Guild Wars 2

So this season brought a lot of changes to the whole league system, most of which are things that the players wanted straight from season 1 and it took you four seasons of experiments to get right. I’m talking about non-progression based ranking with safety nets, being able to see your rating and ranking place, pre-made groups not facing groups of lower size/solo players etc. Now for the bad parts.

Placement matches + hidden MMR not being reset once since the first pvp season started.
It seems like you missed the point where placements play a HUGE role in the current system and it’s actual fact that a lot of players get placed a lot higher/lower than where they truly belong. Now this wont be a big prolem if we had a continuous season in which case eventually people will find their perfect spot and get their perfect matchups. Are two months enough time for that to happen? Not by a long shot. In the current state even a rating decay that kicks ikittenx hours would not be enough to spread the playerpool properly in such a short amount of time. And now when we add up the hidden MMR (that was never reset) that goes hand in hand with your current season rating we get an even bigger mess. Let’s say we have player X and player Y. They are both of exactly equal skill. X placed at the top of the ladder in every previous season. Y didn’t play much pvp during that period or is a new account. X goes 1-9 in placements and gets placed in the top10%. Y goes 9-1 and gets placed in the bottom 10%. Now if we exclude that the placement itself is completely unfair when taking your hidden/previous MMR into account, the common counter-argument here is “but if Y is truly as good as X he will eventually get there!”. But can he? Does Y have the time to play hundreds of games probably consisting of other similarly misplaced competitors when in the end two months might not even be enough? Why does Y have to go through that hassle to get what X achieved instantly? This could’ve all been avoided if you actually did a proper reset (which is common sense for a completely new system) AND put more thought into the placements themselves. Instead you went with the “it will work itself out” mindset which doesn’t work in the season’s time frame.

One last thing I want to point out is the ridiculous way that end of season rewards will be handed out. You are additionally slowing down the placement process by making only the final standings valid. Why would someone even try hard during the first month when his ranking doesn’t matter at all? People can even hold out on playing untill the very last week/day and completely twist the whole ladder just by doing their placement matches. Someone that’s been rank 1 for 99% of the season can be pushed down in a matter of hours and get robbed because of the dumb way rewards are being distributed. The season started on December 13th and ends on February 7th. Every game played during that time frame should be of equal importance, period.

Now you’re free to rant at me. Thanks for reading.

There’s no way a decent player would go 1-9 in the placement matches. If you end up in the very low ranks you can carry easily as a good player. Even more so when you duo Q. If new/low MMR accs are so screwed, why do the top players easily get multiple accs into top 250?

I didn’t play last season. I went 7-3 in placements with the three losses being wide margins (>250 points) due to terrible teammates. I was placed at ~1150 mmr. I am now at 23-6 around 1300 mmr. I must say that I’m enjoying the season a lot more than the previous seasons, but I’m clearly way below where I should be.

Falan.1839:

There’s no way a decent player would go 1-9 in the placement matches. If you end up in the very low ranks you can carry easily as a good player. Even more so when you duo Q. If new/low MMR accs are so screwed, why do the top players easily get multiple accs into top 250?

This was just a figurative example. My point still stands. Hidden MMR (that shouldn’t exist now that we have visible rating by the way) promotes unfair placements which results in other problems as I listed above.

I have no idea if I am where I should be. I alternate matches where I cream people and where I’m utterly outclassed. There seems to be no settling for me and who I get thrown with seems very random. I have the occasional well matched game, but they are the exception not the rule. Meaning I have no idea whether I’m actually in the right place MMR wise, which probably makes sense given the loose coupling of my personal play and whether my team actually wins.

Having a soft MMR reset is a good thing. The match maker will know people’s relative skill level. Therefore, it gets people where they belong faster in the placement matches. The system already had a lot of data on what people should be ranked so it should use it to setup matches. Sure people can get lucky or unlucky in their placement matches, but this would be happening a lot more if you started everyone at the same MMR. Without the caps in place from last season, the ratings should be even better when we start next season.

Burn.5401:

One last thing I want to point out is the ridiculous way that end of season rewards will be handed out. You are additionally slowing down the placement process by making only the final standings valid. Why would someone even try hard during the first month when his ranking doesn’t matter at all? People can even hold out on playing untill the very last week/day and completely twist the whole ladder just by doing their placement matches. Someone that’s been rank 1 for 99% of the season can be pushed down in a matter of hours and get robbed because of the dumb way rewards are being distributed. The season started on December 13th and ends on February 7th. Every game played during that time frame should be of equal importance, period.

Now you’re free to rant at me. Thanks for reading.

As the season goes on the top player’s MMR is getting higher and higher above the max MMR you can get from placements. By the end of the season I doubt any normal player could snipe their way into the top 250. That is the incentive to play the season out.