Guild Wars 2

So with the upcoming massive changes to sPvP, inevitably, this would draw more of the PvE crowd into the sPvP world (or much less those who never ever touched sPvP at all) due to the introduction of more achievements and rewards. Indeed this is extremely exciting news for practically a lot of us players. However, some of us are already groaning at the thought of players with little to no experience randomly queuing for rated matches. As much as i hate when this happens as the match gets uneven, and a supposed MMR-based queue should have made it even (or so I’m told), this is hardly the most concerning issue I’m thinking of but rather the issue at hand of afkers. Since the dawn of the game, the fate of solo queue matches is ridiculously dependent on whether or not one of the players on a team(albeit now having separate queues). So with more players undoubtedly arriving or coming back to tournament matches, is it safe to say that these changes would encourage more competitiveness? Or do queues still needs to be fixed? On a side note if any dev is reading this, would there be an implemented fix before these changes?

Justin ODell.9517:

What do you guys thing we should do in the meantime while we continue to work on the new server infrastructure, matchmaking, ladders, etc.?

All I want to see is a ready check before queue pops.

The very simplest thing you could do is have some sort of chime play when your match is ready (and have that sound always play, even if Guild Wars 2 isn’t the active window). The chime alone would reduce 4v5s by a good amount. Even better than that would be to have an “Are you ready?” pop up to verify that you aren’t afk when the queue pops. If you click no or don’t answer, you get removed from the queue and the others go back into queue and wait for a replacement. This is super necessary for solo q.

Justin ODell.9517:

Well, now that the news is out I guess I can spoil this one tidbit regarding matchmaking. In addition to your MMR, we will also be using your ladder tier when determining who you play against, so as you travel up the ladder the odds of being matched with new players is reduced. This filtering becomes less strict as you wait in the queue, so people can still find matches during low concurrency.

I’ll be working with Josh and the others to get a blog post out and start a discussion about matchmaking in the near-ish future, and we will likely talk about the 4v5 issue at the same time.

What do you guys thing we should do in the meantime while we continue to work on the new server infrastructure, matchmaking, ladders, etc.?

Stricter leaving penalty and an afk report function if possible.

First leave; warning.
Second leave; 10 minute PvP ban.
Third; 72 hour PvP ban.

Any amount over 3 leaves that happens within a given probation period once bans are lifted should result in that person being outright banned from the game, with an appropriately scaled time period, for malicious behavior and intent to harm others gameplay experience.

Justin ODell.9517:

This filtering becomes less strict as you wait in the queue, so people can still find matches during low concurrency.

Using the ladder system as a factor of tourney queues is definitely a great idea! However the diminishing restriction over time feels rather not flexible, how about say, an option to whether or not the player is willing to risk queueing with someone with a rather lower level on the ladder and MMR.

Ready buttons do seem to be the most efficient solution to afkers and I’m sure you guys have never overlooked this solution (having talked to josh before in game regarding this issue) and its definitely long overdue so i assume there are some troubles in implementing this?

Please keep smurfing in mind. It is an incredible deterrent to new players. Thus it is not good for the health of PvP. Create methods to sideline the activity of such.

Justin ODell.9517:

What do you guys thing we should do in the meantime while we continue to work on the new server infrastructure, matchmaking, ladders, etc.?

You should start to take a look at all the people who got reported for botting due to being afk and take action / set consequences for their behavior. Currently you are not doing anything!

Justin ODell.9517:

I know several people would like an option to wait forever for a good match, but I think it would be best to design the system around the more typical use case. If there is still a need for it then we can certainly revisit the topic.

Then why not just put a slider in the queue menu, with a recommended setting? Then users can adjust on the fly to suit their tastes:
(quick+dirty <————x————> long+well-suited)

Justin ODell.9517:

What do you guys thing we should do in the meantime while we continue to work on the new server infrastructure, matchmaking, ladders, etc.?

Talk to the community about your plans earlyer – We got the feeling you guys are doing NOTHING! Wich is for sure false, but we get no input from you (communication > all)

Think about how you want to deal with exploiters/matchmanipulation and talk about this to us. And finaly do anything about the skyhammer farmers and the birthday glory abusers.

Also do multiple small fixes, rather then one buggy big one. For example intoduce the rank barrier for soloQ (rank 20 for example). Just remove the button [JOIN] and replace it with a note “SoloQ is only available for more experienced players, which we consider to be above lvl 20! This is because SoloQ is seen as a competitive area and we want to make me math experienced for all players as good as possible. Thank you for your undestanding.”
This is a quick fix and if you come up with something better you can ask in the forums for feedback and replace it easy if you receive positive feedback. This shows us, that you care about our game experience and what you are willing to help us.

Ty for your attention

Justin ODell.9517:

Well, now that the news is out I guess I can spoil this one tidbit regarding matchmaking. In addition to your MMR, we will also be using your ladder tier when determining who you play against, so as you travel up the ladder the odds of being matched with new players is reduced. This filtering becomes less strict as you wait in the queue, so people can still find matches during low concurrency.

I’ll be working with Josh and the others to get a blog post out and start a discussion about matchmaking in the near-ish future, and we will likely talk about the 4v5 issue at the same time.

What do you guys thing we should do in the meantime while we continue to work on the new server infrastructure, matchmaking, ladders, etc.?

Hey Justin,

Since the new matchmaker rolled out, things have been worse for me. Before the change I was grouped with players of similar rank with the rare chance of having someone who is low rank on the team.

Now, every time I win I see the players rank is single digit or in the teens. Its sort of like a catch 22, you have to win to move up so you group with better players. Yet I’m constantly put on teams with players who are new to pvp and don’t know the game mechanics or maps.

It makes winning extra hard.

Tranassa pretty much hit the nail on the spot in the first part, but I disagree with the others. I’d like if the sPvP team and Balance team actually put their foot on the ground and engaged with players, and preferably the top players at that.
Yes, there is some level of engagement, but it seems that it’s really just basic customer service, and really a matter of just answering for the sake of it.
However, soloQ STILL is not a competitive arena, it’s just slapping 5 randoms, with a poorly designed match-making system coupled with a poor population base. The icing on the cake? Very very bad balances, of which the Balance team would NEVER admit that they royally made a big screw-up of.

So much conditions easily applied in the game, encouraging spam, nerfs to condition duration stacks didn’t seem to do anything at all, nothing at all. While I am fully aware that the sPvP team and Balance team are two separate entities, and on top of that, that sPvP cannot be decoupled from the entire makeup of the game, it seems that the Anet administration is just overwhelmed with work, without foresight, and without a good leader at the helm.

I don’t want to have to ruin the hard work of Justin and the other staff who have spent their time to read the forums, but, such ill-made decisions really have to be addressed at a higher level, with as little bullkitten involved.

can you explain for a noob what your ladder is about?^^

im sure you have some thought behind this and so on

but whatever you say i cant make a picture

how works this ladder?
how we are placed there in matchups?
how works your filter you talking bout in this?

Justin ODell.9517:

Aza.2105:

Since the new matchmaker rolled out, things have been worse for me. Before the change I was grouped with players of similar rank with the rare chance of having someone who is low rank on the team.

Using the ladder tiers in matchmaking should help with that. We’re also still discussion ways to better place new players onto the MMR curve.

I feel that would help a ton if you guys get it working right. Being grouped with players who are ranked far below you and 4v5s are serious issues I’d say. They both make moving up in rank harder than it should be.

1-leaver = 9x poeple wasting 15min

The warning, 10min ban , 72 hour ban from Tpvp seems perfect, strict and effective spot. great idea

Thedenofsin.7340:

Justin ODell.9517:

I know several people would like an option to wait forever for a good match, but I think it would be best to design the system around the more typical use case. If there is still a need for it then we can certainly revisit the topic.

Then why not just put a slider in the queue menu, with a recommended setting? Then users can adjust on the fly to suit their tastes:
(quick+dirty <————x————> long+well-suited)

Unfortunately it’s not that simple, because the queue system is designed off the leaderboards. Making something like this would make the leaderboards really inaccurate, and on top of that this would be extremely hard to code.

Chase.8415:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Justin ODell.9517:

I know several people would like an option to wait forever for a good match, but I think it would be best to design the system around the more typical use case. If there is still a need for it then we can certainly revisit the topic.

Then why not just put a slider in the queue menu, with a recommended setting? Then users can adjust on the fly to suit their tastes:
(quick+dirty <————x————> long+well-suited)

Unfortunately it’s not that simple, because the queue system is designed off the leaderboards. Making something like this would make the leaderboards really inaccurate, and on top of that this would be extremely hard to code.

I actually think the leaderboards now are extremely inaccurate ever since the leaderboards are reset. I.E. winning 1 match almost immediately makes you climb multiple ranks up the leaderboard. Plus the MMR based queue doesn’t really work since the dawn of tourneys, being queued with ~20 ranks even before the separation of solo and team queue. I sure think it wouldn’t be simple adding a slider for this as it might be pretty tedious to adjust the formula based on the slider but as justin has said, if there is a need to it then they could get back to it.

hi justin, just to make sure i didnt misunderstand the livestream, but if ladders arent coming any soon would that mean the ladder+mmr based queue wouldnt be implemented any soon either? there wasnt any mention of fixes for afkers (or the ready button) or queue but i mightve missed this as all i did was browse the overview of questions that were answered. considering you would be implementing the new glory vendors it would most definitely attract a huge crowd of non-pvpers to come pvp (or basically just bring everyone to pvp more) and again if the queue isnt fixed yet wouldnt it actually attract more problems? forgive me if im wrong in understanding this but i just need a clarification

Nope, you did not misunderstand or miss anything. They totally ignored the 4v5 / AFK problem during the livestream. Nothing meaningful was said about it at all. Get ready for massive tears come December 10.

does anyone have an official response directly addressing this problem? these fixes really needs to be a top priority.

Justin ODell.9517:

…
What do you guys thing we should do in the meantime while we continue to work on the new server infrastructure, matchmaking, ladders, etc.?

Don’t let the game start with only 4 people.

If a person on the roster is not logged in at the end of the countdown, then hand them a loss and replace them with another person before the game starts.

Game starts when everyone has hit the ready button. Anyone who is afk and not hitting their ready button in a reasonable time should also be removed from the roster, handed a loss, and replaced with someone else before the game starts.

To re-iterate, never start a game without 5 team members hitting the ready button.

cymerdown.4103:

The very simplest thing you could do is have some sort of chime play when your match is ready (and have that sound always play, even if Guild Wars 2 isn’t the active window). The chime alone would reduce 4v5s by a good amount. Even better than that would be to have an “Are you ready?” pop up to verify that you aren’t afk when the queue pops. If you click no or don’t answer, you get removed from the queue and the others go back into queue and wait for a replacement. This is super necessary for solo q.

What he said.

I’m guilty of being afk for a few minutes into a match sometimes because I kinda got lost into my browsing some stuff or doing things IRL while waiting on a queue since queuing sometimes takes a long time. This suggestion should help alleviate AFK/4v5 issues.

Lets put this way, we have team A and team B:
(not how the actual system works.In fact, we don’t know how it works)

Team A composition:
- Player A1 MMR = 1850
- Player A2 MMR = 1750
- Player A3 MMR = 1580
- Player A4 MMR = 1560
- Player A5 MMR = 1510

Team B composition:
- Player B1 MMR = 1790
- Player B2 MMR = 1720
- Player B3 MMR = 1670
- Player B4 MMR = 1540
- Player B5 MMR = 1450

Assume 1500 is the initial MMR. Which means every new player would start at 1500 MMR. As we can see, team A player 1 has the highest MMR on the match, which means he wouldn’t gain much MMR for winning, since he is clearly playing against less experience players.However, if team A loses, player 1 would lose tons of MMR, because technically, since he loses against lower MMR player, his real MMR isn’t 1850 but lower.

This should work on paper but that’s not how it works for real. One player can’t carry all the team everytime, and that’s even truer here, where we don’t have a “carry” but builds. Putting the Win and Lose gains that way:

- Player A1 (2 / -10)
- Player A2 (5 / -5)
- Player A3 (8 / -4)
- Player A3 (8 / -4)
- Player A3 (+9 / -4)

- Player B1 (4 / -7)
- Player B1 (4 / -5)
- Player B1 (5 /-4)
- Player B1 (7 / -3)
- Player B1 (+11 / -2)

As we can see, the lower your MMR, the higher your profit winning against higher MMR adversaries. If both team were even, the system should be (+X / -X) for everyone. But that’s nearly impossible to happen, so lets go to the real problem. AFKers are common on any game, but they are never punished properly. Putting a “debuff” that won’t let them join matches for a Y amount of time isn’t enough.

Back to our example, assume that player A2 left the match or was kicked for being AFK (we need a kick system btw. But that’s for another topic). Team A would be in disadvantage and if that continues for more matches, player A1 would drop his MMR significantly, and it isn’t even his fault for losing against those odds. If one player leaves, the system should adjust to this:

Team A Win / Lose gain:
- Player A1 (2 / -5)
- Player A2 LEAVER (2 / -10)
- Player A3 (8 / -2)
- Player A4 (8 / -2)
- Player A5 (+9 / -2)

The winning gains wouldn’t change for the team, but losing wouldn’t be so punitive. It would be cut in half for the first leaver, and the said leaver would get a double losing points and half the winning points (if his team wins without him) + the debuff timer.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

I’m guilty of being afk for a few minutes into a match sometimes because I kinda got lost into my browsing some stuff or doing things IRL

I hope you have a Diamond Skin because you are going to get burned for admitting this on the forums!

Justin ODell.9517:

1. A better way to distribute ratings adjustments so that players that are carrying feel less impact for a loss and more impact from a win. I’m uneasy with this change because it would help high MMR players stay high instead of settling them down to where they should be, but may be needed to get some players out of MMR hell.

The problem here is to see who is carrying. We should go away from the old model, where you reward the “every should cap the node for the most points” principle.
A player constantly successfully preventing a base to be capped against two players might have a very important role in this team, but might end up with fewer points, that a player constantly fighting over the +3 Killpoint buffs on Temple who is not helping out his teammates.

Justin ODell.9517:

1. Adjusting MMR based not on win/lose, but the ratio of the final score. So that a final score of 400/500 would be seen as a minor loss instead of the same as a final score of 100/500. My concern with this change is that it would slow how quickly people’s MMR fluctuates, but that may be a good thing in the long run.

With that you would also make a 4vs5 loose much more significant and painful. A 400 to 500 was already a good fight, and you team was almost even. I think you can get over one of those looses.
The problem is the other one, where you end up outnumbered, and you already get angry over this loss, I don’t think you should harm those poor guys further.

Currently the problems I see:

• New player playing with their first games 2-1 or 3-0 and ending up in the Top 10. Please take a look at those occurrences and adjust the system accordingly. Nobody will take your ladder or leaderboard or whatever serious when those things will happen.
  [quote]. In addition to your MMR, we will also be using your ladder tier when determining who you play against, so as you travel up the ladder the odds of being matched with new players is reduced.[/quote]
  What happens when the above behavior is not getting fixed in the new system? Will the players with a 3-0 win and a very very high MMR still play against other bronze players? Or will the first ten matches be used to determine their starting tier, so that new players can wildly jump through the tiers for their first ten matches?

• 4vs5, people who are flaming / afking: Why are you not banning the players who are constantly doing this? Unless (you know who I mean) is being perma banned (got his own thread here on the forum, got reported over and over for month) the 4vs5 is the most frustrating part of the game. Today I played about 3 or 4 hours of TPvP, and 4 or 5 Matches got sabotaged by people afking, and all they are saying is “yeah, report me, just think of xxxx, he wasn’t banned either”. Not to mention the toxic players who are insulting others, to quote one (i reported him): “get aids”. I think he is still happily playing.

• [quote] This filtering becomes less strict as you wait in the queue, so people can still find matches during low concurrency.[/quote] Even though the filtering should increase over time, it should also be restricted to not increase too much. When I’m in the Top 100, with the current playerbase, I should never end up with a player in my team, who is not even in the top 1000.

Thank you for the answers!

jcbroe.4329:

First leave; warning.
Second leave; 10 minute PvP ban.
Third; 72 hour PvP ban.

Any amount over 3 leaves that happens within a given probation period once bans are lifted should result in that person being outright banned from the game, with an appropriately scaled time period, for malicious behavior and intent to harm others gameplay experience.

THIS i had 3 games with the same dood who left over and over yesterday twice on my team once on the other

my understanding from ranking/mmr was allways in all games i played players have to lose points when someone wanna gain pointz

their is a pool on point say 1500 and when 1 player win and gain 100 pointz than someone have to lose this 100 pointz

pool = startranking from everony who joined

cause when not this way than the system will have very fast an inflation in pointz

and when i read you think bout to give players who carryng more than other than this is bad for this system

Drexciyian.9453:

jcbroe.4329:

First leave; warning.
Second leave; 10 minute PvP ban.
Third; 72 hour PvP ban.

Any amount over 3 leaves that happens within a given probation period once bans are lifted should result in that person being outright banned from the game, with an appropriately scaled time period, for malicious behavior and intent to harm others gameplay experience.

THIS i had 3 games with the same dood who left over and over yesterday twice on my team once on the other

It gets worse. The new flavor of the month is the guy who AFKs in the mists when the queue pops, waits it out and only comes into the match for the last couple of minutes. He will then proceed to score 5 points, enabling him to cash in on the rank/glory/gold rewards. AFK like a baws, it’s silvers win or lose starting next Tuesday.

I’m praying for a pre-Christmas miracle before the 10th, but I have a feeling it’s going to be really painful once the patch hits.

AFKing should punish people – but when people dont care bout dishonor or whatever than they jsut do it

give -50k rankpoints per 3x afk and people will think more about^^

I know its going to be impossible to prevent ppl leaving during a match because they will do it for whatever reason. Its obviously not fair to the other 4 who stay and endure another pointless game though. This happens far to often on a regular basis.

If your not going to have a /surrender option then what can you do to at least make it more fair for the 4 who stay? I can think of some benefits that hopefully don’t give an outnumbered team advantages:

- Reduce the respawn rate to 5 seconds
- Halve the cooldowns on respawn or give them all fresh cooldowns
- An outnumbered buff for team of 4 – increased movement speed by 10%
- 25% increase speed in capping a point

Buffs like these are pretty minor and still will not do much to cover the lost of another person but at least they might make it slightly more interesting.

While you punish the leaver (if they leave and are still active in the world they should get a bigger penalty then a lost – it should be 3 losts and like double lost of mmr) give some incentives for those staying to fight it out, while not giving them a defensive or offensive advantage but one that covers movement and capping imo.

There is only one reasonable solution. Remove the leaderboard from soloque

i do believe the experience of every competitor will raise as you make a rank cap of at least 10 to enter any tournament.
this is just for beginning and may be adjusted later, but i cannot believe that it is hard to code that players may not enter below rank 10 (or whatever)

I notice more and more afk-ers in SoloQ. Are these preparations for the incoming gold rewards regardless of win or lose?

I really wish you would reconsider where you place people rating wise after they have played just a couple of games. There are some r9 people being let into top 200 tournaments who really should not be playing in that tier at all. I am not talking about smurf accounts, but newbies with no experience.

Today and yesterday, I’ve had six matches with one r9 newbie on my team of which I’ve lost five. The newbie runs around confused all match, has no clue where to go, and it’s basically a 4v5 every time. Unfortunately, the lowest enemy rank was 40. It’s rather disheartening that I’ve lost 200 ranks in matches that seem impossible to win unless the enemy team gets a newbie with an inflated rating too.

Just look at the first couple of pages of your solo queue leaderboard and you will find a bunch of people with less than 20 games played. They should not be on the leaderboard at all, let alone in the top 100.