Guild Wars 2

So yesterday I had a match that didn’t register in my match history and I received no pips for winning. Screenshot. As it can be seen, last recorded match in my history is not the same as the one from the score panel and my League track doesn’t say anything about losing, winning or the pips remaining the unchanged.

I sent a support ticket from in game, but nothing happened or changed. To note, I had to send a link to the screenshot from in game because I didn’t know there’s an option to screenshot the screen directly for the support ticket. I had already left the match before sending a message to support, so my best bet was to send a link with the screenshot. Not sure if this affects my submission.

I didn’t disconnect during the match and nothing else out of the ordinary happened. Even if I had disconnected, the match would’ve been registered as desertion. After this happened, I left Heart of the Mists and went to do other stuff, in case the system lagged, but the match never appeared in my history later or today (screenshot). This is especially upsetting since I should’ve been on a win streak with this win today, but due to the match not registering, that wasn’t the case.

DeWolfe.2174:

snip

I feel you. I’d definitely like to have a possibility to report someone for afking/throwing the match intentionally and have it actually make some difference (either ban them from the game or allow me to block and not play with them ever again).

I’ve had so many matches where someone gives up after the initial fight doesn’t go in our favor. Like, there’s a 50 points difference and someone says they’ll afk. I once asked them to disconnect at least so the rest of us who are still trying don’t lose a pip. Got laughed at and insulted (and I ended up disconnecting instead). Saved that jerk a pip, but at least saved it for other 3 players too.

Once my team was in the lead and one person said they’ll afk because “we aren’t defending.” How were we not defending? We were leading for about 70 points. We held close and mid. We got temporarily killed, but without much change in the overall score and we easily took mid back in half a minute. Now, I’m a pretty chill person and these things don’t affect me a lot so I never yell in chat and I’m never hostile. But at that moment I lost all of my chill. We could’ve lost a match that was easily winnable because of one person’s insane whim. After I carefully reminded this person that we are leading and that they better not afk (and one other player joined me), that person didn’t afk after all.

But I don’t want this type of a gamble. Every time I enter a match, I ask myself “Alright who’s gonna afk this time?” I just want an option to report and block people who do this.

Anhomedog.7968:

Back to the original question…Why don’t people take advice? I’m always up for someone telling me a helpful tip as long as it’s nicely, and I can tell they mean it in a good way. I would’ve understood why he got mad if I blamed the loss on him or something, but I made sure to word it so that it wouldn’t be taken that way.

I wonder that too, really.

I’m literally always open for advice and criticism. If it’s coherent and isn’t littered with insults, of course. But a lot of people simply cannot have a match without spewing insults in chat or not even listening to other players.

I often think it could be due to demographics, but I have no idea about the demographics of GW2. Perhaps these are hot-headed teenagers who cannot stand being criticized.

Another thing that boggles my mind are people who think they offer criticism when they scream in chat that you’re a “noob.” Sometimes I’m called a noob and with a good reason (if I make a lot of mistakes, it happens), but most often than not, it’s completely baffling to me. The other day a guy with very little contribution to the match called me a noob because we lost for a few points (don’t know why me specifically, there were other people in the team and they wasted 5 minutes fighting for stillness instead of defending mid), despite me being the most mobile player who decaped, caped, defended and rotated the most, and also took tranquility by outsmarting the opponents with my stealth, blinking and illusions. I would’ve loved if this person actually told me what I did wrong in their opinion, instead of just writing “noob.” Even if it meant messaging me after the match.

Riku.1093:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ_1sDVt_rI

I never played ele so I don’t know ele tactics, but I noticed some other mistakes in regards to positioning and clearly not looking at the minimap.

First of all, you spend a full minute hovering mouse over the icons on your build to show it to us (even though people know what each icon is) and then write in team chat asking who is going close just as the match is about to start and people are preparing for the fight and probably don’t have time to write about strategy. The moment you load into the match, you have a full minute to discuss strategy with your team. When you agree on it, click “I’m ready.” Otherwise it’s just meaningless time waste.

It takes you and two guardians way too much time to get to mid, while necro and thief play around at close and Svanir. This is because you didn’t get an agreement that one person should get close and Svanir, while 4 go to mid (or send thief to far). This is a pre-match discussion that your team didn’t use.

WTF is going on at 2:15 and onward? You run from… nothing, and start going behind the keep for absolutely no reason. You see your teammates approaching, you pass them by, change your mind, start going after them and arrive at the other balcony of the keep (all of that while going extremely slowly)… for what exactly? You later state that you’re a support ele, but you keep trying to kill two people on mid while not actually trying to cap the point, while your fellow thief isn’t doing anything either and you’re not healing him. Absolutely futile battle, you against two necros while not even trying to decap or drive them away.

After that, you abandon this, realizing it’s futile (too late). You start going (slowly) to home, before the minimap showed that home is in danger and on top of that, there’s a guardian already going there. You clearly didn’t predict the future here, you simply blindly decided to go to home before even knowing if you’re needed there. Luckily, it turned out you were needed, but it doesn’t seem like you actually supported your guardian.

After they kill you on Henge, you respawn and notice on the minimap that there’s a necro at home. You speed up, and start not going to home, but you change your mind and decide to go to home anyway, despite the minimap clearly showing that the enemy necro is downed. You waste time to close in on home, as if you wanted to make sure the necro is really downed, despite the minimap clearly showing it was so and that your guardian can deal with it.

Then after that, despite previously stating that you’re a support ele and that you can’t decap far, you start going to far where there’s an icon that shows a teammate of yours died there. Not even downed so you’re rushing to heal. Died. Which means there’s an enemy there as well. You give up way too late, and change course, then go to mid. You at least help your guardian kill the necro on mid, but then stand for 6 seconds (9:05-9:11 roughly) without doing anything while the enemy ranger approaches and jumps on mid. You weren’t writing anything or looking at the score panel. Why stand aimlessly? Then you allow yourself to be hit with tons of damage, proceed to save yourself in panic for the rest of the fight which results in your guardian dying (and you dying as well).

There’s definitely some issues with the matchmaking; I’ve been on the bad end of this and it soured my playtime this season. But this was just a bad play. Your enemy wasn’t really that good (necro not looking back, allowing you to decap? Ranger not healing or ressing? Mesmer that did very little, no portal, no wells, no damage?). Your team was pretty on par and the battle wasn’t a blowout. Your team simply made more mistakes than your enemy, you included.

I suggest you accept the criticism, especially from people who know the class and who advise you to change or at least tweak your build. Not paying attention to the minimap, changing your mind between points and going nowhere, wandering aimlessly… Those things can’t be tweaked by a build or by your teammates.

JTGuevara.9018:

That’s the thing. The whole thing is screwed up anyway! They literally cannot do any worse than what we have now.

Don’t tempt them to test this theory out. :P

Joking aside, yeah. They should have known that frustrating the majority of the player base isn’t the way to go. Perhaps changing things as soon as possible should have been a priority, rather than waiting for Season 3. But who knows, I’d understand if making a huge change mid-season might not actually be beneficial or possible. The only thing I hope for now is that they learn from this and don’t repeat it in Season 3.

Daroon.1736:

Oh and more importantly, why, when it has been stated that they are aware of the matchmaking ‘issue’, they feel it is a good idea to wait months before fixing it.

My guess is that if they changed anything mid-season, it would screw up the whole thing. Like, if they suddenly changed the algorithms or MMR or matchmaking in general, it might boost some players through divisions artificially and then create another issue in higher divisions.

Or maybe these things need testing and they can’t effectively do that while the season is in progress.

I don’t know honestly. I’d like for something to change, mostly because, same as you, I’m worried about the overall health of the game. The longer it continues, the more anger and bile I experience in chat, as well as more and more quitters and afkers. Like, people give up before the first minute of the match ends. The match starts with 100-40, someone gives up because they think nothing will change. Of course it won’t if we play 4v5. I don’t understand, I’ve had matches where things were turned around post-400 points.

Playing in group helps, but I can’t always form a group. “Git gud” advice is childish, obviously every player is doing their best within their skill range. No one was born with MLG PvP skills, these things take time to learn, but you can hardly learn when you’re being stomped and act as a punching bag for high-skill players on their way to Legendary. I’m glad those people enjoy their climb and are getting their rewards, but the cost of this is too great I’d say. Far more players are not that good and are being put off by zero progress and highly negative experiences. I personally don’t even care about losing, as long as those losses are something I can understand and learn from. Can’t learn from 500-50 result where you’re basically cannon fodder for 4 minutes. It’s also not fun or competitive when I’m on the winning side in these matches.

Zintrothen.1056:

Not losing a pip from getting a high score promotes competition among your teammates. There should only be competition against the enemy team. As soon as you add a reward to getting a high score, you’ll start seeing pugs sit on points just to get the 10 points in hope of getting that high score, unless they finally change it so that you get the capture points for at least contributing to the cap instead of standing on it till it’s finished. But even then, pugs will probably just run around following other teammates and just standing on the point for a second and then leaving back to the already lost fight because they stupidly followed their teammate to a 2v0.

While I agree that getting a pip for the high score could be problematic (because high score itself doesn’t actually accurately show your contribution), something of the sort could maybe be implemented in a way.

Maybe you should get a pip for most top stats? Maybe only for most top stats related to capping, decapping, defending? Maybe some combination of those? I think that wouldn’t promote competition among teammates. Rather, it would encourage best performance even when it’s obvious that you’ll lose, since you could still get a pip if you try until the end of the match and do the best you can.

The current system promotes giving up (you’re gonna lose a pip either way so people just afk). This system would encourage those who truly believe they are great players who know rotations the best to still get a pip even if they are matched with a team of people who don’t know how to do that. It would also encourage every member of the team to keep trying in hopes of at least getting the pip for contribution.

Also, perhaps it would help to hide the score panel until the end of the match. Otherwise, people can just check how many points they have, then proceed to point-hunt instead of doing some meaningful contribution to the match.

It would be a good idea to have it, but of course with mandatory options to mute and block (that are easy to click during the match itself).

Sounds somewhat good, but it would just make everyone grind to the end. Perhaps there should be something of the sort until a certain point?

For example, Amber stays as it is. Emerald and Sapphire get metal pips, but they require more wins in a row (I’d put 3 in Emerald and 4 in Sapphire). And after that, no more metal pips.

However, that would put grinders into Ruby against people who actually belong in Ruby which may again result in frustration and bad matchmaking. I can’t tell how metal pips would actually affect the player pool going into Ruby. I assume better players would progress faster, while others would still need a lot of time to leave Emerald/Sapphire. But then again, if someone is determined to play 50 matches a day, they’d probably get out of Emerald/Sapphire rather quick regardless of skill if those divisions had metal pips.

So ultimately, I don’t think it would truly help. It would just create another extreme. Maybe some part of it could be implemented together with some other solutions, but I’m not sure.

Yasi.9065:

Beliyal, just keep on improving, try out “new” strategies, like starting with a 3-2 split far/close instead of running 4 in mid and dieing to 3 necros there. If you have only blowout matches, stop playing for a bit so people with your own skill level can catch up and people with higher skill level move on. You dont have to be their doormat

Yeah, I’ve been trying. I moved two tiers up when I finally found a good team, but we’ve had troubles pairing up again.

Currently one of the biggest issues is that people are immediately angry the moment they enter the match and see three necros on enemy team and stuff like that. When they start shouting obscenities in chat before the match even starts, it seems like they’ve already given up. Also, another issue is when people just don’t pay attention to the chat. Even when someone tries to coordinate a team, the least you can do is confirm that you got the plan, but no. If at least 2 people ignore the plan, you can’t do much.

Anyway, it’s frustrating, but at this point I just play three matches a day and see how it goes. If I don’t find a good team, I just stop. I’m only afraid that this will negatively impact the player base because if too many people give up, it can’t be good for PvP health.

illo.5106:

Yasi.9065:

Its not about the hours you put in, its about how you use them. If you spend that many hours on pvp without getting good enough, then you probably spend them doing the same mistakes over and over and over and over again. Should that be rewarded? I dont think so.

That’s fair, I guess.

Can’t speak for others, but I did get better over time. Obviously not good enough to match players with far above average skills, seeing as me and people like me routinely lose with a high point difference, which signifies that the skill disparity between the teams is too big. That’s my primary issue with this. Not the losing itself, but the matches that aren’t matches at all. Those are far too common right now and it doesn’t result in a competitive (or fun) battle, regardless of the side I’m on (and I’ve been on both sides).

When my team loses with a less point difference, I can usually tell where exactly we made mistakes and I can use that to become better in the future. It counts towards your work and effort as well as how you spend your hours in PvP. The point is, there will be no improvement for people like me if we get mowed down like flies in 85% of our matches. I do believe some tweaks can be made to make this less common, because it hasn’t been this common before.

illo.5106:

“Work and effort” is grind. And no, grinding should not be rewarded.

I really disagree that work and effort are grind. Didn’t every pro put work and effort into becoming a pro? Or were they just born a pro? I think it diminishes the hard work and tons of effort put into becoming a pro when you say this.

Grind is when you get a newbie enemy and you slaughter them in a 500-50 match. Grind is when your enemy can’t do much against you. Grind has no skill involved and no competitiveness. You can grind with your eyes closed and automatic pushing of buttons.

To me, that’s not what ranked PvP was or should be. I believe work and effort should be rewarded, however slowly, but rewarded. I’m not planning on reaching Legendary any time soon because I simply need to put more work and effort into my play, and gain more experience. But all of my work and effort and reading on builds and tactics is moot if the “match” results in a curbstomp.

And it results in a curbstomp because one team is picked based on our MMR, while the enemy is picked from pip range. So a team of 5 powerful players that is just breezing through on their way to Legendary uses my team as a punching bag, removing any chance that we’ll learn anything from it. Why not have them pick on someone their own size and leave newbies to work on learning and practicing? We won’t suddenly breeze through to Legendary, we’ll simply progress 2 pips a day instead of 20 pips a day. I’m fine with that. Slow progress that gives me experience is much better than no progress.

Pvt Frosty.6973:

This is what happened last season though. People with low mmr played people with low mmr and high mmr people played high mmr people. and the truly good people would be in legendary along with the not so good people.

I guess they need a system that will reconcile these issues. Right now it looks like they swapped one problem for the other.

You are right though. Slaughters should not happen, that should be the goal of the system. Get someone to the position in the league they belong so they can play matches with equally skilled players. This system actually does it better than last seasons. There are just alot of players that will be disappointed because they won’t get as high as they did last season and because this system actually has a highly unbalanced system for the first 2 weeks. They did already admit to this and are looking into it for season 3. (personally I think they should introduce an idea of placement matches, during those you are matched with people of your own mmr range (15/10 games?). after that, you get put into either amber or emerald and from that point onwards its anyone of your division in your team and in the opponents

Placement matches, a pre-season or something similar would be good. I also really think people who end a season in Legendary don’t have to start out in Amber and stomp average players into MMR hell.

Also, yeah, the fact that things are unbalanced for 2 weeks is too much. Your options are to risk and see if you can make it on luck or simply to not play for the first 2 (maybe even 3) weeks, but that doesn’t seem like a really good solution or advice. I mean, “don’t play the game” is not really beneficial to anyone. They should come up with something that will solve this in future Seasons.

Browrain.7346:

People will convince themselves by any means necessary that it’s the system screwing them over. That it can’t possibly be their lack of skill. The same thing happens irl. There’s a term for it but it’s escaping me…

Maybe… Maybe there’s a middle ground?

Like, perhaps your skill isn’t perfect and you’re an average player with room for improvement. You work hard and train and learn. But the system is created in such a way that you have a high disadvantage. So if you’re average, you start playing, you get a few unlucky teams, you lose, your MMR drops, you get more unlucky teams, you lose more, your MMR drops more…

Many, many people have admitted that they aren’t the best players out there and that their skill isn’t impeccable. We don’t have a problem with admitting that. If we were pro, we’d be pro. We know we aren’t. But we also know we’re at least familiar with the maps and know that you don’t go in a group of three to close at the beginning. And we’ve been paired with players who do that. Players who, when you tell them to not to do that, proceed to ignore you. Evidently, there’s a difference here.

The player base isn’t divided into “terrible beginners” and “MLG pros.” There’s a whole spectrum in between, but the system forces those in the middle of the spectrum to join teams on one side of the extreme, while the enemy team is the other side of the extreme. So we get those 500-50 “matches” (I can’t even consider that an actual match). There’s no “the system is out to get me” conspiracy here, it’s just an unfortunate consequence of how the system was set up. Maybe it will smooth out. Maybe it won’t. It should definitely be looked into and see if anything can be done to fix this. I’ve seen multiple suggestions, most of it is pretty good and relates to having a pre-season or maybe having higher skilled player not starting in Amber/Emerald.

Laserbolt.6731:

I think ANet has the right idea in moving people up and out of division faster; they just urgently need a way to identify decent players caught with an artificially low MMR and up their MMR as well and move them further up the divisions as well.

It might help to match low MMR teams against low MMR teams. This doesn’t affect high MMR teams or how fast they will leave the division. By matching low vs low, you’ll eventually get to see which players had low MMR artificially, and which didn’t. Those who are actually decent players will prevail against someone of their own skill and they will move on. It’s been ten days of Season 2 and we still get absolute slaughters as “matches,” despite people saying things will smooth out. When?

The issue with these slaughters (500-100 matches) is that they are exceptionally common in Season 2 and they are the reason so many people had their MMR drop drastically. I mean, it happened sometimes before as well, but the rate at which it happens in this Season is staggering.

Kayberz.5346:

You dont care about the back piece? Then stop playing ranked and play unranked, problem solved

Well, I don’t think that really solves the problem of a system that isn’t working properly.

I moved to ranked because I no longer had fun in unranked. It was unpredictable and I felt like I could no longer truly enjoy playing with people where three of them go to close at the beginning and just stand there. And when you tell them to go, they don’t even listen. Not really my cup of tea now that I know how to deal with each map, this doesn’t provide an enjoyable PvP match.

Also, I’ll continue playing and give feedback. Things have definitely improved when I finally put together a decent team and kept it for the day, so I suggest people do that as soon as possible. Without that, it’s a gamble each match. Will I get a team of first time players? Will the enemy be ten times above my skill level? Who knows. Not me. Definitely not the matchmaking.

Kayberz.5346:

Its a competitive ladder system , actual GOOD players are progressing just fine, every good player i know has had no trouble at all getting to at least ruby division, everyone else ive seen complaining have been the players who claim to be “average” , “not the best, but still decent”, and “did decent enough last season” (despite last season being a complete joke where low mmr players only had to face other low mmr players)

I guess we’ll simply have to agree to disagree. You didn’t see what’s happening to actual decent players, so it probably sounds as ridiculous “whining.” Season 1, to me, was difficult but manageable when you learn and put some effort. Season 2 is a literal gamble. And it was all decided in the first few matches of the season. If you were lucky at first, your standing wasn’t ruined and you progress normally. For a large player base, this wasn’t the case. It’s not a difficult concept to understand.

Everyone thinks they are entitled to a high division, no one seems to want to admit that they are a emerald/sapphire caliber player, yet if the system is working correctly a MAJORITY of players SHOULD be there.

No one is complaining because they think they are entitled to a high division. Most of the people complaining I’ve seen have said that they’d be fine with Sapphire, me included. I’ve been in Emerald tier 1 for three days and this season Emerald tiers have 4 pips, unlike Season 1 where they had 5 and I progressed 1 tier per day (or half a tier if the day went badly). I don’t consider myself an awesome player, but I’m not so bad to be unable to leave first tier Emerald. As was evident today when I teamed up with a good team. We passed the tier in 3 matches. Because we’re good enough to pass Emerald and shouldn’t be struggling for 3 days in the first tier. Is this entitled? Are we entitled to think that we don’t deserve to be teamed up with people who literally don’t understand how the map works? I’m harsh towards my skill and consider it to be mediocre, but I know not to screw up the match by going to Tranquility three times when it’s not the time for Tranquility. How did that person end up in Emerald? Such good matchmaking. We have those people in the same division with actually decent average players who are trying to advance.

Also, I don’t find Emerald to be bad. I’m fine here, but I believe progress should have been made in the past three days. I was literally stuck in tier 1 (where I don’t belong, along with many other players) instead of slowly advancing. I feel I should have been somewhere towards the end of Emerald by now, considering my individual results, my effort and the fact that each tier has less pips than before.

Lastly, I’m not in this for the reward track, the Legendary backpack or whatever the hell is the reward. Many people have said the same. Why do people continue to decide in our name what we want and accuse us for stuff that no one said is beyond me.

Kayberz.5346:

Same cyclical argument over and over, “i dont care about what division im in”, “all i care about is even matches”, “were not complaining about not getting a higher division, we just want competitive matches”, its all BULLkitten excuses, the reason your complaining is because you want a higher division, period

If all you REALLY care about is even 50/50 matches, PLAY UNRANKED, otherwise your just making bullkitten excuses to distract from your real intentions, to “get yours”

Same cyclical argument from your side, as well. People keep writing in-depth analysis of what is wrong (for them) with this system and we get people replying with infantilizing comments.

As if it is outright impossible for a system to be broken for a portion of the player base. As if this is outside of the realm of possibility.

It’s not. If you were lucky and started well, I assume you had no problems. Some people weren’t as lucky and got matched terribly, which commenced their losing streaks and destroyed their standing, regardless of personal skill.

Today I got slightly out of it, due to having luck, gaining a really good team at random and everyone in it was willing to team up. We ended up playing 7 more matches and winning 5 of those. No one from that team is a terrible player (for our skill level, of course). And yet we’ve been in a horrible position before teaming up. Together and against a team of even skill level, we do fine, we have interesting matches, even when we lost, no one was angry because the match was close and competitive. We also had a few slaughters and I feel bad when that happens because it’s 4 minutes of stomping the enemy for 500-40 result. It’s boring. This isn’t why I moved to ranked from unranked.

Unranked is a gamble, you have no idea about the players in your team and in the opposing team and what might be their skill level. But in ranked, I’ve never had this issue before Season 2. I knew that, by going in, I’ll be facing people who know how a map works. I’ve had a pleasant experience as a relatively casual player in ranked. However, Season 2 has been more like unranked for me than ranked. Thankfully, I may be getting out of MMR hell and it was definitely proven to me today that my loss streaks weren’t the consequence of me being a terrible player. With a decent team and when matchmaking actually matches teams of equal skill, all is going as it should. You win some, you lose some, matches are at least interesting. It’s a shame that it took over a week for this to happen and that the main advice for players so far has been “don’t play the game, wait for it to stabilize.” Yeah, when the advice is “don’t play the game,” something went wrong.

Arvin.3124:

You know what I don’t understand?

Why the players who feel they’re more skilled than their league rank indicates don’t just team up…

In my experience, people get so frustrated and angry by losses they just don’t have the patience to form groups. It becomes a vicious circle where you lose and lose, get kittened off and just don’t care anymore.

I once tried adding someone and they have already disconnected when we left the match. Yesterday my team had three people who didn’t know what they were doing (one of them didn’t know when and where Tranquility will appear. Seriously. In ranked, they still haven’t learned this) and the two of us who carried the team to victory were so angry at each other that naturally we didn’t want to interact afterwards. It puts a strain on the whole team when two people have to do everything and when we make the slightest mistake, you can only be angry at one another since the other three players are unresponsive. You can’t do anything with the person who doesn’t know the basics of a map, so you get angry at the only player who knows how to play because they didn’t time their cooldown just right to save you from being downed.

But overall, you’re right. The moment you see someone in your team who knows what they are doing, you should team up. If you’re lucky, it will work, but finding 5 people will likely take you another 5 losses. By that time, people will leave.

morrolan.9608:

I think the matchmaking issues are highlighting problems with the actual mmr calculation, that its simply not all that accurate with regard to player skill because it doesn’t take into account things like rotation, how you play secondary mechanics etc…
It really should have been reset for the season.

Yeah. And not only that it doesn’t calculate properly, it also doesn’t pair teams with equal skill (judging by how many matches end with a complete slaughter). I wouldn’t mind this if the matchmaking gave me an equally terrible team to compete with, rather than pair one terrible team with a team that should’ve been 2 divisions higher. Losing like that not only keeps us low, but it actually worsens our positions and makes sure that we’ll never get out of it because each loss is a huge punishment.

At this point, you either give up or fight a futile battle.

rummy.4102:

While I respect the sentiment of outpouring your feelings on the forums, I disagree that things might get better.

I simply wanted to state that there is an easy fix for those who are frustrated, just quit ranked, it’s that simple. It hurts a lot less than trying to grind against a system that isn’t meant to be grinded.

You’re right and the fact that you’re right should have ANet concerned because they are losing players. Many people have given up already. I’m too old to get frustrated by an MMO so I’m good. It’s just disappointing because I looked forward to this season after a good experience in Season 1. There’s other stuff to do in the game though (and there are other games).

Personally, I’ll do three matches per day to get the 15-day participation achievement and that’s it. If I win, I win, if not, then not. I just wish I knew at the start that several losses will lock me in with worse teams, I wouldn’t have been trying to get out of the losing streak for thinking it’s all my fault.

Torafugu.1087:

All these threads allow stuck people to make faster informed decisions when they come to the forums to see what’s going on. They might be blaming themselves. I knew some people who were still not aware of the snowball situation, these threads let them know and help them quit.

Otherwise they’d just be blaming themselves and hating their life.

Yeah, this was me. I didn’t know what was going on, I suspected something was majorly screwed up (you don’t go from 54% win ratio to 42% by accident or by suddenly not having skill anymore), but I couldn’t tell what was wrong. At some points I genuinely thought this was my issue alone, but when I checked the forums and saw dozens of people reporting the same problems, I felt better.

Also, I think the community should keep on talking about this. I don’t know if ANet listens or even cares, but if a large amount of people continue with this pressure, they will have to react. Losing player base isn’t ideal for them, and many people have given up already. Perhaps I’m being too optimistic, but no good will come from us keeping quiet. Our only other option is to keep the conversation going and hope it will have some impact.

Kayberz.5346:

I dont see your point
You said you got to saphire last season playing really casual for TWO weeks, its only been 1 week and your almost halfway there already, and you have FIVE , count them, FIVE more weeks left in the season, over twice as much more time to do it again.

All im seeing here is impatience and a need for instant gratification

The issue is that in Season 1 the punishment for losing wasn’t the same. Right now, each time I lose, the system messes up my standing and throws me lower with worse teams. In Season 1 (in pvp in general for as long as I played), my biggest loss streak was 6-7, usually mended by having several days of 3-4 win streaks. Today I got to 15 losses in a row (or more, I’m not sure). It’s… weird because most of those losses were completely out of my hands. The progression is far more unpredictable.

Patience is not my problem. I know I have enough time until the season ends. However, the way progression works now is far more discouraging and frustrating than it was before. I’m currently at 2 pips in tier 1 Emerald and judging by how things are going, I’m gonna lose them tomorrow before gaining two more to move to tier 2.

Also, too many losses end up being things like 500-100. This was very rare for me before, for any team to lose with such low points, even when one player disconnects. Currently, this seems to be the standard. I really don’t understand why this happens and if the matchmaking decided that I’m a terrible player, why not pair my terrible team with another terrible team? I just don’t have fun playing like this, even when I’m on the winning side (and I’ve been there a few times this season). Judging by some other comments on the forums, this issue isn’t an exception.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I don’t think the problem is ppl wanting a reward track so much as being rewarded as they believe they DESERVE. Somewhere deep down there something on the level of justice that bothers ppl being victim of a system (any given system) while, not surprisingly, the successful aren’t seeing it that way at all or even as a problem…

A lot of people think the complainers only want to get to Legendary with little effort, but that’s not really true. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t deserve to be in Legendary or even Diamond, perhaps not even Ruby divisions. I’m not even aiming for that. I aim for 4-5 matches per day with 2-3 wins, maybe more if I have more time and I feel like it.

I’m fine with Sapphire and it took me about two weeks of really casual PVP-ing in Season 1 to get to Sapphire (second to last tier). I progressed at a slower, but steady pace and enjoyed my time while not being a burden to the team, instead actually being a pretty valuable player, even receiving party invites several times. The problem is, right now I can’t get out of first tier Emerald, no matter what I do. I simply get paired with people of low skill.

And you might say that my skill is indeed also low, and I’ll agree that I’m not exactly an amazing player, but I’m not barely Emerald. I’m especially not supposed to be getting 15 loss streak because my team doesn’t know how to hold a point. And I’m not supposed to be in a team where people can barely contribute 70 points, while I have over 220, earned by caping, decaping, defending, communing, killing bosses, reviving… Basically, I do the most I can while having zero support from my team, or maybe having only one other player who knows what they are doing, while the rest go and die between points. Most of these people are even unresponsive when given instructions. This is bad even for unranked.

I most certainly do not belong in that skill group. And yet, the more I lose, the more I’m stuck with those players. And the more I’m stuck, the more I lose.

So yeah. There’s definitely an issue with matchmaking. Again, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not Diamond material, but I don’t think it’s normal for me to be stuck in first tier Emerald, especially considering that I did rather fine in Season 1. At this point, I’m not encouraged to keep playing, while in Season 1 I felt like I was learning, getting better and gaining actual experience (and this was evident through my 54% win rate).