Guild Wars 2

Blizzard is developing heroes ofthe storm and has some good ideas about developing fair system. Some ideas can be transferred to gw2 pvp.
http://eu.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/17345415/coming-soon-hero-league-and-draft-mode-09-01-2015

-MATCHMAKING
While you can queue for Hero League using a party of any size, the matchmaker will always prefer pitting parties of equal size against one another.

For example: Say that you queued for Hero League with two friends, and matched with two other allies who each queued alone. In this case, the matchmaker will attempt to match you against an enemy team consisting of a party of three, and two solo players.
The matchmaker will also search the Hero League queue in order to place you with and against players of similar skill. Hero League will use a matchmaking rating (MMR) that’s separate from your Quick Match rating. This is also an individual rating, meaning that it is unique to your own performance, and will not change based on different parties or players you buddy up with. Everyone will start their Hero League journey with a blank slate in terms of MMR, which may initially cause Hero League matchmaking to feel a little wild while the matchmaker learns more about each player’s individual skill level. The more Hero League games are played, the more accurate matchmaking will become.

GAME ABANDONMENT
We want ranked play in Heroes of the Storm to be a competitive and fun experience for players at all ranks and skill levels. Players who abandon games before they’re finished not only bring down team morale, but also hurt the competitive experience for all nine of the other players. For these reasons, we plan to implement a few penalties for game abandonment with our next patch.

Any player who leaves an in-progress Hero League or Quick Match game, and does not rejoin before it is finished, will be prevented from playing any ranked games until they complete a new Quick Match game. That player will also still earn or lose ranked points depending on the outcome of the match he or she left prematurely.
Any player who leaves a Hero League game during Draft Mode will lose a substantial amount of ranked points, become unable to play ranked games until completing a Quick Match game, and will also cause any players in his or her party to incur these penalties.

We already have this kind of systems in place.
→ We have a MMR System trying to put premades against premades (emphasis on ‘trying to’). If you have any source code which might help improve the process, feel free to pn an arena net dev.
→ We have a desertion system. The part where you loose rank points is already enabled, the timeout is currently collecting data, and will most likely be online next tuesday.
→ The simle points-ladder will get changed to a league ladder in the future. Hopefully soon.

Any other great new, and never before though of, inventions do Blizzard have?

yea, arenanet is trying to make system, while blizzard is doing it.
1. Blizzard does not allow 4 premades vs 2 soloquers.
2. Current gw2 dezert system puts 1 min ban on ranked, while blizzard give 20 min ban becouse player is forced to play full unranked game.
3. Ladder soon… while blizzard is done with it

Urejt.5648:

yea, arenanet is trying to make system, while blizzard is doing it.
1. Blizzard does not allow 4 premades vs 2 soloquers.
2. Current gw2 dezert system puts 1 min ban on ranked, while blizzard give 20 min ban becouse player is forced to play full unranked game.
3. Ladder soon… while blizzard is done with it

Maybe you should go play a blizzard game if you love it so much.

Blizzard system has nothing with desertion system we got. To mine understanding person who got short DC isn’t punished by Blizzard in anyway.

If you will force players to play Unranked game, there is high chance they will just afk in it, troll or sth, because that is what happens when you force people to do sth they don’t want to do.

However I would prefer to get ‘forced’ to play Unranked myself than get ‘Deserter’ aka ‘go afk 30 min’ due to DC, so I could just practice with my alt professions in Unranked ;P

How would Blizzard’s system work if there are only 15 people in the queue at the moment?

Justin ODell.9517:

Urejt.5648:

yea, arenanet is trying to make system, while blizzard is doing it.
1. Blizzard does not allow 4 premades vs 2 soloquers.
2. Current gw2 dezert system puts 1 min ban on ranked, while blizzard give 20 min ban becouse player is forced to play full unranked game.

1. Their wording suggests they do the same thing we do. That is, they will try to avoid matching premades and soloers, but will if certain conditions are not present.
2. You actually get a 16 minute ban (when dishonor is enabled) for deserting the first time. It escalates from there. You only get a small ban if you decline a queue.

Apologies if this is already announced, but can we confirm the bug preventing us from actually leaving queue will be fixed prior to any penalty for denying queue pop?

Justin ODell.9517:

Yes. I have fixed this bug and the fix will be LIVE on Tuesday.

Is there a reason that for a glaring bug you say has already been fixed, you wait until patch day to release it!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

I heard from myself that you are bringing raid of the capricorn back next update. Thanks!

hey Justin, anything in the works to prevent 3 rangers on one team vs. none on the other, or 2 engies + 2 necros vs. none of either on the other team type stuff from happening? i.e. better prof distribution. this is by far the greatest flaw of the matchmaker atm, because not ever prof can fill every role well. for example, a team with 2 thieves and 2 power rangers have no point presence, usually results in loss. stuff like that. and will the matchmaker ever be intelligent enough to look at the spec as well?

i had 3 guardians in 2 games in a row yesterday.

the enemy didnt have one.

im guessing swapping a guard for one of the enemy team’s players would have thrown off the MMR variance. (enemy was not pre-made)

Justin ODell.9517:

mistsim.2748:

hey Justin, anything in the works to prevent 3 rangers on one team vs. none on the other, or 2 engies + 2 necros vs. none of either on the other team type stuff from happening? i.e. better prof distribution. this is by far the greatest flaw of the matchmaker atm, because not ever prof can fill every role well. for example, a team with 2 thieves and 2 power rangers have no point presence, usually results in loss. stuff like that. and will the matchmaker ever be intelligent enough to look at the spec as well?

There already is something in place, it’s just being overwhelmed. We also had to lower the enforcement of duplicate professions because it was overshadowing party size scoring.

By spec do you mean build? We considered adding amulet as a matchmaking variable, but since we want people to be able to change builds in that pre-game window we decided against it.

Most don’t change in unranked. Maybe it should be added as a factor for unranked but not ranked.

FrownyClown.8402:

Justin ODell.9517:

mistsim.2748:

hey Justin, anything in the works to prevent 3 rangers on one team vs. none on the other, or 2 engies + 2 necros vs. none of either on the other team type stuff from happening? i.e. better prof distribution. this is by far the greatest flaw of the matchmaker atm, because not ever prof can fill every role well. for example, a team with 2 thieves and 2 power rangers have no point presence, usually results in loss. stuff like that. and will the matchmaker ever be intelligent enough to look at the spec as well?

There already is something in place, it’s just being overwhelmed. We also had to lower the enforcement of duplicate professions because it was overshadowing party size scoring.

By spec do you mean build? We considered adding amulet as a matchmaking variable, but since we want people to be able to change builds in that pre-game window we decided against it.

Most don’t change in unranked. Maybe it should be added as a factor for unranked but not ranked.

player behavior changes over time. the system must be designed based on what it allows and not only what is currently being used within those allowances.

Hey, that sounds exactly like what ANet is already doing! The punishment for desertion is just a little different (ANet prevents ranked play for a duration, Blizzard forces one round of unranked play).

It’s easy to state how a system should work conceptually. Getting it to function that way in reality is the hard part.

Couldn’t adding “official” roles help matchmaking? Bunker/Roamer are roles the community has created (at least I think it was the community) to define different builds. Since Guild Wars 2 has no trinity and basically all classes can be tweaked to fill any role wouldn’t it help to define the roles that people can play? Maybe this could help with matchmaking by adding a filter to balance teams and also help better define roles in GW2 SPvP.

Justin ODell.9517:

ArrDee.2573:

Justin ODell.9517:

Yes. I have fixed this bug and the fix will be LIVE on Tuesday.

Is there a reason that for a glaring bug you say has already been fixed, you wait until patch day to release it!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Protocol. The bug isn’t critical as it doesn’t prevent play. It’s more annoying than anything else.

But this isn’t the first time something needed to be done, and although some may not be critical it does effect the state of play…

It’s clear on a regular basis players are not pleased with the method or gaps between updates and fixes.

I suggest having a meeting to change/advance/update protocol. Maybe even get the community involved when it comes to problem solving issues that disallow more frequent updates.

As far as your community understands “we don’t do Y because of X” well what governs the state of “X”, why is “X” how it is?? Clearly this specific situation is significantly less critical and effects play less than other situations I agree, but I still think talks should be had.

Justin ODell.9517:

ArrDee.2573:

Justin ODell.9517:

Yes. I have fixed this bug and the fix will be LIVE on Tuesday.

Is there a reason that for a glaring bug you say has already been fixed, you wait until patch day to release it!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Protocol. The bug isn’t critical as it doesn’t prevent play. It’s more annoying than anything else.

It actually had more of an effect than you seem to think. It meant that I was in a ranked game and thought it was unranked. In this case I had initially entered rank queue but then left queue and queued for an unranked game; I only found out it had actually been a ranked game queue pop when I saw I’d played one more ranked game than I thought I had on the leaderboard.

I don’t really mind but it screwed over my teammates as I was trying out a new build and wasn’t really playing to win. My main goal for that match was to test the limits of the build; this meant I was entering fights I was pretty confident I’d lose just to see how it played out which had a major effect on the outcome of the game. If my teammates were passionate about climbing the leaderboard then it was not at all fair to them.

It doesn’t matter massively now as the bug fix will be implemented very soon but I think you underestimated the possible effects of the bug.

The MMR system doesnt seem to work at all in GW2 .. compared to other games that i play , where you only play with people relatively similar to your skill level .

In gw2 you play with all ranges of skill people it is almost never balanced.. games end up 500 vs 100-200 most of the time.. and with 2 thiefs or 3 rangers.. i personally dont see any diference at all before and after the implement of the MMR.. everything that was suppose to be fixed with it.. wasnt , the pvp balance of teams is as broken as it always have been.

for example i never get “bronze league” people in my team, in starcraft because iam 4 leagues above them.. , leagues " or ranks" mean something there . same as counter strike , and many other competitive games .

in gw2 you can get someone that its the first time playing the game.. vs a team of premades in the top 200 . and this isnt a rare case.. it happens daily more than 50% of the time for sure , along with the new idea of having to stay in hotm to launch.. basically makes me want to close the game after 5 min queque.. and 3 games lost by 400 points in a row.. having to deal with 1 or 2 afk and 3v1s…. and there is no guarantee the next 10 games will be better because it keeps happening again and again and again .

Does this mean dishonor will be back come Tuesday as well? Leavers have been rampant lately because there is no penalty.

Lol holidays are for college kids, most adults worked. People who need breaks from work don’t really love what they do. “When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breath then you will be succesful”.

Also use cs go as the template to improve this game. The others are built to please bad gameplay.

Justin,

Is it possible the Match Prediction Algorithm/MMRs can only accurately predict at the extremes? And in the vast middle ground it often fails to predict unbalanced matches?

How did your simulations go applying the updated Match Prediction Algorithm against past games?

Dagoth.7038:

It actually had more of an effect than you seem to think. […]

I don’t think anyone who enters Ranked arena without a team of 5 players should expect everyone to be good at all.

Algorithms can be efficient. They can try to match you with other players who’ve had similar outcomes as you. If they wanted to make it even better, they’d evaluate you based on your contribution to the team (damage dealt, healing done, boons and conditions applied, etc.) and try to match you with equally useful individuals.

But there are things code can’t detect. Sabotage, for example. If you queue up with a team of 4 and your fifth member decides to purposefully disrupt your team (for example, by constantly casting area stealth whenever your team attempts to capture a point), that’s just bad luck you can only prevent by never queuing without a full party.

The bug may be annoying, but I’d much rather have clean patches rather than constant hot fixes that add up to over 10 GB of unused files after a few years (looking at you, Blizzard). If you want to test out a new build, Practice mode is good for nothing but providing semi-intelligent target dummies.

Justin ODell.9517:

mistsim.2748:

stuff

we want people to be able to change builds in that pre-game window.

That’s actually interesting to hear! Since we are now in that topic, does that mean that you guys are also looking at templates (at least for PvP) ?! Personally I’m constantly changing builds in my guardian between bunker and two alternatives of DPS, as well as staff / D/D on my ele, I would appreciate it if I could do it quicker since when Im having my traits window open Im rushing and NOT paying attention to the chat, where team plans are being discussed or I miss a skill/trait/runes/sigil which might be vital to the build and thus completely destroying my build and destroying my team’s chances of winning (at least from me).

Thanks in advanced!

edit: yah I dont think I will get an answer tbh sorry hahahaha :/

Justin ODell.9517:

I’ve been looking at the data, and by my estimate it disagrees with what your saying. Not only are wide differences in MMR rare, we more accurately predict the outcome the wider they become.

That’s not good evidence that the system is working. If a bunch of people are around the same MMR, but some should be higher and others lower, the outcome over many iterations still ends up looking correct because it averages to 50% ratios. Although the accuracy of predictions with wider MMR ranges seems to imply that MMRs are correct, it doesn’t. As long as you have some people higher or lower towards the directions they should be, it helps offset the people with incorrect MMRs when you lump them into teams. In theory, that should eventually settle, but if you keep injecting new players, it stays chaotic.

I have to agree with the feeling that MMR calculation isn’t correct or there are many outliers. While I see many opponents and teammates that I would say are roughly around my skill level, I often that one really bad player on either team that is nowhere close. Problem is, that one outlier has a huge impact on how even the match-up feels.

Fortus.6175:

That’s actually interesting to hear! Since we are now in that topic, does that mean that you guys are also looking at templates (at least for PvP) ?!

Lesh confirmed awhile back that he’s looking at templates. He even opened a thread for it. When they’ll arrive and in what form hasn’t been announced, but I have every confidence we’ll get them eventually.

Also, Justin, dishonor please?

Justin ODell.9517:

Daishi.6027:

It’s clear on a regular basis players are not pleased with the method or gaps between updates and fixes.

It’s only been this long because of the holidays in between updates.

Not because ANet decided on a 3 month update schedule?

Edit: … or was that 5. Either way, really long time especially for smaller stuff.

“I sympathize with the feelings people have, but feelings aren’t dictators of reality.”

No, but blowouts are. What about solo people mixed up against grouped players. That confounds the matcher when there are not all that many people in the queue.

Justin ODell.9517:

Daishi.6027:

It’s clear on a regular basis players are not pleased with the method or gaps between updates and fixes.

It’s only been this long because of the holidays in between updates.

Yeah ok, that’s understandable. But this isn’t the first time we’ve had completed bug fixes that could have come out sooner.

I recall a thread regarding specific class bugs, and a dev confirmed they were either complete or unable to make it in, for the upcoming feature patch at the time.

Why didn’t they just release them as they finished or in a bundle as opposed to waiting 2ish months previous to the big patch?

This is why I suggest being more open regarding such protocols, because I wouldn’t be surprised if that was a situation akin to this. If there is no other way around such protocol, or no room for changes due to other situations, at least it’d be better to know. As opposed of the unavoidable negative light cast from the player base, since we’d get whats going on I think people would be more accepting of certain things.

Justin ODell.9517:

Exedore.6320:

If a bunch of people are around the same MMR, but some should be higher and others lower, the outcome over many iterations still ends up looking correct because it averages to 50% ratios.

I’m not 100% sure I follow what you’re trying to say here. Maybe if we made completely random teams and MMR was ignored it would average out to 50% over many iterations. That scenario doesn’t match our system though, we place by MMR and that MMR adjust over time based on outcome. This isn’t random sampling.

Exedore.6320:

Although the accuracy of predictions with wider MMR ranges seems to imply that MMRs are correct, it doesn’t. As long as you have some people higher or lower towards the directions they should be, it helps offset the people with incorrect MMRs when you lump them into teams. In theory, that should eventually settle, but if you keep injecting new players, it stays chaotic.

This seems to be going in the other direction, and only would be true if players stayed in the same team for every iteration. Our system, even though not a random sample, often generates matches where the same person may be the highest MMR or the lowest MMR in any given match.

Exedore.6320:

I have to agree with the feeling that MMR calculation isn’t correct or there are many outliers. While I see many opponents and teammates that I would say are roughly around my skill level, I often that one really bad player on either team that is nowhere close. Problem is, that one outlier has a huge impact on how even the match-up feels.

I sympathize with the feelings people have, but feelings aren’t dictators of reality. We humans have many cognitive biases that cloud our judgement that we must keep in check when aiming for objective analysis.

This worries me. The thing is that your metrics sometimes dont show everything. Lies. Dam lies and statistics…as the phrase goes.

There is a reason why NO competitive teams currently queue and it is because of matchmaking. There is also a reason why alot of top solo players stopped queueing. And its matchmaking.

Your MMR system might have by now normalised everyone’s rating to a certain level. But your stats can’t show you that I am playing vs no-names and with no-names on 2 minute queue pops.

Games where i am guaranteed to farm their whole team and yet my team is just equally horrendous. It isnt working. the game is dead. Pvp wise it is totally dead. used to be 5/6 teams and/or pugs who would queue every night. So you had good games every night (on EU). What now? It is a disaster zone.

No good teams/pugs queue anymore. Literally NONE. Because they dont get fun games. They just stomp no-names/solo queuers.

The top end of PvP on Eu seems deader than I have ever seen. Thats just my observation.

Justin ODell.9517:

Mindtrick.5190:

Lol holidays are for college kids, most adults worked. People who need breaks from work don’t really love what they do. “When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breath then you will be succesful”.

My employer is very generous when it comes to paid holiday leave. I’ll also remind you that it’s a Sunday and I’m here looking at data and answering questions.

Lol, funny how that guy throws a quote in a lot of motivational videos at you, and you just slap him with that nice reply ’I’m working on sunday, my day off kitten, and you think I don’t care?’ haha.

The only thing I agree with is the ladder, how does a game still not have ladder when simple successful, don’t do balancing every 3 months because we don’t need to game and we self imposed esports game… Yes I’m talking about StarCraft, oldy old every game should take notes from that game.
There ladder was pretty much on point.

Now instead of learning from blizzard, you should be 1 step above blizzard and implement that star rating system I mentioned earlier. Where people rate other players to help you with your matchmaking for better matches.

Let people rate players after a game, if they chose not to rate certain player they just don’t get any rating, but if they hate or think someone is too good for them, obviously they rate them as 1 star (this guy is a newb, que him with other newbs) or 5 star (this guy too kitten good, make him que with other good players because I cant handle this guys skill).

Currently the game cant determine who is good or not. There might be people out there, that hold off 2 3 players never kill them and never die themselves, and that’s why that guy holding off 2 3 players team won because he too good. But he didn’t get points for kills, he didn’t capture anything, he just holded off 2 3 players which is a big deal but didn’t really do anything point wise, game doesn’t recognize this.

Matter of fact a lot of good players are like that, holding off 2 3 players and able to escape. Those guys kitten me off and normally they engineers, probably why people hate engineers but its normally the same select few engineers, and not every engineer player.

The take home message is for the average player the new system is great. They find fun and competitive matches.

For the highly skilled and experienced player the system is so bad that they all quit playing. Does any EU team/pro pug even play full 5 man team queue with ts anymore?

I highly doubt it. Maybe keep the current matchmaking for unranked queue but switch the ranked queue matchmaking over to the previous system so we can actually get some competition back into this game.

Nobody will listen to me I know that. But I am right. You could go and ask ANY highly rated player of old solo or team queue and they will tell you the same (or almost all will say the same). The last patch ruined this game. kitten even Blu, who is anet through and through, said what I am saying about matchmaking. It has killed the game for anyone good..

Justin ODell.9517:

mistsim.2748:

hey Justin, anything in the works to prevent 3 rangers on one team vs. none on the other, or 2 engies + 2 necros vs. none of either on the other team type stuff from happening? i.e. better prof distribution. this is by far the greatest flaw of the matchmaker atm, because not ever prof can fill every role well. for example, a team with 2 thieves and 2 power rangers have no point presence, usually results in loss. stuff like that. and will the matchmaker ever be intelligent enough to look at the spec as well?

There already is something in place, it’s just being overwhelmed. We also had to lower the enforcement of duplicate professions because it was overshadowing party size scoring.

By spec do you mean build? We considered adding amulet as a matchmaking variable, but since we want people to be able to change builds in that pre-game window we decided against it.

hey not sure what u mean by “overwhelmed”. in either case, I just got out of a match with 3 mesmers on the other side while we had none. it was a skill issue I admit, we lost horribly, but there were 10-15 illusions on screen at all times. imagine that. imagine having 2-3 MM necros.

matchmaker should not allow this. it’s a huge problem. class stacking is unenjoyable and no other competitive game allows it. it also leads to silly losses, or blowouts.

Justin ODell.9517:

Neither have/had any barring on balance changes though, those have there own separate concerns.

any chance you can elaborate on this? i have no idea about how balance changes trickle down to us… is it a team or a guy or what and im guessing changes have to go through a couple more QA sessions before they hit live?

Justin ODell.9517:

Mindtrick.5190:

Lol holidays are for college kids, most adults worked. People who need breaks from work don’t really love what they do. “When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breath then you will be succesful”.

My employer is very generous when it comes to paid holiday leave. I’ll also remind you that it’s a Sunday and I’m here looking at data and answering questions.

Given that I’ve had insanely terrible not even remotely enjoyable games lately your work is still appreciated! The problem is way more likely a lack of sizable player base than anything and most adults get paid time off. Let them come back refreshed.

Additionally there are competitions for these kinds of machine learning problems that areneanet could host to find good algorithms for determining close games as opposed to relying so heavily on MMR.

Justin ODell.9517:

Solstice.1097:

Apologies if this is already announced, but can we confirm the bug preventing us from actually leaving queue will be fixed prior to any penalty for denying queue pop?

Yes. I have fixed this bug and the fix will be LIVE on Tuesday.

My inability to search for the thread, and the fact that the search feature on this forum is non-existent…

I am sure, in the past, I saw a thread from a PvP dev that stated they wanted to push patches when they were ready instead of grouping them into “patch days”

I will have to try looking for it again

http://www.gamebreaker.tv/news-main/mmorpg/no-big-patches-for-guild-wars-2/

March 2013, oh boy, some fuel for the fire…

Justin ODell.9517:

Solstice.1097:

Apologies if this is already announced, but can we confirm the bug preventing us from actually leaving queue will be fixed prior to any penalty for denying queue pop?

Yes. I have fixed this bug and the fix will be LIVE on Tuesday.

Glad to hear it, its probably having a substantial impact on the Q times.

Thank you for your responses. Espessially reds. Hope 2015 will be fruitfull. Can not wait for expansion.

uberkingkong.8041:

Justin ODell.9517:

Mindtrick.5190:

Lol holidays are for college kids, most adults worked. People who need breaks from work don’t really love what they do. “When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breath then you will be succesful”.

My employer is very generous when it comes to paid holiday leave. I’ll also remind you that it’s a Sunday and I’m here looking at data and answering questions.

Lol, funny how that guy throws a quote in a lot of motivational videos at you, and you just slap him with that nice reply ’I’m working on sunday, my day off kitten, and you think I don’t care?’ haha.

Now instead of learning from blizzard, you should be 1 step above blizzard and implement that star rating system I mentioned earlier. Where people rate other players to help you with your matchmaking for better matches

Funny how you interept text you white knight of justice and suggest the star idea from kindergarten. This idea won’t work you take it out of players hands so they can’t manipulate it, try again. Oh and working Sunday is normal if you have every Sunday off your job is casual.

Kids now a days assume they get days off and that not working and having time to do nothing is a right. You earn it pleb.