Guild Wars 2

Ladder decay is a necessity that was not only present in GW1, but it’s absence is becoming an issue on the GW2 ladder. If ladder decay is already present, it isn’t strong enough, if it is not present, it is sorely needed.

At present, several players have alternate/secondary/tertiary accounts that occupy spots in the top 50 positions of the ladder. While considering this point as a standalone, it may not seem insignificant. However, being top 50 or less on the leader-board and losing against a player(s) with low or no significant MMR drastically tanks your team’s rating. While only a couple of wins basically gets you to top 100/50, what we are seeing is just the beginning. The need to smurf in order to test ideas and compositions is another angle to this particular issue as well – but we’ve been told custom arenas are coming at some point. As a matter of revenue, I can see the reluctance in eliminating the ability to have more than single account on the leaderboard – and that isn’t what I would suggest.

Ladder/rating decay needs to be implemented to prevent a bottle-necked MMR at the top of the leaderboard.

Completely agree, this is a serious issue that needs to be addressed if the ladder is to have any “legitimacy”.

something like 10 tournies a week min to prevent some decay would be reasonable.

What about good players who don’t play every waking moment?

I agree, see some of the conversations about this in my thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Leaderboards-Decay

“Every waking moment” isn’t needed, reasonable decay is. 10 tPvP games a week minimum is fair. Keeps people moving up and down and stops stagnation.

Rating shouldn’t decay but ranking does, so if people never reach your rating, it is not your fault per say.

Rating and ranking are used somewhat informally here. by ranking we mean where you rank on the leader board based off your rating.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Rating shouldn’t decay but ranking does, so if people never reach your rating, it is not your fault per say.

if you dont play for a long time, your skill gets lower, so even a rating decay is reasonable especially when we have a rating system which allows for a fast rating gain when winning against better oponents

Ranking: They should just disappear after some time from the leaderboards.
They would need to play again to make them appear again. Would prevent abuse from people getting the first rank and then not playing anymore because they are afraid to lose and just want to stay there at rank 1.

Rating should stay same. You don’t know how much you should lower if if someone’s skills get lower. You don’t know the people. One might play like a noob after not having played for 1 week. Others might still play like pro even if they have not played for 4 weeks.

Maybe make the first few matches count stronger towards the ranking after not having played for a long time. If they lose in a row they’ll be ranked much lower than someone that played actively the last weeks and lost a few matches in a row.

I think seven in a week is more then fair. I know a lot of people have busy schedules/lives, but if you can’t play one game a day. You really shouldn’t be able to sit on the top of the leaderboard.

MaXi.3642:

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Rating shouldn’t decay but ranking does, so if people never reach your rating, it is not your fault per say.

if you dont play for a long time, your skill gets lower, so even a rating decay is reasonable especially when we have a rating system which allows for a fast rating gain when winning against better oponents

The Glicko system got a better way to handle that than a rating decay which could have unforseen consequences as a deflation of the rating.

In Glicko, which you can see the details in the WvWvW leaderboard, each entry got a deviation value which is what matters here. Deviation is kind of how much the rating system trusts your rating. Deviation usually decays over time.

Something neat you can do is to not include in the main leaderboard at all the players that are above a certain deviation. That way new players need a few games to enter the leaderboard and absent players will naturally decay out of it into the privisional rating leaderboard. But they won’t lose their whole rating either, just need like a new player to play some more games to be rated again.

This needs to be addressed!