Guild Wars 2

This “organized play” thing is destroying a lot of fun in the game. Here’s a Diamond ( I think ) level player openly asking for an Amber to join them as a duo.

Yes, ANET, mmr tanking is happening.. it’s happening constantly.

-edit- I’ve had a long hard night, the majority of the matches over the past 9 hours or so have been losses, many of them by blowout. I really don’t appreciate the cheating.

Ithilwen.1529:

This “organized play” thing is destroying a lot of fun in the game. Here’s a Diamond ( I think ) level player openly asking for an Amber to join them as a duo.

Yes, ANET, mmr tanking is happening.. it’s happening constantly.

-edit- I’ve had a long hard night, the majority of the matches over the past 9 hours or so have been losses, many of them by blowout. I really don’t appreciate the cheating.

I don’t think you used the term ‘mmr tanking’ correctly. He’s just asking for an amber for a lower average division for faster queue times. Nothing really wrong with that imo.

ReaperJr.5967:

Nothing really wrong with that imo.

LOL.

Getting a low ranking player to team, so your effective MMR is lower is CHEATING pleb.

Ithilwen.1529:

Getting a low ranking player to team, so your effective MMR is lower is CHEATING pleb.

How is it cheating when it’s a genuine amber player? Any difference in skill between their opponents and them is effectively offset. If it’s another diamond player on an amber account then it’s unethical. Otherwise, it’s fine.

The fact that it’s an Amber player makes the combination artificially low MMR. Thus, the diamond player is getting an easy match as well as cutting the queue line.

It’s cheating, plain and simple.

A diamond teaming up with an amber may look and seem innocent but this match making system causes a terrible side effect where it assigns the team with the amber a very low odd for winning the match. If they do win, they get rewarded an easy 2 or 3 pip victory while the other team got punished and farmed proper.

Having an amber also serves as a security blanket. If in any case they don’t win, they do not lose 2-3 pips like the other team that got farmed proper.

I don’t think this is widely known yet but you can read more about it here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/MMR-Weights-and-Pip-loss/

Ithilwen.1529:

The fact that it’s an Amber player makes the combination artificially low MMR. Thus, the diamond player is getting an easy match as well as cutting the queue line.

It’s cheating, plain and simple.

There’s no logic there. Let’s put it simply in perspective for you. Diamond is div 5, amber is div 1. Avg div is 3, sapphire. Sapphire opponents will be easier for the diamond player, but more difficult for the amber player. In that sense, there’s no effective advantage to be gained.

Trust me, I did it once and never did it again. Amber players are god awful at rotations and their mechanical skills are ridiculously low. He effectively threw the game beyond any degree of carrying I was capable of. Lol.

You’re dead wrong. It’s cheating, it’s been stated that it’s cheating and you just admitted to cheating.

Yes, it’s true they are artificially altering the matchmaking (i.e. cheating). But the real problem here is the MM system that favours this behaviour.

Ithilwen.1529:

You’re dead wrong. It’s cheating, it’s been stated that it’s cheating and you just admitted to cheating.

Yeaaah okaaay. No point trying to use logic to convince you. Can’t expect the blind to see. Ban me plz anet i cheated

High-division players do not take ambers and emeralds so that they can stomp noobs. They don’t want to play against noobs, because they suck and it’s a boring match.

They take them because they cannot get a Q otherwise. If I Q by myself, I literally cannot play the game. My Q times are often over 1hr long (see below). I have to party with lower division players in order to play the game, and most of the time, they suck, Anet gives me a kitten team, and I go against a full premade.

@Ithilwen.1529 “Thus, the diamond player is getting an easy match as well as cutting the queue line.”

This is just absolutely wrong, and obviously you’re not diamond nor do you have any friends that are. The diamond player gets HARDER matches, and the diamond player ENTERS the queue because otherwise they are stuck in q hell for literally hours.

My friend and I were emerald last night and queued with two diamonds and a ruby because we’re all 5 friends. We farmed the heck out of people and got both of us up to Sapphire without losing a match. Does that mean we’re all cheating according to you too?

venusiano.8246:

Yes, it’s true they are artificially altering the matchmaking (i.e. cheating). But the real problem here is the MM system that favours this behaviour.

This I agree with. There are times I’ll have a complete blowout either on our or their favor and close matches are relatively rare. I just made it to sapphire so it’s just going to get tougher from here on out.

Ithilwen.1529:

This “organized play” thing is destroying a lot of fun in the game. Here’s a Diamond ( I think ) level player openly asking for an Amber to join them as a duo.

Yes, ANET, mmr tanking is happening.. it’s happening constantly.

-edit- I’ve had a long hard night, the majority of the matches over the past 9 hours or so have been losses, many of them by blowout. I really don’t appreciate the cheating.

Report them. If you know what to look for then you’ll realize this is happening all the time. I would say 1 out of 5 matches, perhaps even more. Observe what others are doing. When they are running around in circles, not contributing to combat and not capping points you know they are purposely tanking the match. Often times they just don’t give it their all and loose that way. Impossible to spot for solo queue players but easier with duos..

Dude, if the single diamond can carry 1 amber and 3 saphs against 5 saphs or higher, he kittening earned that win imo. It’s only if he gets into emerald or lower that I would even begin to care.

The point is that an AMBER should SUCK. So you’re taking a rallybot/man down into a match to lower the que time. Half the time that amber is going to rush in and die, and potentially rally any downed players you might have earned.

It’s putting a monkey on your back to lower your que time. I don’t think it’s that wrong. Yes I agree there should be a better system. No it is not cheating, according to the current rules of play. Until it’s all fixed just understand that any ruby queing with an amber is risking screwing himself just so he can play a little.

ruby/diamond/legend whatever**

This is not what MMr tanking is.

This guy is trying to queue with a lower MMR player to reduce his painful queue times due to the lack of players in him high MMR. This means he is willing to play with a far less skilled partner in order to join a game without waiting 30 minutes, what’s seems to be the problem?

Assuming the system works, they’ll get in a game that will average the MMR on both teams.

I don’t honestly care what the excuse is. This is outright cheating by manipulating MMR. That’s wrong regardless of your justification that it is convenient for the players involved.

If you’re cheating and manipulating to get ahead, you shouldn’t be a diamond level player to begin with.

Match manipulation is cheating and ANET claims that it will punish it. Personally, I doubt they’ll take action… but that doesn’t make it not cheating.

Ithilwen.1529:

I don’t honestly care what the excuse is. This is outright cheating by manipulating MMR. That’s wrong regardless of your justification that it is convenient for the players involved.

If you’re cheating and manipulating to get ahead, you shouldn’t be a diamond level player to begin with.

A number of people have gone into sufficient detail to explain why this isn’t MMR manipulation. I recently introduced a friend of mine to the game and we que’d up and got absolutely demolished for the entire night…it isn’t trivial to carry a new player.

Without any hard data on your situation , it just sounds like you want to blame anything but yourself for your continued losses. What was your w/l ratio before leagues? And after? It’s an easy trap to fall into (and to my shame I do it plenty myself, as evidenced by my pathetic QQ post in this subforum a few weeks ago), but you’ll feel a whole lot better if you just take a step back, read a book or do something else, and then try again in a few hours or the next day…

And people are still complaining about this zzzzzz.

My win ratio, playing my long favorite main is roughly 50% in leagues and I solo queue the vast majority of the time.

Teaming with a lower MMR player for convenience or to pad matches is match manipulation.

As such it is cheating. Those who cheat and manipulate have no business being in the higher echelons to begin with. They are carried by a system that allows exploitation.

Have you no pride?

Most Amber players are better then the Amber rank gives them to be. Especially now that most ‘amber level players’ are Emerald already by just ‘playing a lot, forcing the luck to their side’. This means that unless the player is really bad (and by playing 5 games daily, till the end of league would still be AMBER), he is actually taking profit of a lower mmr then he actually should have. The Diamond player also takes profit of this MMR ‘flaw of math’.

They lower the risk of pip loss.

They heavely increase the chance to win.

Because every single win (even if you are 100000000% favored to win), gives at least a pip, this basically is deceiving the system in two ways:

Lower chance to loose.
If you loose, you loose less pips
If you win, wich you got increased chance to, you get garanteed pip.

That’s 3 things, that over time will heavely improve your win rate and pip gain rate. I’d say for some people, this potentially adds a 20% higher pip gain rate then they should have.

To conclude further, this would set back a lot of diamonds back to emerald/Ruby.

Also these guys clearly want to get superior much pips. It’s their main focus. Woot they got diamond. They dream is almost realized. Why back down then? Is the risk suddenly to big to play normal? Is using dope (mmr fixing), to tempting now? Yes it is. Players are pip, league rank, title, and loot hungry. If Anet gives them no signs it’s wrong thing to do, they will deceive the system.

Like I could invite my friend (or use him accout myself), wich doenst play gw2 anymore. His rank atm? 0. My rank? 3. This would mean I artificially cheated 3 ranks down, so get better matchups. For me (cause i would play other account), no big gain. But the guy queueing with me, gets a superior huge advantage (cause my real rank is III and my ingame ‘thought by mmr system rank’ is 0). I just cheated,3 ranks in favor of my duo Q partner.

I could do this you know. But I don’t. It’s not ethical. Seeing as everyone and their mother players ‘meta’ comps now, it also proves people are addicted to wins, and scared as hell from looses. Seeing how much athletes use dope in such situations, i think it’s fair to say, a lot of player ‘fell’ for the easier pip farming method, and mmr fixing.

So yeah use your excuse, but meanwhile, you are loosing less pips when you loose then intended (ppl with a normal Q composition have it worse), you win more (thus overall gain more pips), and you are fighting weaker enemies, wich in return will make the ‘random lotery’ that matchmaking kinda is lately, more in your favor.

That’s 3 ways, that the ‘mmr fixing people’ have to their advantage, that other players playing in similar fashion don’t. To make it worse, the people that they beat all the time, LOOSE more often then they should. Making it a snowball effect of Non fixing mmr ppl loosing more, and MMR fixing ppl winning more. Let’s be honest here, diamond requires such a high win rate, and if you are not crazy lucky, play 24/7, or have a crazy good team, that you should not be that rank yet. A normal 55% win rate, 45% loos rate, would ping pong your pips so often up and down, that from ruby to diamond would take at least 3 weeks. Some ppl bypassed this, quite a lot so. I’m not denying some it’s because playtime, player skill, or a good team. But there’s to many to not suspect mmr fixing.

To make it worse: these people so focussed on getting pips in right or wrong way, are making pvp less balanced, less fun. A lot of people might leave pvp because of that, wich might kill the gamemode even faster then it already was. For your own sake: stop it so pvp can grow HEALTY again (mmr fixing is not healthy pvp).

You can disagree, naysay, wonk innocent all you want. It’s ethical not correct to other players, and you know it deep down in your heart, it’s why you are so proud, of the diamond tag.

Slice it however you may. It’s manipulating the system and it’s cheating.

How can I have respect for PvP rank when I know that many have gained it by cheap manipulation? It’s pretty sad, really.

same here , it seems even esl players exploiting with low division ranks.

Ithilwen.1529:

Slice it however you may. It’s manipulating the system and it’s cheating.

How can I have respect for PvP rank when I know that many have gained it by cheap manipulation? It’s pretty sad, really.

The system explicitly allows for legendary players to queue with amber, the group mmr adjusts for this, so how is it cheating? Its not exploiting and the system works to adjust for the difference in their ability. It can be ethically suspect depending on the motivations of the legendary player involved but given the extreme queue times for those in the top levels simply wanting a match is hardly a crime.

I don’t think the system should work like this for the league but thats an issue for anet. At the very least there should be soloq.

Ithilwen.1529:

The fact that it’s an Amber player makes the combination artificially low MMR. Thus, the diamond player is getting an easy match as well as cutting the queue line.

It’s cheating, plain and simple.

You’re actually assuming intent. Your assertion is that they’re taking a lower ranked player to help boost their chances to win (by playing weaker opponents, presumably).

However if the intent is to lower their queue time so that they can simply play, then that has not been explicitly called cheating/rigging/fixing/etc, and in fact highlights a flaw in the system that the player is merely trying to overcome. I.e. they’re getting lumped with high queue times. That’s on Anet, not the players.

Proving intent is difficult. Of course Anet’s not bound by any kind of law, certainly no concept of justice, so they can just ban everyone and let Andy Dufresne sort them out later.

ALL that aside, the system actually involves higher and lower tiered players playing together. If it wasn’t meant to, Anet would simply lock grouping out of your tier in ranked play.

In my opinion, there is a big difference between tanking MMR and joining an amber player so you can actually get a game. With queue time of over an hour in some cases, high division players really shouldn’t have to put up with that so I fully understand them taking in an amber/emerald so they can actually do what they turned on the game to do. Even if this is classed a cheating (it shouldn’t be), what exactly are the diamond/legendaries supposed to do when they can’t play the game for over an hour? If this is cheating there should be a way to let them play (maybe after 10 minutes the game just matches them with whoever is available? It better than not being able to play at all).
Of course I am not speaking from experience as I am only in ruby with no problems with queue times, but I don’t believe players should get punished for being the best (or even putting the most work into forming the divisions).