Guild Wars 2

The current season has been going on for some time now, and I’ve been seeing some “issues” you could say with how things are done. Rather than make baseless complaints, I’d like to share my ideas on ways to address the issues.

Imbalance
Though many complain about silvers getting queued with plat etc etc, I’ve personally seen more issues with good players held back by getting queued with sub-optimal players, and those sub-optimal players getting lucky queues ending up around the same MMR. I myself am sitting in gold, even though I’ve been getting topstats 95% of my games and win nearly every duel, often times even 2v1. So here’s a suggestion:

Make top stats more relevant. If you lose a game and would lose 12 rating points, yet have 1 topstat you only lose 9 (so 25% reduction), for 2 or more you would only lose 6 (50% reduction). If you were to win and gain 12 points, yet did not get any topstat, this gets reduced by 25% as well to 9 point bonus. This should start filtering out actual contribution to win rather than getting teamed up with players that have done little in any game, but happen to be lucky.

To compensate for utility-focused players, perhaps a topstat could be added for “map-objective contribution” where staying in combat near the map’s specific objective and channeling times would count.

Pips
The system itself is great, but it seems to attract players that don’t want to “focus” on PvP to grind out pips for reward boxes, not caring about how the match goes. Therefore the only suggestion I would have to this is to swap loss and top stat pips. 3 for top stat, 1 for loss. This should place an emphasis on working hard for your team to win, or be forced to possibly grind out 180 matches for a single last-tier box.

Leavers
I am aware that there is a punishment for leaving PvP matches, yet it doesn’t seem to be that harmful at all. Within the past 10 games I’ve lost 3 due to players leaving on my side and won 2 for players leaving on the enemy side. It’s probably the most extreme it’s ever been for the past 10 matches, but all this isn’t very uncommon. The punishment should maybe be changed or ramped up to be a lot scarier.

in the good old gunbound, a pure match based game, leave are punished in gold. leave, automatically lost gold, and with a some stack system, more leaves, more gold lost. is more effective than a timer-block.

to be clear in gunbound if u win a match u eran gold and ‘rank points’. leave a match u lose a fixed amount gold and rank points.

This system will do work fine Gw2. when players wins, they got gold, reward track, pipes and rank point. what they have do, is make leavers lose this, at fixed amount.

You talk like being in gold is a bad thing. Where do you get that idea? Looking at the leader board, the bottom of the top 250 is in platinum 1…only about 80 rating points out of gold. How “bad” are you really if you’re in gold 3 given that?

I’m not saying I necessarily disagree. From a self-serving point of view, I average just below 2 top stats per game for my entire ranked/unranked PvP career. So I’d obviously benefit quite a lot if my losses were essentially halved! But then again, are top stats a good indicator?

If you’re the only healer, aren’t you pretty much guaranteed to get top healing? If your team is getting no kills and you get 1 kill, did you really do anything? Revives? And who hasn’t had one of these…

Top stats matter since when exactly? It’s really easy to score top damage and kills if you have an AoE build and team fight a lot, even if you shouldn’t. It’s really easy to score top healing if you have even a sliver of healing in your build and don’t have any dedicated healing builds in the team. It’s easy to score top in offense if you have a mobile class. None of that means whatever you’re doing benefits the team as much as possible.

ugrakarma.9416:

in the good old gunbound, a pure match based game, leave are punished in gold. leave, automatically lost gold, and with a some stack system, more leaves, more gold lost. is more effective than a timer-block.

Anet gets ddos’d, people disconnect, system cannot tell difference between anet’s fault and player’s fault, player gets punished. First few times at least should be free IF this system is implemented, but I don’t like the concept overall.

On the other hand, if you locked out achievement progress, and reduced pip and rating gains for (x) matches for a few infractions, you might have something…

Top stats are usually a decent indicator of what someone’s contribution to a game is. On my burn DH I don’t fight away from capture points or map objectives, and yet I’ve been top damage nearly every single game. I also hold a surprising amount of top healing even if I’ve been queued with support elementalists, scrappers or druids. In the end, it’s the kind of people that aren’t getting the topstat they should passively obtain that make a team lose harsh and make the whole system seem imbalanced.

Virender.6957:

Top stats are usually a decent indicator of what someone’s contribution to a game is. On my burn DH I don’t fight away from capture points or map objectives, and yet I’ve been top damage nearly every single game. I also hold a surprising amount of top healing even if I’ve been queued with support elementalists, scrappers or druids. In the end, it’s the kind of people that aren’t getting the topstat they should passively obtain that make a team lose harsh and make the whole system seem imbalanced.

Although, I generally agree that more has to be done to track contribution, I think Anet needs to be cautious because people who do not always get top stats are a very necessary part of a team and, therefore can, and do, necessarily make a positive contribution regardless of the statistical performance.

In short, and a case in point, as a Mesmer main, I can, and do, get a lot of attention during a match – especially of late. As soon as some teams are able, I get focused on hard. It can be good for my team because sometimes players will devote a considerable amount of resources in keeping me from getting into a rhythm and try to keep me from contributing to my team.

The downside for the opposing team is that by constantly doing that, they can, and do, lose the 3v2 they are creating by constantly trying to focus me down. This is good for my team because the imbalance makes it easier to hold at least 2 pts and possibly push for a 3rd. At the end of the match, I do not usually get any stats as a result (in most other situations, I generally average between 2 and 3 tops stats in a match). Is this reflective of my effort? No, because I have to put considerable effort in surviving for my team as long as I can, albeit knowing I will get focused down to nothing and my stats will suffer and will bear that out.

I’ve seen this with others on my team too, including those who play necro and ele. Simply put, top stats, stats in general, don’t always tell the whole story.

anet already said they wont make top stats more relevant cuz they don’t want ppl chasing stats instead of the win.

Well then you can kiss the pvp scene goodbye. Top stats, in a different form mind you, would be ideal to track individual performance and adapt rating accordingly. Not as such, since as such they are nigh irrelevant, but consider this: relative to your team, how do you score on a series of match defining measures? Everyone gets ranked one to five, perhaps even in percentages if you wish to be more accurate, in terms of: damage, deaths, cap contributions, decap contributions, healing. It’d be close to impossible to rank well if you’re chasing stats: you could get 0 deaths by being afk but also 0 damage. It’s the cumulative effect that matters, in the end.

Personally, I’m sick and tired of getting four or even five top stats and losing rating. That’s just ridiculous. Also, by the same token, the new and improved post match display is ludicrous as well. Top three players, regardless of team; that’d engender more competition.

This is supposed to be a game of skill where I literally represent a tenth of the match I’m in? One tenth! So for 10% contribution you get 100% reward/punishment, brilliant! The other 90% that goes into determining the final outcome is irrelevant because raisins. Yeah, that’s a good system.

PvP pop is dying, the new xpac won’t bring it back as long as the game remains as bursty, team dependant and cheeze prone as it is. No eSports? Think they’ll just milk it with no real involvement nor intent thereof. Sad but probably true.

Virender.6957:

Make top stats more relevant. If you lose a game and would lose 12 rating points, yet have 1 topstat you only lose 9 (so 25% reduction), for 2 or more you would only lose 6 (50% reduction). If you were to win and gain 12 points, yet did not get any topstat, this gets reduced by 25% as well to 9 point bonus. This should start filtering out actual contribution to win rather than getting teamed up with players that have done little in any game, but happen to be lucky.

wrong idea, topstar are natural for some clases, play ele and you get permanently, also if you do kitten, the heal topstat, if there is no ele authomaticaly is the druid or guard the one that gets it
and you can be hardcarring and be the one that wins the match but no get a topstat because you are not the one that do more in each cathegory, you are the second in all or not

Savvy.3258:

Top stats, in a different form mind you, would be ideal to track individual performance and adapt rating accordingly.

I probably should have said that. I do agree that the top stats as they are now aren’t ideal, the general thought behind having valid topstats would be.

Savvy.3258:

Everyone gets ranked one to five, perhaps even in percentages if you wish to be more accurate, in terms of: damage, deaths, cap contributions, decap contributions, healing. It’d be close to impossible to rank well if you’re chasing stats: you could get 0 deaths by being afk but also 0 damage. It’s the cumulative effect that matters, in the end.

And he also placed a perfectly valid way of figuring out how it needs to be done.

Personally I’ve been a developer for years now, and I can tell that none of us have the answer to every problem. You’ve got to try and fail, and take it one step at a time. What we need to discuss though, is the necessity of a system which rewards through contribution rather than flat amounts. Too much of the playerbase is dwindling out of PvP because they’re tired of losing rating for being good players, but not great enough to carry an entire game.

I will start with saying that before I was all for rewarding people with top stats in any match, however, over time I was convinced that this is not good approach because, as Anet said, people would stop trying to win matches and start chasing top stats. Also, this is not the only problem with this.

First of all, there are classes which can contribute more without doing single damage to the opponent (for example thief that decaps well), than classes which can do 2 million damage fighting on enemy node entire match not achieving anything by doing so.

In the same way, like someone already mentioned, some classes are naturally inclined towards getting multiple top stats in every match, but not because they are good players, but because their class/build simply gives that that ability.

And the last thing wrong with this is that for example player A did 1001 damage and players B, C, D and E did 1000 damage each, so player A gets top damage stat and gets additionally rewarded for that marginal “contribution”. I would say this is even more unfair than the system we have now.

But on one I do agree with many posting here and on forums in general, there should be a way to reward/punish more or less players based on their performance. We just have to find more objective way to measure performance (which I understand may never be achieved).

I was suggesting before that maybe statistics can help with this. For example in a team of 5 doing 20% of team’s anything is expected. Doing more than 20% is a signal you should be rewarded and doing less than 20% is a signal you should be “punished”. Of course, getting more than 20% damage but less than 20% healing (which is more or less expected behavior) would cancel each other out, because you have more damage oriented build, and same goes for someone with a healing/support build. This way, if you did above 20% in 3-4 categories, then regardless of top stats, it is clear sign you have contributed a lot in that match and should be rewarded more in case of win, or punished less in case of defeat.