Guild Wars 2

I just wanted to know if you have lowered the starting MMR, or if there have been other steps taken that can acclimate the newer players that will surely jump into PvP after the 4/15 update? If starting MMR is left he same, it will not be fun for them, as they will feel like “lambs headed to the slaughter” as another poster so eloquently put it.

Also, from a community perspective, what can we do to help newer players so that they enjoy themselves and feel inclined to stick around?

The “welcome to pvp” post from Grouch (stickied) could use a little bit of updating with newer content, which I cannot find right now. I will do some digging in a few days.

From the dev responses, leaderboard fixes are coming later, so it will be full of new people trying to do soloq/teamq, which leaves you with 2 options: 1. Don’t play soloq for ~1 week so the new players won’t be matched with you (during peak hours) and decay far into leaderboard hell or 2. Play teamq and farm the players that are forming a straight up pug spamming in the new (megaserver) mists.

XGhoul.7426:

From the dev responses, leaderboard fixes are coming later, so it will be full of new people trying to do soloq/teamq, which leaves you with 2 options: 1. Don’t play soloq for ~1 week so the new players won’t be matched with you (during peak hours) and decay far into leaderboard hell or 2. Play teamq and farm the players that are forming a straight up pug spamming in the new (megaserver) mists.

I hope they can at least reduce starting MMR, as I am not necessarily concerned as much for myself, but the health of the game. currently starting MMR is way too high, and leads to many bad situations, such as newbies getting rofl-stomped by experience players, getting berated by experienced players when they are just trying to jump in, and potentially getting discouraged from pvp in general.

I would like to see them make the starting experience more enjoyable for new players with a simple change so that all their work in “revitalizing pvp” isn’t wasted.

I really hope to see a big increase in numbers. More people will mean better matchmaking. Better matchmaking will mean more people will pvp.

Ive seen players during their second game (ever) getting matched against top 5 players with 10/15.000 games played. This should never happen in a game with an MMR system … there is no excuse for it. Ive spoken with newer players that quit GW2 pvp for good due to the horrible matchmaking.

Locuz, that is exactly my point! I am worried we will get a large influx of new players, who will have their first experience marred by poor matchmaking. They have even identified part of the problem is starting MMR. If they just changed that one little number in their code, as well as the starting volatility, it wouldn’t be an issue. Its much better to start a player off below where they need to be so they can see some success over time as they work their way up to the right point, as opposed to starting them too high and hoping they endure games of punishment while the system evens out.