Guild Wars 2

Hi,

With season 3 approaching, I’m considering giving it a chance and see how far I can go (I didn’t participate in the first two seasons). Discussing with some friends, it seems I have misunderstood how match making is working. I have two questions below, and would be grateful to anyone shedding some light upon them.

My understanding is that each player is assigned a level (MMR) for each profession he plays, the precision of which increasing with the number of games played. Then, the match making algorithm selects 10 players with similar levels and puts them together. People grouped together receive a malus in the match making (to offset the better coordination), and divisions act as hard limits for levels.

Q1: Profession MMR

I seem to remember that profession MMR was disabled, but friends told me it was back. Which one is it? I’m super strong on warrior and super weak on thief, so the related MMR would be different. If profession MMR is disabled, does this mean the system uses some sort of average MMR, disregarding the possibly high variance, whatever the number of games?

Q2: Grouping

Friends have told me we can group with people belonging to other divisions, thus possibly disregarding the MMR. This means that matches can be made with people way weaker than you are, to the point of making 4v5 or 5v4. How does the match making system resolves this? 4 strong + 1 weak vs 4 strong + 1 weak still would give a lot of random in the game.

Thanks.

In Season 2 the system searched for players within both your division and MMR range to find your teammates for a match. Your opponents were picked the same way, but when pairing the two teams, MMR was not a factor.

For example a high MMR player in early sapphire was teamed up with other high MMR players in the same division range (probably all players who started late or played few matches) and could fight a team of low MMR players in early sapphire who were stuck there although having played a lot of matches. That way you should quickly race through the divisions until you reach a division range where most players are within your MMR range.

When queuing as a group the highest player’s division range was used to find opponents. I guess for groups <5 this player’s MMR was also used to find teammates.

I’m not 100% sure but I think profession MMR was not used for macthmaking. It would not make sense as you can change your profession afterwards anyway.

In season 2 you gained 1 pip per win and 1 in addition for a win streak (starting at third win) or breaking a losing streak (for first win after three losses).

All these rules may change for season 3.

Thanks for this info, much appreciated. I feel that the current rules, while being satisfying on many aspects, are quite lacking on others. Still, this is just a video game, not a life and death situation, so I won’t mind.

I suppose than soloqueuing with a single profession should give me the most consistent match making. I’ll be paying attention to the new rules published with the next season, if any.