Guild Wars 2

so i finally got my friends/guildies to gather up and play sPvP as a team. we’ve all had some sort of experience with it one way or another through hotjoins and solo queues (some more than the others), but this was the first time the 5 of us were going to play together as a team. we ran our builds, discussed roles each would take, and even borrowed a channel on our server’s official TS channel.

5 hours later, half of the team was completely discouraged, because we weren’t only losing every single match, we were being obliterated by obviously far more skilled players. so is the matchmaking system completely broken, or just inexplicably turned off?

hotjoins can only help so much, it’s not like the 5 of us can play as a team on hotjoins because of how autobalance and team distribution works, and hotjoins are either 8v8 matches (that are usually a complete mess and couldn’t be further from representing rated matches) or dueling arenas. the 5v5 arenas that aren’t repurposed for dueling will either never fill, or cause even more trouble to practice teamwork.

so what’s the solution here? buy a custom arena and get 5 more people to form another team so you can get some practice on people that are also newcomers? that’s hardly inviting.

The solution is somewhat simple, keep losing until you are no where near the leaderboards and eventually you will play against solo queue. TPvP is very much about communication and not necessarily about being technically skilled. Today I formed a group of a r16,r18,r19,r32 myself being r42. I got them all on teamspeak and asked what they were running and in some cases I suggested builds. We played quite a few matches and we won the first 3. After those games I had a couple of them whispering me about how they were enjoying it etc but we had one leave. So I asked Mouby to come join us and we played a few more games some of which we won and some we lost. Overall I think everyone enjoyed themselves, the key to winning is communication and positioning. Practicing 1v1 is a good idea because being able to win 1v1s can win you the game. Knowing which classes to target first and calling targets are crucial when it comes to tournaments. Really the only thing I can suggest is to just continue playing as a team and try and find out how other teams communicate.

Good luck

If you need help learning the mindset behind pvp, feel free to pm me, or ask some of the players who are well placed on the leaderboard. Most of them are very helpful and will be more than happy to explain the game concepts in a manner that will allow you to understand how to generate advantages and to understand why games are turning out the way they are.

I know its easy to blame matchmaking, but it may simply be that your team is legitimately worse than 90% of the groups that are currently forming.

Reaching out and asking for help rather than making excuses for your performance will propel you past the vast majority of the playerbase in no time, believe me.

Adam.6047:

The solution is somewhat simple, keep losing until you are no where near the leaderboards and eventually you will play against solo queue. TPvP is very much about communication and not necessarily about being technically skilled. Today I formed a group of a r16,r18,r19,r32 myself being r42. I got them all on teamspeak and asked what they were running and in some cases I suggested builds. We played quite a few matches and we won the first 3. After those games I had a couple of them whispering me about how they were enjoying it etc but we had one leave. So I asked Mouby to come join us and we played a few more games some of which we won and some we lost. Overall I think everyone enjoyed themselves, the key to winning is communication and positioning. Practicing 1v1 is a good idea because being able to win 1v1s can win you the game. Knowing which classes to target first and calling targets are crucial when it comes to tournaments. Really the only thing I can suggest is to just continue playing as a team and try and find out how other teams communicate.

Good luck

well we follow the PvP community and stuff, we look up map strategy videos, and we try to keep it coordinated via communication and target calling. we do plenty of 1v1s, discuss match ups (my condi thief doesn’t even bother with bunker necros anymore lol) and overall try to help each other improve. we also sometimes run havoc squads on WvW, but that’s another story.

but i’m the second highest ranked player on the team… at 11. maybe we just need to keep forcing ourselves through hotjoins, but i felt that our main issue was practice as a team. like, putting into practice all that tournament play theory. we have a solid idea of what to do, we just can’t do it (at least not well enough to get satisfactory results), be it inexperience, be it team synergy, be it whatever. and it’s hard to do so when your face is being used to wipe the floor.

i actually joked with the team that we should try losing as hard as possible a lot of times, just to see if we dropped low enough on the ratings to get a fair match, didn’t expect someone to bring it up :P but why the hell wouldn’t we start at the bottom of the leaderboards to begin with? i mean, we have one person with some tournament wins under his belt, but that’s one guy in five, and not even that much of a high rating guy.

Archer Henchman.2534:

If you need help learning the mindset behind pvp, feel free to pm me, or ask some of the players who are well placed on the leaderboard. Most of them are very helpful and will be more than happy to explain the game concepts in a manner that will allow you to understand how to generate advantages and to understand why games are turning out the way they are.

I know its easy to blame matchmaking, but it may simply be that your team is legitimately worse than 90% of the groups that are currently forming.

Reaching out and asking for help rather than making excuses for your performance will propel you past the vast majority of the playerbase in no time, believe me.

i’m not making excuses. in fact i’m fairly certain our team fits that “worse than 90% of groups currently forming” scenario. but i’d expect the matchmaking system to make sure we’re pitched against those other 10%, or at least the lower margin of those 90%.

what i’m asking for is a way to get real, solid experience and practice with rated matches against teams that are as good (or as bad) as us.

My competitive team is made up of a group of friends who’ve known each other for 10+ years on average. We played GW1 together and then started playing the GW2 beta and loved it and decided to try to be “decently competitive”.

We formed up a team with all five of us playing in the same room on that first night. We went over our builds for hours before starting and then jumped into our first free tournament with dreams of esports glory……. and LOST 24 GAMES IN A ROW.

I went on the forums and discovered a “pistol whip” thief build that finally propelled us to our first win. I still remember the cheers of joy from that room when the score hit 500.

Many months removed from that first win, we now play Mist League together and are having a blast. We still have some down moments (JESUS CHRIST GOON YOU ARE GOOD!) but have learned a TON about the game over the last few months and I actually have a respectable win/loss ratio now lol

TRDL: Keep at it my friend. Learn the maps. Read the forums. Watch the streams of the top tier players. Join Mist League and challenge some teams of similar skill level. And the wins will come

xantosnightwish.5438:

My competitive team is made up of a group of friends who’ve known each other for 10+ years on average. We played GW1 together and then started playing the GW2 beta and loved it and decided to try to be “decently competitive”.

We formed up a team with all five of us playing in the same room on that first night. We went over our builds for hours before starting and then jumped into our first free tournament with dreams of esports glory……. and LOST 24 GAMES IN A ROW.

I went on the forums and discovered a “pistol whip” thief build that finally propelled us to our first win. I still remember the cheers of joy from that room when the score hit 500.

Many months removed from that first win, we now play Mist League together and are having a blast. We still have some down moments (JESUS CHRIST GOON YOU ARE GOOD!) but have learned a TON about the game over the last few months and I actually have a respectable win/loss ratio now lol

TRDL: Keep at it my friend. Learn the maps. Read the forums. Watch the streams of the top tier players. Join Mist League and challenge some teams of similar skill level. And the wins will come

R.I.P

The matchmaking in this game is very effective. You will eventually lose so much that your enemies will be completely hopeless.

I know it might sound really elitist to say that you just need to play better, but that’s really the problem here. The matchmaking isn’t that broken to the point were “really skilled players” kill you. I can assure you, I do not farm rank 10’s in my tournaments.

This scenario sounds awfully familiar.

Basedgod.7328:

This scenario sounds awfully familiar.

well look who’s around :P

as for the others, thanks for the encouragement, i know i wanna keep at it, i just worry about some of my teammates that are less than thrilled about having spent their day getting their kitten handed to them :P

EDIT: still stand by my point that ANet should take in consideration that not everyone has the willingness to get stomped for weeks/months until they get decent, so they should think about something to ease newcomers into the game without downgrading the game itself. there’s too much disparity between hotjoins and rated matches, and neither are particularly newcomer-friendly (depending on your luck with hotjoins).

Never ever give up. What does not kill you only make you stronger.

You will not get stomped for weeks or months. If you’re in the lowest 10% of players, most elo systems will accurately place you within 15 games, but even in systems with initial placement acceleration via temporarily increased K-values for new players, reaching your estimated ladder level takes 15 games or so depending on the plasticity of the ladder.

Put simply: Being bad at the game is not newcomer friendly because competition is not rewarding for people who are bad. Matchmaking can’t solve that. You’ll receive tangible reinforcement once you start to improve, but don’t expect to play organized teams once you hit the bottom 10% of the ladder.

If you want to improve rapidly, there are many resources you can access, but the main one is going to be your own desire to improve. It might be daunting at first, but you’ll make it if you stick with it.

The one big problem your team is facing is that even though you lost consec matches,..you still gained glory. That glory you were able to spend on….um,…?….the rewards you can achieve through this at least provide some sense of time not being totally wasted. Even though you lost you can still reflect on how you are now able to craft very-very entry level basic armour skins. I am sure this is enough reward to help ease the teething pains of a new team. Once you get progressively better you’ll soon be earning the same reward over and over again, and that unto itself does provide the greatest feeling of , “We’ve made it as a team.”

Again..it matters not how many people say it, the game lacks incentive to struggle through the learning curve of pvp. If you wanna get to that level, you just have to resign to the fact if you lose you lose..if you win you win..your reward is the effort you’ve taken.

BrunoBRS.5178:

we were being obliterated by obviously far more skilled players.

Working as intended like in every pvp game i suppose…sure matchmaking sux no dubt on this but being outplayed by higher ranks it’s normal, keep going…thay only way to become competitive as a team is to loose vs better teams learning from them. Stomping pugs is fun for sure…but is not gonna teach you something imo…just try to go tpvp during the best time period when more teams are running, you’re going to improve your matchmaking since there is more “choice” around…waiting for a decent ladder/matchmaking system..

5 hours… seems a bit much? Even if you started at top no. 1 rank you should be at the bottom of the leaderboards after 5 hours only losing(if average match is between 10-15 minutes and short wait times between the matches and you really played all the time).

Especially at the lower half of the leaderboards 2-3 losses mean already about 10 percent.

Did you play all the classes you are playing in PvE to level 80 and then create your own PvP build? (That’s how I usually like to do it – cause I think starting a new char and jumping PvP won’t help me – especially not with a build from the internet when I don’t even know all the skills).

I also often lose… I went from 50 percent down to 9 lol… then the last days I decided to do dailies in tournaments again(since patch – playing engineer and I like the battering ram) and won all the time so far and up around 50 again… even though it is my least favourite map at the moment(usually I lose often on this map and win most on Temple of the Silen Storm – my favourite map).

BrunoBRS.5178:

so i finally got my friends/guildies to gather up and play sPvP as a team. we’ve all had some sort of experience with it one way or another through hotjoins and solo queues (some more than the others), but this was the first time the 5 of us were going to play together as a team. we ran our builds, discussed roles each would take, and even borrowed a channel on our server’s official TS channel.

5 hours later, half of the team was completely discouraged, because we weren’t only losing every single match, we were being obliterated by obviously far more skilled players. so is the matchmaking system completely broken, or just inexplicably turned off?

hotjoins can only help so much, it’s not like the 5 of us can play as a team on hotjoins because of how autobalance and team distribution works, and hotjoins are either 8v8 matches (that are usually a complete mess and couldn’t be further from representing rated matches) or dueling arenas. the 5v5 arenas that aren’t repurposed for dueling will either never fill, or cause even more trouble to practice teamwork.

so what’s the solution here? buy a custom arena and get 5 more people to form another team so you can get some practice on people that are also newcomers? that’s hardly inviting.

There is no solution until the pvp population expands to the point where matchmaking can put new players against other new players. Also not having a solo q means that the ladder is all mixed up and weird. Again meaning new players could get destroyed by solo q veterans who formed a team on an evening.

P.s. At least there isnt a gear differential as well as a skill differential!

Just for info. Im a r42, i mostly soloed between 80-90%, when i get a team together it got me to 95%. That was my range for last months.

One bad day however, i only soloed. Lose 8 games in a row cz of leaver. Mathematicaly thats a very low chance 0,004%. Then i had about 3 very closes loses but all to lower ranks, which further droped me. I finished the day with a 1-21 ratio on on 56%.

In the lower tiers there are worse players. Confirmed fact. They stand on capped point, dont defend, killing but not capping, etc…. So you will eventualy hit the level where you start wining

P.S. I took me less than week to get back to 90%. I did change my build otw, like, why use rezz signet on noob teammate, when i can just kill a noob enemy with a damage utility.

You and your friend will have to endure it, work on personal skill/teamplay, and sooner or later you’ll start winning and climbing the ladder.

Lordrosicky.5813:

There is no solution until the pvp population expands to the point where matchmaking can put new players against other new players. Also not having a solo q means that the ladder is all mixed up and weird. Again meaning new players could get destroyed by solo q veterans who formed a team on an evening.

P.s. At least there isnt a gear differential as well as a skill differential!

maybe they should have started with a lower base rating?
so a new player enters the ladder a bit “lower”

i think its better this way than the other way round

so long…

btw i loved the idea someone mentioned some time ago, putting a + to your MMR if you are teamQ’ing
since no one knows: lets say MMR is the rating of the whole team together (ind. ratings mixed up by some weird formular). so depending on your way to Q for tournaments an extra amount is added to your teams MMR.
for example:
soloQ = your own rating into MMR
duoQ = your and your teammates rating +20 into MMR
tripleQ = your individual ratings +30 into MMR
quadQ = individual ratings +50
fullteamQ = individual ratings +80
… or whatever numbers

thanks for the support everyone, i’ll repass the message here to them (or at least to the ones that aren’t already reading the thread cough).

i’m just kinda confused why the ladder would place players initially on a somewhat high (for their skill level) position, and then expect them to keep playing until they drop low enough to get more even matches. or that’s what some of you made the situation sound like.

i’d think the ladders would place new players on the bottom and have them climb up, rather than the middle, so they go down, so they can start climbing again.

ELO ladders reach ELR faster if the starting ELO is close to the average elo of the system. If you’re bad you’re going to lose while you approach your ELR, if you’re good, you’re going to win while you approach your ELR. These relationships breakdown near the top and bottom of the ladders.

If you start at a default ‘0’ rating, the only thing that happens is that if you’re under the average, your rating will not adjust to create fairer teams as you lose. Ie, if your effective ladder level is -500 and you start at 0, and cannot go under 0 because the ladder is ‘positive’ only, then you’re effectivly masking a 500 deficit and putting your team down. What’s more, because 0 will, over time disproportionately aggregate people with unquantifiable negative skill values, games will be both low-value in terms of learning how to play, but also very unpredictable in terms of matchmaking. 5 people legitimately at 0 vs 5 people at -500 represented as 0 does not a fun game make.

This is why nearly every ladder which has some kind of linear progression system (0-> x) is actually just masking some kind of elo system. In many moba games you’ll notice that linear progression systems are implemented in tandem with your matchmaking rank. League has levels and # of wins, infinite crisis has levels, DotA 2 has levels, etc. Even leagues which appear to have linear ranking systems like ICCUP don’t work that way; the gradual point inflation which occurs over the course of a season is due to the deficit of points created by D- rank accounts which stop playing.

Linear progression means nothing wrt matchmaking and is generally used as a tool to increase player retention by giving them the illusion of progress as they play, even if they get stomped on their way to hitting their ELR. In GW2, this is supposed to be granted via glory, chests, and rank-up bonuses, but those aren’t working well.

Put simply, if you are worse than the average player who joins pvp for the first time, matchmaking is doing its job in making you lose.

It’s the Anet ‘fix’ to not entirely splitting premade and not.

You get a large bump to your match ranking if you que with as a group, that makes groups of friends rank 1-12 get matched against ranks 20s-40…

I feel terrible for the 3-4 ‘guild premades’ I have faught like that, they got so utterly thrashed it wasn’t even funny… and that is unbelievably kittened, like I have never seen a dev team unintentionally hit casual play so hard… anyways, best of luck!!
:)

You said you are the second highest rank in your party at rank 11? Sounds like you guys are still very green. I’d get more time under your belt playing 5 v 5s and dueling. I didn’t start doing tournies until I was almost rank 20. By that time I had a better understanding of strategy and other classes mechanics.

There’s a lot of teams that will scrim with your team and give you guys some free advise. It does sound like you guys are pretty new to this, what did you guys do in game before? Unless you’ve done lots of small group wvw I suggest you guys hit up hotjoins together to work on spiking targets, securing stomps and peals. Once you get the basics down try some scrims with some teams to get feedback on your strategy/teamplay.

Queueing up tournaments can be rough. I believe you start in the middle of the pack, so if you’re extremely new it might take some time (and a lot of losses) until you go against people that are new to pvp as well.

If you need a server feel free to pm me. We have 2 that you can borrow when we’re not using them. You can go in here to duel each other, test out builds, or scrim other teams. There’s a lot of people that are in the same boat as you guys.

I’m sure there’s a lot of people that are also willing to lend out their servers as well. Never hurts to ask!

You’re just experiencing growing pains. Keep playing and bang your head against the wall. Set up regular play times at least 3 days a week for a couple of hours. You’ll get better and better until you’re the one dominating. The key here is to not give up and keep playing.

Sc2 managed to find my place accurately in 5 games. So it can be done.

The key here is pain ? Just get a knife and cut yourself, it will make u stronger!! No decent game will make u lose 20 games in a row, not even Etrian Odissey does that.

Baldric.6781:

Sc2 managed to find my place accurately in 5 games. So it can be done.

The key here is pain ? Just get a knife and cut yourself, it will make u stronger!! No decent game will make u lose 20 games in a row, not even Etrian Odissey does that.

Sc2 is 1v1. ie: all individual skill. Unless you talk about teams in which case the games matchmaking is not that great. Teams that are changing are variable (class,roles,synergy,communication) which causes huge variation in rating. These systems are not designed for a game like this. Matchmaking might be accurate if we get locked rosters, else there’s just to much variation. They talked about having a different game mode for solo que, which could reduce the importance of the variables I listed above and instead focus on individual skill, then ratings will be much more stable and reliable.

Archer Henchman.2534:

ELO ladders reach ELR faster if the starting ELO is close to the average elo of the system. If you’re bad you’re going to lose while you approach your ELR, if you’re good, you’re going to win while you approach your ELR. These relationships breakdown near the top and bottom of the ladders.

If you start at a default ‘0’ rating, the only thing that happens is that if you’re under the average, your rating will not adjust to create fairer teams as you lose. Ie, if your effective ladder level is -500 and you start at 0, and cannot go under 0 because the ladder is ‘positive’ only, then you’re effectivly masking a 500 deficit and putting your team down. What’s more, because 0 will, over time disproportionately aggregate people with unquantifiable negative skill values, games will be both low-value in terms of learning how to play, but also very unpredictable in terms of matchmaking. 5 people legitimately at 0 vs 5 people at -500 represented as 0 does not a fun game make.

This is why nearly every ladder which has some kind of linear progression system (0-> x) is actually just masking some kind of elo system. In many moba games you’ll notice that linear progression systems are implemented in tandem with your matchmaking rank. League has levels and # of wins, infinite crisis has levels, DotA 2 has levels, etc. Even leagues which appear to have linear ranking systems like ICCUP don’t work that way; the gradual point inflation which occurs over the course of a season is due to the deficit of points created by D- rank accounts which stop playing.

Linear progression means nothing wrt matchmaking and is generally used as a tool to increase player retention by giving them the illusion of progress as they play, even if they get stomped on their way to hitting their ELR. In GW2, this is supposed to be granted via glory, chests, and rank-up bonuses, but those aren’t working well.

Put simply, if you are worse than the average player who joins pvp for the first time, matchmaking is doing its job in making you lose.

i’m not familiar with most abbreviations there, but i understood the post. thanks, it actually makes sense.

Archer Henchman.2534:

ELO ladders reach ELR faster if the starting ELO is close to the average elo of the system. If you’re bad you’re going to lose while you approach your ELR, if you’re good, you’re going to win while you approach your ELR. These relationships breakdown near the top and bottom of the ladders.

If you start at a default ‘0’ rating, the only thing that happens is that if you’re under the average, your rating will not adjust to create fairer teams as you lose. Ie, if your effective ladder level is -500 and you start at 0, and cannot go under 0 because the ladder is ‘positive’ only, then you’re effectivly masking a 500 deficit and putting your team down. What’s more, because 0 will, over time disproportionately aggregate people with unquantifiable negative skill values, games will be both low-value in terms of learning how to play, but also very unpredictable in terms of matchmaking. 5 people legitimately at 0 vs 5 people at -500 represented as 0 does not a fun game make.

This is why nearly every ladder which has some kind of linear progression system (0-> x) is actually just masking some kind of elo system. In many moba games you’ll notice that linear progression systems are implemented in tandem with your matchmaking rank. League has levels and # of wins, infinite crisis has levels, DotA 2 has levels, etc. Even leagues which appear to have linear ranking systems like ICCUP don’t work that way; the gradual point inflation which occurs over the course of a season is due to the deficit of points created by D- rank accounts which stop playing.

Linear progression means nothing wrt matchmaking and is generally used as a tool to increase player retention by giving them the illusion of progress as they play, even if they get stomped on their way to hitting their ELR. In GW2, this is supposed to be granted via glory, chests, and rank-up bonuses, but those aren’t working well.

Put simply, if you are worse than the average player who joins pvp for the first time, matchmaking is doing its job in making you lose.

+1
thanks, helped for better understanding!

Baldric.6781:

Sc2 managed to find my place accurately in 5 games. So it can be done.

The key here is pain ? Just get a knife and cut yourself, it will make u stronger!! No decent game will make u lose 20 games in a row, not even Etrian Odissey does that.

Just a note: ELR is estimated ladder rank, Ie, where you should theoretically end up sitting after you’ve played a lot of games.

You don’t find your place accurately in 5 games. The first 5 games simply don’t have ratings displayed so that new players do not feel bad about losing and contain a k-value amplifier in order to allow players to more accurately ‘sound out’ where they should be. K-values for elo systems can be thought of the maximum possible points you can win per match. High k-values mean that your ladder rank is unstable and you will shift positions quickly, but you should end up getting into the general ‘area’ that you should be in quickly. Low k-values by contrast, slow down your rate of positional change in the ladder, which creates stability. Generally, k-values applied to matches near the middle of the ladder distribution tend to be higher to allow for more efficient sorting, while k-values applied to matches at the extremes (mostly the top, as k-values affecting the bottom create a sunk-point trap for poor players who have improved) tend to be lower in order to allow for more finely grained sorting within more-homogeneous groups.

Warcraft 3 had a nearly identical MMR algorithm and took 15-25 games to match smurfs up against players roughly in their skill bracket. Similarly, you might end up being placed near your ELR after 5 games, but that does not necessarily mean that all players, especially those near the top or bottom of the ladders will be accurately placed within that time period. Additionally, games with set k-value accelerators fall prey when the distribution of players making new accounts ends up being non-random; smurf players heavily depress the rating position of average players by disproportionately affecting their initial ladder ranking.

If you queue as a team, the regular mechanisms for pushing your win-rate towards 50% do not exist; if your ELR is near the bottom .1% and you’re running with a 5 stack that isn’t at their ELR, you’re going to lose repeatedly. There’s no ability to put better players on your team to even out your weaknesses and groups that are legitimately as bad as you get rarer as you descend on the ladder; not only is the bottom .1% of players a relatively tiny group to create teams out of, but poorer players tend to have a lower play-frequency than the best players, which means that you’re more likely to have a few effects play against you:

1) As search duration increases, the accepted variance between team aggregate skill increases. If you’re in a player poor environment, you may be matched up against players who are substantially different from you.

2) Teams generally perform better overall than individual players, and its possible to pull a specific MMR-value for the effect of a team size out of the analytics that the ladder provides the devs. As stated in a previous message, a poor team might be receiving the +50 MMR rating per person bonus for being in a team without any of the functional communication or organization which creates the MMR disparity at other levels of ladder play.

TL;DR elo systems do not function perfectly at extreme ratings. The OP’s best chance for escaping his current issues are to get better at the game in order to return towards the center of the player distribution. None of my posts should be seen as an excuse for a lot of the ladder mechanics that are currently ruining soloqueue, though. They’re just an explanation of what’s likely being done underneath the hood and what steps you can take to improve your play experience.

For me it hasn’t gotten any better with soloQ even tho me ( and often my teams ) ratings ain’t that good. Today was one of most extreme matches…. EU primetime, me and my friend duoQ, my rank around 500, rest of our team not on leaderboard vs premade that had 3 members top 20 LB, one i think top 30, last one has been in top50..dunno current rank. Just makes me curious that how in the world is our MMR’s even close to each others.