Guild Wars 2

So I heard there is this 50% winrate element.
That the game tries to make you have a 50% winrate (by how it matches you with players and against enemies?).
Correct?

So what is the point of trying to force people into a 50% win rate?
Does it help with que times?

I can understand that it might be nice for those who are below 50% winrate, that they have a bit more help to not lose to much.
But why does it affect those above 50% win rate too?
Or can one not exist without the other?

If you take random people each with random skill level and place them in a scenario where there is 50% chance of winning and 50% chance of loosing, guess what basic math says the average ratio of wins to losses will be after 10 matches, 100 matches, 1000 matches or 10,000 matches?

Seriously, its not a mystery.

just because the system forces you to have 50% w/l rate doesnt mean you have to, having for example 51% win rate and enough games will get you from amber to legendary during season 1 and for that matter any season.

Many people had far above 50% win rate. I know I did, and I was usually solo.

Browrain.7346:

Many people had far above 50% win rate. I know I did, and I was usually solo.

Just for the record, I dont talk about having or not having 50% win rate.

I want to ask some questions to get more clear for me, how that 50% win loss rate actually works.

Like when you go over it and win quite some more than you have lost, does it try to make you lose more later on,
making you have a harder time to keep your total matches won going up compared to lost?
Or is it made so that every indivual match has a 50% win loss chance only as Dawdler describes?

Two equally skilled teams facing off should have an equal chance of winning. That is the point of it as a balancing feature.

If you start winning more than the 50%, it doesn’t “make you lose”, it matches you against opponents that are rated a bit higher, to keep the skill level / challenge equal.

If you start losing more matches, it would reasonably pair you against lower-rated opponents. Again, to keep people playing on an even field of skill.

traviswrdunbar.4780:

Two equally skilled teams facing off should have an equal chance of winning. That is the point of it as a balancing feature.

If you start winning more than the 50%, it doesn’t “make you lose”, it matches you against opponents that are rated a bit higher, to keep the skill level / challenge equal.

If you start losing more matches, it would reasonably pair you against lower-rated opponents. Again, to keep people playing on an even field of skill.

Thanks.

This is the case in unranked and ranked?

Because in unranked I know that its a bit differen than you describe.

People from all mmr ranges can be in the same team, as long as the 5 players from team A, have the same combined mmr as those from team B.
Meaning someone with really high mmr and someone with really low mmr can be in the same team in unranked.

The point of 50% is to show that you’re winning as much as you lose, as in the deciding factor between the two teams winning isn’t a huuuuge gap in skill. This is important for a multitude of reasons, but primarily is meant to foster growth at the particular player’s pace which is vital for any game looking to create a competitive scene.

gw2 is focused on casual players , thats the reason for the 50% winrate element.
so the noobs also can win.

some time ago (2 years ago) we had a different matchmaking system and a different leaderboard system (limited to 1000 people) where noobs were complaining that they cant climb the leaderboards. the real good players had a winrate 70%+ and were shown on the leaderboards while all the noobs couldn’t climb the leaderboards and stayed out of the leaderboards.

now go figure…..

Izanagi.9830:

gw2 is focused on casual players , thats the reason for the 50% winrate element.
so the noobs also can win.

some time ago (2 years ago) we had a different matchmaking system and a different leaderboard system (limited to 1000 people) where noobs were complaining that they cant climb the leaderboards. the real good players had a winrate 70%+ and were shown on the leaderboards while all the noobs couldn’t climb the leaderboards and stayed out of the leaderboards.

now go figure…..

Exactly. Good players can carry a team sure and they can get 70% winratio – that’s what good players do. Win despite being matched against good opponents (well, either that or they gamble the system, but lets assume they are just that good). An average player being able to maintain 70% winratio is not being challenged. Which should be the entire point of sPvP.

Dawdler.8521:

Izanagi.9830:

gw2 is focused on casual players , thats the reason for the 50% winrate element.
so the noobs also can win.

some time ago (2 years ago) we had a different matchmaking system and a different leaderboard system (limited to 1000 people) where noobs were complaining that they cant climb the leaderboards. the real good players had a winrate 70%+ and were shown on the leaderboards while all the noobs couldn’t climb the leaderboards and stayed out of the leaderboards.

now go figure…..

Exactly. Good players can carry a team sure and they can get 70% winratio – that’s what good players do. Win despite being matched against good opponents (well, either that or they gamble the system, but lets assume they are just that good). An average player being able to maintain 70% winratio is not being challenged. Which should be the entire point of sPvP.

its not possible anymore to maintain a 70%+ winrate.
more like 55-60% at maximum with the new system.

NOTE: if you play solo.

Izanagi.9830:

gw2 is focused on casual players , thats the reason for the 50% winrate element.
so the noobs also can win.

some time ago (2 years ago) we had a different matchmaking system and a different leaderboard system (limited to 1000 people) where noobs were complaining that they cant climb the leaderboards. the real good players had a winrate 70%+ and were shown on the leaderboards while all the noobs couldn’t climb the leaderboards and stayed out of the leaderboards.

now go figure…..

Please don’t post if you’re ignorant of how the system works.

The players at the top of the leaderboards were some of the best around. Now? The players that would’ve been at the top of the leaderboards are now legendary. Same stuff, different system. The system pushes for 50% in EVERY game. If you’re at 70%, it means you’re far better than the players you play with and the system knows to keep pitting you against tougher opponents. If you can beat EVERYONE in the game and maintain a 70% win rate minimum, go and try out for a competitive team. Ranked, contrary to popular belief, is actually meant to foster fun matches by making the two teams as equal as possible (I doubt it would be fun for a newbie to face someone on helseth’s level). 50% is an indicator that you’re playing with people equal to you and should be having fun (or looking for ways to improve).

Above guys doesn’t give you clear answer so i give you clear answer.

The reason why you guys have frequent 50% winrate is becuz you guys share meta build.
This game is also called Build Wars 2 build. Build does affect minimum 33% in your winrate upto 70%.

This is real reason.

To have more than 50% or less than 50% depends on how you can run build very well and also, rotation, personal skills and etc. but mostly build.

if you want to have like clear 70%~or sometime 80% winrate, develop amazing build yourself, and never share.

anothr way to have more than 50% winrate is getting premade with good skilled friends.

online.1278:

anothr way to have more than 50% winrate is getting premade with good skilled friends.

This is all you had to say lol.

you guys are all wrong. play on high level and you know what i am talking about.
you guys really want to explain someone who did pvp in the mists only since game release and 10k+ played arena games how the matchmaking etc. works? dont make me laught…..i will try to explain you guys what did happen in the past but i really hate to explain stuff to plebians.

just because you win around 55-60% of the games doesnt mean you get matched with and against equally people. This have nothing to do with the build , what i mean with bad people is how they rotate , how they positioning , even a bone minion rotate better than 90% of the pvp players in gw2 , its like people playing without brain and eyes.

there are matches where i had big noobs in my team or enemy team who shouldn’t even get matches with me or against me.

if the matchmaking works correctly then i should get matched only with and against people of my skill range. This is how a good matchmaking would work but i guess in gw2 with the low pvp players population (since arenanet made all pvp players quit) this is not going to work and high skilled players will have a very high queue time.

thats also a reason why we have the 50% winrate for everyone element.
i did only pvp in the mists since gw2 release , have over 10k+ played arena games.

around 2 years ago we had such a system where a good player only got matched with and against good players but we had a bad designed leaderboard system and the good people did stop to play solo arena because they were afraid to lose their ranks and played only 1-2 games a week which did make the queue time in solo arena drastically higher. then they very good players only played with their premade in team arena , there was like 2-3 good teams who won everything and the other premades were afraid to lose and stopped sign up for team arena. now team arena queue had high queue times.

and this all because of a very bad designed leaderboard system were the decay didnt work , insteed of fixing the decay , arenanet just did delete the old matchmaking and leaderboard system and made a new one which was even worse and they also did delete/change this one to the current matchmaking and leaderboard system we have right now which has the worst matchmaking system of all 3 systems we had , and the best or 2nd best leaderboard/league system we had of all 3 systems.

what does a good leaderboard system bring when the matchmaking system is bad? nothing. they need to fix the bad designed matchmaking system first……and more pvp players.

but arenanet made quit more and more pvp players in the past because they create bad designed pvp content. insteed of trying to create good pvp content and try to get back the old pvp players who did quit or try to get new pvp players from other pvp games , they did change the reward system in pvp so you get pve rewards and also created pvp dailys to invite pve players into pvp this was also a very bad move. (most of the pve players play pve for a reason , they dont like pvp at all , they only do pvp for achiement points and dailys)

Izanagi.9830:

its not possible anymore to maintain a 70%+ winrate.
more like 55-60% at maximum with the new system.

NOTE: if you play solo.

That’s pretty much my take on it.

SlayerSixx.5763:

If you’re at 70%, it means you’re far better than the players you play with and the system knows to keep pitting you against tougher opponents. If you can beat EVERYONE in the game and maintain a 70% win rate minimum, go and try out for a competitive team.

I’ll be honest, you don’t have much perspective on the system.

70% is impossible with soloq, anyone who gets that is already in a team. During League’s I was getting fed to 5 man premade ESL legendary players while I was a soloq ruby at that time, just to drag down my win rate.

The same holds up on my second account. Starting in amber obviously, I was getting matched against full premade emeralds, just to drag down my win rate.

@Izanagi

The amount of time you’ve spent and you still don’t understand the system? You speak as if ANet debuffs your toon just to force you to lose. We’re speaking of fact and you’re bringing up speculation. OK.

@SoPP

I know its nearly impossible. He claims that the system is holding back from his 70% win rate.

Something is strange… for few months of playing pvp I could say my “50% chance” of winning was rather lower and I had more matches lost than won during the day.
Since leagues ended and people roll with unranked then first time in my life I got such a huge winning streak, most of those matches were soloq and two were trio premade with guildies.
For what reason this happened?

Rodzynald.5897:

Something is strange… for few months of playing pvp I could say my “50% chance” of winning was rather lower and I had more matches lost than won during the day.
Since leagues ended and people roll with unranked then first time in my life I got such a huge winning streak, most of those matches were soloq and two were trio premade with guildies.
For what reason this happened?

if you form a trio of strong players on TS you can dominate. my pal just got back into gw2 and when he was trying out scrapper (he’s played engi since beta and he’s p great) with myslef on DH and my pal on reaper we had a massive winstreak. even beating guild teams.

most unranked players are pretty poor at combat and rotating, so a few above average players with good builds who play like they haven’t been lobotomised is super strong.

Something that is also worth mentioning: the MM system sacrifices the perfect match for acceptable queue times, so weird things can happen with special snowflakes.

50/50 win rate works like this.

You are a good player and are consistently good. You win. ANETs then puts you on a team with losers to make you lose because ANET doesn’t want you to win.. Once you lose enough. ANET then figures you are a loser now. So they put you on a team with another good player that they were trying to make lose and you win.

Thats how win lose streaks work because ANET has no way of knowing if players are skilled or not that they pair with. They just know who is a loser and who is a winner.

I fully encountered this. I did not play PvP till after HoT. I focued on WvW roamning.
So i trained to play my character for about half a year in small scale combat and got competative.
Then i did go to PvP. There was low challenge. I had a near 80% winrate after knowing what to do till about game 100. I had been in the second division at that moment. Then it suddenly got realy evil. I got scheduled against a lot premades and with not good partners and i suddenly got extremly good oponents. It forced me down to about 50% …. I usually solo.

SlayerSixx.5763:

@Izanagi

The amount of time you’ve spent and you still don’t understand the system? You speak as if ANet debuffs your toon just to force you to lose. We’re speaking of fact and you’re bringing up speculation. OK.

the one who dont understand the system and have no clue about is you……there also were plenty of other threads about the bad designed matchmaking from high level players.

you are just a random who think he know something. the truth is , you know nothing.

Rodzynald.5897:

Something is strange… for few months of playing pvp I could say my “50% chance” of winning was rather lower and I had more matches lost than won during the day.
Since leagues ended and people roll with unranked then first time in my life I got such a huge winning streak, most of those matches were soloq and two were trio premade with guildies.
For what reason this happened?

you cannot compare unranked with ranked , unranked have a even more kittened up matchmaking system.

and as long as arenanet dont remove the 50%winrate for everyone mechanic , the matchmaking will stay bad and the league/leaderboard will be useless.

Indeed a ranking board is useless in a mixed environement that tries to be smart and forces 50% win rate ….

Izanagi.9830:

you cannot compare unranked with ranked , unranked have a even more kittened up matchmaking system.

and as long as arenanet dont remove the 50%winrate for everyone mechanic , the matchmaking will stay bad and the league/leaderboard will be useless.

I did not mean to compare. I did unranked even during season due to bunker meta which was rather unpleasant for me.
Back then unranked was a lot of fun, wide variety of fancy builds that were fun to play and fight against.
Now it got mixed and it feels… odd, I can’t quite tell how bizzare.

Lot of people that were farming ranked then are back to unranked now. Might be the reason.

Izanagi.9830:

SlayerSixx.5763:

@Izanagi

The amount of time you’ve spent and you still don’t understand the system? You speak as if ANet debuffs your toon just to force you to lose. We’re speaking of fact and you’re bringing up speculation. OK.

the one who dont understand the system and have no clue about is you……there also were plenty of other threads about the bad designed matchmaking from high level players.

you are just a random who think he know something. the truth is , you know nothing.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm

This just tells you everything you wanna know. If you want to stay deluded, its on you.

This is easy to understand.
Would you have fun, if you win all your matches? easily?

ITT: A ton of people who have no idea how a matchmaking system works or why they end up around 50% win rate.

Its not a “programmed 50%”, the game matches you against equally skilled opponents. If both teams are equally skilled what do you think the overall win rate tends towards?
It sounds like the algorithm is doing its job pretty well if you are all sitting around 50% winrate in solo q. Everyones longterm average should be 50% win rate if the matchmaker is doing its job.

I would love for some of you to go and post on a real esports games message board (DOTA2, LoL, CS:GO) and talk about the 50% mechanic and see how much they laugh at deride you for not understanding basics of competitive play.

ITT: A ton of people who have no idea how a matchmaking system works or why they end up around 50% win rate.

Its not a “programmed 50%”, the game matches you against equally skilled opponents. If both teams are equally skilled what do you think the overall win rate tends towards?
It sounds like the algorithm is doing its job pretty well if you are all sitting around 50% winrate in solo q. Everyones longterm average should be 50% win rate if the matchmaker is doing its job.

I would love for some of you to go and post on a real esports games message board (DOTA2, LoL, CS:GO) and talk about the 50% mechanic and see how much they laugh at and deride you for not understanding basics of competitive play.

ITT: A ton of people who have no idea how a matchmaking system works or why they end up around 50% win rate.

Its not a “programmed 50%”, the game matches you against equally skilled opponents. If both teams are equally skilled what do you think the overall win rate tends towards?
It sounds like the algorithm is doing its job pretty well if you are all sitting around 50% winrate in solo q. Everyones longterm average should be 50% win rate if the matchmaker is doing its job.

I would love for some of you to go and post on a real esports games message board (DOTA2, LoL, CS:GO) and talk about the 50% mechanic and see how much they laugh at deride you for not understanding basics of competitive play.

well the problem is when the 50% don´t come from equal fight.
When i go in a match and finish both oponents in 1:2 within 20-30 seconds i know something is realy wrong. Yesterday a thief wanted to more or less facetank me while it was clear he can´t stand the preassure …..

i am tired to explain over and over again , noobs and dumb people will never understand.

i will say it one more time , if the matchmaking would work GOOD then i should get matched only against and with people of my skill level , but this is not happening.
insteed i get useless scrubs in my team when i won many games in a row or i get matched against bunch of losers when i lost many games in a row.

those useless scrubs or bunch of losers SHOULD never get matched with or against me , they are out of my skill level.

thats how the stupid 50% winrate for everyone mechanic works…..i am out.
i dont play gw2 anymore.

It’s not the problem in matchmaking, it’s just there’s not enough people in sPvP. It’s simply not possible for you to get matched with and against only people of your level, if there aren’t 9 other players of that level in the queue. Not even in a hypothetical 100% perfect matchmaking system.

Astralporing.1957:

It’s not the problem in matchmaking, it’s just there’s not enough people in sPvP. It’s simply not possible for you to get matched with and against only people of your level, if there aren’t 9 other players of that level in the queue. Not even in a hypothetical 100% perfect matchmaking system.

2 years ago the matchmaking worked like this but there was more pvp players left and then they did change the system and started to invite pve players into pvp with pve rewards for pvp and dailys in pvp etc. , i guess its safe to say that pvp in gw2 is dead now? arenanet anouncend early 2016 that there is 3 million people playing gw2 , i wonder where are they? for sure not in pvp area.

SlayerSixx.5763:

The point of 50% is to show that you’re winning as much as you lose, as in the deciding factor between the two teams winning isn’t a huuuuge gap in skill. This is important for a multitude of reasons, but primarily is meant to foster growth at the particular player’s pace which is vital for any game looking to create a competitive scene.

Um, not sure I follow. Can’t I guarantee a 50% win rate and have huge gaps in skill? For instance if I put anyone with all noobs against a competition level team, and then put them with a competition level team against all noobs. I will guarantee a 50% win rate. … And I will also make all players subjected to this hate it.

My point being that the 50% goal in and of itself could be ensured and yet have entirely undesirable results.

Rodzynald.5897:

Something is strange… for few months of playing pvp I could say my “50% chance” of winning was rather lower and I had more matches lost than won during the day.
Since leagues ended and people roll with unranked then first time in my life I got such a huge winning streak, most of those matches were soloq and two were trio premade with guildies.
For what reason this happened?

I had a 90% win rate with my DH for a couple days in a row. Then all of a sudden i was getting like 40-60% win rate. I thought it was the lag i was getting, but maybe i got pushed into a higher skill tier??

shion.2084:

My point being that the 50% goal in and of itself could be ensured and yet have entirely undesirable results.

And the answer is that the 50% win rate is not the goal, but the result. The goal is for you to have a challenging match no matter your skill.
Yes, it doesn’t work like that in practice, but that is mainly due to population problem.

The reason is pretty simple: to force players to make teams… esparts duhh.

Only way to overcome the obnoxious 50% win rate algorithm is to create a team of good players thus denying the matchmaking any possibility to stack odds against you in match. With premades you can’t get bad teammates, with good premade it also doesn’t matter how good your opponents are.

And no, issue is not because there are not enough players. I have 2 accounts, i could observe very well on fresh account how hard matchmaking is trying to make you lose games if you win too many games (i had like 100% win rate at some point since for game i was noob and facerolled every match): you get teammates that stomp clones, zerg animal, double cap etc. while players on team can win 1v3 fights. As rabbit (on fresh accnt) i was facing people with dragon rank (rank doesn’t matter much but player with dragon rank obviously has more games under their belt than rabbit) that spawn camped my team all match.

Rodzynald.5897:

Something is strange… for few months of playing pvp I could say my “50% chance” of winning was rather lower and I had more matches lost than won during the day.
Since leagues ended and people roll with unranked then first time in my life I got such a huge winning streak, most of those matches were soloq and two were trio premade with guildies.
For what reason this happened?

ranked and unranked have separated MMR
if you haven’t done many unranked games then you are basically noob for the game when you queue for unranked