Guild Wars 2

Visible MMR with a slow, but permanent decay is how GW2 leaderboards should work.

Why Visible MMR?

1. It’s more transparent and shows skill better than a leaderboard number/percentile. Maybe there are just two players at the top who are way out in front of everyone else, or maybe everyone in the top 500 is very close in rating. Without visible MMR, you can’t tell.

2. It gives new players a concrete evaluation of performance and a way to improve. Rather than seeing themselves as a percentile, new players would be more likely to try and improve visible MMR incrementally by setting a new personal rating record(even if only by a few points).

3. If people can actually see what amount of rating they lose or gain while playing, instead of seeing their leaderboard number fly around like crazy after each win or lose, players will stay calmer. Losing 20 points off your rating doesn’t seem as bad as dropping from 55% to 49% on the leaderboards.

4. Visible MMR works for other games, like Chess and WoW. It’s a proven system that most people have no problem with.

Agreed: the GvG ladder in GW1 had visible (numerical) rating, and it worked very well. I’m not super keen on the Glicko ratings they’re using now, they seem very erratic, and not seeing why your rank moved (or didn’t move) after a game makes it feel random and unfair, even if it’s working perfectly behind the scenes (which it probably isn’t, frankly).