Guild Wars 2

Good evening

Yes, there will be a fair amount of raging, dissapointment and sadness in this topic. If you prefer to not read this please click “Back” in the top left corner and save yourself some time!

Right, let’s get to it: I am getting -sick- of tournament balancing system (Solo queue since that is what I’m experienced with).

What is the problem, you might ask? Well it’s the constant unfair matchmaking. I’m currently a level 16(PvP) Elementalist trying to improve his skills in tournament since hotjoin no longer provides the necessary challenge.

When I win a match versus people of my own level I suddenly get matched up vs a level 44/48/52/26. After we obviously lost that as a bunch of level 15-25’s I decide to give it another try and sign up for another game; this time I get matched up versus 4 people with “Champion X” title and all above level 30.

This kind of stuff has repeated itself for the last couple of weeks until I got so sick of it I decided to make a forum post about it.

I’m wondering how the rating system somehow seems to think that because I win versus people of my own skill level I should suddenly start playing versus people with 10x the games played. There is no learning and improving in these kind of games. You get obliterated because they obviously know all your skills and you don’t even have a clue what they all have.

The purpose of this thread is simple (if you disregard the raging bit); why does the system do this? Is this Anet’s intention ? And have any of you experienced this kind of unfair matchmaking too and how often?

Thanks for reading!

EDIT: Please do not invoke a whole discussion if wheter or not levels = skill. It is a fact that skill is nothing more then experience and dedication. Higher levels mean higher games played and should in the majority of the cases mean that the higher level player has a higher skill level. There are exceptions but please do not ruin the question of the thread by invoking a dicussion about how much correlation there is between skill/level in the minority of the cases.

I am rank 13, and ranked 636th in SoloQ.

I get constantly matched up with people from 50s to 10s to 1s, the number next to a person’s name is almost next to irrelevant unless its literally a 1.

Vena.8436:

I am rank 13, and ranked 636th in SoloQ.

I get constantly matched up with people from 50s to 10s to 1s, the number next to a person’s name is almost next to irrelevant unless its literally a 1.

I think this is a rather unfair comment. Yes the level doesn’t mean everything. But let’s not forget what a level stands for : games played.

Skills is in essence nothing else then experience, a lot of experience. In the strong majority of the cases a higher level will equal a higher skill level. The fact that you are doing well in solo queue is great but I hope you can also admitt that you are not the rule, you are the exception. People with higher levels tend to have a lot more experience and should be a lot better then people with a lower level. Especially when the level difference is showing a 1/20 ratio in games played.

Lycus.2834:

I think this is a rather unfair comment. Yes the level doesn’t mean everything. But let’s not forget what a level stands for : games played.

But ranks shows you only sPvP experience (or just time spent, and cannot be discerned from HotJoins). Players can be coming from a plethora of WvW experience (like myself) or simply PvE experience where they have learned their class. The majority of the work necessary in PvP is team work and communication aside from personal player skill/experience.

If you start grouping based on player ranks rather than ELO/MMR, you start to group people on completely arbitrary metrics, metrics that can be farmed in CA deathmatches. And then what? Do I have to be rank X to play with rank Xs or Ys? Why?

If a match in SoloQ is lost, its not usually as matter of rank, its a matter of people just having their thumbs up their kitten and playing as if they were the greatest players eva! that could solo everything (ie. hotjoin heroes).

Vena.8436:

Lycus.2834:

I think this is a rather unfair comment. Yes the level doesn’t mean everything. But let’s not forget what a level stands for : games played.

But ranks shows you only sPvP experience (or just time spent, and cannot be discerned from HotJoins). Players can be coming from a plethora of WvW experience (like myself) or simply PvE experience where they have learned their class. The majority of the work necessary in PvP is team work and communication aside from personal player skill/experience.

If you start grouping based on player ranks rather than ELO/MMR, you start to group people on completely arbitrary metrics, metrics that can be farmed in CA deathmatches. And then what? Do I have to be rank X to play with rank Xs or Ys? Why?

If a match in SoloQ is lost, its not usually as matter of rank, its a matter of people just having their thumbs up their kitten and playing as if they were the greatest players eva! that could solo everything (ie. hotjoin heroes).

This is a valid point indeed.

Perhaps the focus I’ve had was too much on levels. Yet what I’m wondering is how is this current system creating even matchmakings? Even when you disregard the giant level differences at times, at least in my experiene a lot of the games are get steamrolled or steamroll the other team. This can be because I’m still low on the ladder ofcourse. Is this not a problem on higher levels? Aka; does the system start to do it’s job on higher levels?

For me it’s currently ruining the fun of PvP due to lackluster game balancing.

I have 2 alts under rank 10 in top 100. #Freekweekend

Eurantien.4632:

I have 2 alts under rank 10 in top 100. #Freekweekend

Has this become the: let’s show off my alts and their rank in tournament ladders- thread ?

Gratz nevertheless ^^

I have somehow come to terms with the MMR and the matchmaking at the moment, because I believe that any matchmaking would suck if it has to deal with the numbers presented by currently active players in solo sPvP.

If you are in a guild with a lot of sPvPers you can extrapolate the number of players that have played more than 10 matches from where the breakoff point of the highest percentage rank is. In two guilds I am in it is currently at roughly 70%. This means that 1000 players (Ranked 1-1000) make up roughly 30% of ranked players in solo join. Therefore there is a total of around 3330 ranked players in the NA region (I am based in NA). If you divide that over the time zones, consider the fact that some players have second accounts and that not everybody is playing everyday, I am not surprised that the matchmaking sucks. With these numbers any matchmaking system would suck (or queue people up for long amounts of time with no guarantee of a matchup).

In order to deal with this as a sPvP community I think that one way forward is to be friendly and communicative in game, i.e. discuss tactics and plays prior to match, whisper players of your team or of the opposing team (it should not matter) after matches to indicate possible misplays or bad decisions they made and what would have been a better course of action, take newbies under your wing during matches (i.e. do not let them go off alone) and generally create a very positive gaming experience. This way new players are not discouraged and are more likely to come back more often and thus slowly building the numbers that allow for proper matchmaking.

This is in difference to the culture of cussing out and name calling I have witnessed. Calling somebody stupid is not constructive and will not better the player addressed in any way. In fact if he is new he might be discouraged from coming back.

If the dominant attitude is of a communal competitive experience instead of a a pwing competitive experience, I believe that the numbers would slowly grow (despite balance issues, development issues and sPvP being somewhat secondary in GW2). I know that this is cheesy, but we as a community can take action to grow the number by being friendly and creating a reptutation for friendlyness and helpfulness. The numbers being what they are at the moment do not really allow for being careless with your fellow sPvPers.