Guild Wars 2

Changed matchmaking to not favor rosters with unique professions and instead disfavor rosters with duplicate professions. This prevents other scoring factors from being obscured.

Same old crappy results.

Is that hard to put 1 necro + 1 ranger + 1 thief per team and the other remaining players at random?

Kind of hard to when the devs make build/class diversity in this game borderline nonexistent.

All they have to do is remove class stacking from the matchmaking algorithm. Yes queues will be a bit longer for the meta players but overall matches will be significantly more balanced.

Also, obviously, with the patch theres like 90% thief/ necro/ druid players out there. so not wonder they get stacked still ^^

Thats especially the case for thief players, i see them everywhere, its like they’ve all come out of hibernation, sniffing the sweet spring air and wondering,

Evan Lesh.3295:

The change wouldn’t have actually made class stacking better unfortunately. What was fixed was it breaking other matchmaking rules.

Can you elaborate on this point?

Before and now we get these same class-stacking results, so exactly what was changed and why?

I’m sorry, I’m still confused.

gw2 wiki

At the start of matchmaking, the system attempts to find a match customized for the first Filter/Iteration/@rosters rosters (party) in the queue.

1. Step: The system picks the first player. He (or she) is the starting point of the match making process.

gw2 wiki

The first phase, called filtering, gathers players based on their current MMR and Ladder Points.

2. Step: The system creates a list including all the players who have about the same MMR as the first player. Now you already have a list of players who should have match with a good quality due to having about the same MMR, the scoring phase is just to improve upon that. Since the search radius for the list is growing over time, this is the reason we can end up in matches with a win prediction of <20%.

Evan Lesh.3295:

When comparing two rosters, we first assume they are a perfect match with a score of ‘0’. [..] This way we can decide if one roster is a better choice than another when filling up teams because one roster will have a higher score.

This is the third step, the “scoring phase”. The goal here is to find the best two team to play against each other. The means, if I end up with e.g. three thiefs in my team, that my team has an advantage in the score system somewhere else, e.g. a (minor) rating advantage.

Queuing up as a premade influences two steps. First it adjusts it’s average MMR in the list to make sure, that even if a full premade is playing against pure soloq player, that the match should still be as fair as possible. And then in the “scoring phase”, it is influencing the scoring system, trying to match premades against other premades. This means, that a premade can effectively reduce their score by queuing up with the same profession.

Am I correct so far?

Is it really a good thing to include the score based on profession in the team? Last meta I had a big advantage if I ended up with multiple bunker mesmers or revenant. At the same time I had a disadvantage ending with a warrior in my team. Also, when I already had a bunker mesmer, I was indifferent between having a thief or a shatter mesmer.
Do you have a metric how many players, who end up having the same profession multiple times on their team, relog? It can imagine, that this also highly depend on the profession.

Fun fact… at a certain level, people will just adjust professions on roster according to meta during preparation phase.

Personally, I queue with whatever profession Im logged in, and then switch characters to whatever is best for team.

So trying to force unique professions kinda doesnt do anything, and it leaves the system open for abuse.

Personally, Id remove that part for teams, since those are most likely to adapt according to roster. Even if you match two premades à 2x mesmers (4x mesmer) on one team, those two premades are gonna switch professions. If they dont, well… might be mesmer is just way to OP ^^
What Im trying to say… punishing profession stacking, when there’s the option of switching professions during preparation phase just doesnt make any sense – especially for teams.

It is a nice idea for soloQ, but I can predict fairly easily… people will start queueing with less desired professions (like warrior or thief in last season) and then switch during prep phase to meta profession, making this whole forced unique professions thing kinda a moot point.

Yasi.9065:

Fun fact… at a certain level, people will just adjust professions on roster according to meta during preparation phase.

Personally, I queue with whatever profession Im logged in, and then switch characters to whatever is best for team.

So trying to force unique professions kinda doesnt do anything, and it leaves the system open for abuse.

Personally, Id remove that part for teams, since those are most likely to adapt according to roster. Even if you match two premades à 2x mesmers (4x mesmer) on one team, those two premades are gonna switch professions. If they dont, well… might be mesmer is just way to OP ^^
What Im trying to say… punishing profession stacking, when there’s the option of switching professions during preparation phase just doesnt make any sense – especially for teams.

It is a nice idea for soloQ, but I can predict fairly easily… people will start queueing with less desired professions (like warrior or thief in last season) and then switch during prep phase to meta profession, making this whole forced unique professions thing kinda a moot point.

+1 I do the exact same thing 100% agree here

This now leaves open the possibility for a pre-made team to all start as the same class and then switch to their preferred profession once the game starts.

Oh no, you misunderstood – I think. If you stack professions you dont get a bonus, you get a disfavor.

As a full premade this doesnt change anything really, since a full premade has a set roster.

But lets say you play as a 3 man premade. Last season, with this matchmaking, you would log a warrior, thief and guard for queueing.
The pool of players to fill the roster contains, lets say…. 3 necros, 3 rangers, 5 eles, 4 revs, 2 thieves, 2 warriors, 4 scrappers.

If I understand this correctly, the matchmaker will try to fill the rosters with unique professions. This means any roster with more than two thieves and more than 2 warriors will get a malus or disfavor.
So, by queueing with warrior, thief and guard, our premade increased their chances of getting a preferred profession quite a lot.
So, now… the rating of at least one of those thieves and warriors however, is perfect for this match. Resulting in putting them into the other team.
That might be considered fair, IF our premade doesnt switch professions. But they will. So now we got one team with two underdog professions (because lets face it, last season warrior and thief were at a huge disadvantage) and the other with 5 meta professions.

We all know how this will end….

Now you could say, nobody would go to such lengths… but my life experience says, people will abuse this. Not all, mind you, but enough to screw with matchmaking again.

The solution to this is:
Either lock professions on match start (no more switching during prep phase or by disconnecting) or
remove unique professions check when making rosters.

Personally, Im in favor of removing unique professions part. It makes matchmaking less cluttered, and leaves it up to players to make up their own team. Maybe increase prep time by 20 seconds and increase ready bonus.

Or just dont allowed class stacking. If people try swap to a class that are alredy in the game on there team, they cant move and are told no class stacking allowed , pick a new class.

Evan, the last night of League play, I saw lots of people swapping classes during the 90 seconds wait period before the match started, and I was playing in the Legendary division against many of the top players. And I did see a surprising number of people who queued as thief or warrior and then switched to something meta.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Soul.9280:

Evan, the last night of League play, I saw lots of people swapping classes during the 90 seconds wait period before the match started, and I was playing in the Legendary division against many of the top players. And I did see a surprising number of people who queued as thief or warrior and then switched to something meta.

I fully expect higher-skilled players to swap more, but that is a much smaller portion of the player-base.

An important question i: Would all high-skilled players be OK with profession locking if we could ensure no stacking?

Yes, I’d think so. If you lock professions, it would be great to reinstate profession-specific MMR though so we aren’t overly “punished” for trying new classes etc.

Allowing players to log and change classes after the teams have been chosen is the easiest way to game this match making system. I dont think it will be as infrequent as you think it will be.

Lock out class changes and be done with it. As you say then MMR can be class specific instead of account specific which will greatly help matchmaking and encourage players to test new classes.

Id rather not have character swapping locked, because of the wide diversity of builds available for each profession.

I usually swap character if I notice too many defensive players on my team, or vice versa. Making up a roster according to profession does NOT exclude bunker stacking, or condition stacking etc.

And… it gives premades such a huge advantage. They can perfectly fine tune their builds before queueing, while, if you soloqueue you could get stuck with 5 bunker or 5 decapper.

Profession /= build.

And prep phase is NOT enough time to completely switch builds. Especially because you cant leave match anymore to get another weapon.

No, Im completely against locking professions at the current state the game is at. If there were only one build viable per profession, maybe. If we could save builds and swap builds like in gw1, okay. If we would get back solo queue instead of this mixed team/solo queue, yeah, Id be fine with it. But as it is? No. It would be worst mistake to lock professions, giving premades even more of an advantage vs solos.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Soul.9280:

Evan, the last night of League play, I saw lots of people swapping classes during the 90 seconds wait period before the match started, and I was playing in the Legendary division against many of the top players. And I did see a surprising number of people who queued as thief or warrior and then switched to something meta.

I fully expect higher-skilled players to swap more, but that is a much smaller portion of the player-base.

An important question i: Would all high-skilled players be OK with profession locking if we could ensure no stacking?

How about only allowing a swap for a class that has not been chosen yet?

Evan Lesh.3295:

An important question i: Would all high-skilled players be OK with profession locking if we could ensure no stacking?

Maybe you should ask them, I wouldn’t know.

Seriously though, people swap for three main reasons – to cover up holes in the composition of their own party (oh poop, nobody can stand on point), to avoid unfavorable profession stacking (oh poop, we already have two thieves) or to counter professions in the opposing team (I’ll roll a DH and delete the enemy thief). It’s about mitigating downsides and trying to gain a compositional advantage over the opposition, and overall profession balance is a big driver in all of that. The more PvP balance moves in a rock-paper-scissors direction where professions hard-counter each other, the more inclined players are to seek an advantage by swapping toons. If you want to disincentivize swapping, you need to balance away from rock-paper-scissors.

I would be fine with profession locking, if stacking is removed and team roles are factored into the match making system. As you queue you indicate that you are a roamer/DPS, a teamfighter, or a point holder/support, and the system would make sure that each team has a suitable number of each.

Yasi.9065:

If there were only one build viable per profession, maybe.

At Non Trash tier level of play there is only 1 or 2 good builds to play for each profession.

Since we have Anet here. How about instead take a look at why there are so many thief and necros out there? That’s the bigger problem is it not?

This is not a match making problem this is a balance problem. Pre-Patch, almost all classes are represented except warriors, and maybe thief. Now all you see is necro and thief.

Here is some suggestions:
1. Adjustment every 2 weeks instead of every 4 month
2. PTR
3. decrease number of variable when you make adjustments. If you going to remove tanky amulets, perhaps you can wait and see how the results turn out before you buff the damage to some class?

Evan Lesh.3295:

Soul.9280:

Evan, the last night of League play, I saw lots of people swapping classes during the 90 seconds wait period before the match started, and I was playing in the Legendary division against many of the top players. And I did see a surprising number of people who queued as thief or warrior and then switched to something meta.

I fully expect higher-skilled players to swap more, but that is a much smaller portion of the player-base.

An important question i: Would all high-skilled players be OK with profession locking if we could ensure no stacking?

I think if you had the ability to define your role on a team then you wouldn’t need to swap. Balance team compositions around roles and you can lock out profession swapping and stacking.

Pyriall.1683:

I think if you had the ability to define your role on a team then you wouldn’t need to swap. Balance team compositions around roles and you can lock out profession swapping and stacking.

+1

One could envision a team/meta where a class could have two valid builds, for different roles, in which case class stacking would be natural. It reminds me of the old bunker/meditation guardians.

Matchmaking, to be more accurate, need to take into account the performance of players with their classes, and possibly their performance in the roles they’re used to assume. As a result, changing class at the beginning of a game should be disallowed.

Introducing roles should not be too difficult, as Conquest is known game mode. Some players or teams might want to play unorthodox strategies, in which case just let them choose a “custom” role – they’d be accountable for the resulting matchmaking.

Introducing roles would also help teams to coordinate together, as solo players would be more aware of what is expected from them (and what they can expect from the team). This could only lead to better play, thus a more enjoyable experience.

When I enter a random queue I don’t expect it to be anything other than random.

Evan Lesh.3295:

An important question i: Would all high-skilled players be OK with profession locking if we could ensure no stacking?

I’m at best an average skill player, but I’m all in favor of profession locking if it means I can queue as a class I’m not that good at without being a huge handicap to my team. The only time I ever switch classes is if the enemy team is stacked to an obvious advantage to something my team is deficient in, and I’m comfortable with whatever that thing is.

Just use profession locking so we get better games.

I never saw class/profession change in other mmorpg’s ranked system inside a match or before match start before gw2 and they are worked fine.

Probably will get better games especially if we get solo q without that counter comp profession change inside the match. It’s like a matchmaking cheat. Just play the match with the profession you are queued to ranked.

Guys, you are confusing two fundamentally different problems.

Class balance SHOULD NOT be solved via matchmaking.

Build diversity is a GOOD THING.

Let teams sort themselves.

Or put in solo queue and lock professions there. Locking professions in mixed queue is worst mistake ever.

Please implement locked professions !

Build templates would help massively I’d we lock professions to counter certain opposite team comps- then there is no need to swap profession and the match making cannot be abused as much.
(It got absued in season 1 quite a bit from what I saw – eg wiring on a class a person is bad at to then swap to a stronger class etc).

Anything to get better closer match ups is got to be a good thing.

Funny thing this would then allow ANET to work out likely hood of a particular team comp to do well against another.

The question here is premade teams are they allowed to stack professions and would MMR on that rare incident allow a stacked class as a known counter?

Profession lock / balance by matchmaking system is good for if we have a ranked soloQ and ranked Team Q. Team Q queue only allowed if we have full premade team. If team queue only allowed if we have full team maybe can force the pvp players to make new pvp teams and also there is a chance like Abjured etc. getting more hard fights by players that is not known currently but will be after that change So the game can be more competitive. Solo vs Premade problem solved. If we don’t have team then we shouldn’t do Team ranked anyway as there are higher chance to get owned even if we are skilled. With current system we know already before queue that we maybe get low skill random teammates or we have to play against premade or both so it’s about 10mins waste of time/life per games like that.

Ive played like 10 games after update and every time im fighting agains dragons (while having 41 lvl). Before update it was very rare. Shouldnt we fight with others on our lvl of experience?

Yasi.9065:

Locking professions in mixed queue is worst mistake ever.

My issue with that is then all of us normal average skilled players have no way to actually improve on the classes/builds we’re not good at without screwing over your team because your MMR is reflecting classes your play well with.

Sure, I can maybe get some practice on a dueling server, but that certainly doesn’t work for more team oriented builds. If I play regular hotjoin, I have no idea if I’m doing good because I stomped someone, or if they were just really bad, likewise I may be improving but keep getting stomped because I’m up against a higher skilled opponent.

(Solo queue isn’t an option, and this thread isn’t about that. It would just further fragment the playerbase leading to longer queues and worse match, and it isn’t needed so long as party size is taken into account properly with matchmaking.)

Evan Lesh.3295:

I fully expect higher-skilled players to swap more, but that is a much smaller portion of the player-base.

An important question i: Would all high-skilled players be OK with profession locking if we could ensure no stacking?

Just a typical day in unranked…

I agree, the key is not the profession but the role.

Probably in the next (“soon”) build template system you should insert a flag to define the build role (for example bunker/roamer) and insert this flag in the matchmaking system. At this point you can lock the profession swap at beginning and balancing the matchmaking with a good quantity of bunker/roamer for each teams.

Right now many classes can be bunker or roamer so can work for example for thieves but not for other classes.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Locking professions upon queuing gets us a couple things: Profession stacking can be completely controlled via the matchmaker, and we can start using profession MMR again which should make much more accurate matches than just using account-wide MMR.

I’d say, let’s try it out. Isn’t that why we have this time between seasons – to try stuff like that? If it works out, great. If it doesn’t, revert before S2.

Evan Lesh.3295:

An important question i: Would all high-skilled players be OK with profession locking if we could ensure no stacking?

no, because each class has 1-2 apex builds that far surpass the efficiency of all other builds for that class. that doesnt even leave room to fill any role on a team. if, for example, each class had good control, support, and dps builds, or if each class had a good roaming, bunker, dueling, and teamfighting build, then we could talk about hard committing to a profession while in queue.

dont lock us into a certain class/build when we can potentially be countered by matchmaking rolling up random opponents. let us take part in that metagaming and doing our best to counter the opposing team before the game starts.

but thats on the balance team to fix. and after it is fixed, feel free.

Let teams sort themselves while also let people stick to 1 class if they want. I have 6k games but that doesn’t make me want to play scrapper instead of thief.

As I said on the other thread:
People should be able to choose which classes they are willing to reroll to before queuing. A note wold say: Adding more professions decreases your queue time.
You could still stick to just 1 profession or you can say “I can play either thief or druid or…” etc.

Tamasan.6457:

Yasi.9065:

Locking professions in mixed queue is worst mistake ever.

My issue with that is then all of us normal average skilled players have no way to actually improve on the classes/builds we’re not good at without screwing over your team because your MMR is reflecting classes your play well with.

Sure, I can maybe get some practice on a dueling server, but that certainly doesn’t work for more team oriented builds. If I play regular hotjoin, I have no idea if I’m doing good because I stomped someone, or if they were just really bad, likewise I may be improving but keep getting stomped because I’m up against a higher skilled opponent.

(Solo queue isn’t an option, and this thread isn’t about that. It would just further fragment the playerbase leading to longer queues and worse match, and it isn’t needed so long as party size is taken into account properly with matchmaking.)

As I started playing ele after only playing necro since beta, I read up on forums on playstyle and rotations, made a build accordingly and went to play tons of hotjoin games. First I focused on rotations, then surviving, then I added dps. Mind you, I was pretty new still to pvp, and that was my second profession ever.
Nowadays I still do the same thing with new builds. I test them on golems, then I test them in hotjoin for a handful of games, and then its unranked/ranked matches.
Why Im writing this? Because with your professions specific matchmaking, Id probably stomp all over a lot of new players without my experience in conquest matches. No matter Im not 100% with my build, simply because I know the terrain, map timers, can predict enemy rotations, Ill be so much better than any below 100-ranked-matches player.

Also… without locking professions, if you notice, you just cant handle yourself in this match because you get outplayed constantly… you can just switch to a fallback character with a build that you can play perfectly. Sure, you loose some time switching, and thats penalty enough in most matches to discourage switching mid-match, but you have the option to switch and you dont have to sit there and get destroyed over and over like your post suggests.

I think locking characters either by profession or role isnt a good idea.
It results in:
- More frustrating matches (just imagine getting saddled with a new-to-the-profession thief roamer, constantly getting eaten by some bunker)
- Less diverse gameplay
- Bloated matchmaking algorithm which leaves more room for abuse
- Longer queue times (bunker meta but matchmaker tries to find 3 roamers per match)
- No room for exotic builds / playstyles
- Matchmaker constantly has to be updated to keep up with new playstyles and builds to prevent abuse of this system

Locking professions is possible in any hero-based moba, where you pick a hero and that hero has a certain build you cant change. In a game however, that has so many options to configure a build to personal choice, it simply is not feasible.

Quoting me from another thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/unranked-mmr-system-is-garbage/first#post5956743

Evan Lesh.3295:
It sounds like you want profession-specific MMR? In order to do that, we would have to enforce a profession lock upon queuing. There is another thread advocating this idea with the benefit of removing profession stacking.

If you do something, make something hybrid.

Like you can’t switch to another current class of the roster to prevent class stacking.

Hard to sync up. I guess a toon drop down list into the game server, would help to removing the time it take to load three times before switching. (one load for a switch should be enough!!!!)

The other part would be, you could switch with a profession-MMR to another profession that have a lower mmr than the one you queue up with.

So, at least, we would not be punished to lower our own MMR to switch to something more viable comp-wise.

What you want to prevent is having low mmr roster switching to high mmr one. For that, locking class switching it not the solution. You need to simply add a new validation class switching (disabling higher mmr toon on class selection) based on MMR to remove the abuse while giving the flexibility that you provide us. (i really appreciate and vote for Anet for their “intent” to let flexibility be something in the game).

To resume:

You need to ADD a new class switching mecanics into spvp. It need to be done into the game server only, to let you compare MMR and other class of the team. To let people switch to a class that is not stacking and have lower MMR than the one he did queue with.

Dal

alternative suggestion:

allow profession swapping, but block off any view of the opposing team

swapping profession to accommodate a team’s make-up is paramount to making a PUG competitive with a pre-made

if swapping was locked-out, then PUGs would end up having a lot of toxic whiny kittens crying from the beginning of the match over team makeup instead of playing the game

ThePahkage.2684:

alternative suggestion:

allow profession swapping, but block off any view of the opposing team

swapping profession to accommodate a team’s make-up is paramount to making a PUG competitive with a pre-made

if swapping was locked-out, then PUGs would end up having a lot of toxic whiny kittens crying from the beginning of the match over team makeup instead of playing the game

But the reason why someone would want to swap profession is to compliment his team comp while simultaneously taking into account enemy team comp. Allow profession swap but not allowing to view enemy team is practically worthless.

Evan Lesh.3295:

An important question i: Would all high-skilled players be OK with profession locking if we could ensure no stacking?

I don’t consider myself to be high-skilled, but no. Taking into consideration the reasons why players swap classes (you get matched versus an unfavorable roster, your team composition is lacking, etc), it would potentially disadvantage solo/duo players in particular.

I dont get it. People are whining about how matchmaker creates unbalanced matches. But then they want to give away one of the few tools they have to actively create some balance? Instead they want to add even more clutter to matchmaker in the hopes that the more matchmaker decides on their behalf, the better the results get.

I have a newsflash for everybody thinking that way: this just increases the luck component and instead of more balanced matches, you will get more volatile matches.

Why? Because there is no foolproof way to determine someone’s skill at a certain build in gw2. The only way gw2 has to determine if someone is “good” at a certain profession, is the amount of wins one has. But what about those that have low unranked games played, but constantly win on 1v1 servers? What about those that got their 500+ games played as thief 2 years ago and never touched thief again? What about those that got their wins because they played in a team and/or farmed stronghold?
For example, I got 693 games played as a necromancer. But at least 500 games of those are from 2 years ago. Necromancer was hugely different then from how it is now. Current necromancer Im not even that good at, Id need quite a bit of practice to get back into that profession. Still, the matchmaker would think Im above average (> 55% winrate with necro) if profession specific matchmaking would be applied. As it is, a 30-40% winrate would be more accurate.
But how is a matchmaking algorithm to know about that?
Or I played staff support guard in the past. I got around 300 games with only staff support guard with a 60% winrate, due to the simple fact that I played it on a steady team. Now I try out burn medi guard. Thats two absolutely different builds, those two builds are so much appart, they could easily be two different professions.
But still, the matchmaker would think me proficient playing burn medi guard (which admittedly, I was not when I tried it – far from it ).

And so on….

I think the solution isnt to remove more and more human components, but instead to fix class balance issues, power creep and too wide a range of mmr in favor of fast queues.

On the other hand… if you just made spvp into gw2 heroes moba with fixed builds… that would be a solution too. Just think about it… re-make stronghold to only support 5 – 10 heroes you can choose before queueing, and which will get matched in a certain way. It would solve so many problems with that map And everybody that doesnt like same profession twice on a roster can go play stronghold. ^^

I would be very much against profession locking, at least with balance the way it is now. Switching to fill a role your team needs filled has always been an important aspect in solo queue play, and I would hate to see it go.

scrubs need to learn and play more than 1 class. i mean how do they even know what the other class is doing if they dont know how it works?

This isn’t about taking away power from players or creating more balanced matches.
All in all, you can never be sure what build each class is playing (and all classes which can only play one role aren’t well designed anyway). And GW2 is still a team game, so you can never be sure if a player is even responsible for most of his wins/losses.

Instead let’s look at the benefits of locking characters and activating profession mmr:
- more interesting matches with more profession variety (due to less stacking and no one switching to OP class X)
- you can try out classes you play rarely/play only for daily and get punished less for it
- a lot fairer for all players that have yet only mastered one or two characters

@Yasi
If you played a lot of games 2 years ago this will have barely any effect on current matchmaking

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

scrubs need to learn and play more than 1 class. i mean how do they even know what the other class is doing if they dont know how it works?

This isn’t a job for some people chief because you know some of us have actual jobs, other interest and gasp some of us families of our own. I don’t have the time to master 8 thousand builds. How do I know what they are doing? By facing them over and over again, reading up, and watching vids. They can and should do much better with the class stacking portion of the matchmaking algorithm. Stop it with the stockholme syndrome. They can do better period.

MMR has a rating decay so if you played lots of games 2 years ago it will barely make any difference.

I like the idea of profession locking if profession MMR is applied and match making ensures no class stacking (ok maybe allow 2 of a class but not 2 pairs of classes, eg 2 thieves allowed but not 2 thieves AND 2 necros in a team)

The problem with profession switch inside a match if the player plays worse than if he stayed on his main. I don’t like losing my matches because people switch to profession they ar not good at and are close to useless. They are wasting my time about 10mins / matches like that.

Or maybe only allow char switch if that player have same sucess rate on switched char as my main char. So if i win 60% of my matches on necromancer and i get teammate that win 60% of his matches on elementalist then dont allow him to switch engineer he have only 30%-40% win rate…