Guild Wars 2

Here, I’ve done your job for you Anet:

1) Make it so new players start with low MMR, not average.
so that you are not grouping new players with no experience alongside average-level veterans.

2) Revert all other players’ MMR to where it was at the beginning of season 2 (veterans with at least 500 ranked games played, for example).
this will give everyone a clean slate (MMR-wise) for the remainder of the season, as it has been disastrous so far.

3) Reduce the variability of MMR for recently-played games for those players who have already played a lot of ranked matches.
so that losing streaks don’t get severely punished and win streaks don’t get extra rewards. some MMR change is necessary, but the current volatility of MMR is causing increasingly severe punishments for losing players and unnecessary rewards for winning players. losing/winning pips is enough of an incentive without worrying about an MMR death-spiral.

4) Put a soft cap on the total MMR difference that two opposing teams will have.
the maximum difference should be reasonable without creating only 50/50 matchups (60/40 or 70/30 might be fair). if a match within this range can’t be found within a reasonable amount of time, look for the closest possible matchup to avoid long queue times and prevent blowouts.

This would create a reward system based on actual player skill that still tries to create competitive matchups where possible. It also would allow players to play on alts or at non-optimal times without getting caught in a losing spiral. In addition, this would prevent newer players or bad players from being carried, while giving them matchups that are both competitive and fair.

Darknicrofia.2604:

vulneraria.4865:

yes if you start to lose this system bring you to probably lose more.
every member of team have similar mmr but the system select a random team for the matchmaking.
so if you start to lose mmr you probably lose again and again…till all this team with 0 mmr are left at zero pips, then you will have a fair match, you win (yes 2 pips!) and then at 2 pips you gonna probably lose again
they need to remove random team matchmaking, they need to have similar mrr avarage as possible.

no, that would just go back to the season 1 model of bad players being able to advance to legendary because they’re farming worse players.

That stilll happens. Remember, you don’t need to be good. You need to be good enough (or lucky enough) to be sorted into the better team. And luck seems to be the more important factor here.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

The gap in your understanding is that you are not always the lower MMR team. The MMR grouping is done by team, but that does not mean that the 2 teams have to have different MMR.

Yes, it is theoretically possible for you to get opponents at your exact mmr range, but let’s look at it more closely. First,the lower mmr in your range you have, the less likely you are to get an enemy at your level or lower – if you are below average, it’s less than 50%, and gets worse from that point down). Second, if you get lucky enough to be assigned opponents of your level, you have ~50% chance to win (and let’s not talk about how it’s entirely possible to lose due to some serious effort in that direction on the part of your teammates). You may of course get even more lucky, and end up fighting against weaker opponents (so, greater chance to win), but the lower you are on MMR, the less likely it is to happen (and the lower the possible advantage).

So, okay, you were lucky enough to win that. Now what? You pray to RNGesus your mmr got up enough that next time you will be in a winning team again, because if not (and you’ll likely still be at way lower than 50% chance to win that second match) you will lose what you just have gained. Again.

In practice, once you got down low enough into the MMR hell hole, the only practically reasonable way to get out of it is to teamQ.

No, waiting till the better players move past you is not an option. You’d still be at the bottom of sorting table.

(Notice, by the way, the one common word here? Yes, it’s not skill, it’s luck. Curiously enough, luck is also something that lets you not get into that situation in the first place.)

Astralporing.1957:

Darknicrofia.2604:

vulneraria.4865:

yes if you start to lose this system bring you to probably lose more.
every member of team have similar mmr but the system select a random team for the matchmaking.
so if you start to lose mmr you probably lose again and again…till all this team with 0 mmr are left at zero pips, then you will have a fair match, you win (yes 2 pips!) and then at 2 pips you gonna probably lose again
they need to remove random team matchmaking, they need to have similar mrr avarage as possible.

no, that would just go back to the season 1 model of bad players being able to advance to legendary because they’re farming worse players.

That stilll happens. Remember, you don’t need to be good. You need to be good enough (or lucky enough) to be sorted into the better team. And luck seems to be the more important factor here.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

The gap in your understanding is that you are not always the lower MMR team. The MMR grouping is done by team, but that does not mean that the 2 teams have to have different MMR.

Yes, it is theoretically possible for you to get opponents at your exact mmr range, but let’s look at it more closely. First,the lower mmr in your range you have, the less likely you are to get an enemy at your level or lower – if you are below average, it’s less than 50%, and gets worse from that point down). Second, if you get lucky enough to be assigned opponents of your level, you have ~50% chance to win (and let’s not talk about how it’s entirely possible to lose due to some serious effort in that direction on the part of your teammates). You may of course get even more lucky, and end up fighting against weaker opponents (so, greater chance to win), but the lower you are on MMR, the less likely it is to happen (and the lower the possible advantage).

So, okay, you were lucky enough to win that. Now what? You pray to RNGesus your mmr got up enough that next time you will be in a winning team again, because if not (and you’ll likely still be at way lower than 50% chance to win that second match) you will lose what you just have gained. Again.

In practice, once you got down low enough into the MMR hell hole, the only practically reasonable way to get out of it is to teamQ.

No, waiting till the better players move past you is not an option. You’d still be at the bottom of sorting table.

(Notice, by the way, the one common word here? Yes, it’s not skill, it’s luck. Curiously enough, luck is also something that lets you not get into that situation in the first place.)

haha exactly

Players that GAMED the system teamed up at start, fed on newbies, got their pips so now they think they’re pros. NOW they’re misleading you saying, “wait a few days”, but hey I don’t blame them. They got theirs! I just wish they were honest about it!

zaced.7948:

gw2 just isn’t for soloquers. get a full team or gtfo.
in a system where one single bad player can mess up the whole match you’re just not supposed to play with rng strangers.
soloq only works in games where you have roles like a carry that can compensate the mistakes of others.
you’re playing a game 99% based on team coordination without a team. isn’t the result kinda obvious?

i do have sympathy with the one or other person frustrated by this, tho. i have had enough matches with people that seemed like they play pvp for the first time in their life even in ruby. it stops in diamond, tho. take this with a grain of salt, i did this on a smurf since my main acc mmr has flattened out over so many years/matches.

the best advice i can give:
if you want to play pvp get a team. if you can’t leave for greener pastures and spare yourself the stress and misery.

QFT

yeah tell other people to gtfo because they disagree with your spoon feed win sprees.
Here’s the thing, why don’t you gtfo since solo players are majority in ANY game.

i actually did gtfo recently. no time to commit to a team so i left. i’m still around for some pve kitten ing around so i’m still on the forums (just inb4 the generic question why i’m still here).

i’m just exaggerating in my tone here, i could have said it in a nicer way but it’s supposed to make an impact (as it did). overall i’m trying to help people spare themselves a lot of frustration or just explain why they’re getting screwed over by matchmaking again and again and again.
some of those whining are just bad players, sure. but some of them are just unlucky, having their mmr and chances for a decent matchup destroyed by clueless teammates randomly diced into their team, be it that the que was long and the algorithm streched out or them being placed at average mmr for their first game.

yes, average mmr for beginners will actually settle by them losing and getting it lowered but what anet does not think about is the collateral damage it does.
what about the year long player with average mmr that actually knows what to do that they drag down in those “initiation matches”. what about them winning against other new players with average mmr (eventually getting a win streak) and getting propelled even higher and messing up matches above average mmr? and so on …

zaced: “in a system where one single bad player can mess up the whole match you’re just not supposed to play with rng strangers.”

+100

Exactly right.

I still don’t understand why Arenanet choose this mechanism for the current pvp season. My husband and I played PVP for years now…we’re not the best of the best (ended in Ruby last season), but we’re certainly not bad either. We’re always on top of our group and we have no issues winning 1vs2, or even 1vs3. We know when to defend and when to cap, etc.

But this season? We keep getting the worst players around. We keep losing, because we get people who just run to far to die over there (because they’re on their own)…and they keep making the same mistakes. We keep getting teams with (for example) 2 warriors, or 2 thiefs, while the other team always seems to have the most perfectly balanced team around (for example: necro, engineer, ranger, ele and guardian). We always end up on top and we keep winning 1vs2, or even 1vs3, but while we’re doing that the other people in our party cannot even defend one other point.

So yeah, we’re really frustrated right now. We managed to get into Emerald, but it took us about 50 games. We had a lose-streak of 30 games.

What are we supposed to do about that? We just had the bad luck that our first match this season was full of noobs on our side? What sort of system is that?

The solution should be simple….not just your team mates must have the same MMR as you, but the enemy team should have the same MMR aswell. How hard is that? At least then we can carry our team, or at least stand a chance. This current system is just unfair for the people who have the skill, but lack the luck.

Thiefz.3695:

Looking at what Anet has posted and looking at the debacle that is Amber at the moment, the reason that most of us are mad is because our MMR is average. As stated by Evan, all new players start with average MMR.

So the scenario at the moment is that you have average PvP’rs who are “Ok” but know their rotations and you have average MMR PvP’rs who have NO idea what to do and believe that this is death match.

So if you are on a loss streak, it’s probably that there are a bunch of newbies as well as a bunch of averages and the sorting hat is putting most of the new players on your team. As others have said, you have people that don’t know their builds and don’t know the meta, and don’t know rotations. You also have bad class stacking. On my teams I saw multiple DH (4 at one point), thieves, warriors, mesmers and on the other team I saw a balanced group of rev, necro, engi, thief, druid. Party balance is also key to winning.

What I will say, it must mean that the PvP is actually healthy at the moment but the question then becomes: If this experience is what we are giving new players out of the box, is it really an experience that they are going to come back to or after 10-15 losses will they just quit or go back to PvE.

I think that ANet really needs to review the idea that MMR should begin for new players at average and lower it ALOT so they can be matched with similar skill sets.

More “I’m better than you; know your place pleb” crap; more bullkitten.

This experience you claim the system is giving them isn’t a static one that will remain this way until the end of the season, because the system has safeguards that prevent rank loss, thus causing the pool of players to eventually dilute.

Referencing Hearthstone which uses an identical system, first week of the season, you face off against tryhards with competitive net decks designed to grind out the ladder and moving from rank 20 to 15 is a slow process of back and forth wins. At the end of the season, the ladder is diluted and you face off against mostly new players and casuals with gimmick decks at rank 20. I didn’t play the season last month, but jumped in at the end and grinded out 20 to 15 on a win streak in a hour.

Advancing thru the divisions at the end of the season won’t carry the same weight and challenge as advancing at the beginning and thus, the experience is incredibly different. Making it to legend by the end is more representative of time investment than actual skill with skill mostly serving to speed up the process.

hotcarl.8621:

Here, I’ve done your job for you Anet:

1) Make it so new players start with low MMR, not average.
so that you are not grouping new players with no experience alongside average-level veterans.

2) Revert all other players’ MMR to where it was at the beginning of season 2 (veterans with at least 500 ranked games played, for example).
this will give everyone a clean slate (MMR-wise) for the remainder of the season, as it has been disastrous so far.

3) Reduce the variability of MMR for recently-played games for those players who have already played a lot of ranked matches.
so that losing streaks don’t get severely punished and win streaks don’t get extra rewards. some MMR change is necessary, but the current volatility of MMR is causing increasingly severe punishments for losing players and unnecessary rewards for winning players. losing/winning pips is enough of an incentive without worrying about an MMR death-spiral.

4) Put a soft cap on the total MMR difference that two opposing teams will have.
the maximum difference should be reasonable without creating only 50/50 matchups (60/40 or 70/30 might be fair). if a match within this range can’t be found within a reasonable amount of time, look for the closest possible matchup to avoid long queue times and prevent blowouts.

This would create a reward system based on actual player skill that still tries to create competitive matchups where possible. It also would allow players to play on alts or at non-optimal times without getting caught in a losing spiral. In addition, this would prevent newer players or bad players from being carried, while giving them matchups that are both competitive and fair.

I like all these ideas, the only thing I would add is each class needs to have a separate mmr on an account. Some people doing dailys in ranked really screw up matchups.

My thinking now is that as people quit and as people are stuck in their divisions, the higher tiers are going to start seeing some issues with games and queues. Maybe it will all work out but either next week will be great or it will be continuing complaints about matchmaking and additionally queue wait times.