Guild Wars 2

Silentshoes.1805:

Michael,

You said you are more of a lone wolf type…and I think that explains a lot. You do your own thing in a match, and you tell the other players what they need to do to follow your strategy for the match. I am guessing you play a burst roamer, not a support class. Is that right?

But I think you probably need to change how you play to actually support team fights more. Leaderboad rank today is ONLY about how effectively your playstyle helps a weak team cap, hold, and win. Seriously

Your MMR fell as soon as you were no longer teamed with high MMR players. My guess is that your type of play, probably roaming and 1v1s, does not contribute enough to weaker teams and so you started losing, and your MMR fell further, and then you got into REALLY new players at low levels and you are stuck.

If you were fortunate when SoloQ came out and won early games, you were given a high MMR. That high MMR put you with top teams that kept your MMR high. With teams like that you can roam and if your playstyle doesn’t contribute much to the win, it does not matter much since the team is so strong and they all know what to do without you.

I am only guessing here. Do you play a lone-wolf roamer burst build? What class and build is your favorite?

I agree with this but problem is that ppl below rank 30 tend to think they know all and dont want to listen advice,most of ppl r10-20still comes to have duels in spvp.
Hell i was in a team where one single shout from oponetnt H/LB wr destroyed all semblance of team while my 4 wr(rank40+ all of them) skitten to chase him on the map,like crazed chickens ,it would be fun if i was not in their team…\yeah he beated them all sometime even 1vs 2-3

Justin ODell.9517:

This discussion is a pretty good example of why I’ve been suggesting we factor in play style and profile information into matchmaking as well.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could say how serious you were about competition and be matched accordingly? I want to make that happen.

yeah but how u want detect it?

whats with ppl who switch profession? and btw im playing in the most time 2-6 gmt at night, so i dont want wait longer than now.. already long enough to wait 30mins

Justin ODell.9517:

hooma.9642:

whats with ppl who switch profession?

We know when you do this already.

hooma.9642:

btw im playing in the most time 2-6 gmt at night, so i dont want wait longer than now.. already long enough to wait 30mins

We could factor in concurrency to selectively disable some matchmaking rules, we can also disable them by max or average wait time.

with switching profession i mean not switch from 1 class to another for a match. i meaned switching from a long played profession to another for a couple of days, weeks. so the old playstyle would not fit to the other, other the new class would need a new playstyle. and so on.

Someone said about amulets, I agree. I think amulets are a good starting point to know what is the role of the player on each map, let’s suppose we have a warrior with bezerker amulet and another one with clerics, it’s like 90% chance the cleric is bunker etc…. Not taking noobs into account…

Yuki.1765:

Right now pvp level is just how much time you’ve farmed sPvP, rather than an actual skill indication.

Of course it is!

The question is, what is a good player ?
- A killer ? Kills lots of people and get lots of points.
- A bunker ? Defends your positions for your team, but he won’t get a lot of points.
- A support ? Helps his allies, heal and debuff them.
- A PGM ? Perfect builds, fully optimized.

Or, a mix ?

Now, how can you measure those parameters?
- kills, captures, top stats, it’s very easy to get them.
- But how can you measure if THIS guy is pro with his class ? How can you determine if the used skills were the most appropriate in the situation? I think it’s very hard to measure this!

That’s why glory points doesn’t mean anything, they’re based on kills and captures only.

That’s why, maybe this “rank 5 guy” is better than you, who knows ?!

Now about the ladderboard well …. Supposing rank doesn’t mean anything, being in a r50 team doesn’t mean you’ll win !!!

Furthermore, the biggest problem in SoloQ is the communication. Even if your team is supposed to be pro, if no ones communicate, you’ll loose. In the contrary, a noob team with a good communication may win.

And then, don’t forget the “off-peak” hours. Most of the times it is pretty hard to get player that match your level in off-peak.

So, YES the system need to be improved. How? I Don’t know, it’s very complicated. Shame on those sky hammer r50 farmers…. Now being in a r50 team is ridiculous…

arenanet should hide it – to hard for people

Why not, at least people won’t focus on those stupid numbers, that doesn’t reflect your real level

lv 50 knowing that lv 1 most likely doesn’t know anything

Just a question: You’re a very good GvGer in WvW. You want to start sPvP and soloQ. Of course that guy needs to learn the map strats. BUT, do you think this guy could be worse than a nooby skyhammer r50 ? Honnestly

yes, my friend is a wvw player mostly, but he has been 1v1 with Pseudo a lot and come close, but he’s only dolyak rank

This new MM is terrible… just saying. I keep getting new players into my queues its kittened. They have NO idea what to do, they try zerg… clearly new players all the while i’m fighting experienced players e v e r y s i n g l e match.

pedrst.3127:

This new MM is terrible… just saying. I keep getting new players into my queues its kittened. They have NO idea what to do, they try zerg… clearly new players all the while i’m fighting experienced players e v e r y s i n g l e match.

This, it’s also taking longer to get a match on off peak hours(this is probably because less players a playing though…).

@michael the problem is, new ppl just don’t say anything. There is 0 communication.

old people don’t say anything too. To be honest I don’t say anything cuz I don’t want to be trolled, flammed or w/e, I answer if someone asked me something.

But i’m gettin furious when i type it, trying to win and ppl just ignore it, and we get kicked 2xx-500….

But sometimes you lose for different reasons, for eg. the balance !

This morning I did 4 games, and won 1 (sadness), why ?
- 1st game : No guardian, no war and the opposite team had bunker guardian + wars.
- 2nd game : No guardian, 1 war, the opposite team had 2 bunker guardian.
- 3rd game : 1 war only, the opposite team had 1 stun war, 1 spirit ranger.
- 4rd game (won) : SpiritWatch, opposite team was dumb and didn’t get the orb.

Today is it pretty hard to win without a guardian or wars. Let’s take the 2nd game. What can we do against 2 bunker guardians? 1 middle, 1 close. They can hold 2 points VERY VERY VERY easily.

Or another eg., how can you defend something against stun war + spirit ranger ? … bump bump stun stun fear bump immo, dead! Without stability you can’t even deal 1 damage …

So, sometimes your mates are good, but when the balance suck you can’t do anything, Anet needs to fix this!

@deda I dont want to change class,and i consider my self hybrid freak in a sense that i like to play all classes ,i have about 500 games with each class ,but i dont want to change cause i set my self other goals and dont like to be dictated how and with wht to play.

Sometimes people can’t reroll. I could reroll guardian or war, but I’m bad with them.

Justin ODell.9517:

This discussion is a pretty good example of why I’ve been suggesting we factor in play style and profile information into matchmaking as well.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could say how serious you were about competition and be matched accordingly? I want to make that happen.

Can we have any examples?

how you wanna do this Justing?

ppl have to que up as bunker roamer closedefender? or que up as a class?

this will not never ever work

cause atm we have op warrioz – they would have long wait Que cause everyone play it and there is no spot

so they jsut que as a bunker or closedefender and when match start they play hammermonkey

only good filter would be not allow players lower than rank 10 to que for tournaments

OR

make 3 leagues

starter – rank 1-10 and lower than 15 tournaments played
mid – everyone from leaderboard rank 1%-99% but atleast rank 10+
top – top 1000

and match ppl only with ppl from there league

you even could give players than title “top player” when they are in top 1000 and can only use it while being in top 1000 or something like this

but you cant force palyers to play a special class or meta or whatever … i had good matches with 3 mesmers in my team or 2 spiritrangerz or 2 guardians i even had a match with 2 engis in my team + 1 thief and they made good stealth play

this was fun

when players dont wanna play the meta and just paly whatever they can paly than they should can do it

only good filter would be not allow players lower than rank 10 to que for tournaments

once again, rank doesn’t mean anything. If you farmed your glory, being r50 doesn’t mean you’re good.

I like your “leagues” idea, but this shouldn’t based on rank, but on players skills.

it wasnt about there skilll – more like rank 1-10 should fight eachother and not get stomped from higher players

they should first learn before go in tournaments so rank 1-10 AND people with lower than 20 palyed tournaments should fight eachother
matches should be unranked and to find there MMR before step in real Tournaments

to find there MMR before step in real Tournaments

Everyone should have a test or something to define their real MMR. It’s the best solution to avoid ranks problem and focus on real players performances.

Rank should not even be displayed in team matches. Rank shouldn’t even have been a thing. It has zero reflection on player skill and it leads to threads like this. What if an extremely experienced player makes an alt account? They’d be rank 1 but they’d still probably be better than most of you.

Justin ODell.9517:

This discussion is a pretty good example of why I’ve been suggesting we factor in play style and profile information into matchmaking as well.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could say how serious you were about competition and be matched accordingly? I want to make that happen.

No, please no.

At that point, just split the Qs.
You are effectively at that point splitting the Q, so legitimately do it and you’ll end with a much better result.
Makes casualQ (can que with any amount of players, based on rank alone) and rankedQ (must be over rank 20~, split into team or solo, MMR exc).

You can’t pile everything into a matchmaking algorithm…
It’s just going to become a ridiculous mess if it even works (I don’t have much faith in your coders, no offense)…

Splitting the ques into casual and ranked would do the exact same thing as making a togleable ‘competitive or not’, but allow people to play non-shenanigans 5v5s (SPvP) while testing out new specs, people could actually que casually with friends!! omg a social MMO what a great idea to boot it’d make the leaderboard workable at the same time (last post I did about ELO hell).

I know you guys are floundering for a PvP population so ‘splitting Qs again’ is probably taboo… but if you could convince them a competitive toggle is worthwhile… there are nearly only percs from that to splitting ques.

You do have to watch out for TPvP group que dieing though, since it is already at a very small population and most of those people that play it just want to que casually with friends (very few people take GW2 PvP very competitively, kind of a tragedy).
But even then, the game is sooo much more casual centric right now (so few people actually take TPvP seriously) and this will help casuals a ton…

(you guys have steadily been getting further and further from a social MMO, the thing that’s like a cornerstone to online gaming… friends make you not bored… people may talk of leaving because of bad gameplay but people only ever quit when they’re bored…)

Makes casualQ (can que with any amount of players, based on rank alone) and rankedQ (must be over rank 20~, split into team or solo, MMR exc).

What if an extremely experienced player makes an alt account? They’d be rank 1 but they’d still probably be better than most of you.

No need to add more … here’s the answer, and i’m agree with @Write.

Today I played with some r40 teams (I’m 39), and they were noobs … Everyone had the same rank, but their skills and performances were horribly bad. I did my job, I defended close, because no one wanted to (sadness), and the other were … running arround?!

Btw, if you want to be a casual, go Hotjoin.

Well suddenly I have a new idea, what about 2 or 3 tests, in order to measure your skills and performances.

- 1 defence test : Let’s say you need to defend a point against 1 2 or 3 npc ( with different classes ). With this system can evaluate your “defence” skills.

- 1 Offensive test : the contrary, you need to get a points with 1 2 or 3 defenders. System evaluate your “offencise” skills.

- 1 Tactic test : harder, but why not. I don’t have example for this one.

- 1 PvP test: The system measure your ability to fight. A purely 1v1 or 2v1 for example.

At the end of these test, a “Pre-MMR” will be determined. With this system, rank doesn’t matter, only skills and perf measured.

Futhermore, it will performed for EACH class. And of course, depending on your class, the test will be a bit different. For example, if you’re a bunker guardian, some parameters will need to be done.

Yuki.1765:

Today I played with some r40 teams (I’m 39), and they were noobs … Everyone had the same rank, but their skills and performances were horribly bad. I did my job, I defended close, because no one wanted to (sadness), and the other were … running arround?!

Rank is a show of experience, which isn’t entirely the same thing as skill.
Agreed.

But almost every MMO got by just fine with casual matchmaking being based off of experience and experience alone.
Not every match will be dead even, no one expects unrankedQs to be in ANY game, but most will be close enough to be interesting.

Yuki.1765:

Btw, if you want to be a casual, go Hotjoin.

Anyways, the issue of a messed up MMR system, there has to be a change to the que setup, for one, there HAS to be a base necessary rank to que for ranked play (or else random people with no idea how to play GW2 will keep joining it, screwing up MMR)
There has to be a change to what modes you can click to get a match or else Anet’s gonna keep wasting time trying to bandaid up a sinking ship.

Writetyper.1985:

Rank should not even be displayed in team matches. Rank shouldn’t even have been a thing. It has zero reflection on player skill and it leads to threads like this. What if an extremely experienced player makes an alt account? They’d be rank 1 but they’d still probably be better than most of you.

As I said, I’m not talkin about exp players with second acc’s.
Rank IS reflection of skill at some point. If it’s not farmed in hot joins/skyhammer, but on tournaments. Gettin to r50 gives u HUGE experience. And U CAN’T be skilled without experience, coz some things, some knowledge comes with time. And I get ppl who are cleary nonexperienced. That’s the case.

Michael.7382:

Writetyper.1985:

Rank should not even be displayed in team matches. Rank shouldn’t even have been a thing. It has zero reflection on player skill and it leads to threads like this. What if an extremely experienced player makes an alt account? They’d be rank 1 but they’d still probably be better than most of you.

As I said, I’m not talkin about exp players with second acc’s.
Rank IS reflection of skill at some point. If it’s not farmed in hot joins/skyhammer, but on tournaments. Gettin to r50 gives u HUGE experience. And U CAN’T be skilled without experience, coz some things, some knowledge comes with time. And I get ppl who are cleary nonexperienced. That’s the case.

Y’know I would agree but I’ve seen some horrible r40/50’s, and I’ve seen some really good r20’s who got a lot of PvP experience from playing WvW and then just had to learn how to play the maps. There are too many variables and assumptions to say for sure whether someone is good or bad based off rank.

Oh, so you did fix the matchmaking ? Good new ;

I don’t care waiting 20 min to play a match, but please, make lvl 10- differences between players.

What if you are Usain Bolt, and you run against a 10 year old pupil ? Not fun at all

We don’t care about the queue, we care about legitimacy on the fight.

Writetyper.1985:

Y’know I would agree but I’ve seen some horrible r40/50’s, and I’ve seen some really good r20’s who got a lot of PvP experience from playing WvW and then just had to learn how to play the maps. There are too many variables and assumptions to say for sure whether someone is good or bad based off rank.

Not… good or bad.
Competent.

Almost every MMO has managed with the ‘slap together in a day approach’ of just an incremented rank ques (0-10 together, 11-20, exc) and when you hit cap you are thrown into a general que of max ranked players.
Know why?
Everyone in the end que knew how the game is played.
They all had a decent idea of what should be done and what shouldn’t.
That’s enough for decent gaming to happen.

But that isn’t necessary, at this point, no one takes GW2 that seriously.

People just want somewhat consistently decent matches.
That means cutting out people who have no idea what they are doing from ranked que.
Those people are mainly inexperienced players.

I agree, I even saw a terribad r60’s lol. Www enviroment is different – on zerk theif u can get over +100 crit dmg etc with food etc, its not appropirate. There u 1shot sum1, here u need 5x times more effort.
I just had an under r10 in a team, i ask why he cap point with me, no response, after match: i jsut wanted to try tournament. While he feeded all game. And i ask, why the hell im matched with such guys.

@Paradox

I’ve never played with those players, but before saying : ahhhhh lvl 3 omg, MMR suck !!
→ That lv3 or lv5 were bad or not ?
→ Did they contribute to the game(s) (w/e the result) ?

If i’m right, you won with that lv5 ranger. It is also the same with your lv3 ranger. Also seems that they killed or cap-ed some positions.

Once again i’ve never met those players, but when I read you, I smell some hate against people bellow your rank. Maybe I’m wrong, but can you tell me if they were useless in the game or not ?

ParadoX.3124:

Oh, so you did fix the matchmaking ? Good new ;

I don’t care waiting 20 min to play a match, but please, make lvl 10- differences between players.

What if you are Usain Bolt, and you run against a 10 year old pupil ? Not fun at all

We don’t care about the queue, we care about legitimacy on the fight.

games were close.
that means MM works.

I have no idea why people care so much about hotjoin ranks, It shows nothing. In [VoTF] we have many players who are ranked 5-15 and are 100x better than most rank 50+ players. Ranks means nothing, maybe some experience but again you could get ur rank from skyhammer farm.

I’ve played 18 matches of solo queue, i’ve had 2 5v3s (i was in the 3 on both) and several 5v4s. There absolutely needs to be stiff, stiff penalties for leaving a solo or tourney match.

In both 5v3 cases, we started 5v4. GG.

ok , i just played 1 solo queue here are the results —>
why on earth do i get matched with such newbies at primetime 21:00 ? Arenanet can you explain me why i get matched with people which are rank 1000+ while i am top 50 on leaderboards?

Edo Tensei.8254:

ok , i just played 1 solo queue here are the results —>
why on earth do i get matched with such newbies at primetime 21:00 ? Arenanet can you explain me why i get matched with people which are rank 1000+ while i am top 50 on leaderboards?

nice chat conversation on the screenshot.

Oh god, you’ve checked their LB ranks … (waste of time?)

there’s lots of volatility with the LB. If you lose 2 or 3 games, your rank will be decreased by 100+ ranks. And, that’s a big problem.

Since MMR is broken (imo it is), like @garetth says :

Pray that you don’t just get unlucky and get a few teams with a few people who aren’t taking TPvP seriously or are having off-days… leading you to a downward spiral and back into the worst elo hell I’ve ever seen.

Imo, lots of players are undervalued, and prolly some overvalued. It doesn’t they are bad.

Don’t forget the 5v4 5v3 games. Maybe those players lost lots of ranks cuz of that (who knows?)

I’d rather w8 5-7misn for match but with apropirate enemy/team than 1min for such game. Just ended match, and it was a farm for me…I can’t call this other way, 20+ kills, enemy rank 1, 6, etc… So my personal mmr is like this? to be matched vs such enemy? C’mon…

Yuki.1765:

@Paradox

I’ve never played with those players, but before saying : ahhhhh lvl 3 omg, MMR suck !!
-> That lv3 or lv5 were bad or not ?
-> Did they contribute to the game(s) (w/e the result) ?

If i’m right, you won with that lv5 ranger. It is also the same with your lv3 ranger. Also seems that they killed or cap-ed some positions.

Once again i’ve never met those players, but when I read you, I smell some hate against people bellow your rank. Maybe I’m wrong, but can you tell me if they were useless in the game or not ?

On the first match, there were 3 Thief, it’s absolutly no balanced, that’s why we won ; On the second match, you can see that the warior have been disconnected, that’s the reason why we also won. Otherwize, in term of pure skill, we would have lost

Ultima dues, you are seriously kittened. Have you ever checked the PvP population lately? By that I mean people who know what they are doing. Devs can’t do anything about matchmaking if there are literally no good players online, maybe that will change with 10 dec patch, but for now, you will have to deal with noobs until decent players start playing again. But atm there is nothing to play for in pvp so 99% of the good players quit the game and are waiting for a good pvp patch/ another game that cares about pvp.

I heard good things about 10 dec patch so hopefully good players will come back to the game after that patch.

Also I would rather play with rank 5 players rather than wait over 5 minutes, who cares about a broken leaderboard that you want to be on. Just enjoy the game that give you nothing “for now :P”. And even if you get decent players and win, what are you getting? a useless chest so you are implying that you want to wait 1h to win 1 game and get a useless chest. You really need to get a life!

Also Justin, I love reading your funny posts <3

Edo Tensei.8254:

ok , i just played 1 solo queue here are the results —>
why on earth do i get matched with such newbies at primetime 21:00 ? Arenanet can you explain me why i get matched with people which are rank 1000+ while i am top 50 on leaderboards?

How do you know you lost because of them? How do you know you are actually better? Cos you spam your skills faster? Ah cos your are top 50 on solo q lb. Imo solo q lb makes no sense in the first place. This game is about teamplay, how is someone supposed to coordinate well without being on ts? I have the feeling solo q will never be balanced. It’s the nature of that game mode. On top of that I suspect there are so few players left that basically you will be forced into playing with whom is available at that time.
If you don’t like solo q just don’t play it. Tbh I was excited when they released this mode months ago, since most of my friends had left the game and I had stopped playing tpvp. Well I played only one match…I got grouped with other 40+ players vs an average lvl 10 group. Now they said they have fixed the mmr, we will see, as it stands now this game is not worth playing, I log only for my daily and I feel like an idiot every time I play. Who knows maybe I am addicted to this kitten.

Edo Tensei.8254:

I gonna start to make a blacklist and go AFK if i ever play again with newbies in a Match. Hopefully those Newbies ragequit and some Day i dont have to play with newbies again because all left.

Why so mad? Sorry but it’s not really their fault. What you said sounds extremely childish.

mhh
point is i dont wanna wait this long – 5 min is fine and i dont care for mixed matches as long both sides have same

whats the problem when have 2 top 10 players 2 top 500 players 2 top 1000 2 with 80% and 2 50% and each team has 1 from the pair?

its a fair matchup

Ixl Super Ixl.7258:

Also I would rather play with rank 5 players rather than wait over 5 minutes, who cares about a broken leaderboard that you want to be on. Just enjoy the game that give you nothing “for now :P”. And even if you get decent players and win, what are you getting? a useless chest so you are implying that you want to wait 1h to win 1 game and get a useless chest. You really need to get a life!

The problem, at least for myself, is that the game is not really fun to begin with. If the game was fun I can guarantee there would be much more players online every time.
Pick real sporst for example, not everyone is a pro but lots of people still compete just for fun. In powerlifting I see all the time guys who can barely bench their own bw, but they keep competing and having fun, even in a sport plagued by drug abuse.
What is it so fun about gw2? The spam and screen cluttering is disgusting. I suppose lots of people are just addicted to the game. Some others, maybe like you, maybe not, simply don’t want their ephemeral moment of glory in this game to end. That’s my opinion.

You are wrong, I haven’t played any serious team queue since PAX. Simply because there is nothing to play for. Maybe new game modes / reward will make the game more fun.

I have the feeling solo q will never be balanced. It’s the nature of that game mode

So pessimistic

This game is about teamplay, how is someone supposed to coordinate well without being on ts?

Well, 1st people should start communicate … Most of the time chan map is dead!

and what about a public Tn TS ? I think it would be great.

Maybe new game modes / reward will make the game more fun.

hope so

Justin ODell.9517:

We have several plans being implemented right now that are aimed at increasing the number of players.

Any of these plans are aimed into balance correctly? active play instead of passive? conditions not replacing direct damage n’ so on?

Justin ODell.9517:

pedrst.3127:

Justin ODell.9517:

We have several plans being implemented right now that are aimed at increasing the number of players.

Any of these plans are aimed into balance correctly? active play instead of passive? conditions not replacing direct damage n’ so on?

Sorry, I know the skills and balance team has some great things planned but I don’t know what is likely to be release, or what their timetable is.

Thanks for your answer. Time to counter-strike then for competitive game for now then.

Michael.7382:

Dear Justin, the part with “accurate skill” is not fun at all. If u want to loose next player, sure it may be funny for You.
Since when a leadder position is accurate measurment of skill? A TOP1 is unbeatable godlike and top700 can’t beat a top5 coz they are far away fro meach other?
I’m not some kind of pve player that farmed skyhammer to r50, I played tournaments much to lvl up to 50 (took me half of year to make 40-50).
Funny thing, I try to help “fresh” guys when they ask for build or some kind of help, I belive in pvp in this game, I’m still here while many ppl alrdy left frustrated and You come to me with such response? Nice to know how much respect You have to Your players.
I jsut wanted to talk about it, maybe to improve it to make the game more fun but I see You don;t care about it?

There is a huge difference between the top 100 and rank 500-1,000. It’s genuinely astronomical, and anyone who’s played at both levels can vouch for it.

Playing a lot doesn’t really mean anything. I know a lot of players who play a lot but are still really bad at the game.

This entire thread seems to confuse playing a lot for skill.

Being naturally skilled for something is far away from enough. If u don’t practise much, even average ppl will be better than u coz they will outshine u with their hard work. Being skilled more than other + lot of hard work and practise = real succes. Not biased “im skilled”. Playing a lot means that, ofc if u care what u do and not do it only 4fun, that u get experience with every match u play and u get better, if this is your goal. U seem to not getting it.

There seem to be a lot of confusion regarding the pvp rank and the breadboard position. I suggest to rename the pvp rank (those with rabbits and tigers) to pvp experience level.

Justin ODell.9517:

I’ve gotten a few PMs about this, so I’ll post what I was going to say to each of them here.

There are only three things being considered in the current matchmaking; 1) your MMR, 2) how long you’ve been waiting, and 3) who is available to play with.

1) MMR is not broken, it works exactly as it should and I’ve personally verified this. Yes, we want to place new players on the curve better, but simply lowering the default rating will only work if the curve has already been established. As a reminder, everyone’s MMR is being reset on the 29th, so that takes changing the default off of the table.

If you’re trying to gauge the correctness of the MMR based off the leaderboards, you will very likely fail because decay makes things much less predictable and consistent. Even more so now that we have increased the frequency of the decay calculation.

For details on the MMR system we use, please go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glicko_rating_system

We’re open to suggestions regarding other ways of handling MMR.

We’re discussing ways to place new players more appropriately, and we’re open to suggestions in this area as well. The only thing that is off the table right now is splitting the user base, we can’t do this until it gets larger. We have several plans being implemented right now that are aimed at increasing the number of players.

2) When we scan through the queue to find matches, we use your ratings deviation. As time goes on we gradually increase your ratings deviation to increase the odds that we’ll find a match for you. This does lead to lower quality matches, but its very common to do this on the assumption that a lower quality match is better than no match at all.

If you’re on the outer edges of the ratings curve, this is very likely the culprit for why you’re being matched with players with a much different skill level than your own.

3) Related to #2. During low concurrency you will likely need to wait a longer amount of time because there are fewer people around your skill level, increasing the odds #2 will kick in and you’ll get a lower quality match.

That said, a few people that are on the high rating side are upset because they are now being grouped with lower skill players. Before the matchmaking change these higher rated players would be grouped together and they would just stomp the other team. Now they are being shuffled around on teams, which means no more lopsided matches in general. You can still get a lopsided by chance just because of who was available at the time, but even when this happens the match is still much more even than before the changes went in.

I guess that’s the long way of saying “Oh, sorry guys, but for the last year we screwed PvP so much, that now there ain’t enough players for you to get matched up with”.