Guild Wars 2

Ok, end of S6 has come, everyone got their rank, some more deserving some less.
Other than the highly commented rank point issues, there’s barely any talk about placement matches. Why is that? I understand that placement matches are played at the start of season and by now everyone has forgotten about them, but placement matches are basically root of the bad matchmaking in this game. Everything starts in those 10 matches and spirals out of control from there.

Player’s whole season depends on random chance of these 10 matches. This is reason many players left game because they were placed too low and can’t leave the low ratings without playing 500 games in the season. On the other hand there is people in platinum that don’t have basic grasp on how to rotate around map. So good platinum players are getting really bad teammates which makes really bad and random games.

Why is this system of 10 games still in place?

What are the suggestions for improving the placements and is there maybe better way to rank people at the start of season?

I personally got placed in low silver (with 6 losses and 4 wins), played 135 games this season, got 74:61 win-lose ratio, and now I’m jumping around high silver. I play exclusively solo so I got that little bit of extra randomness in my games. If I wanted to climb, I would have to play more than 500 matches, and then I would reach a point that some people reached in just 10 games during placement because they were lucky and got had 6 wins and 4 losses.
I really like PvP in this game and like watching it a lot on twitch, but this game’s system is really demoralising and if nothing changes regarding the placement matches for next season I’m sure many people will just stop playing because system is so unfair and there’s not much you can do.

Yeah I proposed a simple solution a while ago: give static amount of points for wins/losses, rather than dynamic amounts based on opponents’ relative skill level. Here’s the Full comment

a lot of misconcepts here
firts: placement matches are not absolute, they depend on you previous mmr.
before the season starts they make a soft reset of mmr(the formula are: (your mmr + 1200) /2 and placement are to restore partially to your “place”
second: it is not about “climbing” is about geting your place and climb only if you improve your play
third: to huskyboy, this is a skill calculation system and because of this the points win or loss have to be determined by the enemy team not a fixed amount

I’m aware of this soft reset, but how do you soft reset people that make their first step into the game? Or people that got lucky and got carried in their first set of placement matches? It’s amazing how bad some people are in silver, which makes you wonder how bad people must be in bronze; and to contrast that, I’ve seen good players losing their kitten on map chat because their was a clear gaping hole between their skill and skill of clueless people that they got paired with. Same goes for higher tiers. Just watch some higher ranked players when they stream. Some people in their matches are worse than people I encounter in my silver matches. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. But that’s how it is due to placement matches.
And more on the faultiness of this soft reset of mmr; last season I basically started PvP, and I got placed in same tier after my placement matches. Now, this season I can safely say I play much better and understand rotations much more than I did before, yet I had the same luck of being placed at exact same spot in low silver. All because I happened to have ‘luck’ of having 6:4 win:lose ratio in placements in both scenarios.

Whatever the case is, this system is really faulty and having someone’s season be determined solely by placement matches is a really bad system and needs a change.
Placement needs to be dynamic throughout the whole season or everyone starts season at same rating. There needs to be some system implemented that can quantify someone’s gameplay and maybe give boost in rating point gain if he/she excels at lower tiers or some penalty if he/she is bad at higher tiers. Volatility at start of season will always happen, but toward end of season people need to have something to grasp on, and seeing some people get away with 1600 rating and worse win lose ratio than yours while you’re on 1300, just leaves people salty and not want to compete any more.

not sure what u talking about because i look at NA platinum and its the same people whos either legendary during season1 -4 or platinum last season. so this conspiracies about someone bronze or silver player getting lucky and getting place in platinum and for some reason is still there at the end of season is just absurd. for example i got placed t3 platinum during season 5 and by the end of season i was in t2 platinum (400games) now season 6 i got place in t2 gold because of Dced party or just bad team mates including me making mistakes. but im at t1 plat almost t2 and season is over. (135 games) i would have played more if the reward wasnt so crappy and my rating gains is 9+ or 11+ with a lose of -13 or -16 so i didnt even bother grinding the reward boxes to get some ascended gear. oh and btw a guildie of mine got place t1 platinum, im salty about it but when he started playing he drop to silver and i think he gave up and now at bronze.

martin.1653:

I’m aware of this soft reset, but how do you soft reset people that make their first step into the game? Or people that got lucky and got carried in their first set of placement matches? It’s amazing how bad some people are in silver, which makes you wonder how bad people must be in bronze; and to contrast that, I’ve seen good players losing their kitten on map chat because their was a clear gaping hole between their skill and skill of clueless people that they got paired with. Same goes for higher tiers. Just watch some higher ranked players when they stream. Some people in their matches are worse than people I encounter in my silver matches. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. But that’s how it is due to placement matches.
And more on the faultiness of this soft reset of mmr; last season I basically started PvP, and I got placed in same tier after my placement matches. Now, this season I can safely say I play much better and understand rotations much more than I did before, yet I had the same luck of being placed at exact same spot in low silver. All because I happened to have ‘luck’ of having 6:4 win:lose ratio in placements in both scenarios.

Whatever the case is, this system is really faulty and having someone’s season be determined solely by placement matches is a really bad system and needs a change.
Placement needs to be dynamic throughout the whole season or everyone starts season at same rating. There needs to be some system implemented that can quantify someone’s gameplay and maybe give boost in rating point gain if he/she excels at lower tiers or some penalty if he/she is bad at higher tiers. Volatility at start of season will always happen, but toward end of season people need to have something to grasp on, and seeing some people get away with 1600 rating and worse win lose ratio than yours while you’re on 1300, just leaves people salty and not want to compete any more.

this :
“and seeing some people get away with 1600 rating and worse win lose ratio than yours while you’re on 1300”
demostrates that you dont understant the system

and for the streams of the top players you say, y saw one vid from one top duo the 1 and 2 of EU, and one of the “bads” on his teams was a member of my ex-guild i know them they are not so bad, surely they can beat you, but hi not have the level of a legendary, hi is not legendary hi is gold. the insta pop q this season puts players of so diferent skill in a match a gold in a team with number 1 and 2 of EU ranking and surely others players in this team are gold(you can imagine how clumsy will resemble a gold player fighting a legendary one). This is not a placement matches problem this is a low population problem

I dont get the whole “placement matches are basically root of the bad matchmaking” argument.

This season I started in Gold1 and made it to Plat 1 by playing ~70% of my games solo.
Last season I started in Silver 2 (due to kittening up my placements) and at one point even got close to Silver 1 ….and you know what…. while almost playing exclusively solo (~90%), I still managed to reach Plat 1.

Granted ….during both seasons I played about ~350 games. But still, if you really are good enough, you WILL eventually climb. Blaming poor ranking alone on bad placements seems like a really weak excuse to me.

BikeIsGone.8675:

I dont get the whole “placement matches are basically root of the bad matchmaking” argument.

This season I started in Gold1 and made it to Plat 1 by playing ~70% of my games solo.
Last season I started in Silver 2 (due to kittening up my placements) and at one point even got close to Silver 1 ….and you know what…. while almost playing exclusively solo (~90%), I still managed to reach Plat 1.

Granted ….during both seasons I played about ~350 games. But still, if you really are good enough, you WILL eventually climb. Blaming poor ranking alone on bad placements seems like a really weak excuse to me.

So, you’re saying that it was ok for the system to force you to play 350 games to reach the division you belong to? This could probably be a 50 game climb if you got 2 more wins in placement and got placed in Gold 2, for example. Is it fair that some people need to go through grind based only on 10 random placement matches?
You still think my argument is totally bad? Should some people really grind 350 games to reach their skill level division while others only need 10 placement games?

Current system can’t be good when in any given division there is huge gaping hole between best and worst players.

Between lowest and highest rank of any division there can still be a 300 rating gap, which is and SHOULD reflect a high skill gap.

Don’t get me wrong, I get what you try to say. The grind upwards (especially from the lower ranks) can be one hell of a roller coaster especially if you aren’t super pro and can’t maintain a ~90% winrate. But the season is 2 months (!) long, so having a feeling of progression is actually pretty nice. Imagine if your placement at the beginning and at the end of the season were practically the same (if the system would miraculously rate you at a level where your winrate is at about 50%). What motivation would you have to play ranked for to begin with. People would just log in every 3 days, play 1 match and log off again.

it’s not about progression as long as you are not improving!

you get rewards byzantium etc the continue on and on
you get reward track rewards

do you really think that a noobcrusher that plays 300games should be platinum not because he’s a good player.. but on the number of games he has played alone????
THAT would create matches with platform players and one reanalysis getting the nob… ggf…
In these last few days ranked matches imo where quite stressful clutch and if in my last few matches which I solo Qued any player would’ve taken part that is the at least top 250.. (in fact at least 4 in one and 5 in the other were top 25) it would’ve been quite obvious to have someone sticking out in these matches

ranking is not for rewards it’s there to generate good matchups and boil.. those were awesome!

sure it doesn’t work perfectly
alt acs.
throwing games deliberately
placement matches
team comp (even though I found this less of a problem this seadon)
are all factors that need some more fine tuning work or rework
but for the love of God don’t argue that one should feel some sort of progression just for participating in games..
that’d be even worse than in seasons 2-4

Pick your poison. You can place too low and end up climbing most of the season, place just right and be stuck in a 50% win situation, or place too high and end up bleeding rating. No matter what people will find something to complain about. Fix the huge MMR gap on teams first.