Guild Wars 2

Oni.5429:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Oni.5429:

You have two separate tourny ques at this moment. One for 3 round and one for 1 round. In a blog post you guys said that they had separate matchmaking. Paid tournaments previously demonstrated that you guys have the ’’feature’’ in place to force someone to be 5 premade players to que in to the match. You also now have a ‘’join solo’’ button.

If you piece these pieces together you get:

1.Make one tournament que ‘’join solo’’ only, 1 round
2. Make the other que ‘’submit roster’’ with 5 only , 1 round

LE VOILA!
It’s okay, we can scrap the idea of duoq for now. Put that in your ’’soon’’ basket. You can do the same for the random map generator, just keep rotating maps manually the way you guys do every 2 days or something.

There. That is the solution that will allow solo players to play the game without getting stomped by teams.

So in this suggestion, people would only play as a team of 5 or by themselves. That would mean effectively disabling tournaments for people who want to play tournaments with a friend. Or two friends, or three friends, but don’t have a full team. I can’t imagine that would go over very well either.

Of course it isn’t ideal, you guys dropped the ball on that half a year ago when you decided to instead of having a proper and normal system you wanted to go all hipster on us with your paid tournaments. But at least this way people will be able to be COMPETITIVE in the game without needing a team.

I mean the ideal scenario would be this:

1. One unrated que, invisible elo at most where you could invite any number of people with the mmr you guys have, essentially the que you guys currently play with.
2.. one rated solo que, visible rating where you could max invite one person with only people matching here
3. one rated team que, team only. Preferably the team has their own rating based on the teams actual achievements.

You know, like a proper system is supposed to be.

But the system I suggested will bring back HUNDREDS of players. I’ve been here since beta and I’ve been in the competitive scene since release. If you knew all the players I knew that quit because they couldn’t tryhard one bit because they didn’t have a team then you would have INSTANTLY made this change. It’ll be good enough, it’ll show that you guys are taking the steps required to making this game good. It’ll also restore the faith of countless players that will actually see you guys admitting that you’ve done a mistake (because that’s exactly what you’ve done with both this soloq and paid tournies) and that you’re improving.

Make Helseth proud now.

so much truth
hairseth for president

Tyler Bearce.3427:

We of course understand that solo players would prefer a separate queue from premade teams, and it isn’t off the table as a future improvement. The trade off here, besides the extra development time, is that high rated solo queuers would get a better experience (never facing premades), at the expense of all team queuers getting a worse experience (longer queue times)

So you are basically saying that: The interest of Solo queuers should to be sacrificed to fix a problem having by Team queuers? I dont understand what kind of logic is this.
A Solo queuer paying the same amount of $$$ as a Team queuer, correct?
There are way more Solo queuer than Team queuers, correct?
So why Anet is treating Solo queuer as a group of second class customer, and sacrificed their interest for Team queuers?
How about do an in-game vote/survey on this issue and see who is the majority? Solo queuer or Team queuers.

Id sooner kill myself then go join solo 1 more time, 4v5 more than 50% of the time and vs premade. Cant wait for the ladder to show of my ranking i grinded up with this.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Oni.5429:

You have two separate tourny ques at this moment. One for 3 round and one for 1 round. In a blog post you guys said that they had separate matchmaking. Paid tournaments previously demonstrated that you guys have the ’’feature’’ in place to force someone to be 5 premade players to que in to the match. You also now have a ‘’join solo’’ button.

If you piece these pieces together you get:

1.Make one tournament que ‘’join solo’’ only, 1 round
2. Make the other que ‘’submit roster’’ with 5 only , 1 round

LE VOILA!
It’s okay, we can scrap the idea of duoq for now. Put that in your ’’soon’’ basket. You can do the same for the random map generator, just keep rotating maps manually the way you guys do every 2 days or something.

There. That is the solution that will allow solo players to play the game without getting stomped by teams.

So in this suggestion, people would only play as a team of 5 or by themselves. That would mean effectively disabling tournaments for people who want to play tournaments with a friend. Or two friends, or three friends, but don’t have a full team. I can’t imagine that would go over very well either.

So how do you plan to deal with people who wants to play tournaments with 5 friend, 6 friends, or 7 friends, or 8 friends, or 9 friends, or 10 friends, or 11 friends, or 12 friends……or 2013 friends. I am just curious.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Oni.5429:

You have two separate tourny ques at this moment. One for 3 round and one for 1 round. In a blog post you guys said that they had separate matchmaking. Paid tournaments previously demonstrated that you guys have the ’’feature’’ in place to force someone to be 5 premade players to que in to the match. You also now have a ‘’join solo’’ button.

If you piece these pieces together you get:

1.Make one tournament que ‘’join solo’’ only, 1 round
2. Make the other que ‘’submit roster’’ with 5 only , 1 round

LE VOILA!
It’s okay, we can scrap the idea of duoq for now. Put that in your ’’soon’’ basket. You can do the same for the random map generator, just keep rotating maps manually the way you guys do every 2 days or something.

There. That is the solution that will allow solo players to play the game without getting stomped by teams.

So in this suggestion, people would only play as a team of 5 or by themselves. That would mean effectively disabling tournaments for people who want to play tournaments with a friend. Or two friends, or three friends, but don’t have a full team. I can’t imagine that would go over very well either.

I think many of these suggestions are being thrown out as more or less hot-fixes to the current state, not as the perfectly ideal situation.

Idealy we would have ranked solo/dou (trio?) queue, ranked 5 man, and unranked any queue with seperate ladders and ratings. However, as already pointed out these queues take time to implement and there would likely be a population issue in the games current state making it unreasonable to expect these soon*tm.

What we do need is a seperation of PUGs and 5 man, the rest is much less important. A team queue and a 1-4 man queue that trys to match you with teams with = number of premade players (i.e. a 4+1 will be matched with a 4+1 or a 3+2). There is no benifit to having 5 man teams stomp PUGS, neither team enjoys it.

I would like to describe my soloque experience.

I got quite high rating really fast, by playing solo or with a friend or two. I think I won about 20-30 games while I lost maybe 2-3.
After that my rating was so high that I would sit in roster for 10 minutes before I would be matched with a team and end up vs teams like Curse, NN or Chieftain Ninjas. Interesting part here is that the poor players that ended up on my team were in between rank 1-15. So these players just trying to do some soloque end up vs these high end teams because my rating is high and i can not get matched up against anything els. This is because the team gets an average rating instead of matching me up with players on an equal rating.
For the teams i end up against it is no fun experience either, if you queue with your full team you want to play vs another full team. A coordinated team will not get a challenge out of a sologroup even though it might be top end players, communication is key in this game.

I should also note that this is no bug (the long queues I am experiencing), I ended up 2 games in a row with Phantaram and Klikacz. After we won those two games they continued to get queue pops while I sat 20+ minutes in roster without any succes.

Your form of a soloque works for lowrating players, where they will get instant queue but once you get a decent rating you will only be matched up against teams and pugs, so what is the point of this soloque? last 10 games i have played solo have been vs pugs/teams I have been asking at the start of the matches to be sure.

It is extremely annoying and frustrating to try and play as a solo player when you are matched up against teams on a form of teamspeak. It is by no means only me feeling this way, as stated earlier in this thread.

The single round free is by far the most popular so why will you not make a second one instead of the three round (three round free should be the daily, monthly and so on tournament setting otherwise it is nothing special with the daily one if you can do it anytime you want). One of the two single round frees should be dedicated to soloqueue and possible even duoqueue if you can work that out.

My two cents.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Oni.5429:

You have two separate tourny ques at this moment. One for 3 round and one for 1 round. In a blog post you guys said that they had separate matchmaking. Paid tournaments previously demonstrated that you guys have the ’’feature’’ in place to force someone to be 5 premade players to que in to the match. You also now have a ‘’join solo’’ button.

If you piece these pieces together you get:

1.Make one tournament que ‘’join solo’’ only, 1 round
2. Make the other que ‘’submit roster’’ with 5 only , 1 round

LE VOILA!
It’s okay, we can scrap the idea of duoq for now. Put that in your ’’soon’’ basket. You can do the same for the random map generator, just keep rotating maps manually the way you guys do every 2 days or something.

There. That is the solution that will allow solo players to play the game without getting stomped by teams.

So in this suggestion, people would only play as a team of 5 or by themselves. That would mean effectively disabling tournaments for people who want to play tournaments with a friend. Or two friends, or three friends, but don’t have a full team. I can’t imagine that would go over very well either.

You could have solo q be parties of 2 players max…that way they can still group up together and play solo q’s even if they don’t have a full team. Or if you want to keep the current settings, only pin 3 man premade – 2 man solo q pugs against another team with a similar comp, where they also have a 3 man premade, 2 man solo q.

In the current state (and I don’t see it changing even when MMR is settled because there just aren’t enough people doing tpvp), solo q will just keep pinning you up against premades, not to mention premades with VOIP. When new or low level players get pinned against veteran premades, they are going to lose the will to play because they WILL get stomped…it’s not a debate. I understand that this happens because not enough people of the same MMR are q’ing, so the system, after some time just pins any team together…which is fine! But it seems to be happening a lot…I just feel bad for the new players because no one wants to come in the map and leave at 500-20. I’ve already seen so many people discouraged for this exact reason.

True solo q can also replace hotjoin at it’s current stage and bridge the gap between tpvp and hotjoins. Hotjoins right now are only good for testing new builds…other than that it’s a total zergfest which is not what tpvp is. People who do hotjoins come to do tpvp and have no clue what they’re doing because it’s not a zergfest.

Siric.3589:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Oni.5429:

You have two separate tourny ques at this moment. One for 3 round and one for 1 round. In a blog post you guys said that they had separate matchmaking. Paid tournaments previously demonstrated that you guys have the ’’feature’’ in place to force someone to be 5 premade players to que in to the match. You also now have a ‘’join solo’’ button.

If you piece these pieces together you get:

1.Make one tournament que ‘’join solo’’ only, 1 round
2. Make the other que ‘’submit roster’’ with 5 only , 1 round

LE VOILA!
It’s okay, we can scrap the idea of duoq for now. Put that in your ’’soon’’ basket. You can do the same for the random map generator, just keep rotating maps manually the way you guys do every 2 days or something.

There. That is the solution that will allow solo players to play the game without getting stomped by teams.

So in this suggestion, people would only play as a team of 5 or by themselves. That would mean effectively disabling tournaments for people who want to play tournaments with a friend. Or two friends, or three friends, but don’t have a full team. I can’t imagine that would go over very well either.

I think many of these suggestions are being thrown out as more or less hot-fixes to the current state, not as the perfectly ideal situation.

Idealy we would have ranked solo/dou (trio?) queue, ranked 5 man, and unranked any queue with seperate ladders and ratings. However, as already pointed out these queues take time to implement and there would likely be a population issue in the games current state making it unreasonable to expect these soon*tm.

What we do need is a seperation of PUGs and 5 man, the rest is much less important. A team queue and a 1-4 man queue that trys to match you with teams with = number of premade players (i.e. a 4+1 will be matched with a 4+1 or a 3+2). There is no benifit to having 5 man teams stomp PUGS, neither team enjoys it.

Solo Q is different from 2Q, 3Q, 4Q, 5Q, or whatever. Solo Qer is the vast majority in pretty much any online game. So, satisfying Solo Qer should always be the #1 priority in any online game development, way above 2Q, 3Q, 4Q, 5Q.
By appealing to Solo Qer, you will attract a large number of players. When there are enough players around, they will start form teams for 2Q, 3Q, 4Q, 5Q.
On the other hand, if you kitten off Solo Qer, you are driving the vast majority of players away. The PvP community will be very small and shrinking. The 2Q, 3Q, 4Q, 5Q will eventually fail as well.

Oni.5429:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The point is to have competitive matches. If you are so good that you beat every other solo group. Then yeah you should have at least a reasonable shot at beating the lower tier premades.

You wanna test that theory of yours? I’ll go ahead and grab some rank20s that are all on builds that they’ve been given from myself and my team (believe me, plenty of these premades are getting their builds from the toptiers copypaste style), put them all on ts while mixing you up with a group of r20rs that don’t have a team composition at all or any preset roles or anything similiar to that and then telling you to carry?

I’ve been in situations like that and those games are hardly easy to carry. Do you think one strong player will make up for four weak unsynced notonts players in a major teamfight? Obviously not, not unless I’m on teamspeak with them calling important stuff. So what is your solution? Splitting and 1v1ing their point defender? If you know anything in this meta at all you know that the standard solution to someone 1v1ing your point is to call the thief to your close point.

You guys have a severe lack of understanding if you think it’s easy to carry randoms vs premades in a game like this. This isnt league of legends, I can’t outplay the top laner to the massive extent where I get fed and 1v2 the top laner and the jungler. This is a game without snowballing.

You guys seriously took the normal game mode of league of legends, the least form of competitive play in league and made that your serious matchmaking mode.

zz.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

We of course understand that solo players would prefer a separate queue from premade teams, and it isn’t off the table as a future improvement. The trade off here, besides the extra development time, is that high rated solo queuers would get a better experience (never facing premades), at the expense of all team queuers getting a worse experience (longer queue times)

What extra development time?! THE SYSTEM IS IN PLACE! It’s not hard to solve this puzzle, I’ll give you the pieces:
You have two separate tourny ques at this moment. One for 3 round and one for 1 round. In a blog post you guys said that they had separate matchmaking. Paid tournaments previously demonstrated that you guys have the ’’feature’’ in place to force someone to be 5 premade players to que in to the match. You also now have a ‘’join solo’’ button.

If you piece these pieces together you get:

1.Make one tournament que ‘’join solo’’ only, 1 round
2. Make the other que ‘’submit roster’’ with 5 only , 1 round

LE VOILA!
It’s okay, we can scrap the idea of duoq for now. Put that in your ’’soon’’ basket. You can do the same for the random map generator, just keep rotating maps manually the way you guys do every 2 days or something.

There. That is the solution that will allow solo players to play the game without getting stomped by teams.

Hit the nail on the head please listen to helseth before you end up losing more top level players. You’re literally killing your own game by ignoring the top tier players.

It’s also notable, that it’s usually the top players of teams that would most be affected by queue times that are the loudest advocates of separating the team queue from a solo/duo queue.

We all (should) understand things take time, but we seem so close to what is desirable in this situation it’s a admittedly frustrating. It’s only frustrating because we love the game and what it could be with this type of setup.

Oni.5429:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The point is to have competitive matches. If you are so good that you beat every other solo group. Then yeah you should have at least a reasonable shot at beating the lower tier premades.

You wanna test that theory of yours? I’ll go ahead and grab some rank20s that are all on builds that they’ve been given from myself and my team (believe me, plenty of these premades are getting their builds from the toptiers copypaste style), put them all on ts while mixing you up with a group of r20rs that don’t have a team composition at all or any preset roles or anything similiar to that and then telling you to carry?

I’ve been in situations like that and those games are hardly easy to carry. Do you think one strong player will make up for four weak unsynced notonts players in a major teamfight? Obviously not, not unless I’m on teamspeak with them calling important stuff. So what is your solution? Splitting and 1v1ing their point defender? If you know anything in this meta at all you know that the standard solution to someone 1v1ing your point is to call the thief to your close point.

You guys have a severe lack of understanding if you think it’s easy to carry randoms vs premades in a game like this. This isnt league of legends, I can’t outplay the top laner to the massive extent where I get fed and 1v2 the top laner and the jungler. This is a game without snowballing.

You guys seriously took the normal game mode of league of legends, the least form of competitive play in league and made that your serious matchmaking mode.

zz.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

We of course understand that solo players would prefer a separate queue from premade teams, and it isn’t off the table as a future improvement. The trade off here, besides the extra development time, is that high rated solo queuers would get a better experience (never facing premades), at the expense of all team queuers getting a worse experience (longer queue times)

What extra development time?! THE SYSTEM IS IN PLACE! It’s not hard to solve this puzzle, I’ll give you the pieces:
You have two separate tourny ques at this moment. One for 3 round and one for 1 round. In a blog post you guys said that they had separate matchmaking. Paid tournaments previously demonstrated that you guys have the ’’feature’’ in place to force someone to be 5 premade players to que in to the match. You also now have a ‘’join solo’’ button.

If you piece these pieces together you get:

1.Make one tournament que ‘’join solo’’ only, 1 round
2. Make the other que ‘’submit roster’’ with 5 only , 1 round

LE VOILA!
It’s okay, we can scrap the idea of duoq for now. Put that in your ’’soon’’ basket. You can do the same for the random map generator, just keep rotating maps manually the way you guys do every 2 days or something.

There. That is the solution that will allow solo players to play the game without getting stomped by teams.

I agree with helseth the thing is that no matter how well u play u cant beat a premade on voice chat, unless u play grenade engi and do so much area dmg when they try to revive that u will have 4 ppl downed state(not gonna happen agaist 80%+ of the premades). At the moment I don’t see any1 happy with the soloque, because u work to get high mmr and ur reward is to face premades, anyway at least tell us we forced ppl to leave the game by having only 3 ppl working on pvp, so if we seperate the queues then we will have queue problems if thats the case. Also about the fact that it takes development time, yes ofcourse it does it requires testing etc but if u are a team of programmers(more than 2) shouldnt be more than 1 afternoon with testing included (and that is exaggerated).

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Oni.5429:

You have two separate tourny ques at this moment. One for 3 round and one for 1 round. In a blog post you guys said that they had separate matchmaking. Paid tournaments previously demonstrated that you guys have the ’’feature’’ in place to force someone to be 5 premade players to que in to the match. You also now have a ‘’join solo’’ button.

If you piece these pieces together you get:

1.Make one tournament que ‘’join solo’’ only, 1 round
2. Make the other que ‘’submit roster’’ with 5 only , 1 round

LE VOILA!
It’s okay, we can scrap the idea of duoq for now. Put that in your ’’soon’’ basket. You can do the same for the random map generator, just keep rotating maps manually the way you guys do every 2 days or something.

There. That is the solution that will allow solo players to play the game without getting stomped by teams.

So in this suggestion, people would only play as a team of 5 or by themselves. That would mean effectively disabling tournaments for people who want to play tournaments with a friend. Or two friends, or three friends, but don’t have a full team. I can’t imagine that would go over very well either.

Well dont imagine, ASK THE COMMUNITY! Its the game WE play for FUN, stop deciding what YOU think is fun for US, let US decide. We are the ones who have put 1000+ hours into the game, so at this point in all honesty I think we know what the community wants a kitten of a lot better than you guys do!

Why there has to be solo que in the first place or team que.

What I mean is there should be only 1 “Find Match” Button

IF you que alone. You SHOULD only get solo quers. Who want’s to solo que into premades and get stomped? This is basically free tournaments again.

IF you que with few mates(2-3). You SHOULD get few players that qued together aswell or solo quers. NOT PREMADES

IF you que with Premade. You SHOULD get only premades and if theres none. match them with other quers after that. It should only be last resort though.

Everything should include MMR. Nobody likes uneven team(Even solo que). Rank 10’s don’t prolly wanna play with rank 50’s and other way around.

Not that hard anet is it? and everyone would be happy…

So after solo 6 matches I am really frustrated. If there is something like matchmaking I dont feel it. I always get some pugs in the range of 1-15 in my team. Some of them have really no idea what there are doing. Today I was hardrezzed more often than the entire past months.
I dont want to be a trainer and since these guys also affect my rating I am tired of them. It does not matter for me if a play against premades but at least I want to play with people on the same skill level like me :/.

How this Web Designer, in fact A.Net, can be disagree with us on this point omg. This is so annoying to see how Anet is slow on developpement and now they might be disagree with the community on subject so important? God, we spend so much time on this game in these 6 months you can’t just decide for the community, mainly on this subject where WE ARE RIGHT. I don’t understand how and with wich arguments you can even talk right now !

How can anyone disagree with what Helseth said? Those suggestions are out now for weeks and what Helseth says is just a workaround, because Anet can not program a proper soloque, different ratings, a random map generator and so on and so forth. Arenanet can program a join solo BUTTON, gj Anet took your programmers months to create a BUTTON.
My experience with soloque was that, I soloque the first time and I meet a CN/CRS pug, that was really a great experience.

It’s just that Anet should step into our shoes and actually play their game so they would actually notice what people are whining about. Yeah and playing in their private little world against each other is same thing right?

Tyler Bearce.3427:

We of course understand that solo players would prefer a separate queue from premade teams, and it isn’t off the table as a future improvement. The trade off here, besides the extra development time, is that high rated solo queuers would get a better experience (never facing premades), at the expense of all team queuers getting a worse experience (longer queue times)

Right now it seems like I’m constantly pit against people who know what their doing whilst being teamed up with people who DON’T know what they are doing. It’s a bit saddening really.

Although, I may just be overreacting because I’m tired of the crappy losses to full teams or otherwise.

Purie.9046:

Yeah and playing in their private little world against each other is same thing right?

Honestly, A.net is just crazy. Never saw a game like this, how can they play in their private games for tests and expect a real impact on the real game? I really don’t understand how A.net is working since the release, so confused.

Added link to Rerroll’s poll to first post, please vote if you haven’t already.

Ever Green.5842:

Purie.9046:

Yeah and playing in their private little world against each other is same thing right?

Honestly, A.net is just crazy. Never saw a game like this, how can they play in their private games for tests and expect a real impact on the real game? I really don’t understand how A.net is working since the release, so confused.

They have their own private server where they play tournaments with signet warriors and minion necros.

Purie.9046:

Why there has to be solo que in the first place or team que.

What I mean is there should be only 1 “Find Match” Button

IF you que alone. You SHOULD only get solo quers. Who want’s to solo que into premades and get stomped? This is basically free tournaments again.

IF you que with few mates(2-3). You SHOULD get few players that qued together aswell or solo quers. NOT PREMADES

IF you que with Premade. You SHOULD get only premades and if theres none. match them with other quers after that. It should only be last resort though.

Everything should include MMR. Nobody likes uneven team(Even solo que). Rank 10’s don’t prolly wanna play with rank 50’s and other way around.

Not that hard anet is it? and everyone would be happy…

yea make rating visible . i want it like purie. u should separate teampremades vfrom soloqueuers it is too unfair for the random people. the skill and knowledge of premades is far beyond better than from pugs. ( engaging, disengaging, tactics, teleports, when to fight and where…) if u have one weak player u cannot be competitive vs premades… separate them also if the community is small.

So much arrogance here, so much anger and rudeness, it’s hard to believe oO

How can you even think of telling ArenaNet that Gw2 isn’t their game and they’re not free to decide to do whatever they want with it?

When you bought the game did it give you shares in the company? Did the activation code come with a decision right?

We are players: we play the game. If we don’t enjoy it, we leave. If we want to improve it, we make suggestions. We argue reasonably – yeye, the internet, blabla, but still-. But we certainly don’t dictate devs what to do oO

And to come back on that pug vs premade thingy: a pug of people with thousands of games in the top tier is likely to win over a premade who only plays a few games then and there. If you can understand that, then you realize that there’s actually an algorithm that can make the occasional pug vs premades balanced, close and fun.

Purie.9046:

Ever Green.5842:

Purie.9046:

Yeah and playing in their private little world against each other is same thing right?

Honestly, A.net is just crazy. Never saw a game like this, how can they play in their private games for tests and expect a real impact on the real game? I really don’t understand how A.net is working since the release, so confused.

They have their own private server where they play tournaments with signet warriors and minion necros.

Yup ^^, I knew that they have their own private server but the fact is they aint ask the community about anything what they’re doing, I don’t even know what is their project in the PvP, cause actually we are playing really for nothing since the release.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

So in this suggestion, people would only play as a team of 5 or by themselves. That would mean effectively disabling tournaments for people who want to play tournaments with a friend. Or two friends, or three friends, but don’t have a full team. I can’t imagine that would go over very well either.

I agree with what you’re saying, but I think that suggestion can be easily adapted to this:

1. Make the 1-round tournament que ‘’join solo’’ only
2. Make the 3-round tournament work as it does now

There. One for solo-only, the other working the way tourneys currently work in-game. It might not be a perfect solution, but it’ll probably be (I guess) the best way to implement what everyone is suggesting without investing too many resources into it. And then you can just polish that system in the future, by transforming the solo queue into a solo/ duo queue for added flexibility, etc.

I would gladly pay a monthly fee if it would make Anet working harder and pushing important stuff before its too late.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I agree with what you’re saying, but I think that suggestion can be easily adapted to this:

1. Make the 1-round tournament que ‘’join solo’’ only
2. Make the 3-round tournament work as it does now

There. One for solo-only, the other working the way tourneys currently work in-game. It might not be a perfect solution, but it’ll probably be (I guess) the best way to implement what everyone is suggesting without investing too many resources into it. And then you can just polish that system in the future, by transforming the solo queue into a solo/ duo queue for added flexibility, etc.

Teams would never get a pop or new teams get pitted against the top teams in the game, and I think that’s what the devs are afraid of (and a problem we had with paids before, the skill disparity is too large at the moment).

It sucks for the high bracket either way (stomp pugs or stomp flies while waiting on queue), but its especially onerous for new teams who’d only have one option: queue up against premades that far out rank them because there’s no one else in team queue. As it currently stands, in an environment that cannot support both, this supports new teams “in theory” and will eventually support solo-q’s better “in theory” when the ratings settle.

Yes, no solo-q player will ever be gold amongst golds, but the playerbase should be able to discern a good solo-q from a bad solo-q once ladders are active and we infer a sort of pseudo-solo ranking.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Oni.5429:

You have two separate tourny ques at this moment. One for 3 round and one for 1 round. In a blog post you guys said that they had separate matchmaking. Paid tournaments previously demonstrated that you guys have the ’’feature’’ in place to force someone to be 5 premade players to que in to the match. You also now have a ‘’join solo’’ button.

If you piece these pieces together you get:

1.Make one tournament que ‘’join solo’’ only, 1 round
2. Make the other que ‘’submit roster’’ with 5 only , 1 round

LE VOILA!
It’s okay, we can scrap the idea of duoq for now. Put that in your ’’soon’’ basket. You can do the same for the random map generator, just keep rotating maps manually the way you guys do every 2 days or something.

There. That is the solution that will allow solo players to play the game without getting stomped by teams.

So in this suggestion, people would only play as a team of 5 or by themselves. That would mean effectively disabling tournaments for people who want to play tournaments with a friend. Or two friends, or three friends, but don’t have a full team. I can’t imagine that would go over very well either.

Well what you could do instead is this; premade ranked queue, solo ranked queue, then just normals (1-5 player queue) with the current hidden mmr system (no leader board) to promote premade vs premade and solo vs solo play; but in a looser way.
Replace hotjoin with custom games to normalize the queue times and I think everyone wins no?

Zodian.6597:

Well what you could do instead is this; premade ranked queue, solo ranked queue, then just normals (1-5 player queue) with the current hidden mmr system (no leader board) to promote premade vs premade and solo vs solo play; but in a looser way.
Replace hotjoin with custom games to normalize the queue times and I think everyone wins no?

Was it not that they will monetize custom servers ?
It would not hurt to keep hotjoin but it has to be 5vs5 only.
Normals may also do their job, but I think hotjoins will be a better first experience.
Or we have a designated server or other things for newer players.

P.S.: I would also not mind a monthly fee.

Lady Sara Goldheart.2764:

Zodian.6597:

Well what you could do instead is this; premade ranked queue, solo ranked queue, then just normals (1-5 player queue) with the current hidden mmr system (no leader board) to promote premade vs premade and solo vs solo play; but in a looser way.
Replace hotjoin with custom games to normalize the queue times and I think everyone wins no?

Was it not that they will monetize custom servers ?
It would not hurt to keep hotjoin but it has to be 5vs5 only.
Normals may also do their job, but I think hotjoins will be a better first experience.
Or we have a designated server or other things for newer players.

P.S.: I would also not mind a monthly fee.

Nah, I think the term “rent-able custom servers” was misunderstood by a lot of people: they simply meant custom game creation. And any monetization other than cosmetics VIA the cash shop would likely hurt the generated income of spvp rather than boost it.
We have to think of sPvP as a newborn child; it needs to be nurtured and developed very carefully in a way that’s healthy for it’s growth so that down the road, we can hit adulthood (esports) and have a powerful infrastructure to support the competitive and casual scenes alike.

Zodian.6597:

Nah, I think the term “rent-able custom servers” was misunderstood by a lot of people: they simply meant custom game creation. And any monetization other than cosmetics VIA the cash shop would likely hurt the generated income of spvp rather than boost it.
We have to think of sPvP as a newborn child; it needs to be nurtured and developed very carefully in a way that’s healthy for it’s growth so that down the road, we can hit adulthood (esports) and have a powerful infrastructure.

The original idea was probably to have them literally be rentable for money/tickets/something from the shop for long periods of time. That’s not really going to fly with so little a population though and that plan likely went the way of the paid tournies, or I hope it did.

The quaggan plushies probably made them more money in a day then all of paids ever did.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

I just wanted to pop in once more and let you guys know that we are still watching this thread and evaluating our options. There is some good discussion here, and I do actually agree with the general consensus.

We love you Tyler! ;p

Hello
Here is anet spvp to-do list, in order of importance:

1. new solo-only queue
2. disable 3-round tourny (re-enable at scheduled times, increase rewards.)
3. button on screen in mists “join solo queue”
4. button on screen in mists “make team roster”
5. then, everything else. (visible rating, duo queue, etc)

thnx
bye

Tyler Bearce.3427:

I just wanted to pop in once more and let you guys know that we are still watching this thread and evaluating our options. There is some good discussion here, and I do actually agree with the general consensus.

Despite all the ranting that goes on with a thread when Anet employee speaks, we appreciate you guys talking to us today. Keep it up.

Yes, sometimes you are in team with rank 1, 40, 25 etc. like OP said. But the best way to learn is to play against better players and if you play against 40+ ranks you probably die fast especialy if they are premade, but if you don’t take any experience out of it, you are playing it wrong. Its the best experience, to see what they play, how, what classes they have, who takes the orb or who goes there or whatever.

I hope I’ll still be able to meet higher ranks in the future because I’d hate to see only same ranks as I am. I know that rank doesn’t mean always skilled player, but experience it is and I always liked playing against more experienced people, because from people on the same level or lower you can’t simply learn as much as against people who play way better.

I might be too “oldschool” but PvP was never about fair play. PvP is about winning, about beating your oponent with what you have in that time in that place. So some premades might stomp you as fast that you don’t even notice, I know the feeling too as we all do. But thats just PvP, if you are not ready to die than you should consider if PvP is right thing for you.

Thats why my PvP motto always has been “I’m ready to die!”, those who are not usualy rage, cry, complain or quit. Those who are ready to die are ready to learn.

Kampfkoloss.3654:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The point is to have competitive matches. If you are so good that you beat every other solo group. Then yeah you should have at least a reasonable shot at beating the lower tier premades.

That means u think that once ratings have settled, soloqers will be in a “low tier” and teamplayers in a “high tier” with a little zone of overlapping? That seems to be severly flawed, cause it would only work if teamplayers ONLY play with their team and soloqers ONLY play solo. If u have someone usually playing with his team doing some matches alone cause his team isnt complete or they take a timeout his rating will be so high at first that he gets matches withprmades till it finally settles in the low tier. When enough people of his team do that their average rating will drop in the “low tier” so when they finally play as a team once again….they face soloqers.

How can u not see that this System is completly flawed? The thing is that ur capabilitys of winning will fluctuate very much if u alternate between solo and teamplay, cause of composition, ts-coordination, overall gameplan and soforth. Hence ur rating will never be able to stabilize. I just dont get how this System made it live.

100% this. I wrote something similar in a different thread, as imho it’s a big problem with the current state.

My suggestion for highly needed changes is:
- single match queue for solo players only, visible rating
- single match queue for 5 player teams only, visible rating
- 2-4 player teams can either play in Hotjoins or, when the demand is high enough, play in a single match queue for 1-5 players with a hidden rating (current “1-round free tournament”).

Nice to have:
- regular (daily, weekly, monthly) tournaments for full teams with 3 or more rounds and a spectator mode
- Overhaul of the Glory/rank points system to reward playing the objectives and not going for the most kills, as well as reward winning the match more.

Minor:
- Overhaul of the ranks so players get a cosmetic item progression that’s more evenly distributed among their playtime and not only with rank x0, which causes them to need weeks, months or even years for casual players in high ranks to get something new again.

This seems relevant here as well:

Since this thread is being read ive got some suggestions regarding the solo Q debate.

One of the primary concerns about it , is that it would divide the community. It’s obviously linked to what the OP is talking about here, as funnelling hotjoin players into proper matchs is really important. And for new players like that a solo Q might be very important.
For people to learn the game, and for it to be an esport people have to learn , at least a little, the meta and how the game is really played. Not like what you have with the come and go almost deathmatch experience of hotjoin. That way they will know enough to want to watch what better players are doing.

To wit.
Solo Q , should really be solo or duo. That way its not entirely 1 or 5 only.
And to help out with the ‘wait time’ on real teams quing for ranked matchs, here are some incentives ideas that would be easy on the development time.

1. Unique titles for winning ranked team games. and winning X number of them with certain classes. Somewhat like how we have tourny titles now.
2. A tiny cash prize for ranked team games, like 10 silver a win. That way someone can make gold in spvp. ( why not, this would be trivial compared the money people make in pve, and might drag players into doing team games).
3. As a consideration, consider the 1vs1 tourny implentation with ticket cost and 5 man team requirement? The pops that where happening where still fast. Teams will definately Q.
4. By allowing solo/duo Q, the only groups left out will be groups of 3. As a 4 man group can either, easily grab a fifth from map chat. Or split into two duo teams of 2 till they have more log on.

I myself am not dying for a solo q. But the community is, and these are i think good ways to help it happen that would invovle very little investment of dev time relative to other suggestions.

Hugs.1856:

And to come back on that pug vs premade thingy: a pug of people with thousands of games in the top tier is likely to win over a premade who only plays a few games then and there. If you can understand that, then you realize that there’s actually an algorithm that can make the occasional pug vs premades balanced, close and fun.

Pug is a Pug = no communication, no teamwork, no premade teamsetup, you can end up with 2 warrior 2 thief and 1 necro in team, you can play without bunker or you can play with 4 bunker in team (its random)

Premade = communication, coordination, team setup etc…

pug vs premade cant be balanced. no way, sorry.

Ive been in pugs that beat premades, some of those rank 5 pve guilds that roll over to pvp and have no idea how to play or spec etc.

But overall, the class balance and voip means a premade will beat pugs.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

We of course understand that solo players would prefer a separate queue from premade teams, and it isn’t off the table as a future improvement. The trade off here, besides the extra development time, is that high rated solo queuers would get a better experience (never facing premades), at the expense of all team queuers getting a worse experience (longer queue times)

Reallity is that spvp is dying and guys are more willing to farm rank points (useless anyway) then learn to play and win.
And fix is so easy, make guys get rewards based on their overall score in team (1st place -this reward, 2nd place this and so on, winning team gets rewards doubled)

Tyler Bearce.3427:

I just wanted to pop in once more and let you guys know that we are still watching this thread and evaluating our options. There is some good discussion here, and I do actually agree with the general consensus.

Thank you Tyler.

I don’t think a solo queue system would divide the community much, as long as Anet could effectively transfer the hotjoin pug community to ranked (hidden or not) solo queue matches. But for that to happen, I guess the rewards would need to exist and be visible. Hotjoin is currently “too good” to farm glory in 8v8, and a lot of people do it for that (in addition to not having to face premades).

DiogoSilva.7089:

I don’t think a solo queue system would divide the community much, as long as Anet could effectively transfer the hotjoin pug community to ranked (hidden or not) solo queue matches. But for that to happen, I guess the rewards would need to exist and be visible. Hotjoin is currently “too good” to farm glory in 8v8, and a lot of people do it for that (in addition to not having to face premades).

It would divide it like 50 players this way and other 50 that way.

what is the purpose of hotjoin?
ask yourself this question.
if there was: unranked solo, ranked solo, and premade
wouldn’t it be better to have a new player in ranked solo q?
“play at your level”
many times people who are not new want to try out a new build, but don’t want their rating affected, so they can go unranked solo.
in this way new players have a clear path to play with less zerg and less heat from better players. in hotjoin it is just a mass chaos.
later when custom arenas are done, it would be great to have ability to join cool player-maintained servers with different rules, and create semi-communities in this way. but now, hotjoin is pointless and it is a bad experience for new players.

I think we all can agree that, sooner or later, hotjoin must come to an end. Between no matchmaking, mindless glory farm and a 8v8 mode that does not works in this game, hotjoin stopped being representative of GW2’s pvp very early in the game, even more so now that MM is in. Custom arenas (for quick matches, training, etc) and solo q tourneys (for pugs who want to be competitive or for pugs who want to “farm” the best possible rewards and acchievements possible at their disposal) should completely substitute hotjoin and make the pvp environment much better.

Anet will then juust have to find a way to comunicate to most hotjoiners what are the new places to go. Many of them are probably clueless of the scenes behind the curtains, the forum posts, etc, and probably think that hotjoin = entire pvp. Besides, the word “tournament” might even intimidate some of them.

Hugs.1856:

So much arrogance here, so much anger and rudeness, it’s hard to believe oO

How can you even think of telling ArenaNet that Gw2 isn’t their game and they’re not free to decide to do whatever they want with it?

When you bought the game did it give you shares in the company? Did the activation code come with a decision right?

We are players: we play the game. If we don’t enjoy it, we leave. If we want to improve it, we make suggestions. We argue reasonably – yeye, the internet, blabla, but still-. But we certainly don’t dictate devs what to do oO

And to come back on that pug vs premade thingy: a pug of people with thousands of games in the top tier is likely to win over a premade who only plays a few games then and there. If you can understand that, then you realize that there’s actually an algorithm that can make the occasional pug vs premades balanced, close and fun.

I agree people should really be more polite in these threads. I mean its ok to be passionate but some civility needs to be maintained come on everyone

I have said for ages that we need solo Q. I agree team composition and tactics and communication are underestimated by the devs, who conversely vastly overestimate the importance of individual skill. This probably reflects the disconnect from us knowing that being part of a team is the most important think and them thinking individual player skill comes close or surpasses this.

With a solo queue that is rated we also need hidden rosters until the game launches so people cant dodge noobie rosters. And hotjoin needs to go to force people into this far more enjoyable form on pvp.

I agree with ONI, the systems are all there they just need piecing together. However, collectively this is still a big undertaking. This is why we do need a BIG pvp patch which can also include custom arenas. EVerything so far in pvp (and wvw) has been a band aid on broken systems and mechanics. I know more people play pve than pvp. And I know most of your time as a company will go there because of this. But most pvpers feel neglected when we see just how much content pve is getting and how ignored we are. They have full reworks of systems and have had soooo many new areas of content to enjoy. All we need is a workable sandbox system which could take you a bit of effort and then we are sorted for years and years.

It is worth the time investment to support us pvpers because we arent demanding like pve. We make our own content. But you need to give us the tools to do this.

Easy solution to this problem.

Make one queue where you can group up with friends, but no groups bigger than 2~3 can be formed.

Make a second queue which is 5 people teams only, but give them much higher rewards. As in higher glory as well as chest drops.

And get rid of hotjoin, it’s sort of a joke unfortunately.

Currently playing as solo queuer in tournaments is a terrible experience. You end up against premades almost all the time. There is zero fun in that.

I understand why the devs don’t wish for a solo queue – Some past MMOs that went with seperate queues had the premade queues completely dry up and be utterly empty. But they created a PvP game where premades have a way bigger advantage over PuGs than in other MMOs as well. Downed state management on VOIP alone gives premades a huge advantage, as well as bunkering capture points and calling for help when attacked. In other MMOs VOIP’s only advantage is to call which target to attack first. In GW2 premades on VOIP have a -lot- more advantages.

daydream.2938:

This seems relevant here as well:

Since this thread is being read ive got some suggestions regarding the solo Q debate.

One of the primary concerns about it , is that it would divide the community. It’s obviously linked to what the OP is talking about here, as funnelling hotjoin players into proper matchs is really important. And for new players like that a solo Q might be very important.
For people to learn the game, and for it to be an esport people have to learn , at least a little, the meta and how the game is really played. Not like what you have with the come and go almost deathmatch experience of hotjoin. That way they will know enough to want to watch what better players are doing.

To wit.
Solo Q , should really be solo or duo. That way its not entirely 1 or 5 only.
And to help out with the ‘wait time’ on real teams quing for ranked matchs, here are some incentives ideas that would be easy on the development time.

1. Unique titles for winning ranked team games. and winning X number of them with certain classes. Somewhat like how we have tourny titles now.
2. A tiny cash prize for ranked team games, like 10 silver a win. That way someone can make gold in spvp. ( why not, this would be trivial compared the money people make in pve, and might drag players into doing team games).
3. As a consideration, consider the 1vs1 tourny implentation with ticket cost and 5 man team requirement? The pops that where happening where still fast. Teams will definately Q.
4. By allowing solo/duo Q, the only groups left out will be groups of 3. As a 4 man group can either, easily grab a fifth from map chat. Or split into two duo teams of 2 till they have more log on.

I myself am not dying for a solo q. But the community is, and these are i think good ways to help it happen that would invovle very little investment of dev time relative to other suggestions.

Solo Q: I would dearly love to be able to go into a pvp match with my hubby. I have played some by myself (was Rank 11), but he usually won’t go with me, as the party won’t hold together most of the time, or we get split onto separate teams.

I have learned a lot from pvp matches, and had fun. I don’t farm glory (obviously), but actually try to help the team. I’ve learned that my necro can beat a thief and a ranger, but I better watch out for that other necro with five pets. Still trying to learn not to panic when a Guardian chains me down. lol.

We have played pvp in other MMOs, and I wish we could return to doing it here in GW2. I don’t even have to work on getting pvp gear! Or that we are both in the same level range! And yet…we don’t play it together.

BTW, I never used hot join. I always pick a map by looking at the list and choosing a map.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The point is to have competitive matches. If you are so good that you beat every other solo group. Then yeah you should have at least a reasonable shot at beating the lower tier premades.

So what i understeand we have our “personal” rating. When a group is made (solo or full premade) then this rating is counted and game is searching worthly opponent.

Well.. now imagine the situation Im in and i believe more player do have same.
I play in my team, on top of that i play in other teams and to be honest, i have quite long friend list. So its pretty offten i play with totally different people. Therefore my personal rating is going up and down like crazy depending on my friends i play with. For example with my team i can fight pretty good. But on the other hand, when i play with some of my friends that play mostly PVE – then im going to lose a lot.

Well.. now imagine the situation Im in and i believe more player do have same.
I play in my team, on top of that i play in other teams and to be honest, i have quite long friend list. So its pretty offten i play with totally different people. Therefore my personal rating is going up and down like crazy depending on my friends i play with. For example with my team i can fight pretty good. But on the other hand, when i play with some of my friends that play mostly PVE – then im going to lose a lot.What that mean? It mean that Im playing with my rating and it doesnt reflect my skill and when others do (and they do) we will never have enviroment that is fair. I feel so sorry, for random groups and solo players that we defeat 500:0.
As long as this will happend.. we have a problem..

Well.. now imagine the situation Im in and i believe more player do have same.
I play in my team, on top of that i play in other teams and to be honest, i have quite long friend list. So its pretty offten i play with totally different people. Therefore my personal rating is going up and down like crazy depending on my friends i play with. For example with my team i can fight pretty good. But on the other hand, when i play with some of my friends that play mostly PVE – then im going to lose a lot.What that mean? It mean that Im playing with my rating and it doesnt reflect my skill and when others do (and they do) we will never have enviroment that is fair. I feel so sorry, for random groups and solo players that we defeat 500:0.
As long as this will happend.. we have a problem..I can imagine, you dont want “guild” rating because then people can smurf which was a big problem in GW1.. but .. well.. personal rating is not working any better to me.