Guild Wars 2

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Week after week, I’ve seen the 3rd place finisher gain in rating and the 1st place finisher drop in rating. Again, it seems like the system will not be satisfied until everyone in a tier is all about the same rank, meaning it will be very difficult for one to move up or down because the same thing happens in the tiers above and below you, meaning the point gap between tiers increases.

the only point gap increasing from tiers is the last tier to second last tier, everything else is pretty close.

the rating system is ok for now….

So let’s say some highschool basketball team plays a game against an NBA team. The highschool team lost the game, but the score was 89-87. Because of the point margin, shouldn’t the highschool team (even though they lost) gain a boost to their rating IF there some sort of rating system for basketball? Same logic.

Just because you finished 3rds doesn’t mean you MUST lose rating.

The servers in Tier 2 (BG,SoR,IoJ) have all improved drastically over the last month. It would be nice to see one of them have a chance in Tier 1 to see how they would compete. Unfortunately, none of them will get a shot in Tier 1 because they keep playing each other to a relative draw in Tier 2. This is the problem with the current system.

It’s also evident at the bottom of the ladder as well, Devona’s Rest and Kaineng would be a tough challenge for say Gate of Madness, Sorrow’s Furnace or Anvil Rock but will not get the opportunity to play them because they keep playing each other to a draw in Tier 8.

Peetee.9406:

The servers in Tier 2 (BG,SoR,IoJ) have all improved drastically over the last month. It would be nice to see one of them have a chance in Tier 1 to see how they would compete. Unfortunately, none of them will get a shot in Tier 1 because they keep playing each other to a relative draw in Tier 2. This is the problem with the current system.

It’s also evident at the bottom of the ladder as well, Devona’s Rest and Kaineng would be a tough challenge for say Gate of Madness, Sorrow’s Furnace or Anvil Rock but will not get the opportunity to play them because they keep playing each other to a draw in Tier 8.

Actually it’s been like this for the past 3 weeks…

WEEK 1

BG wins
SoR 2nd
IoJ 3rd

Weel 2

BG 1st
IoJ 2nd
SoR 3rd

Week 3

BG 1st
SoR 2nd
IoJ 3rd

and now it’s

SoR 1st
BG 2nd
IoJ 3rd.

This week hasn’t ended yet, and isn’t even halfway.

It’s a common trend, BG should either move up or IoJ should move out. Otherwise the way the ratings go, it’ll be the same teams fighting each other in every tier over and over again.

That is how it’s intended. The glicko system isn’t just about win/loss 1st moves up 2nd stays 3rd moves down, it is about the type of performance expected based on the ratings in comparison to the other servers you are vsing. It is suppose to produce the most even match ups as possible. If it was 1st move up 2nd stays 3rd moves down, then quite possibly you would have the 3rd server moving down from the above tier smashing the other 2 servers and the server that came first moving up to the above tier getting smashed as well. Would you rather close tight matches as most of the tiers are now, or continuous blow outs every 2 weeks?

Raven Paradox.1860:

Actually it’s been like this for the past 3 weeks on NA servers…

Fixed

What about just having fun? It’s just numbers on a screen anyways

Peetee.9406:

The servers in Tier 2 (BG,SoR,IoJ) have all improved drastically over the last month. It would be nice to see one of them have a chance in Tier 1 to see how they would compete. Unfortunately, none of them will get a shot in Tier 1 because they keep playing each other to a relative draw in Tier 2. This is the problem with the current system.

How exactly have they improved they have been playing the same servers. And if they are playing to a relative draw in tier 2, they shouldn’t be in tier 1. Unless one server starts showing they can be in tier 1 by beating the tier 2 servers handily, then you will stay there.
I mean really look at the history; when JQ lost tier 1 they completely drummed the tier 2 servers, when SBI dropped they drummed the tier 2 servers, SoS drummed every tier to get to tier 1 and is now winning matches in tier 1. IoJ got drummed in tier 1 and dropped, BG came in second one week, then got drummed and SoR has never been there.
Don’t act as though you don’t know what a tier 2 server has to do to get to T1. Winning means something but winning by alot means alot more
The rating are correct and the system is working correctly
Remember it was not long ago where people were everyone was talking about how no matches were fair and servers were always blowing out the others in their tier.
Now you are talking about relative draws in your tier-that is the system working

And the system and ranking are not even considered a minor issue for WvW there is alot of other issues alot more important than that

Yeah, SBI and JQ ’drummed’ Tier 2 almost 2 months ago.

Things do change except the ratings......they don’t.

As for SoS ’drumming’ every tier, they only beat SoR by 20k. You know, about the same margin they beat JQ and SBI by every week, except we had to play against PRX.

Maybe you should check the history out
Last 2 SoS vs SoR were
270k to 188k
277k to 193k
That’s not 20k, that’s a drumming

BAEK.8561:

So let’s say some highschool basketball team plays a game against an NBA team. The highschool team lost the game, but the score was 89-87. Because of the point margin, shouldn’t the highschool team (even though they lost) gain a boost to their rating IF there some sort of rating system for basketball? Same logic.

Just because you finished 3rds doesn’t mean you MUST lose rating.

The NHL has a realistic example, in the NHL if you go into overtime, both teams get a ranking point, so even if Team A wins, Team B still gets something important out of it. Team A winning will get the 2 points they would have gotten if they won in regulation time, but Team B is rewarded for going into overtime with the team that beat them.

Phule.1968:

What about just having fun? It’s just numbers on a screen anyways

Fun died when games started introducing permanently tracked stats for meaningless pub games. I mostly blame the Call of Duty series, since there used to be a time when you could play shooters and have fun instead of feeling forced to play seriously all the time because people would just go reference your stats during any discussion to see if you were “worth” talking to or not. If my stats had been tracked from the old days of Counter-Strike, they’d be awful thanks to how much I would run around doing knife only or have fun spraying the Para like an idiot while micspamming Highway to the Dangerzone.

At this point, the younger generation of gamers cares entirely too much about the numbers and progression. It’s really the most meaningless in GW2 WvW, it’s pretty much entirely about zerging around and right now SoS has probably the biggest Oceanic population, so they keep their numbers high around the clock after the North American players are mostly sleeping.

Josh P.1296:

That is how it’s intended. The glicko system isn’t just about win/loss 1st moves up 2nd stays 3rd moves down, it is about the type of performance expected based on the ratings in comparison to the other servers you are vsing. It is suppose to produce the most even match ups as possible. If it was 1st move up 2nd stays 3rd moves down, then quite possibly you would have the 3rd server moving down from the above tier smashing the other 2 servers and the server that came first moving up to the above tier getting smashed as well. Would you rather close tight matches as most of the tiers are now, or continuous blow outs every 2 weeks?

I would rather have blowouts once in a while to give people something different. Watching Federer play Nadal every week is boring. Sometimes you want to see Murray get lucky and beat Federer. Why not have 3 divisions instead where everyone in the division plays everyone else, and then the winners of each division play in a championship?

I’m glad to see some discussion on the topic. I would like to make some counterpoints.

@ Ilyset

Incorrect. Almost every tier is getting an increasing point gap.

I keep hearing that the system is working as intended. That the Gliko system is about expectations. I understand this, but I think that something in the math is broken. I’m on Blackgate. We’ve won our matches against IoJ and SoR every week, yet every week, we go down in rating. It looks like now, we are going to be playing them for a 5th week, and because of the rating system, probably the week after that and the week after that. For arguments sake, let’s just say we win every week, SoR places 2nd, and IoJ places 3rd. (this is just for argument sake. I’m following the trend. With the exception of 1 week, where IoJ made a comeback for a very close 2nd, this is my example) Let’s also assume that we all play about the same way we have been. What will happen is BG will continue to loose rating and IoJ will coninue to gain rating.

At a certain point, however, the “expectation” of how much we should win by will meet our actual resuts. This means that we will reach a point where we will not loose rating. Then, I assume, that we will reach a point where we will actually gain rating. However, I foresee this rating gain to be minimal because we probably won’t beat SoR by a large enough margin. Also, at this point, the gap between tier 1 and 2 will be so large that we probably will never (or at least a few months down the road) be able to get up to tier 1.

So, why is BG not rewarded for placing 1st? Shouldn’t they get a shot at the next tier? What if BG places 1st 8 weeks in a row against the same servers, but the rating system has made it so that the 3rd place finisher in tier 3 is 100 points above? How is the 1st place finisher below ever going to get the rating points to that level?

An even better, real life example other than mine, is TC in tier 3. If you look at the ratings as of this writing, TC is first by almost 70K points, but they are loosing 5 points in ratings. If i remember correctly, they have won every match for the last 4 weeks, by a better margin than my bracket, yet because IoJ has gained points ever match, the gap between TC and IoJ is about 55 points. It seems thier shot at getting into tier 2 is just as bad as ours getting into tier 1. When will this end?

It seems that the only way for a 1st place finisher to gain rating is to completely smash the competition by about double the 2nd place score. This is unrealistic now that things seemed to have settled down somewhat.

So, in WvW, am I gonna face the same servers for the rest of the game? Keep in mind that I’m not saying that I want to play SoS and SBI. I think these last few weeks have been great, but I can see them getting stale soon. The other thing this system creates is the lack of incentive for trying if we won’t be awarded for placing 1st, except for the knowledge that we did so.

The rating may need some work but I think part of it is being “between” tiers. BG TC and YB all have this issue. They can’t just slack off in the lower tiers but can win without to having to really push hard. Yet they jump up and while they can hold their own they have little hope of winning. As was stated u pretty much have to role the tier u r in to have a chance to win the tier above

Actually, the rating system is working as intended. It’s grouping servers that are as close to the same strength and coverage as possible. The real problem is the small playing field. There are simply not enough servers for some variety of opponents of similar capability (coverage and participation).