Guild Wars 2

Currently this isn’t how the system works but I’m curious if this is the expectation from the player base. Currently you can have any MMR in any of the divisions so long as you win enough games to complete the division requirements.

The question is though, do the players feel this is appropriate or would they rather have divisions represent MMR?

Keep in mind that using divisions to represent MMR would likely require uncoupling the meta achievement from divisions, resetting MMR in some capacity at the start of each season, as well as allowing division loss through losing matches/pips.

Just curious what the people think. Let’s hear what you got

Divisions should certainly represent MMR since high MMR means you’re good. If you have ruby for example and only made it there by competing against other 50th percentile players then are you really a ruby? Making league correlate with MMR would give give the badges more prestige.

Divisions should definitely equate to MMR. If they aren’t doing that, what use are they, other than a mechanic to abuse for a cool backpiece?

Agemnon.4608:

Divisions should certainly represent MMR since high MMR means you’re good. If you have ruby for example and only made it there by competing against other 50th percentile players then are you really a ruby? Making league correlate with MMR would give give the badges more prestige.

Just a heads up: Even many people in the 95th percentile are overwhelmingly mediocre; I wouldn’t use that as a good metric of skill. It’s better to look at the w/l ratio if you insist on using the leaderboards for any kind of example.

Divisions were supposed to be = MMR. Yet, without proper MMR reset at the beginning of the league, we got two different systems trying to to same thing.

Divisions should directly represent MMR. Why?

• #1 – Would immediately stop pip farm match manipulation
• #2 – Division would have meaning and give community direction of command
• #3 – Promotes focusing on learning and getting better to progress.

The system could use the exact same glicko. Just make divisions & tiers directly represent where players actually stand within the MMR ladder. Ambers are lower end MMRs, Legendaries are high end top MMRs. If your MMR starts to lower, so do your pips. This way people won’t be afraid to lose games! It’s simply more about maintaining your skill factor for rewards, not farming with match manipulation tactics. I’m pretty sure that everyone could agree that this change needs to happen during season 2.

^The answer is a 100% yes

I completely agree.

Your suggestion will never get implemented, it makes too much sense. The following are other posts people have suggested, some references were made before the league started.

This needs to be prevented in the future. I’ve seen low-mediocre skilled pvpers climb divisions using the method the link’s OP is complaining about:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/MMR-Weights-and-Pip-loss/

Some kind of MMR reset is a must. A lot of people have voiced that already but will they ever listen:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Anet-Please-Do-the-Right-Thing

I don’t even know why we still have this. It creates the wrong impression in the minds of people on how conquest is played. I personally think it is the main culprit on why there are so many bad players in this game:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/The-ONLY-time-when-personal-score-matter/

It’s like teaching a child differential calculus after exposing him to lead poisoning.

Agemnon.4608:

Divisions should certainly represent MMR since high MMR means you’re good. If you have ruby for example and only made it there by competing against other 50th percentile players then are you really a ruby? Making league correlate with MMR would give give the badges more prestige.

Ruby is like third tier from the top, wouldn’t that correspond to 50-75th percentile of the PvP population anyway? That’s my way of looking at it.

Finally some common sense put into the MM system.

of course they should, this is a no-brainer….

100% yes. It’s what I thought the league system was going to be, but turns out it was just a reward track for a legendary backpack.

The answer ofc is yes BUT there shouldn’t be a “no possible pips loss” in any tier/division, I.E.: everything should work like it works from ruby div on.

And considering how Anet clearly caters to carebears, it will never be implemented. Sadly.

Valkyriez.6578:

Agemnon.4608:

Divisions should certainly represent MMR since high MMR means you’re good. If you have ruby for example and only made it there by competing against other 50th percentile players then are you really a ruby? Making league correlate with MMR would give give the badges more prestige.

Ruby is like third tier from the top, wouldn’t that correspond to 50-75th percentile of the PvP population anyway? That’s my way of looking at it.

Divisions shouldn’t be based on straight, simple math because a 50% player and 75% player can have a huge gap in skill. For perspective if you are rated 1800 Elo (class A) in chess (FIDE) you’re in the top 90% whereas an international master is above 99.9%.

I propose a correlation like so:

Amber: 0-50%
Emerald: 51-75%
Sapphire: 76-90%
Ruby: 91-95%
Diamond:96-top 1,000
Legendary: Top 500 only.

Yes, definitely. Higher divisions are meant to represent higher skill levels, so they should do exactly that.

Of course, as OP has already mentioned, this would require some major changes to league achievements, so that backpack farming should be possible even for those that won’t get out of amber (with higher divisions letting you finish faster).

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

Divisions should definitely equate to MMR. If they aren’t doing that, what use are they, other than a mechanic to abuse for a cool backpiece?

Unfortunately as implemented, “a mechanic to abuse for a cool back piece” is exactly what they currently are. How can there be any integrity in the division icon beside a character name when you have

• MMR manipulation at each tier giving incentive for players to give up early in matches or purposely loss matches
• Solo queue mixed with pre-made queue,
• Matchmaking that does not take into consideration number of Elite Spec and meta builds when balancing
• People who have years of experience playing on alt accounts to get a free ride to Ruby
• Extensive use of teleport and other hacks
• Skilled in higher divisions taking gold to pair up with lower division players

Even if we didn’t have all these things going on mucking up the integrity of League Divisions you also have the tier lock-in. Given enough play time, eventually a player will get the five pips needed to lock in to the next tier. The elite progression from Amber to Ruby seems to be designed for those who don’t take PvP seriously (I suspect it was designed for the PvE crowd who occasionally do PvP, this is what you get when great PvP is trapped in a PvE focused MMO). The tier-lock in means one can grind into Ruby. Luck is going to be just as much a factor as skill when solo queuing.

For the full pre-mades it’s a different story. If you’re a great pre-made many of the problems in the bullet list will not impact your team. It comes down to Diamond and Legendary being the only two divisions with prestige. But even when I see a Diamond I wonder if they used MMR manipulation tactics, alt accounts or hacks to get there. So there is no respect for it.

I would like to offer potential solutions to the above mentioned problems:

MMR manipulation at each tier giving incentive for players to give up early in matches or purposely loss matches

Tie league to MMR.

Solo queue mixed with pre-made queue.

Solo would be solo whereas to potentially solve queue time problems mix duos and triples with full premades.

Matchmaking that does not take into consideration number of Elite Spec and meta builds when balancing

Ban people who don’t have HoT from ranked and only have them able to do 10 unranked games per day.

People who have years of experience playing on alt accounts to get a free ride to Ruby
Extensive use of teleport and other hacks

Such hacks need better monitoring. Since Guild Wars 2 is a very light game (I can get 40-60 fps with just a GTX 670 at 4k resolution) such software running to check for hacks shouldn’t add too much of a burden.

As for alt account experience if you really have that level of expertise don’t you belong in ruby to begin with? What if their “alt” account is actually their main and need a PvP tag on that account so no one mistakes him for a pure PvE’r? Badges say, or should say, “I PvP and this is where my skill level is at.” Showing a tag is much better than being on an alt with no tag (therefore no way to separate yourself from pure PvE’rs who’ll simply say if you’re such a PvP expert where’s your tag?"

Skilled in higher divisions taking gold to pair up with lower division players

I honestly foresaw this happening but not the tanking. All this would achieve is division inflation and should be regulated as such. Then in the higher division they’ll get experience playing better players and will eventually develop the skill to belong there. Still, it’s a morally gray area leaning towards the dark side.

Astralporing.1957:

Yes, definitely. Higher divisions are meant to represent higher skill levels, so they should do exactly that.

Of course, as OP has already mentioned, this would require some major changes to league achievements, so that backpack farming should be possible even for those that won’t get out of amber (with higher divisions letting you finish faster).

If someone can’t get out of amber do they really deserve the backpack though?

Agemnon.4608:

I would like to offer potential solutions to the above mentioned problems:

MMR manipulation at each tier giving incentive for players to give up early in matches or purposely loss matches

Tie league to MMR.

Solo queue mixed with pre-made queue.

Solo would be solo whereas to potentially solve queue time problems mix duos and triples with full premades.

Matchmaking that does not take into consideration number of Elite Spec and meta builds when balancing

Ban people who don’t have HoT from ranked and only have them able to do 10 unranked games per day.

People who have years of experience playing on alt accounts to get a free ride to Ruby
Extensive use of teleport and other hacks

Such hacks need better monitoring. Since Guild Wars 2 is a very light game (I can get 40-60 fps with just a GTX 670 at 4k resolution) such software running to check for hacks shouldn’t add too much of a burden.

As for alt account experience if you really have that level of expertise don’t you belong in ruby to begin with? What if their “alt” account is actually their main and need a PvP tag on that account so no one mistakes him for a pure PvE’r? Badges say, or should say, “I PvP and this is where my skill level is at.” Showing a tag is much better than being on an alt with no tag (therefore no way to separate yourself from pure PvE’rs who’ll simply say if you’re such a PvP expert where’s your tag?"

Skilled in higher divisions taking gold to pair up with lower division players

I honestly foresaw this happening but not the tanking. All this would achieve is division inflation and should be regulated as such. Then in the higher division they’ll get experience playing better players and will eventually develop the skill to belong there. Still, it’s a morally gray area leaning towards the dark side.

Some nice ideas here mixed with some I’m not so sure about, but I’ll toss my solution recommendations. How I would fix these problems.

Fixing PvP in this game is actually a pretty short bullet list

• Add ability to go do other things while waiting in queue. This take care of players who are going to have to wait longer when they solo queue and it’s also going to make premade players happy. No one likes sitting around Heart of the Mist. In fact most of us hate it. No one likes watching other players sit around Heart of the Mist on Twitch so it’s killing the opportunity for streaming to help market the product.

• Add solo queue. Solo queue players should have the option to queue with full premades but not be forced to. The current queue. After solo queue is added, the current queue system becomes the premade queue. Solo, Duo queue members who choose who enter premade queue know that they are be paired with 3-4 other’s who are on team together…. Meanwhile to solo queue you can’t be in a party at all and when you solo queue you know 100% you will be paired against another solo queue team

• Split League divisions by solo and premade queue. Amber-Ruby should be given to solo queue and tier lock-in left in tact. Solo queue players know their team composition is going to be largely luck of the draw so keep tier lock-in up to Ruby then add two higher divisions for them (e.g. Onyx and Peral) without tier lock-in in place of Diamond and Legendary

• For premade queue, nix Amber-Ruby. leave Diamond and Legendary as is but add two lower divisions (Topaz and Opal) that each have 15 pips and no 5 tier-lock (that’s right, don’t give premade queue any tier lock-in… it’s win and a pip loose a pip all the way through from the very start).

• For solo queue players- Add routines to match making so that it is aware of current meta builds and near meta builds. Make it so you never have one solo team composed of all Elite Spec metas against a team that’s running mostly outdated builds. Or at least when these matches happen pip distribution at end of match considers the leverage Elite Spec heavy team had.

• Be up front with the game community about current hacks. Anyone can type “GW2 hacks” into Google and find these things so why not respect the community enough to make everyone aware of what’s going on so the this can be better reported?!? The only reason I can think of a company wouldn’t do this is if they knew the hacks were out of control and that they couldn’t do much about it because of limited resources or effort required to patch…. ESL play requires anti-hack background app to run, they know they have their pro matches covered. Pro players are complaining about how the anti-hack ESL app impacts ping, etc… ArenaNet has probably weighed that outside pro play, it’s better to allow hackers than to implement something that will slow the game down for everyone (otherwise why wouldn’t we all be running this anti-hack software?). I guess they figure it’s best to try and cover it up.

….

I don’t care that you can grind through leagues, as long as skilled players progress faster. In way, that’s the case: the people you see in Legendary division are mostly good at the game. And you probably noticed, if you are good, that passing through emerald and saphire was super easy, compared to bad players forced to wait for a lucky win streak, or to abuse the system.

It’s not perfect however. I would like to see the pip system stay, but with MMR taken into account a bit more, for example by influencing the number of pips you gain for a win/lose for a loss. The idea is the following: if your MMR is higher than the average MMR in your league, you lose less pips when you lose, and you win more pips when you’re victorious. That way, you’ll reach the division you really belong to more easily.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

• For solo queue players- Add routines to match making so that it is aware of current meta builds and near meta builds. Make it so you never have one solo team composed of all Elite Spec metas against a team that’s running mostly outdated builds. Or at least when these matches happen pip distribution at end of match considers the leverage Elite Spec heavy team had.

I liked a lot of your ideas, but this one seems difficult to implement. Meta changes by the week, you can make a ton of variations to a viable build keeping it viable, or change one trait and break it. In addition, certain meta builds don’t stack well. Finally, certain meta builds perform amazingly in competent, organized teams, but won’t work in soloq. If your idea was implemented, dragonhunters and reapers would be god tier in soloq, since noone can decently focus them and the MMR of their opponents would be lower than theirs.

There is a system in the MM that prevents profession stacking. The rest of the solution to this problem must be found by the players. Every player should be able to play two or three builds to be able to counter comp rapidly, and if you run a subpar build, you must be ready to do more work to win.

how ruby works should have been how amber, emerald, and saphire works. they should all lose tiers also. if your a scrub in pvp you will be stuck in ruby the whole season. if your somewhat decent you will be in diamond or possible legendary at the end of season.

Agemnon.4608:

Astralporing.1957:

Yes, definitely. Higher divisions are meant to represent higher skill levels, so they should do exactly that.

Of course, as OP has already mentioned, this would require some major changes to league achievements, so that backpack farming should be possible even for those that won’t get out of amber (with higher divisions letting you finish faster).

If someone can’t get out of amber do they really deserve the backpack though?

I do not mean those that currently won’t get out of amber. I mean those that would be left in amber in this hypothetical new system. And yes, Anet’s clearly stated design for backpack is that better players will get it earlier but anyone that will continue playing is supposed to eventually catch up as well – it will just take a lot more time. I see no reason why this should not hold true in any modified system as well.