Guild Wars 2

I’ve been doing alot of soloQ in the past 3 weeks, I now have over 200 matches played.

Here are the problems:

1) 25% of matches have a 4v5 situation for all or part of the match. This creates unfairness for the team that is short, and normally leads to an unchallenging (and not fun) match for all involved. Sometimes the 5th player starts zoning in just as the gates are opening, which sets one team behind by 10 to 20 seconds, which often is enough to cost the match. Many 4v5’s occur before the match has started, though occasionally some are caused by disconnects mid fight (this is the rarer case).

Solution: Delay the start of the match until both sides have 5 and all players are ready.

2) People occasionally disconnect or afk during a match.

Solution: Give players the option to report people who are afk. If 3 or more people report a player as afk, then the person gets booted from the map and a replacement player is found.

Solution: In cases of afk or disconnect, the game pauses the match, and a replacement player is found, resume play once they have selected “ready”. Any player that comes into the middle of a losing match does not get credit for a loss and their MMR doesn’t go down, but if their team turns it around and wins, then they get credit for the win (as reward for their skill).

3) Class balance mismatches. I’ve seen matches with 5 thieves/mesmers on one team, going up against a balanced team (mix of bunkers, condi, and power burst). I’ve seen one team full of high dps classes, against a balanced team. This is a complex problem to solve, but some of the simpler aspects could be solved without too much debate. Let’s face it, we have a bunker meta. A team with 2 bunkers has an inherent advantage at holding points against a team with no bunkers.

Solution: The matchmaker should look at classes, not just MMR, to create the teams.

Advanced Solution: Add logic to the matchmaker to evaluate not just classes but likely roles (bunker, condi, power) looking at gear and traits, to balance things out. Each team gets a comparable number of bunkers, etc.

Ultra Advanced Solution: Identify OP builds, for example hambow/healing signet warrior, bunker guardian, spirit ranger, MM necro, decap engi and spread them as evenly as possible across the teams. And don’t allow people to switch classes before the match.

I’m not saying the proposed solutions are perfect, but I believe they move soloQ in a positive direction that is sorely needed right now because most people that I talk to who do soloQ feel it’s a real mess right now.

4) Player experience imbalances. It’s not uncommon to see someone with a rank of less than 10 mixed in on a team where everyone else is rank 25+. The majority of the time the people with low rank don’t know what they should be doing, and contribute little to the success of their team, and often cause their team to lose.

Solution: Group people by experience and by rating. Stop creating teams with a large spread of MMR ratings. And stop putting people with rank less than 10 on a team full of rank 25+s. Most people would prefer to wait longer to get a good match, than to get noobies mixed with veterans and an imbalanced match.

1) 4v5 tends to happen to people lower on the leaderboard ranking
2) Can be abused/trolled
3) People can switch profession depending on the things they are doing prior
4) will affect queue times especially when during off peak hours. too long and 4v5 will start happening more.

4v5s happen to people with higher ratings too. I’ve been between 70% and 85% rating the past 2 weeks and I’ve seen plenty of 4v5s.