So it’s no secret that matchmaking in its current iteration is, well, broken. I was trying to come up with a potential way that Anet could improve matchmaking/leader boards and thus the overall pvp experience.
The current system was supposed to match you against people with similar win/loss ratios as yourself and thus create a leader board that way, but it really turned into who could play the most games. Which I think most of us can agree wasn’t a good thing.
The theory:
Each win will give points based off of the magnitude of your win, thus if you obliterate your opponent you will be granted more points than if it was a very close game. As you gain points on the ladder you will have hard caps of opponents that you are able to face, thus preventing new players being lumped into experienced games. Conversely if you yourself get annihilated you will lose points and move down the ladder.
How it will work:
Team A faces team B at the start of the season, both have equal amounts of points (number is arbitrary, lets call it 100)
Team A is very experienced and wins by a margin of 250 points. They gain say 5 rank points for doing so. Team B on the other hand loses 5 rank points.
Team A now has 105 pts to team B’s 95 pts.
Again, numbers are arbitrary but lets say there is a bracket for people with between 100-125 rank points. Team A will no longer be able to fight Team B as they are held in a different bracket and will only fight teams within the 100-125pt range.
The difference in match points will determine how many points you win/lose, so for example if you win with <50 pts lead then you only gain 1 rank point, win with 50-100pt lead and you gain 2 points and so forth.
Eventually the better teams will distance themselves in points and end up in completely different brackets to bad teams, thus (hopefully) ensuring matches against people of similar skill level.
Given that a lot of people, myself included, usually solo Q then your team will be made via other players within your bracket. It will be your own rank that determines the match up but everyone on the team suffers/gains from a loss/win. Unfortunately I can see how people would use this to grief others, but I can’t think of anyway around it and at least if they keep grieving they will push themselves out of the bracket.
Also for every player each of their professions will have a different rank tied to them. I may be a good ele player but I suck at thief and it makes no sense for me to be matched up against players who know their classes well, nor is it fair to my team. Now this is where things get a bit sketchy for me idea wise. Regarding profession swapping before a match starts, I think it would make sense that you can only swap into professions that meet the bracket requirements for the game that you are loaded into. Granted this could pose some problems so I’m not really sure about that. Perhaps you could bring a character from a lower bracket, but not a character from a higher bracket? So I couldn’t just que on a class I’m awful with to get matched against bad opponents and then swap to a class I’m better with before the game starts.
Also on a side note, for map selection what do you think about a first past the post type system? So as soon as one map get 6 votes it is chosen, but if there is no clear majority then the wheel spins as normal to select the map?
I’m keen to hear what the pvp community thinks of this, I know there are flaws but it’s a rough idea that would benefit from the community refining it further.