Guild Wars 2

I feel like most of the forums have failed utterly in getting across to the devs what the main issue with matchmaking is.

What is not a major problem:
1, More than 1 profession on a team – this is utterly secondary to player skill when queuing. Any system which deems this important will be lacking utterly in other respects.

2, Solo vs team – sure a team has an advantage. Again this advantage is HUGELY less important than individual player skill. If you take 5 very good players and put them vs a mediocre pre-made the solo players will stomp that game.

What is BY FAR the biggest matchmaking problem?

It is the massive discrepancy in individual skill between players who are loaded into the same game. When you can 1v2 their whole team and yet your team is dying 3 vs 1 it just makes for a miserable experience for everyone.

The better players have no fun competition. The worse players just get stomped and it isn’t fun for them.

Any matchmaking should MASSIVELY prioritize individual player skill. Everything else will work to make the actual game quality WORSE not better.

If you are trying to not have duplicate professions or to keep solo/trio away from premades then the result will be less satisfactory matchmaking based on the only thing which really matters – individual player skill.

The patch is good and the direction is good and every new feature WILL have issues. But currently, gw2 pvp is in an unplayable state imho. There is no fun competition currently It is just stomping rabbits.

Apparently they haven’t turned the matchmaking on yet, hence how you get paired with people who can’t tell their left from their right.

Indeed completely agree, all other things are conveniences and/or secondary to the most important aspect of matchmaking – MMR or Skill of the players

I agree.
Avoiding dublicate professions might even be counter-productive.
For instance:

Team 1:
Warrior – Using a tanky shout build
Guardian – Support AH build
Ranger – BM / Conditank
Engineer – Rather tanky turret enginner
Necromancer – Terrormancer

Team 2:
Guardian – Medi Guard
Guardian – Suppot Guard
Ranger – Pew Pew
Ranger – BM / Conditank
Warrior – Hambow

Even though there are two pairs of dublicates on team 2, their roster has a more balanced setup. Since some professions can fulfill multiple roles.
It’s fine that it’s accounted for, but as Lordrosicky said, it shouldn’t be a priority.

I strongly suspect that the current MMR does not accurately measure skill.

That’s why matches are blowouts. The match was never even, but the faulty MMRs “added up” and the matcher algorithm said the teams were evenly matched.

But they were not. Hence, a blowout.

The key to proving this is to look at the “expected win” number for all the matches and see how many teams with a “50% chance” were actually shut out earning just 0 to 100 points.

Look…your individual MMR is derived from the GAMES you are in, from your entire team’s total performance against a specific, unique team…it’s not your particular contribution.

The theory is that over time, it will capture your actual skill. I kinda doubt it.

Or if it does, it would have to be 500 to 900 games to do it, since there are SO MANY random factors about who you are teamed with, and against.

I was thinking a reason that you are seeing way different skill levels in rated play is that now, it’s just as easy to click on ranked play as it is to join hotjoin. Before they were seperate, and entering the queue was a longer and more deliberate process. Now you probably have people clicking compete who maybe aren’t ready for it.

Narkodx.1472:

Indeed completely agree, all other things are conveniences and/or secondary to the most important aspect of matchmaking – MMR or Skill of the players

Which cannot be easily measured from their TEAM’S performance unless you look at hundreds of games. Many random factors. Your team members can afk…that tanks “your” MMR. You can be placed on a team where your build is a liability…again, not a measure of your skill, but your MMR is adjusted nonetheless.

Roe.3679:

I was thinking a reason that you are seeing way different skill levels in rated play is that now, it’s just as easy to click on ranked play as it is to join hotjoin. Before they were seperate, and entering the queue was a longer and more deliberate process. Now you probably have people clicking compete who maybe aren’t ready for it.

But before those players still existed but I was shielded from them via MMR. Ask anyone who has been in the top 1000 for solo or team queue for any peroid of time and they will tell you that at peak hours before the patch they would rarely seem a random unknown player/team with/against them. Now I play in games where I have never seen anyone else before in my life (or maybe 1 or 2 people at most).

The result is a total fail unfortunately.

I agree 100%. Current players u get are totally unknown to me which is complete opposite to what it used to be. You can clearly see from their builds and gameplay that they are complete noobs in pvp. If it stays like this i feel like just quiting the game since its a waste of time when u are with / against people like this.

Keep casuals / hot-joiners in hot join or unranked and let the more hardcore people have their fun too Speaking of solo queue ofc.

Covis.6037:

Keep casuals / hot-joiners in hot join or unranked and let the more hardcore people have their fun too Speaking of solo queue ofc.

This goes the other way too. I started to play a little about a month ago, so I am a ‘noob’. Before the new system, I was able to contribute at least something to every game. Now, I am completely out of place in teams with and against Dragon Ranked Champions. The saddest thing is that the ‘practice’ games are even more gruesome than the unranked que. An own private arena could be a solution, if I were that rich.

I had a lot of hope for this patch and getting to play with people about the same skill level, but it got worse. Right now I am thinking I will take the ‘friendly’ advice “not to play since you are (curse word) horrible”.

I would like to advocate rolling back the matchmaking changes. It really was fine beforehand and the only people who moaned about “3 thieves on my team” were idiots. The current system is just making the game unplayable.

Lordrosicky.5813:

I would like to advocate rolling back the matchmaking changes. It really was fine beforehand and the only people who moaned about “3 thieves on my team” were idiots. The current system is just making the game unplayable.

I respectfully have to disagree. The system has been rewritten and a lot of great things are possible with this new, more flexible system.

They can re-load in everyone’s established MMR from the old system (and I believe they are planning on that right away).

They can adjust the “dials” to mimic the old “match selector” if it comes to that.

I think the allowing teams mixed with solo players, and resetting of MMRs are the main reasons for the current pain.

I also suspect they are hoping that the team vs solo problem will urge people to group up with other solo players who want to work together but have been a little “shy” about asking other people to group.

Benjamin.8237:

Apparently they haven’t turned the matchmaking on yet, hence how you get paired with people who can’t tell their left from their right.

This is how I see most of the players in pvp.