Guild Wars 2

sPvP is simply not enjoyable anymore. Everyone is running the lame builds like Hambow, Shoutbow, Power Ranger, Condi-mesmer.
In roughly 60% of the matches I play I have to simply give up on all hope because someone in my team decided to ragequit leaving us in a 4v5. Ofcourse we lose…go figure.

sPvP used to be fun, but now it’s more rewarding to play PvP on sodding Minecraft because it’s more balanced. And that’s what you tried to deliver: a balanced PvP experience. Well… it’s not balanced? XD Not even close. Not even close..

Hambow, condi mesmers… The MMR slice where you seem to be stuck does look boring! PvP is actually quite balanced, especially at your level of play where hambow warriors and condi mesmers are considered viable. You can’t force other players to change their builds, but you can have fun by inventing different builds for yourself, if you’re willing to make that effort.

Condi ranger and self-build warrior. Manage quite well:>

Cries for nerfs, cries for buffs, cries of imbalance. Zzz. The devs do aim to make all classes balanced in PvP, while maintaining the distinct differences thereof so that not only is there variety, but a) the various roles and play styles exist and are viable, and b) variety is necessary against a team of equal skill and knowledge.

People like to complain. No matter the state of the game, there will be people saying X is too strong, others saying X is too weak; some saying X should always beat Y, and others insisting Y is a counter to X. It’s very easy to be influenced by these claims; eventually you’ll encounter one that relates to your experience. That’s when you discover the type of player you are: does it encourage you to become better so that is no longer true for you, or does it inspire you to complain alongside those people, and make no progress unless the devs sympathize with your crowd.

TLDR? - PvP is balanced. "Moaners gonna moan".

I just want to defend Ranger here for a second~ What are we supposed to play (we, because its one of the many classes I play~ wouldn’t consider it a main). Ranger has its list of issues. Its only viable builds are Condition, when is apparnetly cheese, Power which is apparently cheese, and Spirits which are somehow still considered cheese even though they’ve been nerfed to hell and back. o.O

I just don’t really understand what ranger is supposed to play to seem legit lol.

I would say fix the 1950 range though. Clearly it should cap at 1500, but beyond that…

Impact.2780:

Cries for nerfs, cries for buffs, cries of imbalance. Zzz. The devs do aim to make all classes balanced in PvP, while maintaining the distinct differences thereof so that not only is there variety, but a) the various roles and play styles exist and are viable, and b) variety is necessary against a team of equal skill and knowledge.

People like to complain. No matter the state of the game, there will be people saying X is too strong, others saying X is too weak; some saying X should always beat Y, and others insisting Y is a counter to X. It’s very easy to be influenced by these claims; eventually you’ll encounter one that relates to your experience. That’s when you discover the type of player you are: does it encourage you to become better so that is no longer true for you, or does it inspire you to complain alongside those people, and make no progress unless the devs sympathize with your crowd.

TLDR? – PvP is balanced. “Moaners gonna moan”.

That’s such a load of carp. Meaningful professions development, meaningful combat mechanic improvements, meaningful balance updates, … have been the lowest priority to the development team since the beginning. Much of their resources have been put toward living story and china development, not to make the core of this game (professions and combat) better.

Edit- the only things carrying profession and combat in this game are the mechanics behind them (movement while casting, good camera, good targeting and overall gameplay “smoothness”), not on their own merits.

Swagger.1459:

Impact.2780:

Cries for nerfs, cries for buffs, cries of imbalance. Zzz. The devs do aim to make all classes balanced in PvP, while maintaining the distinct differences thereof so that not only is there variety, but a) the various roles and play styles exist and are viable, and b) variety is necessary against a team of equal skill and knowledge.

People like to complain. No matter the state of the game, there will be people saying X is too strong, others saying X is too weak; some saying X should always beat Y, and others insisting Y is a counter to X. It’s very easy to be influenced by these claims; eventually you’ll encounter one that relates to your experience. That’s when you discover the type of player you are: does it encourage you to become better so that is no longer true for you, or does it inspire you to complain alongside those people, and make no progress unless the devs sympathize with your crowd.

TLDR? - PvP is balanced. "Moaners gonna moan".

That’s such a load of carp. Meaningful professions development, meaningful combat mechanic improvements, meaningful balance updates, ... have been the lowest priority to the development team since the beginning. Much of their resources have been put toward living story and china development, not to make the core of this game (professions and combat) better.

Edit- the only things carrying profession and combat in this game are the mechanics behind them (movement while casting, good camera, good targeting and overall gameplay "smoothness"), not on their own merits.

You appear to be confused. I did not say that the devs are constantly or even frequently investing significant time into updating combat, mechanics, and progression (although if they are to be believed, they have been since I think they said they’d been quietly working on HoT for a long time, we just haven’t seen it yet). I merely said that it was balanced. I even gave a 6 word summary; I’m really not sure where you got lost.

Impact.2780:

Swagger.1459:

Impact.2780:

Cries for nerfs, cries for buffs, cries of imbalance. Zzz. The devs do aim to make all classes balanced in PvP, while maintaining the distinct differences thereof so that not only is there variety, but a) the various roles and play styles exist and are viable, and b) variety is necessary against a team of equal skill and knowledge.

People like to complain. No matter the state of the game, there will be people saying X is too strong, others saying X is too weak; some saying X should always beat Y, and others insisting Y is a counter to X. It’s very easy to be influenced by these claims; eventually you’ll encounter one that relates to your experience. That’s when you discover the type of player you are: does it encourage you to become better so that is no longer true for you, or does it inspire you to complain alongside those people, and make no progress unless the devs sympathize with your crowd.

TLDR? – PvP is balanced. “Moaners gonna moan”.

That’s such a load of carp. Meaningful professions development, meaningful combat mechanic improvements, meaningful balance updates, … have been the lowest priority to the development team since the beginning. Much of their resources have been put toward living story and china development, not to make the core of this game (professions and combat) better.

Edit- the only things carrying profession and combat in this game are the mechanics behind them (movement while casting, good camera, good targeting and overall gameplay “smoothness”), not on their own merits.

You appear to be confused. I did not say that the devs are constantly or even frequently investing significant time into updating combat, mechanics, and progression (although if they are to be believed, they have been since I think they said they’d been quietly working on HoT for a long time, we just haven’t seen it yet). I merely said that it was balanced. I even gave a 6 word summary; I’m really not sure where you got lost.

No, you are confused here and don’t get it.

Also, the abysmally low spvp numbers speak for themselves

Thank you for helping me make my point.

Swagger.1459:

Impact.2780:

Swagger.1459:

Impact.2780:

Cries for nerfs, cries for buffs, cries of imbalance. Zzz. The devs do aim to make all classes balanced in PvP, while maintaining the distinct differences thereof so that not only is there variety, but a) the various roles and play styles exist and are viable, and b) variety is necessary against a team of equal skill and knowledge.

People like to complain. No matter the state of the game, there will be people saying X is too strong, others saying X is too weak; some saying X should always beat Y, and others insisting Y is a counter to X. It’s very easy to be influenced by these claims; eventually you’ll encounter one that relates to your experience. That’s when you discover the type of player you are: does it encourage you to become better so that is no longer true for you, or does it inspire you to complain alongside those people, and make no progress unless the devs sympathize with your crowd.

TLDR? – PvP is balanced. “Moaners gonna moan”.

That’s such a load of carp. Meaningful professions development, meaningful combat mechanic improvements, meaningful balance updates, … have been the lowest priority to the development team since the beginning. Much of their resources have been put toward living story and china development, not to make the core of this game (professions and combat) better.

Edit- the only things carrying profession and combat in this game are the mechanics behind them (movement while casting, good camera, good targeting and overall gameplay “smoothness”), not on their own merits.

You appear to be confused. I did not say that the devs are constantly or even frequently investing significant time into updating combat, mechanics, and progression (although if they are to be believed, they have been since I think they said they’d been quietly working on HoT for a long time, we just haven’t seen it yet). I merely said that it was balanced. I even gave a 6 word summary; I’m really not sure where you got lost.

No, you are confused here and don’t get it.

Also, the abysmally low spvp numbers speak for themselves

And what exactly are the numbers of people playing sPvP?
Last I checked, queue times were reasonable, HotM was always full and very chatty, hardly ever face the same group/people…

Yeah, sPvP numbers are significantly down, and no one plays the game anymore.
#GW2isdead
(._.)

I suggest playing SMITE. The diversity of characters and skills and builds you can make are staggering. 62 gods to chose from, each with their own 5 skills. No skills are copied and pasted. As well as chosing 6 pieces of armor per match(You have a choice of over 100). 6 different game modes, from 3v3 joust , 5v5 conquest, 5v5 arena battle on and on.

and oh ya, the graphics are much better.

It is IMO the best PvP game out.

GW2 has consistently ruined PvP.

Impact.2780:

Thank you for helping me make my point.

I don’t think you are fully comprehending this debate. I would like to suggest that you reread what I wrote before you try to carry on this conversation.

Also in the previous post, I never said you “said” that, I gave you reasons why things were not “balanced”.

Edit- read this because it still very much applies to gw2 profession development and balance in 2015…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/balance/PvX-Balance-Iteration-Wrongdoing/first#post3680985

ronpierce.2760:

I just want to defend Ranger here for a second~ What are we supposed to play (we, because its one of the many classes I play~ wouldn’t consider it a main). Ranger has its list of issues. Its only viable builds are Condition, when is apparnetly cheese, Power which is apparently cheese, and Spirits which are somehow still considered cheese even though they’ve been nerfed to hell and back. o.O

I just don’t really understand what ranger is supposed to play to seem legit lol.

I would say fix the 1950 range though. Clearly it should cap at 1500, but beyond that…

All those builds are considered cheese because they arent very good builds but they can stomp people who dont see them coming. Also they take little effort. The main one is power which is a really bad build except for spamming 2 from far away.

Play sword something if you want to be legit. I forget what the builds is because i dont play ranger anymore, but ive seen some people rocking it and even tho its much harder than the ones you listed, its more rewarding and can be pretty hard to kill. Kind of like sword thief.

champ.7021:

ronpierce.2760:

I just want to defend Ranger here for a second~ What are we supposed to play (we, because its one of the many classes I play~ wouldn’t consider it a main). Ranger has its list of issues. Its only viable builds are Condition, when is apparnetly cheese, Power which is apparently cheese, and Spirits which are somehow still considered cheese even though they’ve been nerfed to hell and back. o.O

I just don’t really understand what ranger is supposed to play to seem legit lol.

I would say fix the 1950 range though. Clearly it should cap at 1500, but beyond that…

All those builds are considered cheese because they arent very good builds but they can stomp people who dont see them coming. Also they take little effort. The main one is power which is a really bad build except for spamming 2 from far away.

Play sword something if you want to be legit. I forget what the builds is because i dont play ranger anymore, but ive seen some people rocking it and even tho its much harder than the ones you listed, its more rewarding and can be pretty hard to kill. Kind of like sword thief.

Eh. I’ve gotten to the point I don’t even really care what people think is legit. I run Sword/Torch Axe/Dagger, which is fun, effective and at least requires skill in landing attacks, comboing your own fields and has no real range (I hate short bow). It gets the job done. If people don’t like it, sorry. But it’s about the only thing I enjoy these days. Some might say it’s “easy”, but it doesn’t use any less abilities than other builds. I call it intuitive. That’s a sign of good design. To each their own I guess.

Swagger.1459:

Impact.2780:

Thank you for helping me make my point.

I don’t think you are fully comprehending this debate. I would like to suggest that you reread what I wrote before you try to carry on this conversation.

Also in the previous post, I never said you “said” that, I gave you reasons why things were not “balanced”.

Edit- read this because it still very much applies to gw2 profession development and balance in 2015…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/balance/PvX-Balance-Iteration-Wrongdoing/first#post3680985

You didn’t bluntly state it, no. You implied it by calling what I said a load of “carp,” and proceeding to tell me that balance updates are a low priority of ANet’s. As for this… “debate,” there really isn’t one. You’ve said absolutely nothing in response to what I actually said. You just quoted it, called it “carp,” and went on about something else. The only thing I can’t comprehend is how you can possibly think it’s me that isn’t comprehending the discussion. Perhaps you’re just retaliating to me saying “you appear to be confused?”

ronpierce.2760:

champ.7021:

ronpierce.2760:

I just want to defend Ranger here for a second~ What are we supposed to play (we, because its one of the many classes I play~ wouldn’t consider it a main). Ranger has its list of issues. Its only viable builds are Condition, when is apparnetly cheese, Power which is apparently cheese, and Spirits which are somehow still considered cheese even though they’ve been nerfed to hell and back. o.O

I just don’t really understand what ranger is supposed to play to seem legit lol.

I would say fix the 1950 range though. Clearly it should cap at 1500, but beyond that…

All those builds are considered cheese because they arent very good builds but they can stomp people who dont see them coming. Also they take little effort. The main one is power which is a really bad build except for spamming 2 from far away.

Play sword something if you want to be legit. I forget what the builds is because i dont play ranger anymore, but ive seen some people rocking it and even tho its much harder than the ones you listed, its more rewarding and can be pretty hard to kill. Kind of like sword thief.

Eh. I’ve gotten to the point I don’t even really care what people think is legit. I run Sword/Torch Axe/Dagger, which is fun, effective and at least requires skill in landing attacks, comboing your own fields and has no real range (I hate short bow). It gets the job done. If people don’t like it, sorry. But it’s about the only thing I enjoy these days. Some might say it’s “easy”, but it doesn’t use any less abilities than other builds. I call it intuitive. That’s a sign of good design. To each their own I guess.

honestly i find anything that isnt a bow on ranger is not that easy to use! and yes fun is above all which is why i still run hgh on engie sometimes especially in unranked xD

Original thought is dead. People look up their builds on youtube and then copy/paste and viola. PvP was fun until i learned all their builds and see the same garbage game after game. People always laugh at my gs/rifle build until I smash someone for 14k.

Impact.2780:

Swagger.1459:

Impact.2780:

Thank you for helping me make my point.

I don’t think you are fully comprehending this debate. I would like to suggest that you reread what I wrote before you try to carry on this conversation.

Also in the previous post, I never said you “said” that, I gave you reasons why things were not “balanced”.

Edit- read this because it still very much applies to gw2 profession development and balance in 2015…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/balance/PvX-Balance-Iteration-Wrongdoing/first#post3680985

You didn’t bluntly state it, no. You implied it by calling what I said a load of “carp,” and proceeding to tell me that balance updates are a low priority of ANet’s. As for this… “debate,” there really isn’t one. You’ve said absolutely nothing in response to what I actually said. You just quoted it, called it “carp,” and went on about something else. The only thing I can’t comprehend is how you can possibly think it’s me that isn’t comprehending the discussion. Perhaps you’re just retaliating to me saying “you appear to be confused?”

you said things were balanced and gave your reasons. my response was that things were not balanced and gave my reasons. I’m sorry you don’t understand that.

I think it would do you some good to click that link I posted and read it.

gl and hope you learn something.

pdavis.8031:

Swagger.1459:

Impact.2780:

Swagger.1459:

Impact.2780:

Cries for nerfs, cries for buffs, cries of imbalance. Zzz. The devs do aim to make all classes balanced in PvP, while maintaining the distinct differences thereof so that not only is there variety, but a) the various roles and play styles exist and are viable, and b) variety is necessary against a team of equal skill and knowledge.

People like to complain. No matter the state of the game, there will be people saying X is too strong, others saying X is too weak; some saying X should always beat Y, and others insisting Y is a counter to X. It’s very easy to be influenced by these claims; eventually you’ll encounter one that relates to your experience. That’s when you discover the type of player you are: does it encourage you to become better so that is no longer true for you, or does it inspire you to complain alongside those people, and make no progress unless the devs sympathize with your crowd.

TLDR? – PvP is balanced. “Moaners gonna moan”.

That’s such a load of carp. Meaningful professions development, meaningful combat mechanic improvements, meaningful balance updates, … have been the lowest priority to the development team since the beginning. Much of their resources have been put toward living story and china development, not to make the core of this game (professions and combat) better.

Edit- the only things carrying profession and combat in this game are the mechanics behind them (movement while casting, good camera, good targeting and overall gameplay “smoothness”), not on their own merits.

You appear to be confused. I did not say that the devs are constantly or even frequently investing significant time into updating combat, mechanics, and progression (although if they are to be believed, they have been since I think they said they’d been quietly working on HoT for a long time, we just haven’t seen it yet). I merely said that it was balanced. I even gave a 6 word summary; I’m really not sure where you got lost.

No, you are confused here and don’t get it.

Also, the abysmally low spvp numbers speak for themselves

And what exactly are the numbers of people playing sPvP?
Last I checked, queue times were reasonable, HotM was always full and very chatty, hardly ever face the same group/people…

Yeah, sPvP numbers are significantly down, and no one plays the game anymore.
#GW2isdead
(._.)

Lol, this is hilarious.

1. queues are short = Matchmaking is pretty bad. Don’t get any decent matches anymore. Since we lost soloq, the quaility has been only getting worse and worse, only queues shorter.

2. HoTM is full because of megaservers.

3. Goes for you, some people face the same players over and over.

4. Yeah, gw2 pvp population is not really that great.

Laraley.7695:

pdavis.8031:

Swagger.1459:

Impact.2780:

Swagger.1459:

Impact.2780:

Cries for nerfs, cries for buffs, cries of imbalance. Zzz. The devs do aim to make all classes balanced in PvP, while maintaining the distinct differences thereof so that not only is there variety, but a) the various roles and play styles exist and are viable, and b) variety is necessary against a team of equal skill and knowledge.

People like to complain. No matter the state of the game, there will be people saying X is too strong, others saying X is too weak; some saying X should always beat Y, and others insisting Y is a counter to X. It’s very easy to be influenced by these claims; eventually you’ll encounter one that relates to your experience. That’s when you discover the type of player you are: does it encourage you to become better so that is no longer true for you, or does it inspire you to complain alongside those people, and make no progress unless the devs sympathize with your crowd.

TLDR? – PvP is balanced. “Moaners gonna moan”.

That’s such a load of carp. Meaningful professions development, meaningful combat mechanic improvements, meaningful balance updates, … have been the lowest priority to the development team since the beginning. Much of their resources have been put toward living story and china development, not to make the core of this game (professions and combat) better.

Edit- the only things carrying profession and combat in this game are the mechanics behind them (movement while casting, good camera, good targeting and overall gameplay “smoothness”), not on their own merits.

You appear to be confused. I did not say that the devs are constantly or even frequently investing significant time into updating combat, mechanics, and progression (although if they are to be believed, they have been since I think they said they’d been quietly working on HoT for a long time, we just haven’t seen it yet). I merely said that it was balanced. I even gave a 6 word summary; I’m really not sure where you got lost.

No, you are confused here and don’t get it.

Also, the abysmally low spvp numbers speak for themselves

And what exactly are the numbers of people playing sPvP?
Last I checked, queue times were reasonable, HotM was always full and very chatty, hardly ever face the same group/people…

Yeah, sPvP numbers are significantly down, and no one plays the game anymore.
#GW2isdead
(._.)

Lol, this is hilarious.

1. queues are short = Matchmaking is pretty bad. Don’t get any decent matches anymore. Since we lost soloq, the quaility has been only getting worse and worse, only queues shorter.

2. HoTM is full because of megaservers.

3. Goes for you, some people face the same players over and over.

4. Yeah, gw2 pvp population is not really that great.

While you can infer that the population is down/low because of what you observe, One can also infer the opposite by the things they observe. It’s really a matter of perception at that point. You see short queue times that must mean that population is low because there are so few players. I see low queue times, I see lots of people playing because I am not having to wait for a long time to find players.

As far as facing the same people, I am pretty sure that has to do with the Match making system. I’m not quite sure what the details are behind it, and how it works, but from what I gather is that it places you with people of a similiar rank (at least it’s supposed it) so that could certainly be a major factor in why you start seeing the same people.

Queue times don’t have much to do with the quality of the match.
If you are referring to either being placed too high (where you are destroying the other team without barely even trying) or too low (getting decimated without hope for a chance) then yes that certainly is a problem, and a problem with the match making system. You can’t make any sort of determination on the population of PvP based on a broken match making system.

pdavis.8031:

While you can infer that the population is down/low because of what you observe, One can also infer the opposite by the things they observe. It’s really a matter of perception at that point. You see short queue times that must mean that population is low because there are so few players. I see low queue times, I see lots of people playing because I am not having to wait for a long time to find players.

As far as facing the same people, I am pretty sure that has to do with the Match making system. I’m not quite sure what the details are behind it, and how it works, but from what I gather is that it places you with people of a similiar rank (at least it’s supposed it) so that could certainly be a major factor in why you start seeing the same people.

Queue times don’t have much to do with the quality of the match.
If you are referring to either being placed too high (where you are destroying the other team without barely even trying) or too low (getting decimated without hope for a chance) then yes that certainly is a problem, and a problem with the match making system. You can’t make any sort of determination on the population of PvP based on a broken match making system.

You actually can. If matchmaking is inconsistent, putting you in all kind of random matches when one game you end up with top players and second game you end up with people who don’t even know the basics, you can assume it’s either:

1. Broken matchmaking completely.

2. Low population that allows broken matchmaking by trying to maintain short queues.

Since Anet said that matchmaking is trying to put players around the same MMR in the same matches but when it can’t find any, the requirements for putting people together get lower, you can assume they either lied or the matchmaking is not capable of doing so because of low population. Just to keep short queues.

Lots people have been saying they like short queues, they don’t care about the matches quality. Would you pursue long queues to reach high quality and balanced matches if people don’t want it? No.

You can’t possibly have a functional matchmaking with very short queues if the population is not big enough. I’m pretty sure if gw2 had the same population as LoL or Dota2, even with this matchmaking the games would be more balanced.

Yes, it tries to put the people with the same rank together but because there is not enough people, it can’t. People have been complaining about unbalanced games, low quality games, getting new people. If we had enough people from mid and high tier, these matches wouldn’t even occur.

I assume they built their matchmaking on some sort of high population system but since the game lacks it, it doesn’t work.

About getting the same people over and over, it’s what I’ve heard from others, it doesn’t happen to me that often BUT you say that it’s because those people are around the same MMR. Then again, if population was higher you wouldn’t be getting the same people, because there would be more than 9 people with the same mmr. Also, apparently if it can’t find people with the same MMR, it tries to balance the MMR around teams and not individual MMR, which means getting the same people would have even lower chance.

For the kind of matches I’ve been getting, there would have to be no matchmaking at all. It would have to be completely random.

After all, there is very little competition in gw2. We see the same teams over and over. You can also assume something from twitch average viewers. So yeah, I think I can have an opinion about gw2 population based on matches quality. Of course, I could be wrong, I could have wrong information but hey this is my opinion and I can base it on what I’ve experienced.

Swagger.1459:

you said things were balanced and gave your reasons. my response was that things were not balanced and gave my reasons. I’m sorry you don’t understand that.

I think it would do you some good to click that link I posted and read it.

gl and hope you learn something.

It doesn’t matter how much you want it to be the case, that version of events remains incorrect. Once again, I merely stated they were balanced. I did not give reasons for anything being balanced or unbalanced. I don’t pretend to know what the devs are thinking. You’re trying to argue against something that doesn’t exist, and for some reason selected me to be your opposition. I’m not going to argue for something I never said. You are extremely lost, and all you seem to have to say for yourself is, effectively, “No you!”

Laraley.7695:

~snip~

Hmm very interesting. That could very well be the case. It kind of makes sense.

However, thats basically assuming the match making system is working.
If the system isn’t working, as many are claiming, then the way I see it is:

The population is there, but due to the broken system, they are getting placed into “bad” match ups.
So if the system takes the average MMR of the team and matches them up with a team with a similar MMR (which is the intent of the system) than you shouldn’t see bad match ups. But, what if the system isn’t doing that. Instead it’s taking the lowest MMR of a single player, and matching them up as a team to the next lowest player in the queue in order to create a low queue time. So if team A has a player with a MMR of 15, and team B has a player with an MMR of 6 the system says “thats close enough” and matches them together. The system doesn’t spend the time to look for a player with an MMR of 13-16 in order to create short queue times. This would certainly create the bad match ups we’ve been seeing.

Also with the decaying MMR (IIRC) if a player/team has an MMR of 8, but 1 player doesn’t log on for a few days then comes back, the MMR of the team as a whole drops to 12. So the system matches up the team at 12 MMR. Although the team is at a higher level, it matches them up on a lower tier because of the decay. Thus creating a unbalanced game.

Then there is the matchup threshold. if you have an MMR of 12, does the system look for at least 2 points higher and lower? Or is a greater threshold? Like 5 points higher/lower? This would also create the bad match ups.

These do not necessarily point to low population, but more to a broken system.

Of course, this is my opinion, but the way I see it is that the PvP community is as strong as ever, and bad match ups don’t necessarily mean that the population is low. There are certainly all sorts of claims that the game is basically dead, and people point to various things as evidence, but those same things can be looked at from another perspective to show that the population is fine.

pdavis.8031:

Laraley.7695:

~snip~

Hmm very interesting. That could very well be the case. It kind of makes sense.

However, thats basically assuming the match making system is working.
If the system isn’t working, as many are claiming, then the way I see it is:

The population is there, but due to the broken system, they are getting placed into “bad” match ups.
So if the system takes the average MMR of the team and matches them up with a team with a similar MMR (which is the intent of the system) than you shouldn’t see bad match ups. But, what if the system isn’t doing that. Instead it’s taking the lowest MMR of a single player, and matching them up as a team to the next lowest player in the queue in order to create a low queue time. So if team A has a player with a MMR of 15, and team B has a player with an MMR of 6 the system says “thats close enough” and matches them together. The system doesn’t spend the time to look for a player with an MMR of 13-16 in order to create short queue times. This would certainly create the bad match ups we’ve been seeing.

Also with the decaying MMR (IIRC) if a player/team has an MMR of 8, but 1 player doesn’t log on for a few days then comes back, the MMR of the team as a whole drops to 12. So the system matches up the team at 12 MMR. Although the team is at a higher level, it matches them up on a lower tier because of the decay. Thus creating a unbalanced game.

Then there is the matchup threshold. if you have an MMR of 12, does the system look for at least 2 points higher and lower? Or is a greater threshold? Like 5 points higher/lower? This would also create the bad match ups.

These do not necessarily point to low population, but more to a broken system.

Of course, this is my opinion, but the way I see it is that the PvP community is as strong as ever, and bad match ups don’t necessarily mean that the population is low. There are certainly all sorts of claims that the game is basically dead, and people point to various things as evidence, but those same things can be looked at from another perspective to show that the population is fine.

Yeah, but the problem is that they would have to design a system that matches people whose MMR’s are quite different but close enough for matchmaking. There isn’t any reason to do this on purpose other than being aware of low population and queue times having the possibility of being long.

They did state that MM tries to place the people with same mmr together. However, it doesn’t. They also said if there are not enough people around the same MMR, the system will lower the requirements, which can result in unbalanced matches. What would permanently low population do? We would keep having unbalanced matches. Either they designed it badly OR MM just can’t find enough people with same MMR.

This is only what I’ve heard from others, so I’m not sure if it’s confirmed or not. MM tries to balance individual MMR’s but again because of low population it has to balance it around teams. So let’s say we have one player on team A has MMR of 30 and rest of his teammates have MMR of 5, their combined mmr would be 50. Team B has five players with the MMR of 10 and combined 50. Now, teams seem to be balanced, they have the same MMR. But in reality, they are not at all. If it’s true that MM actually does try to balance individual matchmaking, then the problem is low population. If it doesn’t and allows these faults, then yes it’s broken.

Let’s face it, gw2 is not highly populated game. (Compared to WoW for example.) The pvp population is even lower, if they tried to make MM that works with high numbers of people, then they need to rework it either way. But from what I can see I would say they’re just trying to maintain short queues. For example, you can see a top player matched with another top player but rest of the teammates are really not that experienced. But hey, the queue was only a few minutes.

In the end it is a fault in matchmaking system BUT it’s determined by low population. But I do agree with you that we need a better matchmaking, however they need to look into it a bit deeper and figure out if it’s because not enough people interested in pvp. It’s not only this, though. The issue of class stacking and since gw2 doesn’t have trinity, it creates matches that can lead to a loss just because of team composition. In conquest you heavily depend on your team composition. Of course, you can win a game when you have five squishies on your team but you are in a disadvantage there. I think it would be awesome if we had players around our MMR’s in matches, if we didn’t have class stacking and if the matchmaking would consider what spec you actually play. The question is: Is there enough people so we can ask for this without making queues too long?

its not the class balancing that is the problem, its the dailies and the matchmaking. Take ranger for example. By themselves, they are quite balanced. But every match (especially on ranger daily day like today) has 3+ of them. I just played a match with 5 of them, and of course, it wasnt 2 per team, but one on one team and 4 on the other.

That matchmaking is what makes sPvP ridiculus to play.

mulzi.8273:

its not the class balancing that is the problem, its the dailies and the matchmaking. Take ranger for example. By themselves, they are quite balanced. But every match (especially on ranger daily day like today) has 3+ of them. I just played a match with 5 of them, and of course, it wasnt 2 per team, but one on one team and 4 on the other.

That matchmaking is what makes sPvP ridiculus to play.

Huh? That was my point. And it’s not always caused by dailies. (Three rangers one team A, zero on team B ). So many rangers even when it’s not their daily.