Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone and good day to you ArenaNet developer and designer teams!

I will begin this post with a forewarning, to avoid replies like “L2P nawb!” or “If you’re so pro, play Ranked, nawb!” or my personal favorite “Just don’t play PvP, dude!”. I like competitive PvP in MMO games and I am a competitive person in real life. I have studied at lengths via written and video recorded material, various aspects of PvP in GW2 and I found sPvP to fit my play style and my desire to crush enemies and bash heads. As Conan once answered to what is best in life: “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women”. As such I have focused my efforts on playing the profession of Mesmer (CondiShatter build) and Guardian (Burning Symbol build) which proved decently effective in 1v1 and 1v2 scenarios.

tl;dr – I like PvP, I consider myself pretty decent, and the guild mates who played with me agreed that I can be a decent to good team mate, considering Unranked environment.

My story begins when I took my girlfriend’s Engineer for a spin, because it was in the Daily rotation for a win. I got this build watched some videos and got my rotations straight beating the puppets from the Heart of Mysts. Fun! The fun ended though when I have entered Solo Queue to play some Unranked matches to get that daily win, but instead I have been greeted with TWENTY CONSECUTIVE DEFEATS.

Each match worse than the last. If the first was lost by a small margin of 20 points because the opposing team rang the bell in Revenge of the Capricorn, the last one was lost at an appalling margin of 502 points. Yes, the team I was with at that time, managed to leave the base only once, and then the opposing team just camped the entrance and turned everything into a massacre.

I have been banned for three hours because I have been “toxic”, by cursing, cussing and calling names on my team mates for the appalling way they were playing. Always off-point, never putting pressure where it mattered, always going 1v4 or 1v5 and dying like chattel they were. Please do believe me I have tried my best. Turrets in place, support, AoE pressure, capping undefended points, far and home if needed, so on and so forth, but I am one player character, I only one against many, I can’t beat three or four competent player characters that really know their profession and play a good game.

Alas! I am at a loss. I have no idea how am I teamed up with newbie player characters that resemble headless cokerels in their play style rather than being teamed up with player characters which display a bit of competency. I have noticed that this string of defeats happens across all my characters and all my (two) accounts, which gives me pause. Today for example, I entered PvP with my mesmer and suffered four defeats in a row on Revenge of the Capricorn. If it would solely be my fault, I would bow before the competency of my team, but the scores showed a sad reality. Differences in score was always between 150 and 300! And even in such defeats I got Top Player Kills, Top Player Objective Neutralizer, Top Player Condition Damage Dealt, which means I do the part of the job I am supposed to do.

As such I have some questions for the ArenaNet team of developers and designers, regarding the Unranked PvP format and how should I avoid situations where I can’t get a win, unless I suffer a head stroke a heart failure and throw a perfectly good keyboard off the window:

#1. How is a player character, teamed up with other player characters in solo queue? What are the criteria and how can I improve my chances at getting a string of victories?

#2. How can I avoid being paired up with sub-par and novice player characters that can spell a string of shameful defeats? Also why does the system pair me with non-English speaker players thus preventing any strategy or tactics being coalesced and acquiesced?

#3. How can I accomplish my Daily PvP objectives, considering the above string of TWENTY DEFEATS IN A ROW?.

To conclude our business here, I advise the ArenaNet team or teams that participate in the development of PvP to make some test drives in Solo Queue Unranked PvP, because it is NOT OK to play twenty matches and suffer just shameful defeats. I believe that from 10 matches played at least 4 matches should be victories. My statistics from my matches across the characters I play, say that less than 35% of them are victories which means, that however good or bad I play, it does not matter.

This ruins my play experience, and thus is a disincentive in playing the game further. I am out of luck though as I am way past the refund policy for I would have asked for a refund, considering the poor quality of Solo Queue Unranked PvP, where however good or bad you perform, you still get defeated.

Food for thought: I have managed in one of my lost matches with the Thief, to gain 210 points by doing one thing: capping home and far on Capricorn map, by using Shadow Step and 5-skill on shortbow. I just roamed between these locations, decapping and capping those points, and avoiding any and all enemy contact. The second player, below me, was at 80 points. You be the judge.

Thank you for reading my rant!

P.S. I would be honored if at least someone from ArenaNet, would reply to this post, but I know they don’t have the time for this, as they are busy fixing the PvP system. Am I right?

may be you are not like barbar Conan, but barbar Cohen and his desires are – “hot water,good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper”.

It certainly can be frustrating when you are on a team with subpar players, but that’s frequently the nature of unranked pvp. That’s where new players should start or where players should try out new builds and style.

If you’re getting suspensions for shouting snd cursing at your team mates, that’s on you. I fail to see how that improves the situation you are in or has any positive contribution. I’ve had plenty of poor players on my tesm but I usually try to instruct or give them tips. No one likes losing but it happens especially in team oriented games where you can’t depend solely on yourself.

There is a mmr in unranked that is different than the ranked system. Not sure exactly how it works but I’ve had varying levels of skills on most of my teams.

I do agree on the fact that my cursing, cussing and name calling has no positive contribution, but that is not the reason I play PvP. The main reason I play PvP is to win my daily rewards and blow out some steam from work.

I agree, in team oriented games, you cannot shoulder the burden of defeat onto oneself yet methods can be put in place to prevent such poor outcomes.

I don’t think there’s a MMR system in play for Unranked. I believe it just pools the solo queuers and throws them in a bucket, spins that bucket then throws it down the stairs.

I think Conan would have had the balls to play ranked. My advice is to follow in Conan’s footsteps and get your kitten into ranked if you really want to crush your enemies.

In my experience matchmaking is not able to create teams of similiar skilled players. This can be frustrating and promotes a toxic environment. One issue I see is that there is no class based MMR. Whenever I test a build with a class I rarely play (in unranked) I don’t perform that good. I think this is the same for many players and leads to the impression you get noobs in your team. Another issue is mixing solo and team play. I once played an evening in a PuG team. We were winning everything and I crossed a whole division (ruby) in one go. Now I am heavely overrated. when I queue solo. Matchups are bad no matter if I am the strongest or weakest player.

Balasar.9137:

I do agree on the fact that my cursing, cussing and name calling has no positive contribution, but that is not the reason I play PvP. The main reason I play PvP is to win my daily rewards and blow out some steam from work.

I agree, in team oriented games, you cannot shoulder the burden of defeat onto oneself yet methods can be put in place to prevent such poor outcomes.

I don’t think there’s a MMR system in play for Unranked. I believe it just pools the solo queuers and throws them in a bucket, spins that bucket then throws it down the stairs.

There is an unranked MMR.

Doing the trash talk, did gave you a big dishonor hit. Active dishonor go away fast, but residual dishonor not.

That stack of residual dishonor is affecting your MMR in a big way.

Unfortunately, Anet sanctions are harsh and they penalize you for a long long time.

If you like pvp, you should buy another HoT box on sales and start from there.

Your stories feel like you are in MMR hell.

Have fun,
Dal

System tries to balance teams. But i have heard that some dishonour will put you in the boat with other dishonoured players, which might get you in a frustration spiral …

Marxx.5021:

One issue I see is that there is no class based MMR.

This. And more. I believe league ranking should be profession based, not account based. If i’m a ranger that’s around ruby/diamond level gameplay, that does not mean that hopping on revenant (which i know jack about) will make me an equal challenge to ruby/diamond opponents. More like fodder for the enemy team.

My league rating on ranger should apply to all my account rangers, but not other professions. Let them earn their own mettle in ranked and be where they should be, given my skill in playing each.

@Yasha.5963 – Conan is manlier than me because he is rank 80 in PvP ! I am yet to have the minimum rank to go Rated. Yet!

@Marxx.5021 – I agree with you. This is supposed to be fun and challenging, not just challenging.

@Jourdelune.7456 – I concurr with your assessment and also tested it. I have disabled my Team chat and I simply quit talking crap at people, when I am angry. I have seen a marked increase in my victories and my personal scores during the match as now I can focus on either not getting killed (as a mesmer), or burn everything in my path (with the guardian). Thus I observed a marked increase in the quality of the matches I play. I am much obliged on the observation you so astutely pointed out and grateful for the advice.

@Wolfric.9380 – As per Dal’s observations, you are definitely right.

@ZeftheWicked.3076 – I believe this could have a two-sided effect. On one hand it will let you specialize in playing the ranger and thus ignore other professions and as a result you will see no diversity in team composition and on the other hand no one will really specialize and thus have a greater diversity and a greater array of skills but will frustrate those that try to specialize alongside those new to the profession. However you apply this line of thought depends on the results you are aiming towards.

As per Dal’s reasoning, having such a complex math with so many variables is bound to upset some people like me, with low anger threshold, but it will certainly be an incentive for those that wish to (over)specialize.

NOTE: the current meta for example sees a lot of druids and a lot of dragonhunters but I have seen them easily shut down by older yet effective builds. As such the game has kept its dynamic and with the new information gleaned from you, now I understand that is all a matter of patience and perseverance in face of failure.

As @Solstace.2514 pointed out, this is a team effort with strangers. It matters more how you coordinate with them, rather than how they coordinate with you. It is a matter of numbers after all.

Thanks everyone for your time and advice.

Using cele rifle in the current meta is a sign that you are in fact, not good at pvp, because cele rifle is not even possible atm. Not only that, but if you are using rifle you are supposed to either be a flamethrower or grenade build with marauder or demolisher, rofl.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Engineer

You shouldn’t be playing rifle engineer unless you have a ton of knowledge on how to play engineer since you have to work extra hard to make rifle engineer useful over power hammer.

That being said unranked players are absolutely horrible, so unless you are playing to carry them then you won’t fix your win rate. The people beating you probably aren’t good, they are likely spamming easy classes like trapper DH. Always take elixir s so that you can use the invis to juke out enemies. Even on the meta power hammer build, swap out the condi clear drone for elixer s. Elixer s should be used on every single soloq engi build ever because it allows you to be immortal if you know how to juke. The invuln is worthless, but the invis that it gives as a secondary is extremely strong. In fact you should challenge yourself to never die as engi in some matches while solo capping the enemy far point and running away when you get lit.

Also get some practice in on 1v1 servers with engi. Engi is not the best 1v1 build in the game, but you should know how to bunk every enemy class on point for a bit before juking away from the point.

@Balazar: Thank you very much, I am really grateful about your feedback because most of the time, I gave free knowledge but I got rarely some form of recognition.

keep playing man, no one started as good, they all baddies.