Guild Wars 2

I think the leaderboards are really useless right now— heres why:

Players play ranked matches based on their MMR. They encounter players close to their skill level based on their previous games and like Justin said before, with the balance in MMR, everyone’s win/loss ratio should be close to .5.

The leaderboards, however, do NOT take the MMR differences into account. The rank 1 person could just be a “not as skilled” player winning their matches in the lower skill portion of MMR and just reaping game after game of wins enough to gather points to be rank 1, but not get into the higher MMRs.

I think (and a lot of games have this) there should be leagues, Gold, silver, bronze, 1,2,3 whatever to show the differences in MMR between players.

This is all just coming from the idea that people playing a lot of games in the lower skill divisions SHOULDN’T be on top of the leaderboards. People look to the leaderboards to see who is the best. If i encounter the rank 1 with my super esports tryhard 4 bunker team and crush them, I think something is wrong with the system.
People wan’t to see whos the best, not just the best at farming the system to get points.
The rank 1 has less than a 50% win ratio, but has almost double the points of the 88-2 4th place. The skill to time played ratio needs to be adjusted.

True, true i’m currently very high on leaderboard and i’m just an average player. This problem was mentioned on other threads. I agree that there should be leagues, but there is one problem, the current pvp community is too freaking small for that…

Maybe it could highlight players based on their MMR rankings. Keep the overall, but have a gold, silver, bronze highlighted bar across their names.

The ranking brackets don’t have to be the same size anyways. top 500 in high ranking, and everyone else…

“People look to the leaderboards to see who is the best.”

Best at what, exactly?

Not as simple as it may sound. It’s worth discussing.

I tend to side with the OP, though only cause I think it offers a valid solution.

To me the reason for leagues/rank brackets is that being put against people who are close to your level. I think the leagues would need to be fluid say changing weekly or something like that.

The core issue I see is that matches are not always close, nothing beats the feeling of winning by 5 points… and when you lose by 5 points you can genuinely say gg

I wouldn’t suggest having different rewards, just like the leader board there is no reward for being #1 other than saying I’m the best.

Justin ODell.9517:

How would we determine your league? By that, I mean, do we place you in a league based on the MMR at the start of the season? 10 days after the season starts? Or, do we let you move between leagues as your MMR goes up and down throughout the season? Do we let people pick their own league?

(keep in mind i’m just trying to brainstorm ideas, i’m just not fully satisfied with where its at)
I think league would be determined by MMR and be very dynamic throughout the season. Sure 10 days sounds good to lock place leagues—- but if youre internal MMR reaches a point in the matchmaking system you move leagues.
I’m no programmer but MMR being represented as a number is an underlying assumption. If you can use that as a built in way of places people in leagues based on where they are at, then I like it.
Picking leagues is interesting.. but i have a feeling some good people would farm the lesser to be #1.

Lets say MMR is a number from -3 to 3. 3 being the best -3 being the worst. From 1-3 you would be in gold league, 0-1 silver, and the bottom 50% (-3-0) in bronze. I’m assuming MMR is also on a standard bell curve 0 is mean and mode, 1 being standard deviation. meaning the top 16% are in gold, top 34% in silver and the rest is bronze (bottom 50%).

Justin ODell.9517:

What sort of implications does this have for matchmaking? Do we only let people fight others in their league? If yes, this could cause long queue times, especially in the upper leagues. If we let people fight players from any league does the current odds of victory point handicapping still fit?

I would say it doesn’t effect matchmaking at all. Let the internal MMR pick the matches, inside or outside of the league, keep the point system and everything, but just for the leaderboards, categorize it into these leagues so other people can see it.

Justin ODell.9517:

How does this affect rewards? If we rewarded the top 150 players, do we now only reward the top 50 in each league? If we split rewards by league, doesn’t that imply locking people into a league at the start?

Maybe for the last week you can lock the leagues, and have people fight it out for the rewards in each league. I don’t really have the rewards in mind when I think of things since its new and hasn’t happened before.

TLDR: Put people into leagues based on the system’s internal MMR, don’t lock them until maybe the week or so before, and just have the Leaderboards show which league people are in, to differentiate skill level in the new point accumulation system.

Justin ODell.9517:

How would we determine your league? By that, I mean, do we place you in a league based on the MMR at the start of the season? 10 days after the season starts? Or, do we let you move between leagues as your MMR goes up and down throughout the season? Do we let people pick their own league?

What sort of implications does this have for matchmaking? Do we only let people fight others in their league? If yes, this could cause long queue times, especially in the upper leagues. If we let people fight players from any league does the current odds of victory point handicapping still fit?

How does this affect rewards? If we rewarded the top 150 players, do we now only reward the top 50 in each league? If we split rewards by league, doesn’t that imply locking people into a league at the start?

I like this discussion, but keep in mind, I’m not a designer and be kind to me if I don’t know the answer to these sorts of questions.

League Design Example

Inizial position - new players: 10 test unranked or rated match to determine their mmr or an “entry” division (like for example “bronze” ) . Old players: old MMR in rated match.

League: people are spread considering their MMR in different leagues (master, diamond, gold etc.). Number of people and number of leagues depends on spvp population.

Progression - you can move between leagues at the end of the season. You can go up and down, it depends on your final position.

Matchmaking: like LoL and Starcraft, you can meet people of other divisions. Of course there is a priority for your league but if there is no people online, you are matched with people of other leagues.

Rewards: Top X players of each league at the end of the season. Different rewards for each league (of course more league is higher, more shiny is the reward. Exclusive rewards for league (weapons,armor,titles, back, finishers, special usefull items etc. ) + other good stuff difficult to get ingame (for example precursor or gift for master leagues)

And how i suggested in another topic, i’d like a CAP for the number of matches played during the season to contain the extreme grinding. OF course you can always play rated if you reach the max number of games played but only X matches (like X high but not very high) count for the season.

Laserbolt.6731:

“People look to the leaderboards to see who is the best.”

Best at what, exactly?

Not as simple as it may sound. It’s worth discussing.

I dunno tbh. i just enjoy looking at who has good win ratios. And since its all going to reset occassionally, it will be more up to date and easier to understand who is top tier.

And the leagues makes it so you don’t have to be super esports to feel like you’ve accomplished something on the leaderboards.

Laserbolt.6731:

“People look to the leaderboards to see who is the best.”

Best at what, exactly?

Not as simple as it may sound. It’s worth discussing.

In the other topic i gave 2 suggestion to contain extreme griding. Maybe it could be interesting a discussion:

. CAP Matches during the season - it means a player can play only X matches during the season valid for the leaderboard (an average number calculated after the test season). OF course, player can play rated after they reach the max number of matches played but further matches don’t count for the Season Leaderboard. Only count the first X matches (with X high number but not super high). In this way we have a fair competion like in every sport championship, same number of matches, who get more points, will win. Super grinding is limited.

. Weekly ladder points bonus based based on win ratio . So, having an high win ratio is more a system issue (or better, population issue) than a true skill measurement but the fact remain that there are people who stomp more people than others but play less. With this bonus boost, you’ll receive a weekly boost points for the leaderboard if you keep a good ratio (for example > 0.6/0.7 )

Justin ODell.9517:

How would we determine your league? By that, I mean, do we place you in a league based on the MMR at the start of the season? 10 days after the season starts? Or, do we let you move between leagues as your MMR goes up and down throughout the season? Do we let people pick their own league?

What sort of implications does this have for matchmaking? Do we only let people fight others in their league? If yes, this could cause long queue times, especially in the upper leagues. If we let people fight players from any league does the current odds of victory point handicapping still fit?

How does this affect rewards? If we rewarded the top 150 players, do we now only reward the top 50 in each league? If we split rewards by league, doesn’t that imply locking people into a league at the start?

I like this discussion, but keep in mind, I’m not a designer and be kind to me if I don’t know the answer to these sorts of questions.

At the start of the season you need to play 10-20 placement matches. However, you can still take into account the previous MMR for those matches. After that you’re placed in a league.
It is important to have goals and aim to be competitive, so I’d say that you should be able to progress through leagues or fall back down to lower leagues.

But the most important part about leagues, is that it offers a great platform for a good reward infrastructure that incentivizes competitive play (< time spent) and rewards skilled play. You need to differentiate the rewards between the leagues and make them unique.

For example:

Gold league:

Gold cape (Everyone in gold league at the END of the season gets this)
Top 50% : Gold cape with color x guildtag
Top 25% : Gold cape with color y guildtag
Top 1% : Gold cape with color EPIC guildtag
Unique armor/dyes/weapons/mini’s/tonics/titles (This could be vendor-based where you get points based on winning to buy some of this stuff in order to motivate people to play)

Silver league:

Silver cape (same as gold league)
Unique armor/dyes/weapons/mini’s/tonics/titles

Bronze league:

Bronze cape (same as silver/gold league)
Unique armor/dyes/weapons/mini’s/tonics/titles

• If you end in gold league, you get everything that lower tiers get, and so on. Otherwise people might just want to stay in a certain tier.

Anyway, just rewarding the top 50 isn’t enough, non-unique rewards is a non go either (don’t you dare put anything in hotjoin). You need to reward people who try to be competitive(< reward time) in playing leagues, and then you should reward people who are playing good (< reward skill).

Laserbolt.6731:

“People look to the leaderboards to see who is the best.”

Best at what, exactly?

Not as simple as it may sound. It’s worth discussing.

If system is gonna be this, best at nolife farming i guess (And i mean just farming for games played…not winning) like pretty much like after qpnts change when they started giving 1 qpnt even to ppl who lost, so many just started going and going getting all those +1 and at the end of the season upper qpnts ladder was just crowded by scrubs who won pretty much nothing and just made their way up there queing and losing 24/7

And this is gonna be the same. ESL only skill meter….still full of celestial lame eles, engis comps and kitten ofc but 100 times better than this nonsense ladder

butch.8136:

What this guy said

I don’t think its a bad idea, but if Anet doesn’t want to do the work or implement a really structured reward system and leagues, my alternative is just a quick improvement to the pretty trashy leaderboards right now.

:)

^ They did a league CDI a year? ago, they confirmed last patch that they’re still working on it and Justin just talked about it. :p So I guess it’s still on the table.

I’ll just talk about a little part of what this can be in the future: rewards.
Let’s say we get hypotetical leagues:

Quaggan 1,2,3
Bear 1,2,3
Phoenix 1,2,3
Dragon 1 (only one because it would be the last one? I’m not getting into that :P)

Then, based on that these leagues are in order (quaggan is the “newbie” league; dragon the “pro” league) it should have different rewards at the end of the season. I don’t find “fair” that only top 150 players will get season rewards, because:

1. Solo Arena is not a thing anymore and I’m OK with that, but for people who like to play Solo or Duo will have a really rough time to reach top 150.

2. Experienced teams (and future new teams of course) will have an “advantage” at getting to these ranks (Coordination and Teamwork OP).

Yeah, sure it will encourage players to don’t play solo and form teams with other PvPers, but sometimes people don’t have the time to do that or simply they don’t want to play on a Team. So if you had these leagues (they should be based on MMR to make everyone start “at the right spot” on every season) you could make special rewards for it. For example you could say:

“Quaggans get 5g, 2 unidentified dyes and 5 champ boxes”
…
“Dragons get 100g, 5 unidentified dyes, one minillama (it has to be there!), … and one original – PvP exlusive – piece of armor”.

These are simple examples. The point I’m trying to make is that structuring PvP in Leagues like that, it would make everyone get rewards (even if they are few) but still rewarding top players with something unique, something that makes people recognise them like finishers, armor (or even weapon!) skins.

So that’s everything I wanted to tell. Leagues to make everyone get some rewards (because they play PvP) and make the top PvPers get unique rewards (because they play PvP at a “professional” level).

Keep these changes going Justin (and Anet Team), I like them very much, you (Anet Team) almost got that MM problems and good luck everyone with the experimental season, cheers ^^.

In my league design example, i put rewards for every x top players of EACH league at the end of the season, i think this gives great motivation to everyone to improve their skill level and play to win.

In general some rewards should be differerent fo each season or it takes a progression system like for example mystic forge recipes that use multi pieces to create a special item (example 4 mini llamas for a super special mini llamas) or a token systems like www seasons.

Personally, I do not care at all about leaderboards. Just give me matches that are well balanced. Right now that is the problem.

Leaderboards aren’t too important to me either, but its a resource other than relying on who wins the world tournies once a year.

I think its just interesting to see who is winning and by how much. since the scores will reset now, it will be cool to see who is the best and just how active they are.

Justin ODell.9517:

How would we determine your league? By that, I mean, do we place you in a league based on the MMR at the start of the season? 10 days after the season starts? Or, do we let you move between leagues as your MMR goes up and down throughout the season? Do we let people pick their own league?

For the beginning make it simple, top 100, top 500, top 1000, rest ?

Justin ODell.9517:

What sort of implications does this have for matchmaking? Do we only let people fight others in their league? If yes, this could cause long queue times, especially in the upper leagues. If we let people fight players from any league does the current odds of victory point handicapping still fit?

Keep the algo you have right now, seems okayish if there are enough players.
This means you can move between leagues in season and the mm algo does not need any change at this point because ppl from different “leagues” can play vs each other.

Justin ODell.9517:

How does this affect rewards? If we rewarded the top 150 players, do we now only reward the top 50 in each league? If we split rewards by league, doesn’t that imply locking people into a league at the start?

Well this is something you have to figure out , but there is still some time.
I personally liked the WoW-system, where you could achive titles ( items ) once you reached a certain “Rank” .

Justin ODell.9517:

I like this discussion, but keep in mind, I’m not a designer and be kind to me if I don’t know the answer to these sorts of questions.

Although this is true, did you never came to the conclusion what the OP wrote?
That the current leaderboard does not reflect skill that much, because if your MM-algorithm would do its job its merely about the amount of games played ?

Ah, and one more thing, can you perhaps show the MMR ?
Or would it be a too big problem, or whats the reason you hide it ?

I would say it doesn’t effect matchmaking at all. Let the internal MMR pick the matches, inside or outside of the league, keep the point system and everything, but just for the leaderboards, categorize it into these leagues so other people can see it.

^^^
Then it would be pointless to have different leagues.

This is exactly what we need! +1000000

Top 100
Top 500 / maybe 250
Top 1000
Top 90%
Top 80%

50-70% were total new poeple as i remember droping here one day after a 1-21 losing streak…
Below 50% were only afk poeple

Roughly, this were old “tiers” , where you could really see the playstyle of players being on a different level. So these should be borders between leagues.

That’s my biggest wish. We need leagues and exclusive rewards

SYPHA.9283:

I would say it doesn’t effect matchmaking at all. Let the internal MMR pick the matches, inside or outside of the league, keep the point system and everything, but just for the leaderboards, categorize it into these leagues so other people can see it.

^^^
Then it would be pointless to have different leagues.

I don’t want to wait for a certain 100 people to log on so I can queue though… it would take forever if you were locked into a certain amount of people you could even possibly queue with.

I just think it would separate the leaderboards nicely so you can see who has a good ranking AND is a high skill player. Who has a good ranking but Does Not play with high skill players.

Right now the leaderboards do not reflect MMR in any way. A visual-only league system would allow us to see MMR without changing how the leaderboards currently work.

I really like the changes from the last patch. And it’s all just an evolution. I will say the leaderboards are better as well as the balance in matches.

I do notice however that the top players will more than likely not be the best ones but the ones that are slightly above average and play many many matches. It’s not perfect but its better and a step in the right direction.

Poliator.7021:

I’ll just talk about a little part of what this can be in the future: rewards.
Let’s say we get hypotetical leagues:

Quaggan 1,2,3
Bear 1,2,3
Phoenix 1,2,3
Dragon 1 (only one because it would be the last one? I’m not getting into that :P)

Then, based on that these leagues are in order (quaggan is the “newbie” league; dragon the “pro” league) it should have different rewards at the end of the season. I don’t find “fair” that only top 150 players will get season rewards, because:

1. Solo Arena is not a thing anymore and I’m OK with that, but for people who like to play Solo or Duo will have a really rough time to reach top 150.

2. Experienced teams (and future new teams of course) will have an “advantage” at getting to these ranks (Coordination and Teamwork OP).

Yeah, sure it will encourage players to don’t play solo and form teams with other PvPers, but sometimes people don’t have the time to do that or simply they don’t want to play on a Team. So if you had these leagues (they should be based on MMR to make everyone start “at the right spot” on every season) you could make special rewards for it. For example you could say:

“Quaggans get 5g, 2 unidentified dyes and 5 champ boxes”
…
“Dragons get 100g, 5 unidentified dyes, one minillama (it has to be there!), … and one original – PvP exlusive – piece of armor”.

These are simple examples. The point I’m trying to make is that structuring PvP in Leagues like that, it would make everyone get rewards (even if they are few) but still rewarding top players with something unique, something that makes people recognise them like finishers, armor (or even weapon!) skins.

So that’s everything I wanted to tell. Leagues to make everyone get some rewards (because they play PvP) and make the top PvPers get unique rewards (because they play PvP at a “professional” level).

Keep these changes going Justin (and Anet Team), I like them very much, you (Anet Team) almost got that MM problems and good luck everyone with the experimental season, cheers ^^.

Dragon lol…everyone is kittening dragon …i have 2 accounts with freaking dragon and going for third…you can get r80 in less than 4 months after they dumbed ranks down for casuals last year

Dragon…yeah….

Archaon.9524:

Poliator.7021:

I’ll just talk about a little part of what this can be in the future: rewards.
Let’s say we get hypotetical leagues:

Quaggan 1,2,3
Bear 1,2,3
Phoenix 1,2,3
Dragon 1 (only one because it would be the last one? I’m not getting into that :P)

Then, based on that these leagues are in order (quaggan is the “newbie” league; dragon the “pro” league) it should have different rewards at the end of the season. I don’t find “fair” that only top 150 players will get season rewards, because:

1. Solo Arena is not a thing anymore and I’m OK with that, but for people who like to play Solo or Duo will have a really rough time to reach top 150.

2. Experienced teams (and future new teams of course) will have an “advantage” at getting to these ranks (Coordination and Teamwork OP).

Yeah, sure it will encourage players to don’t play solo and form teams with other PvPers, but sometimes people don’t have the time to do that or simply they don’t want to play on a Team. So if you had these leagues (they should be based on MMR to make everyone start “at the right spot” on every season) you could make special rewards for it. For example you could say:

“Quaggans get 5g, 2 unidentified dyes and 5 champ boxes”
…
“Dragons get 100g, 5 unidentified dyes, one minillama (it has to be there!), … and one original – PvP exlusive – piece of armor”.

These are simple examples. The point I’m trying to make is that structuring PvP in Leagues like that, it would make everyone get rewards (even if they are few) but still rewarding top players with something unique, something that makes people recognise them like finishers, armor (or even weapon!) skins.

So that’s everything I wanted to tell. Leagues to make everyone get some rewards (because they play PvP) and make the top PvPers get unique rewards (because they play PvP at a “professional” level).

Keep these changes going Justin (and Anet Team), I like them very much, you (Anet Team) almost got that MM problems and good luck everyone with the experimental season, cheers ^^.

Dragon lol…everyone is kittening dragon …i have 2 accounts with freaking dragon and going for third…you can get r80 in less than 4 months after they dumbed ranks down for casuals last year

Dragon…yeah….

I think he doesn’t mean dragon rank, he just used it as a name for a league. He also used quaggan as a name for a league (there’s no quaggan rank)

phoenix stomp looks so much better anyway =P

mistsim.2748:

phoenix stomp looks so much better anyway =P

since dragon is probably the ugliest finisher ever…yes

it looks like a failed 3d max rendering…even bunny is better

dragon is not ugly at alll

Exodus.6501:

dragon is not ugly at alll

THIS was good and took YEARS of constant winning to get and no more than 10 players got it

Gw2 dragon is just crap…..worthless and crap, 1kk rank points, old r70 was around 3.5kk and they just gave kitten dragon for free to everyone above r55 after dumb rank patch….no wonder why it looks so bad rofl…even dat dragon from gem store looks better, but even with a better animation would be worthless anyway since everyone can get 1kk points in less than 4 months

April 2014 Never Forget when ranks still had some little sort of meaning, dumbest patch EVER in the neverending list of dumb patches

Exodus.6501:

dragon is not ugly at alll

It’s hideous.