Guild Wars 2

Are you still playing unranked, Lopez?

Sounds like not enough top players in ranked for a good game with good compositions.

longbawl.5072:

tico.9814:

If population is the problem then make the spvp side of the game free.

This. This would be pretty amazing. Talk about opening up the pop.

People would still not play gw2 PvP even if it was free. I doubt its the right solution. Only trolls and hackers would be interested if it was free just to kitten off the playbase.

Justin ODell.9517:

longbawl.5072:

And there seems to be see-sawing in philosophy of where to take the game. Back to merging queues? Do we remember why the didn’t work in the first place?

When we had them together everyone hated being stacked (which is understandable) and wanted a solo queue. When we had solo queue everyone hated how it was random and the ladder meant practically nothing.

Now we have them together and everyone hates being stacked against (again, understandable.)

The solution isn’t to try the same thing no one liked, the solution is take care of the actual problem: being stacked against. I’m working on that. Looking at the data, the current implementation seems to be helping, but still has a quite ways to go. I have a few ideas I’m going to run by some people on Monday, and I’ll run a lot more simulations before bringing them into the server.

Another part of the problem is the perception players have, which is being fueled by a selection and confirmation biases, and was not helped by unranked and profession ratings starting at the default.

Just wanted to pop in and urge you to not let the ranting get to you. This whole ordeal is easily the most apparent case of confirmation bias I’ve ever seen.

I (and many others with me) thoroughly enjoy the more streamlined system, and have very high hopes on where the new algorithms will take the match quality once MMR settles down and what not.

Best of luck!

haven’t had too many issues in NA. I played both during prime time and early morning (4-5am est). imbalance of teams was fairly significant initially, but as I play more games (30-ish games in now), the closer the skill gap is. my win ratio is roughly 60-70% (estimate).

one thing im noticing is that queues are increasing in length as im moving up in the MMR, which is understandable. longest queue for me was 6min during primetime, which seemed a little long.

the pvp community seems vibrant atm, and it’s very populated, whereas wvw is dying. these are my impressions after being away for 10 months. pvp community will continue to grow as long as balancing is frequent (currently, cele ammy needs nerfing), and as long as we get new and fresh content (rewards, maps and/or gamemodes). once the season and ladder launch, spvp will have a purpose. a lot of people are enjoying it now. the algorithm just needs a bit of tweaking, nothing too major imo.

wvw is the mode that literally hasn’t had ANY significant or relevant content added since release. EOTM and BL revamp were bad moves that drained a lot of resources, and ended up being fads that faded soon. arena and wvw ranks I would classify as a minor good additions.

so in short: if development resources are distributed intelligently to a specific game mode, it will grow or stay alive. i feel spvp lately has been supported intelligently and is growing now as we speak. whatever gets neglected will wilt, like wvw has been for about a year and a half.

Well it could be a lot worse. The good old days!

I have been playing unranked NA and the wait times have been extremely low (less than a minute, sometimes almost instant) and then skill level of team mates has been mixed, but generally ok.

It is much better than hotjoin, and the new system for unranked seems excellent.

I still don’t understand what the problem with SoloQ & TeamQ was. You have solved so many issues that SoloQ had. Why would you remove it? I just can’t see the new Ranked Arena working out like this.

I think that Ranked Arena should be ‘Solo’ or ‘5v5’ only. I think Unranked Arena should allow everything else as well.

Obsidia.5127:

I still don’t understand what the problem with SoloQ & TeamQ was. You have solved so many issues that SoloQ had. Why would you remove it? I just can’t see the new Ranked Arena working out like this.

I think that Ranked Arena should be ‘Solo’ or ‘5v5’ only. I think Unranked Arena should allow everything else as well.

well, they basically made it like dota2. everyone goes in the same pool, and the soloq’ers will generally remain in lower ranks compared to the best premades, which will be winning as a team. the reason I like solo and team q’s combined is that q pops faster and you get an interesting mix of people. after a little while, ranks will settle and you’ll be playing with people close to your level.

also I thought they mentioned something about win/loss ratio not affecting your place on the ladder. instead, your overall performance does relative to your teammates…is that right?

Obsidia.5127:

I still don’t understand what the problem with SoloQ & TeamQ was. You have solved so many issues that SoloQ had. Why would you remove it? I just can’t see the new Ranked Arena working out like this.

I think that Ranked Arena should be ‘Solo’ or ‘5v5’ only. I think Unranked Arena should allow everything else as well.

In theory a unique queue would be better if matchmaking worked great.

We say in another topic that roster size needs to be filtered to avoid some combinations vs others.

BUT now there is a bigger problem linked to rating first of all.

And We need to consider that without a leaderboard and season, community is very split between unranked and ranked now.

Gokil.2543:

Justin ODell.9517:

longbawl.5072:

And there seems to be see-sawing in philosophy of where to take the game. Back to merging queues? Do we remember why the didn’t work in the first place?

When we had them together everyone hated being stacked (which is understandable) and wanted a solo queue. When we had solo queue everyone hated how it was random and the ladder meant practically nothing.

Now we have them together and everyone hates being stacked against (again, understandable.)

The solution isn’t to try the same thing no one liked, the solution is take care of the actual problem: being stacked against. I’m working on that. Looking at the data, the current implementation seems to be helping, but still has a quite ways to go. I have a few ideas I’m going to run by some people on Monday, and I’ll run a lot more simulations before bringing them into the server.

Another part of the problem is the perception players have, which is being fueled by a selection and confirmation biases, and was not helped by unranked and profession ratings starting at the default.

Just wanted to pop in and urge you to not let the ranting get to you. This whole ordeal is easily the most apparent case of confirmation bias I’ve ever seen.

I (and many others with me) thoroughly enjoy the more streamlined system, and have very high hopes on where the new algorithms will take the match quality once MMR settles down and what not.

Best of luck!

I have to agree. Ive had more even games no when queing both as a solo quer and with a couple friends than I have in hte last YEAR of the game. I used to be in one of those interesting areas k*tten the people above you were massively more experienced and those below you were no where near your level. Its pretty hard to get out of that when you bounce between being roflstomped and creaming someone.

Now though when I que more often than not ive actually been facing people that know what there doing without being god mode at it. Which means im learning and improving again. And thats what I want in pvp >.< Id wait 10-15 minutes for a match where Ill actually fight someone I have a chance to learn from so I can kill em in the next match.

I was playing a ranked match on Courtyard, and I got randomly kicked back into the mist. No prompt or warning, just back to the mist.

I’ve been playing a whole lot of unranked arena solo, and I have to say that the matches are way better. I normally play around server reset times, and the queue time is 20-30 seconds most times, while the matches never feel like a landslide.

If the problem with matchmaking is during off-peak hours, is it possible to dynamically adjust matchmaking based on server population? Or, maybe the player base from ranked and unranked could be merged, but player rank would only be affected from a win/loss if you entered the match via ranked queue.

Kharr.5746:

I’ve been playing a whole lot of unranked arena solo, and I have to say that the matches are way better. I normally play around server reset times, and the queue time is 20-30 seconds most times, while the matches never feel like a landslide.

If the problem with matchmaking is during off-peak hours, is it possible to dynamically adjust matchmaking based on server population? Or, maybe the player base from ranked and unranked could be merged, but player rank would only be affected from a win/loss if you entered the match via ranked queue.

I suspect they are looking at doing just that.

Harbinger.8637:

Well it could be a lot worse. The good old days!

RIP Min

Obsidia.5127:

I still don’t understand what the problem with SoloQ & TeamQ was. You have solved so many issues that SoloQ had. Why would you remove it? I just can’t see the new Ranked Arena working out like this.

I think that Ranked Arena should be ‘Solo’ or ‘5v5’ only. I think Unranked Arena should allow everything else as well.

This, or make unranked into ranked solo q.
I mean its kind of ridiculous that the devs would solve the problems of solo q , map choice/ 4v5’s, remove the option and then create the problems that demanded the creation of a solo q to begin with.

The ladder wasn’t really the purpose of solo q, it was for people without a guild to be able to find ranked games without facing premades.

Overall solo q was important, and exists in all competitive e sports games. Basically ranked games are now bring a team or get stomped experience.

@Justin,

Most of the comments here don’t really deal with the issue from the OP. The main problem is that no one wants to have a premade team play against a pug team. It is just not fun. Adjust the variables as needed, but that should never be allowed.

style.6173:

@Justin,

Most of the comments here don’t really deal with the issue from the OP. The main problem is that no one wants to have a premade team play against a pug team. It is just not fun. Adjust the variables as needed, but that should never be allowed.

Never isn’t a variable. It’s the end of a scale, Always is the other end. The variables would lie between.

So, going by your comment, I am guessing you want Team and Solo split up again, but your comment isn’t really clear since you use Variable and Never.

Justin ODell.9517:

glock.6590:

Just bring back the old match making system. Is it that hard? The new system is obviously not gonna work if there’s like only 1k players that actively play spvp.

What specifically is bothering you? Is it queue time? Is it merging solo and team arena?

)

Teams are not queuing for Ranked because the waits are too long.

As a result Unranked is full of teams.

Removing soloQ has been terrible for the game. Both unranked and ranked are full of teams just farming people. In one single patch this pvp has gone from decent to absolutely terrible.

You need to bring back soloQ. It was popular and it was fun. The current game is not fun. What is the point of playing a game that is not fun for most of the people involved?

Soloq was not popular. A kittenton of solo’ers played teamq instead for the rewards.

Party Size

Since playing with your friends gives you an advantage, we’ll try to keep things fair by matching you with other parties of the same size. Playing with a full team? We’ll prefer matches with other full teams. Playing alone? We’ll prefer to match you with other lone wolves. Even if we can’t find another party of the same size within your skill level, we’ll work to get it as close as possible..

This was taken out of one of the site news regarding the new system. Why am I not seeing it in-game?
It’s the same as if I queued alone for the team ladder during the “previous” system.

butch.8136:

Soloq was not popular. A kittenton of solo’ers played teamq instead for the rewards.

I bet Anets metrics of who was playing what would prove otherwise.

I would like to say the system has been working pretty good for me, I’ve gotten q pops (EU) after maximum a couple of minutes and I’ve not experienced any 4v5 etc. (except a couple of times on courtyard). The skill level has been a bit different, from meeting top EU players to new players, but i guess that will even out with time. In the higher percentage of games I’ve also been facing groups with about the same number of pre made players so thats good.

The only major change i would like to see changed is too remove courtyard, spirit watch and sky hammer from ranked arena.

Thanks for trying out the new system Anet and keep improving it, can’t wait for the ladder season to actually start.

just play unranked for now. It’s the same gameplay, just no ladder. I understand for strictly competitive players this will be unappealing, but it’s better than waiting for ages for a probably bad match up.

To put it in perspective, many of us older (25 here) gamers used to play CS, quake, and unreal tournament when hotjoin was the only option and ranks didn’t exist. I just kind of reminded myself of that and realized I wasn’t really too worried about rank or ladder since at least I can enjoy the game and earn more spvp rank points and rewards.

Not trying to apologize for the problems here, but providing some alternative insight to the situation.

Dude wtf is this?

From 30 second que to 20 min que and still going.
I aint no top tier player, I shouldn’t be waiting 20 mins for a decently made game. Plenty of other people around my skill level, should be no reason why I have to wait this long, and the match is probably going to be bad anyways.

Seriously though, what data did you come up with that gave you the conclusion to go from 30 second que’s to 20+ min que’s?

Obviously bad data, your market researcher needs to redue his research and get the right data to you folks.

Also, there should be something in hotm where I can make money, besides playing tp.
There should be mini games in hotm while people wait. Pretty dang bored just waiting for someone to sell me something so I can flip it.

Just found out that unranked gives you 1500 points (same as ranked), goes towards champ title (same as ranked). Why kitten you even have ranked, especially when theres no leaderboards?

Yall just trying to get someone who is feeling like pvp to wait in que for 34 mins and then go back to pve??? You sure aint going to increase the pvp population that way.

So silly, the unranked games do same as ranked games, just two different instances and tabs to split up the population. No wonder why que times are high, because some people stuck in ranked like me and didn’t even know unranked gave same rewards.

Do your stupid hidden leaderboard on the unranked and just don’t rank it, why even have two tabs right now. Just makes community angry.

Laserbolt.6731:

I believe Ranked Arena refuses to put you with lower-skilled players now.

So apparently there are not enough skilled players in Ranked right now to find a real match for you.

The other day I had two players with (and I hate to bash on people for this) less than 500 achievement points on my team. They were very clearly new players with little idea with what to do and I’m in the r70s at the moment, so the system is not perfect. Hopefully we’ll see improvements in the near future.

-

Queues yesterday were sometimes long for ranked matches so my team switched to unranked matches where they were considerably better, I’m on NA if that helps. I PvP’d pretty much all day yesterday so it flip flopped. I guess it does kinda suck that solo players can get matched up against full guild/group teams, but I used to do team queue by myself a lot with the old system. It helped me meet a lot of friends and often times I’d group up with partial teams! I still PvP with a lot of these people to this day

I enjoy the new system but it does have its faults; it’s new so most likely it’s not final, there will be little changes here and there to improve it. I like having a little freedom in picking maps, I like the new UI, and I like not having to submit rosters anymore (lol).

they should prevent people for queuing up more than 3 people in unranked. groups of 4 or 5 should have to queue ranked only. i think you would see an improvement in queue times.

i played all unranked this weekend and matches were better balance as far as score. still got 4v5 and lots of duplicate and occasional triplicate of a class on one team.

also, if queue times are gong to be that long in ranked, you really need to allow for people to queue up without having to go to the mists. 30min queue time without being able to do anything would make me quit playing a game really really quick.

TBH my experience with the new system is rather positive. I’m from EU server, mostly playing on EU peak time, so the queues are really short.

My W/L ratio is 50% which is about something that the match-making supposedly wanted to achieve. Of course I don’t like that there’s a chance of being matched up against a premade of 3+ players, but I haven’t noticed that being a major problem for now. It could be in the future tho…

For now the match-making seems much more consistent than the previous soloQ, where I could go from a 10 win streak to a 15 loss streak and that happened to me regularly…

Ranked que is going to die out,
Theres no reason to do it, and unranked gives you everything ranked does.
Champ title, 1500 points. There’s no leaderboard so no reason to even rank que anyways. Why even bother when unranked gives out the same rewards too.

That system they had on launch day, was pretty good, too bad they deleted the good stuff.
Tournaments, require tournament tickets. Tournaments are worth being in.

Justin ODell.9517:

Lewis Burnell.2493:

How are we now supposed to find out our PvP Rank? I queued today for 10 minutes and got no ranked queue pops. I’m Rank 52 and previously rated 320 on the Leaderboards.

Ladder rank? The beta ladder does not start until the 16th.

What time were you queuing?

Agree on this…were u Q’ing at 3 a.m? Longest I have waited since new system is 5 minutes and that’s because I had a full team. Solo Q’ing was max 2 min late at night.

I am having no problems with Q times…just the matchups. I was always a Team Q kind of guy (Even when rolling solo). The Solo Q players just seemed a lot more “incompetent” as to what they should be doing. That definitely shines right now because as soon as someone gets in and complains there is no Solo Q…That’s the guy that just goes willy nilly on the map and does nothing to help the team. Frustrating to have these players in Q with me. If solo players want to play selfish, I say give them back the SelfishQ. 50% of them seem to have no will to help out in a team aspect.

Q’ed with 4 people…5th pug mentioned he wanted SoloQ back. We told him our game plan and asked him to do certain things to help out in situations. He yelled “I WILL DO WHATEVER THE kitten I WANT”. The map basically proceeded as 4v5 because he was just a road warrior the whole time ( not a good one) and just got rekt in every 1v1 in the roads he engaged in.

Burn.5401:

Party Size

Since playing with your friends gives you an advantage, we’ll try to keep things fair by matching you with other parties of the same size. Playing with a full team? We’ll prefer matches with other full teams. Playing alone? We’ll prefer to match you with other lone wolves. Even if we can’t find another party of the same size within your skill level, we’ll work to get it as close as possible..

This was taken out of one of the site news regarding the new system. Why am I not seeing it in-game?
It’s the same as if I queued alone for the team ladder during the “previous” system.

The key word in there was try.

If a whole bunch of high-skilled players are in the Q in groups that cannot be split up, the only possible games at the moment will be blowouts.

Me and my friend duo q in unranked and get vs abjured, what the actual f***…..

Odysseus.8095:

Me and my friend duo q in unranked and get vs abjured, what the actual f***…..

Working as intended.

As Justin’s alluded to in other posts, the matchmaker decided the Abjured might possibly be worse than its MMR indicated and found you a perfect match.

I’m a bit confused. Are we matched by our finisher rank or leader boards rank?

I’m bear rank 55 and I’m seeing a wide mix.

Also what happened to hotjoin while in que? We should continue to have this option, especially now with these wait times:(

And what happens to calling target? Now our teamates cannot see a target unless partied before que? Sigh

The supposed matching with people in your skill range is not working at all. I get people who don’t rotate, over reach, spend half a match all trying to win just one point ignoring the 2-cap, and if and when they do win it, no one wants to defend it. It’s either a huge insult to my "skill level" to imply I belong with them, or something is terribly, horribly wrong. Worse still, it’s immensely difficult to fulfill my role with people like that. Play another role you say? Can’t really, thief is pretty limited competitively, and I don’t find condition thief builds enjoyable. Play another class you say? Can’t! I need to work up my points on this class because they are all separate now!

Justin ODell.9517:

Sins.4782:

Can you guys write a script to change matchmaking variables at set intervals based on number of players queuing or something?

It isn’t just a matter of how many players are queuing, it’s how many are queuing within your skill range.

Is there a way you can make it dynamic, narrowing the acceptable range of matchups during peak times and expanding it during off-peak times?

You guys need to fix the team queues against the solo queues. When i read about the new PvP you said that you would try and match a team with X number of people premade to another team that has the same number premade. So far I’ve seen 5 solo queues against a full team and that’s extremely bad. Moreover, during off peak hours queuing is taking forever. If you can make it more flexible it would be appreciated.
Agreed the old sPvP had issues but at least we came and we played a quick game, expecting something to go wrong. Now we come and we don’t even play due to the time we wait. To add to that the fact that we cannot leave the heart of the mists is completely ridiculous. We have NOTHING to do for around an hour just waiting for the queue pop that does not come, and eventually just rage quit the game. Circumstances do not let me play during peak hours and so I am constantly stuck with at least 40 minutes of queue just for a 15 minute game. What makes it worse, again, is the fact that there is nothing to do in heart of the mists. At least let us hotjoin so we can duel or play while we wait.

Justin ODell.9517:

lilwizz.5783:

…

I’ve got a fix for this that will let us ramp up min-potentials, and dynamically scale it back for off-peak hours or outliers.

Should be in for the 16th build unless something goes wrong.

So you going to bring back SoloQ or what? That is what I want. SoloQ was a great way to pop in play a few games and have some fun. I would go so far to say that despite 4v5’s occasionally, SoloQ gave us perhaps the best casual pvp experience possible, best of any MMO I have played. Now that there is no specific place for soloers to play, I really am not enjoying playing any more. Now we have the same problem that plagues all other MMO’s I have ever tried, teams farming solo players.

Typical Anet, they listen to the minority of people who want to force everyone to play TeamQ and now refuse to admit what they have done is broken on so many levels.

The game was better before the last patch.

wish mmr would stop resetting so i don’t have to type “please don’t double cap” while winning a 3v1

Played about 10 matches today.

Mostly the same people, which was fine. Although we did win 8 in a row. Some of them very easily.

Queue times were fine, nothing over 3 min.

Justin ODell.9517:

Relentliss.2170:

…

No, we aren’t bringing solo queue back. Yes, I am working on making sure you’re less likely to be stacked against pre-mades.

Thank you. The changes made thus far are great and I dread reverting back to the old system. Don’t let the vocal minority sway you.

Any changes just give the malcontent and blame-prone players more arrows in the excuse quiver to fire when they should be objectively examining their own play and the actual results from the matches of the evening. It’s human nature to strongly remember the blow-outs and allow the mind to gloss over all the fair, competitive match-ups.

The state of the forums these days seems whenever someone has a bad game they come to forum because it MUST be the new system’s fault…

Justin ODell.9517:

Relentliss.2170:

…

No, we aren’t bringing solo queue back. Yes, I am working on making sure you’re less likely to be stacked against pre-mades.

The change I’m referring to benefits everyone because we’re purposely holding back the matchmaking system until this fix goes through. Without this fix, queue times grow during off-peak hours to levels we don’t find acceptable… which causes a feedback loop that increases queue times further as people leave the queue because of the wait.

It benefits outliers because there are far fewer players available at their level, but the system doesn’t (yet) compensate for that fact, so it simply won’t match them. There may be enough players in the queue to form a good match for them, but not enough to meet the amount we prefer for the common scenario. We want a larger pool of choices so we can be picky about thing like profession. So instead they sit in queue until the fail-safes kick in (which increases the range of possible matches by lowering standards) and the system gives them a lower quality match. In that way it benefits the more typical player by preventing the fail-safes from engaging in the first place.

Oh please make sure. I was thrown into very unbalanced matches tonight: full solo-q team against full premade (or 2+3)

In before you ask how I know they are premade: I right-click on them and it shows they are all in group

Justin ODell.9517:

Relentliss.2170:

…

No, we aren’t bringing solo queue back. Yes, I am working on making sure you’re less likely to be stacked against pre-mades.

Thank you for noticing this as an issue, was just put up against a premade guild which proceeded to go 500-0 on the team i was on in courtyard. I don’t pvp very often and i would say thing’s like this is (and not adding new modes) what stop me from playing more often.

So let’s get this straight. You’ve increased queue times and decreased match parity and yet you still consider this a good thing. Clearly I don’t see the logic. Your up coming fixes are just bandaids for an arterial wound.

Not having premades fight against pugs was one of the great attractions of GW2 pvp, something that really set it apart from other mmos where pug stomping is the norm. The move to an unranked queue and many of the other recent changes seem great but I am confused why premades can fight against pugs in unranked.

Surely ranked is the place for teams and unranked for pugs or maybe small two person groups? There is still a large difference between the old ranked solo queue and unranked even if teams cannot play in it.

Justin ODell.9517:

Relentliss.2170:

…

No, we aren’t bringing solo queue back. Yes, I am working on making sure you’re less likely to be stacked against pre-mades.

I have no problem for it, but I’d like to see at the end of the game my %age of win guess from the game, and the result for the ladder.
When I’m in solo or when I’m with my team, loosing or winning has a better signification when the game tell me I made better (or worst) than he predicted.

Will it be displayed after the 16th ? Ingame or on the ladder (let’s say history of last 5 games) dosen’t matter for me.

Flyphish.6398:

Thank you. The changes made thus far are great and I dread reverting back to the old system. Don’t let the vocal minority sway you.

Completely agree. However loud and whiny the forum gets, please don’t forget JUST HOW FEW PEOPLE used to regularly play solo queue. The new system is an improvement even if it’s not better.

However, you really should consider only having one arena during off-season. If the leaderboards aren’t active between seasons there’s no point in ranked arena is there? You’re just splitting the player pool in 2 for no reason, and making both matchmaking and queue times worse for both queues.

I recommend that, after the test season is over, you temporarily disable ranked arena until the first “proper” season starts.