Guild Wars 2

Quality of competition goes down on the weekends?

Curious if this is just a false perception of mine or something others notice.

Definitely true. You definitely notice the difference between the weekend warriors and the tryhards. During the week you basically queue into the same people over and over, during weekends the variety is a lot larger.

More people have more time to waste, so everyone with even a mild interest in PvP does some PvP. Whereas during the weekdays, when most people have work and/or school, most of the people doing PvP are those who like to spend their sparse free time doing so.

Lopez.7369:

I think I get more competitive matches in the weekend, but I also get more bad ones. Maybe it’s just because I queue a lot more on weekends, though.

Start keeping track, for science! A larger sample pool should produce a larger variety of results. I might start doing this just to see what happens and see if any trends develop.

I’d say I really noticed that change. Maybe I was the one playing bad or had some bad matches (1W/7L).
In some matches I felt like I could not do anything more, but it could have been my teammates were having a bad day and MMR-wise they were better than me. I can just say it was a feeling, not certain of course.

Justin ODell.9517:

On Friday I lowered the inflated MMR parties receive from +5% per member to +2% per member. I believe the initial value of +5% was too high, and we were aiming to overshoot due to the bad perception of solo vs pre-made. The drop to 2% was based on data from the beta ladder.

Could that may be what you noticed this weekend?

I think the issue with inflated MMR is once you reach a certain tier of players, they will be experienced enough with team rotations that they can automatically respond to what their teammates are doing even without the use of voice communication.
Obviously there is still an advantage with being premade and having access to this, but the gap seems to become increasingly smaller at increasingly higher levels of play. At lower levels of play, premade teams have a larger advantage since pugs have a habit of over committing to certain points.

For example, I was soloq’ing on my mesmer the other day and I pushed far at the start with a pug thief. We both knew when to disengage and actually disengaged at practically the same time and moved into the mid point to burst down a target. Similar things happened throughout the match.

Perhaps with this taken into account, inflation should be something along the lines of a combination of both a percentage of MMR as well as a constant number?

Random Weird Guy.3528:

I think the issue with inflated MMR is once you reach a certain tier of players, they will be experienced enough with team rotations that they can automatically respond to what their teammates are doing even without the use of voice communication.

this is why i no longer consider the teams i lose to premades.

they are precogs. 0_o

I definitely felt that this weekend – I ran with guildies in TS and we absolutely stomped.
I can only recall 3 losses with that group and well over 20 wins, some of which were horrendously lopsided in our favor.

Could that may be what you noticed this weekend?

Yes it was very noticeble.
Rly bad games all weekend.

This is scummy, but i rage quit a match for the first time this weekend. I felt it.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

Justin ODell.9517:

On Friday I lowered the inflated MMR parties receive from +5% per member to +2% per member. I believe the initial value of +5% was too high, and we were aiming to overshoot due to the bad perception of solo vs pre-made. The drop to 2% was based on data from the beta ladder.

Could that may be what you noticed this weekend?

I think the issue with inflated MMR is once you reach a certain tier of players, they will be experienced enough with team rotations that they can automatically respond to what their teammates are doing even without the use of voice communication.
Obviously there is still an advantage with being premade and having access to this, but the gap seems to become increasingly smaller at increasingly higher levels of play.

i disagree with part of this logic simply because using voice coms =/= using voice coms properly. just like how pugs get better rotationally over time even without voice coms, teams that use voice coms do so more effectively over time. its one thing to say in voice coms which point you’re going to or that you’re going to die, but it’s a whole other level to be constantly calling out numbers, cooldowns, respawns, stuns, peels, etc.

what i’m saying is that using voice coms is only as much of an advantage as YOU make it to be.

All the matches are the same.
I que ranked.
High chances of me having newbs on my team.
High chances of enemy team having newbs.

I say instant que it, no need to make me wait so long, I get que’d with newbs anyways.
Btw, I’ve won like 20+ games and lost only 4 games solo que recently (anet decides my mmr too high stacks the biggest newbs on my team while the newbs that played a few games and kinda know what to do on the other team to balance it, hence my team runs around clueless and we lose, hence 4 losses, anet expects me to carry 4 clueless people against newbs but one can only do so much, I just need 1 guy with a clue that’s all). Than I get hit with a -2 every sticking time, never get any games with a +2 or +3 anymore.

Where are all the good players at yo?

Justin ODell.9517:

uberkingkong.8041:

Where are all the good players at yo?

Define good? You’re rating is average, so you should be getting matched with the average player.

OUCH.

perhaps it is a problem to expect newbs to have average mmr when they start? the game mode knowledge wont be there, even if the mechanical skill is, which is a pretty severe handicap.

i know playing late night night is kind of asking for trouble, but i’ve recently had on the very same match player from ESL and completely clueless rookies, it feels like the mmr swings way too wide. (i like playing at night because you get a chanche to play with the pros even if you aren’t but there a should be a limit?)

Not many average players that I see. If it’s possible to get paired up with average players, then please for the love of God, pair me up with them.

There’s newbies and there’s champion players. That’s pretty much all I ever see. When I started playing pvp, I didn’t have a fantastic record, but I could hold my own. And we had some decent matches. Now I’ve played and gotten to rank 49, all I ever get paired with are players way better than I am. Not sure why, but that’s just how it goes pretty much every session now. Once in a very blue moon, I’ll have a good match that is nice and close, but typically, it’s just all but over in about 2 minutes and I spend half the match getting obliterated.

Justin ODell.9517:

uberkingkong.8041:

Where are all the good players at yo?

Define good? Your rating is average, so you should be getting matched with the average player.

condi guard justin strikes again.

Justin ODell.9517:

uberkingkong.8041:

Where are all the good players at yo?

Define good? Your rating is average, so you should be getting matched with the average player.

No, but seriously. Rekt.

He was being generous when he said average.

That 43% win ratio…

Justin ODell.9517:

uberkingkong.8041:

Where are all the good players at yo?

Define good? Your rating is average, so you should be getting matched with the average player.

kitten , why speaking to the developer is the only way to find out your mmr?

Justin ODell.9517:

uberkingkong.8041:

Where are all the good players at yo?

Define good? Your rating is average, so you should be getting matched with the average player.

You know.. Maybe we could get our OWN MMR as ‘Average’/‘Above Average’/Below Average’

wwwes.1398:

Not many average players that I see. If it’s possible to get paired up with average players, then please for the love of God, pair me up with them.

There’s newbies and there’s champion players. That’s pretty much all I ever see. When I started playing pvp, I didn’t have a fantastic record, but I could hold my own. And we had some decent matches. Now I’ve played and gotten to rank 49, all I ever get paired with are players way better than I am. Not sure why, but that’s just how it goes pretty much every session now. Once in a very blue moon, I’ll have a good match that is nice and close, but typically, it’s just all but over in about 2 minutes and I spend half the match getting obliterated.

Team comp? Communciation? Queue times/Failsafes? I know I had a block of time where I went from amazing close games to utterly atrocious knockouts. Thats what the Bad Matchups thread is for.

Justin ODell.9517:

uberkingkong.8041:

Where are all the good players at yo?

Define good? Your rating is average, so you should be getting matched with the average player.

See if we had an MMR-based leaderboard, people wouldn’t be getting this misconceptions as to how good they are

Not sure if you’ve seen this poll or the post, but it’s obvious that an overwhelming majority of players want an MMR leaderboard (preferably as the only leaderboard, but I guess splitting is also viable):
http://strawpoll.me/3638200/r
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/POLL-Possible-leaderboard-changes/first

Do you know what’s great about the match making system from a solo queuer’s perspective? When the wind blows from the correct direction and all the stars align, the new system produces a matchup that the old system was able to produce every single time by default. That’s progress right there. Kappa.

Lux.7169:

He was being generous when he said average.

That 43% win ratio…

MMR isn’t directly connected to your win/lose ratio. If you play during off hours your matches will be more extreme and even average players might have higher or lower w/l ratio despite everyone expecting it at around 50% level.

Crell.6401:

wwwes.1398:

Not many average players that I see. If it’s possible to get paired up with average players, then please for the love of God, pair me up with them.

There’s newbies and there’s champion players. That’s pretty much all I ever see. When I started playing pvp, I didn’t have a fantastic record, but I could hold my own. And we had some decent matches. Now I’ve played and gotten to rank 49, all I ever get paired with are players way better than I am. Not sure why, but that’s just how it goes pretty much every session now. Once in a very blue moon, I’ll have a good match that is nice and close, but typically, it’s just all but over in about 2 minutes and I spend half the match getting obliterated.

Team comp? Communciation? Queue times/Failsafes? I know I had a block of time where I went from amazing close games to utterly atrocious knockouts. Thats what the Bad Matchups thread is for.

I noticed over the weekend that there was some really really atrocious matches because of the silly daily.

Lux.7169:

He was being generous when he said average.

That 43% win ratio…

If’n ya mean me, then yeah, I’m saying average when I mean mediocre so I don’t hurt my own feelings. Point remains valid, maybe even moreso. If I’m a mediocre player that constantly gets matched up with players that beat the crap out of me, I sort of feel like it makes sense that my w/l ratio is bad and getting worse.

I didn’t ever do PVP until after the matchmaking update hit, so I don’t really have a frame of reference for whether it was better before. I thought to myself, “yay, now they have a system to match up players so I won’t have to deal with playing against people that wipe the floor with me or dragging down my team”. Well, I was wrong, I suppose.

I guess it doesn’t really matter, I only play pvp for fun and to do the reward tracks, so I’m probably not going to quit. I just would like it if I could stop being put in the same match as a bunch of dragon ranks that know how to kill me in about 2 seconds.

Or maybe the problem is that the only people playing are the dragon ranks and there’s just not enough to pair people up evenly. In which case I guess there’s not much to be done.

Today’s dailies were mesmer and engineer winner. Both classes I’ve played many times and won with many times. I finally won on mesmer the fifth (sixth?) time, and have yet to win with engineer after about four matches. There’s more here than just l2p, there’s just seemingly no mechanism at all to correct/modify my mmr. If you get wiped three times in a row, it would seem to follow that the fourth time, you’d get put against an easier team.

I too have noticed a huge difference between player skills as mentioned by wwwes. One match earlier I was playing people that were decades ahead of me, predicting everything I do, completely outplaying me, knew every single positional/blink trick in the book and just dominated me. We still won that game though.

Next game I’m against players I ACTUALLY could 2vs1, as I 2vs1’d them over and over.

PVE feels the same way, you’re either with COMPLETELY new players who have never done the dungeon/played GW2 before or veterans who know every single trick and can speed run efficiently as possible. No middle ground.

This entire games player base is either new, or a veteran of 2 years. Seems like something is wrong with the games design.

Shiyo.3578:

This entire games player base is either new, or veteran of 2 years. Seems like something is wrong with the games design.

I’m struggling to get my head around this statement, it’s the game’s fault that there’s a massive hole between new and veteran players?

And I’m not sure how true this is anyway, the majority of people I play with don’t fall into either category.

No, there’s something with the way the game is designed that makes someone either play the game for 2 years straight and know everything, or be brand new to it. No middle ground. The only other games I’ve played like that were obscure f2p MMO’s with a tiny player base.

I don’t agree with what Shiyo is saying, I definitely see people playing at all levels of experience and a lot of people who took breaks coming back. I myself stopped for about 6-7 months and came back last June. I’ll say that right now, the content in the game has slowed, so the people who aren’t diehard players are busying themselves with other stuff while they wait for more. Maybe that’s what you’re seeing.

I just mean specifically in PvP it seems like there’s no matching on skill level, it’s “throw a bunch of people together and then try to balance two teams”.

Shiyo.3578:

No, there’s something with the way the game is designed that makes someone either play the game for 2 years straight and know everything, or be brand new to it. No middle ground. The only other games I’ve played like that were obscure f2p MMO’s with a tiny player base.

Even I don’t fall into either category here, I only started seriously PvPing around 10 months ago (by which I mean, I was still only rank 15ish at that point).

wwwes.1398:

I just mean specifically in PvP it seems like there’s no matching on skill level, it’s “throw a bunch of people together and then try to balance two teams”.

Well this is true to some extent. As far as I can tell, the match making with gather up people who queue within a certain time frame (for argument’s sake, let’s say 5 minutes) and then attempts to create a number of matches with the players that queue in this space of time. I don’t know if this is how it works, but I imagine these players would be first split into different tiers (if there are 30 people in the queue, then 3 tiers) then attempt to divide these players into teams of similar MMR.

When there aren’t many people queuing, there’s a failsafe that prevents the queue time from being too large (I think this is around 6-8 minutes) and therefore reduces the number of people it has to work with and therefore the number of different tiers, which results in a larger deviation in player skill level within each of these tiers.

Obviously you can’t force players of the same skill level to queue up within 5 minutes of 9 other people of the same skill level queuing up – in the ideal world this would happen.

I see plenty of people complain about long queue times, so I get that that is an issue for some people. I haven’t polled, but maybe the much better players in my matches have had to wait for far too long. Me personally, I usually have a queue wait of maybe a minute more than the average tops. So I’m guessing most of the time, I’m being served up as the chum for better players so they don’t have to wait longer.

wwwes.1398:

I see plenty of people complain about long queue times, so I get that that is an issue for some people. I haven’t polled, but maybe the much better players in my matches have had to wait for far too long. Me personally, I usually have a queue wait of maybe a minute more than the average tops. So I’m guessing most of the time, I’m being served up as the chum for better players so they don’t have to wait longer.

I do find that the matches that take 6-8 minutes to get started tend to be lower quality matches (one team stomping the other) than matches that only take 2 minutes to get started. I guess this is due to the failsafe when less people are in the queue.

Lemme tell ya something.
From what I remember from this fight (look at pic)
Ya we lost but I was kitten those necros, and the thief would come in to help.
I’d kitten that thief and the necros come in and help.

Ya’ll underestimate the medi guardian.

If I was to make a team myself and everyone was to join, and we just wanted to beat abjured, it’d be something like me, Stunningstyles, Raplion, Pink Puma, and Nymph as guardian.

That kind of team would own abjured. And if we lost 1st round due to engies not dying… All I gotta do is switch to my power ranger and BAM those engies, backpack and chaith, dead meat. PEW PEW em all day.

Force them to fight where I want to fight, you don’t let your enemies force you to fight where they want to fight.

Ya’ll underestimate guardians too, yall need to be playing the medi guardian. Serious easy to own thieves necros and mesmers on medi guardian (That’s like half of abjured).

Oh and I believe it would make a good stream, I could see nymph getting excited owning abjured thief and necros.

This is my new favorite thread.

As far as the OPs point, there’s a lot of Weekend Warriors who just don’t play as much as most of us. I see drops in a lot of places, including PvE open world stuff like Tequatl that you think people would have learned by now.

So yes.

Justin ODell.9517:

On Friday I lowered the inflated MMR parties receive from +5% per member to +2% per member. I believe the initial value of +5% was too high, and we were aiming to overshoot due to the bad perception of solo vs pre-made. The drop to 2% was based on data from the beta ladder.

Could that may be what you noticed this weekend?

Oh! So you are saying I can take my Guildies out without getting them frustrated?
Please say yes. Always been a problem for them getting into PvP, don’t want to alone, but the system in place matches us to people a bit to high.

Matches are still actually pretty unforgiving, at least in my case, I wouldn’t bother with it if losses bother you.

Seriously hoping Justin can look at my history today and tell me whether I’m right or wrong about my current MMR and teams I’m paired up with. It’s just been so weird/bad and soul-crushing lately.

It’d be awesome if we can run the game with a command-line flag that shows us, at the start of a match, our MMR, the average MMRs of the two teams, and the predicted score. Or even at the end of the match if the worry is that players will QQ. Then you could show initial and final MMR or something.

Crell.6401:

Justin ODell.9517:

uberkingkong.8041:

Where are all the good players at yo?

Define good? Your rating is average, so you should be getting matched with the average player.

You know.. Maybe we could get our OWN MMR as ‘Average’/‘Above Average’/Below Average’

Yea. I still don’t know why we can’t see our own MMR or at least a range?

Shiyo.3578:

No, there’s something with the way the game is designed that makes someone either play the game for 2 years straight and know everything, or be brand new to it. No middle ground. The only other games I’ve played like that were obscure f2p MMO’s with a tiny player base.

I think that from a player skill, profession knowledge and mechanical stand point, there is definitely a middle ground, and I see it a lot.

But in regards conquest “rotations” and playing the conquest game type, I can agree a bit. There are a lot of decent players out there who haven’t grasped how to properly rotate, and for the conquest game mode (and GI Joe), that’s half the battle. Many people I play with regularly fall into this category. And rotations are hard to teach someone.

In my experience, it doesn’t really matter for me. I generally play with or against the same people, if they’re online. If not, then I see a wider variety of people. However, I’d rather play against those same people because they are competent in pvp. It’s true that a lot of my matches are close, however, this is due to bad plays (bad rotations, don’t understand mechanics, and not understanding their role) and comps. Not because everyone is equal in skill.

Justin ODell.9517:

uberkingkong.8041:

Where are all the good players at yo?

Define good? Your rating is average, so you should be getting matched with the average player.

words cannot begin to describe my love for justin.

On that note any chance you I could find out where I’m at mmr wise, been seeing some more higher level players and my games have been fantastically competitive and balanced think I may be in my sweet spot.

uberkingkong.8041:

Lemme tell ya something.
From what I remember from this fight (look at pic)
Ya we lost but I was kitten those necros, and the thief would come in to help.
I’d kitten that thief and the necros come in and help.

Ya’ll underestimate the medi guardian.

If I was to make a team myself and everyone was to join, and we just wanted to beat abjured, it’d be something like me, Stunningstyles, Raplion, Pink Puma, and Nymph as guardian.

That kind of team would own abjured. And if we lost 1st round due to engies not dying… All I gotta do is switch to my power ranger and BAM those engies, backpack and chaith, dead meat. PEW PEW em all day.

Force them to fight where I want to fight, you don’t let your enemies force you to fight where they want to fight.

Ya’ll underestimate guardians too, yall need to be playing the medi guardian. Serious easy to own thieves necros and mesmers on medi guardian (That’s like half of abjured).

Oh and I believe it would make a good stream, I could see nymph getting excited owning abjured thief and necros.

lmfao, you go make that team and beat the abjured. can’t wait to see that

NeXeD.3042:

words cannot begin to describe my love for justin.

On that note any chance you I could find out where I’m at mmr wise, been seeing some more higher level players and my games have been fantastically competitive and balanced think I may be in my sweet spot.

I’m the exact opposite of in my sweet spot, so I’d also like to get word on this.

Justin ODell.9517:

uberkingkong.8041:

Where are all the good players at yo?

Define good? Your rating is average, so you should be getting matched with the average player.

Lux.7169:

He was being generous when he said average.

That 43% win ratio…

More like unterkingkong, eh?

I never took uberkingkong’s words seriously, having seen the manner in which he chooses to adress fellow posters and this just settles things up.

Thanks, Justin. You’re great.

leman.7682:

Justin ODell.9517:

uberkingkong.8041:

Where are all the good players at yo?

Define good? Your rating is average, so you should be getting matched with the average player.

Lux.7169:

He was being generous when he said average.

That 43% win ratio…

More like unterkingkong, eh?

I never took uberkingkong’s words seriously, having seen the manner in which he chooses to adress fellow posters and this just settles things up.

Thanks, Justin. You’re great.

But he can beat Abjured:

uberkingkong.8041:

If I was to make a team myself and everyone was to join, and we just wanted to beat abjured, it’d be something like me, Stunningstyles, Raplion, Pink Puma, and Nymph as guardian.

That kind of team would own abjured. And if we lost 1st round due to engies not dying… All I gotta do is switch to my power ranger and BAM those engies, backpack and chaith, dead meat. PEW PEW em all day.

Force them to fight where I want to fight, you don’t let your enemies force you to fight where they want to fight.

Ya’ll underestimate guardians too, yall need to be playing the medi guardian. Serious easy to own thieves necros and mesmers on medi guardian (That’s like half of abjured).

Oh and I believe it would make a good stream, I could see nymph getting excited owning abjured thief and necros.

And he’s so pro that all the other pros leave when he comes online:

uberkingkong.8041:

After i win a bunch of matches solo Que all day than seeing no good players playing, logoff.

All the good players too scared to rank que when im online. No fun playing with news, i want to screenshot me finishing good players.

Is uber trolling if he is that one post about Medi Guards and his dream team beating Abjured is Hilarious. Otherwise it might be time to fit him with a straight jacket.