Guild Wars 2

I understand something had to be done about the Match up system as week after week the matches became very stale fighting the same server over and over.

Unfortunately the RNG system currently implemented does not solve the issue. I am currently on a server that is winning(this should be a great thing) but unfortunately I am very board as when I go into EB we are sitting with nearly the entire map. One server has already given up completely.

I think the best solution to keep the tier’s changing(fighting different servers each week) would be a 1 up 1 down system. The winner of the tier would move up a tier and the looser would move down a tier. This way it wouldn’t be as random as the RNG system currently implemented but would balance a lot better.

Please discuss your thoughts on this..

Some servers would still get stuck in the middle, never change colors and still suffer from a stagnation due to limited opponent interactions.

Oddly free transfers were in a way a better system. Players could migrate to various tiers and enjoy different styles of play. It did give rise to Kaineng style servers but IMO we have that on a limited scale now.

Ultimately the server versus server system is fundamentally flawed and adjustments to the system will never really fix it. Unfortunately a significant change to that design is probably to big to implement. My hope for GW2 is that like GW it influences games to come.

No, please don’t.

Even if matches were balanced one week WULD guarantees they would be imbalanced the next week.

Variety in opponents is good so I like the random matchups but ANet needs to add a handicapping system to the scoring so every Server feels like it can win every match.

I know its a popular suggestion but it would not work, in the long run, you would just end up fighting the same 4 servers that yo yo every week…

A handicapping system of some sort is the best answer, then every server can fight every other server, no restrictions at all…

Do it around the in game scoring system, so its obvious to all players…

Either a starting advantage in points total…

Or +x points per tick for the weaker servers…

The most important part of the system would be all 3 servers knowing they have a real chance at winning that week…

They need to let the servers sit for a few weeks and see what the power of each server balances at. Once things stabilize then tighten the variance. Moving up and Down will create other issues. One Server winning one Tier to get clobbered in the next tier.

People, you gotta keep in mind anything they do with the rating system isn’t an overnight fix. Its going to take Several weeks if not months to make sure each servers strength is getting the right opponent.

Please don’t. This would guarantee imbalanced matchups week after week as teams from two tiers apart are thrown together.

The current matchup system is exciting, as we don’t know who we’ll fight week by week. Sometimes we get matched up against ludicrously overpowered servers like Piken/Riverside (as a rank 19 server that’s pretty high up), sometimes around our level, sometimes a little lower. Either way we have fun and it’s not stagnant.

One up, one down would be guaranteed awful matchups without even the possibility of a random surprise matchup.

No thanks.

I don’t know why people keep suggesting this. Think about it this way. Many people hated their matchup with TC because they were the strongest by far in their fight unless a T1 server dropped in (I think dragonbrand could hold its own but not being in that tier I’m not sure). Now instead of that matchup like that every other week T2 would be faced with JQ, dragonbrand, and SoS. This week dragonbrand is crushing SoS. Imagine how it would be for them to face JQ. Now make these matchups happen across almost every tier every other week. So for half of the year WvW would be absolutely pointless.

Now I might be presuming too much based on the countless threads and just looking at score, but I think that system might just be a failure.

Now lets look at the current system. Tier 1 is even, Tiers 2 and 3 are clear victories, and the rest seem to be fairly competitive. There are week for some servers that are not the most competitive, and that sucks. But I have been in tier 8 since launch and I gotta tell ya, we’ve had much worse.

If you can give us an actual good reason, besides you are bored this week, for a 1 up 1 down system I’d love to hear it. I understand not wanting an easy win, but think about it this way: Next week with 1 up 1 down you’d have a nice big loss.

Rackhir Tanelorn.9123:

No, please don’t.

Even if matches were balanced one week WULD guarantees they would be imbalanced the next week.

The old glicko and new random+ glicko the system has given unfair match ups for many EU servers entire year 2013!

E.g. our server hasn’t won a single match up. We have ended #3, last in our tier, for week after week. Yet we are matched against EU #1 and #3.

I am not claiming that WULD is optimal. Every system has problems, but this is very easily understood system. One should test WULD before claiming it is worse. Currently people just have opinions that WULD would be worse.

WULD would be much better for us. At least every second week would have realistic chances for a win. Every 2nd week imbalanced match up is much better than 5+ months of imbalanced match ups in a row.

Here’s the thing … the match system hasn’t really changed.

What did change, instead of the system saying “your rating is X”, it says “your rating is somewhere between Y and Z”.

As we play against more varied opponents, the system gets more confident in the rating and the difference between Y and Z will get smaller. Arena-net could also make some adjustments to the calculation to bring the range down quicker.

This means, once the range is small enough, we will be playing the same servers most of the time (as before), but unlike before the colors will swap more frequently and we’ll see the occasional server jump up or down every now and then.

No.

Wuld is even worse than current one.

Get beck to previous matchmaking system, and improve the rating responsiveness and ceiling, having it taking in account more parameters.

I understand that every server is going to have different coverage and different amount of players ect. however if they are to keep the rng then they will have to implement a handicap system that isn’t +20% magic find, +33% experience, +10% World Experience and Take no Armour damage on death as these are completely useless to help your server… It only helps you not get large repair bills from being pawned so much. If they keep the randomness then you ether have 1 week getting completely dominated or another week dominating. Both of which are not the greatest fun.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Rackhir Tanelorn.9123:

No, please don’t.

Even if matches were balanced one week WULD guarantees they would be imbalanced the next week.

The old glicko and new random+ glicko the system has given unfair match ups for many EU servers entire year 2013!

E.g. our server hasn’t won a single match up. We have ended #3, last in our tier, for week after week. Yet we are matched against EU #1 and #3.

I am not claiming that WULD is optimal. Every system has problems, but this is very easily understood system.

WULD would be much better for us. At least every second week would have realistic chances for a win. Every 2nd week imbalanced match up is much better than 5+ months of imbalanced match ups in a row.

This is more due to the weakness of Desolation compared to your rating than limitations of the system itself.

Give it some time to drop your rating and hope you get matched against a few lower servers, before long you’ll be rocking it up between T2-4 and having a lovely time.

Probably.

Either way, the travails of one server doesn’t mean we should condemn all servers to an eternity of awful matchups. WULD wouldn’t be “one good week, one bad week” it would be endless bad weeks.

It works for the football league because they have more than three teams so the churn is tiny, but in a league of three you only have ONE member who stays. The one who comes up will get destroyed by the one who comes down (and likely even by the one who stays, given the relative population discrepancies across all the tiers) so you’d have a tiny server, a medium server and a huge server in virtually all matchups.

(all relative to each other of course).

tl dr; no, this is an awful idea and thankfully anet have publically said so for exactly these reasons.

Please don’t implement this. Fix how servers get points and how upgrades and such work instead.

Nabrok.9023:

Here’s the thing … the match system hasn’t really changed.

What did change, instead of the system saying “your rating is X”, it says “your rating is somewhere between Y and Z”.

As we play against more varied opponents, the system gets more confident in the rating and the difference between Y and Z will get smaller. Arena-net could also make some adjustments to the calculation to bring the range down quicker.

This means, once the range is small enough, we will be playing the same servers most of the time (as before), but unlike before the colors will swap more frequently and we’ll see the occasional server jump up or down every now and then.

Someone who understands! <3 \o/

Nak.8315:

People, you gotta keep in mind anything they do with the rating system isn’t an overnight fix. Its going to take Several weeks if not months to make sure each servers strength is getting the right opponent.

What about those servers who haven’t won this year at all? How much more they should wait for a fair match up?

Just because you and many others love the current system, how many more months and years should our patience continue? We already lost 10 WvWvW guilds to other servers and didn’t get any guild transfers for months.

I seriously do not believe the glicko system will ever give accurate numbers. And here are my arguments:
- coverage issues need to be addressed 1st. Right now the one with the superior coverage wins
- imbalanced match ups, which have been occuring to some EU servers for entire year 2013, can cause boredom in both the winning and losing side, thus one of them doesn’t play at full strength
- server transfers happen all the time and change the strength of the server faster than the glicko can react. Thus the glicko score is gonna be inaccurate forever.

I have a theory: People who defend the current system and oppose WULD have been enjoying balanced match ups at least once this year!

No thank you, no 1 up, 1 down.

1. Tighten the random roll to about half what it is now – don’t wait until confidence rating supposedly improves. Some matchups are, by any measure, daft right now.

2. Also like the idea of a scoring handicap. Don’t mess with people’s stats etc. Don’t like the idea that suddenly one team’s players are stronger/tougher than the other because their server is weaker, people should still be able to see on the map if their server is stronger. But handicap the scoring so each team has something to fight for.

3. I would also make it so if one server caps another’s fort the wXP reflects their relative glicko. It IS easier (on average of course) to cap a weaker server’s tower. This would also encourage transfer into the weakest servers since they would ALWAYS have a positive wXP bias and those who like good fights can go there to show what they are made of . Note: I’m not suggesting that T1 servers get less than T7 servers, just that, in each matchup, more wXP is given to weaker servers when they cap.

No. Please stop saying this system is good, it’s not.

Mean Girls Meme
“stop trying to make WULD happen”
“it’s not going to happen”

Deniara Devious.3948:

Nak.8315:

People, you gotta keep in mind anything they do with the rating system isn’t an overnight fix. Its going to take Several weeks if not months to make sure each servers strength is getting the right opponent.

What about those servers who haven’t won this year at all? How much more they should wait for a fair match up?

Just because you and many others love the current system, how many more months and years should our patience continue? We already lost 10 WvWvW guilds to other servers and didn’t get any guild transfers for months.

I seriously do not believe the glicko system will ever give accurate numbers. And here are my arguments:
- coverage issues need to be addressed 1st. Right now the one with the superior coverage wins
- imbalanced match ups, which have been occuring to some EU servers for entire year 2013, can cause boredom in both the winning and losing side, thus one of them doesn’t play at full strength
- server transfers happen all the time and change the strength of the server faster than the glicko can react. Thus the glicko score is gonna be inaccurate forever.

I have a theory: People who defend the current system and oppose WULD have been enjoying balanced match ups at least once this year!

This is only the 4th week of the new system. If you all haven’t won in 2013 it is because of the old system. You were stagnated in the wrong position. The new system will be better for you.

Handicapping the scores cannot fix anything other than the perception of winning/losing. The purpose of the overall rank points is to find servers that would have relatively even matches not determine an arbitrary victory score. All handicapping would do is move lower ranked servers higher forcing them to compete with better servers. Sure their score would look better but they would still get crushed all the same.

No server v server system has ever achieved balance in any MMO that I am aware of. As the system stands, everyone but the top most servers are always going to draw the short straw at some point and lose. Until they find a way to regularly redistribute server populations, this will continue to be an issue no matter the system.

Johje Holan.4607:

This is only the 4th week of the new system. If you all haven’t won in 2013 it is because of the old system. You were stagnated in the wrong position. The new system will be better for you.

That is so far just unproven theory.

The new system has in fact been worse than the old one for us. Because in the old one we would have been in tier #2 and dropping down with points. Now with the new system we are rising up with points, despite we are losing stuff left and right. We are rank 7 and pitted against EU 1 and 3.

It is interesting that people insist glicko+random system works as it is obvious to even my 4.5-year-old son that it doesn’t. Yes, he is also a gamer.

Here is an explanation why WULD would be better:

WvWvW coverage is the single most important factor deciding success in WvWvW. WvWvW population is not static. We often see guilds changing servers, in fact even entire alliances moving from one server to another. Normal glicko would react way too slowly to such events. Adding a very large random variation glicko would of course often produce totally imbalanced matches e.g. #10 vs. #20, which is even more imbalanced than WULD would ever give you. Adding a small random variation to glicko would be close to normal glicko and react way too slowly to the dynamic nature of WvWvW population.

Winner goes up and loser goes down (WULD) is not perfect. In the long run every 2nd week of match up can be imbalanced for many servers. But when drastic changes happen to a WvWvW population WULD reacts much faster. Instead of waiting for months until the ratings “stabilize”, WULD would create a more balanced match up in 1-2 weeks.

I think handicapping would be good, used in combination with the current matchup system. I think the current matchup system does a reasonably good job of choosing opponents (but not a perfect job, certainly), but it does not do a good job of communicating to players how well they are doing relative to how well they were expected to do.

It is necessary for people to play “outlier” matches from time to time in order for the system to be able to choose good matchups more often. but we need to find a way to ensure that these “outlier” matches are just as fun as the “close” matches, and a handicap system might achieve that.

-ken