Guild Wars 2

So, we got an update in December on “core PvP features”, which brought us :

- the removal of solo queue and the addition of ranked/unranked queues
- a new matchmaking algorithm
- a new “dishonor” algorithm
- a new map selection functionality
- a new leaderboard and its “test season”
- the obligation to stand in HotM to queue

3 months after this update, I have mixed-to-bad feelings about this.

On the positive side, I find :
1. The map selection, which everybody loves I think. A great addition.
2. Matchmaking isn’t that good, but is hampered by decisions that have nothing to do with the algorithm itself, such as merging solo and team queue. But when it deals with workable input, I think the algorithm does fine.

But I have to say, that’s it. There is much to say on the negative side :
1. Once again in PvP, there were as many things removed as things added. PvP has suffered quite a bit in the last two years in the sense that things that were added were abandoned and removed later on (ex : IG tournaments, solo queue, even the reward tracks were made to the detriment of another system). The removal of Solo Queue has caused many upsets, and has put much stress on the matchmaking algorithm to make sure a full premade will not face “solo queuers” under normal circumstances. The removal of the ability to queue from anywhere has forced us to endure the sometimes insane queue times in HotM (8+ minutes) not being able to do much. Luckily the BLTP & bank vendors were added, or it would have been atrocious. And then you have …

2. The leaderboard and the “pvp seasons”. You did it : you created a leaderboard that has even less signification than the previous one. With all respect for Peiper, the fact that he’s winning the EU leaderboards with his <50% winrate turret engy says it all. Leaderboard, leagues (to give various skill levels a reason to compete), rank system, any classification systems is the absolute number one thing needed in any modern game that wants to push a competitive scene. We are 2 years and a half into the game and we still have nothing in game to support the competition, it’s a shame. At this point I think we are lucky that the fundamentals of the game are great and that the community is really supportive, because the game is clearly not supporting us.

3. There is still no indication for players about their “overall skill level”, or the opponent’s/team mates’. With the leaderboard meaning nothing anymore, average people like me do not know where they stand, and if they are improving. You have a complex MMR rating in place, but we don’t even have access to our own. We also don’t see the overall skill level of our opponents and team mates, so it is impossible to see in what type of game we are playing, which team mate will probably rock and which we’ll have to cover. I know you respond with “the fear that some players might be blamed for a low MMR”, but that is a bold statement considering the actual situation where everyone is accused of being a noob as soon as he loses a 1v1.

4. The dishonor system. Where is it ? Many things were made in this update with the assumption that people will be punished for A. leaving games, and B. for changing classes. That thing is still not working, it’s crippling the rest of the update (like class MMR or the matchmaking).

5. And finally, I’ll just let here what I would like to have in the game, is more rewards for winning and get good. And I do not mean “reward” in the sense of 2 blues and a green, leave that to PvE. I mean actual rewards for competitive player, sensible things that happen when you win.
Again, a comparison will be made with GW1 I’m sorry, but even in solo arena in GW1, winning meant something. You would stay with your team and continue playing new opponents. After a number of successive wins (I don’t remember how much now, maybe 10 in a row), you would even be put into Team Arena to face premade teams. It was an accomplishment, and it was worth trying to do that as a casual PvPer.
The Hall of Heroes was obviously another example, where climbing its way to the final map was super exciting, not even talking about the fact that everyone in the game would be aware of your win in the Hall of Heroes when it happened.
We have nothing like that in this game. We are repeating games one after the other, with no reward other than reward tracks.

TL;DR : We made two steps forward but also two steps backward in the last PvP update. Much is still missing for making dedication to PvP actually fun.

Wow 0 reply, I guess that was too long and most people rather QQ on the dailies.

Ok

I miss the leaderboards so much. It is why nobody try hards nemore. Most premades are not real premades with ts or gd comps

it’s bad.

Don’t write walls of text, it’s not worth anymore, devs don’t listen, the community doesn’t care ( as you’ve seen) altough i would argue there’s not a community anymore and the game sucks.

Just quit till the game gets interesting again

Same thoughts here.

As a GW1 player i feel for you but the lack of dev-side intrest in pvp shows us that we never gonna have even near the quality of pvp as we had there

/goes back to game and prays for a meaningful expansion…
Edit: /or for a dev team that not only works for sallary (and plays tetris in office or idc) but also leaves something useful behind…

I agree leaderboards currently are bad, but idc about leaderboards myself.

The BIGGEST change that you are ignoring is the SHARP decrease of 4v5’s. It’s very rare when I get a game that the opposing team only has 4. Most times, 4v5’s only happen when some kitten afk’s in spawn.

You have to balance the impact of this change and the current queue time vs. the necessity of standing in the HotM.

Ouroboros.5076:

Wow 0 reply, I guess that was too long and most people rather QQ on the dailies.

Ok

The reason you are not seeing more replies because while your post is spot on these are all issues that are well known and as usual the ball is in A-net’s court. It’s always a waiting game that ultimately leads to disappointment.

brannigan.9831:

Ouroboros.5076:

Wow 0 reply, I guess that was too long and most people rather QQ on the dailies.

Ok

The reason you are not seeing more replies because while your post is spot on these are all issues that are well known and as usual the ball is in A-net’s court. It’s always a waiting game that ultimately leads to disappointment.

I saw this thread the other day and was going to post a post with words about how all this is outsourced through use of the custom arenas, or something like that. Anyways I ended up doing something else so today ima leave this video with the phrase, Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

I really like the nicely organized list of why this update didn’t really do much for PvP aside from helping out the 4v5 issue. I hope the devs see this and HoT brings some needed changes.

matchmaker is still garbage to be honest. MMR needs to be displayed, the matchmaker needs to distribute profs evenly and have amulet choice as part of its algorithm, and stop matching 3-5 man premades with 5 soloq’ers. leaderboards needs to matter. needs to be MMR with brackets. no one cares about how much you’ve played.

Yeah, we need visible MMR

If they would just bring back solo queue I would be happy with the new system. I don’t care how long team queuers have to wait that is their problem.

I think bad Leaderboard and Stuck on the Mist while queing are the main issues right now.

One thing i think it would be interesting, speaking about ranked queue, if you can’t avoid at all the issue soloquers vs premade, i’d like to see stats about roster rumber for everyone.

I mean like a simple pie chart when you find stats about how many times you joined solo/duo/trio/4 men/full team on total matches (for example 50% solo, 20% duo, 30% trio )

I think this stat, correlated to your rank position in a “no grind leaderboard” (or how we suggested many times, with a cap of matches number) can give a good value about the player skill.

Arenanet’s attempt at a leaderboard is really quite embarrassing. That said, I agree with your post but the devs don’t seem to care about this.

In fact, one of them even told me they don’t want visible MMR because of “rating shaming” when in reality it would probably lead to a better community with people more evenly divided based on skill and experience. It’s quite silly logic they employ.

Anet stop baby sitting players by hiding ranks / MMR… seriously its a pvp game and its nature is to be toxic. It even happens in real life and theres no stop for it. As long as there is competition theres rivalries.

Please make the game competitive outside your god kitten ESL tournaments too…

- The leaderboards has some good things but it mostly shows the wrong things. I’d say it’s not that hard to fix it, we’ll just have to wait till they do. Probably when a new season starts.

- Competitive scene: nearly no incentive (still). There’s the ultra casual soloq experience and then there’s ESL. There is no reason to start a team even though conquest couldn’t be more teamplay focussed. This will even be worse when we get stronghold.

- We need Automated Tournaments to offer a consistent daily/weekly/monthly competitive experience (a la gw1). In unranked/ranked there’s solo/teams all together so unless you fix that, we do need a competitive team environment.

We need:

- build templates (coming)
- stronghold in a seperate queue (I hope that’s coming or you shouldn’t even bother putting it in the game)
- a solution for team/solo differentiation. (How will leagues work with the current queue infrastructure? How can a leaderboard represent skill at this point in time? etc etc.) Automated tournaments could be a decent work-around.
- better reward infrastructure (leagues with several pvp exclusives tied to them, with a better skill/time reward scheme)
- replay system (a la gw1 again?). Last WTS shows yet again that gw2 is too hard to shoutcast ‘properly’ (it allows for colorcasting but in-depth shoutcasting proves to be near impossible). A replay system would allow the community to see the different POVS, to analyze the games, etc.

My priority list:

1) Rework of the ladder. Best players should be in the top, instead of those that play the most.

2) Visible rating

3) 4 month seasons with unique skin sets and titles. You can unlock the required reward tracks with your rating.

4) The ability to duel in the mists or to join custom arenas while in queue.

This game is now 2.5 years old so far, with special designers and attention in PvP for it to become an E-Sport. In my opinion, right now PvP is exactly how it should be: perfect.

It’s time for a new major expansion with balances to keep us more entertained and more connected to the GW2 E-Sports gaming scene.

Thank you ArenaNet for the awesome PvP gaming product.

I’ll update this post : I remove the matchmaking from the positives.

When you get matched with a full solo team against a team PuG of ELE/MLG, when you get matched with a total noob (“we have to take points, right ?”) against the EU account of Ostrich, you know the matchmaking is total kitten.