Guild Wars 2

Thanks for replying.

I meant uneven as in the number of matches with less than 10 players.

Ah sorry, I misread that post, thought uneven in terms of win ratios!

You mention people picking maps they are built for, do you consider that a bad thing? Imagine a scenario where we have templates. Everyone would always switch to the most effective build for a given map to ensure a win. That’s what people like to do, win

Not at all, people already do that to an extent. They might swap out a trait or 2 during the pre-match waiting time, or even relog into a different character if necessary. But on every other map, they will do this thing in response to the enemy team’s composition. On Skyhammer, they will do it in response to Skyhammer! Are we supposed to be playing against each other or against the map here? 2 teams of 5 engis each knocking each other off ledges would be hilarious fun for about half an hour, but I wouldn’t want it to be every third game I played!

I realise I should’ve put a tl;dr for my post: As long as the maps are balanced (and most of your maps are balanced – Temple and Legacy in particular are SUPERB), voting would be a great idea. As long as unbalanced and exploitable maps are in the tournament rotation, voting should be restricted to hotjoin.

Based on the internal metrics on which map is the most hatefull/least voted by players … is it fearsable to program the system to keep the map in the soloque , but your rating in not affected for loosing or winning ?
And for each time you havent ’’voted’’ for the map > the winning rewards is increased by 20% (max 100%) ?

Evan Lesh.3295:

manveruppd.7601:

Imagine a scenario where we have templates.

I’ve been imaging this scenario since beta O_O
Feels like it’s the Cantha of the PVP community.

Weights would have to be introduced after sufficient data is collected; Maybe all the naysayers are wrong, and skyhammer will be played All day?

Usually people tend to choose the default option;
Check here to donate your organs on death
Gets a lot more votes then
Check here NOT to donate your organs on death.

• If skyhammer starts with 2 or 3 votes and people have to actively vote against it
  The odds favor skyhammer winning as the default choice.

• RNG Always picks unpopular maps

• Someone mentioned special weekends;
  Maybe on those weekends the vote is rigged toward skyhammer?

• Behavior modification Special rewards or Penalty for voting the same map all the time.

This type of weight would be added if the need arises…

Edit; Textile too hard please nerf.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Skyhammer is only an example of a map that some people have vocalized that they like less than others. There will always be maps that people like more and less than others. What I’m trying to get from you guys is to think of how a map voting system could work with regards to all player preferences. How could we ensure that players can always get chances to play their favorite maps?

easy, instead of voting, add a UI were players can check/un-check the maps they would / wouldn’t not like to play on.

If skyhammer pops they it will pop ONLY for players who have the box checked, obviously the more maps you have “enabled” the less waiting time for a queue to pop.

So if I check 3 maps only I know that it will take longer for a map to pop for me then if I check 5 but hey, it’s my choice.

A fixed map rotation could be implemented to improve this “map choice system”
You could use the one already running on hotjoins and it would work like this.

So ppl chose the maps they want to play on and queue. If the next map on the rotation is checked by this player would be added to this map, if this this player does not have this map enabled he will have to wait for the next map on the rotation to open up and so on.

this way SkyHammer will still pop as much as any other map to players who chose to have it enable for queuing.

I personally do not like skyhammer to much but I would still queue for all maps to avoid longer queues, for players that don’t really care they can go into hotjoins wile waiting for a map they enjoy to pop.

what do you think?!

Evan Lesh.3295:

Volrath.1473:

Rigging the rotation is an interesting idea to avoid long queues with filters. I’m not actually sure if that would results in shorter queues than the matchmaking algorithm finding the best set of 10 people all with overlapping map filters. It would certainly still get slower the more maps you veto.

In either case, anything that increases queue times or effectively creates separate queues is probably not something we want to implement if it can be avoided.

I understand, the example I did is valid when there are few ppl queuing, when there are more, there will be various different map rotations with different maps at the same given time, meaning the queues would be just as long as they currently are since all maps are rotating at the same time.

Anyway it was just a suggestion I hope it helps

One thing you could do, would be make it a Roll, rather then a definite..
So say you get 4 people who say they wanna play Khylo; and 1 Person wants to play Skyhammer, Theres 4 rolls to get khylo, 1 Roll for Skyhammer.
So the highest number out of 100 is the map, so say its 66 77 55 99 for khylo, and Skyhammer rolls 100. It’s gonna be skyhammer.

Darnis.4056:

I plugged the values we have into
http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/hypergeometric.aspx

And the results were favorable(20% Skyhammer will happen)

Unfortunately I don’t think 33% of the population will vote skyhammer 100% of the time to uphold these results.

Sociology has thoroughly proven that people will vote for whatever everyone else is voting for; If you show the results..

I’m leaning toward a Weighted system with More RNG rather then a direct democracy (For this particular feature)

Most likely its the skyhammer lovers who will throw away their votes as they are in the minority.

I’m not sure I followed your process. Do you mean on any given queue pop, skyhammer would have a 20% chance? That’s greater than 1/6, which means skyhammer would be more popular than it is now. But I’m pretty sure I’m misunderstanding something.

My own figures were pretty crude estimations and I’m no statistician, but it seems that having the least-popular map (by a large margin) come up somewhat less than 20% of the time—let’s say 10%-12% to account for the other variables you mentioned—is completely sufficient. The whole purpose of voting is to have less popular maps be chosen less often. If the voting system doesn’t make skyhammer chances fall below 1 in 6, there’s a massive problem.

Imo, there’s enough RNG in the 10-player pool to give a great enough variety of results. I think there will probably be a significant outcry if players feel like the voting process is “rigged.”

Personally, I feel skyhammer would be better off as a hotjoin-only map, and the majority of solo arena players feel the same way. If it must stay in arena, so be it. But if a voting system fails to cause the least popular map to come up fewer than 1 in 6 times, it’s not functional at all, and WILL cause player backlash.

Well yea; this was assuming that 33% of the population would choose skyhammer 100% of the time, which is not going to happen.
You don’t have to be a statistician to know how probability works..

The poll was that 30% of people don’t want to remove skyhammer, that’s a highly improbable situation.

Darnis.4056:

Well yea; this was assuming that 33% of the population would choose skyhammer 100% of the time, which is not going to happen.
You don’t have to be a statistician to know how probability works..

The poll was that 30% of people don’t want to remove skyhammer, that’s a highly improbable situation.

That’s still okay. As I said, it’s better for skyhammer to come up less than one in six times, because people don’t like skyhammer. The point of voting is that people get more say in the maps they play. If they have to play the maps they don’t like just as much as before, the point of voting is kind of null.

Remember that your own vote—100% skyhammer—will greatly increase your chances of getting in a skyhammer match. So even if 33% of people didn’t vote for skyhammer real often, and the general public only got skyhammer matches 1 in 15 times, your chances would be about double that, depending on how likely those 33% actually were to vote for skyhammer.

What if there’s a certain threshold of time after which vetoes get ignored?

Say, for example, we’re going with “pick 1 map pre-game, and you will never get it”.

Player picks Skyhammer as their veto. But after, say, 15 minutes, the game will ignore that preference, and throw them into a Skyhammer map.

My other idea, which I think I saw in an FPS somewhere; during the pre-game selection, you can choose to veto the current map. HOWEVER, you can’t choose what the next map is; it’s random, and you’re stuck with it.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Filters will always impact queue times, which is very undesirable. We should avoid anything that increases queue times or effectively create more queues..

So, why not use a vote system after the queue has popped, the minute and a half you get before the match starts can be used as a time to vote for what map people want to play on in the same way as it works on games like CoD, this won’t increase any queue times or create any more queues. Problem solved.

Evan Lesh.3295:

In either case, anything that increases queue times or effectively creates separate queues is probably not something we want to implement if it can be avoided.

Why not? Using a filter should mostly increase your own queue times (and for what it might impact others’ I’d say people should be playing for their own enjoyment, not to provide others with opponents).
I’d gladly take a slightly longer queue time to avoid Skyhammer; in fact the chance of ending up on Skyhammer (which would mean I either play while not having any fun whatsoever or I quit the game, go play something else entirely and leave the other players 4v5) is the main reason I hardly play any queue PvP games.

honestly it all sounds very complex,
it’d be so much easier to simply make skyhammer like courtyard,
remove it from hotjoin and tournament but allow people to make customs arenas.
you would be branded heroes for finally taking it out of rotations.

Personally I’d prefer to NOT be able to personal select the map pool, but ask the community which maps should be available in the map pool.

Why should the map pool be the same for every player?
Player A will play f.e. Kyhlo, Foefire and Nifhel; Player B Skyhammer, Spirit Watch and Temple → They will never meet, why should we then put them on the same leaderboard? We can never tell who is better. Even if you are only able to deselect one or two maps, it will still increase the chance, that you the two players can dodge themself.

Our priority should be to get a good reliable rating system f.e. league system.
Mostly in SoloQ the current leaderboard is a joke, and I know player who player 3-0 to end up in the top 3. I simply don’t trust ArenaNet to implement a Map Selection Option, and not destroy the upcoming rating system with it.
(TeamQ is a different story, I don’t mind the current leaderboard there, since the top teams are comparing themselves during f.e. ESL or ToL Tournaments, and therefore the TeamQ leaderboard has a different position / importance compared to the SoloQ ladder.)

Personal suggestion:

• Players are able to select their top 3 maps.
• THEN the 10 players who are going to play together are selected depending on their rating.
• AFTER THAT, the system selects the map on which the 10 players are going to play, but takes into account the preferred maps.

Evan Lesh.3295:

a t s e.9614:

What if people don’t care about having longer Q times? Those who like all maps can just select them all and have a normal Q time?

I would wait 10+ min to not get skyhammer/ temple / khylo

A fair question. This is what I would speculate: Some people wouldn’t want to compromise on their map selections regardless of how bad queue times get. They then want a way to have there map filter AND good queue times. Then we have to incentivize people to play with no filters so that picky players can still have decent queue times. This is very much a slippery slope argument, but as someone posted earlier, this is what happens in WoW. While it is totally feasible, it’s far more complex to teach than a vote system.

but i think too this would be best solution – just give people max rewards when play with ALL maps and give -20% rewards when people disable atleast 1 map

Logged in just to say thanks to Evan for actually posting & discussing pros/cons and being responsive to player wishes. We need more of this all over the forums.

Back on topic: I’d lean towards the weighted random system. I’d hate to see the same maps over and over and over nonstop like in some FPS (a la Karkand in BF2 anybody?).

This idea may be buried in a post above, but how about this:
1. Pick the 10 players for the match and
2. Proceed to pick the map by a weighted system
-Each of the 6 maps gets 10 weighting points (60 total)
-Each player gets one vote for a preferred map worth 4 points. (40 total) (Set a checkbox preference so it automatically votes and you don’t have to manually do it every time a queue pops)
Sum of the 10 points plus points from votes = % chance of that map being selected.
So if everyone voted for the same map it could have a maximum 50% chance of being picked.

There aren’t exactly lots of maps to begin with, I really don’t like the idea of disabling more of them.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Remember that your own vote—100% skyhammer—will greatly increase your chances of getting in a skyhammer match. So even if 33% of people didn’t vote for skyhammer real often, and the general public only got skyhammer matches 1 in 15 times, your chances would be about double that, depending on how likely those 33% actually were to vote for skyhammer.

That was my fear too, that a minority of players would be able to enforce their preferences on their opponents. Like Evan said, people want to win, so if someone is running a build that allows them to exploit a map mechanic, you can be sure that player will ALWAYS vote for that map, sure as Grenth’s balls are cold.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Sounds like two parties on this idea:

• Pre-match veto
  * Pro: Only play on maps you like
  * Con: Longer queues (How much longer we don’t know)

• In-match vote on RNG selection
  * Pro: Every map gets love, but you play on ones you like more often
  * Con: You will sometimes play on maps you don’t like

Personally I’m partial to the RNG + vote because of queue times. I can just queue up and not worry about maps until the match is ready. I wouldn’t need to ever Veto a map because I enjoy them all, but my preference may change at any moment.

In a veto system, we would have to balance how many maps you can veto versus the queue times.
In a vote system, do you think people would vote for the already most-picked map to not ‘throw away’ their vote?

I think the RnG+vote is a great first start. It would generally decrease the amount of time players play on maps they don’t prefer. If I knew I would be playing in skyhammer, for example, say even like 25% less than current, that would be an improvement.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Sounds like two parties on this idea:

• Pre-match veto
  * Pro: Only play on maps you like
  * Con: Longer queues (How much longer we don’t know)

• In-match vote on RNG selection
  * Pro: Every map gets love, but you play on ones you like more often
  * Con: You will sometimes play on maps you don’t like

Personally I’m partial to the RNG + vote because of queue times. I can just queue up and not worry about maps until the match is ready. I wouldn’t need to ever Veto a map because I enjoy them all, but my preference may change at any moment.

In a veto system, we would have to balance how many maps you can veto versus the queue times.
In a vote system, do you think people would vote for the already most-picked map to not ‘throw away’ their vote?

I think people will only “throw away” a vote if they don’t really care about the maps to vote from. But you can be sure that it someone loves one map or hates another that they will vote to get the map they like more.

For example I would absolutely vote for Foefire or Niflhel over spirit watch, but not really care about voting between them because I like those maps.

manveruppd.7601:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Remember that your own vote—100% skyhammer—will greatly increase your chances of getting in a skyhammer match. So even if 33% of people didn’t vote for skyhammer real often, and the general public only got skyhammer matches 1 in 15 times, your chances would be about double that, depending on how likely those 33% actually were to vote for skyhammer.

That was my fear too, that a minority of players would be able to enforce their preferences on their opponents. Like Evan said, people want to win, so if someone is running a build that allows them to exploit a map mechanic, you can be sure that player will ALWAYS vote for that map, sure as Grenth’s balls are cold.

Exactly. That’s why it’s important that the vote process is simple. If there’s anything perceived as “funny stuff” that makes skyhammer come up more often than it would otherwise, people are going to get mad. Like really mad.

Honestly, I think the best thing would be to announce skyhammer coming off the solo rotation temporarily, for two weeks, and then judging the responses. My bet would be three or four players—total, in the entire game—would complain, and the other 24,996 would cheer. But it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.

However, the good news is that anyone with a 100% voting chance, either for or against skyhammer, would have a massive influence on their chances of getting the map. The difference in probability between 4/9 other players voting a given way, and 5/9 players voting a given way, is huge.

Since the complexity of the vote system comes from the individual vote intersections. Just make it a team vote when you are paired with people.

That way you don’t need to process the matchmaking any different than it is right now.

1. When the 5v5 is set. Prompt two screens for player teams to choose their veto’d map (the enemy team wouldn’t see your team’s votes and vice versa).
2. Any map with at least 2 vetoes would not be rolled into RNG.
3. Then intersect the list of remaining maps from each side and randomly select a map.
4. Also, make sure the system doesn’t move away from map selection until all players vote for each side or it times out (Insert kicking and re-matching one player in this phase).
5. Then reduce the overhead wait time from 2min to 30s or less because if the phase before won’t move on until all players voted, then we know for sure that all 10 players are ready.

Expected Outcome
- Queue time to match players together remain the same
- Each team gets their personal choice of maps they don’t wan to play. And each player gets 1 vote.
- Overhead time is only the time it takes to vote 1 map per person for each team (2min wait time can just be made into this period) + getting a new player due to afk.

i.e.
Team 1 vetoes: Skyhammer, ToSS
Team 2 vetoes: Spirit Watch, Skyhammer
Legacy, Khylo, Nihfiel would be randomly selected.

TL;DR @ Expected Outcome
Current Matchmaking Time + 2 Minute Map Selection (or 1 minute) + 30s or less leniency before start => Barely a minute more wait time than it is currently for preferences added.

Worst Case
- 4 maps would be eliminated (At most 2 maps could be chosen from each team with a 1 2 2 split) => Still have 2 maps to randomly select from.
- No players vote or all players vote different maps => Map selection times out or doesn’t impact anything, anything less than 2 votes for each team will intersect and make it into the random selection => No increase in prep time with map selection time limit.

Worst Case with AFK Reroll system
(Map selection would reset every reroll until you have 5 votes total at the end for each team)
- Player is afk during map selection => Reroll all players who haven’t voted for another => Added overhead = SUM of time it takes to get new players per reroll.
- Player deliberately chooses to not vote to get requeued up => give priority to people who are already matched than people who are queuing recently => don’t allow any players dropped by map selection to queue for a certain time limit.

*EDIT – Other issues to consider: *

When to prompt map selection?

Allow teammates to talk to each other immediately via /team as they are matched at 5. Then you don’t have to include any loading time to discuss map selection and you can prompt in HOTM.

Having the chance to veto 1 map before placing yourself in the queue would be sufficient.

If you limit it to being able to veto a single map, there is still a rotation of 5 maps in the pool. A bit of theory:
Player 1 vetoes skyhammer
Player 2 vetoes Kyhlo

These players would still be able to end up being paired as they’ve got 4 maps still in the pool to choose from.

Player 3 vetoes skyhammer
Player 4 vetoes Spirit watch
Player 5 vetoes kyhlo

Then the team is formed, the map pool is restricted to 1 out of 3 maps: foefire, forest, temple.

The game then locates 5 opponents whos pool contains any of these 3 maps.
/theory

I’d consider that a viable choice in soloQ, but for teamQ I’d say each party would be restricted to vetoing one map, thus limiting the possibility that players attempt to efficiently narrow down the pool to 1.
Should this have too much of an impact on queue times then perhaps reducing the amount of maps present at any time would be an idea:
Set a rotating map pool, let there be (light?) 2 or 3 maps in rotation and let the rotation change every 3-7 days.

Or if one map would turn out to be far less played than others, implement a system that grants additional “rewards” to players for playing a certain map and have that map have an increased chance to be selected from the map pool for X days.

I think it could work, but in reality I’m just interested in being able to veto skyhammer.

Lue.6538:

Having the chance to veto 1 map before placing yourself in the queue would be sufficient.

If you limit it to being able to veto a single map, there is still a rotation of 5 maps in the pool. A bit of theory:
Player 1 vetoes skyhammer
Player 2 vetoes Kyhlo

These players would still be able to end up being paired as they’ve got 4 maps still in the pool to choose from.

Player 3 vetoes skyhammer
Player 4 vetoes Spirit watch
Player 5 vetoes kyhlo

Then the team is formed, the map pool is restricted to 1 out of 3 maps: foefire, forest, temple.

The game then locates 5 opponents whos pool contains any of these 3 maps.
/theory

I’d consider that a viable choice in soloQ, but for teamQ I’d say each party would be restricted to vetoing one map, thus limiting the possibility that players attempt to efficiently narrow down the pool to 1.
Should this have too much of an impact on queue times then perhaps reducing the amount of maps present at any time would be an idea:
Set a rotating map pool, let there be (light?) 2 or 3 maps in rotation and let the rotation change every 3-7 days.

Or if one map would turn out to be far less played than others, implement a system that grants additional “rewards” to players for playing a certain map and have that map have an increased chance to be selected from the map pool for X days.

I think it could work, but in reality I’m just interested in being able to veto skyhammer.

The complexity of the matchmaking will extend the queue by a lot depending on how they decide to confirm a team.

If the team is confirmed by common map choice, then the matchmaking becomes increasingly longer to match with each added filter.

1. Player 1 chooses skyhammer to veto. Queues up.
2. Player 2 chooses skyhammer to veto. Queues up.
3. Let’s assume they are the only ones in the queue, then they’ll get matched up. Okay 8 more.
4. Player 3 chooses spirit watch to veto. He’ll get matched with Player 1 & Player 2 but since they don’t have the same veto—it’s an additional restriction to match people.
5. Now this pool of player 1, 2 and 3 can’t play anyone who has anything but khylo, legacy, ToSS, and nihfiel. And this is only 3 people. By the time it reaches 10, there actually may only be one map you can play.

The only way to avoid this would be to not do a pre-filter and/or match people if they have the same preferences first, then match people with common intersections after a certain time limit.

1 veto works great for 1v1. But 5v5 will require more programming and factors to reduce queue times.

Edit – OR
You can create 6 groups for each filter. If 1 filter represents a map. Then break it into 6 fixed pools people are put into.

Players that vetoed Skyhammer
Players that vetoed ToSS
….
6 maps veto pools

Then players in those pools would get matched up with each other. Only con is no one from the other pools would ever get matched with each other.

There are only 4 maps in this games teamq. What is the point in spending resources to code a vote or veto system with only 4 maps after nearly 2 years of this games release?

Here is what I get from this thread.

There are a lot of people who hate Skyhammer and the developers are planning on coddling the minority who contribute to making the majority miserable.

The people who like this map, like it at the expense of making everyone else miserable.

The only people who have fun on this map are the people pulling and pushing people off with troll builds. The people they are doing it to HATES it. Don’t FORCE us to play with these people… because basically that is what you want to do.

Jasher.6580:

Here is what I get from this thread.

There are a lot of people who hate Skyhammer and the developers are planning on coddling the minority who contribute to making the majority miserable.

The people who like this map, like it at the expense of making everyone else miserable.

The only people who have fun on this map are the people pulling and pushing people off with troll builds. The people they are doing it to HATES it. Don’t FORCE us to play with these people… because basically that is what you want to do.

I dunno I feel like this thread is more about putting in a new feature, which could as a secondary part of this thread disenfranchise quite a few players
(33% voted to keep skyhammer in Soloque, this is not a small amount)
It’s not really about forcing players to do one thing or the other..

ALSO ::

IMHO Making the Vote a RNG system where each vote buys a roll for a certain map and the winning map is the one with the highest roll is fair. (I feel like this idea was ignored, or maybe I’m missing something)

Darnis.4056:

Jasher.6580:

Here is what I get from this thread.

There are a lot of people who hate Skyhammer and the developers are planning on coddling the minority who contribute to making the majority miserable.

The people who like this map, like it at the expense of making everyone else miserable.

The only people who have fun on this map are the people pulling and pushing people off with troll builds. The people they are doing it to HATES it. Don’t FORCE us to play with these people… because basically that is what you want to do.

I dunno I feel like this thread is more about putting in a new feature, which could as a secondary part of this thread disenfranchise quite a few players
(33% voted to keep skyhammer in Soloque, this is not a small amount)
It’s not really about forcing players to do one thing or the other..

ALSO ::

IMHO Making the Vote a RNG system where each vote buys a roll for a certain map and the winning map is the one with the highest roll is fair. (I feel like this idea was ignored, or maybe I’m missing something)

I believe the RNG aspect of selection was that only two or three maps would be presented as options, and that presentation would be RNG. So you could be presented with Skyhammer, Forest, and Temple, and get to vote for one.

In a strict veto system, skyhammer would never come up at all. The odds are nonexistent that every single other map would get more vetoes than skyhammer. It would literally never happen in 1000 matches.

In a 6-map vote system, skyhammer might come up too often because the votes would be too spread out. No map would likely receive more than 2-3 votes, so any time you got three skyhammer enthusiasts in a match together, the 30% would likely win.

An RNG roll wouldn’t increase or decrease skyhammer’s chances unless you’re suggesting that the devs play with the numbers to “help” skyhammer out. I don’t think you need me to tell you what 70% of the playerbase would think about that. Also, why even vote if the results are going to be rigged to about 1/6 per map anyway? That’s what we currently have.

Also, I’m curious about something:

You keep on saying that skyhammer will never come up in a straight vote, but then you also keep on saying that a ton of players still like skyhammer and would be disappointed if it never came up. Which is it?

If there are enough people who vote for it consistently that it still comes up sometimes, perfect. If there are so few people who would consistently vote for skyhammer that it would never pop, it’s not worth protecting.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Darnis.4056:

I dunno I feel like this thread is more about putting in a new feature, which could as a secondary part of this thread disenfranchise quite a few players
(33% voted to keep skyhammer in Soloque, this is not a small amount)
It’s not really about forcing players to do one thing or the other..

ALSO ::

IMHO Making the Vote a RNG system where each vote buys a roll for a certain map and the winning map is the one with the highest roll is fair. (I feel like this idea was ignored, or maybe I’m missing something)

Well said. I don’t think the weighted RNG is being ignored. It is an elegant solution that both caters to the masses and doesn’t ignore the minority.

I just don’t think it really matters since I can join teamQ solo to avoid that map. If 9/10 people voted to skip skyhammer on a match, but a weighted roll from the minority prevented the skip then you are full circle with players joining teamQ solo to avoid that map.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Darnis.4056:

I dunno I feel like this thread is more about putting in a new feature, which could as a secondary part of this thread disenfranchise quite a few players
(33% voted to keep skyhammer in Soloque, this is not a small amount)
It’s not really about forcing players to do one thing or the other..

ALSO ::

IMHO Making the Vote a RNG system where each vote buys a roll for a certain map and the winning map is the one with the highest roll is fair. (I feel like this idea was ignored, or maybe I’m missing something)

Well said. I don’t think the weighted RNG is being ignored. It is an elegant solution that both caters to the masses and doesn’t ignore the minority.

Please see my above post for why I don’t think weighting votes is a good idea. I predict that a lot of players will feel very insulted if they feel the system is “rigged” to make skyhammer come up more often than it “should.” Notice how the entire “Choose the maps” thread turned into a “skyhammer” thread. That’s because there are a lot of players who don’t like skyhammer. Making their vote count less is not going to be well-received.

It’s also going to endanger your skyhammer players to verbal abuse. Consider the following scenario:

—Skyhammer pops
—Map chat complaints start: “Which one of you idiots voted for this map?” “It wasn’t me.” “Not me.” “Not me.”
—A skyhammer build such as Darnis’ greatsword/focus/boonrip mesmer instantly shreds three normal builds rushing into the skyhammer platform.
—“It was YOU who voted for this garbage, wasn’t it!?!?!”
—A long stream of insults, curse words, and dishonor stacks ensues

No one wins in a weighted-vote scenario. If 30% of the playerbase votes for skyhammer somewhat consistently, it will come up on its own, as all the math has shown. If only 20% do, it will still come up. If only 10% like skyhammer enough to ever vote for it, then it needs to become a hotjoin map.

Every competitive game where the map matters is decided by veto, so why not Gw2 ?
Your team is maybe not stronger on any kind of map, but in Khylo you could be a beast and at least have a chance to play on it instead of the random system we currently have.

If the map has been decided by both team, you can have better games and you are sure to avoid one or two maps you don’t wanna play on.

Evan Lesh.3295:

I would prefer a map vote feature to be an improvement over the total RNG we have now rather than a solution to an atypical conquest map.

Build templates for what we have now is better imo.

Besides, with weighted votes there is still basically total rng and the maps chosen to be voted on are random as well. Once this game becomes closer to having 20 maps then a better need for a voting system arises. But, there isn’t 2-5 maps with the same primary and secondary objectives to vote between.

Unless new primary objective modes will be voted on so you don’t create separate queues?

I disagree with everything about Map voting. I don’t want to bother with this trash. I don’t want to fill a survey. I don’t want pop ups on my gameplay. I just want to get on and play.

Just fix the maps that players dislike and everyone will forget about this issue.

You need to be very carefull with a rng component in a veto system.

U can use rng to choose xx maps to vote (before the vote but after this, the vote win and there is no rng) but would be very bad using a rng component after people vote.

MarkPhilips.5169:

You need to be very carefull with a rng component in a veto system.

U can use rng to choose xx maps to vote (before the vote but after this, the vote win and there is no rng) but would be very bad using a rng component after people vote.

I agree with this, what’s the point of voting if you are just going to RNG the kitten out of it anyway?

Evan Lesh.3295:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Could definitely happen that way. Do you think that’s more of a problem stemming from players not being able to easily switch builds on a per-map basis? It goes both ways: If someone is built for one map, there is no guarantee they get the map. They may do poorly on a map they didn’t vote for, or need to switch builds to adapt.

You can think about whether a certain implementation of a map vote feature would be a good one if you imagine how it works given any subset of maps. What if we had 2 maps, 20 maps, or 20 game modes?

I would prefer a map vote feature to be an improvement over the total RNG we have now rather than a solution to an atypical conquest map.

Builds per map can be solved at a later time potentially. When templates are implemented that solves that problem. No need to come up with another solution, when it will be solved.

For people that like lower popularity maps, occassionally put the low popularity maps together so that one they are more likely to be chosen. Currently an example would be to put Shyhammer and Spirit Watch together as map choices.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Well said. I don’t think the weighted RNG is being ignored. It is an elegant solution that both caters to the masses and doesn’t ignore the minority.

It’s an interesting solution from a design standpoint, but how can it be implemented in such a way that the player doesn’t feel it’s just an unnecessary barrier between them and the game? I think weighted RNG has more of a chance to be frustrating than straight RNG, and it would be clutter as it is essentially the same result as now. Note that the current system isn’t bad, it’s just that it needs about twice the maps to be as smooth as it could be, such that you don’t get the same map several times in a row.

As it has been commented on prior by some, an fps-style veto option, like the one in the old Halo 3*, could work. If any one map “always gets skipped” when it’s on the first screen, it would balance out when any of the other maps get skipped (which they will). A weighted RNG system just doesn’t seem compatible with a competitive gametype, it sounds more Mario Party than Starcraft.

*: You are presented with map and gametype, one chance to veto, next map is rng and un-vetoable. If you have some time, I would recommend checking out the Halo 3 matchmaking. I haven’t seen a better system since, and it came out 6 years ago now.

Please stop agonizing over non-existent problems and just Occam’s Razor that kitten by removing Skyhammer from soloQ. Nobody will muster the effort to complain. And if, for some unfathomable reason, you decide to fix the Skyhammer issue by building a map vote function, for the love of Jebus please make sure it does not introduce more RNG to the game. That’s the one thing PvP doesn’t need any more of.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Having more control over what we play each match would be awesome, although in solo q any build changes are far more driven by enemy team comp/build imbalances rather than map type.

In team q it’s more clear cut which teams/comps favour which maps.

Spvp should work as random/team arena from gw1. Random map and game mode. Now everybody builded around point defense/atack. Random maps/modes can improve diversity

Evan Lesh.3295:

Could definitely happen that way. Do you think that’s more of a problem stemming from players not being able to easily switch builds on a per-map basis?

Yes, but not in the way you think: switching is very easy, you just log out and pick another character. PLAYING a completely new build just because this one match is on Skyhammer, on the other hand, that’s not so simple!

The issue is that people don’t want to switch up their build for the sake of one map, nor should they have to in a competitive pvp game! PvP games measure your skill in direct opposition to another player. Exploiting the terrain and map mechanics comes into it, of course, but when your skill at knowing where to launch your pull from to knock someone off becomes the main determinant to victory rather than just a factor, you’re no longer in pvp territory: you’re in “competitive pve”.

Sure, people might occasionally change up a single utility or adept trait to adapt to a map, but Skyhammer doesn’t want that: Skyhammer demands that you completely upend your build and focus completely and exclusively on crowd control. And not just any crowd control but specifically the forced movement kind: pulls, pushes/knockbacks, and to a much lesser extent fears.

People don’t want to do that. Not only does it feel cheesy and exploitative (because you’re playing against the map, not against you opponent), it also goes against the basic promise of this game, which was that it would let you choose your playstyle, and that each class would be able to fulfil multiple roles. Not ALL roles obviously (thieves can’t be bunkers, for instance), but most classes do have a reasonable variety of viable builds to choose from, and, because this is a very high skill-ceiling game with lots of nuance and hidden tricks you can learn, a lot of people have been playing more or less the same build (not just the same PROFESSION, but the same BUILD!) since launch! You can’t expect people who have found a build that perfectly suits their temperament and playstyle, and which they’ve been practicing to death, to suddenly go hop on their engi alt every time Skyhammer pops, especially when they’re playing at high levels. They will make dumb mistakes and get frustrated. They will feel like they’re fighting the map and not the enemy. When you’re playing a build you know well you get into a flow, and switching up because a single map demands it breaks that flow! Remember when Grouch interviewed TCG after the tournament? The one most emphatic piece of advice they had to give was PLAY YOUR MAIN CLASS.

Skyhammer completely breaks the game because builds that focus on pulls and knockbacks are so overwhelmingly superior to everything else! Professions do not have equal access to these specific kinds of CC, nor do they have equal access to stability, the only counter to CC. TBH even looking at it on a profession basis is wrong, because most professions have more than one viable build which in some cases play completely differently. Not all builds within the same profession have the scope to respec for pulls and knockbacks. If I’m playing condi necro I can go sure, take 2 trait points out of death, put them in SR for some stability, maybe swap in Spectral Wall for another fear, and we’re done, but if I’m playing minionmaster I don’t have the same latitude to swap stuff in and out.

It goes both ways: If someone is built for one map, there is no guarantee they get the map. They may do poorly on a map they didn’t vote for, or need to switch builds to adapt.

As I explained above, the high skill ceiling of this game and the vastly different playstyles of different builds make switching non-trivial. But say that’s not the case. Say that tweaking your build in between games to adapt to each map becomes a thing in GW2, and becomes an interesting metagame in itself. Well, look at how things stand: for every other map, most players do not need to change a single thing. They have the option to do so, but the advantage is marginal. For Skyhammer, otoh, the extent to which most players would need to change their builds to adapt to the map is so extreme they’d playing a whole different build, which puts them at a disadvantage even if they do switch. So the metagame you’re thinking about currently only applies for one map, and even if you play it you lose, because you’re forcing yourself to play something other than what you’ve practiced and are good at.

I like to split up the quoutes abit to more easily respond to them, I sincerely hope you don’t mind.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

The complexity of the matchmaking will extend the queue by a lot depending on how they decide to confirm a team.

If the team is confirmed by common map choice, then the matchmaking becomes increasingly longer to match with each added filter.

1. Player 1 chooses skyhammer to veto. Queues up.
2. Player 2 chooses skyhammer to veto. Queues up.
3. Let’s assume they are the only ones in the queue, then they’ll get matched up. Okay 8 more.
4. Player 3 chooses spirit watch to veto. He’ll get matched with Player 1 & Player 2 but since they don’t have the same veto—it’s an additional restriction to match people.
5. Now this pool of player 1, 2 and 3 can’t play anyone who has anything but khylo, legacy, ToSS, and nihfiel. And this is only 3 people. By the time it reaches 10, there actually may only be one map you can play.

Correct, there may very well end up being only 1 map in the queue, but in turn if you have 8 players and only Legacy and Forest remains, then the remaining 2 players are highly unlikely to have vetoed one of these maps and far more likely to have vetoed one of the other 4.

However I feel that you ignored or just overlooked the parts I mentioned that would strive to counteract this: By providing sufficient incentive in the forms of additional rank points, double progress towards tracks and other rewards for playing less commonly played maps, more players are likely to not veto said map because the rewards are simply lucrative enough that they would rather endure playing it.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

The only way to avoid this would be to not do a pre-filter and/or match people if they have the same preferences first, then match people with common intersections after a certain time limit.

1 veto works great for 1v1. But 5v5 will require more programming and factors to reduce queue times.

One other solution would be to have a combined pool of vetoes: Rather than matching each player and sorting out those who aren’t matches in terms of vetoes a possibility would be to combine all 10 vetoes into 1 pool, then if a map retrieves more than X of the votes(Lets say 40% or 4/10 maps) it is removed from the pool for that particular match but ALL maps that fail to reach that treshhold remains in the queue.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Edit – OR
You can create 6 groups for each filter. If 1 filter represents a map. Then break it into 6 fixed pools people are put into.

Players that vetoed Skyhammer
Players that vetoed ToSS
….
6 maps veto pools

Then players in those pools would get matched up with each other. Only con is no one from the other pools would ever get matched with each other.

I don’t think this would be a fabulous idea, it’d split up the community far too much.
In the version I first presented anyone can still end up in the same queue, it all depends on WHEN they get teamed up whereas in the version you’re presenting here you’re just efficiently dividing the entire community into 6 slices.. which is likely to increase the queue times by a vast amount, it also further splits up an already small pvp community and I don’t think anyone of us wants to see that happening.

Personally I think I like the veto-pool the most to be honest.

Acgsev.6931:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Well said. I don’t think the weighted RNG is being ignored. It is an elegant solution that both caters to the masses and doesn’t ignore the minority.

*: You are presented with map and gametype, one chance to veto, next map is rng and un-vetoable.

This is best imo. I’m assuming new game modes won’t have a separate queue and this would aid in making sure less favorable modes/maps e.g. skyhammer can be skipped or not skipped.

Evan Lesh.3295:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Could definitely happen that way. Do you think that’s more of a problem stemming from players not being able to easily switch builds on a per-map basis? It goes both ways: If someone is built for one map, there is no guarantee they get the map. They may do poorly on a map they didn’t vote for, or need to switch builds to adapt.

You can think about whether a certain implementation of a map vote feature would be a good one if you imagine how it works given any subset of maps. What if we had 2 maps, 20 maps, or 20 game modes?

I would prefer a map vote feature to be an improvement over the total RNG we have now rather than a solution to an atypical conquest map.

I actually find the PvP build system to be very streamlined, so I don’t see that as an issue. Anyone who wants to run a skyhammer build can run one. People just don’t like building that way.

I don’t think the number of maps or game modes makes a big difference. Most games with a ton of maps + a voting system randomly select 2 or 3 maps for the players to choose from upon queue pop. The voting system doesn’t need to account for 20 maps.

I completely agree that you don’t want the vote system to be thought of as a “solution” to one map. That’s why I don’t think you should go overboard to “protect” it using weighted rolls. Even though skyhammer is the least popular map atm, there are still enough people who like it that it will pop regularly for them in straight votes.

Just offer a choice between three maps on queue pop, voting favorite style rather than veto style. That’s important because veto style is much harsher on unpopular maps. Offering three maps means that it potentially takes fewer votes for a map to win the vote. It’s much better to “protect” skyhammer that way than by “rigging” vote results.

Thanks for taking time to discuss this so thoroughly!

I feel like offering Build templates should be the top priority of the PvP team…
Half the work seems to already be in; I feel like this feature would bring much more to PVP then a Map vote for the casual non-competitive PvP game mode.

Also I second nevir; Thanks Evan for being awesome and actually talking to the players and doing the Collaborative development thing rather then putting a sticky up and then forgetting about it.

I agree that weighted RNG is bad. I really don’t get how this is any different than voting in dungeons. The difference with dungeons is that people know up front which path they want. Well with the user base as small as PvP is, most people know which maps they don’t like so it works out. You can use the same dungeon interface and just randomize the options shown. People pick and done. The only thing I noticed was to allow a option for the PvP menu to autopass. That way if 2 people vote skyhammer and 2 people vote ToSS with the rest passing then the system will RNG.

What I see here is that of all the people who are vocal on the forums, more are against Skyhammer than for it. That does not include the segment of the PvP’ers who don’t post/don’t care. If you get 10 pass then RNG commences. At that point the players can only blame themselves for skyhammer.

If we look at any game based mainly on pvp gameplay (insert any fps title here), they all use a voting system. Based on this, in Gw2 pvp before any match regardless of game mode, a window should appear that allows players to vote between two randomly selected maps in the rotation. Players could then select either map or “random”(for those that could care less) and go by majority rules. As this could lead to one map getting played repeatedly, there can be a “2 play rule”. This would allow a map to only be played a total of 2 times before switching up the vote to two different maps. Allowing all maps to be played at least once before returning to previously played ones keeping some sort of variety.