Guild Wars 2

Results aren’t surprising at all. There’s still problems with the season, but it was definitely better than S1.

For better or worse, with the current match making system you can start late in the season in get where you would naturally end up after a couple days a of play. To me the biggest issue in the game is the people that play it. There needs to be something to weed out the people that afk or intentionally tank to troll people.

Also, the system needs to do a better job of separating players and motivating them playing their main account. Right now once you plateau, you can go to an alt and quickly walk up the ladder. This causes the lower tier players to repeatedly get farmed by people which isn’t the greatest system for growing PvP. Yeah they need competition, but let them progress against people of their same skill level.

I would keep the same system but break it into 2 or 3 groups. In order to advance a group, you have to finish in the top 1/3 of your group for the season. The bottom 1/3 of the groups get demoted at the end of the season. Obviously give better rewards for pips in the higher tier groups so the skilled players get rewarded more.

Meta is slightly better than last season but still several steps from being in a state of acceptable balance. It won’t be acceptable until the viability of all classes/archetypes is similar to the level of viability game-wide pre 6/23/2015.

Match making is a complete joke this season. What mainly bothers me is that a person with 50/50 win ratio that losses 3 and then wins 3, will progress in pips and eventually make it to legendary but a person with 50/50 win ratio that loses 1, wins 1, loses 1, wins 1 will remain stagnant in the exact same pip position and never progress. This has personally been my story this season in late diamond t7. I’m actually pretty kittened off about it. There are several ridiculous problems with S2 match making, no need to go in to them as I’m sure they’ll be covered by other posters.

Another BIG problem, from the perspective of a guild leader:
People who are in higher division do not want to play with a player of lower division because pip farm becomes priority due to how the math making was working this season. People in lower divisions do not want to play with people in higher divisions because they don’t want to play in diamond division let’s say, when they are trying to break out of sapphire. This results in an effect where guild members stop communicating and start solo queing. This is no good for community. Between S1 and S2, I’ve seen more friends, acquaintances and guild members just get bored, kittened off and leave the game than at any other time in GW2.

- This seasons meta really wasn’t much better, just different overall; condition specs became even more popular and lead to braindead team fights.

- Matchmaking still seems pretty hit or miss, ~70% of my games have 250+ point differentials, and a small portion were within 10-30 points. My games at the beginning of the season we’re much closer which I find strange because most were against ESL players, twitch streamers, and a few coordinated challenger teams.

Another issue I feel is at play here, is the fact that the pip range for matching is too wide (most likely to reduce queue times), and also the possibility of huge MMR deltas between teams. While in theory it should help better players progress early in the season, and ultimately allow for more matches based on pip range by the end of the season, it didn’t seem to work out that well in the end.

- Almost no build diversity and balance is still horrible. Until they split game modes, at least to some extent, the game will never come close to some form of balance.

I’ve played PvP since release, and this season pretty much made me stop playing the game mode all together. I don’t have much hope for PvP until division drops are allowed, and we get end season rewards more akin to LoL and WoW.

The amount of bad players I’ve seen in legendary is no different from S1 when there were ways to easily abuse the system to hit legendary.

This sums up this season for me, logically both teams here should be of equal skill/knowledge to be able to reach diamond. So how could a blowout of >!!!600!!!< point difference be possible.

Competitive? what was remotely fair about this match?
It wasnt fun for me to win, it was painful for the losing team.
This just should not happen.

[Edit: 1. the other team didnt have any d/c, 2. they couldnt win a single fight. 3. they only managed to cap a point once and never could take it back.]

I have very mixed experiences with the League System. If I play solo I have quite good experiences. In a group the experience depends on skill level and builds. In a group with coordinated builds and similar skill level the experience is quite good. In a group with varying skill levels the experience is catastrophic.

Before the changes of matchmaking I could just play with a group of friends regardless of their skill level. Matchmaking had always found a reasonable enemy team for us. If I do that now I get a guaranteed loss streak. I don’t think that it is beneficial for the community if you have to choose the friends you can play with by their skill level. I know that the league system in the last season was abused, but if the only possible fix for the league system is to break a good working matchmaking, the league system is broken beyond repair and should be discarded.

Season 2 was an improvement but to me league placement is still not an accurate reflection of personal skill. Still too easy to get to diamond and legendary. Still many many bad players who don’t know the basics getting diamond and legendary. The answer is probably league loss being possible starting with ruby or sapphire but I doubt A-net has the guts to do it with all the complaining about season 2.

The balance was better than season 1, not by much, but the match making was so unbearable, to the point where I no longer play the game

Balance the classes and shorten the league would be a start.

Kraljevo.2801:

Balance the classes and shorten the league would be a start.

The league don’t have to be shorten. They ought to fix the MM algorithm, that will fix the season. There is nothing competitve about X vs X. It’s a joke. This season is a joke because of X vs X.

And like I said, in the other thread, if by season ( you are including the meta) then it’s debatable… otherwise the S1 ladder is a lot better than the one we have.

S2 was definitely better than S1 for me.

S1 my win loss was just pure 50/50. I only made it to sapphire.
S2 I made it to legendary. I was stuck in MMR hell for awhile, I played as much meta as I could, and eventually as the season went on, more bad players ended up in ruby/diamond and made it easier for me to progress to legend.

Whether this is good or bad for pvp overall is a different story. I don’t think either season really hits the nail on the head though (obviously).

Definitly better then last season, for me matchmaking wasnt that bad , i had a 6 game losestreak in the last tier of diamond but after i reached legendary i never lost more then 2games in a row.

The one thing i really think is broken is that alot of times i get the same 2-3ppl on my team and the same 2-3 ppl on the enemy team for 3-4 games in a row. And that is really strange , instaead of mixing up these 6 ppl you always get to play with and against the same people

And as an ele player i dislike beeing the healbot so i would love to see some changes to ele so i can play another build next season without draggin my team down

In comparison to the horrible grind and the boring bunker meta of S1, S2 was way better for me and my sister (tempest and condi/shout reaper).

In S1 we were 7 pips away from diamond and we played a lot during the Christmas holidays. It took us ages to even reach ruby with the 50/50 win chance. Especially in the end it felt like a chore and we always hoped to end the day with a pip more.
But we also had some nice surprising matches: We lost by ca. 10 points and won 3 pips. Our team had rubies and diamonds against a full premade 4 legendary and 1 amber.

In S2 we easily reached diamond. We didn’t really like the too easy matches on our way to ruby, but with sometimes winning 10 in a row, it didn’t take us long. In ruby the matches became more balanced (but still with a ca. 70% win rate) and in diamond we had a ca. 50% win rate.
Most matches in diamond were quite fun.
So for us S2 was working as intended.

It was really interesting and surprising for us (with just pvp rank 63) to see the huge difference of the skill level in S2. You see better and worse people in unranked (and S1) too, but due to the MM there the difference isn’t that big:

- We met enemies who played godlike in comparison to us and killed us in seconds (loosing 10 vs. 500 hurts).

- I played druid for some matches in amber (for the achievement) without having any experience, so I usually went to close (and killing beast on Niflhel) and hoped to not get involved into to many fights. Mostly my worries were unnecessary: Some who were running towards me, arrived with hardly any hp left (I just used staff 1, 2 and Bristleback) → no dodges, blocks,… some even forgot to use the heal skill.

- There were enemies who died to my healbot tempest.

- My sister jumps into a cap point with 3 enemies to delay capping (I thought “omg what are you doing?”), some very long seconds later two of them were in downstate until she finally went down.

→ I don’t think it’s good when people get frustrated because they are stuck below ruby (especially when the matches are blowouts), but on the other side after what I’ve seen in S2 I also understand why some are in legendary and some have trouble reaching ruby.

PS: Maybe I’m a bit biased because in S2 I really enjoyed playing the “healbot”, while in S1 I still missed my cele d/d ele that I played pre HoT.

This was my first real attempt at season play. Only qued season 1 for guild missions. I personally believe that the teirs per division should be switched, with a higher number of tiers to cross for the lower divisions and fewer numbers for the higher divisions. I also think there are too many divisions. I can see 4 divisions total, with pip/tier loss across all of them, including the 1st division, for season 3, then re-evaluate if necessary for season 4 (to maybe include division loss). I think having division, pip, and tier loss implemented all at once for all divisions would be too much too fast, possibly a mistake.

Locuz.2651:

Zodi.8932:

Absolutely awe full. For me last season was miles better. Matchmaking is so beyond broken that it prevents good players from getting to Legendary and allows PvE players who have barely touched PvE to go straight to Legendary. I sincerely hope something changes.

What a bag of blaming bulllkitten.

It’s really not. I know a few people that almost never pvp and realistically shouldn’t get past ruby and yet are currently legendary.

ixon.2496:

This sums up this season for me, logically both teams here should be of equal skill/knowledge to be able to reach diamond. So how could a blowout of >!!!600!!!< point difference be possible.

Competitive? what was remotely fair about this match?
It wasnt fun for me to win, it was painful for the losing team.
This just should not happen.

Fully agreed. Wins/losses by over 600 points are never the fault of just one player. It is the fault of the completely broken match making system.

Also the changes to the pip scoring between Season 1 and Season 2 were bad. Now the game treats 0-500 and 499-500 loss the same way, you lose 1 pip and that is it. That gives most players no incentive try to limit their losses when the game goes bad after start. Many players throw in the towel and in worst case just intentionally die as fast as possible or AFK after their team is losing by 100-150 points, even though comeback at such point would still be possible if they played their best and enemy makes a mistake. The previous system where you could even gain a pip with a loss if you were matched up against a higher MMR rank team and managed to score a quite narrow loss, was tons better. Give players always motivation to play the game to the bitter end!!

Please bring that old system back!

Mooncow.6847:

The balance was better than season 1, not by much, but the match making was so unbearable, to the point where I no longer play the game

Pretty much this.

Balance was better than season 1 even if there is lot more to do but MM was awfull, there is nothing competitive in this MM this is just a poor design made to grind pvp games; when 99% of games are stomp you know there is a problem…

There is enough farm in PvE so plz give us some enjoyment in sPvP with skill level ranking league and if the only problem is the wing farm just delete the division requirement so player will still have to farm rank point, win etc

definitely better than last season, still a lot of improvement needed (matchmaking, class balance)

I could tolerate the meta for this season since last season I just didn’t bother beyond saph.
I had a pretty easy ride from amber – diamond playing reaper/tempest. Honestly -too- easy with a 30+ win streak, the games weren’t even fun after awhile. I think only 4 of those games went above 300 points, the rest were total blowouts. (I solo q’d from Saph – Dia, btw.)
Once I reached diamond it felt like the matchmaking was punishing me for those win streaks and went out of it’s way to force me to lose.
I probably wouldn’t have minded as much if I didn’t need to win for those class achievements. In the end it was pretty demoralizing and I gave up on getting those for this season.

There seriously needs to be something done about class stacking though.

Matches this season were more fun balance wise.
That bunker crap from season 1 was so boring.

I enjoyed this season since i got to legendary division losing only like 5 games.
All games except for 6 were duo queue.
Though i did enjoy winning almost every game, it shouldn’t be like this.
I see myself as a good pvp’er but this season made me feel like i have some pro league skills.
Maybe i got used to the 50% winrate from season 1 but i don’t think i should be winning games this much without any loses in between.

Israel.7056:

Mooncow.6847:

The balance was better than season 1, not by much, but the match making was so unbearable, to the point where I no longer play the game

Pretty much this.

Same for me. Will give season 3 a try but is the last chance I will give Anet to make things better rather than worse.

People have already weighed in with similar things, but I will throw in my chips:

The “meta” was better, but balance still has a ways to go. People much more intelligent than myself have suggested an abundance of possibilities, so I’ll leave that alone.

The League itself was not particularly entertaining to me. I basically experienced a trivial ride to mid diamond on a win streak. The matches were blow outs. I get the intent of the matchmaking was to put people into the “tiers” they were supposed to be at, but it simply wasn’t fun getting there (at least for me).

I did experience fun, challenging matches getting from there to legendary, but after I hit that, I just experienced more blowouts, win or lose, so I just kinda stopped. No one wants league to be a grind where matches are trivial one way or the other.

If MMR was working as intended, I think maybe my skill level would be somewhere in diamond based on my experience, but there may just too many variables in Leagues to use it to objectively kitten your skill level.

I hope season 3 will be better, but I don’t know that I’ll participate. I’m not typically the person who would participate in this kind of competitive venue, and was attracted to Leagues for the wrong reason. If I can get good matches in unranked, i’ll stay there… heck i can even have fun in bad matches. We’ll see I guess.

The balance in S2 I think was worse than S1 but that’s just my opinion.

The matchmaking was definitely better but could still use improvement. The only caveat to this is that with such a small pvp population, if they were to completely match up players, queue times would be much longer.