Guild Wars 2

Preface by saying I’m rank 40 at pvp, not an expert in game design or balance but I know what isn’t fun. My friend recently purchased the game along with many others during the sale and one of the big things he wanted to try and was excited about was the pvp mode. I told him that its not the easiest thing to play when you just start out but he wanted to try it out. So I help set him up with a build, explain to him the point of the game and we queue up for unranked. In our first and only match we get paired up agains a 5 stack guild group. We end up getting stomped out hard and i had to explain that it was because in matchmaking there is no restrictions to who you can queue up with or got matched with, and judging from his response I don’t think he is going to play it again.

First of all, guild groups are not necessarily good. I’ve been playing in a full guild group since before I became a deer.

Second of all, did you consider that maybe he should practice a bit before jumping into the arena? 4 levels in PvE to get used to the UI and his key binds, and then hotjoin for a while? Unranked is for new players, sure, but it’s there to learn rotations and team work. You’re expected to learn about your skills a little beforehand, and he very well may have been the worst player in the entire queue.

I’ve been r80 so long I forgot Deer was a rank…. so this sentence hurt my brain for a minute….

Sorel.4870:

I’ve been playing in a full guild group since before I became a deer.

Sorel.4870:

since before I became a deer.

Sorel.4870:

I became a deer.

well when at least 3 of them are dragon rank and better than myself, and he has already leveled fairly far into the game. Hot join is a straight up mess of people leaving if they aren’t immediately stomping.

With that approach your friend will never get better. I would love to always be matched with premades who play a lot better than my team. That is the only way you can learn to play- by being stomped over and over again. You learn almost nothing by wining easy games.

Hey! It was NA and it was about an hour ago. Unranked Queue

adam.8692:

You learn almost nothing by wining easy games.

True, but oth what do you learn from being instadowned by 5 people camping under your resp point?

Both cases don’t really teach you how to play properly.

Razgriz.9831:

Hey! It was NA and it was about an hour ago. Unranked Queue

EST

So this was his very first PvP game ever? Even with a decent build, he was always going to lose against anyone who wasn’t just as new as he was. Worse, he’s fairly new to the game generally. I’d have taken him to an empty “Practice” Arena and dueled for a while, so he can at least learn how things work and get used to his build and to fighting other players, rather than dropping him straight into unranked.

Your friend is better of queuing solo. You probably have a high MMR and that bump of the ratting.

If your friend queue solo, he’ll probably be queued with good group.

I don’t like the match making myself. Even if I win, I’ll get to the point where most of the match is against premade of 3-5. So I stop care about winning so much.

I do think the system try to keep everyone at roughly 50% win ratio though(besides the top premade). So your friend loss this one, he’ll be queued with easy match next.

adam.8692:

With that approach your friend will never get better. I would love to always be matched with premades who play a lot better than my team. That is the only way you can learn to play- by being stomped over and over again. You learn almost nothing by wining easy games.

that’s a joke ,right? Because you can not possibly learn anything when you don’t get the chance to do anything because you are dead before you try
Though I agree that you don’t learn much from the easy games either
On the topic,solo vs premade and newbie vs high rank should never happen

Solstice.1097:

I’ve been r80 so long I forgot Deer was a rank….

Well you are dragon since April, mostlikely,))).

Same for 2 friends of mine. They started 1 week after the beta Leaderboards and quit after 2 week. We played as a group of 3 and I guess this was the reason why we more or less got always a team of 5 as opponents. We managed to win some games but it was not fun for them so they quit

My matchmaking seemed pretty off last night. I kept getting matches that were 500-100 (or less). Since the weekend, really, I’ve seen lots of new players who have no business being paired with or against me and my guildmates. We’re not great, but it’s pretty unfair.

We had a guy on our team be honest and tell us it was his first PvP match. Another team member (and not a guildmate) told the other team it was his first match, so I think he had a pretty rough go of it. We won, though.

But yeah, Justin: if you want an example of somebody with average skill (at least I’d bet I’m of average skill, I’m certainly not top end) getting matches with VERY new players for some reason or another, feel free to look at my games last night/since this weekend.

timmyf.1490:

We had a guy on our team be honest and tell us it was his first PvP match. Another team member (and not a guildmate) told the other team it was his first match, so I think he had a pretty rough go of it. We won, though.

Not saying that matchmaking is perfect, but what if that was the best option for him without what could be considered a ‘unreasonable’ queue time? A bit worrisome there.

As long as the length of queue is part of the equation (and I don’t think that in itself is a bad thing, no one wants to wait to enjoy a game) that will account for a portion of the matchmaking issue.

Bran.7425:

timmyf.1490:

We had a guy on our team be honest and tell us it was his first PvP match. Another team member (and not a guildmate) told the other team it was his first match, so I think he had a pretty rough go of it. We won, though.

Not saying that matchmaking is perfect, but what if that was the best option for him without what could be considered a ‘unreasonable’ queue time? A bit worrisome there.

As long as the length of queue is part of the equation (and I don’t think that in itself is a bad thing, no one wants to wait to enjoy a game) that will account for a portion of the matchmaking issue.

This may have very well been the case. We won that match handily, iirc (by over 100 points), so I think he was matched with us to pull our rating down. That said, it’s the semi-regular blowout matches that concern me more.

The matchmaking is horrible since the last pvp update. I think the main problem is: it mixes experienced soloq/teamq players with unexperienced players.
Mixing good and bad players is less worse than mixing experienced and unexperienced, maybe a player (like me) will lose every one vs. one, but at least he can cap/decap and help other players out.

I’m not a good pvp player but I don’t enjoy teams with three people going for close at the beginning. Which will wait there untill it is capped. Or the whole team always keeps running for the next point leaving everything unprotected.
You don’t learn basics like “always fight on point” “never leave a point unprotected” in hotjoin. So maybe the soloq/teamq/ranked/unranked experience should get more wight.
The matchmaking was way better before the last pvp update. Don’t know what went wrong, but maybe just undo the changes…
Its really frustrating knowing the match is lost when its 50vs30 points or something like that. You cannot giveup or leave. I’d like to see /resign back.

THe OP’s experience is what every newcomer to this game faces, and it’s an inherent weakness of the Glicko-2 system. Because the system assigns unrated players a high Ratings Deviation, it essentially assumes that a brand new player could be terrible but could also be awesome. They’re therefore just as likely to be assigned a good or a bad opponent. Glicko-2 essentially assumes that, if you have 0 matches, you’re somewhere in the middle of the skill spectrum, and it moves you up or down as you play.

In principle that’s fine if your aim is an accurate MMR, but not if you want people to have fun: at this point in the game’s lifespan, even the people in the middle of the skill spectrum will be pretty decent and chew up and spit out beginners! So everyone just starting out is guaranteed to lose their first 10-20 games in a row!

It’s a really horrible flaw which drives a lot of new players away from spvp, because of the impression that it’s wildly unfair and extremely hardcore. Even skilled players from WvW have an absolutely terrible time when they move to spvp because they’re just as likely to be matched against teams so high-rated they create a space-time anomaly on the leaderboards when they log in as against a team of one-flippered manatees randomly mashing the keyboards with their snouts. You can’t expect people to endure through 20-30 absolutely terrible matchups while their Glicko-2 rating stabilises!

Things worked OK in the starting few months of the game, when we were all more or less on the same level, but now, where there’s people who’ve been playing for 2 years and can kill you before you even spot them, it’s really unfair to drop beginners right in the middle of this!

The only solution to this is if MMR IS NOT USED AS A MATCHMAKING VARIABLE until a player has accrued a certain number of matches (say 30), so MMR actually means something. They should arbitrarily be assigned a made-up lowest-possible MMR, so they’re guaranteed to be matched up with other beginners. Keep calculating MMR in the background, just don’t use it for matchmaking: let players accrue enough matches so their MMR is meaningful before it’s used.

If you’re not willing to implement this, the only other way to make sure people don’t quit pvp after 10 games is to force them to only do hotjoins until rank 10 or 20 or so, and only then be allowed into unranked. Then gate ranked behind an even higher rank requirement.

I’ve talked to a lot of beginners who get dropped into a match full of top-1000 people for their very first game, it happens every single time there’s a free trial. Those people just NEVER come back! Justin, there’s a big influx of new players here now because of the sale, so if you can knock up something along the lines I suggested before a big wave of them start getting bored of pve and start queueing up for matches, you can actually singlehandedly grow the active pvp population significantly!

manveruppd.7601:

The only solution to this is if MMR IS NOT USED AS A MATCHMAKING VARIABLE until a player has accrued a certain number of matches (say 30), so MMR actually means something.

What about second accounts then? You’ll still get really skilled people who are forced to play against total newbies for 30 matches and stomp the hell out of them.

Interesting, so we can assume that matchmaking doesn’t recognize how long a player has pvped for.

Razgriz.9831:

We end up getting stomped out hard

Define that? What was the final score?

Razgriz.9831:

i had to explain that it was because in matchmaking there is no restrictions to who you can queue up with or got matched with

That is not completely true. There are restriction. You were in a premade team with at least on rank 40 (you made an effort not to disclose if you had more in your team, and the rank of your team mates). The matchmaking, likely based your opponents on the rest of your team.

Razgriz.9831:

judging from his response I don’t think he is going to play it again.

It must not have been very important to him if one match was enough to curb the limited interest he had in the first place.

Jockum.1385:

The matchmaking is horrible since the last pvp update. I think the main problem is: it mixes experienced soloq/teamq players with unexperienced players.

How is it horrible? The problem is the pool of players to chose from, when your queuing. Your option is to not play for a very long time, while the system waits for others to near your rating level to queue up, or play with other who are relatively close, based on system perimeters set.

Jockum.1385:

Mixing good and bad players is less worse than mixing experienced and unexperienced, maybe a player (like me) will lose every one vs. one, but at least he can cap/decap and help other players out.

I enjoy your use of “less worse”, instead of “better” to maintain the negative tone you try to imply. You get rating credit for playing better players/teams, as well as you are more likely to improve when playing better players then weak ones, or not at all.

I’m not a good pvp player but I don’t enjoy teams with three people going for close at the beginning. Which will wait there untill it is capped. Or the whole team always keeps running for the next point leaving everything unprotected.
You don’t learn basics like “always fight on point” “never leave a point unprotected” in hotjoin. So maybe the soloq/teamq/ranked/unranked experience should get more wight.

I agree, no one enjoys that. I feel most people have more difficulty understanding how to rotate on a PvP map then anything. Many seem to simply assume the ability to fight another player defines this game mode. This has nothing to do with matchmaking fairness though.

Jockum.1385:

The matchmaking was way better before the last pvp update. Don’t know what went wrong, but maybe just undo the changes…

No, no it wasn’t.

Jockum.1385:

Its really frustrating knowing the match is lost when its 50vs30 points or something like that. You cannot giveup or leave. I’d like to see /resign back.

Absolutely not. My matches may not be as equivalent as before, but my queues are 500% shorter. I do not want longer queue times, so you can win more matches.

coglin.1867:

How is it horrible? The problem is the pool of players to chose from, when your queuing. Your option is to not play for a very long time, while the system waits for others to near your rating level to queue up, or play with other who are relatively close, based on system perimeters set.

My opinion is if they want to merge, they should start with merging ranked and unranked arena together first.

Obviously people will complain that they wont’ be able to test builds etc. But it is something better to sacrifice. Instead of just queueing solo players with premades to save queue time.

coglin.1867:

Your option is to not play for a very long time, while the system waits for others to near your rating level to queue up, or play with other who are relatively close, based on system perimeters set.

I prefer to wait a few minutes longer instead of getting a team which seems to be for the first time in a pvp match. I’ve played a few matches and I prefer to get teams which have also played a few matches (hotjoin doesn’t count).

coglin.1867:

I agree, no one enjoys that. I feel most people have more difficulty understanding how to rotate on a PvP map then anything. Many seem to simply assume the ability to fight another player defines this game mode. This has nothing to do with matchmaking fairness though.

It’s more about “enjoyable matchmaking” less on “matchmaking fairness”. Anet could place the best two players and the worst 8 into a match and it would be fair. But the good players won’t enjoy the match and the bad too.

While I don’t think that matchmaking is “Horrible” as the OP put it, there is are solutions to the problem of PUGs vs Premades that are implemented in, for example, most Valve games with a matchmaking system.

Basically, in DOTA 2 and CS:GO, teams are put together partially based on their team compositions. If you dual queue with someone, you will usually end up facing a similar team of two on the other side, because you were matched up with them, and the other spots on either team were filled with solo queueing players. They really should just add in some sort of factor in the matchmaking system that takes into account the size of the groups being entered into the queue.

Now, I only suggest this because Anet seems to have attempted to change the structure of their matchmaking to be very similar to the above games (I’m not sure exactly which game they took their inspiration from, however there are a lot of 5v5 competitive games of which the new PvP matchmaking system is very reminiscent.)

Polismassa.6740:

While I don’t think that matchmaking is “Horrible” as the OP put it, there is are solutions to the problem of PUGs vs Premades that are implemented in, for example, most Valve games with a matchmaking system.

Basically, in DOTA 2 and CS:GO, teams are put together partially based on their team compositions. If you dual queue with someone, you will usually end up facing a similar team of two on the other side, because you were matched up with them, and the other spots on either team were filled with solo queueing players. They really should just add in some sort of factor in the matchmaking system that takes into account the size of the groups being entered into the queue.

Now, I only suggest this because Anet seems to have attempted to change the structure of their matchmaking to be very similar to the above games (I’m not sure exactly which game they took their inspiration from, however there are a lot of 5v5 competitive games of which the new PvP matchmaking system is very reminiscent.)

One of the few good things about current matchmaking seems to be that it does a decent job at limiting premades vs solo queuers, at least in ranked matches. I seldom get matched against a premade when queueing solo, but quite often when I queue with a team, which is how it should be. However, possibly due to the lack of teams queueing, the matchup often seems to have little to do with MMR and a lot to do with throwing any two teams together in order not to extend queue times farther.

The real failing of the matchmaking, as I see it after several hundred ranked matches this month, is difference in skill levels. Maybe it’s a problem with MMR volatility, maybe it’s also due to a lack of players queueing. I don’t really know, but I have seen a lot of very inexperienced players getting teamed with very experienced and highly skilled players, and this situation is pretty bad for both sides. Maybe it’s an issue as referenced elsewhere on the forum where new players are given an ‘average’ MMR rating until they’ve had enough matches for the system to be confident about their rating, and until then, they’re considered volatile enough in rating to be teamed with experienced players.

Class stacking and balancing between teams also is way out of hand, and it’s not just about the daily profession winners. I’ve been collecting screenshots of dozens of ridiculous matchups I plan to post here at some point, situations like three thieves on one team and three mesmers on the other. It’s like the system isn’t even trying to divide classes up somewhat evenly when it seems like it would be easy to do in cases like this. So, even if matchmaking is highly accurate as far as player skill ratings go, the matchups we’re given are often completely one-sided as a result of how the classes are divided between the two teams. Unfortunately, queue time seems to be an evergreen excuse from the devs, and combined with low pvp population, I have little faith that it will ever get better.

manveruppd.7601:

THe OP’s experience is what every newcomer to this game faces, and it’s an inherent weakness of the Glicko-2 system. Because the system assigns unrated players a high Ratings Deviation, it essentially assumes that a brand new player could be terrible but could also be awesome. They’re therefore just as likely to be assigned a good or a bad opponent. Glicko-2 essentially assumes that, if you have 0 matches, you’re somewhere in the middle of the skill spectrum, and it moves you up or down as you play.

In principle that’s fine if your aim is an accurate MMR, but not if you want people to have fun: at this point in the game’s lifespan, even the people in the middle of the skill spectrum will be pretty decent and chew up and spit out beginners! So everyone just starting out is guaranteed to lose their first 10-20 games in a row!

It’s a really horrible flaw which drives a lot of new players away from spvp, because of the impression that it’s wildly unfair and extremely hardcore. Even skilled players from WvW have an absolutely terrible time when they move to spvp because they’re just as likely to be matched against teams so high-rated they create a space-time anomaly on the leaderboards when they log in as against a team of one-flippered manatees randomly mashing the keyboards with their snouts. You can’t expect people to endure through 20-30 absolutely terrible matchups while their Glicko-2 rating stabilises!

Things worked OK in the starting few months of the game, when we were all more or less on the same level, but now, where there’s people who’ve been playing for 2 years and can kill you before you even spot them, it’s really unfair to drop beginners right in the middle of this!

The only solution to this is if MMR IS NOT USED AS A MATCHMAKING VARIABLE until a player has accrued a certain number of matches (say 30), so MMR actually means something. They should arbitrarily be assigned a made-up lowest-possible MMR, so they’re guaranteed to be matched up with other beginners. Keep calculating MMR in the background, just don’t use it for matchmaking: let players accrue enough matches so their MMR is meaningful before it’s used.

If you’re not willing to implement this, the only other way to make sure people don’t quit pvp after 10 games is to force them to only do hotjoins until rank 10 or 20 or so, and only then be allowed into unranked. Then gate ranked behind an even higher rank requirement.

I’ve talked to a lot of beginners who get dropped into a match full of top-1000 people for their very first game, it happens every single time there’s a free trial. Those people just NEVER come back! Justin, there’s a big influx of new players here now because of the sale, so if you can knock up something along the lines I suggested before a big wave of them start getting bored of pve and start queueing up for matches, you can actually singlehandedly grow the active pvp population significantly!

^^this one?I am a two year player, and god I am better than 90% of the population in spvp. I do not enjoy killing newbies, for the same reason if one was assigned to my team. Karma keeps coming back …you know.
before there was people suggesting about a dead set rank 20 requirement until you can step into Q system.
I am still a big enthusiastic of such ideas. I know Anet does not feel like telling people they can not play because they are new. at least with the new mmr system. please make a rule in the back ground, so newbie was not even in the same pool as the rest of the more exped crowed

timmyf.1490:

My matchmaking seemed pretty off last night. I kept getting matches that were 500-100 (or less). Since the weekend, really, I’ve seen lots of new players who have no business being paired with or against me and my guildmates. We’re not great, but it’s pretty unfair.

We had a guy on our team be honest and tell us it was his first PvP match. Another team member (and not a guildmate) told the other team it was his first match, so I think he had a pretty rough go of it. We won, though.

But yeah, Justin: if you want an example of somebody with average skill (at least I’d bet I’m of average skill, I’m certainly not top end) getting matches with VERY new players for some reason or another, feel free to look at my games last night/since this weekend.

Pretty much how my matches have felt lately. My “premade” team consists of whatever friends are willing to pvp, all of us with different skill levels, none of us very serious or exceptional. I love the close matches, but lately they feel lopsided- either with my team winning greatly or losing terribly. Today we were spawn camped by a team with dragon ranks on it. QQ

Umm… Your friend was completely new to PvP and you brought him into UNRANKED for a first taste of it? Why didn’t you bring him to Hotjoin instead until he learned the ropes? Even if you guys didn’t get a full guild group, chances are you wouldn’t have been stomped so badly.

I’ve noticed this as well. I’m rank 40 and my first game today was in courtyard and I swear to god there was 3 other people on the team that acted like they don’t know what dimension they stumbled into. We got rolled. Then I partied with friends and won like 3 or 4 straight before calling it a night.

It just seems like all the games I lose lately are because I could not control the make-up of my team so I cannot control the flow of experienced players. Then you hope that the other team suffers from that problem and it basically hands you a win.

I managed to get into a loss against 4 [WOLF]guild and one [HUNT]. It was clearly organized.

Being a solo Qer, I should have not faced them at all. It ended 500 to 1xx.

Zaxares.5419:

Umm… Your friend was completely new to PvP and you brought him into UNRANKED for a first taste of it? Why didn’t you bring him to Hotjoin instead until he learned the ropes? Even if you guys didn’t get a full guild group, chances are you wouldn’t have been stomped so badly.

I don’t blame him Practice is nothing more than a toxic (Un)Happy Daily Get done fest depending on persons playtime.

Isslair.4908:

manveruppd.7601:

The only solution to this is if MMR IS NOT USED AS A MATCHMAKING VARIABLE until a player has accrued a certain number of matches (say 30), so MMR actually means something.

What about second accounts then? You’ll still get really skilled people who are forced to play against total newbies for 30 matches and stomp the hell out of them.

They are not a problem: an experienced player will quickly rise to the right MMR before too long. Besides, the second accounts of experienced pvpers are way fewer than the first accounts of complete beginners.

Matchmaking, at least in terms of solo vs group, seems ok to me. Not that you don’t sometimes get screwed solo versus premade but imo experience the vast majority of the time if you solo you will face other solos. Or it will be something like 3 solos and one 2 man group versus the same on the other side. A way to kind of check this is to try inviting the people on the other side to group. You won’t have the option to invite if they are in a group. I do it at the start of every match as a sanity check. What bugs me way more are multiple classes or lack of certain classes. Like getting multiple thieves and no bunkers on your team. That ruins far more matches then solo versus groups.

I’m going to assume fewer and fewer people are queuing up leading to these situations. If we are going to have to wait till the expansion for anything to change then…. well…. someone get me on the phone to the cryogenics lab.

The last few days have seen really bad matchups for me and really long queues. I’ll queue ranked and unranked and my wait is usually twice as long as the stated average while playing NA prime. Also, getting more and more premades of at least three while I solo. I had a matchup on foe fire where the opposing team had three or four dragons and one zerk warrior who didn’t know to stop attacking the door as I killed him from range. It seems like there are not enough bodies or something where I am queuing and it will throw anyone together.