Guild Wars 2

Thank you Anet, i am really happy with this! But what about the dc-system. Will players not lose pips when someone is dcded during a match? Will be there changes for maps like the lords from legacy of foefire? And will be there class nerfs before league season 2?

Greetings.

Thank you kittening jesus finally i can’t

Good start so far. Now, to fix balance and some professions

Great to finally hear something from you guys! Sounds promissing. Im verry excited for the win streaks, as it works great in Hearthstone. I would also suggest there is a sort of pre-season where you can get an MMR and/or division rating that already places you more or less in the division you belong to prevent the “volatile” opening of the season. Or let’s say at a maximum of saphire. So low in amber, medium in emerald and high end players in saphire when the season starts. (But you would still have to earn that spot via the pre-season).

Inb4 “were’s our frequent balance patches”

Awesome post nonetheless. Looking forward to S2.

A lot of these issues could have been forseen prior to the season release, but this is the first time ArenaNet has ever had a league system so it’s understandable.

_

What isn’t understandable is the gross imbalance, sheer power creep, multiple bugs and a massive overflow of CC turning players into a ragdoll.

great changes, hope you’re as spot on with the balance changes too

Hi ArenaNet PvP staff, welcome back from your two month vacation…. Thank you for taking some time this week to huddle up and figure out how to improve leagues moving forward. Clearly you have no intent to address the issue of mixed solo and team queue and queuing outside Heart of the Mist, etc…

There is no way to take ranked pvp serious when you have a blended solo and team queue. As I’ve explained in other post, you would not have an NFL team go up against 11 random NFL players tossed together. The NFL team would have a huge advantage in terms of communication, strategy and the overall advantage of trust, respect and coordination a TEAM has. Five players who solo queued together even have a disadvantage when the opposing team has a duo queue who between the two maintain these elements. This is common sense.

The FACT that ArenaNet blends solo and team queues for League divisons shows that as a company ArenaNet does not believe this level of scrutinization and seriousness should be applied. It does not matter which MMR algorithm you use to try and allow the server to create these random teams for solo queuers, the other TEAM elements are missing. It’s not good enough to assume a new or poorly performing guild team is an ok fit for give man solo queue team. The disadvantage for the solo queue players is still there. You can’t argue this.

I know your primary concern is taking care of your core. It’s undeinable that your GW2 core is a PvE focused player base. As a business you would be making incredibly bad decisions to not take care of your majority base. You business model demands that you take care of them. I believe the current sPvP system is designed for the casual player in mind and to provide a sense of progression for the casual PvE player who ocassionally does PvP instead of it representing true rank. Until you split solo and team queues there is no way sPvP in GW2 can be taken seriously.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Shopping for Ambers

In addition to the changes above, we’ll also be adjusting the way that parties are scored in our matchmaking algorithm based on the overall division spread of a team’s makeup. It is important to us that anyone can play with their friends regardless of league standing, but in doing so, we also want to ensure that teams aren’t gaining an unfair advantage in match difficulty based on their rosters. An example of this would be two friends: one is in Diamond and the other is in Amber. For Season 2, these two players will still be able to team up and play together, but they’ll be placed into Diamond level matches based on the highest division player in the party. This means that forming a party with players in a higher division than you will always bring you up to their level for matchmaking and prediction, rather than adjust to compensate for party members at lower divisions. This specific change will go into effect in our next scheduled release (prior to the end of season 1).

This is all good and well, but what’s stopping a diamond tier group of friends from having one dude make an amber account? I’ll assume that you’re also changing the pip rewards then, making it so that it doesn’t matter if there’s a tier 1 amber with a clean MMR on the winning team.

Someone please clarify.

Good job PvP team! Gaile will there be a sneak peak on the upcoming balance changes? I think that’s what most of us are waiting for.

My only concern with these changes is that they may make completing the league progression achievements impossible for too large a portion of the playerbase. Having to get out of Ruby to get tier 4 is difficult enough as it is. Will you re-examine that particular set of achievements in light of this change?

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Hi ArenaNet PvP staff, welcome back from your two month vacation…. Thank you for taking some time this week to huddle up and figure out how to improve leagues moving forward. Clearly you have no intent to address the issue of mixed solo and team queue and queuing outside Heart of the Mist, etc…

There is no way to take ranked pvp serious when you have a blended solo and team queue. As I’ve explained in other post, you would not have an NFL team go up against 11 random NFL players tossed together. The NFL team would have a huge advantage in terms of communication, strategy and the overall advantage of trust, respect and coordination a TEAM has. Five players who solo queued together even have a disadvantage when the opposing team has a duo queue who between the two maintain these elements. This is common sense.

The FACT that ArenaNet blends solo and team queues for League divisons shows that as a company ArenaNet does not believe this level of scrutinization and seriousness should be applied. It does not matter which MMR algorithm you use to try and allow the server to create these random teams for solo queuers, the other TEAM elements are missing. It’s not good enough to assume a new or poorly performing guild team is an ok fit for give man solo queue team. The disadvantage for the solo queue players is still there. You can’t argue this.

I know your primary concern is taking care of your core. It’s undeinable that your GW2 core is a PvE focused player base. As a business you would be making incredibly bad decisions to not take care of your majority base. You business model demands that you take care of them. I believe the current sPvP system is designed for the casual player in mind and to provide a sense of progression for the casual PvE player who occasionally does PvP instead of it representing true rank. Until you split solo and team queues there is no way sPvP in GW2 can be taken seriously.

They’re at least doing stuff to close loopholes and make league progress fairer. Besides there were many times I was soloQ and beat premades ranging from two through five. Yes teams have an inherent advantage (can’t get a random two thief and warrior team if you premade two chronos, two revenants, and a tempest or druid for example) but are beatable.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Shopping for Ambers

In addition to the changes above, we’ll also be adjusting the way that parties are scored in our matchmaking algorithm based on the overall division spread of a team’s makeup. It is important to us that anyone can play with their friends regardless of league standing, but in doing so, we also want to ensure that teams aren’t gaining an unfair advantage in match difficulty based on their rosters. An example of this would be two friends: one is in Diamond and the other is in Amber. For Season 2, these two players will still be able to team up and play together, but they’ll be placed into Diamond level matches based on the highest division player in the party. This means that forming a party with players in a higher division than you will always bring you up to their level for matchmaking and prediction, rather than adjust to compensate for party members at lower divisions. This specific change will go into effect in our next scheduled release (prior to the end of season 1).

This is all good and well, but what’s stopping a diamond tier group of friends from having one dude make an amber account? I’ll assume that you’re also changing the pip rewards then, making it so that it doesn’t matter if there’s a tier 1 amber with a clean MMR on the winning team.

Someone please clarify.

That’s an excellent point. Gaile, will the pip rewards be same regardless of player’s division so that they don’t exploit the system with smurf accounts?

So still no word on Solo-Q? How long can you dodge this question..

Exciting changes so far. Hopefully thief gets some love in the balance patch and I’ll consider still giving this game some of my attention I don’t give to BnS.

Also as others have mentioned, what about solo q?!

SlayerSixx.5763:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Shopping for Ambers

In addition to the changes above, we’ll also be adjusting the way that parties are scored in our matchmaking algorithm based on the overall division spread of a team’s makeup. It is important to us that anyone can play with their friends regardless of league standing, but in doing so, we also want to ensure that teams aren’t gaining an unfair advantage in match difficulty based on their rosters. An example of this would be two friends: one is in Diamond and the other is in Amber. For Season 2, these two players will still be able to team up and play together, but they’ll be placed into Diamond level matches based on the highest division player in the party. This means that forming a party with players in a higher division than you will always bring you up to their level for matchmaking and prediction, rather than adjust to compensate for party members at lower divisions. This specific change will go into effect in our next scheduled release (prior to the end of season 1).

This is all good and well, but what’s stopping a diamond tier group of friends from having one dude make an amber account? I’ll assume that you’re also changing the pip rewards then, making it so that it doesn’t matter if there’s a tier 1 amber with a clean MMR on the winning team.

Someone please clarify.

The way I read that, if that diamond-tier group has one amber guy, they still get put into diamond-tier matches. Based on the comments about MMR still being used for within-tier placement, you’re somewhat more likely to end up in an easy match, but you’ll still be matched against other diamonds.

I wasn’t sure what to make of the pips bit, hopefully someone will clarify that, but my best guess is that the one amber-tier, low-MMR guy will probably just make it so that the other side, if they lose, doesn’t lose a pip, or loses fewer. Probably does nothing if they win, but I could very easily be wrong about that.

no solo arena = bad

Thank you so much for this, things are looking promising!

Inb4 babyrage: “Gj Anet you punish me for playing with my low ranked friends”.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Hi ArenaNet PvP staff, welcome back from your two month vacation…. Thank you for taking some time this week to huddle up and figure out how to improve leagues moving forward. Clearly you have no intent to address the issue of mixed solo and team queue and queuing outside Heart of the Mist, etc…

There is no way to take ranked pvp serious when you have a blended solo and team queue. As I’ve explained in other post, you would not have an NFL team go up against 11 random NFL players tossed together. The NFL team would have a huge advantage in terms of communication, strategy and the overall advantage of trust, respect and coordination a TEAM has. Five players who solo queued together even have a disadvantage when the opposing team has a duo queue who between the two maintain these elements. This is common sense.

The FACT that ArenaNet blends solo and team queues for League divisons shows that as a company ArenaNet does not believe this level of scrutinization and seriousness should be applied. It does not matter which MMR algorithm you use to try and allow the server to create these random teams for solo queuers, the other TEAM elements are missing. It’s not good enough to assume a new or poorly performing guild team is an ok fit for give man solo queue team. The disadvantage for the solo queue players is still there. You can’t argue this.

I know your primary concern is taking care of your core. It’s undeinable that your GW2 core is a PvE focused player base. As a business you would be making incredibly bad decisions to not take care of your majority base. You business model demands that you take care of them. I believe the current sPvP system is designed for the casual player in mind and to provide a sense of progression for the casual PvE player who ocassionally does PvP instead of it representing true rank. Until you split solo and team queues there is no way sPvP in GW2 can be taken seriously.

Even league of legends allows up to duo Q in their ranked soloQ. Of course, since their population is high enough, they’ll have more people going duoQ to make it so that sides both have a duoQ.

As far as I know, they might even be adopting a similar system to GW2 where they would be allowing even 5man premades into soloQ with the intent of always making it so that both sides have the same amount of partied players.

Thank you Gaile and Evan for info.
Although proposed changes are a step in the right direction, would there be a chance to get an update whether or not you are discussing your company policy about frequent posting on forums and revealing future plan in ahead as I believe community may provide a lot of useful feedback.
I am sorry but with current frequency of “red posts” and feedback I don’t think many are happy.
Is it possible for you guys to escalate this issue to higher management to improve in this area? Would benefit all of us.

These are great changes and look like they address the biggest issues in the current system. Much more significant ones than SoloQ, which I say as a mainly solo player. Thanks ANet for taking our points on board.

SlayerSixx.5763:

This is all good and well, but what’s stopping a diamond tier group of friends from having one dude make an amber account? I’ll assume that you’re also changing the pip rewards then, making it so that it doesn’t matter if there’s a tier 1 amber with a clean MMR on the winning team.

Someone please clarify.

This is exactly the same thing that I was thinking while reading that paragraph.

If the pips loss/win depends on the higher div player of a team, than this change is good. If not, it will still not prevent some kind of abuse.

Praise Balthazar, PvP Leagues are finally getting fixed. I’ll actually have a reason to play leagues in Season 2. Especially if things get balanced well.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Even league of legends allows up to duo Q in their ranked soloQ. Of course, since their population is high enough, they’ll have more people going duoQ to make it so that sides both have a duoQ.

As far as I know, they might even be adopting a similar system to GW2 where they would be allowing even 5man premades into soloQ with the intent of always making it so that both sides have the same amount of partied players.

League of Legends actually dropped solo que for season 6 (the current one). There is only ranked and unranked ques. No solo, duo, or full premade versions.

Yes, League of Legends removed their solo/team que split.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Shopping for Ambers

In addition to the changes above, we’ll also be adjusting the way that parties are scored in our matchmaking algorithm based on the overall division spread of a team’s makeup. It is important to us that anyone can play with their friends regardless of league standing, but in doing so, we also want to ensure that teams aren’t gaining an unfair advantage in match difficulty based on their rosters. An example of this would be two friends: one is in Diamond and the other is in Amber. For Season 2, these two players will still be able to team up and play together, but they’ll be placed into Diamond level matches based on the highest division player in the party. This means that forming a party with players in a higher division than you will always bring you up to their level for matchmaking and prediction, rather than adjust to compensate for party members at lower divisions. This specific change will go into effect in our next scheduled release (prior to the end of season 1).

This is all good and well, but what’s stopping a diamond tier group of friends from having one dude make an amber account? I’ll assume that you’re also changing the pip rewards then, making it so that it doesn’t matter if there’s a tier 1 amber with a clean MMR on the winning team.

Someone please clarify.

+1 i wanted to ask the same thing.
How will be the reward. Since Predicton will mostly toward the team without an amber player.
This would mean even if the players with an amber in their team lose. They will still gain a Pip?

Eolirin.1830:

My only concern with these changes is that they may make completing the league progression achievements impossible for too large a portion of the playerbase. Having to get out of Ruby to get tier 4 is difficult enough as it is. Will you re-examine that particular set of achievements in light of this change?

Why people want prestigious rewards is it communicates, “I overcame these challenges” and, “I completed hard content and am therefore skilled.” That value needs to be maintained. If you’re an average player you’ll become good much faster than a good player would become great for example. The better one becomes at something the higher the diminishing returns. For example if you spent eight hours sprinting (over a long stretch of time not in one go obviously) you might shave three seconds off your time whereas an Olympic sprinter would be lucky to shave off 1/10th of a second. You need bigger amounts of effort for increasingly smaller gains and in fact most RPGs reflect this as well (grind for months to go from level 200 to 201 but spend only a few hours going from 1 to 10).

What I’m trying to say is if you have sapphire tier skills (75th-85th percentile or 32 through 60 ladder points by my estimation) you’ll get ruby tier skills faster than a ruby (86th-98.5th percentile) would obtain diamond skill.

Some nice changes but please consider adding Solo Queue.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Galandil.9641:

SlayerSixx.5763:

This is all good and well, but what’s stopping a diamond tier group of friends from having one dude make an amber account? I’ll assume that you’re also changing the pip rewards then, making it so that it doesn’t matter if there’s a tier 1 amber with a clean MMR on the winning team.

Someone please clarify.

This is exactly the same thing that I was thinking while reading that paragraph.

If the pips loss/win depends on the higher div player of a team, than this change is good. If not, it will still not prevent some kind of abuse.

Match prediction is also based on the highest division player in the party.

Good, Evan, that’s what we all wanted to hear.

Lutto.8745:

So still no word on Solo-Q? How long can you dodge this question..

I think I can answer that. Soloq will not return unless the population of TeamQ reach a point where the que times for TeamQ are less than 3 minutes on average. So the only way to get Soloq back is to promote Spvp to a larger audience and get more players, which I assume is Anet’s goal.

In the mean time, perhaps Anet can look into rewarding Soloq players for winning against pre-mades with extra pips.

So do I get to keep my Legendary badge for the next season?

After this season ends, how long will it take to the new one starts?

Thank you for this.

Gaile Gray.6029:

While we’ll be using divisions to match you against your immediate opponents, we’ll still use your MMR to place you on teams with similarly skilled players (from your division point range) to help ensure that you’re not forced to play with individuals that are of a much higher or lower skill than you.

So this means you will be matched with and against same division players, but your teammates will have your same mmr?

Hallelujah!!! finally!

Awesome news especially the bnit where the shopping for ambers fix will be in the next scheduled release and not waiting for end of season one.

Thanks!

BY the way is the 50/50 forced win/loss system going to remain or is that going away too?

Gaile Gray.6029:

A message from the PvP team:

Shopping for Ambers

In addition to the changes above, we’ll also be adjusting the way that parties are scored in our matchmaking algorithm based on the overall division spread of a team’s makeup. It is important to us that anyone can play with their friends regardless of league standing, but in doing so, we also want to ensure that teams aren’t gaining an unfair advantage in match difficulty based on their rosters. An example of this would be two friends: one is in Diamond and the other is in Amber. For Season 2, these two players will still be able to team up and play together, but they’ll be placed into Diamond level matches based on the highest division player in the party. This means that forming a party with players in a higher division than you will always bring you up to their level for matchmaking and prediction, rather than adjust to compensate for party members at lower divisions. This specific change will go into effect in our next scheduled release (prior to the end of season 1).

So this means that yes people can queue with lower division but unless its known that they can play at the level of the highest person, why would they want to? Especially if that person is in ruby or higher where a loss can be a major setback.

Congrats! In general I’m really excited about these changes and I hope it’ll lessen the need for a separate solo Q (the thing I really want). That said…

Gaile Gray.6029:

While we’ll be using divisions to match you against your immediate opponents, we’ll still use your MMR to place you on teams with similarly skilled players (from your division point range) to help ensure that you’re not forced to play with individuals that are of a much higher or lower skill than you.

If match prediction is based on division/pip count within a division, this is going to create situations where low MMR players end up with extraordinarily long loss streaks based on the fact that the bad players in a match will end up on one team. This is especially true at the start of each division and it’ll be exacerbated in times of low player population.

This can be mitigated if match prediction uses MMR to prevent low MMR players from losing pips when facing a much better team. From the sounds of the above descriptions match prediction may be using division + pip counts instead, which would be a mistake.

Also I’d like to emphasize one thing to the balance team: PASSSIVES NEED TO GO
They are ruining the pvp experience and have drastically lowered the skill floor of many classes. This is hindering this game from becoming an esports contender as the AI is playing the game instead of the PC. At the very least design a way for the player to use these passive skills actively. This can be done by assigning a hotkey to passive skills and having a prompt be available for a short time window in that the player can interact with, based on the form of cc or attack used against them. Even with this system in place some passive skills need to be toned down/changed like the Revenant and Mesmer passives. I really hope the team considers these points.

Agemnon.4608:

Eolirin.1830:

My only concern with these changes is that they may make completing the league progression achievements impossible for too large a portion of the playerbase. Having to get out of Ruby to get tier 4 is difficult enough as it is. Will you re-examine that particular set of achievements in light of this change?

Why people want prestigious rewards is it communicates, “I overcame these challenges” and, “I completed hard content and am therefore skilled.” That value needs to be maintained. If you’re an average player you’ll become good much faster than a good player would become great for example. The better one becomes at something the higher the diminishing returns. For example if you spent eight hours sprinting (over a long stretch of time not in one go obviously) you might shave three seconds off your time whereas an Olympic sprinter would be lucky to shave off 1/10th of a second. You need bigger amounts of effort for increasingly smaller gains and in fact most RPGs reflect this as well (grind for months to go from level 200 to 201 but spend only a few hours going from 1 to 10).

What I’m trying to say is if you have sapphire tier skills (75th-85th percentile or 32 through 60 ladder points by my estimation) you’ll get ruby tier skills faster than a ruby (86th-98.5th percentile) would obtain diamond skill.

The analogies you’re making don’t apply here; individual improvement is irrelevant as league progression is based on relative improvement against the entire rest of the player base. If leagues are moved to a place where they’re truly reflective of player skill, some significant portion of the player base will struggle to be able to get into, much less out of, Ruby because no matter how much time they put in their rate of advancement will only match if not lag that of everyone else. They won’t be able to make that up by playing more. A lot of people have hard ceilings too, and simply won’t get any better than a certain point.

Currently if one of those people gets into Ruby, they’ll still get matched with roughly even MMR, so while it’s hard for everyone to maintain a greater than 50% win ratio, it’s at least possible, regardless of skill level, because everyone has roughly even ability to achieve slightly higher than 50% inside their skill band. What happens when you stop doing that is that if a division’s median MMR is significantly higher than yours, you are pretty much guaranteed to lose more matches on average. You can still, maybe, progress up the divisions where you can’t lose tiers, if you are very lucky and get a good streak, but you’ll stall out completely at Ruby. Edit: and this is further compounded by the MMR still matching you to your team based on your MMR. Anyone who is at one of the tails of the MMR distribution for a division will tend to be clustered with other people in that tail, and will either win more or lose more on average vs people in the middle. They’ll also see longer queue times.

And that would be okay, except for the fact that every single other achievement you need can be grinded out regardless of skill level. You will plateau at the divison that’s appropriate to your skill level, but you’ll still have a mix of wins and losses, so you can work on every single other achievement. But you will get hard gated on that one achievement. That is kinda terrible. If you want unique really prestigious rewards they should be obviously gated from the beginning behind things like getting into Legendary tier. You should not be able to get 99% of the way there and then be locked out.

Unless I am reading this wrong, this sounds horrible for casual/low mmr players who will have to face high ranked players at the start of the season, thus putting them off pvp altogether. It sounds like it is best not to play in the first week of the season at all……. I won’t be.

Wait, help me with this. According to the point Shopping for Ambers:

If someone has lower raiting than me (because his skill level is probably lower) i should not duoQ with him because we will face enemies in my ranking range. —> bad ifea

If someone has higher rating we duoQ we will face better enemies. —> bad idea

So dont teamQ with people who are not in your raiting range?

Evan Lesh.3295:

Another note: We’re making some changes to allow high division players to get matches faster to help combat the long queue times.

How long until we get Team Queue and Solo Queue separated again as they were quite a while ago?

Evan Lesh.3295:

Krysard.1364:

Gaile Gray.6029:

While we’ll be using divisions to match you against your immediate opponents, we’ll still use your MMR to place you on teams with similarly skilled players (from your division point range) to help ensure that you’re not forced to play with individuals that are of a much higher or lower skill than you.

So this means you will be matched with and against same division players, but your teammates will have your same mmr?

Yep.

Fantastic! The “averaging” approach sounds decent but in reality it created so many one-sided matches and mixed players who knew strategies and when to rotate, with those that just charged a random point and stayed until dead.

Gaile Gray.6029:

A message from the PvP team:

Shopping for Ambers

In addition to the changes above, we’ll also be adjusting the way that parties are scored in our matchmaking algorithm based on the overall division spread of a team’s makeup. It is important to us that anyone can play with their friends regardless of league standing, but in doing so, we also want to ensure that teams aren’t gaining an unfair advantage in match difficulty based on their rosters. An example of this would be two friends: one is in Diamond and the other is in Amber. For Season 2, these two players will still be able to team up and play together, but they’ll be placed into Diamond level matches based on the highest division player in the party. This means that forming a party with players in a higher division than you will always bring you up to their level for matchmaking and prediction, rather than adjust to compensate for party members at lower divisions. This specific change will go into effect in our next scheduled release (prior to the end of season 1).

So if a Diamond or legend player decides to trio queue with 2 friends that are completely New to the game, the other 2 players that get placed on that team are screwed??, that’s not fair.

In my opinion with that system you should only be able to queue with people from your division +/- 1. Unless it s a full party. With that system if you queue with 5 it should be ok, but if you are less than 5, it will be unfair for the other people that get placed on the team.