Guild Wars 2

I’ve been quite passive in the forums, just here or there lurking around in my Reaper Shroud to see what people have been talking about.

And I’m starting to see a common pattern honestly,

People complaining about the matchmaking this season and why the kitten they can’t climb.

Now by any means, I’m not a pro player and I don’t consider myself great at any class. I’m just a gamer who fell in love with the Necromancer class and have been playing pvp with it for a long time. When Heart of Thorns came out, and the official seasons of ranked pvp came with it, I was stuck in Emerald for the entire season. Yeah thats how bad I was lmao.

I kept blaming teammates and lag and just stacking up mounds of excuses and excuses as to why I couldn’t kittening get out of Emerald. So, one day I decided to tryhard and record an entire game that I played. I kept analyzing the footage to see what my teammates were doing wrong.

And then while I was watching the footage of the match, it hit me like a truck. I was the one playing like an idiot and playing garbage and rotating like a random carousel. Just from that one footage I realized for myself that it wasn’t my teammates fault, it was basically me.

So I worked on it, and by the time Season 2 came dodge rolling around I was able to make it into Legendary. Same for season 3, and season 4.

“Oh thats nice, raise your horn and ego even more you elitist prick.”

No no no, that’s not what this thread is about. I make it sound so easy to get into Legendary, but trust me it was still a struggle.

Yes, you will get unfair matchmaking. Yes, you will face against duo que’d players on voice, yes you will get people on your team that have let’s just say “unique” builds that clearly don’t work in ranked. Yes, you will lose 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10+ in a row, and you will rage indefinitely and you will definitely want to punch or destroy something. Yes, you’ll get people on your team that have absolutely 0 idea about Conquest or Ranked mechanics, and definitely hell yes there are problems in the new matchmaking that ArenaNet has made.

But, it’s only been out for ONE, not FOUR, one season. Now, before you go raise your meta builds up on me and torture me while calling me a white knight for ArenaNet, let me assure you I’m nowhere near that border lmao.

Remember what I said about me being stuck in Emerald in season 1? Yeah, I wanted to go in the forums and blame everything on the matchmaking system and yell at ArenaNet for making sPvP trash and terrible in Guild Wars 2. Then, after I watched the footage of me backpedaling, clicking abilities, (even clicking the yellow bar to dodge cuz I didn’t have it bound) and spamming my marks on staff all in one place like the kitten I was. After I fixed all of that and Season 2 came rolling by, I dragged and carried myself to Legendary. By no means was it easy, because like I said before, you will get que trolled. It happens to everyone, and it will always happen to everyone. That’s just how it is.

I got lucky, and got placed into Platinum 2. I’m slowly but surely climbing my way to Legendary, but getting +5 for every win and losing -24 for every loss is making me want to go into HULK SMASH mode.

So what’s the actual point of this thread? Well my actual point is, before you blame anyone of your teammates, before you blame any of ArenaNet’s matchmaking algorithms, look at carefully and analyze how you play out in the field first. I’m not saying the good old quote “git gud and carry pleb” I’m simply saying maybe there are a few things YOU as a player can improve on before you go flame your teammates or ArenaNet, cuz believe me I needed some major improvements. If any of you ever need help with general sPvP questions like mechanics, and how to rotate properly you can certainly ask. As for class related questions, I’m afraid I can only answer Necromancer/some Engineer class questions as I suck at multiclassing at the other classes.

That’s all I wanted to say, now you can reply down below and call me a white knight elitist kitten prick. :P

Divine.3279:

I got lucky, and got placed into Platinum 2.

Hope you are not one of those guys with 15-4 score in plat 2. Also previous seasons, doesnt matter what rank u were tbh because it was a grind.

Well, I didn´t get lucky with 3-7 (+ one game my pc crashed) and ended up at 600 rating (lowest bronze lul). Everyone who played in bronze knows whats going on there. People capping points in a threesome, dying to svanir, don´t know their roles, go afk for easy ascended gear farming etc.. But since players on both teams are kitten I was able to carry many games (not all though of course). Meanwhile I climbed from 600 to about 1200 with roughly 70 % winratio playing solo. I didn´t play many games though since I get constantly frustrated by kittenty teammates. It´s just not fun at this rating. Players in Silver are not really better than in Bronze.

I completely agree with you in regards to players preferring to blame matchmaking/bad team mates or whatever instead of looking at themselves. I’d love to be able to record my own games and look over them but I’m too much of a scrub to figure out how to make OBS record without lagging out for 2s at a time. (Also, before going into this I feel like I need to emphasise that I accept that I make mistakes too, sometimes really stupid mistakes. I know when I play badly or when I lose focus. If I screw up in a fight I’ll apologise or give myself a mental kick to wake up and start playing properly.)

Unfortunately I can also completely empathise with people who are angry about the matchmaking system and who do rage at their team mates. I’m usually not the type of person to call my team mates imbeciles, but I’m afraid sometimes the matches I get are just too kitten stupid.

Last night I had a particularly crappy experience and lost almost a tier, so now I’m just above gold tier 2. In one of my matches we had 2 necros, me being one of them. I asked the other necro if he could switch and he said no, he needed necro wins for the PvP wings and had apparently only played 1-2 games on necro. I explained he could switch back to necro if we were winning, he said “cool, thanks, I didn’t know that” and proceeded to spend the game accomplishing nothing.
Another match, their team has a condi zerker on close to stop our thief decapping, our druid decided to camp close to stop the enemy thief decapping. Except he didn’t, he either died or was too busy afk auto attacking mid with lb to notice.
One game was a complete throw when the only person who came to help defend lord was a kittening s/d thief who just so happens to advertise himself as best thief EU.
Oh, of course, who can forget the game where we won mid so our ele afk’d there whilst the enemy team played sides and we had no support. I’m not exaggerating when I say this, this guy just stood on mid, blissfully content at his supremacy in stoically holding a 1cap whilst his team tried to 4v5.

This isn’t bronze, this is T3 gold. Whilst I appreciate that gold isn’t exactly ESL, surely the players that I’m getting matched with should know better than this.
It’s not that I complain about idiots on forums and don’t try to change the tide of the game, but there’s only so much I can say in /t to try and direct people, or even do. I can’t stop a hero DH rushing far after winning mid and dying to 2-3 respawns. I can’t stop 4 people going close after winning mid to kill that 1 guy that respawned the earliest and decapped far, leaving me wide open to getting ganked on mid, no matter how hard I kite and stall. I can only ask them not to, but it seems the people I get matched with do not give a kitten .

Scykosix.7836:

Divine.3279:

I got lucky, and got placed into Platinum 2.

Hope you are not one of those guys with 15-4 score in plat 2. Also previous seasons, doesnt matter what rank u were tbh because it was a grind.

Nah, I have almost 200 games played in platinum 3 atm. As for previous seasons I was able to get Legendary fairly early into the season and not in the very last seconds. Whether it was a grind or not, I’m still proud of myself for being able to get into Legendary for Season 2, 3, and 4 and improving from my Season 1 hell nightmare of being stuck in Emerald :P

Xca.9721:

Well, I didn´t get lucky with 3-7 (+ one game my pc crashed) and ended up at 600 rating (lowest bronze lul). Everyone who played in bronze knows whats going on there. People capping points in a threesome, dying to svanir, don´t know their roles, go afk for easy ascended gear farming etc.. But since players on both teams are kitten I was able to carry many games (not all though of course). Meanwhile I climbed from 600 to about 1200 with roughly 70 % winratio playing solo. I didn´t play many games though since I get constantly frustrated by kittenty teammates. It´s just not fun at this rating. Players in Silver are not really better than in Bronze.

Yeah, like I said before you will get que trolled, I’ve been in that end multiple times over the years that I’ve played sPvP. The only advice I can give you is to keep on trying, and block any afkers/idiotic teammates and que dodge them.

NekoNoKoi.9137:

I completely agree with you in regards to players preferring to blame matchmaking/bad team mates or whatever instead of looking at themselves. I’d love to be able to record my own games and look over them but I’m too much of a scrub to figure out how to make OBS record without lagging out for 2s at a time. (Also, before going into this I feel like I need to emphasise that I accept that I make mistakes too, sometimes really stupid mistakes. I know when I play badly or when I lose focus. If I screw up in a fight I’ll apologise or give myself a mental kick to wake up and start playing properly.)

Unfortunately I can also completely empathise with people who are angry about the matchmaking system and who do rage at their team mates. I’m usually not the type of person to call my team mates imbeciles, but I’m afraid sometimes the matches I get are just too kitten stupid.

Last night I had a particularly crappy experience and lost almost a tier, so now I’m just above gold tier 2. In one of my matches we had 2 necros, me being one of them. I asked the other necro if he could switch and he said no, he needed necro wins for the PvP wings and had apparently only played 1-2 games on necro. I explained he could switch back to necro if we were winning, he said “cool, thanks, I didn’t know that” and proceeded to spend the game accomplishing nothing.
Another match, their team has a condi zerker on close to stop our thief decapping, our druid decided to camp close to stop the enemy thief decapping. Except he didn’t, he either died or was too busy afk auto attacking mid with lb to notice.
One game was a complete throw when the only person who came to help defend lord was a kittening s/d thief who just so happens to advertise himself as best thief EU.
Oh, of course, who can forget the game where we won mid so our ele afk’d there whilst the enemy team played sides and we had no support. I’m not exaggerating when I say this, this guy just stood on mid, blissfully content at his supremacy in stoically holding a 1cap whilst his team tried to 4v5.

This isn’t bronze, this is T3 gold. Whilst I appreciate that gold isn’t exactly ESL, surely the players that I’m getting matched with should know better than this.
It’s not that I complain about idiots on forums and don’t try to change the tide of the game, but there’s only so much I can say in /t to try and direct people, or even do. I can’t stop a hero DH rushing far after winning mid and dying to 2-3 respawns. I can’t stop 4 people going close after winning mid to kill that 1 guy that respawned the earliest and decapped far, leaving me wide open to getting ganked on mid, no matter how hard I kite and stall. I can only ask them not to, but it seems the people I get matched with do not give a kitten .

That’s people for you my friend. Even in Platinum 3 where I am at the moment I still see people sitting on a node and leaving the team at a 4v5, still see idiots rushing to far and dying, still see people playing classes they have 0 clue how to play because of the stupid PvE backpiece ArenaNet implemented. (that was really dumb on ArenaNet’s part to put PvE Gear in a PvP scene) If you play Necromancer like you said, all I can tell you is to just try and survive while killing people in teamfights. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do knowing how squishy our class has become, but that’s literally the only way I carry as a Necromancer is by surviving while killing bunkers like dragonhunter, engineer, elementalist, etc. Hope your ques get better mate!

Scykosix.7836:

Divine.3279:

I got lucky, and got placed into Platinum 2.

Hope you are not one of those guys with 15-4 score in plat 2. Also previous seasons, doesnt matter what rank u were tbh because it was a grind.

You can calculate whether a player is good in how fast they get to Legend in the old system. Good players get to Legend in 60-80 matches in Season 1 through season 4, average players get there in 90-150 and so on and so forth.

Divine, nice story but it doesn’t matter what you are doing when there is someone on your team throwing the match on purpose. It’s very obvious for those of us who have been around a while.

I see this a lot in T3 gold and have no reason to believe it is any better in platinum. It’s that or the matchmaker somehow put a player into high levels that runs into a 1v4 and insta-Gibbs repeatedly.

Without a grind based component, people will mess up ranked with alternate accounts. I feel bad for all the plebs that don’t understand how this is working. They think it is all about the matchmaker, they rage into chat with disbelief at how bad their teammates are, not understanding they are being farmed for rank.

This is the worst system yet. Easily exploited.

Divine.3279:

That’s people for you my friend. Even in Platinum 3 where I am at the moment I still see people sitting on a node and leaving the team at a 4v5, still see idiots rushing to far and dying, still see people playing classes they have 0 clue how to play because of the stupid PvE backpiece ArenaNet implemented.

…or they have a clue how to play and are farming you.

Archon.6480:

Divine, nice story but it doesn’t matter what you are doing when there is someone on your team throwing the match on purpose. It’s very obvious for those of us who have been around a while.

I see this a lot in T3 gold and have no reason to believe it is any better in platinum. It’s that or the matchmaker somehow put a player into high levels that runs into a 1v4 and insta-Gibbs repeatedly.

Without a grind based component, people will mess up ranked with alternate accounts. I feel bad for all the plebs that don’t understand how this is working. They think it is all about the matchmaker, they rage into chat with disbelief at how bad their teammates are, not understanding they are being farmed for rank.

This is the worst system yet. Easily exploited.

“around a while.” When Guild Wars 1 first came out, I was there at that game when it launched and the only thing I did was PvP. The same story goes for Guild Wars 2. Don’t think that I don’t know about people trying to throw matches, because I have seen that and I have been there. Yes, you will lose matches because of people like that, but there are ways YOU can avoid getting them like blocking them and just que dodging. No mmo is perfect at systems, and I mean none. If you think the Pip system was better, you are clearly wrong as it allowed people that weren’t even NEAR legendary to get into it just by grinding. Yes, this ranking system has it’s problems, but there’s always things you can do to try and at least find solutions. As for the alternate accounts, the only incidents i’ve been seeing recently of that is on North America. I play on Europe so I don’t see too many smurf accounts that much. You have to take in account, sometimes your region DOES matter where you are going to be at the end of the season, because some regions have significantly better players than others.

Archon.6480:

Divine.3279:

That’s people for you my friend. Even in Platinum 3 where I am at the moment I still see people sitting on a node and leaving the team at a 4v5, still see idiots rushing to far and dying, still see people playing classes they have 0 clue how to play because of the stupid PvE backpiece ArenaNet implemented.

…or they have a clue how to play and are farming you.

So, you’re telling me when there’s someone sitting on a home node the entire game the other team has a “clue how to play and are farming you.” When a teammate of mine plays lets say Druid for the first time ever in ranked and gets killed over and over the enemy team has “clue how to play and are farming you.” What are you even trying to say here? Please clarify because I really don’t understand.

Divine.3279:

Archon.6480:

Divine.3279:

That’s people for you my friend. Even in Platinum 3 where I am at the moment I still see people sitting on a node and leaving the team at a 4v5, still see idiots rushing to far and dying, still see people playing classes they have 0 clue how to play because of the stupid PvE backpiece ArenaNet implemented.

…or they have a clue how to play and are farming you.

So, you’re telling me when there’s someone sitting on a home node the entire game the other team has a “clue how to play and are farming you.” When a teammate of mine plays lets say Druid for the first time ever in ranked and gets killed over and over the enemy team has “clue how to play and are farming you.” What are you even trying to say here? Please clarify because I really don’t understand.

He has friends on the other team and is helping them farm you. If he stood in home base, it would be obvious. So instead, he runs around being a rally bot and does dumb things the whole match.

Or do you really think that is how he always plays and magically got into Platinum?

Archon.6480:

Divine.3279:

Archon.6480:

Divine.3279:

That’s people for you my friend. Even in Platinum 3 where I am at the moment I still see people sitting on a node and leaving the team at a 4v5, still see idiots rushing to far and dying, still see people playing classes they have 0 clue how to play because of the stupid PvE backpiece ArenaNet implemented.

…or they have a clue how to play and are farming you.

So, you’re telling me when there’s someone sitting on a home node the entire game the other team has a “clue how to play and are farming you.” When a teammate of mine plays lets say Druid for the first time ever in ranked and gets killed over and over the enemy team has “clue how to play and are farming you.” What are you even trying to say here? Please clarify because I really don’t understand.

He has friends on the other team and is helping them farm you. If he stood in home base, it would be obvious. So instead, he runs around being a rally bot and does dumb things the whole match.

Or do you really think that is how he always plays and magically got into Platinum?

Yeah, okay so matchmaking is rigged and people “win-trade.” And this Guardian wasn’t in Platinum, he was in Gold and got matchmaked into Platinum for some odd reason. Before you start spouting out nonsense like this, first let’s be clear that I play in Europe. Do incidents like people paying the other team to do stupid kitten happen in Europe? Probably, but very rarely does it happen up on Platinum. North America is far worse with this kind of problems so I’m guessing that’s the server you play on, and also yes, some people are just that terrible because they get carried in their placement matches and get placed very high up even though they are terrible.

My thoughts on the randomness of match making are included here …. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/A-tale-of-Rise-and-Fall-in-PvP-ranking/first#post6464063

If your bad you’ll likely tank your team near platinum. If you are good, it doesn’t matter so much as getting lucky and not having someone that’s bad.

Incidentally going from mid gold to platinum, to rank 181, to low gold to mid gold I made platinum this weekend. Very seldom can I make any sort of a noticable difference to my games unless I play poorly. Awesome play, good play, winning 1 v 2’s in a match a few times…. ususally makes no difference what so ever.

I was losing games where I was running metaphorical circles around my opponents. Zilch I could do about it. I’m glad you’ve hit good randomness, but let me impart this truth which moderates both of us.

It is true that when people fail they tend to blame others or the system, however when they succeed they have a tendancy to attribute this to their own skill.

You’ve pointed out the first part, be careful about the second.

Great that you finnaly understand that you are not as good as you think – if my 3 other teammates would realize the same, i could finnaly move up to the rank i deserve!

What I struggle with is that sometimes the matchmaking is so awful and terrible that even though I win, I still feel disgusted with it

Don’t tell me you’ve never felt like that.

Bio Flame.4276:

What I struggle with is that sometimes the matchmaking is so awful and terrible that even though I win, I still feel disgusted with it

Don’t tell me you’ve never felt like that.

I´m in silver, so basically every game is kitten.

Bio Flame.4276:

What I struggle with is that sometimes the matchmaking is so awful and terrible that even though I win, I still feel disgusted with it

Don’t tell me you’ve never felt like that.

No, I’ve never felt that feeling before. I hate bringing it up, but I play on Europe (where games are a little bit closer and people tend to be less idiots.) So, I’ve never felt bad about winning because mostly all games I play are either really close or just intense because the enemy team is playing a lot better than ours.

Divine.3279:

No, I’ve never felt that feeling before. I hate bringing it up, but I play on Europe (where games are a little bit closer and people tend to be less idiots.) So, I’ve never felt bad about winning because mostly all games I play are either really close or just intense because the enemy team is playing a lot better than ours.

EU is definitely a lot better in this regard. I had a game last night on NA where I lost 592-10 and lost -13 rating. There was just no way to win that but I got punished anyway.

I think a lot of the team mate grievances are more NA than EU, stuff is a mess over here and generally unfun at all levels (eg. plat and you get staff burn guards)

NekoNoKoi.9137:

but I’m too much of a scrub to figure out how to make OBS record without lagging out for 2s at a time.

Three things are likely key here:

One, use a GPU-based encoder, such as NVENC. Using a software encoder is less dire for GW2 than many games, because GW2 uses just over one core, but it is still far from optimal in terms of cache busting, etc.

Two, make sure you have enough memory that you are not swapping during the recording process.

Three, make sure that the recording is output to a different drive to what GW2 resides on – a separate physical spindle – even for an SSD. It’s more pronounced on spinning rust, but even on an SSD a “heavy” write load (like, say, a video stream) can lead to delays for various reasons on input, which can lead to lag like that.

(heavy in scare-quotes because it’s really not that big, but some SSDs still have nasty log collection latency internally that can lead to .5 second or longer delays at times, etc, under write load. fun times.)

SlippyCheeze.5483:

NekoNoKoi.9137:

but I’m too much of a scrub to figure out how to make OBS record without lagging out for 2s at a time.

Three things are likely key here:

One, use a GPU-based encoder, such as NVENC. Using a software encoder is less dire for GW2 than many games, because GW2 uses just over one core, but it is still far from optimal in terms of cache busting, etc.

Software encoder is still fine if 1) you have at least an i5 3570 or 3570K, and 2) set OBS to higher CPU priority than GW2. That way, the recorder isn’t competing for resources with GW2 (which results in a very laggy recording even if GW2 is minimally affected). The higher CPU priority for the recorder solves the laggy recording while minimizing impact on GW2.

Hardware encoder is still better if you have the hardware for it (namely Nvidia card).