Guild Wars 2

It’s time to bust this myth once and for all that “ranks don’t mean anything”. So open question. All things being equal, who would you rather have in your team?.

If you answer “I’ll toss a coin”, then ranks mean nothing to you.
If you answer “I’ll choose the r70”, then you admit that ranks mean something to you.

Also, if we pit a full team of random r40s vs a team of random r70s and make them play 100 matches, what do you think the outcome would be percentage wise?

My responses:

1. I would choose the r70 any day all other things being equal.
2. The r70s would win maybe 98% of the time. Allowance being made for disconnections etc.

I saw r15 player who had more tactical understanding as r50s. And I also saw r60+ ppl just doing “their thing”.
There are some things which ppl never want to learn. Doesn’t matter which rank they have.
The only important things are the roster, builds and the mastering of its class in general.

Ok, so i’ll ask a question :

If we take the top100 teamQ in both NA/EU, what’s is the lowest rank ? What is the average rank ? How many players are under r50 ?

So you see… Ranks MEAN something.

I came across a rank two mesmer who I thought was very good at the game (I assumed she is a regular WvWer). And I came across a Champion Illusionist (she was on her mesmer too when we fought) who still keyboard turned and generally had less mesmer mechanic knowledge than the rank two mesmer.

Take that with a grain of salt but really, ranks and the champion title can be grinded. But some will continue to be terrible while some will learn a lot from the grind.

Do ranks mean something? Definitely. But I wouldn’t use it to gauge skill all the time. I see it more as a gauge of how long they’ve played the game.

Say we have two people one rank 60 the other rank 70 and just for you lets say the rank 70 is better. now lets just forwards something like 2 years and now both are rank 80, how are you going to know which is better? are they the same skill level now because they are both 80?

MrFlump.8725:

Say we have two people one rank 60 the other rank 70 and just for you lets say the rank 70 is better. now lets just forwards something like 2 years and now both are rank 80, how are you going to know which is better? are they the same skill level now because they are both 80?

If you have a cap like 80 that is easily reached, then isn’t it obvious that it doesn’t become meaningful?

In any case, how about taking a stab at the question in the OP?

chriswho.8605:

Ok, so i’ll ask a question :

If we take the top100 teamQ in both NA/EU, what’s is the lowest rank ? What is the average rank ? How many players are under r50 ?

So you see… Ranks MEAN something.

Rank mean something, but there is a threshold in which it means only how much time you’ve sinked into PvP.

I can quantify that threshold to be around r55.
Seems fair to me.

sorrow.2364:

chriswho.8605:

Ok, so i’ll ask a question :

If we take the top100 teamQ in both NA/EU, what’s is the lowest rank ? What is the average rank ? How many players are under r50 ?

So you see… Ranks MEAN something.

Rank mean something, but there is a threshold in which it means only how much time you’ve sinked into PvP.

I can quantify that threshold to be around r55.
Seems fair to me.

So pit a team of r55s against a team of r70s a hundred times and see who wins the overwhelming majority of the time.

bhagwad.4281:

So pit a team of r55s against a team of r70s a hundred times and see who wins the overwhelming majority of the time.

55HPM, currently the top EU team, winning pretty much any tournament around, have a r55 (Maylo) and a r51 (Niah) in their team according to the latest ESL weekly cup.

Cheese Mode, as for the latest record, had 3 members of their team under r60.

Among the top EU teams, there isn’t a single r70.

I think it will come down to a random r70 will on average be better than a random r40 but you will obviously be able to pick specific r40s that are better than specific r70s.

Since this was made because of what i said in another thread to bhagwad i’ll post this here.

What im trying to say is not that rank shows no skill but it dose so poorly, so im gunna make it simple and show why I think rank is a bad way to show skill

OK look at it like this,

lets say 1 win = 5 points and 1 loss = 1 point and every 10 points you get a rank

Lets say Player A is a god at this game and never losses but only plays 2 games a day giving him 10 points meaning he ranks up 1 time every day

Now Player B is pretty bad at the game and only wins 1 game a day but losses another 5 meaning he also got 10 points a day so he also ranks up 1 time every day.

They both play for 80 days and are now both rank 80, now looking at just their ranks who is the better player?

this is what im trying to get at, because rank also factors in the amount of games you play and not just win/loss it dose not correctly show you level of skills, not all r70s are on the same skill level as eachother some could be a lot worse. This is why people who want to be “pro players” should be glad they are shifting the focus to leader boards because it will more correctly show your skill level (once they make them better that is) than your rank dose right now.

Think how awesome if would feel being top 5 on the leader boards and ANet give you a special title or finisher (which they need to do) only 5 people have and you have to actually TRY to stay in the top 5 to keep it, wouldn’t that be more gratifying than a dragon finisher that everyone will get eventually. Things like this will be more likely if the focus was taken off of ranks and on to leader boards.

ANet really need to shove Leader boards into your face when you pvp, you can’t even see them in game right now which really sucks and give special things to people high up on them that you can only keep if you stay high up.

moot point.

no one cares about ranks, they’re pointless.

When paradigm was on top, azshene wasn’t even rank 40 (lel).

High rank means you’ve played a lot and/or farmed hotjoin by spamming granades on nifhel (cough cough), by no means i shows how skilled you are.

this at least for rank 35 +, after that it’s really totally random.

moreover plying solo and playing in a team is like sea and earth: you can be the best solo player in the world and suck kitten in team q becaues you don’t know how to rotate with your team.

Overall you can’t tell, so who cares lol.

If Skyham was in tQ I’d surely pick r70. He should know Skyham map very good, every platform.

But as it stands for now, I don’t care. If r70 has any feelings of being “elitist” I just ignore him and prefer r20 over him.

I’ve played with rank 60’s that don’t use the chat and do their own thing then blame the “troll team”. Likewise I’ve met low ranks that are amazing, in one of the EU Dueling servers we had a rank 2 ele come along in celestial gear and beat everyone in a duel. I’ve also met Deer ranks that actually know when to leave points…

Generally Rank is a good estimate of someone’s ability, but recently I’ve seen many exceptions to this…

Most people who start pvping based on these changes will hardly be hardcore and probably won’t care all that much.

Exceptions are team arenas.

The whole goal is to bring the causal into the game mode. Believe me this is a step in that right direction. Looking forward to it. Not at all concerned about ranks.

sorrow.2364:

bhagwad.4281:

So pit a team of r55s against a team of r70s a hundred times and see who wins the overwhelming majority of the time.

55HPM, currently the top EU team, winning pretty much any tournament around, have a r55 (Maylo) and a r51 (Niah) in their team according to the latest ESL weekly cup.

Cheese Mode, as for the latest record, had 3 members of their team under r60.

Among the top EU teams, there isn’t a single r70.

Exactly.

To try to equate rank 70 to some kind of uber skill level is laughable.

Mrbig.8019:

moot point.

no one cares about ranks, they’re pointless.

When paradigm was on top, azshene wasn’t even rank 40 (lel).

High rank means you’ve played a lot and/or farmed hotjoin by spamming granades on nifhel (cough cough), by no means i shows how skilled you are.

this at least for rank 35 +, after that it’s really totally random.

moreover plying solo and playing in a team is like sea and earth: you can be the best solo player in the world and suck kitten in team q becaues you don’t know how to rotate with your team.

Overall you can’t tell, so who cares lol.

This.

After r35 (and I might even argue r30) there’s more that goes into how well you do than just experience playing matches. Having a build that fits your play style, for instance, and that you enjoy. Understanding what makes a build or strategy strong or weak. Exploiting those weaknesses and playing to your strengths.

Then there are other factors, like being able to play with a team well, or playing solo well (for TeamQ and SoloQ, respectively). Personally, I’d much rather play with a r40 who plays slightly worse than a r70 but is open to criticism and change, whereas the r70 is an egotistical, stubborn brat. Creativity and innovation in play and buildcrafting are both important to me as well.

I think it’s a causation vs correlation issue

from all the posts i have seen from you. it sounds like u are solo Q player.

for solo Q , u would want a higher lv for sure.
but in Team Queue it’s more about you know the guy u play with… Lv doesn’t matter.

[quote=3832345;Seifer Thalaen.7869:]

You need some basic understanding and experience so rank does matter. A rank 30-40 should be able to compete tho if he is a fast learner and/or plays a shallow class.

When running hardcore, the rank 70’s will win 100% of the time, maybe even in 4v5’s simply because they know the mechanics and they will win every time.

When running casual, the ranks 50+ actually play worse than rank 40’s so depends when you catch them

A couple people have said that they have seen terrible rank 60’s but there’s really no such thing when they’re sober and going hard.

Obviously, a rank 50 non farmer while always have a higher chance of being more skilled then a rank 30 non farmer.

Ofc, you can say team paradigm blah blah blah, its like saying there are 12 years old genius going to university, so age doesnt mean —-- in terms of brain development.
it’s called rare case, which can not be set as an example when the subject is general public.

The one with skill

I hate absolute arguments. Ranks mean nothing? Is that why rank stacking occurs so much in hotjoin and why the vast majority of time the higher ranks stomp the lower ranks? I’m not saying ranks are THE absolute indicator for skill but generally the more experience a person has with something the better they are at it. There are exceptions, of course, and diminishing returns. But given a choice and knowing NOTHING else about the players themselves, I’ll pick higher ranks for my team. It’s just common sense.

But I do have to say that diminishing returns is more evident when comparing R40 to R70.

I’m cool with anyone R40+ It shows you have been playing enough to at least know what you are doing well enough for a team fight, sure they may not be able to win every 1v1 but if your over all tactics are better and maybe you throw in a bit of cheese onto your comp things can swing in your favor.

Also in terms of skill I see R40’s wreck 50’s and 60’s all the time… So I’m confident 70’s can lose to the 50’s, 60’s, and well manged 40’s in turn. If your R70 all I see is your loyalty to this game and the strength to endure all the annoying situations that have fallowed since release.

Also I want to point out there are a lot of “of the Arena” people who left the game and came back, and are still like r40-r50.

This is why your mmr rank should be the rank shown but not the time rank. If this was the case then none of these threads nor any of the other “I faced a team of rank x and it was unfair” threads would be posted or at least it would be very minimal compared to what it is now.

the one with skill like supcutie whos not even rank 70+

Seeing as lots of us were past rank 40 November 2012 it’d be nice to think we haven’t completely wasted our time trying to improve since then lol..

I take the r40 over r70. Pvp is filled with ‘not so friendly’ (to keep it civil) players. The higher the rank (most of the time), the unfriendlier they are. Unfriendly is very broad, and actually big pun intended here. I’m not gonna do in details to prevent flaming, but a lot of pvp people could learn a thing or two about being polite.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

I take the r40 over r70. Pvp is filled with ‘not so friendly’ (to keep it civil) players. The higher the rank (most of the time), the unfriendlier they are. Unfriendly is very broad, and actually big pun intended here. I’m not gonna do in details to prevent flaming, but a lot of pvp people could learn a thing or two about being polite.

I find that statement particularly ironic since the first time I saw you playing your thief, you pm-d me, called my condition engineer build “op and meta” (I’m sure running engi with rocket boots is meta) , then proceeded to flame me and blocked me before I could say anything.

actually scratch that I just saw a r64 Mesmer trying to play like a decap engi >>

Uhtameit.2413:

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

I take the r40 over r70. Pvp is filled with ‘not so friendly’ (to keep it civil) players. The higher the rank (most of the time), the unfriendlier they are. Unfriendly is very broad, and actually big pun intended here. I’m not gonna do in details to prevent flaming, but a lot of pvp people could learn a thing or two about being polite.

I find that statement particularly ironic since the first time I saw you playing your thief, you pm-d me, called my condition engineer build “op and meta” (I’m sure running engi with rocket boots is meta) , then proceeded to flame me and blocked me before I could say anything.

Seem’s that’s how to play PvP, lol.
I really wish I could see which users blocked me. Also my own block list is quite huge.

When I read this topic I really think ppl expect far too much from a r70+. And things like “they may would win a 4on5” is out of any realism.
These players spend more time by practicing different builds and play type and that’s required especially for engineers.
But at least it does not mean they are godlike or smthn. Since the spectator mode is available in public you just can copypaste a lot of players, watch how they act and then you can practice it by yourself. If you rank up from 20 to 35 with a really strong build you are experienced on it and can be counted as competetive as well as a r70 type.
As I said: there is a point where tactical understanding and teamplay is much more important as practicing more on your profession.

I think past the rank 55, it becomes practically impossible to keep getting better from repeating the SAME THING over and over again.

Of course rank means something. It’s an indicative of experience and the higher the rank the better player you might statistically expect.

The more experienced on a given task someone is, however, the less it will improve by repeating it over and over. There’s a point were the weight of that experience is minor when compared with other performance elements, like being naturally more skilled, having a better computer/connection or, even more important, they way the experince has been acquired.

The given example is also completely biased. The r70 team is likely to win against the r40 one, but in the new scenario r70 players will be r80 while r40 ones won’t.
r70 team against r55? I wouldn’t put my money there without further information.
In this case (and probably in the r40 vs r70 too), a ladder based information would be a much better indicative.

Honestly, I think that r54-r55 is an awesome placement for the new cap and I’ll be OK if the ladder system would be half as well thought as the rank overhaul will be.

You don’t tend to play something as long as it takes to reach rank 60 and be bad at it. It just doesn’t happen. Anyone who is bad probably quit long before that point.

That said, while I’d pick the rank 70 too, I have met some massive egos close to that rank that would forfeit any game if it didn’t go their way.

In those rare cases they were more useless than even a bad level 40.

Sorry to burst your bubble but rank = experience only , can still be bad experience

exii.8913:

As I said: there is a point where tactical understanding and teamplay is much more important as practicing more on your profession.

Yes yes yes and yes. You are my hero.

This and a lot of posts are just different angles to attack the injustice of autoleveling r55+ to r80.

I have empathy with the outrage and simply put as you get a small rank increase for losing every match you play, an unemployed monkey trained to join up a character will eventually reach r80.

Hard Fact : rank = time. Bad players more time and good players less time. Therefore if you have more time, say you dont earn a living or at school you will have a higher rank than the best pvper who can only play 1 hour a week.

So by all means get upset at the amount of time those players have:

Pessimistic view : Given away to their competitors
Optimistic View : Gifted to their fellow players.

Its depressing I know but it really is a measure of how much time you can play in the current system. I would let it go and save yourself some high blood pressure.

EDIT: reading around the initial point of would you take a r70 over an r40 is the pvp equivalent of the pve filter of 5K AP only groups. Its gambling but limited your losses. In my experience the people who advertise such groups/restrictions are poor players that need better players to help them through.

My responses:

1. I would choose the r40 any day all other things being equal. r70 = 90% mindless skyhammer farmer.
2. The r40s would win maybe 70% of the time.

K U T M.4539:

The one with skill

I only pvp with Dragon ranks

@OP:

Only one answer…. the one who can play the best with a team.

I know plenty of high rank players who primarily play hot join. They can do quite well there. That doesn’t mean they are good at tPvP.

Not really sure of the point of this thread. Do you have a high rank and someone said you weren’t good or something?

draven.4796:

This and a lot of posts are just different angles to attack the injustice of autoleveling r55+ to r80.

I have empathy with the outrage and simply put as you get a small rank increase for losing every match you play, an unemployed monkey trained to join up a character will eventually reach r80.

Hard Fact : rank = time. Bad players more time and good players less time. Therefore if you have more time, say you dont earn a living or at school you will have a higher rank than the best pvper who can only play 1 hour a week.

So by all means get upset at the amount of time those players have:

Pessimistic view : Given away to their competitors
Optimistic View : Gifted to their fellow players.

Its depressing I know but it really is a measure of how much time you can play in the current system. I would let it go and save yourself some high blood pressure.

EDIT: reading around the initial point of would you take a r70 over an r40 is the pvp equivalent of the pve filter of 5K AP only groups. Its gambling but limited your losses. In my experience the people who advertise such groups/restrictions are poor players that need better players to help them through.

^^^^ this another person with a brain for once in forums

draven.4796:

This and a lot of posts are just different angles to attack the injustice of autoleveling r55+ to r80.

I have empathy with the outrage and simply put as you get a small rank increase for losing every match you play, an unemployed monkey trained to join up a character will eventually reach r80.

Hard Fact : rank = time. Bad players more time and good players less time. Therefore if you have more time, say you dont earn a living or at school you will have a higher rank than the best pvper who can only play 1 hour a week.

So by all means get upset at the amount of time those players have:

Pessimistic view : Given away to their competitors
Optimistic View : Gifted to their fellow players.

Its depressing I know but it really is a measure of how much time you can play in the current system. I would let it go and save yourself some high blood pressure.

EDIT: reading around the initial point of would you take a r70 over an r40 is the pvp equivalent of the pve filter of 5K AP only groups. Its gambling but limited your losses. In my experience the people who advertise such groups/restrictions are poor players that need better players to help them through.

Yes, great point of view!

We have to admit that practice does makes perfection, at least better performance.
you can only earn ranks by strictly playing pvp so rank is a fair representation of time investment. So on average, people with more ranks tends to have better skill. its hard statistic facts. and since it is statistics, its all chances of having a good player with ranks are higher than those with lower ranks.
If you don’t believe in this then you are biased
Ranks as a skill measure may be terrible, but as a team reliability measure is quite trust worthy.

I was on front page of soloq leaderboards for a month from rank38 to 46. I was the lowest rank player in all games before I got 2 4v5s in a row and dropped off. Now I find ppl from r20 to 70 in games and honestly it doesn’t really matter.