Guild Wars 2

Unranked Queue

The good: it’s the natural hot join evolution. Finally people have a place where there is no auto-balance. It’s a true conquest mode, so people try to learn how play conquest correctly and it’s a good mid step before ranked matches. It’s really better than hot join. Same money amount and rank points for ranked matches, it’s possible to have a progression in rated matches achievements.

The bad: it suffers matchmaking issues like ranked matches.

Suggestions: in general it’s fine, i like to see a spectator mode in unranked queue, it would have a huge impact on people gameplay.

The Queue system

The good: i really like the new UI, is really clear and easy to use. Now people need to accept the queue pop so it minimizes the AFK issues at beginning. The map selection is really good, everyone has a chance to keep their favorite map. In general I’m not a fan of RNG system but i think in this case it’s fine as it is.

The bad: people need to stay in HOTM, waiting for their queue. It helps to avoid or minimize afk at beginning but it’s really boring now.

Suggestions: at least, let people to do hot join or custom arena. In alternative, add more stuff to HOTM (JP with rewards, 1vs1 Pavillon Style etc.)

Dishonorable system

The good: it’s a system that punish people if they quit early the match or the queue so it’s good. It needs to be balanced about length.

The bad: you gain dishonor and loss if you have a DC. Many times people can come back very fast in a match so it’s not a really good way punish people if they can come back fast in the match

Suggestions: add a grace time window (like 1 min max) for short DC.

Conclusion

In general i think it’s a good patch for some aspects but really bad for others. Matchmaking and leaderboard are main issues and need to be fixed quickly. After that, there is always the balance problem, basically a 6 month meta is too long, we need a more dynamic scene.

Pretty spot on. I like the League/ ticket reward like WvW. Vendor for various prizes for different ticket amounts. You can spend or save until you can buy a better prize a few months out (for people that can’t play 8+ hours a day and make top LB). You can have mini’s, Glorious armor (high amount of tickets), boxes of different tier mats, boxes containing reward track potion xp thingies (various amounts for different ticket amounts), etc etc etc. This would be a way to introduce PvP weapon skins (like WvW has) as well. Many options with this kind of reward system. Allows the players to get what they want from doing good. The better you do/ the more you play (lol), the faster you get the rewards you want. (Although this would probably take Anet forever to create rewards + vendor and skins). Jan 2016?

+1 + 15 charrzookas

This is FANTASTIC and constructive! Thanks for being a positive and helpful member of the pvp community. +1

+1
Really good feedback, the only thing that I don’t like is Skyhammer, Spirit Watch and Courtyard on the Unranked Arenas, but then again I kinda hate those maps
I still think Courtyard shouldn’t be in Conquest Q, it’s a map that promotes a different playstyle (kinda like GvG or WvW in really small scale) and so the classes need different builds, builds that sometimes 1:30 minutes aren’t enough to change :/

I can pretty much agree with the feedback here but I just wanted to add in what I think they got this horribly wrong.

I think they had incredibly good ideas with the match making and the ladder but ruined it all with one stupid idea. Making solos play vrs premade teams. You just increased the probability of bad matches infinitely more than what was done to ensure balanced matches by making a variable criteria on something you can’t measure with game statistics. Coordination. If you ask me to sacrifice quality of matches of people that want to play log on and go pvp casually isn’t worth the reduced queue times of teams.

It becomes really obvious what party is solo queues and what parties are on teamspeak. It is really going to keep me out of PvP until I can find a full team to go with, because it really isn’t worth anyones time to queue up solo only to get creamed. Which alot of people just arn’t going to pvp because not everyone has teams that are readily available to go when they are on.

I actually think I’m wrong and that this game is still a piece of garbage. ANET allowing BS such as blinking and teleporting through vertical range or ledges is just anti-fun garbage specially if you’re playing classes that can’t do it. Not to mention the cele meta, multiple stun breaks, braindead easy mode, stow lightning whip bug those are all ANET’s fault.

Not to mention ANET never ever learns from their mistake and keeps making anti-fun mechanics in this game. Like the population is so bad GW2 can’t even afford to have a solo que and has to have a mixed que. The reason why the population is bad is because ANET keeps kittening people off with their incompetence.

Just GG, I think the game will be very underpopulated even after PAX east.

Agreed with a lot here.

I actually don’t think there’s a huge problem of premade vs. pug, I didn’t think there was in the original LB incarnation either. BUT! it’s so hard to shake that perception. Whenever you lose a match, you sit there and wonder if it’s just because the other team was a premade.

Sometimes just the perception that you’re not fighting on even terms (premade vs. pug) is really demotivating, and it doesn’t matter how even the match was, or if the team you were playing was even a legit premade.

I strongly encourage Anet to consider that, maybe just try a test season with solo/team queue split again to gauge player reaction and how bad queue times suffer.

Great suggestions.

I want to add that in matchmaking let soloq players have a choice to carry their team into the next match if they win.

I miss the rank RP vendors and pvp crafting tremendously. I think it was a mistake to completely merge them with the reward tracks, although earning currency through PVP was a very appreciated change.

PvP Profesion Win Dailies need to go. The combo of low queue population (even at peak hours) means you get a huge jump in bad pve players with bad builds getting paired up with players way outside their skill level around reset. My last match had 5 rangers and all 5 of them were not regular PvP players (yet myself and Magic Toker both ended up playing in the match).

Current WoW 2v2 Eu
1st Place : 28 wins – 18 looses = 2172 rating
2nd place : 123 wins – 111 looses = 2122 rating

Current WoW 3v3 Eu
1st Place : 282 wins – 139 looses = 2858 rating
4st Place : 76 wins – 30 looses = 2834 rating

No system is bulletproof , even it was created 100 years ago .

We had the same system , in the old leaderboard , where some ppl got lucky with the wins (solo or with a team) and get on the Top Ladders .

The community (especially some ppl , proclaimed that ‘’the Leaderboard are a joke atm , no1 is paying attention to them’’ and we must change them ….)
whined that the ppl in the Top Leaderboard spots where inactive and the rest of the population couldnt reach their spot (even if those ppl played 1 macth per weeks , so they decay wont effect them)

BrB work

Edit : inc sucky ’’D’’ maths

The most easy + costless solusion is increase the rewards for team-que and implant a system that calculates the ’’average’’ game per active-person played .
The ppl that play minimun amount of games to avoid the Leaderboarding Plummering , will be forced to play that ’’avarage’’ games requiement + an extra 20% games , to recieve the ‘’end season rewards’’

I just wish I could solo q without getting my pug team matched up with a 5 man premade ( ._.)

If i join a match and dc but then re-enter before the match starts, am i getting a penalty? If so, can you make it so that if someone dc’s and re-enters before the match starts on the same character there is no penalty.

Also i would like to suggest putting an option to save up to say 3 builds per class, so that you can swap builds easily rather then scrambling to do so before the match starts. I run a guardian primarily and if there is a bunker already i would like to swap to dps without hassles.

The bad:

1/ When one of your teamates dc, and you lost cause of him, you can lose leaderboard point.

Fix: you should not lose point.

2/ When you dc and your team win and you reconnect in time and make game points game, you lose leaderboard point.

Fix: you should not lose leaderboard point, You should even gain it

Nina.4317:

The bad:

1/ When one of your teamates dc, and you lost cause of him, you can lose leaderboard point.

Fix: you should not lose point.

2/ When you dc and your team win and you reconnect in time and make game points game, you lose leaderboard point.

Fix: you should not lose leaderboard point, You should even gain it

aye i agree with this.

justin, please reconsider.

Great post!
+1 for league system
+1 for HOTM-upgrade ( 1v1 / JP .. )
+2 for 3month meta instead of 6

I agree with pretty much everything in the OP, great suggestions.

I’d like to add one more thing, better statistics. It would be great to be able to filter wins and losses by map/class/game mode and also by current ladder/lifetime. It would be even better to be able to see similar breakdowns of objectives achieved. So for example I could see that I’m doing a good job on my thief decapping on Legacy but I’m not as effective on Forest. This would help give people some feedback and something to work on.

Superb feedback, spot on for most; how are the brackets chosen for the leaderboard though? Is it by MMR rating?

As someone who initially had a terrible experience with the launch and relaunch of the system where I was placed in 80% losing games, I’ve managed to swing that since then to a 60% win rate. I had a 58% win rate before the change, and I only solo queue.

The matchmaking takes time to settle into a good experience in terms of volatility, and there are some nights where it drops you into blowouts because the queue is imbalanced, but all in all I think it is a more accessible system.

I have images of myself queued under the old system for 19 minutes at primetime (8 PM EST.) The longest queue I’ve ever had under the new system is maybe 3-4 minutes.

I run into premades more than I’d like, with maybe a 2-3 loss per win record against them. Most of the games are not blowouts, so the matchmaking is trying to balance them, it’s just giving too little credit to being a premade. If being premade had a bigger MMR hit I think this would be fairly even.

I’m not sure what they can do for the leaderboard rankings because in theory the way it works is actually pretty sound now. People keep railing about Pugs versus premades but people seem to forget that you won’t lose points generally losing to people with higher MMRs and often can gain points against them by making the match quasi competitive. People need to stop obsessing over w/l percentages because they are not suppossed to be the end all and be all in this system. As for different leagues I just don’t see the population where you can say we will only have the top 500 for example play each other or the top 200 etc. The queues at certain times of day would be extraordinary. T

he main problem to me is fixing it so you don’t need to play 20 matches plus a day to get ranked in the top 100 or so. Quantity is being rewarded a little too much. Maybe some kind of diminishing returns for points earned in a given time period and maybe being able to lose or win points in .5 increments instead of just whole numbers meaning a win could potentially sometimes be worth as little as half a point. I am leery about some kind of hard cap or minimum or maximum games played because people should be able to play quite a bit and have it help there rating if they do well.

As a 98% PvE player here are my impressions of the test season and my experiences.

About me: I’m one of those PvE players who only did Ranked matches and I play on average 2-8 matches an evening (to get the dailies done). I only queue up solo, I don’t have a PvP guild, nor do I want one.

Why I queue ranked: The matches in ranked seem a bit better quality than unranked. I don’t like courtyard (though I do like skyhammer & meh on spirit watch). I know I’ll never be a top player on the leaderboards, but I like seeing where I stand. I was up in the top 600ish for a little while and that was cool, but since I don’t play PvP as much as others I’m down in the 93% now with 40 points. I like seeing that info, so I play ranked.

Matchmaking: I’m pretty sure I have a terrible MMR and as such it sometimes feels like I’m thrown to the lions and my opposing forces are folks who have been waiting in queue for a while and the system finally gave up and threw me at them. Though the matches I’ve gotten that the end score was hilariously lopsided have been few and far between. I don’t consider 200-500 a terrible loss…it’s bad, but not 50-500 bad. I have gotten quite a few matches where the final scores were <50 different between the two. Those feel balanced and when I’m on the losing end of that it doesn’t feel bad.

Queue: My queue times are anywhere from instant to 2 minutes….I still really hate having to sit in the heart of the mists while I wait. It has also taken some time to get used to leaving party before queuing up. I used to be able to stay in a party with my husband while I solo queued matches and he could ping things to me that he found and I could still do my matches. It’s annoying, but I’ll get used to it. What is weird though is when we’re partied together, he goes offline, and I’m still technically in a party (but he’s offline) and I queue…it sits there waiting for the offline person to respond. That’s stupid. Could the system just remove the offline person then queue me? I don’t know.

Season Rewards: I’ll never see a season reward from PvP so they’re of no consequence to me. The token system mentioned earlier would be nice, but still wouldn’t ever affect me unless there’s some “consolation prize” for those like me who participate but can’t compete with the folks who do nothing but pvp.

Dishonor System: I always finish what I start no matter how bad the match gets, so I will never voluntarily leave a match early. I’ve not experienced any connection issues to the matches either. I think it is a good system in place to try and keep those that abandon early to a minimum. The worst match-up I was in was a 3-5…it went badly for the team with 3 and mad props to those three for sticking with it til the end. Even with dishonor, some will still leave but I think it helps.

Other stuff:

• The leave queue button was still not working last I tried to leave queue. I wanted to go to bed, but then queue popped as I was getting ready to log so I played that match then went to bed…Now I just make sure I really don’t need to do something else before I queue up (but that does need fixing if it hasn’t been already).
• Is there a reason Costume Brawl wins don’t count in HoTM? This could be something people could do while waiting for queue, but since it doesn’t count toward that achievement…there’s no point.

From my standpoint way down here in PvPscrubdom, things feel a bit more fun overall and I like the bonus track progress you get from dailies. I really miss the free PvP skins I got from Achievement chests and really hope they bring back the old PvP exclusive skins…have the tracks open up when a person hits a certain rank so they’re still tied to rank. That would be super cool.

League system. I think right now the pvp community needs to grow and with the new matchmaking system it will. I think growth is the focus and should remain the focus until there is a large enough community to split into leagues. The silver-lining is that less experience players will play with more experienced players and should learn from those matches even if they lose it should strengthen the community as a whole in the long term.

In general i don’t think we need a super large community for a league system. Players number we have now is enough to make 5-6 league+ (like for example bronze, silver, gold, platinum, master). Matchmaking should prioritize meeting people of your league but it should be possible to face people of other leagues if there is not enough people online (like in starcraft and other games).

A league system brings a lot of advantages because people can compete for each leagues for different skill level, so everyone is on competition with people of similar skill level (at least in the leaderboard, in game you can face people with different skill level or it would be impossible for a matchmaking to work properly 24h/24h).

It promotes progression because people can move between leagues at the end of the season like MOBA games and you can get rewards for each leagues, so basically everyone can win something if participates (with a tokens system for example everyone could get a little amount of tokens for participation and depending on final position, an higher number tokens).

At the same time i agree this game mode (conquest) is not really easy to play and to understand completely (there are a lot of common mistakes), for this reason i’d like to see a better spectator mode implemented at least in unranked mode (in ranked it would be perfect with a replay system + delay). This would have a huge impact on game quality.

The following issues are, imo, game breakingly serious:

1, Not being able to queue from anywhere
2, Very poor matchmaking matching players of vastly different players levels into the same game leading to no fun for those farming or being farmed by individuals in those games. So even if the scores are close it DOES NOT MEAN that matchmaking is working well.
3, No solo queue option again – surely their metrics showed massive amounts of people solo queued previously? Well they removed the most popular form of gw2 for a large portion of the population (solo queue) and replaced it with a terrible experience.

Sorry but the patch has settled now. It was a pvp feature patch which set pvp back MASSIVELY. No longer do teams log in to team queue because its just farming idiots. No longer do people log in for some fun/close and competitive solo queue because solo queue is TERRIBLE either vs full teams or farming idiots with idiots on your team.

Many bugs in the leave queue system.

Moral of the story:
Dont remove features your player base likes and uses (solo queue)
Dont release a major patch with a ton of bugs before you all go on holiday for xmas/new year
Dont take away freedom from players (sitting in Hotm always)

My solution:
Cancel everything you have done and roll back to the previous system.
Sounds lame but its the only solution.

PvP is currently on its death bed. Look at the ESL entrants. You are giving away real money and still nobody signs up for this….

I think anet are awesome but its hard to defend this patch. Its a patch which killed the game. Simple as that.

First of all I don’t think any of the new system changes were “gamebreakingly serious”:

Lordrosicky.5813:

1, Not being able to queue from anywhere

It’s obviously an issue if you are having quite a high queue times, but not gamebreaking (plus it was done in order to prevent even more the “DCs” and “4vs5” stuff).

Lordrosicky.5813:

So even if the scores are close it DOES NOT MEAN that matchmaking is working well.

I do agree that matchmaking still needs improvements and it’s not fair at all sometimes (but it SOMETIMES works well, it pairs equally skilled players. I’m sure you’ve had one balanced match).

Lordrosicky.5813:

3, No solo queue option again – surely their metrics showed massive amounts of people solo queued previously? Well they removed the most popular form of gw2 for a large portion of the population (solo queue) and replaced it with a terrible experience.

It seems that I’m the only player in gw2 that didn’t have a good time playing Solo Arena and enjoyed more Team Arena, even playing solo. Solo Arena gave me bad matches, totals crush (500-0 and stuff like that, what supossedly was rare before) and, to be fair, longer queue times than Team Arena. It’s true that I’m not a huge MMR skilled professional player, but I really do enjoyed more Team Arena than Solo Arena.
I’d assume by my experience that Team Arena had equal population playing than Solo Arena, but maybe it’s just everyone’s perception, who knows. Lastly, while it’s true that the experience is a little bit worse than before, it’s not because of the Solo Arena removal, but to the Matchmaking state (they’re still tweaking it).

Lordrosicky.5813:

Many bugs in the leave queue system.

These are really some weird bugs lol.

It was just my opinion, these problems with the new system, while they are odd, they don’t seem to be “gamebreaking” or something like that, they’ll likely get fixed in a (I hope) near future.

so i logged in under my ranger joined queue, the daily switched so i left queue and logged out. i logged in on my engi and within about 10-15 sec my queue pops with me not in the mists or queued up. so ya, not upset since it was my intent to queue up with my engi anyway.

The leaderboard currently has 2 people with under a 50% winning percentage in the top 5. Seriously?

style.6173:

The leaderboard currently has 2 people with under a 50% winning percentage in the top 5. Seriously?

Sure. They just got a lot of lopsided matches handed to them. But they tend to not lose points from it.

Please listen to player feedback. Like Blu42 said on his stream. Communication is very important in this game. If you have premades vs solos and they are on nearly the same skill level. The premades will win every time. This is not fun. This idea did not work to put solo and team Q into one system.

Please listen to the feedback.

Lupanic.6502:

Please listen to the feedback.

Le them do some internal testing ….
Let them brake some eggs …

By not allowing ppl to join Hotjoin , while they are on que , > they can see how many ppl like quick joins vs ques
‘’If they implant a Unranked que , no1 would play Hotjoin that is the Bane of the PvP’’

And to see how many ppl like the idea of Soloque vs an Uranked que
‘’that MUST be created in order ppl to play with their friends is a casual/fun format > that wil leads in more teams been created and more competition’’

The people are forced now to build teams to have fun in Queue. This is in general good step. But not every player has access to ts3. Some players like to player just 1-2 games and that’s is. It takes to long to build a group to join ts just for 1-2 games.

oh yea i got another solo vs premade.
In this time,players are not much and there are 3 premade team,i have to feed them.
You want cut down the team’s queue time,you have to do more pvp mode or something else not force solo vs premade.

Mireles Lore.5942:

I think they had incredibly good ideas with the match making and the ladder but ruined it all with one stupid idea. Making solos play vrs premade teams.

I think the reason behind this is the following: they don’t want to have 4 join options for 1 gamemode, especially if other gamemodes will be added at some point, and this is a valid concern.

But they made a bad call. Instead of replacing Hotjoin with Unranked que (which is a recurring suggestion since launch), they replaced Soloque and kept Hotjoin – and we all know you can’t learn anything about the game in hotjoin.

Solution: hotjoin has to go and Soloque must come back.

Edit: there should still be a game browser tab for player-owned custom arenas, only for practicing / hosting tournaments, with rewards disabled.

witcher.3197:

But they made a bad call. Instead of replacing Hotjoin with Unranked que (which is a recurring suggestion since launch), they replaced Soloque and kept Hotjoin – and we all know you can’t learn anything about the game in hotjoin.

Solution: hotjoin has to go and Soloque must come back.

/highfive
that makes so much more sense!

Practice/hotjoin is a necessary maybe for the sake of just a quick play and run for any number of reasons. I test build changes there alot. I wonder what the effect would be if only unranked and ranked were available. Setting up a custom arena and finding people to test the buils on would be to much of a hassle for the average player I presume. And the randomness of practice arena allows for a more unbiased test

Three words: solo versus premade. This negates anything good by far.
Stop trying to please minority of teams by harassing majority of soloers. If team arena gonna die because long queues – this shall be a headache for teamQ players, not for everyone else.

To me it feels like the old solo queue. In the old team queue there was communication and balanced matches whereas solo queue was awful and you were paired with players of huge skill differences and you got lopsided results. That’s what it feels like to me at the moment and I’m not even sure why I’m still playing because I have less than 50% win rate every day for a while now. I’ve also had a few random dc’s where I’ve been kicked to the menu only to log right back in and finish the game…only to receive minus points anyway.

It’s definitely been interesting and I’m looking forward to the next season with (hopefully) a few improvements. But I’m glad overall that we actually have seasons now.

RusShiro.9241:

Setting up a custom arena and finding people to test the buils on would be to much of a hassle for the average player I presume.

i highly doubt the average player tests builds. besides trying 2-3 meta builds.
unranked has ALOT! of people running test builds. which i think is good because it lets you know its viableness (cant think of a proper word) against the meta.

I don’t have anything to add but these suggestions shouldn’t be on page 4