Guild Wars 2

The first thing I would like to note is that the current system performs quite differently in the task of making interesting (relevant) matchups and creating a ranking of the results.

The matches created involve servers that are close to one another, but the system has 2 blind spots and this is differentiating between the 3rd and the 4th place and between the 6th and the 7th place, this is due to the fact that these places usually swap positions without actually meeting.

The by far worse aspect of the current system is the resulting ranking. My 2 main objections are that it produces far more ties than there have to be and that the system is so unstable (in a very predictable way) that given there is a server that wins every match and a server that loses every match all matches prior to round 8 are completely irrelevant for the final result for all other servers.

In my eyes a very simple and elegant way of evaluating the matches is by using a directed graph and determining the score for one server against another as the maximum flow between these two servers. I will show this using the EU Silver league as an example.

First we make a table counting all direct victories between servers:
http://abload.de/img/wvwt1xsktj.jpg

The resulting graph shows a directed weighted edge from the winning server to the losing server:
http://abload.de/img/graphwvwsilver82bio.jpg

Before we determine the (indirect) score of each server against the others we remove all circles, in this case one for Abaddon and Gunner and one for Ring of Fire and Ranik (this doesn’t influence the final rating, but helps seeing interesting future matches).
The score is determined as maximum flow between two servers, for example Gandara only played once against Abaddon and won, but they also won 4 times against Shiverpeaks, who won twice against Abaddon, so Gandara’s score against Abaddon is 3.
http://abload.de/img/wvwt2okabj.jpg

We can see that the graph can resolve all but 2 ties from the current rating system and it also shows the next most interesting matchups, being Piken vs Abaddon vs Gunnar and Drakkar vs Aurora vs x, but these 2 matches would also mean that the leftover matchup would be rather boring, but then again every matchup in the Silver league involving Gandara and Shiverpeaks has proven to be boring (as far as the final result is concerned).

Unfortunately we don’t need a new match-making, we need more team balance to make matches interesting. If the teams are to imbalanced no match making can produce balanced matches

We need winner takes all points,right now its 1v1 + a big server that chose who wins,if winner get all points we get l 1v1v1 again,and lot better rotation in match ups.

Yes, this 5-3-1 is bad it leads to a Double-Focus on the 2nd. A 1-0-0 would have been a better incentive for a double-focus on the currently leading.

Better yet:

The server turns place 2 and 3 “green” to each other, making them friendly until the points change who is in first.

WvWvW solved.

We discussed that once here in the forum, looks like a good idea on first sight, but it could lead to a bunch of bad situations (e.g. green leads and owns whole red third, now blue captures all this red third from green, and red is not allowed to attack it’s own third to take it back from blue). And in close matches where the lead turns often (and thats the goal of this change) the resulting situations are even more worse.

I like it. But how are you determining the patchups in the first place? This seems to be a better way to evaluate the score but its the matchmaking that needs to be addressed too so that we’re not playing the same servers all the time. Or switching back and forth like with the swiss system.

And to address Dayra’s point – I definitely agree we need more actual balance. But until we can get that, a better matchmaking system can be instituted quickly and easily.

The problem with WvW is that players over stack winning servers because the meta is easier, loot is easier and the rewards are four times as much for server #1 tha n for last place.

To truly fix WvW, you’ve got to put limits on player incentives to game the system.

Here is what needs to be done:

Before the season

1. Give free transfers to bottom tier servers, give cheap transfers to mid tier servers, expensive transfers to top 6 servers, and no transfers to top 2 servers.

During the season

1. Eliminate leagues.
2. Everybody in Swiss style matchups.
3. Scoring changed: Win == 5 points, second == 2 points, 3rd == 1 point. This is necessary to reduce the harm of gaming the system with second place finishes.

After the season:

1. Only three tiers of reward, Gold for top 6, silver for next 9, bronze for last 9.
2. Rewards are ideally the same for all players that completed the meta, except maybe the gold reward can glow gold and the bronze reward can glow bronze. If not, keep the meta rewards within a +/- 33% range.
3. Use league results to determine matchups or the first week after leagues. After that, it’s ok to go back to the existing formula.