Guild Wars 2

And introduce tiers
skip to the second half to skip my intro

Why do we love gaming? Or to be more specific, why do we love PvP? Wether it’s GW2, a MOBA, or an FPS. We play and compete to reach the top. To see how we compare to the competition. To be the best that we can be.

GW2 may not have the best class balance possible, but it has the most seamless 3rd person combat I’ve experienced in any MMO. Which is the reason why i still play GW2, and its PvP side nearly on a daily basis. I say this because i know many of you agree, but we’re here to talk about what i first opened this discussion on. The leaderboards.

We can also all agree the current leaderboards in no way shows skill in this games PvP. Which is why I and many other players struggle to find a reason to take tPvP serious, and use it as a way to just kill time. The original leaderboards had it’s flaws, but if you were to look back at the original boards front page players compared to today’s front page players there’s no question as to which showed player skill more accurately.

Anet wants to have lower queue times and better possibilities of competitive matches by combining team and solo queue. Yet the current form of matchmaking is making that very difficult. Add that with the low amount of players at certain hours and it leads to blow outs.

Now with all of that being said lets talk about what i mean by tier lists. I’m talking about the players of this game. I’ve played with or against every player worth mentioning in NA. I can tell you exactly who is A tier, and who would be B tier (depending on how strict anet makes the tier list). The tier list would easily go down to aleast 2 more tiers of players. Think about how easy matchmaking would be if players were matched according to their tier. To then be able to climb the tiers, or be lowered accordingly. Think about the super pug vs super pug matches created solely by the tier list. Let’s not forget about the new players getting their taste in ranked games playing in the F tier along side others in the F tier.

The only way to ascend tiers is by having a high win percentage in your current tier. Making it easy for good players to advance and not so good players stay behind. Of course winning in a full group will be easier and should give less rating unless versing another group. Whilst a solo player losing to a group in their tier shouldn’t have their rating punished as much.

There are still many other scenarios to take in to account. Like 3 A tier players in a party with 2 F tier players who are good but just haven’t played any ranked games for whatever reason. They’d be averaged out in to C or B tier and stomp them until they reach A tier. Things like that will happen for a long time until everyone is sorted out.

I feel like I’ve said about all there is to say on my suggestion. Does anyone have anything to add? Have anything in mind that i didn’t discuss? Or want to talk about why you’d prefer the current numerical leaderboards?

Not enough players

Narkodx.1472:

Not enough players

Not enough balanced matchmaking or incentive. That’s why we’re on the forums posting to make changes for the better.

Don’t really need tiers. Just change their percentile scoring into a point scoring system. A win gives 20 points and a loss you lose 15 points. This way the amount of times you play actually matters but the amount of times you win matters too.

Martin.6381:

Narkodx.1472:

Not enough players

Not enough balanced matchmaking or incentive. That’s why we’re on the forums posting to make changes for the better.

I don’t disagree but what would Tier A have? 20? maybe 30 players? While Tier F has 3000 players who play 3 games a day for the daily

Counter question – When has Anet backed away from a change they made and actually admitted to making a mistake?

Narkodx.1472:

Martin.6381:

Narkodx.1472:

Not enough players

Not enough balanced matchmaking or incentive. That’s why we’re on the forums posting to make changes for the better.

I don’t disagree but what would Tier A have? 20? maybe 30 players? While Tier F has 3000 players who play 3 games a day for the daily

Counter question – When has Anet backed away from a change they made and actually admitted to making a mistake?

Yeah 20 to 30 or so is about what i figure.

But isn’t that what makes competitive gaming so much fun? To be a part of a small percentage of people and say you’re the best?

A tiers could easily be matched with B tiers. That’s no different than what we’ve all had to deal with since launch. It would give B tiers some insight as to what they’d need to improve on. Same thing could go with F tiers and D tiers.

As for Anet admitting defeat and revamping something…

Nevermind
you’re right

Let’s go play runescape yo

GW2 has been out for a three years. Some people have several thousand hours practicing PvP.

Some have learned to take mechanical skill and group assistance and map understanding to a completely different level way beyond 90% of the players.

Yes, they would have a small bracket. There aren’t that many of them. And yes, they are the best.

But the game should exist for the pleasure of the majority. Not this minority. They can move on to learn something else if they can’t have fun in their rightful bracket.

I don’t need to be reminded every single season of their ability. I have already acknowledged it.

Laserbolt.6731:

GW2 has been out for a three years. Some people have several thousand hours practicing PvP.

Some have learned to take mechanical skill and group assistance and map understanding to a completely different level way beyond 90% of the players.

Yes, they would have a small bracket. There aren’t that many of them. And yes, they are the best.

But the game should exist for the pleasure of the majority. Not this minority. They can move on to learn something else if they can’t have fun in their rightful bracket.

I don’t need to be reminded every single season of their ability. I have already acknowledged it.

How would this not help the minority?
By keeping them away from the A and B tier players unless they work up to being able to play against them.

Martin,

I wasn’t disagreeing.

I think tiers are good. I was just predicting that those in the top, very, very small tier, would not be able to find games when they felt like it, and they would want newb cannon fodder by having lower brackets play against them so the queue times are not an hour long.

Hopefully the upcoming change to the leaderboards will go back to being dependant on wins and who you beat. Luke the good ole days.

not enough players. You can clearly see this by the quality of matches at different times. I play mostly at prime time and the match making in general is pretty good a lot of close matches and comeback win/losses . Once in a while I play during the morning , man it’s always horrid at those hrs, you pretty much know if you won or lost the match in the first 2 mins.

A tier or league system does nothing to improve matchmaking. In any computer game, tiers/leagues are only a means for players to be better identify themselves when compared with a rating number. Behind the scenes, matching is done based on the players’ match-making rating (MMR). A league/tier is just a block of players in a rating range; that block has moveable end-points to account for shifts in population. If MMRs are calculated well and you’re properly matched with someone of similar MMR, you’re both likely in the MMR range of your league/tier unless you’re at the extremes of its MMR range.

It would be good to have a tier system as a way to express MMR compared with the pure MMR number since MMR distributions are usually not even. It also allows decay or inactivity calculations to be done in the background. And it could dissuade top players from sitting on rating because they don’t know how far apart they are from others.

The problems you’re seeing in matchmaking are due to bugs in the calculation (Justin fixed one a week or so ago), parameter weights being in flux, the struggle of balancing wait time with rating difference in a relatively small pool, and accurately determining the contribution of an individual in a team game.

Your tiers proposal doesn’t address any of that.

Exedore.6320:

accurately determining the contribution of an individual in a team game.

Does MMR even take this into consideration? I thought it was just a game of ping pong between opponent team MMR and your team MMR and whether the match was a win or a loss.

Exedore.6320:

snip

You misunderstood the point of my thread. Although matchmaking is a big issue I’m more concerned about the leaderboards in terms of not being an accurate representation of the actual leaders of PvP. Wether the ladder/tier system would improve matchmaking or not is debatable sure, but the accuracy of the current leaderboards is not.

Martin.6381:

You misunderstood the point of my thread. Although matchmaking is a big issue I’m more concerned about the leaderboards in terms of not being an accurate representation of the actual leaders of PvP. Wether the ladder/tier system would improve matchmaking or not is debatable sure, but the accuracy of the current leaderboards is not.

Leaderboards need to be based on rating. Simple as that. If they choose to mask it with a league/tier system, that’s fine. The way you presented your idea, you went into matchmaking and rating determination and not a leaderboard overhaul.

There are a few unknown problems, and I can point out at least one known problem with the current rating and matchmaking system. Addressing that would make rating more meaningful and fix some of the issues with the old leaderboard, which did a pretty good job of putting the best players at the top.

Martin.6381:

Exedore.6320:

snip

You misunderstood the point of my thread. Although matchmaking is a big issue I’m more concerned about the leaderboards in terms of not being an accurate representation of the actual leaders of PvP. Wether the ladder/tier system would improve matchmaking or not is debatable sure, but the accuracy of the current leaderboards is not.

Yes but you still have to consider that there was a ladder reset, and maybe the " best players " you do mention simply don’t want to climb it all again.

Except by splitting up solo and team queue, i fail to see how the leaderboard could represent the actual leaders of pvp..

Tiers would be a fantastic idea if everyone did solo queue or if everyone on a team was in the same tier. What happens if a person from tier 2 parties with a person from tier 5?

I really just want my individual score during a game to count for something. As a player, I can be doing my job really well. Decapping, recapping, +1’ing where I’m needed (I’m a Thief, afterall), but depending on the pugs I’m matched with, it could still be a horrible loss.

Make personal score mean something.

Anomaly.7612:

I really just want my individual score during a game to count for something. As a player, I can be doing my job really well. Decapping, recapping, +1’ing where I’m needed (I’m a Thief, afterall), but depending on the pugs I’m matched with, it could still be a horrible loss.

Make personal score mean something.

Except the personal score on the scoreboard means next to nothing. You get points for double-capping, tagging players in a fight which is already won while letting a node be de-capped, etc. If the scoreboard was a better refection of team contribution and skillful play, I could agree with it counting toward ladder points or rating adjustment.

I made this post knowing eventually they’d change the leaderboards. I thought they’d change it for the better though. . So i guess I’ll try to spark up this topic again.

Mind you i rambled off a bit and talked too much about the matchmaking instead of the leaderboards.

But yeah

Need new boards mang

This is definitely still relevant if not moreso now. I don’t queue much in the current farmboard system, but from my limited experience: The Matchmaking has actually been very good lately. I think it really would lend itself to a “tiered” pvp environment and produce fair/accurate rankings.

The tier system Martin suggests is far more of a true “ladder” than the current system and is in fact the standard “ranked pvp” model for most major esports.
Let’s get with the times and finally realize the potential that this game’s pvp and combat system has. The esports scene is still burgeoning, but in reality the ranked pvp system in place now is the worst it has ever been.

Martin.6381:

So i guess I’ll try to spark up this topic again.

Spark me up bae, and I want the old the leaderboard back with a better decay system or League Division system.

I have much to add to what you’ve said as well as my own suggestions to go along with it but the problem is that we would need to write a short book to thoroughly point out and explain what is wrong with the GW2 leaderboards.

Ultimately Martin, you are 100% correct when you say “it is time to do away with leaderboards”. Aside from all the debate that occurs with what we could change on the leaderboards, one thing is certain and that is that the leaderboards have never really worked to begin with. At this point, it would be a better MMR system to remove the MMR system and just allow true RNG to occur with who ques and when “similar to RA in GW1”.

I really do think it would be a good start by completely abandoning any attempt to salvage this leaderboard system and just start all over again with a completely new concept. Here are a few good ideas:

• Do not call it leaderboards, call it stat boards
• Stat boards will record important detailed information about a player’s actions taken during matches. Ever play Smash Bros? Use a similar system. This kind of detailed statistical record is a great way of viewing “who is good and who is new”. This would speak louder than any previous leaderboard record data as well as better represent the player’s stats as an individual. Not to mention that’s it kitten sure more interesting to read though a players detailed action history.
• Stat boards can be viewed through filters: best win/lose rates, most kills on point, most points capped, so on and so forth. Again, this is a very detailed way of seeing who is good and what and what they are not good at.

This system would also prompt players to worry less about winning and more about trying hard “to maintain their personal statistics”. Oh you’re losing a match? Well that’s fine because you beat every elementalist you saw on point and never died and still have the highest statistic NA for Thief vs. Elementalist. Do you see where I am going this with? It would entirely change the mindframe of the community regarding needing to get those wins and make them more acceptant of losses “as long as they knew they did well”.

A-net do what you need to do to create a real player history, just get some serious players to give you feedback on what is important to be able to sift through data wise, to be able to judge a good player from a bad one. Whatever it is you do, scrap these terrible MMR systems and give us something worthy. You have a vicious fanbase here that wants to play hard, do something with it.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

This system would also prompt players to worry less about winning and more about trying hard “to maintain their personal statistics”. Oh you’re losing a match? Well that’s fine because you beat every elementalist you saw on point and never died and still have the highest statistic NA for Thief vs. Elementalist. Do you see where I am going this with? It would entirely change the mindframe of the community regarding needing to get those wins and make them more acceptant of losses “as long as they knew they did well”.

I will have to disagree with this statement; this will promote multiple people capping a single point for their personal score, which honestly is redundant. Because you will start supporting a bad mind set for the new players. On top of all of this, specific points would hint toward a role that player is playing, which wouldn’t mean that he’s skilled or anything.

Make a leaderboard like the one in Guild Wars 1 GvG. A Leaderboard for guilds (or teams, guilds are too large to fit in only one team), with each team having a single rating.

It will be much much easier to make a good matchmaking system with ONE number, than with 5 numbers.

Naaaaa. Just get rid of it. It’s to much math for them..

LordKage.9135:

Trevor Boyer.6524:

This system would also prompt players to worry less about winning and more about trying hard “to maintain their personal statistics”. Oh you’re losing a match? Well that’s fine because you beat every elementalist you saw on point and never died and still have the highest statistic NA for Thief vs. Elementalist. Do you see where I am going this with? It would entirely change the mindframe of the community regarding needing to get those wins and make them more acceptant of losses “as long as they knew they did well”.

I will have to disagree with this statement; this will promote multiple people capping a single point for their personal score, which honestly is redundant. Because you will start supporting a bad mind set for the new players. On top of all of this, specific points would hint toward a role that player is playing, which wouldn’t mean that he’s skilled or anything.

You misunderstand what I am saying my friend. The records wouldn’t be that simple. In fact, the records would record things that were “good” to do in conquest. Thus the personal records would reflect your ability to play conquest.