Guild Wars 2

ANet – Whats the plan?

Players – Are you good with this or is this too much? Can you handle losing divisions or are safe points worth allowing people to gain levels and then sit there?

Thoughts?

I don’t like to lose progress either but if it means people balancing out where they should be it might make better games.

Game isn’t balanced enough to be forced into losing divisions. PvP is already a ghost town and predominantly populated by people after the back or achievements. Force players to play with people that have literally no idea how to play the game, much less PvP, and allow them to downrank divisions? People will quit in droves.

PvP in this game is already a massive joke and subject to luck more than anything else.

Its a must.

While division and tier safety nets sound nice at first, its one of the main reasons for a lot of the mmr related issues this seasons.

Ppl get pushed to divisions where they dont belong and there is no way back down. Its ruining games for them and for their teammates.

The other thing that needs to happen this season is that new players need to start with an mmr at the bottom end of the spectrum. You cant expect new players to be average mmr wise anet.

Losing divisions will have more negative impacts than positive ones. Safety nets should ONLY be at the divisions and not tiers. Amber division should be the only one that won’t allow loss of pips/tiers and once you’re out of amber ppl should lose tiers (in addition to pips in emerald/sapphire)

No pip loss up to legend. People still playing all are legend achevement worth. The play alot and after 6 months og no ballance and stuff.

Then allow pip and tier loss in legendary ranks. And give legendary rank more valmue the higher you go.

It all were you set the skill level base “level” yes it could be in amber, but would go aginst Logic to get more people playing for pve reward.
It could be in legendary rank 1 achivet for playing alot and being commitet to the game. Playing alot ect, not much skill based before legendary rank 2-3-kitten ect call it Pure Legendary or something
Its like skilled people seems to get kitten if to many get higher ranks

it is fine the way it is.

ruby and diamond is where the real action is at.

Yes, there needs to be losing division, otherwise we will constantly get uneven fights.

You won’t “balance out” your division unless you can actually lose and drop down. Everyone has a division that’s suited for them and their skill level. if you aren’t allowed to be dropped back down to that skill level.. you’ll constantly get farmed by better players and p2w elites.
Pips and division needs to be separated. Use Pips as a means to gain the rewards, but divisions to find your suitable skill level. Higher division means greater rewards, lower division means lesser.

Personally though, i believe the sPvP is structurally flawed, because you need to be able to track skill level, instead of winrate. Otherwise you’ll keep getting uneven fights.
Also, i believe that 5v5 setup is also flawed. It works in a premade vs premade tournament setup, but because people can actually have very different builds(Yes, most probably use meta builds, but that doesn’t change the fact that they CAN have others), this makes the 5v5 very tricky. A bad player with a bad build makes the game 4v5. if you have more bad builds and bad players that simply lowers the odds even more.

what I’d like to see, in order to increase the playtime and queue time, is for instance adding a team of 4 high winrate players, Legendary division vs 6-7 lower division players.
Sure, they’re worse players, they have bad builds.. but shear numbers on their side would at least give them a fighting chance against the meta.

That would give the legendary players a new kind of challenge from time to time, and give lower players a fighting chance.
It could be a horrible idea, but I’d really like to see it in practice. possibly start it in unranked playlists to see how it works out.

I like losing tiers and divisions starting at emerald, but I’d prefer a lot less pips in total. I love me some PvP, but I’ve stopped playing it entirely because there are so many kitten tiers in every division.

I know it’s completely psychological, but it makes my normal few games a day feel like grind instead of just playing a few games for fun.

Basically: Fewer games but with more at stake.

Losing Divisions is fine if you reward people for playing. However since you don’t get rewarded again for losing a tier, would you get your tickets for crossing the same tier again? If there are no rewards, will that entice people to continue playing if they continue to fall tiers or can’t get through certain tiers?

Good or Bad, the legendary backpack brought more people to PvP. However most good to average PvP’ers will have the backpack already or at least by the end of S3 so the reward will be gone. So what does that leave you with? Reward tracks? Hardly great.

If you are going to lose tiers then you need to review how people are rewarded in PvP. You can’t just say “lose tiers” without another option. If you say that, then you will basically kill any new playerbase we got and without people in low tiers in rank, there will be no one for good players to over come to get to higher tiers.

I don’t believe that we will be able to keep many people just for the sake of PvP. Those people are die hards. We need people who want to come for PvP because it’s equal to the reward of PvE just different mechanics. I’d be for division loss if there was another reward path. Otherwise I’ll just keep to unranked for my dailies.

I feel like a soft safety net could work. By this I mean you can lose, say 3 matches at the first pip of a division before dropping back down.

This will hopefully keep players in a division that represents their skill level. Almost as important though, it’ll keep troll that have already reached Legend from trolling too much because they run the risk of dropping back down to diamond. It’ll only help a little in some cases, but the fact that you can reach Legend, then go around screwing people over is not OK.

Well if you’re going to disincentivize people from queuing like this, that’s basically RIP PvP for most of us that don’t play prime time.

This season I had regular 11-20 minute queues for Diamond/Legendary around halfway thru the season. By no means was I rushing at all. I would imagine with this new system you guys propose, I might as well not bother playing because games won’t pop after diamond, if that.

I lost interest in PVP because of ruby division – because of the fact that tiers are not checkpoints anymore. There is no way I will get to Diamond now, thus, there is no way I will continue PVP. It is sad, but that how it works for me and thousands of others too for sure.

The only problem I see with losing divisions are longer queues times for the higher division players. I prefer getting rid of the tier safety net. If you lose 5 games at zero pips you lose the division rank.

It would probably be better to give the players that reach their rank this season to be dropped two divisions for the start of season 3 and just give them the rewards for the previous divisions. They will reach it anyway. This will help make games better at the start of season 3.

It would be a bad idea to have people losing divisions. Nuff said. If people are in a division they feel is too high for them letting them go down a rank by their own choice would be acceptable but not losing it against their will.

Sinmir.6504:

It would be a bad idea to have people losing divisions. Nuff said. If people are in a division they feel is too high for them letting them go down a rank by their own choice would be acceptable but not losing it against their wqill.

I could totally see people abusing this to go down divisions to (1) constantly farm noobs, and (2) play with their lower div friends to do (1).

I don’t think anyone wants to lose a division, but clearly people who got stuck in a higher division than where they should be shouldn’t be forced into games above what they’re skilled for.

Because of this, I think a better solution would be:
Allow players early into a division who are on a losing streak to have their matchmaking treat them as someone in the previous division

Otherwise, you’ll have too many people discouraged from PvPing after attaining their new division.

If people can lose divisions, I guarantee you Legendary queue times will be through the roof from people who don’t want to risk losing their division quitting PvP for the season or moving to unranked.

Division loss should start at ruby that would allow people to get the wings.

Losing division at ruby is fair

Losing division is essential in a competition.

reaper it is very strong and needs nerf, the classes must be better balanced, we see that although it has lost division will only help to know which actually have skills or not to help the team climb division.

Another thing is to lose tier division in all, this is a competitive game and not to do charity for new players, if new players want to play RANKED, you must first learn how to play in unranked.

The S2 problem is the lack of balance with classes, people only need to play all the time to climb division since it can not lose it, and is there tying a few times to climb if that division is not for it is really there .

I think losing division would be kinda sketchy.

I think making Sapphire or maybe even Emerald tier-loss divisions, and maybe making Amber a pip-loss division, would help a lot to keep the “I will definitely get into Ruby no matter what” down. There are only two ‘real’ divisions in the game as it stands; Amber is no-loss, Sapphire and Emerald are grind-thru, Legend basically means you’ve already won.

But I dunno.

The issue with losing divisions is that there (currently) isn’t any real prestige associated with high division rank. The top players in legendary mostly just want to stomp people and would rather have unbalanced fights than long queue times.

As a result, you’ll end up seeing people do losing streaks to drop into lower divisions to get more games. You’ll probably be seeing the premades do this too. You’ll randomly be facing the abjured and they’ll just go around fighting off point the whole time, and you’ll wonder what’s up, then later once they’ve lowered themselves enough they’ll stomp everyone on their way back up. It’ll be just like the smurfing that’s going on now, but with their main accounts instead of alts.

While I recognize the importance of being able to lose divisions in an actually competitive ladder, the PvP in this game simply doesn’t have enough population to produce an actual competitive ladder where being at the top means something. This makes the entire concept fall apart. If high standing on the ladder isn’t a reward by itself, then the motivation to stay at that high standing is removed.

A lot more people will be team queuing to guarantee wins if that were to happen

Rap Tiger.1257:

Losing division is essential in a competition.

reaper it is very strong and needs nerf, the classes must be better balanced, we see that although it has lost division will only help to know which actually have skills or not to help the team climb division.

Another thing is to lose tier division in all, this is a competitive game and not to do charity for new players, if new players want to play RANKED, you must first learn how to play in unranked.

The S2 problem is the lack of balance with classes, people only need to play all the time to climb division since it can not lose it, and is there tying a few times to climb if that division is not for it is really there .

As has been mentioned already in the thread queue times will escalate to the point that there wont be any matches in the higher divisions people who get there who should not be there just will not play for fear of losing their division so you wont have any “competition”

godsie.2864:

Rap Tiger.1257:

Losing division is essential in a competition.

reaper it is very strong and needs nerf, the classes must be better balanced, we see that although it has lost division will only help to know which actually have skills or not to help the team climb division.

Another thing is to lose tier division in all, this is a competitive game and not to do charity for new players, if new players want to play RANKED, you must first learn how to play in unranked.

The S2 problem is the lack of balance with classes, people only need to play all the time to climb division since it can not lose it, and is there tying a few times to climb if that division is not for it is really there .

As has been mentioned already in the thread queue times will escalate to the point that there wont be any matches in the higher divisions people who get there who should not be there just will not play for fear of losing their division so you wont have any “competition”

Dahkeus.8243:

If people can lose divisions, I guarantee you Legendary queue times will be through the roof from people who don’t want to risk losing their division quitting PvP for the season or moving to unranked.

Beat ya to it. =P

But yea, I don’t think people are really considering this impact seriously enough.

You can’t just make changes based on fixing problems of today. You also have to make sure you aren’t creating problems for tomorrow.

godsie.2864:

As has been mentioned already in the thread queue times will escalate to the point that there wont be any matches in the higher divisions people who get there who should not be there just will not play for fear of losing their division so you wont have any “competition”

We are already taking queue time high in divisions higher as diamond and legendary, contrary to what you said, the loss division will make people want to really play to win, because if she gets afk, disconnect on purpose or play as it want without worrying about winning will lose division.

Now I see is players sometimes losing on purpose when is without pip to win after winning 2 pips, people simply giving up play when his team is losing because he will not miss pip and is even zero.

Already falling division, I doubt that will give up an easy game or stand losing to earn reward 2 pips, this often happens in emerald, sapphire and amber, people losing 3 games to win 2 pips.

Outside you always pick up again and people on your team playing bad because you can not lose division.

Rap Tiger.1257:

godsie.2864:

As has been mentioned already in the thread queue times will escalate to the point that there wont be any matches in the higher divisions people who get there who should not be there just will not play for fear of losing their division so you wont have any “competition”

We are already taking queue time high in divisions higher as diamond and legendary, contrary to what you said, the loss division will make people want to really play to win, because if she gets afk, disconnect on purpose or play as it want without worrying about winning will lose division.

Now I see is players sometimes losing on purpose when is without pip to win after winning 2 pips, people simply giving up play when his team is losing because he will not miss pip and is even zero.

Already falling division, I doubt that will give up an easy game or stand losing to earn reward 2 pips, this often happens in emerald, sapphire and amber, people losing 3 games to win 2 pips.

Outside you always pick up again and people on your team playing bad because you can not lose division.

What I said was that once people get to the high division then they wont play because of fear of losing division so there will be much longer queue times because less players will then play

Just allow players to lose Tiers. This will solve the majority of problems.

godsie.2864:

Rap Tiger.1257:

godsie.2864:

As has been mentioned already in the thread queue times will escalate to the point that there wont be any matches in the higher divisions people who get there who should not be there just will not play for fear of losing their division so you wont have any “competition”

We are already taking queue time high in divisions higher as diamond and legendary, contrary to what you said, the loss division will make people want to really play to win, because if she gets afk, disconnect on purpose or play as it want without worrying about winning will lose division.

Now I see is players sometimes losing on purpose when is without pip to win after winning 2 pips, people simply giving up play when his team is losing because he will not miss pip and is even zero.

Already falling division, I doubt that will give up an easy game or stand losing to earn reward 2 pips, this often happens in emerald, sapphire and amber, people losing 3 games to win 2 pips.

Outside you always pick up again and people on your team playing bad because you can not lose division.

What I said was that once people get to the high division then they wont play because of fear of losing division so there will be much longer queue times because less players will then play

It will be even better because those who arrive legendary have to be careful not to descend back to the diamond, the queue time will be high with or without a division loss.

Most that S2 arriving in legendary, gave up playing pvp or created another account to play again, I believe that with a fall in the division would be better to solve this problem.

no

the way is incentivate players to stay in the division that reached (perhaps a bonus multiplier reguards and mf in it)not to create alt acounts

losing divisions will make a lot of players once reached legend stop play for not descending and the others simply because interminable queue times

asume that: population is low and losing divs will maintain top tier divisions much low populated

and the mid low players the last we want is “pros” trolling in oir divs whith alts

I personally would love to see ANet improving duoQ.

I was duoQing with my gf (no communication outside of chat and in-game tools) and i was becoming food for premades.

I went soloQ while she was out of town and poof … getting tiers in diamond with EASE.

No, she isn’t a bad player.

Rap Tiger.1257:

It will be even better because those who arrive legendary have to be careful not to descend back to the diamond, the queue time will be high with or without a division loss.

Most that S2 arriving in legendary, gave up playing pvp or created another account to play again, I believe that with a fall in the division would be better to solve this problem.

That makes zero sense. If I make it to legend and there is potential tier loss, unless I am an ESL player I’m going to stop playing period. You say that most in S2 legend stop playing PvP, if you add division drops I can guarantee that it won’t be most people stop playing PvP, it’ll be majority stop playing PvP in legend.

There is zero incentive to risk losing legendary or even diamond.

If amber is beginner and legend is highly skilled..

One can get into ruby (above average.) with more losses than wins.

With Tier safe guards early on one can get into diamond (skilled) with 50% win/loss. It now all about volume of matches played and momentum going into high tier sapphire/low ruby.

With division safe guards one can fairly get to legend (highly skilled) and lose their next 300 matches and remain’ highly skilled’.

They need to return to hero arena from gw1 and have division losses. Ultimately skilled players with their professions will defeat other players. With the addition of AI companions that can be swapped at match start and micro managed players with solid rotational understanding and of overall current build popularity, or with good knowledge of build synergies will ultimately progress. It satisfies what most good player or above want. The ability to get good with their profession professions versus actual other players and also ticks the boxes of players who enjoy making smart rotational decisions. It also favours players who take the time and enjoying playing multi professions and being up to speed on what each of the professions can do.

megilandil.7506:

no

the way is incentivate players to stay in the division that reached (perhaps a bonus multiplier reguards and mf in it)not to create alt acounts

losing divisions will make a lot of players once reached legend stop play for not descending and the others simply because interminable queue times

asume that: population is low and losing divs will maintain top tier divisions much low populated

and the mid low players the last we want is “pros” trolling in oir divs whith alts

exactly agree 100%

fishball.7204:

Rap Tiger.1257:

It will be even better because those who arrive legendary have to be careful not to descend back to the diamond, the queue time will be high with or without a division loss.

Most that S2 arriving in legendary, gave up playing pvp or created another account to play again, I believe that with a fall in the division would be better to solve this problem.

That makes zero sense. If I make it to legend and there is potential tier loss, unless I am an ESL player I’m going to stop playing period. You say that most in S2 legend stop playing PvP, if you add division drops I can guarantee that it won’t be most people stop playing PvP, it’ll be majority stop playing PvP in legend.

There is zero incentive to risk losing legendary or even diamond.

Then you don’t deserve to be a ‘legend.’ The greatest legends this planet has ever seen were not the ones that retired the moment they became champion..they are the ones who defended and held their title. Mohammed Ali became champion after ten years of not boxing and being stripped of the title. The recently crowned all blacks held their champion title and became the first team to win back to back titles despite not having the same team has 4 years earlier. Any soccer team can be relegated from the premier division, yet funnily each year their is some teams that have never been since the premier league started in 1992, yet overall in the entire sports history in Britain every team has been relegated at least once. In other words good teams that have been relegated soon won their way back to the top of the premier league again. Legends of their sports don’t fear the losses..they look forward to the challenges. That is what makes them a legend. Doing well in a 30-40ish day period is far from even remotely scratching what it means to be a legend in any competitive scene. It you got to legendary, then resign because you fear losing and dropping down a division..well, I dare say you were a one hit wonder and never a legend to begin with. This is why people have mad respect for the player supcutie..he may not always be on a ESl winning team, he may not win every 1 vs 1…he may not make every game deciding play..but he is always in legend division..always welcoming of the next match..goes out of his way to make tutorial vids, do podcasts and generally behave like a legend..because everyone knows he is.

Just my 2 cents worth.

I personally would vote for Pip, Tier and Division loss in every division except Amber.

ANET needs to decide if they want to have a grind system or proper skill based system.

And I’m saying this knowing this will forever prevent me from getting legendary.

still will not change the fact that people wont play out of fear and will compound the problem of long queue times in the higher division

godsie.2864:

still will not change the fact that people wont play out of fear and will compound the problem of long queue times in the higher division

Implement a decay system. If you don’t play your ranking decays. So play and risk losing your ranking or don’t play and DEFINITELY lose your ranking. Besides you still get the achievement for crossing divisions so not like you miss out on those.

that would be a good solution

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

snip

You pretty much completely miss my point and went off on a tangent on respect and unrelated stuff.

All I’m saying is without a proper incentive to keep playing in legend and even adding a DISINCENTIVE aka rating decay or division dropping, it’ll just completely ruin queue times of people that wish to play.

Sure people like supcutie or Java or those other ESL nice guys will continue playing and do just fine but for the rest of us who want a few games here and there during offpeak hours it’ll be hell and over 30 mins queue.

Honestly the biggest difficulty for me getting to legend this season was fighting the queue times. It’s kinda hard to move up when your games take 15 min to pop and another 10-15 minutes of playing. Make it worse? Oh man.

godsie.2864:

still will not change the fact that people wont play out of fear and will compound the problem of long queue times in the higher division

Thing is… if they remove division locks it is pretty much a ladder system like we had before.

The vast majority of the higher rated players those days played for the sake of playing; not because we wanted to maintain our top X ranking.

And thats how it should be. The main incentive of getting to higher leaderboard ranks/divisions was (and should be) “playing quality games with and vs quality players”. If you keep that in mind you realize that stopping at that point would be totally pointless.

Play 3 games per day for 5 days in a 7 day period. Lose no pips.
Play 3 games per day for 4 days in a 7 day period. Lose 1 pip
Play 3 games per day for 3 days in a 7 day period. Lose 2 pips
Play 3 games per day for 2 days in a 7 day period. Lose 3 pips
Play 3 games per day for 1 day in a 7 day period. Lose 4 pips
Don’t play at least 3 games for any days in a 7 day period. Lose 5 pips.

There are ways to make sure people don’t just stop playing without it being onerous.
You can’t be called champ if you refuse to fight your competition.

fishball.7204:

Rap Tiger.1257:

It will be even better because those who arrive legendary have to be careful not to descend back to the diamond, the queue time will be high with or without a division loss.

Most that S2 arriving in legendary, gave up playing pvp or created another account to play again, I believe that with a fall in the division would be better to solve this problem.

That makes zero sense. If I make it to legend and there is potential tier loss, unless I am an ESL player I’m going to stop playing period. You say that most in S2 legend stop playing PvP, if you add division drops I can guarantee that it won’t be most people stop playing PvP, it’ll be majority stop playing PvP in legend.

There is zero incentive to risk losing legendary or even diamond.

The fun of a game is exactly at risk, you want to keep legendary being that may not be worthy to stand if there is better people?

The queue time will be long with or without loss of division, so anet have to think of something such as legendary play to continue playing with diamonds dividing correctly for each team.

People in S2 already stopped playing to catch legendary for queue account, it makes sense that your comment in relation to stop playing.

The problem that some GW2 players want milk in the mouth but do not want to eat solid food, they want everything easy in the game to achieve their goals without much effort.

If you have a division of fall will show that only the most hardworking and who understand the game will go up along with his team.

I think somewhere that somebody got this idea and they think this will help them only get highly skilled players on their team and they think the players currently in their division don’t deserve to be there. While that might be true for some. What they don’t realize is the impact this would have on each league season.
1. First off if you dont get everything you need for the legendary you’re going to be able to earn it outside of seasons. So if you think this will make it more rare your wrong.
2. Often people ask for this and dont realize they will be one of the ones losing divisions.
3. Players will get to Ruby or diamond and will quit playing or go to unranked. This has a huge negative impact on the community. Because matchmaking at the beginning of the seasons is currently a mess as even anet stated.
4. Queue times in ruby and above will soar. More people will leave as they wont have the time.
5. Rewards wont encourage people to risk losing their division, because most people have lives and jobs and dont have the time to grind out games.

We need pvpers spread out across all tiers or this system dies. What makes a player equal to each tier is impossible for a lone player to decide. If match making is improved (less blow out matches)you could possibly get rid of win streaks so that people would cap out sooner at a 50/50 ratio. This would require new to ranked players going through a test period to avtually assign them an mmr to start vs. A default average value.

Nightshade.2570:

I think somewhere that somebody got this idea and they think this will help them only get highly skilled players on their team and they think the players currently in their division don’t deserve to be there. While that might be true for some. What they don’t realize is the impact this would have on each league season.
1. First off if you dont get everything you need for the legendary you’re going to be able to earn it outside of seasons. So if you think this will make it more rare your wrong.
2. Often people ask for this and dont realize they will be one of the ones losing divisions.
3. Players will get to Ruby or diamond and will quit playing or go to unranked. This has a huge negative impact on the community. Because matchmaking at the beginning of the seasons is currently a mess as even anet stated.
4. Queue times in ruby and above will soar. More people will leave as they wont have the time.
5. Rewards wont encourage people to risk losing their division, because most people have lives and jobs and dont have the time to grind out games.

We need pvpers spread out across all tiers or this system dies. What makes a player equal to each tier is impossible for a lone player to decide. If match making is improved (less blow out matches)you could possibly get rid of win streaks so that people would cap out sooner at a 50/50 ratio. This would require new to ranked players going through a test period to avtually assign them an mmr to start vs. A default average value.

excellent post agree entirely

Locuz.2651:

godsie.2864:

still will not change the fact that people wont play out of fear and will compound the problem of long queue times in the higher division

Thing is… if they remove division locks it is pretty much a ladder system like we had before.

The vast majority of the higher rated players those days played for the sake of playing; not because we wanted to maintain our top X ranking.

And thats how it should be. The main incentive of getting to higher leaderboard ranks/divisions was (and should be) “playing quality games with and vs quality players”. If you keep that in mind you realize that stopping at that point would be totally pointless.

but most I suspect don’t think like that eg AP hunters and PVE’ers wanting backpack

Nightshade.2570:

I think somewhere that somebody got this idea and they think this will help them only get highly skilled players on their team and they think the players currently in their division don’t deserve to be there.

I can answer that one.

In a competitive sense, where have you ever encountered a system that only allows you to go up? If a system does not allow for corrections how is it to balance games. If we end up with a larger portion of the population in the higher tiers then this is grind based. Or do you disagree?

I think we have multiple camps here. People in it for the reward, people in it for the competition, and people in it for the progress. The issue here is these conflict.

Progress is already covered by rank, people can grind to rank 80 over time. We already had this metric in game, we were missing skill versus time.

The reward bit should have been tied to reward tracks. Create things that people want and they want to be able to achieve them. I don’t like the wings but others will want them and if they are tied to progress they will request it have safeguards, which means its the same as rank, which we have.

What we didn’t have was skill versus time. To have a system like this you need to be able to lose. No one likes to, but if not its the same as rank. And anyone can grind out rank today.

Now I am not saying there isn’t issues with match making, but I am saying that the system today does not allow for adjustments down and if it doesn’t then division means nothing but grind.

Edit: and if I am mis-interpreting Nightshade I apologize, but facts remain about differences in groups.