Guild Wars 2

Here is some statistical simulation that someone made considering all parameters of the league system (including win and lost streak).

With a 50% win/loose ratio, someone have to get 649 Games to get the title.

People with 30 hours a week into the game mode, (good or bad players) have the Legendary title.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4fgtyj/pvp_statistical_experiments/

So, is it prestigious to grind games to get the best pvp title of this game?

obviously

Most players with the title played way fewer games than that though. I’m not 100% certain, but I believe I played something in the order to 200 games this season.

I have a total of 2600 games since 3 years ago. So I play an average of 160 games a season, but I’m sure I played a bit more this season, so closer to 200 games. Also, keeping 50% win rate this season was harder than last season. I went on many win streaks for 8 or more games. I understand that by grinding enough, with some skill you can get there. And frankly I’m much more proud of legend this season than last.

I think you’ll find that most people in legend either did it by grouping up and coordinating, or are simply decent-to-good players like myself who solo queued all the way to legend. It wasn’t easy to get out of diamond, and I don’t think that calculation takes into account the fact that games got more and more competitive as I moved up diamond. First two tiers I did as a ventari rev, but that didn’t work as well higher up the league. Had to mix things up, but I ended up finally breaking out of diamond with a guardian dh and thief depending on if we had another thief.

I would be curious on the number of people who reached each division this season, and a mode (most frequent number) for how many games played per player. It should give some indication on how many games players played and how realistic that reddit post is.

I would guess that most players in legend got there within 100-300 games. In fact, if each game takes 20 minutes this number of 649 would take players 9 days of just playing gw2 and not sleeping or eating. If we made it more realistic and imagined someone played 2 hours a day. (which is still a lot) It would take them 108 days, 72 days for 3 hours a day. Both are longer than the season. So these players who happen to win 50% of the time would have to play a hell of a lot to get legend. I feel good about it.

Sure some players just played non stop pvp, but during this season, I did sab, made a new character, unlocked herald in hot, did some personal story, did some wvw, played silverwaste for mastery points, etc. I think most players do more than pvp too, so it becomes even more unrealistic to imagine this reddit thread has much basis on fact.

649 games is hell of alot…
It took me around 70Games(62w/8L) on this alt-account to reach Diamond T5 before the end of season in less than 16hours*…

Yes, it is prestigious for achievements and titles.

When the population is low enough, legendary will never mean anything regardless of what system you use.

edit: should’ve rephrased that to “competitive population”

Sublime Peasant.8092:

649 games is hell of alot…
It took me around 70Games(62w/8L) on this alt-account to reach Diamond T5 before the end of season in less than 16hours*…

Yes, it is prestigious for achievements and titles.

Great, with that kind of result, you are indeed a Legendary Player. But what about all those grinders that made it with 400+ games?

The point here, is what Value the Legendary Titles hold for Prestige, when average players can grind enough game to get it.

For example, in 2014… you could grind 3000 games and never be top 100. Now… well, the value of the title don’t “reflect” top 100 nor top 500 nor top anything… only being able to spam games each night until you get it.

There is no more 50% win rate for S2, so your entire argument is based on a false premise.

Jourdelune.7456:

Great, with that kind of result, you are indeed a Legendary Player. But what about all those grinders that made it with 400+ games?

The point here, is what Value the Legendary Titles hold for Prestige, when average players can grind enough game to get it.

• Thanks, but sadly thats what the majority of the player base wants. Achievements, titles and gear..

Jourdelune.7456:

For example, in 2014… you could grind 3000 games and never be top 100. Now… well, the value of the title don’t “reflect” top 100 nor top 500 nor top anything… only being able to spam games each night until you get it.

• This website; https://www.gw2pvp.de/web/index.php shows a BETA Leaderboard(overall,rank,unrank,season), with all personnal stats, etc..
  It works with your Api Key so I beleive that is pretty legit..

Most people would give up long before 650 games if all they were doing was winning 50% of there games without getting legedary. Also, we are talking about simulations here if you were really unlucky you could end up never getting to Legendary. What do you propose by the way to make it more skill based? This is only like the third or fourth time you have floated this kitten .

Man who the hell needs 500+ matches to reach leggy? Took me a little under a week of 1-2h a day of playing a few matches after work to get leggy this season. I probably played up towards 80-90 matches after reaching legendary and unlocking the final year of the ascension to get the wins conqueror achievement though. I blame that on matchmaking putting me against premades and partial premades of esports people while I had random solo queuers like myself with me.

I started S2 a couple weeks late. When I did start, I was busy with work and could only play 3-4 games a night. There was also a point mid-season where I just didn’t log in for a couple weeks due to being too tired. During the last four days of S2, I decided to try and grind legend right fast due to some well deserved time off. I had already reached t2 diamond at this point with about 100 matches played. During these four days, I was running probably 15-20 matches a night. On the final day I had reached diamond t7, just two more games to hit legend when the server stopped S2. Was pretty disappointed actually but w/e.

Point being:
I was able to do that with a total of about 200 games played this season, mixed solo and duo ques, mostly solo. Most people I talked with had said they grinded hard for 300-400 matches or more to achieve legendary. Others had horrors stories of 500+ games to do it and some others still, were able to do it in 100-150 matches. The people I had spoken with who did it quickly, were all people began play on day one, didn’t take breaks and were able to benefit riding their actual MMR wave up and out of ruby/early diamond quickly and of course people with structured teams. Those who started late or weren’t able to play often, were the ones who got stuck in the “MMR hell” for obvious reasons concerning how division being a part of match making worked during S2 “keeping good players who can only run 3-4 matches a night, in bad places”.

Things I heard that truly disturbed me about S2 match making:

• Players confirming to me that their main account struggled greatly to achieve legend but on an alt account, were able to do it in less than half the time.
• Players that I know for a fact are strong at conquest, struggled 400+ matches to achieve legend, when players that I know for a fact are weak in conquest, somehow rode win streaks to legend in less than half the time.
• Players telling me they have a 50/50 win/lose and progressed to legend fairly easily due to lose 3 then win 3 = get ahead 2 pips but other players telling me they have a 50/50 win/lose but have been stuck in the same spot for weeks because they lose 1, win 1, lose 1, win 1, so on and so forth.

Three things are certain:

• Legendary title is only 50% about skill. The other 50% is about having time on your hands to grind for it. An extremely good player may capitalize on high levels of skill to carry teams and do it more quickly than other players but bad players can still invest shameful amounts of time in place of their skill to lose 3 then win 3 their way to legendary.
• Pip grinding for division tags is a poor method to display actual player skill.
• Division tags need to be representing actual MMR, not pip progression.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Most people I talked with had said they grinded hard for 300-400 matches or more to achieve legendary. Others had horrors stories of 500+ games to do it and some others still, were able to do it in 100-150 matches. The people I had spoken with who did it quickly, were all people began play on day one, didn’t take breaks and were able to benefit riding their actual MMR wave up and out of ruby/early diamond quickly and of course people with structured teams. Those who started late or weren’t able to play often, were the ones who got stuck in the “MMR hell” for obvious reasons concerning how division being a part of match making worked during S2 “keeping good players who can only run 3-4 matches a night, in bad places”.

Just to give you another data point with an entirely different outcome: I started S2 on day 4, and reached ruby duo queuing two days later on day 6. I then took a ~5 (?) day break and came back around day 11 and duo que’d to diamond on day 14. Then I took a ~3-4 week break and came back with ~2 weeks till the end of S2 and solo/duo’d my way to legend over the span of 5 days. Legend took 174 games. With 1 week remaining, I then got an f2p account core warrior to diamond solo/queue.

What you should get out of the above paragraph: I did not start early (day 1), I didn’t play often (took several long breaks), but I never found myself in MMR hell. Even when I started a new ranked season on a new account with 1 week left there was no MMR hell. The bottom line is, based on my s2 experience I don’t think the time you start the season, or the frequency of your games (grinding through vs. taking breaks) matters at all.