Most likely some been mentioned already by others in other topics. But just listing up some things that could improve the experience from my perspective (someone whose MMR is within the pack, since i rarely get groups together).
1) Courtyard really doesn’t belong in the standard queue. Team deathmatch is a good pvp gametype. But deathmatch in other games is always focused on smaller teams, just look at WoW as prime example with their arena. 2v2 is the most popular, 3v3 is still heavily played, but 5v5 has little success. Partially it’s because it takes too long to create teams, but it’s also because it ain’t fun if you can’t avoid people dieing within seconds from focus fire. That problem is only intensified in GW2 because there are no primary healing classes! Am i saying that you’d have to change the combat style of GW2? No.
All i’m suggesting about courtyard is to give TDM maps (well currently 1) their own queue of different size, 3 would be perfect for GW2 in my eyes, 2 might be force stalemates if facing double bunker. That way other more objective maps can still be played with 5.
2) Leaderboard, currently there’s soo many complaints that it’s a projection of having played the most. A simple fix for this purpose, make the point system of the ranking a little different. Makes the score: Points acquired * (games played capped to a certain number) /games played. This will give the scoring a little mix, for players who play often it’ll be kinda representation of their win% as points are generally gained/lost according to winning losing, aside of specialties like losing a sure win, or making a superior team tremble. For players who played little games they won’t be able to take the lead with a lucky single win. To clarify some numbers:
Gonna use 100 as cap, that way it would feel as much as possible like a “percentage”
Take the first of the ranking EU: 153 points 176-101 63% With my scoring system it’d be 153*100 / 277 = 55.235 points.
Taking the second of EU: 146 points 174-28 86% With scoring it’s be 146*100/202 = 72.277 points.
Taking another example of the rank but a specialty: 56 points 53-2. With my scoring it’d be 56*55/55 = 56 points.
With these examples i’d wanna show that you might get a lucky streak, but before you’d have full use of your scoring, you’d have to get to the point where you put the cap of the multiplier. Aka if you set it at 100, one would need to play 100 to be able to equal someone with the same “win%” as you, so no lucky 10-0 hitting the top ranks early. And skilled players who play 100 games will be able to beat grinders who played 3000.
3) Matchmaking is currently being a horror for soloists because they get pushed against premades, i’m currently with this suggestion ignoring that matchmaking is far too loose (pre-patch i was around 92% on tpvp as soloist but i apperantly got teamed against a couple of 55hp monks just messing around with alts yesterday – i remember you mentioning prof mmr is ignored atm).
But to handle matchmaking against groups, you should put a limitation that certain type of teams can only be teamed against other certain types.
For example make following setups:
5 man teams can only face 5 , 4 or 3 man teams.
4 man teams can only face 5, 4 or 3 man teams.
3 man teams can face anything.
2 man teams can not face 5 or 4 man teams.
This list is based for largest team in the match. A 2 man team being put with a 3 man team would still be able to be placed against a full team. Soloists are generally used as fillers for this ruling.
In general a gang of soloists would never face worse than 3 man groups, unless their team actually contains a 3+ group itself.