Leader of The Guernsey Milking Coalition [MiLk] Sanctum of Rall
Ranked Refinements and Tweaks
No suggestion is worth implementing until ArenaNet can fix the biggest issue: drawing in many more players and giving them incentives to perform well in PvP.
Once we can guarantee that we have 100s of players at all skill levels queuing concurrently (this is the key, really, not just sheer numbers, but concurrent numbers), then we can start to talk about matchmaking and whether or not it’s working as expected.
No suggestion is worth implementing until ArenaNet can fix the biggest issue: drawing in many more players and giving them incentives to perform well in PvP.
Once we can guarantee that we have 100s of players at all skill levels queuing concurrently (this is the key, really, not just sheer numbers, but concurrent numbers), then we can start to talk about matchmaking and whether or not it’s working as expected.
Rashy is right. We can only focus on one problem at a time. LITERALLY. The devs are physically incapable of solving more than one problem in a given timeframe. Not possible, will never happen, let’s never discuss solutions to problems ever.
No suggestion is worth implementing until ArenaNet can fix the biggest issue: drawing in many more players and giving them incentives to perform well in PvP.
Once we can guarantee that we have 100s of players at all skill levels queuing concurrently (this is the key, really, not just sheer numbers, but concurrent numbers), then we can start to talk about matchmaking and whether or not it’s working as expected.
Rashy is right. We can only focus on one problem at a time. LITERALLY. The devs are physically incapable of solving more than one problem in a given timeframe. Not possible, will never happen, let’s never discuss solutions to problems ever.
Not sure if sarcasm, but to elaborate:
Yes, there are plenty of issues that need looking into. Yes, all of them do need to looked at at some point in the future. However, not all issues are equal priority. The focus should be on the biggest issue, while working on the other issues simultaneously (lower priority).
And IMO, the highest priority right now should be PvP population. Matchmaking issues will probably fix itself if it has a healthy population of players to draw from. With a healthy population to draw from, they can implement additional controls to prevent class stacking. With a healthy population, you won’t have matches that are stacked against you, you’ll have more even matches where everyone is rated roughly equally. With a healthy population, proper solo and teamQ can be re-implemented, and separated queues won’t be a problem. Even with a healthy population, the game doesn’t need to be an esport, but it has a better potential to be one.
Class balancing is an on-going problem that can be dealt with by making far more frequent balancing updates, or implement a public test server (probably more work involved).
So, how to bring in more players?
The cleanest solution would probably be a PvP-only version of the game (GW1 called, it wants its idea back), that players can download for free, or for a small price. They get most of the PvP build interface unlocked (the core stuff that everyone gets, including all specializations). They can still earn reward track progression and pip rewards, but can only be fully taken advantage of if they buy the full game. Additional things can be unlocked by paying for it with gold, as it is for players with the full game. If a PvP-only player wants to buy the full game, they can pay a discounted price for it.
Of course, ANet will need to prepare for something like that, as the large influx of players could pose many problems.
No suggestion is worth implementing until ArenaNet can fix the biggest issue: drawing in many more players and giving them incentives to perform well in PvP.
Once we can guarantee that we have 100s of players at all skill levels queuing concurrently (this is the key, really, not just sheer numbers, but concurrent numbers), then we can start to talk about matchmaking and whether or not it’s working as expected.
Rashy is right. We can only focus on one problem at a time. LITERALLY. The devs are physically incapable of solving more than one problem in a given timeframe. Not possible, will never happen, let’s never discuss solutions to problems ever.
Queue times are in the best place I’ve seen them in a long time. Bumps in player numbers happen at the start of a season, but the rewards are better. Hard core players could care less about that, but to keep number in a good spot with this game in particular, the rewards seem to draw crowds and keep them coming back. It’s nice to actually be able to play PvP in this game and make decent coin. More often than not over this game’s lifespan that simply wasn’t the case.
They need to refine it now and I think the first step to doing that is giving individual rankings to each profession on an account.
Leader of The Guernsey Milking Coalition [MiLk] Sanctum of Rall
Other than poor decisioning on the Ascended part that required only participation and handled them like a candy, i see no gripe about implementing them by adding Scavenging or required Trading post participation.
It could be nice running around in open world gathering/jumping and diving around to get Water of Rhand within Ascalon (e.g) and try to give him that to Zommoros if he likes it or not, i mean like Vial of Salt but better.
[Urge]
Between a master and apprentice, i would love to see the differences.
Between a master and apprentice, i would love to see the differences.
No suggestion is worth implementing until ArenaNet can fix the biggest issue: drawing in many more players and giving them incentives to perform well in PvP.
Once we can guarantee that we have 100s of players at all skill levels queuing concurrently (this is the key, really, not just sheer numbers, but concurrent numbers), then we can start to talk about matchmaking and whether or not it’s working as expected.
Rashy is right. We can only focus on one problem at a time. LITERALLY. The devs are physically incapable of solving more than one problem in a given timeframe. Not possible, will never happen, let’s never discuss solutions to problems ever.
Not sure if sarcasm, but to elaborate:
Yes, there are plenty of issues that need looking into. Yes, all of them do need to looked at at some point in the future. However, not all issues are equal priority. The focus should be on the biggest issue, while working on the other issues simultaneously (lower priority).And IMO, the highest priority right now should be PvP population. Matchmaking issues will probably fix itself if it has a healthy population of players to draw from. With a healthy population to draw from, they can implement additional controls to prevent class stacking. With a healthy population, you won’t have matches that are stacked against you, you’ll have more even matches where everyone is rated roughly equally. With a healthy population, proper solo and teamQ can be re-implemented, and separated queues won’t be a problem. Even with a healthy population, the game doesn’t need to be an esport, but it has a better potential to be one.
Class balancing is an on-going problem that can be dealt with by making far more frequent balancing updates, or implement a public test server (probably more work involved).
So, how to bring in more players?
The cleanest solution would probably be a PvP-only version of the game (GW1 called, it wants its idea back), that players can download for free, or for a small price. They get most of the PvP build interface unlocked (the core stuff that everyone gets, including all specializations). They can still earn reward track progression and pip rewards, but can only be fully taken advantage of if they buy the full game. Additional things can be unlocked by paying for it with gold, as it is for players with the full game. If a PvP-only player wants to buy the full game, they can pay a discounted price for it.Of course, ANet will need to prepare for something like that, as the large influx of players could pose many problems.
Yes, I was being sarcastic. Anet is no longer a tiny developer, they can handle more than one problem at a time (they employ more than one dev). Saying as you did that we can only discuss other people’s pet peeves after your particular annoyance has been solved is a self-interested attempt to shut down other important discussions. Yes, we’d all benefit from a larger PvP population, no, that discussion should not eclipse all other discussion dedicated to improving the sPvP side of GW2. I would also point out that if the population were to increase, it would all be new people, and so would simply increase the number of “bads” in the lower tiers of sPvP ranked matches and wouldn’t affect higher tiers. It wouldn’t solve the issue of Silver/Gold-level players being stuck in Bronze due to not being quite good enough to carry 4 other players every match, and it would only increase the number of players in need of carrying. That being said, people who are stuck in Bronze who “don’t belong there” are only a portion of the sPvP population and I don’t think their concerns are more or less important than any other issues.
I have heard the idea of a sPvP-only client before and I think it’s a great idea, this should happen and I fully support it. Your idea of a sPvP-only GW2 account is a bit different, still viable and I like it. It would also help GW2 market itself as a MOBA within a MMO, which could take GW2’s sPvP situation in a more positive direction.
Yes, I was being sarcastic. Anet is no longer a tiny developer, they can handle more than one problem at a time (they employ more than one dev). Saying as you did that we can only discuss other people’s pet peeves after your particular annoyance has been solved is a self-interested attempt to shut down other important discussions. Yes, we’d all benefit from a larger PvP population, no, that discussion should not eclipse all other discussion dedicated to improving the sPvP side of GW2. I would also point out that if the population were to increase, it would all be new people, and so would simply increase the number of “bads” in the lower tiers of sPvP ranked matches and wouldn’t affect higher tiers. It wouldn’t solve the issue of Silver/Gold-level players being stuck in Bronze due to not being quite good enough to carry 4 other players every match, and it would only increase the number of players in need of carrying. That being said, people who are stuck in Bronze who “don’t belong there” are only a portion of the sPvP population and I don’t think their concerns are more or less important than any other issues.
I have heard the idea of a sPvP-only client before and I think it’s a great idea, this should happen and I fully support it. Your idea of a sPvP-only GW2 account is a bit different, still viable and I like it. It would also help GW2 market itself as a MOBA within a MMO, which could take GW2’s sPvP situation in a more positive direction.
" and so would simply increase the number of “bads” in the lower tiers of sPvP ranked matches and wouldn’t affect higher tiers."
New to GW2 perhaps, but not necessarily bad players, or necessarily new to PvP and conquest. People learn at different rates. Bringing in more players would increase populations at all skill levels proportionately, not accounting for individual player growth from those new players.
“Anet is no longer a tiny developer, they can handle more than one problem at a time”
I’m aware. However, they’re also relatively small in size compared to the big names in PvP games. Due to that size, prioritization is important. Tackling more problems at the same times runs the risk of them being stretched too thin, not being able to dedicate enough time and resources to each problem individually.
Also, PvP population isn’t a personal annoyance. It’s a prevalent problem that’s existed since GW2 launched. Concurrent population is affected by that as well – why do you think they removed Team Queue and aren’t re-adding it now? Because they can’t afford the split in PvP population as it will affect queue times adversely.
1. No. Part of competitive GW2 is being able to play a few builds well.
2. No. Not enough players to make full team queue work outside of prime time. Full 1-5 player queue will come back in S6.
3. Core isn’t abyssmal; it’s pretty good overall. The problem is HoT specs are far too strong.
4. Agree
5. Fix #3 and you don’t need this.
6. Ranked rewards need to spread out more. They’re all early on and then substantially less afterward.
Kirrena Rosenkreutz
Yes, I was being sarcastic. Anet is no longer a tiny developer, they can handle more than one problem at a time (they employ more than one dev). Saying as you did that we can only discuss other people’s pet peeves after your particular annoyance has been solved is a self-interested attempt to shut down other important discussions. Yes, we’d all benefit from a larger PvP population, no, that discussion should not eclipse all other discussion dedicated to improving the sPvP side of GW2. I would also point out that if the population were to increase, it would all be new people, and so would simply increase the number of “bads” in the lower tiers of sPvP ranked matches and wouldn’t affect higher tiers. It wouldn’t solve the issue of Silver/Gold-level players being stuck in Bronze due to not being quite good enough to carry 4 other players every match, and it would only increase the number of players in need of carrying. That being said, people who are stuck in Bronze who “don’t belong there” are only a portion of the sPvP population and I don’t think their concerns are more or less important than any other issues.
I have heard the idea of a sPvP-only client before and I think it’s a great idea, this should happen and I fully support it. Your idea of a sPvP-only GW2 account is a bit different, still viable and I like it. It would also help GW2 market itself as a MOBA within a MMO, which could take GW2’s sPvP situation in a more positive direction.
" and so would simply increase the number of “bads” in the lower tiers of sPvP ranked matches and wouldn’t affect higher tiers."
New to GW2 perhaps, but not necessarily bad players, or necessarily new to PvP and conquest. People learn at different rates. Bringing in more players would increase populations at all skill levels proportionately, not accounting for individual player growth from those new players.
“Anet is no longer a tiny developer, they can handle more than one problem at a time”
I’m aware. However, they’re also relatively small in size compared to the big names in PvP games. Due to that size, prioritization is important. Tackling more problems at the same times runs the risk of them being stretched too thin, not being able to dedicate enough time and resources to each problem individually.
Also, PvP population isn’t a personal annoyance. It’s a prevalent problem that’s existed since GW2 launched. Concurrent population is affected by that as well – why do you think they removed Team Queue and aren’t re-adding it now? Because they can’t afford the split in PvP population as it will affect queue times adversely.
It would not increase the number of people at all skill levels proportionately. All talent levels perhaps, but certainly not skill levels. It takes months to learn this game properly since you need to have at least passing knowledge of all meta builds, some extra knowledge about lesser-used traits and skills, high levels of proficiency in playing 1-2 builds, and of course the expertise to make logical decisions about when to rotate where. Even if a highly talented player starts playing today and has plenty of free time, they’d need a minimum 3 months to become a Platinum-level player, and that’s assuming they can afford to play 6 hours every day. Your idea of increasing the sPvP population is nice, but doesn’t solve the current issue of MMR mismatching people of disparate skill levels. We want the game to be fun now, not at some arbitrary point in the future. Gw2 is already 4 years old, it won’t be around for too much longer, so making the game more fun now is a priority. Long-term solutions that take time to be effective made a lot of sense at launch; now, not so much.
>Your idea of increasing the sPvP population is nice, but doesn’t solve the current issue of MMR mismatching people of disparate skill levels.
MMR mismatch is a result of the system not having enough players at different MMR ranges.
And as for taking a minimum of 3 months to get to Platinum level, that is entirely subjective. People learn at different rates. Most classes have a low skill floor to do well, and only some classes have a high skill ceiling to do really well. Learning conquest and rotation isn’t unique to GW2 as it’s conceptual.
Proportionately here means something along the lines of:
If say 80% of the playerbase is Bronze and the remaining 20% is Platinum or higher, and the game brings in 100k new players, those new players will more or less fit into those divisions with the same proportions, in theory. In practice, if the numbers are even slightly different (say, 10-15% of new players reach platinum level), that’s still a noticeable boost in population at platinum.
Yes, all of this did make more sense at launch, but it’s never too late to start. Frankly, the game was almost completely overhauled with new systems for HoT, which was 3 years after the game’s release.
1) Can only happen if they disable class swapping before a match, but I’m all for that.
2) Completely agree, but it needs to be pure solo queue and pure 5v5 team queue. With proper rewards with an emphasis on Team Queue, population issues could decrease. Also, telling players they can’t queue as a team with their friends/guild and enjoy decent competition because their queue times will be too long isn’t really logical. There are many people that are willing to wait for better matches, and many more that would be willing to play Team Queue if it offered exclusive rewards (we’ve already seen this happen with pvp in general).
3) We’re pretty close to being there, Anet seems to be slowly working towards this.
6) The only issues I have with the reward system is that it shouldn’t reward anything if you lose. The only thing this accomplishes is give players a benefit to afk’ing.
>Your idea of increasing the sPvP population is nice, but doesn’t solve the current issue of MMR mismatching people of disparate skill levels.
MMR mismatch is a result of the system not having enough players at different MMR ranges.
And as for taking a minimum of 3 months to get to Platinum level, that is entirely subjective. People learn at different rates. Most classes have a low skill floor to do well, and only some classes have a high skill ceiling to do really well. Learning conquest and rotation isn’t unique to GW2 as it’s conceptual.
Proportionately here means something along the lines of:
If say 80% of the playerbase is Bronze and the remaining 20% is Platinum or higher, and the game brings in 100k new players, those new players will more or less fit into those divisions with the same proportions, in theory. In practice, if the numbers are even slightly different (say, 10-15% of new players reach platinum level), that’s still a noticeable boost in population at platinum.Yes, all of this did make more sense at launch, but it’s never too late to start. Frankly, the game was almost completely overhauled with new systems for HoT, which was 3 years after the game’s release.
When I said 3 months, I was assuming this person got help from Platinum or Legendary-level players along the way; I’ve had help from one person like that and I can tell you I improved a LOT faster once I started dueling him and got advice. There aren’t enough high-level players to come even close to having a 1:1 new player/experienced player ratio to make that happen. And that’s assuming that all experienced players would dedicate themselves to teaching, which is certainly not the case. It will be more than 3 months before a PvE convert can reach that level of play, there’s too much knowledge to absorb and comprehend, as well as mechanical skills to learn, for that all to fit into 3 months of play. That is, unless they have a dedicated tutor who comes prepared and is constantly available. Pretty much all of the the top players have been pvping since launch; it’s experience that makes them great. All the Platinum players I’ve been talking to have also been playing for years.
I’m interested to hear more details about your theory as to how new players and formerly PvE-only players would fit into higher tiers soon after starting sPvP. PvE players have a head-start since they will understand their favorite build’s offensive rotation reasonably well, though they’ll be using a different build for sPvP most likely. But they won’t understand their defensive skill rotation as PvE rarely forces the player to thoughtfully use those skills to the same degree as every sPvP match does. They simply won’t have the mechanical skill until they develop it. PvE players will certainly not understand all of the meta builds in sPvP at the moment. And everything I just said goes double for people new to GW2, they might have had relevant experience in other MOBAs, but GW2 is relatively complex and there’s a lot to learn. Rotating between points is not unique to GW2, but class/build matchups are different in GW2, so making intelligent rotations is mostly something that has to be relearned when starting GW2. +1ing a thief who’s fighting your DH is stupid, even though +1ing a 1v1 is generally a good idea.
To summarize, I’m just not seeing why increasing the numbers of players is the top priority, though it’s not a bad idea. It simply does not address how Anet could make systemic changes that, upon taking effect, will immediately make the ranked system more enjoyable, such as awarding/deducting MMR points based on individual contributions in matches. Increasing population is certainly not so important that other issues/improvements should not be discussed concurrently.
> I’m interested to hear more details about your theory as to how new players and formerly PvE-only players would fit into higher tiers soon after starting sPvP.
Let me spell it out again, word by word.
People. Learn. At. Different. Rates.
That applies to all facets of life. Some people have natural talents. Others need only a bit of work to become really good. Others need a lot of hard work to succeed. And there are also people who, despite the effort, cannot get better without extra guidance. And there are others, regardless of how much guidance they receive, will never improve.
You’re using your own personal experience to apply it as the general case.
There’s more than enough resources online to get the essentials needed to start to succeed.
The big change with Season 5 with Ascended gear being easily farmable was to attract new players – a portion of those new players will stick around, while the rest move on. Some of those new players will improve. Others may not.
Metabattle does a good job of documenting the essentials for each meta build. The rest is easy to pick up on with a bit of situational analysis from the player’s side. With a bit of research, players can watch top rated streamers and see what they do. Some actually explain what they’re doing as they play, making it that much easier to receive tips and tricks.
Of the many issues people have with the current system, half can be fixed by increasing population. Any new player who comes into the game will fit somewhere on the bell curve of MMR (that’s how statistics tends to work). The other half of the issues can be fixed while working on a way to bring in large numbers of players.
The issue you mention about MMR changes depending on individual performance is one of the issues that’s unrelated to population, which can be looked into for Season 6. There are other issues such as exposing team MMR (starting and ending) after the match, in the match details panel, which can also be implemented now that MMR is visible.
You’re missing the point I make about prioritization. Higher priority doesn’t mean that’s the only thing that needs to be worked on. I already clarified what I meant when I said "no issue is worth discussing until … "
Yes, other issues need working on, but most of those are ongoing problems that have been happening for a long time. Yet, despite all these years, they still haven’t fully addressed the issue of PvP population, and providing proper incentives to get better in PvP.
(edited by Rashy.4165)