Leading into this weekend I had been on a rather amazing roll. For about 3 weeks I had been bouncing around in Ruby, up a few pips, down a few pips, wash, rinse, repeat. Then I hit a streak of about 20ish wins to 5 losses and was closing in on Diamond. Until Sunday rolled around.
During that great winning period I noticed a few important things.
1) all but 1 of those matches were amazingly close, most decided by less than 15 points, and a lot of them by less than 5 points. The 1 blow-out a 91 to 500 was the result of a guy that seemed to be afk from the start.
2) generally even spread of professions across the teams. Again, since I was seeing very few groups qued up the matching system was free to put people where they wanted and as a result seems to be smart enough to even them out fairly (something I really wasnt sure it was smart enough to do up to this point)
3) I rarely saw anyone qued up as more than a pair and didnt see a single diamond/amber (or emerald) pairing
On Sunday the train to Diamond City came to a crashing halt and has since starting being towed, kicking and screaming, back int he direction from which it came. In what is currently a 10 match losing streak I have noticed a few things… and a few that have been on my mind for a while.
1) The 1st and 2nd losses in this streak, as well as a 3rd later on, came as a result of someone disconnecting from the match. Ya, kitten happens, I get it, could happen to anyone. But as a result of this I lost 2 pips in each of those losses. The 1st of those matches we were about 100 points ahead when someone said in /t that we lost someone.
I understand the old forfeit/bye system we had the the start was being abused. Get a team together, start losing, a guy with no pips to lose drops out of the match to save the rest of the team from losing pips. I understand why it needed to be changed, but its removal I feel was a mistake. A better option would have been to penalize not only the person who dropped from the match, but everyone they qued up with. 3 or 4 people que up together, 1 drops (on purpose or by accident, doesnt matter), everyone he qued up with takes the same pip loss the person that disconnected did. Anyone else on the team is spared from taking a hit. In addition, the 1st disconnect can stay as a 10 minute desertion, that’s fine, but but a 2nd from the same person or from the same team (if they are queing up together) should be drastic, something like a 24 hour ban from PvP. Sounds extreme? Maybe, but when I play PvP if I have a match were I cant stay connected, I dont que back up because I dont want to be losing pips in matches I cant win because I keep getting disconnected. I suspect most people also wouldnt want to be throwing pips away due to a bad connection. The only people this will impact are people looking to abuse the system, or who are prone to rage quiting out of a bad match.
2) Killing the Lord in Stronghold matches should NOT give points. The points are not needed as killing the lord automatically gives you the win. Here is what happen: my 5-pug team got paired up against a full premade of 3 tempests and 2 bunker mez. I felt we out performed. Points were about 120 (us) to 180 when they finally took down our 2nd door, but once that happen it was just a matter of time before they kill the lord and get another 250 points giving them a huge margin of victory and we lose 2 pips. Nevermind that was the most BS Stronghold team I think I have ever faced, why is the Lord worth any points, nevermind 250? With Lords worth that much a kill tends to cause the score to imply a more lopsided match than it actually was and more 2-pip losses then are really deserved. The easiest solution would be to remove the points from the Lord kill. This would also make it easy to determine how many pips someone gains or loses using the system used in the rest of the game. The only place it might become trick is if the team that kills the Lord and wins the match also has fewer points (because Lord would give no points), but if that happens, then everyone deserves a pip in that match as far as Im concerned.
3) 4 and 5-man premades Vs Pugs. Im not going to make the same complaints about Diamonds teaming up with Ambers and Emeralds to get better match-ups because its all been said a million times already (and as a friend told me today, seems the popular thing to do now is for elite teams to sell tiers to lower Div players, as it becomes a win-win for them, easier match-ups and gold for dragging a noob along). And I get the argument from Diamond and above players that their que times are too long (note, they did this to themselves by dropping their MMR to get matches against Ruby and Sapphire players and then beating them backwards and thereby preventing them from every making it into Diamond where they could reduce the Diamond and above que times). And I still say my win/lose record if you could pull it up over the course of the past year will show, when in matches of 5 pugs Vs 5 pugs I win a hell of a lot more than I lose. Change that to Pugs Vs 4-5 man premades and that percentage drops dramatically. So the solution should be this, nevermind MMR, if you are a solo que and placed against a 4 or 5 man premade, you shouldnt lose a pip for anything short of a 500 point loss. If the reason premades and Diamonds+ get matched up with pugs and Rubies and below is to give them more reasonable que times why should the solo que players be penalized for that?
4) Once you que for a match you shouldnt be able to swap characters. None of this checking out the other team or seeing what map you got and then swapping to another character better suited for this match. Im tempted to say you shouldnt be able to change your skills or traits once you load into the match either but think that might be going a bit too far. But changing characters shouldnt be allowed. You thought you were good enough to play thief in ranked and then saw you were against a team that included 2 necros and guard and a mez; well, too bad, dont play theif if you cant handle it.
5) If you are playing Ranked you should not have an option to only que up for Conquest or only Stronghold. My thinking is along the same lines as for #4. Playing in Ranked should mean being prepared for whatever you get put into. Your build or your 5-man premade is really built for Stronghold, great! But you shouldnt then be matched with just pugs that are playing whatever the que gives them (thereby making everyone’s que times shorter). Put Stronghold into the normal map selection voting system and make everyone play it without being able to play just it, it never play it.
6) In line with #5 and a personal preference of mine. Add Spirit Watch to the Ranked map selection. Ill even accept taking Skyhammer (which I hate) as a package deal. A guildmate of mine, who works for ANET has attempted to explain to me that those 2 maps are considered to have “bad mechanics” that lead to certain builds just completely breaking them and thereby making them “unfun” (knock backs on Skyhammer located at the hammer to maintain control for example). I can see issues with Skyhammer, but not with Spirit Watch. However, even if that is the case, I have to ask, has anyone at ANET played Stronghold? There is nothing on any map more broken than a few healers defending a few door breakers other than a scrapper and a healer defending door breakers on a Stronghold map.
Anyway, those are the things that have been on my mind how I would see some issues in PvP fixed for the next season.
