The idea to merge solo and team tpvp together was a BIG mistake.
1) Because you cant change class before the game, class stacking is even more prominent now.
I just faced a team with 3x thieves, they got kitten d. Before that i was with 3x necro, we got kitten d. Now no matter how good the matchmaking system is, it can’t compensate for class stacking. NO matter how pefect the match ups should be..there is going to be a disadvantage if class stacking happens.
2) solo queuers should not have to face a 5 or even 4 team premade with ts. Again, you can have the perfect match making system but when a team has a distinct advantage via synergy ( time played together) and the ability to communicate via ts…how is that in anyway a fair, level playing field!?
3) Courtyard should NOT be in rated queues. Its the worst map when it comes to the snowball effect. As a bunker, you should not have to endure playing that build in a map where it is NOT needed. I have played 4x courtyard games, granted i won 4/4 but i felt sorry for the other team. You cannot simply queue up with a build/ class focus on conquest, to then be forced into a free for all zergfest deathmatch.

I feel ANet are definitely going in the right direction but the above points (especially mergence of solo and team queue) is a BIG step in the wrong direction and judging by the forums, they better take heed.

- K L I C K

Please do not overreact to this patch. Let’s at least give it two weeks and allow for the consideration of MMR and whatnot in the matchmaking. At the moment, the system will be assuming that all of us are equals (I think), and will assume that the newbies are just as capable of rotating as the rest of us. Sure, we’re going to have some terrible matchups, but the main focus of these next weeks is to make sure queue times are semi-low and funtional, to make sure everything works from a game perspective, THEN to consider how to make matchups more consistently even.

I generally either solo queued or I queued with groups of 2 or 3 and we would usually get stomped on by tryhard teams of 5 over and over because they were able to communicate far easier. With this patch, my friends and I can solo, duo or trio queue without having to worry about that. I have yet to encounter a solo queue of mine where I’m pitted against a full team (or even a team of 4). In a queue of 3 people, I got a 5 man team opposing me once so far, but that is all.

The far more glaring issue at the moment is the incredible skill differential because the game assumes that we are all equally capable, I guess.

I would be in favor of perhaps lower ranked players not being placed on a team of 4, especially against full 5 man teams. However, this might just discourage 4 man teams from queueing, which we don’t want to do.

As far as the courtyard goes, I don’t see anything wrong with it. I have played the courtyard 5 times since the patch, once with one guildie, another time with 2, and the rest of the time I was alone. Liam McColgan (the guy above me) said there was no need for bunker, but there totally is. The map is about coordinating bursts, and even as a group of solo players, it’s not the worst. The only reason I dislike the map is because it is so obvious that certain players are so incapable of adapting. I’m going to attribute this to skill level. I played as a mesmer for some of the matches, and I swapped from gs/staff to gs/sword pistol because I knew what the map would entail. When I was an ele, I swapped from staff to d/d because again, I knew what the match would entail. All this means is that players are going to have to think in that minute before the match starts and carry an extra weapon set or two. I DO NOT SEE THIS AS AN ISSUE. The issue is the players who are stuck in this map who simply say “i can’t 1v1” or “I’m not prepared for this map” and give up there. The map is NOT about 1v1. It’s about a sustained team fight. Which team can burst targets better. Which team can out-do the other with downed play. In almost all of my matches, both teams got up to about 100 points fairly easily and then one team fell apart because they refused to fall back and regroup. In ONE of my matches, it ended up being about 500 to 50 at the end because the enemy team fell apart and we were able to res our downs for the most part. However, I knew 3 of the people on the enemy team to be good players. I’ve wvw’d and pvp’d with them before. I didn’t really see it so much as a skill differential as a tactical one, as in any pvp match.

Just my thoughts. I’m really enjoying the patch aside from massive queue times. I’d rather suffer through a terrible team than have a 20 minute queue.

Edit: also, to Justin’s “2, 3) Are you willing to wait longer for a match if it greatly reduced the odds of this happening?”… No. I do not want to wait longer because the “average” wait time is not anywhere near my wait times. Most of the time I have been waiting between 5 and 10 minutes, which I am fine with. The problem comes when the matches start taking longer than 10 minutes. I’d like to get about 3 matches in per hour at minumum. This isn’t possible if I have to wait 20 minutes for a queue.

Slippery slopes.

So now if you skew the scoring to favor the PuG over the Pre you are penalizing the Pre who probably wanted to face another Pre.

Just like in GW1, there should be an RA and a TA. Random Arena (random partners) and Team Arena (Teams).

I enjoy randomness of opponents. I heavily played RA in GW1. In GW2 I never played tPvP. I don’t care for Meta vs Anti-meta.

Now I just use Practice……as close to Random as I can get.

From my experience in the past I really enjoyed doing solo q cuz I could run pretty cheesy builds like power necro/ ranger. Nowadays, you will queue up for an arena, and granted it takes 30 seconds, but you always get super gg conquest teams who are always complimenting each other.
I remember back in the day when I first made my power necro I won like 50 games straight cuz I was doing solo queue.
THE BIG DIFFERENCE:
-CURRENT-
1. When you are on a team you have people who will back each other’s builds.
1a. Teams of 5 can easily 3 cap a bunch of pugs with 2 people on each point then a bunker on the third.
-PAST-
2. When you were in solo queue (in the past) everyone’s build was random (aside from the meta) so the games were fun and unpredictable.
2a. Sometimes you would see the rare bunker trying to support the team by holding home.
2b. Other times it would be 5 dps builds vs. 5 dps builds and it would add a facet of strategy to the game because you would have to rotate with the pugs without and voice communication software (cuz we all know what happens when you try to type in an arena.)
3. I really didn’t mind the long queue times for spvp, because at least I could test a new build in a real match (not hotjoin)
3a. As a mentioned above, solo queue in the past was great! No sense of organization, or people traiting or switching toons just to roflstomp your comp.
-Thats all folks,

Justin ODell.9517:

displacedTitan.6897:

You have to stop people Qing with 4 because its always going to be unfair and not fun for the solos.

That isn’t the only reason. It’s also harder to find a match for them because they can only be paired with solo players, where as solos can pair with 1111, 112, 22, 13, 4.

Have to look at the pros and cons.
Solo players tend to be extremely angry, they have nobody to talk to and if they lose its everybody elses faut, etc.
Team players tend to be less angry, they have somebody to vent too, if they lose it might be there fault or they cant talk about it.

Having a system based on promoting teamplay encourages competition and hypes up the competitiveness of the game due to a lot of teams to look out for.

Having a system that promotes people to party with one another does a couple things, gets people to make friends, chances to win games is higher, feel urge to logon because your friends are online.

Having a system that promotes people to solo does a couple bad things like, nobody makes friends (they all just tell there teammates they suck), chances to win games aren’t that great unless your a preppy popular kid, urge to logon isn’t there because you have nobody to look forward to talk too.

If you have solo que system people will use it, and thus not create friends, this single system is better even though it has some cons like some people just outright refuse to be miserable and have no friends and wont party with somebody else and argue on forums how they hate the system.

Some players think they too good and will only group with people better or equal, and if there a preppy popular kid, its kinda hard to get full team because they have no incentive to keep playing after making it to the top so they will vent too because they want to pvp but there friends equal or better aren’t on because lack of incentive (leaderboard issue, needs to encourage people who play a lot to knock people off…. Making losing less harsh, as in you lose instead of going down 100 spots, you go down 33 spots. You win you go up 100 spots. You also need to calculate rating. And also how many games it takes to knock people from being 3rd rank, win 5 games in a row become 1st rank even though that first rank guy never plays anymore. I remember somebody being 2nd rank long time ago, he won 15 games and STILL 2nd rank, 1st rank guy never played any games, that 2nd rank guy had everything to lose by continue playing rather than something to gain. That should not be the case, it should encourage you to keep playing and not stop playing.)

I think the best answer is to get good first before going ranked?

I come across a lot of pre made teams but it does not bother me because i know I can stand my own ground, yes there are a lot of better players than you but it happens, you win some, you lose some.

We were all noobs before right? Have patience.

Sorry but it is a much much worse experience for people not in premade teams. Courtyard just makes me want to quit in a way Skyhammer never did.

It is less fun and doesn’t seem to solve much of the 4v5 issue.

I quite like waiting around and doing some resource farming in PvE land. Now you make me wait in the Mists.

Please just put it back to how it was.

Justin ODell.9517:

2, 3) Are you willing to wait longer for a match if it greatly reduced the odds of this [premade vs pug] happening?

Hi Justin. I don’t think current solution of merging teamq and soloq is solving the problem of few people playing soloq and thus creating long wait times. There are a lot of great changing to pvp in this patch, but I don’t believe that merging soloq and teamq is a good idea at this time.

The biggest reasons people weren’t playing soloq before are among the following:

1. Skyhammer (OK, this was at least me )
2. Unbalanced profession matches (all necros vs all mesmers)
3. Unbalanced rank matching (high ranks matched with low ranks)
4. Leavers
5. Afkers

Any one of these is enough to keep a lot of people from playing soloq, because each creates unbalanced and unfun matches.

So it’s great that many of the changes made in the last patch deal (or will deal) with these issues:

1. Maps get voted on
2. Matching accounts for multiple instances of the same professions
3. Matching accounts for rank
4. Ready menu and dishonor
5. I’m not sure how this is being dealt with

Unfortunately, you also added a huge new reason to avoid soloq by merging it with teamq. I could understand considering this after doing everything else and still not getting people into soloq. But this change just creates more imbalance in matches that will drive people away. Thus, the main problem of unbalanced matches isn’t solved.

If I’m entitled to my opinion;

It seems clear that matches are being made at the moment with no consideration of skill levels. It’s as though everyone’s rating was reset to 0.

I have seen no evidence of consideration of team vs. solo. Skimming the matchmaking algorythim, I may have missed it. I was tired but didn’t see anything in the psuedocode that dealt with team size.

Courtyard deserves criticism stronger than is fit to print here. The best thing to “fix” it would be to bin it and pretend it never happened.

Yes, perhaps after 6 months of accumulated stats this may produce a well rounded matchmaking. However, by that time.. most of the new people will have quit and there won’t be anything left to balance.

Very short sighted and poor implementation, imo.

Justin ODell.9517:

Ithilwen.1529:

I have seen no evidence of consideration of team vs. solo. Skimming the matchmaking algorythim, I may have missed it. I was tired but didn’t see anything in the psuedocode that dealt with team size.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm#Pseudo-Code
Look for roster size and max roster size.

Can you answer here pls? ^^

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/MatchMaking-RosterSize/first#post4601399

Hello Justin… Could you please answer on this thread?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Why-locking-us-in-Lobby/first#post4602194

Been doing ranked solo and duo for a couple of hours now. No premade teams and a lot less 4v5s (although they still happen more than I hoped). Of course match ups weren’t always balanced, but generally I think it’s going into the right direction. A few more weeks of tweaking and I’m sure everything will improve.

Only thing that bothers me is courtyard. If I wanna zerg I’ll go play WvW, this is terrible…

I’m personally liking the new system very much, I can actually play games with my buddies now.

Matchmaking is out of whack, as is expected, since there seems to have been a total reset? Not a big deal if periodical resets aren’t planned (as in WoW’s arena/RBG seasons)?

Courtyard needs to be removed, not necessarily because it’s a bad map/mode, but because it’s the only map/mode of its kind at the moment. People plan their builds and teams around conquest, as that is what the rest of the maps/modes are.

No problems with it if more DM and proper CTF maps are (finally) added in to the mix.

Full premade teams should only be matched against other, full premades, even if it resulted in (significantly) higher queue times.