Guild Wars 2

I really like a lot of the changes discussed in the blogs over the last two days. I haven’t played PvP at all sans a few matches here and there since April. I do have a few questions though.

1.) What’s to keep people from queue-ing as a profession they don’t regularly play so that they enter the match at a lower rank and then swapping to a profession they do play a lot? It would have been nice to see that covered in the blog but I didn’t see it. If you are locked in to the profession that you queue up with, then I am all about this change as it doesn’t make you feel like you need to limit what profession you play based on how good you are with it.

2.) Quoted from Justin’s blog:
“Ratings

At the heart of matchmaking is your Glicko2 matchmaking rating (MMR). This rating helps us match you with other players near the same skill level. Now, in addition to your core rating, we will also keep track of ratings for each profession you play.
By using more than one rating, we hope to encourage you to experiment with other professions you may not play regularly. Are you a really good mesmer? We’ll match you with other great players. Are you an engineer newbie? We’ll find you easier matches while you learn the ropes!
Rank

While we firmly believe that a player’s rank doesn’t necessarily match that player’s skill level, it is a pretty good indicator of experience. With that premise in mind, we will now prefer to place you with others near your rank."

Does the system take into account your MMR as a bigger percentage and then your rank? Because the different professions are listed under the rating portion of the blog I am also wondering if your different professions will have different ranks. Is that the case?

I would love to see that be how it is handled and I would also love to see a leaderboard with “Best overall” that showed players who were really good on numerous professions. It would be a great way to differentiate players and have them be identified as really good on a profession or two or really well-rounded because they are solid on a lot of different professions.

Thanks for any info you can provide in regards to my questions! Super excited that this could end up being where I spend a ton of time again!

Will this end the phenomenon where some of your teammates go into the map after the queue pops to find out what classes the other team is playing and then switch classes to counter the other team? How about when people switch characters mid-match.

Justin ODell.9517:

Iason Evan.3806:

What’s to keep people from queue-ing as a profession they don’t regularly play so that they enter the match at a lower rank and then swapping to a profession they do play a lot?

Leaving the PvP lobby will remove you from the queue.

What I mean is, I enter the match on my garbage Thief. We are waiting for the match to begin. I then swap to my really good Ranger. How is that handled?

Thanks for the awesome replies though!

Iason Evan.3806:

Justin ODell.9517:

Iason Evan.3806:

What’s to keep people from queue-ing as a profession they don’t regularly play so that they enter the match at a lower rank and then swapping to a profession they do play a lot?

Leaving the PvP lobby will remove you from the queue.

What I mean is, I enter the match on my garbage Thief. We are waiting for the match to begin. I then swap to my really good Ranger. How is that handled?

Thanks for the awesome replies though!

Yes. It does not appear that the system can stop players altering their matchmaking by waiting in queue on an alt, and switching mid-game.

Maybe switching characters can finally be disabled????

Justin ODell.9517:

Leaving the PvP lobby will remove you from the queue.

What does this mean exactly? what is the PvP Lobby? Heart of the Mists? the in-match starting area?

I am ususally not in Heart of the Mists when I queue, I am running around other places, or practicing in a hot-join.

Justin ODell.9517:

Iason Evan.3806:

What’s to keep people from queue-ing as a profession they don’t regularly play so that they enter the match at a lower rank and then swapping to a profession they do play a lot?

Leaving the PvP lobby will remove you from the queue.

Justin, the way you word this confuses me. The word “queue” makes me think that once we are in the game we are still in a queue. Do we have to accept something to make the game start when we are put into the match?

So say I am on my engineer, accept the queue, and the game starts. If I leave the game to go play thief, I will not be able to return and will be treated as a leaver, correct?

tichorum.2415:

Justin ODell.9517:

Iason Evan.3806:

What’s to keep people from queue-ing as a profession they don’t regularly play so that they enter the match at a lower rank and then swapping to a profession they do play a lot?

Leaving the PvP lobby will remove you from the queue.

Justin, the way you word this confuses me. The word “queue” makes me think that once we are in the game we are still in a queue. Do we have to accept something to make the game start when we are put into the match?

So say I am on my engineer, accept the queue, and the game starts. If I leave the game to go play thief, I will not be able to return and will be treated as a leaver, correct?

This is what I am hoping. I would hate to see people have the ability to use a class they don’t play all that often and and then switch professions to something they are ranked highly with.

Another question as well: Is this per character or per profession? Let’s say I have an Elementalist ranked in the top 100 named “Joannie Loves Chachi”. If I make a new Elementalist namded “Chachi Loves Joannie” will that Ele be ranked the same as the highly ranked Elementalist or are the rankings separate?

Justin ODell.9517:

Iason Evan.3806:

What I mean is, I enter the match on my garbage Thief. We are waiting for the match to begin. I then swap to my really good Ranger. How is that handled?

You’ll receive dishonor if you leave a match and take a full loss on the leaderboard.

Sweet! Thanks so much for the replies!

Justin ODell.9517:

You’ll receive dishonor if you leave a match and take a full loss on the leaderboard.

Can you quickly more clarify this:
does leaving for a short time (e.g disconnect, character select screen,…) give instant the loss or only if you log back in with a different character than you queued up and will you be hinted at this?

Am I reading this wrong? Why would we want to disable swapping to another class/character? I really don’t want to be a mesmer on a team with 3 thieves and another mesmer.

Calypso.2578:

Am I reading this wrong? Why would we want to disable swapping to another class/character? I really don’t want to be a mesmer on a team with 3 thieves and another mesmer.

how i understood this you wont be matched with 3 same classes together, so no problem there

Looks to me that you can swap for hotjoin/nonranked matches but not for ranked matches. Which, to me, makes sense because if ranked matches are there to get you into sPVP then you can’t switch classes in normal tournaments since there are clearly defined rules on what you can swap. At least this is how I am interpreting the new changes.

Calypso.2578:

Am I reading this wrong? Why would we want to disable swapping to another class/character? I really don’t want to be a mesmer on a team with 3 thieves and another mesmer.

If you read yesterday’s blog post you will see why. They are making it so that doesn’t happen with multiples of the same profession like that. The profession specific MMR will help greatly too. I understand the concern though. I do. No one wants to get stuck on a team with classes that are all the same.

I still have a concern about multiple same professions on an account having different MMR. If all I have to do to game the system on a Warrior is just roll a different Warrior, then that is an issue for sure.

Justin ODell.9517:

Iason Evan.3806:

I still have a concern about multiple same professions on an account having different MMR. If all I have to do to game the system on a Warrior is just roll a different Warrior, then that is an issue for sure.

No, it’s profession specific, but not character specific. Your warrior rating will be the same no matter what warrior you’re on.

Yes! Justin, I remember talking about this stuff last year and it is so reassuring to be getting these changes. Thanks so much for all the hard work. It makes it worth the wait!

Justin ODell.9517:

Iason Evan.3806:

What I mean is, I enter the match on my garbage Thief. We are waiting for the match to begin. I then swap to my really good Ranger. How is that handled?

You’ll receive dishonor if you leave a match and take a full loss on the leaderboard.

Justin, I’m not sure you and the OP are on the same page here. He wasn’t talking about leaving the match after it starts, or about logging out while still in the queue. What he’s saying is: you queue up on a profession on which you have a bad record. The game matches you up, you enter the match, and DURING THE 2 MINUTE PRE-GAME COUNTDOWN you log to the character selection screen and choose another profession, which you’re better on.

If you’re saying that logging and relogging during the pre-match period gives you dishonour, even if you log right back in (whether on the same or another character), I seriously think you should reconsider this feature. Swapping characters pre-game is something a lot of people do for legitimate reasons. Say you’re queueing solo as a mesmer for example, you enter a match and see that your teammates include 2 more mesmers. It’s not in any way cheating or dishonourable to swap to a guardian, is it? Why should you be awarded dishonour for that?

If, instead, you’re saying that logging and relogging after the match has actually started awards dishonour, then I’d like to ask: how does this system deal with disconnects?

Justin ODell.9517:

Iason Evan.3806:

What I mean is, I enter the match on my garbage Thief. We are waiting for the match to begin. I then swap to my really good Ranger. How is that handled?

You’ll receive dishonor if you leave a match and take a full loss on the leaderboard.

DCs, DCs everywhere.

Ripperino for my rating.

The fact that going out to the login screen results in dishonor and a full-loss, is there any way for the game to tell if there was a server DC or game crash? Are crashes/DC’s handled the same way as an intentional logout? This is especially relevant with how volatile the servers have been in recent months kicking people out of games and whatnot.

This actually happened to me today:

Match prompt started and I entered the match. Timer gets down to 58 seconds till match starts and my pc crashes. I reboot as fast as my pc could and log back into the game. I re-enter the match and we are down around 100 points. I jumped right into the game and we actually made a comeback and took the win. (shout out to teams that don’t give up in 4vs5)

Hope that in this future update I won’t be penalized and receive dishonor for things that were out of my control.

BlackBeard.2873:

The fact that going out to the login screen results in dishonor and a full-loss, is there any way for the game to tell if there was a server DC or game crash? Are crashes/DC’s handled the same way as an intentional logout? This is especially relevant with how volatile the servers have been in recent months kicking people out of games and whatnot.

up this.
I know it is hard to maintain server on this scale, and ddos happen from time to time.I also have this feeling that anet do not have a mechanics to check for real DC or intentional log out yet. it is really impossible to tell. you need to factor in uncontrollable factor.when the ranking become really important.

Yeaa same here…. I play on a very crappy internet and PC, hopefully arenanet can tell if its DC or rage quit. Like giving 5 min to come back would be reasonable, that’s what it takes to reset the PC and stuff.

Justin ODell.9517:

glock.6590:

Yeaa same here…. I play on a very crappy internet and PC, hopefully arenanet can tell if its DC or rage quit. Like giving 5 min to come back would be reasonable, that’s what it takes to reset the PC and stuff.

Sorry, but if you leave for any reason you’ll get dishonor, no matter the length of time. Even the shortest interrupts can have significant impact on the quality of the game for the other players.

Unfortunately there is no real way that I’m aware of to detect real disconnects from someone ripping out their Ethernet cable and setting it on fire in a fit or rage induced passion.

As usual though, if there is good reason too, we’ll take the time to look at this again. I can’t promise any we’ll take any action though.

That’s an insane requirement given that some teams (teamq) run less than optimal comps for the sake of fun, but when they see a real team they swap classes. What you’re essentially putting is a barrier to always play serious which results in teams steamrolling other players and rather than building a stronger pvp community you get more people discouraged from playing.

Justin ODell.9517:

glock.6590:

Yeaa same here…. I play on a very crappy internet and PC, hopefully arenanet can tell if its DC or rage quit. Like giving 5 min to come back would be reasonable, that’s what it takes to reset the PC and stuff.

Sorry, but if you leave for any reason you’ll get dishonor, no matter the length of time. Even the shortest interrupts can have significant impact on the quality of the game for the other players.

Unfortunately there is no real way that I’m aware of to detect real disconnects from someone ripping out their Ethernet cable and setting it on fire in a fit or rage induced passion.

As usual though, if there is good reason too, we’ll take the time to look at this again. I can’t promise any we’ll take any action though.

So we are no longer allowed to change calss at start of game if we see we have 5 thiefes (or 5 bunker guards or whatever)? Sorry but this sounds like a worse system than now. profession specific matchmaking is nice and all but if that means we lose the ability to adapt to our team when soloqing it probably isn’t worth it.

Justin ODell.9517:

XGhoul.7426:

That’s an insane requirement given that some teams (teamq) run less than optimal comps for the sake of fun, but when they see a real team they swap classes. What you’re essentially putting is a barrier to always play serious which results in teams steamrolling other players and rather than building a stronger pvp community you get more people discouraged from playing.

I get you, the matchmaking system will do much more to prevent awkward compositions.

If you want full control over comp you must form a party. Evan’s post tomorrow (today for you, maybe?) will explain how we’ve simplified and improved the process. I hope it helps.

What I was getting at was that full party groups do this now (playing alt-classes then swapping when it is going to be competitive), I’ll hold judgement until tomorrow , thanks for the fast reply.

Justin ODell.9517:

Iason Evan.3806:

What I mean is, I enter the match on my garbage Thief. We are waiting for the match to begin. I then swap to my really good Ranger. How is that handled?

You’ll receive dishonor if you leave a match and take a full loss on the leaderboard.

Uhm..it’s not pretty clear, Justin:

2 scenarios:

1) I join the match with x prof, ex. thief. 2 min countdown starts and i decide to swap character, for example warrior. I got the dishonorable buff + max loss?

2) I have a ld during the match. I return before the game ends. I got the dishonorable buff + max loss?

I hope it’s not in this way because it would be very very heavy.

Do disconnections apply dishonor? Because some people legitimately have a problem where they DC occasionally during a match. If this happens in 1 match they could lose progress for the next three they would win.

At the same time, it’s easy to fake a disconnect and relog on a different character.

Edit

Also are you worried that because disconnects have such a severe impact on rankings and ratings that it will incentivize people to DDOS those that are high up on the leaderboards?

Edit 2
Or worse, just DDOS the game servers and start hitting as many people’s ratings as possible?

Edit 3
It looks like if you have interrmittent disconnects that happen once and a while and during the wrong match, you will have to play a total of up to 3 or 4 matches and win latter 2-3 to make up for the DC in these situations.

This is very worrying to me.

Edit 4
Just imagine a period of time where your isp is having trouble, and you get connection issues. If a DC happens multiple matches in a row that’s terrible for a players rating.

Additionally, once a player does DC, there’s literally ZERO incentive for them to continue playing if they take the maximum penalty, which would severely impact the rest of the players as well. So a single DC could literally impact my rating even if I’m not the one who DC’s.

Justin ODell.9517:

MarkPhilips.5169:

I hope it’s not in this way because it’s very very heavy.

You queued as a warrior, we found a match for a warrior, using your warrior MMR. It wouldn’t be fair to others if we let bypass matchmaking rules, and it opens the door for exploits.

If the full loss for small disconnects becomes an issue, feel free to bring it up again and we can talk about less severe deterrents. As John mentioned, this is an experiment and we’ll be looking at the data and community reaction.

Ok, i can understand it, but in matchmaking have you considered party composition? Because before, speaking about soloqueue, people swapped a lot for example if they have a bad party comp, like 2-3 same profs in the same team or not bunker or other cases.

In team queue instead, speaking about full premade, it’s a big handicap if a team can’t switch a profession if they meet some specific setup.

And about small disconnections, pls, don’t to this, or super quality connection would be the higher parameter in ladder, more than player skill. The actual system doesn’t punish if you can come back before the game ends, i think it’s really better, considering new score system too.

Sometimes I end up against a comp that I know I can’t deal with on my current class/build, and will switch to another profession that I know will deal better with the situation, pre-game start of course. I don’t want to be locked into what I know will be a very miserable game for me due to being countered constantly, when before I wouldn’t be. If you’re going to log us into one profession for each fight, at least have the decency to implement build hot-switching through templates first.

Also, there should definitely be a window for the first disconnect, even if it’s as small as 20s. These do happen with even the best of ISP’s and internet connections.

what if the new system only slap offenders with dishonor, only if they came back with a different profession?

for example,
if they queued with a hambow warrior initially
they could go to character selection, come back with another warrior.

since we do not have builds template saving system, i believe some people actually load up different sPvP builds on different characters, even if same profession.

or, in the case of actual disconnect, as long as they log back in before the match ends, with the correct profession, they should not be slapped with dishonor?

well, to prevent away-from-match-but-come-back-last-minute-to-avoid-dishonor abuse errrrr ….

how ah?

Justin ODell.9517:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

what if the new system only slap offenders with dishonor, only if they came back with a different profession?

While I can’t any we’ll make any changes, I can say the new systems give us way more flexibility to try more things. So feel free to bring up discussions about these issues throughout the season.

I only hope you can reconsider the problem with small disconnections before season starts or we’ll have dishonorable everywhere and mega complaints topic.

I’m pleased that Anet is taking a firm stance on disconnects, whether unintentional or intentional. It’s a much needed component in curbing the 4v5 issue which is ridiculously common in the current system. I have random disconnects myself on occasion, but I see the necessity of punishing leavers harshly, because leaving effectively ruins the experience for 9 other people.

As for people with poor ISP stability – either stick to offline games or nut up and invest some cash money in a proper connection. And if you happen to live in the burbs with nothing but poopy ISP alternatives, well, how much do love PvP? Time to relocate.

@ Aereniel.7356

what about cases when the disconnect is caused by the gw2 game server, and the player tried his / her very best to load back up gw2 and get back into the game, say, within a minute? with the same character and profession.

that’s enough time to close the gw2 client, load it back up, then load into the map.

There are a lot of topics about gw2 servers problem, i know a lot of people with super mega connections that have only, sometimes, problems with gw2, and it’s not predictable.

Dishonorable + -3 ladder points is really too much for a 1 sec. ld.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

@ Aereniel.7356

what about cases when the disconnect is caused by the gw2 game server, and the player tried his / her very best to load back up gw2 and get back into the game, say, within a minute? with the same character and profession.

that’s enough time to close the gw2 client, load it back up, then load into the map.

That’s a risk all GW2 players are subjected to. Please remember that in the end it is very much in Anet’s best interests to offer the best possible gaming experience, so they should, from a bottom-line business standpoint, devote as much resources as needed to eliminate disconnects that are caused by their own servers.

Whether or not Anet actually manages to deliver remains to be seen. I’d like to keep playing GW2 in the future, so I sincerely hope they can.

Aereniel.7356:

I have random disconnects myself on occasion, but I see the necessity of punishing leavers harshly, because leaving effectively ruins the experience for 9 other people.

This DOES NOT punish leavers cause they can just AFK till the end of the match.

@ Aereniel.7356
aye, what to do? we’ll just have to hope for the best then.

@ Shadow of Azrael.1205
hmmm true, people who manually avoid participating in the match is a serious problem, i think someone said to report those as “botting” under the right click report function?

if all 4 other team members report the player who is not participating in the match, and somehow the 5 players on the other team also makes a report, perhaps that might suffice?

Shadow of Azrael.1205:

Aereniel.7356:

I have random disconnects myself on occasion, but I see the necessity of punishing leavers harshly, because leaving effectively ruins the experience for 9 other people.

This DOES NOT punish leavers cause they can just AFK till the end of the match.

In-game AFKing and leaving the match prematurely are two separate issues. Both can be and have been ameliorated successfully in other games. Let’s see how the new system manages before resorting to caps.

Aereniel.7356:

In-game AFKing and leaving the match prematurely are two separate issues. Both can be and have been ameliorated successfully in other games. Let’s see how the new system manages before resorting to caps.

Thing is we already have dishonorable for people that completly leave the match. And punshing something like 30sec DC in a won match is just plain ridiculous.

Shadow of Azrael.1205:

Thing is we already have dishonorable for people that completly leave the match. And punshing something like 30sec DC in a winning match is just plain ridiculous.

Are you worried for your own sake or speaking more generally? Because in the grand scheme of things I doubt the situation you’re describing happens often enough to have any impact on a person’s eventual MMR or ladder placement. Not when we’re looking at hundreds or even thousands of games played. And if a person’s internet connection really is so abysmal that he can’t play a single evening without DCs, well, time to make frands at the ISP company.

Oh dear, I’ll have to start picking a main profession now.
No point in swapping characters to better complement my team’s composition if it results in being dishonourable. Not quite sure how it would be considered dishonourable to help out your team by swapping pre-start to a bunker if it lacks any, but oh well.

It’s hard to blame ISP when u get a totally random disconnects without any lag spikes prior DC and can relog right away. BTW did Arena fix all spots of falling through textures because there is no 100% way to unstuck without death/relog as far as i know?

I hope that the new matchmaking system is flawless. Right now, the main reason I don’t play my mesmer a lot is that every time I hop in soloq, there is at least one other mesmer and a thief in my team, and I am forced to swap professions. On my engineer, I almost never have to do that.

In addition to that, let’s say the matchmaking system is perfect and I never get teamed up with other mesmers, what happens if before the match starts there is a thief, a pew pew berzeker ranger, a scepter zerker ele and a zerker warrior? We are doomed! Wouldn’t it be possible to swap classes exclusively during the 2min timer in the beginning, and let the profession-based MMR be that of the profession you’re playing when the match actually starts? I never quite understood why in the current system you could not swap builds during the game but still swap classes.

This is great! So this mean that you can’t swap professions after you have queued because you’ll then leave the PvP lobby, hence drop out of the queue.

Love it! Thanks Justin!

Justin ODell.9517:

glock.6590:

Yeaa same here…. I play on a very crappy internet and PC, hopefully arenanet can tell if its DC or rage quit. Like giving 5 min to come back would be reasonable, that’s what it takes to reset the PC and stuff.

Sorry, but if you leave for any reason you’ll get dishonor, no matter the length of time. Even the shortest interrupts can have significant impact on the quality of the game for the other players.

Unfortunately there is no real way that I’m aware of to detect real disconnects from someone ripping out their Ethernet cable and setting it on fire in a fit or rage induced passion.

As usual though, if there is good reason too, we’ll take the time to look at this again. I can’t promise any we’ll take any action though.

Penalties for disconnecting has made me stop playing other pvp games in the past. It so happens that my internet connection, for some reason, likes to interrupt itself once or twice a day, for a few seconds long. If this happens (and it will happen) every time I’m working hard for my ranking, and see all my effort wasted and heavily penalized due to random, second-long occurrences, then I’ll have no choice but to stop pvping. :/

Even the shortest interrupts can have significant impact on the quality of the game for the other players.

But here’s the biggest problem: this system might and WILL contribute to that negative impact on the quality of the game.

Assume the following case: a player gets DC’d.
Situation A: No disconnection punishments. Player comes back, and works hard for the team to get the best score possible. The team might hold their scoring advantage, they might still make a comeback, or perhaps get a close lose.
Situation B: Dishonor kicks in. DC’d player knows this, and loses their motivation to log back into the game. They already know their effort for the remaining match will be useless, because they’ll get a loss in ranking no matter what. So they don’t even bother. If the team was holding a scoring advantage, they will probably lose it. If the team was having any hopes for a comeback, they’ll probably be unsuccessful at it. Their lose will probably not be close to victory at all. Everyone loses.

I hope I was clear on my point. Can you see, Justin, why this new system might contribute to the negative impact of a DC? Because it gives to the disconnected player no motivation to come back and work hard for the remaining match.

The new system is, thus, making a problem worse than it is.

A DC’d player who comes back (quickly enough) and works hard should actually be rewarded for that. It’s good behaviour.