Guild Wars 2

In short, it fine! At least for me.

I’m rank 47, mid gold, EU player. Mediocre player. I usually play just a few games a day. And for some reason, this season, almost every match is a nail-biter, ending at least 500 – 400+. A lot of games ended in such a way, that in retrospect – if I hadn’t screwed that one time, we would have won. Lately, I’m kind of wishing for a few blow-outs, because matches like this tend to become too stressful.

And I really don’t get it, why there are so many complaints about the match-making? Is it because you are not winning more than 50%? But that’s kind of how match-making is supposed to work, doesn’t it? For every game you win, 5 guys lose. And if you are not climbing up, well, maybe you are not THAT good?

I rarely get matched with rage-quiters. In fact, in my last game, only two raged if I recall corectly (one from my team and one from opponents). Is it because I always stick to the last second and I’m getting matched with the people like me?

What I’m trying to say is: are you, those who complain, being really honest with your complaints? Maybe your teammate dced just because you dced a few games ago? Maybe you are really not the sharpest knife in your team after all? I had one temamate who told me “to delete” after a close loss I’m partly responsible of. Well, we got matched against each other next game and I “deleted” him from that game. In my experience, the guy who complains the most is the guy least usefull.

My point is, are we really reasonable with all the complaints or we’re just being salty, because, you know, we lost a match or two and for some reason it’s someone else’s fault.

Edit: grammar

I am in EU too. Gold and have nearly the same experience. (not all to close but most are over 300 and many over 400).
Yes you get someone that AFK´s (mostly after something went bad…). Yes games can get blowouts due to human factors.
What i see is that the system balances classes. My concern is that it puts class balance over MMR balance when doing the final side distribution, which will then actually create more one sided matches than having classes stacked.

The people complaining on forums, those you are talking about, are not complaining about losing the match, they are complaining about not having a chance to win one and that alone has nothing to do with how “sharp” they are.
Now to you both, it seems like it is fine, but Gold has such a big player pool that blow out matches are not likely to happen at all, while in Platinum + it gets much much worse. There are dozens of people complaining about that and only very few who dont, and none of those who don’t are above Gold. The rumours are true, only it is not fault of any algorithm, as many like to claim, but a fault of low player pool for Platinum and Legendary, cause it is giving the mm no other option but to create uneven matches in order to at least provide one.

OP, maybe you should read complains properly? No offense, but get to plat then you will see what people are talking about.

Do you think it is reasonable that gold and silver players are in the same match as legend? Do you think it is reasonable that players in such matches lose points worth of 2-3 wins? I am sitting in a match with few gold players facing top 5 players, lose 2 games worth of points and you tell me not to complain? Couple matches like this kill entire week of matches for me and i have no control over it (except for resorting to exploiting of the system in which i am obviously not interested).

You have the luxury of sitting in the rank range where big part of pvp population is. You do not get to experience the crazy lopsided matches that happen at the end of the spectrum because MM is designed around fast queues and not quality so it throws whatever it can find (e.g. silver vs legend) into matches and treats it as fair.

wait mid gold is now rank 47 …………………….. ??????

Also if i may defend myself as one of those people who complain.

I have a issue with being put up against Premade ESL teams S1-4, put up against ESL players in S5-6. And in those same seasons being put with people who camp on a point and think its ok.

I have a issue losing +15 rating in match i had no chance to win.

I have a issue losing +15 when my team mates are not at the same level as the opponent.

At no point do i have a issue with the players, everyone is always trying there best. Yet as someone who sits between that gold 3/ plat 2 level. I see all sides of the spectrum from facing Plat 3/ legendary players to low gold high silver players in my match.

There is literal games that i can go 1 vs 3 on my ele and sustain myself on a cap point.

Then the very next game get 1 vs 1 by a mesmer who times his/hers moa condi bombs.

I would just like to say that in my defense. Im unhappy with the rating system and the rating changes it gives me based on matches i clearly know isnt right yet Anet will not show my team mates or opponents ranks or overall team Rating. That has always been my gripe.

kdaddy.5431:

wait mid gold is now rank 47 …………………….. ??????

I am pretty sure he ment his PvP Rank =D

Shrugs

My experience comes from the lower end of the spectrum. I’ve peaked out at low gold, and got kicked back to high silver after a spectacular array of rage quits stemming from a failed fight for mid (Seriously, if you’re going to give up in the first 40 seconds, do everyone a favour and just don’t sign up…).

Winning the skirmish for mid isn’t much better – quite a few times, someone on the enemy team will afk if they lose mid, leading to a boringly lopsided fight.

Recently, I’ve stopped pvping to decay my rank to mid bronze – and ooooh boy, that was an experience. The rumours you hear about bots and hackers? I’m lead to believe they’re true.

So, in short, PvP honestly isn’t all that fun below gold. Silver fights feel hugely lopsided, while Bronze is just some fatcat’s bot farm.

It isn’t even about one’s own personal experience or perception of their match history. It’s about when one is able to see the bigger picture of how players are being allocated within the algorithm for match making purposes. Even a person who didn’t play GW2, who only watched twitch streams, with enough time, would still identify the problems going on with match making. It’s arguable that an avid twitch viewer who doesn’t even play the game, might actually notice the problems much more quickly than an actual player because they are frequently watching the different experiences of others, rather than only paying attention to their own experience.

Things that the twitch viewer would notice more quickly than a normal player:

• Why do some streamers frequently get paired with ESL players on their team and often go against randoms and maintain seemingly easy high win ratios?
• Why do other streamers, despite a high rating, often get paired with complete randoms that must be carried and are often put against teams of stacked ESL players?
  Why does this happen so often to certain people but not others?
• I see players in the stream that I know. 2 are plat – 4 are gold – 4 are silver. Why did the system not make teams of plat/gold/gold/silv/silv vs. plat/gold/gold/silv/silv but rather chose to make a game of plat/plat/gold/gold/silv vs. gold/gold/silv/silv/silv? Why does this seem to happen to certain streamers but not to others?
• Isn’t this game’s ranked system supposed to be creating balanced matches? is it just choosing when people lose at times? Some of the streamers I watch seem to get much better matches much more often than others. The thief I like to watch seems to often get very bad match making despite being visibly the better player out of all the people I watch. What the hell is going on here?
• ect.. ect.. ect..

If you really want to see what people are complaining about, you have to start paying attention to the experiences of others and not just your own. Everyone assumes that what they experience during match making is the same as what others are experiencing but that assumption couldn’t be further from the truth. Take a couple days off from GW2 and watch some streams. Start que’ing with different types of players, better ranked and lower ranked. You’ll quickly see what people are complaining about.

I’m not sure if match making is being deliberately tampered with or if the system has some kind of effect with actual MMRs with a bit of Rating and certain target margins between high/low ranked, are somehow being shuffled into favorable rhythms due to how the system uses their rank demographic for placement… but something is wrong with the match making. Some accounts visibly when watching their history, just get shuffled into good or at least balanced matches often, whilst others are repeatedly being given “carry matches” where if they don’t carry their team mates like the god Atlas, they will lose every time. There are people out there with horror stories of bad match making that other players actually don’t believe because they aren’t experiencing such bad match making. You’ve got to wonder what’s going on there.

The OP here says: “his matches end 500 to 400+ and that it’s stressful and he is wishing for some blowout matches” That’s laughable tbh bro. There are some people out there who only get blowout matches. Either win 500 to 80 or lose 80 to 500 because the matches are never in any practical to even be played. Either they win hard and it’s boring or they lose so hard that there is no reason to try because all of the team mates are leagues below the skill of the opposing team. You’re gonna sit there and say you are wishing for blowout matches? Only a person who has not experienced the worst of this match making would say something like that.

~ With all due respect

From my experience, there’s no such a big difference between gold and platinum players. I fought platinum players myself and, to be honest, there wasn’t such a big skill difference to me. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost, like always. A very few times I encountered pvp gods that played truly spectacular, but I couldn’t say they were only on enemy side, no. Sometimes I get lucky, sometimes I don’t, but I can’t complaint that I’m getting matched with terrible teammates. Enemy has terrible players too, so I focus on them…

I get it, that on higher ranked levels, your loss starts to cost a lot. But! It goes both ways. There’s only one 1st place, so the higher you go, the more costly the loss should be. It couldn’t work differently. Every player has the same chance to be matched horribly, so you must be really exceptional to stay high. And this is how it’s supposed to be. And even if you do get a perfect matching, you have to rememeber human factor. A little a sneeze and you might drop in ranking. There’s not really a lot a dev could do here.

Also, one little note, builds do matter. Even the highly skilled players could get matched against the team with same classes but different builds and get blown away, just because they were countered. For example, as a power engie I avoid cond engies, because they melt me to fast…

Manthas.6234:

In short, it fine! At least for me.
A lot of games ended in such a way, that in retrospect – if I hadn’t screwed that one time, we would have won. Lately, I’m kind of wishing for a few blow-outs, because matches like this tend to become too stressful.

This means you are getting better and you are able to tip the balance if you focus an play well. It doesn’t say anything about the matchmaking,

@Trevor Boyer.6524
I’ve seen my share of hell:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Anet-we-need-to-talk/first#post6529458

But I was honest to myself, I changed class to unfamiliar one and probably that was the reason.
Of course, that’s my experience, but I’ve seen way too many people failing to say the whole truth.

Post you game logs so we can see. Not doubting you would just like real evidence. The problems with the matchmaking go beyond w and l. I generally do pretty well but its not fun at all to win 500-200 or greater and scores like that happen a lot and when I do lose a lot of the time its similar type scoring and I didn’t play any differently from when I won by that margin. Also, I think some of this could be perspective you might actually think that 1/4 to 1/3 of the games being blow outs it totally acceptable well many would disagree with that.

steelheart.7386:

Post you game logs so we can see. Not doubting you would just like real evidence. The problems with the matchmaking go beyond w and l. I generally do pretty well but its not fun at all to win 500-200 or greater and scores like that happen a lot and when I do lose a lot of the time its similar type scoring and I didn’t play any differently from when I won by that margin. Also, I think some of this could be perspective you might actually think that 1/4 to 1/3 of the games being blow outs it totally acceptable well many would disagree with that.

That’s my match history right now. It looks to me like only one of those matches was a total blowout (And that for a 15 rating loss! Ouch!)

Having said that, I recently changed my build and have been duo queuing with people I trust where before I was going it alone. Previously, I placed low in gold 1 and never progressed to gold 2. Since making the changes a few days ago I’ve been steadily climbing ankitten ow at 1389 rating (up from 1207 originally). As you can see from the 70% win rate, I think I still have room to grow here.

If I’m reading the complaints correctly, I can’t agree that it was matchmaking holding me back previously or that it’s matchmaking in my favor allowing me to suddenly progress where I had been stuck in gold 1 since the beginning of the season.

So, on the surface it appears the matchmaking system works. However, it was also mentioned that it breaks down when there are insufficient players. I haven’t reached plat rank yet (but I hope to!), so I have no direct frame of reference for that. But looking at the leaderboards it seems obvious that there are too few players at plat and above.

If I had to guess, there are probably far fewer than 500 players in platinum. How many of them are actively in the matchmaking queue at any given time? It can’t be enough to avoid meeting the same players over and over and pulling from lower ranks to fill slots.

I don’t know what you can do about that. Making PvP more attractive via rewards unfortunately won’t attract the type of players you need to resolve this issue. Only offering the gameplay this type of player wants will do that.

I’m not trashing GW2 PvP. This is my first season and progressing through gold so far has been a blast, with all of the ups, downs, crushing defeats and epic wins I expect from PvP. I find myself wanting to keep playing and see how far I can go with my personal rating. But I don’t want to reach plat and end up complaining about terrible matchmaking ruining the experience.

The pvp system is garbage. Period.
It matches players of different divisions in one match, treats it as fair match and heavily punishes higher rated players in such matches for being unlucky and sitting on the losing side of the lopsided match. IN WHAT WORLD MATCHMAKING IS CALLED GOOD WHEN IT EXPECTS PLAYER TO WIN 1v3 TO WIN THE MATCH?
Season after season, telling devs same thing over and over and they refuse to do anything about it. Let’s force everyone into exploiting or quitting! GLORIOUS!

Tried to carry this season. Switched to engi. I was getting to point of 60% winrate with first 40 games. Then game adapted and now I have the same one sided win 10 matches, lose 10 matches streaks, as I did before on ranger.

And lose streaks… well even on high gold, I play with ppl ignoring close at start, dying solo on far, just doing silly things. On low gold you get ragequiters.

Even games are like 1 in 10. And if you only play one game a day, usually it is good enough. Play more, get all bs.

That’s not how matchmaking is supposed to work. Ideally, you raise their mmr until their winrate is 50%.

Ideally ideally they are in a match with all legends. Less ideally is them being placed on a team with scrublets and being expected to carry. Although that matchmaking is very fast, it isn’t good for gw2. That being said IDK what current MM works like.

Alatar.7364:

kdaddy.5431:

wait mid gold is now rank 47 …………………….. ??????

I am pretty sure he ment his PvP Rank =D

come on you have to admit that was good

:)