Guild Wars 2

Aeroxe.8140:

Just to clarify my statement as a lot of people seem to replying to it->I understand the reasons for the ban: RMT, account sharing, abuse of game systems, etc. What I’m looking for though is clarification as to why it was necessarily a perma-ban, as opposed to the usual lengthy temp ban of a one to a few years.

A temp ban delays the problem, it’s not enough to prevent those players from a repeat offense; they return in 1-2 years and will likely do the same thing over again. A permanent ban ensures those players can never do it again. Sure, some other idiot my decide to try their hand at cheating in the future, but this action sets the baseline for any action taken on future players deciding to cheat the system.

Nos.9803:

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain

You have some nerve.

Good riddance.

Dhan Rahl.8493:

While I appreciate the free gear bot and the random xmute shard…what we really got cheated out of was the LI, which for most is the main focus for raiding, as this bug set people back a week.

So why were Legendary Insights not included in this? Would gladly trade in the chest for my LI I would have gotten instead.

The LI comes from the loot chest. The issue with the bug was, if you didn’t get the loot chest, it didn’t trigger as a kill at all (the API would still show the boss as not killed).

The second thing is, it was fixed in 2 days. Enough time for a group to form up and full clear (or clear the bosses that were bugged) between Thursday to Sunday, and still get the missed LI.

If you chose to not raid at all that week, because of the bug, or weren’t able to, well … tough luck. There’s no way of knowing whether or not you actually killed a boss and got no loot (it didn’t trigger as a kill at all), or simply didn’t attempt that boss at all (in which case, you don’t deserve the loot).

I am pleasantly surprised. Appreciate it guys

I don’t know what game you’ve been playing for the last 5 years, but the PvP community in GW2 is toxic. Not as toxic as other dedicated PvP game, but there’s enough toxicity in GW2 PvP already.

A year ago, I had 2 LI and no experience whatsoever. Today, I have 226 LI and a set of Legendary armour.

I didn’t get to that point by paying, I chose to work hard for it. I had to practically beg some groups to give me a chance to prove myself, but they refused. So I looked for guilds that did training raids, and 2 weeks later, people were grabbing me the first chance they got. Within another week, I had the potential to join 3 static teams, but I only joined 2 due to time conflicts.

If after all of that effort, you fail to get far in raids, that’s entirely on you.

Mr Godlike.6098:

No matter what that info would be it’s only distraction from one simple question:

Why I couldn’t carry?

If we can rule out toxic players argument still there is no value of this info. People will try even more to put blame on mmr/other players rather then their inability to improve.

GW2 PvP isn’t the easiest to carry all by yourself. Communication is possible, but cumbersome, and relies on teammates actually listening (which isn’t a guarantee). If one player is more experienced, and the others follow their lead, then it’s possible to carry a match (frankly, I did so myself on one match due to a mix of poor decisions made by the opposing team, and my teammates wanted to make the same decisions themselves; my input stopped them from doing so).

You can certainly attempt to carry a match, but with limited means to do so, it’s not a guarantee.

Mr Godlike.6098:

steelheart.7386:

Mr Godlike.6098:

Simply no…let’s not give new tools to abuse for trolls and unstable people. We know how seasons 1-4 looked like.

I disagree it would be a good sanity check. People already act nasty based on what they see in a match anyway it can’t get much worse. Not showing it takes away some incentive for A-net to do a better job also the player base might be able to find bugs with the matchmaking if the results are not what A-net expects and its pointed out to them. They won’t do it though and use what you are saying as an excuse but I believe the real reason is they don’t want us to see the very large MMR spreads that are in many matches together. I will always be for more not less knowledge for the player. The answer to what you are so afraid of is called the block feature or maybe not getting bent out of shape by what someone says. Both work surprisingly well.

Anet already has data I don’t know what that would improve. Most blowouts can be explained by checking hour of match, player population, class stacking and such.

We could see divisions in seasons 1-4 and that didn’t have worth in checking how mmr behaves.

Like I sad we shouldn’t give more tools for trolls. Your talking about block and I talk about more things than post match team/map chat.

Proportion of trolls is probably minimal compared to the players who can judge things for themselves, with enough information. Sure, ANet has all of the information, and they may reveal it on a case by case basis (as seen on these forums repeatedly), but that requires players asking for that information, and maybe getting a response back.

Having that information transparent (the information needed to explain WHY a match turned out the way it did) cuts down on all of those topics. Sure, trolls will abuse it. As they already do with visible MMR (they have to go about it as equally a roundabout way to get information as players trying to determine why a match ended a particular way).

With more information available, more logical conclusions can be made. This increases learning opportunities, as well as knowing (with certainty) that some matches are simply unwinnable/unloseable depending on the outcome of a match. Among many other conclusions that can be drawn from that information.

I’m all for discouraging whiny cry-baby behaviour too, if that’s what ANet is catering to by keeping that information hidden. The world isn’t a safe place. Neither is the internet.

Okay, so, rating changes are now visible, which is wonderful (especially in the API, so rating changes during placement matches are also technically visible).

It’s time to include individual player MMR in the post-match results (before and/or after rating changes). I get that it can be used as a way to point fingers, but the benefits of visible player MMRs (at the end of a match) outweighs the negatives (which are already happening, just requires more steps by adding players to friend’s list). This will allow players to determine exactly what’s going on with matchmaking, and why a match ended the way it did.

If that’s not done, at the very least, average team MMR should be included in the post-match result (before rating changes, as that’s what will be used to determine odds of victory). We need a bit more transparency.

Kaltyn of Torbins Deep.2946:

OriOri.8724:

Kaltyn of Torbins Deep.2946:

The other side of this is the need for Potions of PvP Rewards for GH upgrades. Dailies are the only way to get them, so removing two potential options for me to get them is a bad thing. Upgrades to the GH are already enough of a grind, making it even more painful is suboptimal.

These dailies should be replaced with a “Win X games” daily, where it can be 2-3 games. Then the last daily could be “play a game on Y map” to encourage players to play different maps. End result, only 1 less PvP potion (since the game on a specific map should only grant 1 potion), but players are no longer given huge incentives to play classes that they aren’t as strong at.

A fully upgraded GH requires 720 Potions of PvP rewards. You want to remove 1 a day from the rewards? Let us make a game mode that I really do not enjoy just that much more unenjoyable. Pretty please, with cherries on top! NOT.

Considering how many people can simply cheese the PvP dailies, guilds should have no trouble whatsoever accumulating 720 PvP reward potions.

With S5, it was explicitly stated that titles will carry forward from season to season.

FitzChevalerie.1035:

what is there to learn on a dh or warrior lel

-shrug- new to both. map rotations, mechanics, among many other things. I mean, it looks easy, but I have less practice with both.

Learn was the wrong word. Practice is more appropriate.

Basically in the same spot. I’m not concerned about rewards, because I raid a lot and I’m swimming in ascended gear and magnetite shards.

I’m enjoying the learning experience. Between Thief, Dragonhunter, and Warrior, I have enough to learn.

Brigantia.5746:

I have to respectfully disagree with your last statement OP.
I don’t see how it is a fairly good balancing point to force PvP players in a self proclaimed “casual” mmo to not only spend the time gaining the required ascended shards at the annoying pace of a 50-50 win loss ratio but to also force them to invest in level 500 crafting and then go out of their way to craft tokens to obtain gear. It is not casual, and it is not fair to us,after previously having only been required the first currency(shards).

I only bring it up because it’s probably too late to rescind the crafting requirement. ANet wants vendors to involve Crafting. Considering how heavy handed they were with this change, I don’t see the crafted token going away. Hence, increasing the shard count for the first completion of each chest to 100 shards. Or even 150. They can set how much PvP effort it takes to get the currency by changing a number.

It’s a good balancing point considering the current situation. Crafting never should have been added to PvP to begin with, I’d be completely fine with having to repeat Byzantium 18 times IF it didn’t involve crafting.

Which is the intention behind this: “IMO, it should have been only #2, or only #3.”

Keep in mind, in the process of completing Byzantium 12-18 times, you’re getting 26.5 gold per completion. That’s 300-500g in your pocket. Enough to buy out the stuff you need for the tokens (and enough gold to level crafting too).

Sure, it’s annoying that crafting is forced onto PvP players, but I don’t see ANet taking that back, while retaining the current effort needed to get shards.

So, Ascended shards.

Problems with Season 5: 1) 1200 shards took no time to get. 2) A full set of armour required 1300 shards. 3) No incentive to repeat Byzantium, so PvE players had no reason to stay long term.

Season 6 changes attempted to solve some of that, but the numbers are overtuned, especially considering the crafting requirement.

Season 6:

1) 1200 shards for a full set of armour. Likely 1200 shard cap per season too, but we’ll see.

2) To get 1200 shards requires completing the reward track once for 300 shards, then Byzantium a further 18 times for 900 more shards. This requires 3240 additional pips, or optimistically, 300-324 wins. At a 50/50 win rate, that’s over 400 matches, easily. Potentially 500 matches or more. Attainable, but not for the faint of heart.

3) On top of that, we have a crafting requirement. #2 above alone would have been enough to justify no crafting requirement at all, because of the sheer effort (far more than raids or fractals).

IMO, it should have been only #2, or only #3. But, to be fair, I think a good balance would be 100 shards per chest, with 50 for the repeatable Byzantium. This brings the effort down to only 12 repeatable Byzantium chests, which is far less daunting, and much more attainable for fairly casual pvp, but not ultra casual where it can be done in a single night. Keep the crafting if this change occurs, as it’s a fairly good balancing point.

Thoughts?

All depends on the final item. If a new raid comes out with armours, maybe, but I feel like it’ll be tied to LS3 somehow, if they manage to release the armour by episode 5 (unlikely to see a raid with that, optimistically).

Bear in mind that there’s also minimum matches in play for leaderboards. Someone may have placed higher, but have fewer than 15 matches. Unless there’s a cap obviously.

This means everyone will have some climbing to do.

Bry.8140:

Hmmm, why have I been assuming it’s the teleport circles :/

Thanks Miellyn

Both attacks do similar things spatially – one moves you parallel to the arena floor, while the other moves you perpendicular to the floor (upward).

The difference is in the name of the attack – the teleport circles are called something else. I checked the combat log immediately after an attempt and checked Cairn’s skill tooltips to verify which attack was needed to be avoided.

My group usually followed this strategy for green circles:
Above 50%, all go to the biggest one. People with agony go to a smaller circle, while kiter finds the smallest circle.
Under 50%, the big circle spawns too far away for melee group to go there without getting shared agony. We usually pick the 2-player circles to go to, while players with agony+kiter aim for a bigger circle, or one of the other smaller circles.

If you’re aiming for the heart, always go to the smallest circle under 50% health; only go to a 2-player circle if someone is on it already and doesn’t have agony.

Probably live on reddit actually, as it’s more suited for the type of thing they want to do.

Edit: re-read the post, I guess it is official forums. Well, we shall see. reddit is more suited either way.

zealex.9410:

dude… we try to get “Casuals” into raiding not push them away, dont make any raider look like a kitten

Many experienced raiders try very hard to introduce raiding to “casuals”. However, we can only do so much without crossing the line to hand-holding.

Let me define what I mean by Casual.
Casual is someone who has done all or most of other content other than Raids. They want to get into raids because it might be fun to tackle. They have some or no experience with raiding but they are willing to learn.

I would not describe these players as casual. Casual to raiding perhaps, but not casual overall. A willingness to learn something new separates these players from actual casuals: the ones who want to always play their own way.

I experienced this with my other guild of casuals too.

Up until a certain point, they basically just said “kitten raids, we’re never doing it as a guild ever again”. Then, one by one, players started expressing interest in wanting to raid, so I introduced those players to guilds that do training raids, and they participated in a few, time permitting. Eventually, I became experienced to the point of feeling comfortable leading training raids, so I started one up to see if there would be any interest in it, and I got maybe 5 players who could definitely commit to a consistent time.

Together, we managed to defeat VG, Sloth, Trio, and Escort. We could have defeated Gorseval and KC with effort. Some of them went on to raid with other groups and successfully killed Gorseval and attempted Sabetha, killed Matthias, etc.

All of this was in the space of maybe 4-5 weeks.

I stopped doing training raids myself, and let two other experienced players in the guild take over. About 2-3 weeks ago, we started a raid workshop session focused entirely on builds and improving DPS, and we stayed on the golem for most of it before doing a few VG pulls.

We only did that once. The player who started the workshops … decided that someone in the group was being too elitist, and decided not to participate in raids ever again. She hasn’t given me a full explanation, so I’m not entirely certain what triggered it (apparently, I wasn’t the one being elitist).

The two players I know who still run training raids for that guild can usually only get 2 players from the guild to join, filling the rest with PUGs. This basically brings us back to the early days of raiding, when I was still an active member of that guild, and another guild of friends ran training raids for us (I got my first VG kill from that before becoming discouraged and returning months later to raid seriously).

The biggest problem I see is, the people I train do expect to be carried. Few took the initiative to seek out a consistent group and get consistent clears, despite me giving them every avenue to do so. This is true for every other person I know who does training raids.

If the armour is coming with Episode 5, it could be an open world component (that’s hard to get to, kinda like Ley-infused heart, which required doing the DS meta), or a Fractal requirement (I can see this happening if they release a new fractal that has some form of story significance).

I was hoping to see some QoL features with the most recent release, but considering a lot of time and resources was dedicated to the wing itself, I can understand why some of these items may have fallen lower on the priority list. Nevertheless, these are some features that I would like to see for future raid releases, because I think it’s time to start addressing them sooner, rather than later.

1) Consolidate the raid portals.

We have 4 right now, one for each raid wing that’s available. With the next raid, that’ll grow to 5 portals, or up to 7 if it ends up being a 3-wing raid. What we need at this point is a single portal with the option to select which raid and wing you want to go into. This may require some Aerodrome changes to make it look presentable, but I think it would be a good idea to implement it now before we’re faced with potentially over a dozen doors in the aerodrome (getting pretty confusing to remember which door is which wing for some).

2) Boss selection

This benefits raid trainers the most. Right now, only the first few encounters are within reach of trainers, namely Sloth/Trio, VG and Gorseval (group dependent), Escort and KC, Cairn+Mursaat Overseer+potentially Samarog. To do a training run of the end bosses requires having someone who can open the instance (which can be a tall order).

Boss selection resolves that problem. The raid portal above should let you select the wing you want to enter, and if you are fully cleared, spawn an instance of a particular boss you want. Want to do a Matthias training run? Spawn an instance that is fully cleared up until the Matthias fight. This allows raid trainers who are fully cleared to spawn training runs of any boss they want, to give more players exposure to those bosses. New raiders rarely have exposure to these bosses, and usually only do them if they get into a static team that does progression raiding (many groups are past that point and would probably require kill experience of all bosses to join).

3) Daily/Weekly Achievements

Experienced raiders ask this a lot: “what incentive do I have to raid more than once a week?” I personally use multiple clears as opportunities to practice more on my main profession and learn other professions depending on the seriousness of the group. Others don’t see the point of clearing a raid more than once.

A daily achievement for defeating x number of bosses, or specific bosses, may be enough of an incentive for players to do more than one full clear per week. A weekly achievement that tracks your boss kills (at 13 bosses, it’s still easy enough to keep track, but when we’re faced with 20, 30, or 40 bosses, having a weekly achievement tracker will be necessary), with an incentive to fully clear all bosses (this will get harder as time progresses, so eventually, it could be “kill 20 bosses in a week”). Weekly or daily bosses done in challenge mode (or their respective achievements, like Last Cannon) could also be a thing. All of these give some additional reward (magnetite shards, maybe an extra LI though that’s not needed unless we have an LI sink, etc).

I’ll leave out changes I’d like to see for the Special Forces Training Arena. Faerla is already aware of that as per the recent AMA. If some time and resources can be dedicated to perfect it though, would be nice, and would help theorycrafting immensely.

Keep up the good work, raids team! Absolutely enjoying the new wing

It doesn’t matter what it is, it’s an exclusive item that has value, that people are willing to pay for. That’s extra gold in the pockets of players who seek to do raids. Weekly rewards are pretty sparse as it is, and a ghostly infusion or mini every 6 weeks is a good chunk of extra gold.

Wing 4 Boss 2, actually.

For the same reason Ghostly infusions are tradeable. It gives raiders something extra for their time. People will always pay for exclusive items if they can.

AndrewMcLeod.3857:

It is intended that you need to survive the encounter to get credit for the Jade Heart, as Spatial Manipulation will not hit dead characters (and if you could activate the heart in combat, you could just wait until the boss was nearly dead before using it).

I am sorry that we don’t have a better way to track giving credit for the collection without having to reactivate the heart between attempts, but unfortunately, there’s not an easy solution.

I think it’s fair to have the heart buff itself persist after death (maybe 30-60 minute timer). Simply give the achievement only to players who are alive when the boss dies, if they have the buff.

If player is alive and has the buff: give achievement.
If player is dead and has/doesn’t have the buff: no achievement.
If player is alive and doesn’t have the buff: no achievement.

Rednik.3809:

NikeEU.7690:

Since when did people being unwilling to adapt or learn become an accessibility issue? There is literally no barrier. No gear rating, no attunement challenges, no consumable grind. Any barriers you perceive are self imposed limitations.

Community is literally forced to create training raid runs to prevent game mode from dying out due to the lack of fresh blood, thing that is literally unheard of in other raiding games.
If this situation looks normal to you and not like complete failure from raid development team to tune raid accessibility, then I dunno in which kind of imaginary world you are living.

Everyone in the raid community started at the same point. Some had a deep understanding of their class, others did not. Either way, knowledge of the encounters was minimal, optimal group compositions were unknown.

A new player wanting to get into raids can do just that: form their own group of inexperienced players and tackle the raids. These players are now at an advantage though, as all the theorycrafting has established optimal strategies and compositions, and there are plenty of video guides to get people started, practice, and get better. Of course, this experience can be punishing, especially when faced with 9 other players of different skill, and different willingness to improve, take initiative, etc.

Hence, training raids were born, where experienced raiders try to create a safer learning experience, with the goal that trainees, once they’re comfortable with mechanics, go out and find a static raid team.

The problem that many raid trainers encounter though: very few of the trainees actually go on to find or form static teams once they’ve gotten that experience, and continue to rely on training raids.

I started raiding last May. I whined a bit about accessibility then, but my experience, though daunting, had a positive end. I’m not a hardcore raider, but currently have 226 LI and am constantly seeking the next bar: what more can I do to improve?

pyrocyborg.4162:

Steelpusher.1684:

Also, i can bet you that if you had a snow storm in your area, you would call in for a day off because it stopped you from getting to work!

Not here in Eastern Canada. There’s a snowstorm pretty much every other day.

But yeah, they got hit hard and there’s nothing they can do about it. The only “legit” thing people might be frustrated about is the lack of communication from ANet. I mean, they probably knew right off the bat that it wouldn’t be delayed only for a few hours and that it would be unrealistic to release it today, but they simply said that it would be delayed. They should have told us that as soon as they could (which probably was 5-6 hours ago).

That’s the exact same lack of communication that they “expressed” during the server rollback a few months ago: a simple message to tell us not to expect it today would have been enough.

Still, I’m not angry, not over that. I had a long day at work and wasn’t even expecting to play today…and it’s not as if it was impossible to play right now. It’s simply a content patch. I don’t even understand why people would be “wasting their time”: they can still play or go do something else.

Well, anyways: Keep up the good work guys and don’t overdo it this night.

Even Eastern Canada isn’t really immune though. Couple of years ago in Toronto, power was knocked for nearly a week or more and many people were displaced (had to move to friends houses where people had power to avoid freezing). That also had the unfortunate consequence of knocking out a major telecommunications company’s network, which affected many ISPs in the area. It’s not unusual for thunderstorms to knock out power or shut down public transit due to flooding.

kitten happens.

Appreciate the hard work guys. Working overnight can be pretty taxing. Take care! <3

Weather happens. Hard to predict something like that happening in this part of the continent.

First, the outcome of your placement matches depends entirely on who you play against. Everyone starts close to 1200, and depending on who they face and how their matches end up, their rating could swing very widely.

What you’re seeing now though, is decreasing volatility. As you play more matches, the system becomes more certain of your true skill, so your rating doesn’t change as much, assuming of course, you’re still facing opponents close to your skill rating. Even if your volatility was minimal, facing much stronger opponents (and somehow winning) will also result in a high rating gain.

W/L ratio has nothing to do with your rating changes. Rating change depends on these factors: your own rating, your team’s average rating, the opposing team’s average rating (the last 2 lead to an expected outcome of the match, which aims to be 50-50), your rating deviation (which is a measure of uncertainty), and an additional volatility constant (which can also change due to certain factors).

@Evan Lesh

As of probably last season or prior to that, ranked PvP was left unlocked during the off-season, so players can still play ranked. Is that still going to be done after Season 5? and if so, how will skill rating be handled during the off-season? Would we still be able to see rating changes?

Presumably, the leaderboard will be frozen at whatever rating you got when the season ended. If skill rating continues to change during the off-season, I would also assume that the most current rating would be used for the soft reset, as opposed to using the rating obtained at the end of Season 5.

I would love to use the off-season to practice different classes (first in unranked, then in ranked), and would like to see my skill rating change to reflect improvements made during the off-season.

LUST.7241:

I’m honestly surprised Evan didn’t reply with his standard, “here’s the matchmaking algorithm” again. Extra surprising that he owned it.

He took the time to explain it, but that’s technically how Glicko2 works with increasing volatility to account for long periods of inactivity. Rating deviation (with dictates how volatile your rating is) depends on time since last “rating period”. That should only really be the case if a player goes for weeks without playing, not days. Not playing during the off-season would cause increased volatility as well, or volatility can be simply reset to the highest amount at the start of the next season.

I suppose one way to fix it is to only allow logging out to character select while in each team’s respawn area. Or the more rigid solution: after a certain point in the game (or at the very start), no logging out to character select or swap at all (but this may not prevent early game abuse).

Appreciate the update, Evan

Bio Flame.4276:

The issue is that instead of Evan trying to fix and balance Pvp, he’s trying to fix a stupid matchmaking algorithm that won’t ever work because you can’t possibly balance randoms vs teams.

Try as he might, he will fail everytime. The sooner he realizes that and begins spliting true random queue from team-queue, the better.

It’s a nice dream to have such an algorithm but it ain’t gonna happen. Just admit it.

There’s a different team that handles balance. Evan isn’t a one man show for everything PvP.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Your mistake is that you believe – incorrectly – that rating loss or gain is related to the MMR of your team vs the other time.

MMR changes are based on two things:

The first is the “win or lose” prediction from the respective MMRs vs the actual win or lose, which determines if you gain or lose MMR from this fight.

Technically not a mistake, as the win or lose prediction takes into account both team’s MMR. Indirectly related if anything.

The mistake is assuming that rating change is SOLELY tied to team MMRs. And it’s also probably more about the team’s average MMR as opposed to an individual player. While you may face off against a rank 1 player, their team isn’t all made up of rank 1 players. If you legitimately win a match with a team average of 1700 against a team average of 2200, your rating gain will definitely not be minimal.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

NekoNoKoi.9137:

but I’m too much of a scrub to figure out how to make OBS record without lagging out for 2s at a time.

Three things are likely key here:

One, use a GPU-based encoder, such as NVENC. Using a software encoder is less dire for GW2 than many games, because GW2 uses just over one core, but it is still far from optimal in terms of cache busting, etc.

Software encoder is still fine if 1) you have at least an i5 3570 or 3570K, and 2) set OBS to higher CPU priority than GW2. That way, the recorder isn’t competing for resources with GW2 (which results in a very laggy recording even if GW2 is minimally affected). The higher CPU priority for the recorder solves the laggy recording while minimizing impact on GW2.

Hardware encoder is still better if you have the hardware for it (namely Nvidia card).

And this is why we can’t have nice things.

It’ll likely be fixed for next season.

Shaogin.2679:

Rashy.4165:

Shaogin.2679:

Rashy.4165:

Well, we now know why some of these stacked matches are occurring, as per Evan Lesh in an alternate topic. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Matchmaking-sucks-EVIDENCE/first#post6461405

Yeah I saw that, but according to him it is pretty rare.

You do realize he’s one of the few people qualified to make that call, right? We’re seeing a lot of topics here, but those topics are part of the 3%, or the rare cases. Especially if you factor in the 100s, if not 1000s of players who’re playing ranked and the 10s of 100s of matches each one of them has done.

The point is, we now know the reason why it happens, and Evan is testing a fix.

Evan’s post was in response to why that particular match had such a huge skill gap, it does not explain why teams are split the way they currently are. I am not disagreeing with Evan on his evaluation on how that particular match-up occurs, but it still doesn’t answer my particular questions with what I have been observing.

It does partially explain it.

When the match was first formed, the numbers were even. Yes, 2 duo’s were placed in a single team, but if the match was truly even, that shouldn’t have mattered too much if the solo’s on the other team were good enough, and the solo on the stacked team was terrible. Two duos on a team isn’t a guarantee that they’ll win in a match where the odds are close to 50-50. It’s a high likelihood, but not a certainty.

However, since not everyone readied up, the system found substitutes to fill in the gaps, which just happened to be the non-duos. The system found substitutes who were worse than the original players. That happened enough times that it compounded the problem.

I’ll agree on one thing: the matchmaker SHOULD split up duos, regardless of what that does to difference in team MMR and expected outcome. Maybe it thought that the original matchup didn’t need to be split up for the most optimal match (lowest difference between team MMR). But since the matchmaker didn’t re-balance the teams after substitutes, the problem happened.

The only alternative is to have solo queue only, with a split queue (population likely won’t sustain it) for teams (of 2, 3, or 5) so that matches can be (2+3)v5 or 5v5 or (2+3)v(2+3). Again, the issue of finding substitutes can skew the match if that particular issue isn’t resolved.

IMO, splitting based on MMR/Skill rating is fine. Stacking a team with 2 duos is fine if the team MMRs are close, but logically, splitting the duos is a good idea too. Using other metrics like games played/won to split the team is not necessary.

Shaogin.2679:

Rashy.4165:

Well, we now know why some of these stacked matches are occurring, as per Evan Lesh in an alternate topic. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Matchmaking-sucks-EVIDENCE/first#post6461405

Yeah I saw that, but according to him it is pretty rare.

You do realize he’s one of the few people qualified to make that call, right? We’re seeing a lot of topics here, but those topics are part of the 3%, or the rare cases. Especially if you factor in the 100s, if not 1000s of players who’re playing ranked and the 10s of 100s of matches each one of them has done.

The point is, we now know the reason why it happens, and Evan is testing a fix.

Personal experience, as a complete newbie to PvP this season:

Absolutely bombed my placements 2-8 and ended up in Bronze 1 at 466.
Over the next day or two, climbed to around 670.
Hovered around 590-670 for a few more days.
Currently on an upward climb sitting at 893.

In between, I duo’d with someone doing placement matches, and afaik, they’re high Gold or low Platinum rated on their main account. I was definitely getting some really high rated matches where losing was a -3 or -4 point loss, and both matches were very close losses (500-480, 500-450). There was also a win in between that earned me 26 points or so. My conclusion from that experience: my map awareness and rotations need a lot of work (D/P Thief), and while I can keep up with some guidance (my friend was giving me suggestions while playing and it helped immensely as they play Thief too) at Gold tier, I’d be a liability queuing by myself (at my current level of skill in Gold tier). With enough practice, I’m confident that I can improve to the point of belonging in Gold tier.

My goal for this season is to make it to Silver (at least 1050). If I really push myself to improve, I think I can get to Gold 1.

My goal for next season is to be fully prepared on 3 professions (D/P Thief, Warrior or DH, and support Ele) and place significantly higher than where I started Season 5. I want to be able to play at least one of each key role (roaming/+1, bunker, support), so that I can swap to (which happens very rarely at Bronze).

I’m maintaining an overall 53% win ratio, 60% not including placements.

Well, we now know why some of these stacked matches are occurring, as per Evan Lesh in an alternate topic. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Matchmaking-sucks-EVIDENCE/first#post6461405

Leaderboards probably takes a bit of time to update.

Konakona.4130:

Talindra.4958:

My partner and me still hv to finish the ap.. just want to check when will the ap for this going to be locked?

they said achievements will stay. and capricorn achievements will return too. lame “everyone should be winners” policy tho, maybe they can just give everyone all the achievements already unlocked and done and that’s it.

about main topic – tyvm.

It’s not “everyone should be winners”, it’s “everyone should have the same opportunity”.

Bringing the achievements back doesn’t take away from the effort needed to actually get them. Exclusivity doesn’t make it any more special than it is.

1) The matches you lost were likely against a team you weren’t meant to lose to, hence the larger rating reduction. The wins were likely against a team closer to your rating, so the gains weren’t high.

There’s an expected outcome from each match which, in a perfect world, is 50-50. In an imperfect world though, it could be 55-60% in one team’s favour. If that team loses though, they suffer from that loss.

2) https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm
Also, overview of Glicko: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glicko_rating_system

3) Play a profession that can easily carry team fights, or 1v1/2/3. Something easy like DH or Warrior has a lot more carry potential in lower tiers.

4) Don’t rely on teammates if they don’t communicate. It’s not always easy taking charge when the only way of communication you have is text.

5) Wait it out, they’ll eventually leave.

6) See 5. PvE players only in it for the Ascended gear will leave just as soon as they’re done farming the first Byzantium chest.

7) Players voted for solo and duo only. ANet is testing it out to see how well it works. They may revert it for future seasons, but that remains to be seen. There’s the possibility for solo only (only matched up against other solo players) and team only (of 2, 3, or 5) separated queues, but the PvP population may not be able to sustain it.

Evan Lesh.3295:

I have good news and bad news.

This example is an extreme case so it is not screwing over everybody. There were multiple people that failed to ready up, which meant multiple rounds of substitutes were needed.

Bad news. Teams are not rebalanced after finding substitutes and it has been that way for years. There are complicated computer-science reasons why, but it is solvable and I will attempt to fix it. In this case since it happened multiple times, it compounded the inaccuracies.

If I’m understanding correctly, the matchmaker does something like this (A):
- 10 players are chosen for match, balanced between teams.
- 5 fail to ready up, matchmaker finds replacements for those from the queue, while remaining 5 remain in the “match” while it’s being formed.
- repeat X amount of times.
- finally all ready up, match progresses.

(That’s the impression I seem to be getting, at least).

Unless it does something like this instead (B):
- 10 players matched up.
- 5 fail to ready up, so everyone is back in the queue.
- match re-formed, again, 5 fail to queue up.
- Repeat.
- Eventually match formed.

Obviously over time, players in the queue are changing, so the matchmaker has to work with what it has access to, occasionally resulting in weird matchups.

IMO, Scenario B should be what happens, not A, since Scenario A is working with a partial match and filling the gaps with as close to suitable players as possible. It’s entirely possible that players in the queue (substitutes) who were closer to the rating of players already in the match are already in another match of their own. Scenario B effectively resets the matchmaking and starts over (I think).

Correct me if I’m mistaken.

sephiroth.4217:

Did you forget you posted links and source and I quoted it strait from your links?

It’s further up this thread if you want to re-read what you posted.

Your reading comprehension must be serious lacking as BOTH links I posted do not explicitly state that Ascension is exclusive to Seasons 1-4.

I’m done.

sephiroth.4217:

Rashy.4165:

sephiroth.4217:

Rashy.4165:

sephiroth.4217:

Quoted it strait from your link. The current Wings can be earned AFTER a new one is released. Can someone please point out the new backpack? no? ok.

They never said it was exclusive to Seasons 1-4. That was implied by them saying “one backpiece per year” where Ascension was logically 2016, since it worked out to 4 seasons per year. As of the end of S1, they stated very simply that if you miss out on earning it in 2016, you can still earn it through some other means in later years, IF they release a second backpiece.

People assumed that The Ascension won’t be obtainable after 2016, but ANet said they’d come up with a way to still make the backpiece earnable. Somehow. Currently, they don’t HAVE to do that as they haven’t announced a second backpiece. Even if they were to release a second backpiece, the cleanest solution would have been to not retire the achievements and allow for people to always make progress towards them (potentially earning multiple backpieces at the same time, unless they change the achievements for future backpieces).

The goal was always to ensure rewards were always ACCESSIBLE. That doesn’t cheapen the effort needed to actually get it (except for the difference in league tracks vs. divisions which was fair because they anticipated that not everyone would be able to cross into higher divisions multiple times). The ones who worked their butt off got to show off their backpiece for a lot longer.

1 backpiece per year is not an implication, it wasn’t implied at all it was stated directly by Anet. Implication… jesus…

They did say it was going to obtainable in the future yes, but AFTER a new one was released. I still don’t see a new back piece but what I do see is another decision to push away the dedicated players of the game while simultaneously discrediting Anets future promotions to it’s customers. People worked hard to make it in the time frame and stopped playing other modes, games and gave up some real life time to make sure it happened.

They laid out there plans, no one made any assumptions, we just believed Anet like the morons we are then settle for satisfied when nothing happened again.

Read closely. One backpiece per year IMPLIED that it would be one backpiece for S1-4. One backpiece for S1-4 was NEVER STATED EXPLICITLY.

It is stated. I’m not going to argue basic English with you.

Without a source, I’m not convinced. The only source is “one backpiece per year”, not one backpiece “exclusive to season 1-4”.

Currently playing D/P Thief in low Bronze (792 atm, climbing slowly).
Most matches are fairly good. I end up out-rotating the team, or holding well 1v1 or 1v2 for a bit before disengaging.

For the start of the match, I normally aim to do 1-4-0. If someone claims home, I go mid and try to do as much as possible to ensure the mid fight wins before leaving to decap far or +1 home if need be. If nobody claims home, I try to cap it quickly and hope that the enemy team doesn’t send anyone there (can’t hold it for too long when that happens).

I’ve had other matches though, where instead of 4 going mid, only 2 did. The other 2 casually walked away from mid and started making their way far (Skyhammer, after far had been capped). Of course, in that same match, 2 of the enemy team came to home and I couldn’t hold it (either die or forced to disengage). Far was basically unguarded, and mid was bunkered in that match, so I wasn’t entirely sure what to do (team didn’t regroup to take back home or mid).

As a D/P Thief, I generally know what I should be doing: +1 a 1v1, decap far, or put some pressure on a team fight. The results aren’t exactly the most consistent, but seems to work well most of the time.

I suppose the question is, should I keep playing D/P Thief, or play something that’s probably a bit more consistent? Like staff Thief for instance, which could work better in lower divisions.

People have so little trust …

ArenaNet has already stated how matches are formed. In a perfect world where we have 100s of players at every single rating point (100s at exactly 1600, 100s at 1601, etc) all queuing simultaneously, you will always have matches that are even.

Bolded for emphasis. That part is simply not true (look at the leaderboards and see if you can spot even 2 players of equal rating next to each other, and if somehow, you do find that, see how often that happens; this can then be extrapolated somewhat to all tiers; on top of that, all of those players have to be queuing at the same time for matchmaking to put them in a match together). Matchmaking cannot guarantee that people of equal skill rating are queuing at the same time. It has to do the best it can. When you queue, the system tries to find people as close to you as possible, and then forms the teams to try to even out the numbers. However, it will never, ever, period, be perfect when everyone’s rating in a given match is different. Even if the ratings are within about 5-10 points of each other, the odds that you’d be able to get a perfectly even match is very slim, and thats if by some miracle, players of close skill rating are actually queuing at the same time.

And on top of that, the longer you’re in the queue, the wider the search range becomes, and the greater the disparity. The system has to do the best it can with what it can get, and that particular split probably minimized the difference in average team rating.