Mario Kart has better PvP than Guild Wars 2

Mario Kart has better PvP than Guild Wars 2

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Posted by: Vagrant.7206

Vagrant.7206

As a preface: I’m at legendary rank, prestige 1. The game keeps putting me tantalizingly close to prestige 2 and then I get a massive string of losses. I solo queue.

I’ve played a lot of games that are “competitive” in nature — Call of Duty, Mario Kart, WoW PvP, so many Half-Life deathmatch mods and Team Fortress. I enjoy playing competitive games at their core. And Guild Wars PvP is no different to me.

But there comes a point when the game ceases to be fun. Those moments are obviously when you keep losing, but also when you keep winning. Facerolling people is only a slightly slower way to lose interest than to keep getting facerolled.

Most competitive games learned this problem long ago. Call of Duty gives you some boosts when you’re on a death streak. Team Fortress has short matches (so if you do get facerolled, no big deal) and randomizes the teams every game. Mario Kart gives better boosts to the people in the back, and less useful boosts to the people in front.

What does Guild Wars 2 do? Absolutely nothing. In fact, it almost seems like it revels in exacerbating the problem. Among other legendary players, it’s almost a running joke that the system already knows who’s going to win the match based on whatever stat the game keeps hidden from us.


I hear you trolls shouting: “So what? Working as intended. Stop being a carebear” And you may be right.

But the way the system is designed is the best way to discourage people from playing. It drives them away. Last night I got pitted against a team that had #1, 2, and 3 on the leaderboards against my team. Needless to say, we lost.

What reason did I, or the rest of my team, have to continue playing the rest of the night? We knew the system would do it again. The result is the game gets abandoned by the very people you need to keep it interesting, and queue times get longer. Have you noticed that queue times at the beginning of a season are often short (<30 secs), and by the end of the season, queues can take an excess of 10 minutes? The reason is that people stop playing, because the game stops being fun.

Yes, I am aware that GW2, being an MMO, has a much more complicated system to balance the ranking/matchmaking system. But there are simpler short-term solutions even if you do nothing to change the matchmaking:

  1. Don’t let people backslide down tiers, regardless of rank. This is a very nice feature at lower ranks, but disappears later on. If the system already has a predicted winner for a match, it is humiliating and insulting to keep backsliding against a predetermined fate. Putting in the safety net stops the worst part of high level PvP. People who are exceptional will still rise to the top, and the rest of us won’t suffer for it.
  2. The system should grant partial credit for a match well played. IE: If scores are within 100 points of each other, instead of penalizing you. Currently, losing a match 494-500 gets treated the same as losing a match 0-500. They’re simply not comparable.
  3. If the system has predicted the match outcome with relative certainty (IE probability of 75% or higher) it shouldn’t penalize the losing team a point.

And if you include refinement of the matchmaking system to stop producing matches where the winner is already predetermined, you end up with a system that is a lot more fair and lenient to players who may simply be getting a bad hand.


/rantover

For now you’ll find me in unranked, where the matches actually seem to be more balanced, for whatever reason.

The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.

(edited by Vagrant.7206)

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Posted by: Sooloo.1364

Sooloo.1364

You’re wrong, GW does do something when you are on a losing streak. It puts you in even worse games so you’ll lose more. Working as intended I think.

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Posted by: Vagrant.7206

Vagrant.7206

You’re wrong, GW does do something when you are on a losing streak. It puts you in even worse games so you’ll lose more. Working as intended I think.

That seems to jibe with my experience too, although I don’t have any kind of statistical rigor to back it up.

The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.

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Posted by: fishball.7204

fishball.7204

This problem arises because the population is too small. In an ideal world you would vs players of similar skill and even if you get stomped the next game won’t be the same people due to the large pool of people.

Unranked is a totally different story. I’ve gotten 3 signet rangers and people that are totally new to PvP on my team (and against). That’s not really fun for me either and I’ve rarely if ever had a close game out of the past 50 unranked matches I’ve had since this season started.

They just need to scrap everything and rework it, right now both ranked and unranked are messed up

FOR THE GREEEEEEEEEEEEN

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Posted by: Tatori.7938

Tatori.7938

I would especially be in favor of your first suggestion over everything else I’ve read on the forums thus far. I can handle long losing sprees or being dominated some games by the clearly better team, but to then lose pips and fall into an even lower tier is insulting. I loved how up to Ruby you had safety nets to avoid the treadmill grind.

I also like both other suggestions don’t get me wrong, and would love to see them implemented, but I have my doubts Guild Wars 2 would ever change that much to PvP at one time. With how messy the PvP matchmaking and balancing is, I’m surprised they are even trying to push E-Sports.

(edited by Tatori.7938)

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Posted by: Jumpin Lumpix.6108

Jumpin Lumpix.6108

bro mario kart 1 has better spvp than gw2

aka. “The Complainer”

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Posted by: Ubik.8315

Ubik.8315

Unranked is a totally different story. I’ve gotten 3 signet rangers and people that are totally new to PvP on my team (and against). That’s not really fun for me either and I’ve rarely if ever had a close game out of the past 50 unranked matches I’ve had since this season started.

They just need to scrap everything and rework it, right now both ranked and unranked are messed up

I have less competitive ranked games than unranked.

Normally in unranked it’s a case of which team has the fewer new players has a player who can hard carry on a hard carry class.

In ranked it’s just which team has the better MMR.

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Posted by: Vagrant.7206

Vagrant.7206

Unranked is a totally different story. I’ve gotten 3 signet rangers and people that are totally new to PvP on my team (and against). That’s not really fun for me either and I’ve rarely if ever had a close game out of the past 50 unranked matches I’ve had since this season started.

They just need to scrap everything and rework it, right now both ranked and unranked are messed up

I have less competitive ranked games than unranked.

Normally in unranked it’s a case of which team has the fewer new players has a player who can hard carry on a hard carry class.

In ranked it’s just which team has the better MMR.

This is often my experience. In unranked a good individual player can change the course of a game, but in ranked it’s very unlikely for any one player to influence the outcome, as the outcome was already predetermined.

The other thing is that people are more likely to be playing for fun and screwing around. It’s harder to be annoyed that you’re beating your head against a wall, unlike in ranked. Fewer people leave me incapped to die later on.

The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.

(edited by Vagrant.7206)

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Posted by: bLind.6278

bLind.6278

Anet doesn’t care. We’ve been on about this for 6 weeks, and they’ve not even said that they’ll be looking into the system for season 4.

It’s been a very frustrating 5 weeks in Ruby for me, and I have no desire to experience it all over again in season 4.

One foot out the door, yet again.

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Posted by: fishball.7204

fishball.7204

I have no interest in ‘carrying’ unranked by killing people 1v3. That’s not PvP to me, that’s like farming PvE. Most of my games I win 500-50 or lose 500-50 in unranked.

Ranked isn’t perfect either but at least I don’t get totally new players on my teams even if the matches are just as lopsided.

FOR THE GREEEEEEEEEEEEN