Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion, I’m not stating “truths” or trying to troll, I just want to give my opinion on something that kinda worries me, so we can have a nice discussion about my concerns.

I’ve seen people talking about a quite famous moba in this forum, saying that it’s the most played online game at the moment (and it is) and that we need Ranked SoloQ because it will attract more people. (which is probably true).

But, as a former LoL 1450ish ELO Jungler I will tell you why I don’t really like the idea of bringing ELO into GW2, bear with me, it’s for two reasons basically:

The first reason is that it will probably not improve the variety of builds, it’s the other way around, LoL was(is? I left a while ago) built around a very specific team combination that you’ll know if you ever played that game before. (Solotop, AD Carry, AP carry, Jungler, Support with some variations brought sometimes by professional teams just to try and counter a specific well known opponent -on average the team comp, especially at my ELO or Lower- would stick to the meta-).
What makes LoL entertaining is the fact that you get different characters that can fulfill the same role in different ways. In GW2 we have 8 classes, which can be customized in a finite set of builds that, as the knowledge of the metagame progresses will be considered “optimal builds” to be run to win a game.

(I’m nowhere near an expert in GW2 so take this with a pinch of salt, what I’m basically saying is that people realized that Ele are the best at X, so the meta will be “X MUST be done by Eles”, Guardians are the best at y? “Y MUST be done by guardians” then!)

Which brings me to the second and most important point in my long, boring wall of text: Expectations from your team mates.

If I want to describe in one word the LoL community, The first word I’ll use is “Awful”, but that’s the direct result of number one and visible ranks: Since you’re supposed to run the optimal build to do X, Don’t you dare to try something else! It’s not about you enjoying your game, It’s about your kitten ELO! I found myself not enjoying the game anymore because it felt like a job where I was expected to do always the same thing at the same time instead of just having fun! (Tell me you never had someone saying “Jungler didn’t gank at lvl3 gg noob” or “support buy more wards!” or “Carry LAST HIT kitten #8221;)

What I fear, basically, is that a visible ELO will destroy people’s willingness to try different stuff while making the ingame community nastier at the same time.

Comments?

Huh?
The games going to have CA eventually to do things unranked and foster growth.
So even if games were visible ranks there eventually would be a place to experiment

I just don’t think the ranking really matters when it’s not team based but individual.

ensoriki.5789:

Huh?
The games going to have CA eventually to do things unranked and foster growth.
So even if games were visible ranks there eventually would be a place to experiment

Yes, you will be able to experiment in unranked games, but I guess a ranked game will probably yeld bigger prizes than an unranked one, shifting the playerbase into ranked games, where point two of my argument will be predominant, thus curbing the chances for experiments, it’s a vicious circle. Mind you, I’m just speculating here (Even if I consider my speculation quite plausible)

I just don’t think the ranking really matters when it’s not team based but individual.

I hope this will be the case, because if what happens in LoL will happen here, your ranking (and how you affect theirs) will be the only thing thatyour teammates will care about.

I think it’s very important to make sure that if a visible ranking is shown then i hope it is introduced with a separate solo queue system and current single round free tournaments are kept in the game as another option for players like yourself and me too. This would make current single round free tournaments the equivalent of normal games in LoL which don’t really have the problems you’re talking about due to no visible ranking in those, and then there is the option for more competitive players in a solo queue system with visible ranking which would be the equivalent of Ranked LoL games. This would also solve the problem of making it possible to group with friends without having a full 5v5 team, same as in normal LoL games.

If your MMR isn’t visible, how do you even know it is working?

Close games? That’s not exactly helpful.

Kando.9046:

I think it’s very important to make sure that if a visible ranking is shown then i hope it is introduced with a separate solo queue system and current single round free tournaments are kept in the game as another option for players like yourself and me too.

I hope so, even though I’m scared the wait times will get longer with all the people joining ranked games and the possibility that people will join unranked just to blatantly troll around

Don Alosi.2401:

Kando.9046:

I think it’s very important to make sure that if a visible ranking is shown then i hope it is introduced with a separate solo queue system and current single round free tournaments are kept in the game as another option for players like yourself and me too.

I hope so, even though I’m scared the wait times will get longer with all the people joining ranked games and the possibility that people will join unranked just to blatantly troll around

This seems to be the biggest thing Arenanet is worried about when asked about creating a separate solo queue ranked system.

I actually don’t think it would hurt the game, right now when i join single round free tournaments the longest i have to wait is about a minute and this is playing at fairly inactive time zones (Australian). I believe that creating more options for both competitive and more casual players will increase the Spvp population which should keep queue times down even with separate queues.

The only place that might have significantly longer queue times is the 5v5 only queue. I believe this would also be improved eventually by the increase of the overall Spvp population as having more competitive players will bring more people to making their own 5v5 teams which increases competition for the 5v5 only queue therefore decreasing their queue times, this would be improved even further by separating solo players from 5v5 players since part of the reason why so many pro 5v5 teams are quitting is due to the only competition being solo players which is very boring and not competitive at all.

Arenanet may have to make the rewards from 5v5 only queue quite significant to create more desire from people to create their own teams, this could be done with either in game rewards like gems again or maybe by actually starting to develop the e-sports part of GW2 pvp by making 3 round/8 team tournaments a weekly/montly/quaterly e-sports tournament which you qualify for by playing 5v5 only queue.

Spot on. Make the team que only give a small amount of gems and qualify you for monthly tournaments. Solo que is just that, solo. Both have separate rating and ladder associated.

Watch population boom and waiting times will be a thing of the past.

Honestly no matter what happens people will always latch onto what is considered “best.” People are quick to call things overpowered/underpowered, and I guess that’s just the way it is.

When one person tries something new and fails, then it is an underpowered build. When someone tries something new and succeeds, then it’s the most overpowered thing in the game and the new meta.

On the other hand, visible rating could mean more people are willing to try something different. If one person can get a high rating playing a non-meta build, other people will try it too. People who play creative builds could gain a lot of respect for it.

Of course, maybe I’m wrong. Seems possible, though.

IMO they shouldn’t have visible rating until they can fix all the problems with spvp.

For example: 4v5’s, even 3v5’s are prevalent throughout spvp. You think people will keep playing when they see their rating droppign cause they’re in 4v5s?

YOu gotta fix the inbalance first. Visible rating’s feeds kitten and yeah, people will be trying to gain rating. But as soon as they start realizing its just 4v5s or against premades all over the place, they’ll rage even harder because now they can see their own rating fall down. Fundamental problems need to be fixed first. separate solo queue from premades. Fix 4v5s….then we can talk about visible ratings.

Maybe they could make Your MMR insible to anyone but you, unless you link it or something ( like if u want to prove you have a certain rating) .

I lost more tournaments then that i have won (about 48-52%) which means extremely bad MMR. This was also caused by 4v5’s and by getting outplayed by premade’s. I have the feeling that something like MMR hell will come xD