Hey there,
I wanted to take some short time to discuss about the current placement system in Guild Wars 2.
But first to my own person:
I play Guild Wars 2 for about 4 years now and I play mainly sPvP for about 2 or 3 years, so I am quite experieced in that. In the seasons 1 to 4 I had only once the time to reach Legendary and in season 5 to 7 it was the same.
So I think I can say of myself that I am quite a good player (I’ll come to that one later again :P).
I think to tell my placement story I should begin with season 5 first. I paused Guild Wars 2 for quite a while before playing my placements but I was quite depressed when I got placed at silver. The matches for kind of boring and I fought myself up in ranks with a 70% winrate and hit platinum in the end.
In season 6 I got ranked silver again…. There I stopped at gold 3 for I had other games to play too
In season 7 I got ranked at low platinum (about 1,500) so I was glad that I had the chance of reaching top 250 with not too many matches to play. At the end of the season I was rank 58 and at a skill rating of 1,805 (and that with a 59% winrate). To prove this I made a screenshot for you: http://puu.sh/xt9Pt/684a3cc9a5.jpg
In season 8 however I got placed at gold again. I was pretty kittened about that, as you can probably imagine, for I used to play games with the top tier players before and had fun doing so. Got 5-5 placements (http://puu.sh/xwmp5/95cc4ac74e.jpg), but I lost the first 3 matches sadly. Here’s a screenshot of my rank after the placements: http://puu.sh/xt9Pz/4486e10172.jpg
So after I climbed a whole season from low platinum to rank 58, I get placed even lower than I started the previous season? I don’t get the point of that. But I’m not only here to complain (though I have good a reason to). From my personal experience I think that ArenaNet weights the first placements over the last. So in my case after the first 5 placements it was clear that I will be placed at some lower elo. In my opinion the placements should stick more to the rating you ended the previous season, so active players are treated fairer. I think you should not be able to get placed 300 skill rating off your achievements from the previous season. It is kind of depressing to play with worse players and it’s not always fun.
I would suggest that for the placements you will always get ranked within a +/- 150 skill rating range. With that the placements will be more precise for players that stick to their account and will set at least some limits to smurfing. It would be best of course if ArenaNet could be more precise about your personal MMR and rank according to that (not the amount of lost or won placement matches), but I know that this is hard to balance. I would wish that in the future the placement system will not let people drop that low as I did, so everyone can enjoy sPvP at his or her own skill level.
Thank you for your attention!
Josias Distler
P.S.: I was an elementalist main in sPvP last season and this season I play DPS to climb faster back to my elo (for anyone who’s interested).