Guild Wars 2

This is a serious thread about the current matchmaking system.
For the last months, we have experienced a system using our division rank and our MMR. I am pretty sure we all have a different point of view on it, depending on our victories, defeats and progress in the Ascension success tree.

I will mostly talk about the soloQ, because I consider that the “party queue” should be in a different mode (Random arena and Party arena, we remember you). Of course this is also a part of the debate.

The good point this season is the absence of ennemy guild teams. Sometimes a pre-build party appears, but they are never making a huge match (some have won, some have lost). The balance focussed on the better player of the team favors the “solo” players.
I have issues trying to progress both in my rank and in my success, the main problem being the team : I always have a same-class teammate.
I am good enough to switch character (personnal experience in the previous ranked system + experience in season 1), but I don’t want to because I need A3 profession achievments and another ranked class achievment. My clone is often not able to switch because he is either doing the same success, or not good enough to switch.
The main problem here is the matchmaking neither using the player profession nor their experience, which could be considered by the following ranked statistics :
- The number of game with his profession
- The number of other profession (with a good number of victories/games)
This creates kitten in the progress for the player starting a new profession and they become burden for their teammates.
A good alternative would be an algorythm using as a base the player’s rank (division + mmr, like the current system), extended by the their profession. After 1-2 minutes of unsuccessful research, the system could stop using the players’ profession and eventually take their experience to complete the team. Keep in mind that a good and balanced team is often a 4-5 profession team, and not a 4-5 necro team.
To help people in their “queuing”, statistics about current most picked professions could be displayed.

What if each class had two viable specs which each performed a different role, so that if you have duplicate classes in a bad comp you could swap to that other role?

For example say you have two elementalists and double aurashare is not good for the opposing comp. If Fresh Air were a viable build you could have one of the elementalists swap and you have a better comp instantly without needing to rely on swapping to an alt of a different class.

I’m not a meta scientist but I’m pretty sure there are examples of classes which can do this even now. 3 necros? Have one go MM so he can play sidepoint bunker. Stuff like that.

I agree Sarrs, unfortunately we are not supported to play that way.
As long as we won’t be able to save skill and armor sets, changing role at the beginning won’t be practiced. A moderate player will keep his favorite build because of his lack of experience and build making (or he just doesn’t have a second screen with his metabattle-like to quickly rebuild). I am not saying that every player fights with eyelet, but that simple feature would open opportunities and encourage people to prepare and think about their sets.
But this is indeed an interesting opinion that could indirectly help the matchmaking.

Well…you can take a look at the threads on the PvP forum and almost everything is already talking about the matchmaking…

But the OP seems to be making some good insight, so I’ll bite. Here’s my 2 copper:

There’s a deep philosophical problem at the heart of many matchmaking woes. Should you rank people based on their division (amber, emerald, etc.) or based on their MMR? The feedback from S1 was that people wanted to be ranked based on their division and S2 has largely accomplished this.

The result is many people end up on big winning or losing streaks. However, this puts a lot of shock on players who have previously been playing with a roughly 50% win rate. If you’re below or around average, you’ll probably run into a point where you either can’t progress or get a division slightly above where you should have settled and then get stuck in matches where you’re outclassed.

So, do we want players to have a happy, balanced experience in ranked games (i.e. everyone wins close to 50% of the time?) or do we allow some players to get stomped by the stronger players so that the top divisions are more competitive?

To touch on one other point the OP makes, I do agree that there is a lot of class stacking in matches, but I think this is more a result of class balance than matchmaking. You can adjust classes to be stacked less, but then you just run into issues of long queues, which sucks when you have to play a certain number of games to hit achievements and progress ranks.

Balance needs to address the inadequacy that’s at least perceived with warriors and thieves. I think it also needs to look at how easy some of these classes are to play. Not only do a lot of meta builds have a low skill floor, but they also are very tanky while bringing a lot of damage.

My 2 copper on balance changes needed: Nerf tanky damage builds and push the meta back to encourage low damage bunkers (bunker guard, how we miss you!) and high damage roamers.

This MM was made to let fewer get to legendary rank or somthink but I seeing lot more Legendary/Diamond ranks than season one so I almost sure it fail in that.

And on the flip size all games are super boring as you will win or lose 200 + point,I not even need to focusing on my games anymore like in S1 when the MM picks the winners

Here is Mike..he has played 50 games. He has won 46 of them and lost 4 and is in tier 5 sapphire and about to cross tier 6. Mike only has limited time he can play each day.

Here is Izaak..he has played 200 games. He has lost 102 of them and won 98 and is in first tier ruby. Izaak has a few hours he can play each day.

Mike, even though on a solid winning streak will be paired with a number of sapphire players and maybe an odd ruby. Izaak will be paired with mostly ruby and maybe an odd sapphire.

Izaak is being carried by his slightly better team, even though he loves to push far and usually isn’t too successful at it.

Mike doesn’t like to push far, he prefers to protect mid and be mindful of what is happening on home. Mike does what he can to carry with straight forward solid tactics.

Mike has a great MMR, but not many matches to confirm his status.
Izaak has a terrible MMR, and a lot of matches to confirm his status.

The System decides Mike and Izaak should face each other. They are within pip range of each other. So Izaak will get a carry by the system assigning him other good ruby players, because that is his division and likewise Mike gets an assist by being placed with some good sapphire players and a some what struggling, but ok ruby player.

The end result will either be;
Mike’s mostly sapphire team wins by countering Izaak’s persistence in pushing far. The other players on Izaak team have been let down by being placed with Izaak and his mindset that far must be pushed at all costs.

or

Izaak team carry him. With better win histories than Izaak and more experience than Mike’s team they adjust quickly to carry Izaak and Mike gets beaten by a team he shouldn’t be facing quite yet. However the system saw a connection between Mike and Izaak because they were close to each other in pip range and everyone else got pulled in because they are some where within a 15 pip point spread of each other.

This is where the system struggles. Izaak can’t lose divisions even though he loses more than he wins. Mike can’t get an opportunity to accelerate up to be with better teams because he has to progress through all of sapphire division first.

I understand why they made the system this way, but example like this expose how easily the system can make flawed decisions when it only takes a couple of variables into consideration.

Alternatively, Mike and Izaak end up on the same team. =P

But really, it’s not as simple as that since the track record of 10 people are all being taken into account.

And yes, there will be some games where players just get matched with other players greatly outside of their skill range, but this should average out once you play enough games.

And if that answer isn’t satisfactory…then the only real solution would to have a greater PvP population so that the problem of ideal matchmaking and ideal queue times isn’t such a hard one to solve.