3. Matching experienced people with unexperienced players.
Third one could be explained by low population, but not the other two. This seems to happen very often. It makes me feel like there’s something seriously wrong with the matchmaking, which is not affected by players’ behaviour. My question is why this happens.
I’m starting to wonder if people are simply unexperienced, or if people are actually knowing how to play on capture points.
Typically my last game, opponent had a bunker guard sitting middle all the game. We managed to cap far point meanwhile, and getting points advantage until the unbeliveable happened. Ranger on far went to lord, he died 2v1, and far got lost 3v2. Our engineer was sitting home not on the point, and he got it decapped. We were tricapped. Then, people kept trying to 1v1 the guard on mid, and it was lost…
its normal to struggle against comdi/sustain builds as dps guard. (condi) engis, dd ele and shoutwars are your counter in 1v1. however you can win against bad engis. You need the better opening. so jump him with burst. You need to keep the engi pressured and try to cleanse the burn(ip). you have about 4-5 IP procs you can cleanse/survive. after that he needs to die or you will
This. Also, if you’re winning every other single 1v1, i guess it’s normal that something is able to beat you… it would be too easy otherwise..
Let’s be honest, it all depends on your teammates and opponents anyway. Obviously, it’s safer to play point holder/bunker than zerker, since it’s avoiding the risk to have 0 point holder in a party which is quite a handicap, but i don’t believe it will have such a big impact.
I’m playing bunker guard most of the time, but that’s not the point of the topic. What i meant is that in order to promote more skillful play according to the OP, i believe we first need to get rid of the " anti-failures " skills/actions..
Defensively, there are too many " panic " buttons. People aren’t caring to dodge key skills, watching carefully x builds. They get kded, then use stability or any evade. That’s also why i believe the 2nd point of the OP is good, but others are minor in my opinion..
Why not, but there’s more important to do first in my opinion.. The actual meta builds are too forgiving and it’s too complicated to counter some setups easily..
I’m having to deal with double warriors guard engi on legacy of foefire too many times, and it’s simply not fun, especially when you have at best 1 point holder in your party. Losing to people running around points, spamming conditions and buffs with no risk isn’t fair. It’s like losing 6-0 in football to a team defending with 10 all game..
and essentially you now have a game type where luckier class matchups and premades will decimate the other team. Being solo queue and this map coming up is almost never fun as you know it getting voted means you’re going against a group that is premade for it and you are about to be destroyed.
Yes, but right now this is happening on legacy of foefire most of the time… How fun is it facing premades( actually even random setups) with 2 warriors 1 guardian 1 turret ?
Also, i would like to add that there is no way to prevent these setups from rushing and killing the lord at 350
What’s not good is that builds have a bigger impact than skill usually, especially on maps such as legacy of foefire.. What i noticed is that i’ve had many close matchs with mirror builds, but it’s way too easy to lose when having a bad setup
Let’s be honest, if you get 3 thieves and 2 rangers, all #100 against guards engi eles all #95%, i’m pretty sure the second team would win most of the time
It’s hard to complain about team compositions in a random system, but still, it shouldn’t be so easy to lose in some situations
Only the sheep will exclusively play meta. I say “sheep” in the sense that they flock to what is popular. The irony here is that these people, from my experience, often look down on those who aren’t actively playing the meta, without realizing that it takes someone willing to experiment to make new discoveries and shift the very meta that they follow zealously.
My favorite example is watching someone on the Warrior boards make several videos and arguments for Hammer/Longbow way back in the day, and everyone laughed at him, saying it was terrible, only bad players would be beaten by that, etc. I took a hiatus, came back to the game, and “Hambow” was this godly build, easy-mode, skillless, super effective, etc. I honestly don’t remember what all little changes might have gone into that switch, but the complete reversal still makes me smile.
These are interesting paragraphs. The problem comes when there are too many people only " caring " for the meta. Typically, when you see 80% of one class is running exactly the same build, using skills in same order.. What happens then is that, if you’re doing good, it’s ok. But anytime you’re going to make a fail, there’s someone to notice it..
Actually, i do not mind much " meta addicts", they are in every game and it’s also good to have reference builds to practice. The problem is however when failure tends to be too rewarded.
I argued about it yesterday, but the " save my life " skills aren’t fair. People aren’t even watching the field in order to dodge key skills, they get kded and then use the skill to get out of the spike.
I don’t really like all the " avoid death spikes " skills that can be used while kded. I’m running mainly full warrior spikes builds, and i feel it’s cheap when the guy is getting away thanks to slick shoes, or ignoring damage because stone signet recharged on time..
It should be played like, watch the player, dodge key skills, use skill before the spike comes. Not just click skills on panic and still get rewarded..
I like variety and would be fine with all three game types being in the queue within Unranked. Not sure if the PVP community is large enough to support splitting into game-type queues.
Skyhammer, while a fun concept, should not exist in the match making system for the same reason maps with water should not exist. Class access to knockbacks/pulls/fears is not remotely balanced. This is not to say it should be deleted, though. Both Skyhammer and Raid on the Capricorn should exist for private servers to load up if underwater/death fall combat catches someone’s fancy.
Spirit Watch is one I wouldn’t mind seeing fall off the face of the planet. Orb running isn’t really a unique mechanic that brings in new play types, and is strongly imbalanced in favor of classes with innate speed, leaps, and blocks. Add in that inexperienced players get confused by the orb (feeding orb escort groups, going after orb exclusively while 3-capped, letting them get easy orb runs, etc), and matchmaking becomes far worse on this map. There is no question this is the least favorite map out of all of them bar none.
These maps promote a lot more strategy. 2 maps that don’t involve you to have a balanced or bunker setup to win.
Every single match these days is on legacy of foefire. It should be a bit harder than sitting on points with defensive setups and that’s it. At least, when i played on this map with 5 zerkers in the past, i felt i had a chance to faceroll the opponent..
Yes, exactly. So if a team loses, people will blame always the guy with the lowest MMR even though it might not even be his fault. There is a reason why competitive games don’t show MMR to players and it’s the possibility of hostility.
Actually not. Right now, i had a match where all my team kept dropping like flies for no reason… I might not have complained at all if i knew these were beginners/less experienced.
However, i’m not fan of displaying the MMR itself, maybe simply putting the total number of tournament games played should be enough.
Spirit Watch is ok as a map, but that orb thing is just kittened. Some tanky built shoutbow can run it basically unobstructed with all the leaps and condi cleanse, which means you need more than one player to stop it, which means you’re getting outnumbered at point fights.
Skyhammer got better since we can now dodge cannon. But it favors classes with strong fears\knockbacks A LOT. A coordinated group of two rifle engis can push anyone to their death. There’s nothing competetive about that.
My two favourite maps are Temple and Battle, but yeah unfortunately people mostly choose legacy\forest.
On these arguments, we could say that foefire is rewarding well defensive setups.. Actual meta builds have lot of stability, blocks and escapes, i’m not sure it would be so easy anymore to kick off map..
I think these 2 maps offer more options to win, to any kind of setups against any kind of setups. On foefire, if you got a bad setup against a meta/defensive one, that’s probably it( and you can’t avoid opponents from pushing lord)
match making has gotten better in the last week or so. I still get streaks of kitten" matches where I have no way of winning or get put in 4 v 5s but it’s happening a lot less. Maybe because I play a lot less matches now days , it does seem to work better.
That was exactly my opinion, until this afternoon… I played 5 or 6 matchs :
- 1st was 3 + 1 + 1 : we get beginner engineer suiciding twice on far, then rage quitting
- 2nd and 3rd were against the same premade : not much to say concerning these
- one was 2 + 1 +1 +1 : beginner necro made us lose a ( probably) won match
- last one i was alone, we’re 4v5 after a few seconds, we can still win but we end up losing because we got no bunker against 2 eles + sword war + engi
I don’t understand how any Dev would think that this is fine and balanced.
Unless they have no clue on competition? Or they don’t even play their own game?Just split Random/Solo queue and Team queue already.
Agreed. There needs to be a place where a solo person can que into a game without premades.
That’s not going to change much. People will still come here and complain at losing matchs with bad setups against OP setups. That’s actually the real problem, facing a premade is only a small detail..
I’ve played plenty of solo queue games( although not many this season), and there’s minimal difference between a premade or a full pug with 2 engis 2 eles 1 guard, yourself having a team such as mesmers necros and rangers.
The other problem is still about people trying too much to 1v1/1v2 the turret. Even if you removed turret enginner, there would still be the situation with people trying to 1v1/1v2 x bunker..
When someone is sitting on one point and doesn’t seem to move, it’s safer ( especially in solo queue) to 5v4 other points..
It depends the point of view of the player. Sometimes i do run a modded version of the old 100b build. Positive point is that i have huge damage and several sources of spikes, negative is that i have exactly 0 defense..
Everytime my bull’s charge or mace kd does hit the opponent, but meta builds have so many evades/block/stabilitys that the opponent always have the panic button to evade from the spike.
What i mean is that we could argue about a lot of things in the actual meta that aren’t requiring any form of skill, but that’s part of the game you gotta accept that some builds are easy, some others are harder( although sometimes not rewarding enough..)
I completly agree with you, but this can hardly be done since it’s a random system overall, there will always be subjective issues. And actually, i don’t believe that would solve the problem, since it’s most likely builds rather than players skill..
Give 5 #100 players 2 mesmers 2 necro 1 thief, and put them against 5 #400 players with engis eles and warriors, we can predict the result of 3 out of 5 matchs probably…
It’s the same issue with pugs vs premades : most of the times i did complain about it, it was because we had to deal with OP bunkering setup on legacy of foefire, having 5 squishy armors..
Let’s say you can clearly see what’s the problem by solo queing. Actually, all topics ( whether it’s about turret enginners or bunker) put the issue on evidence…
The average players are playing solo queue, and are getting legacy of foefire with 2 thieves 1 mesmer 1 ele against turret + warrior + ele + guard, and are losing at any mistake they’re doing..
What’s the problem in fact ? Turret engineers ? Bunkers + Legacy of foefire ? People that do not know how to deal with builds mentionned ? Solo queue ?
It’s not about making mistakes, it’s just that it can give you a pretty big advantage regarding the opponent( and your) team setup. This is even more true if yo’ure playing on legacy of foefire..
Not that you’re going to win all your matchs 500-10, but you still have some advantage in some situations, that occur frequently in solo queue.
You’re arguing about some players skill. Well, i won’t deny that it costs usually many games, but actually i think the real problem are builds.
Typically, yesterday i had :
- 1 game with 2 mesmers 1 necro 1 guardian against 2 turrets + warrior + guardian
- 1 game with full physical damage against a premade with guard + engi + 2 eles
I can’t remember exactly, but both games we didn’t do bad and lost 500-350. What bothers me however is that opponents were playing terrible and only won because of builds. With all due respect, they didn’t play safe, they were like engaging any fight against anyone 1v1, leaving points uncapped for no reason, but in the end it still works because they got better builds, like spamming damage/buffs at same.
I would agree with all arguments, but right now #1 in EU has 1 lose and +2 points. So basically, if i’m understanding , he was predicted to get literally rolled, but lost the match like 500-450, and got 2 points.
The problem however is that if the #1 in the leaderboard can have matchs where he is expected to get completly destroyed, then there is no way people can catch back some of these top players doing xx games per day…
Actually, i noticed kind of same in my last games. I’m not losing all games( winning a few more than losing), but most are against premades.
But the problem was when i checked leaderboard, and i noticed some players i faced were in the first pages, meaning they were top 50 players. I’ve however only played 20 games so far, and i should be at 80%..
How can i be teamed with/against players on the front page…
That’s a good idea. Basically, we won’t see anymore top5 players with 4 loses and 0 negative points. Assuming they should win all their games, loses will start to hurt, and everything will be better
I don’t know of a single top player that likes the new system. Pretty much every single highly skilled player has complained about it since it was introduced in December.
What’s more likely is low- and mid-tier players with a lot of time on their hands like it because they can finally see themselves high up on the leaderboards, even though they don’t really deserve anything close to a top spot.
Amen
The system is literally atrocious. One of the worst ladder systems ive ever seen. In fact i challenge anyone to find a ladder system in an MMO thats worse than GW2s. They show a clear lack of talent and vision.
The previous one was much worse. Way too volatile, decay helping people to skyrocket by doing 1 game each month,… In some way, the actual system is " similar " since you can still have anyone at any rank, but i guess someone #10 deserves that spot better having 500 games played( even if 300 loses) than someone with 15 games played..
Everyone already said what the problem is today : top players don’t get hurt by losing. Top 100 players should need 2 wins( 3 if top50,…) to compensate a lose against less experienced players, but that’s not the case, and i’ve already seen #1 with +1 win + 4 loses and no points lost..
It’s been 2 days i’m mostly facing full premades as well. But actually, this isn’t even fun anymore.
I wouldn’t mind having solo vs premades with all players mesmers, thieves and rangers. The point is that all these premades do run setups like double warriors, double guardian and engineer, and they’re only winning thanks to builds..
Also for some reason, people from my team always push far 1v1 when they got someone sitting there all game, and alternatively, no opponent( even when solo) does that when someone in my team is doing it… Seems my luck is nice
I don’t mind new people playing pvp but it is bad if they run like some bad random build (non meta) thinking it is good.
There’s are 2 potential problems in the game actually :
- not knowing capture points mechanics
- running a bad build/ always dying 1v1,…
What’s happening today is that there are many players who aren’t very good on 1v1’s for various reasons, but they do know map mechanics. They won’t do no sense moves, they will anticipate better when to go on x point, when to go on 1v2 so others can cap,..
Alternatively, and with all due respect, some players have no clue how to play on such maps, but they do run some OP hard to fail build, and it’s less evident to call them " bad ", since they won’t die as quick as a zerker usually.
People are mostly calling some players " bad" when they’re dying, but you also have to consider players moves.
I think the problem might also be about repetitive easy gameplay. I believe, after 10 games facing turret engineers, people believe they’re OP, but it’s more likely a boring build problem…
I had the same right now, too many matchs on legacy of foefire against 2 longbow rangers standing on cliffs and warriors running in circle spamming conditions. There’s literally no gameplay difference, every player is doing the same… But builds aren’t really OP and do not need a nerf..
I still personnaly fail to understand how the current leaderboard is working. I would like to be explained why :
- i am, quite often, teamed with and against people from 1st leaderboard page, although i’m only #650
- people on 1st page get +3 loses, but no negative rating point..
If i’m having the same MMR than front page players, then this means basically anyone can be teamed with anyone. This would explain why i’m getting +1 point for my wins, but still…
In my opinion people should be teamed with people having a similar leaderboard rating.
What is fun with turrets engineers, unlike other meta builds, is that the outcome of the match will depend on every other player but the turrets.
It’s highly predictable that the turret will sit on a point for a very long time, so basically you can play 5v4 on other points. Here are the points then :
- if you have a balanced setup, or having zerkers against zerkers, it should be an easy win
- if you have 5 zerkers, and opponents do have a balanced setup, it might be very hard
Now the problem is that there’s almost always one or 2 guys trying to fight the engineer on his point, resulting in bad loses. But actually, we talk about turret engineers, but there’s a similar problem in PvP generally. Yesterday, there was a MM necromancer sitting far, and our mesmer decided to try to 1v1 him on his point for no reason. Doing this is good in tPvP, but it’s not in solo queue since you don’t know if everyone will win his even number fight. People have to play safe tactics in solo queue
The player base being small is why the matchmaking sucks, and the matchmaking sucking makes the player base even smaller because it ruins the fun for a lot of people and they quit due to it.
:(
Not only. It’s also rewarding too much number of games played. Everytime i’m checking my rating, it’s like number of points = number of wins.
Even when i’m checking leaderboards positions randomly, it seems that loses aren’t hurting anyone and wins are giving +1 to most players…
It’s not that entertaining when one day you play 10 games, win these 10, and see you gained 10 points " only ".. And this is from solo experience mostly, i hardly believe i’m only facing less experienced teams..
My opinion :
- It might lack a letter yes, but it’s not especially hard to find the place, and it’s an arena only…
- Dailies are cool, rewards are fine for now.
- Dragon ball arena is cool in itself, but it lags way too much to try to do tactics and stuff right now( and it lags in PvP as well, fairly hard to play thief/zerker builds right now…)
- The new outfit is very nice, reminds of canthan armors from GW1. Very good idea !
I’m also quite discouraged since yesterday. I’m quite tired of legacy of foefire and it’s not fun facing engineers eles and guards together with beginners or bad setup. I’m also tired getting +1 only for my wins, whatever the score/opponent is.. I’d rather have all games on skyhammer or spirit watch, at least i know we can win even with these team disadvantages….
I will still maintain that this is a meta problem however. If beginners weren’t rolled that easily by those eles and engineers, it might be better…
snip
You misunderstood the point of my thread. Although matchmaking is a big issue I’m more concerned about the leaderboards in terms of not being an accurate representation of the actual leaders of PvP. Wether the ladder/tier system would improve matchmaking or not is debatable sure, but the accuracy of the current leaderboards is not.
Yes but you still have to consider that there was a ladder reset, and maybe the " best players " you do mention simply don’t want to climb it all again.
Except by splitting up solo and team queue, i fail to see how the leaderboard could represent the actual leaders of pvp..
It’s just hiding the problem that when you team up 5 no risk builds with sustain/condi damage together, it ends up in a faceroll if the other team has no bunker( and even more depending on how many zerkers they got)..
Just had a match with 3 zerkers and 2 engineers against medi guard, sword war, sword thief and ele, and it was just a faceroll. We all drop to condis in a few seconds, they all got buffs all the time, all got button click to survive in case they gonna die 1v1.
On other maps, we might stand a chance, but on foefire it’s simply not fun, the map is too small. And even if, there’s no way we can prevent that setup from rushing the lord…
Twice vs same premade right now, both times i got full physical damage( full solo) against eles guard warrior.
How am i supposed to win with rangers, zerker warriors and thieves if it takes 2 of us to even kill one of them ?? Not that the result of the match would have been different, but still we can’t do anything…
What’s OP are builds that can do many jobs at same, and that involve very few risk engaging anything 1v1, and that aren’t especially that hard to play. Usually the kind of builds spamming buffs and condis at same, while running in circle around a point..
Some builds are pretty annoying, i.e LB Ranger, mm necro, turret engi, or sword thief, but they aren’t really OP..
uberkingkong said it perfectly right however, the problem is that full zerker or full bunker builds alternatively aren’t enough efficient. I’m only running full zerker builds actually, and sometimes it’s like noone did even hit me and i still got 15 sec of burning out of nowhere.. Also, there are too many blocks/evades/anti stun in mentionned builds above to make full melee zerkers really useful…
Theres a difference between someone just saying you suck and when someone says your an idiot because you didn’t do this or that or why did you do that.
This. Many times i’m complaining in chat, there’s a good reason : typically, when someone keeps going far 1v1, although he died twice. Or, when we got 3 guys chasing one thief off point.
But there are many trolls in game complaining for no reason, not bringing anything. Recently , i decided to test out some other builds, rather much based on team work than on individual. It was doing pretty good, but unfortunately, you get those players :
- " LOL, shadow signet thief, go back to wvw " ( that one lasted all the game long) , " LOL ele with signets " , " LOL ranger with hunt signet " , " LOL engi with flamethrower "
You know it’s pretty annoying, and i can imagine how beginners would react to these…
Yes but it’s complicated to make a 5v5 leaderboard based on solo entry, from this point of view, there will always be something to complain about…
The only problems are that :
- loses aren’t hurting at all : right now #1 has 3 wins 2 loses, ends up with +3 points
- all my wins, whoever the opponent is, are giving me +1 point, but i’m " only" #700…
Except if i am told that i’m only facing beginners, to me, this is only grinding…
Just because you played a thousand games and won only 100 of them, doesn’t mean your going to be top of the leaderboard when a bunch of other people played 300 games and won 175 of them.
That’s all the problem actually, it looks like players with 100 wins and 500 loses would be at the same rank spot( if not higher) as someone with 95 wins and 10 loses. If you check leaderboards, you will see than, in average, number of points = number of wins.
You know, i saw several times #1 with 1 win and 4 loses, ending up with no negative points. From this simple exemple, you see there’s a problem somewhere…
I still think it would be helpful having the statistics when the match begins/ends, to understand better…
That’s quite the opposite to me. I didn’t check leaderboards for a week, but i was under the impression that i won almost all my games. The majority of matchs weren’t so bad, i never facerolled opponents 500-10.
But now i check it, and i feel i still have the same problem i had at the end of previous season, for some reason it seems like all my wins are giving me +1 point only…. And when i’m checking front page players, they don’t seem to get hurt by their loses….
each map has a slightly different playstyle to it. biggest problem i see with pug groups is they act the same no matter what the map is. a map like LoF favors a team that plays smart. running around capping and leaving is what kills pugs in that map. or the random guy who tries to take the lord all by themself. its not the map its the players.
Can you tell us how to play smart against a premade that has 1 engineer on home, 1 guard on mid, and a sword thief + warrior + ele chasing others ? I’ve had these situations with thieves rangers and mesmers, and although i agree many players aren’t playing fine, there’s not much you can do, and you lose 500-200 thanks to home point, but that’s like 500-0..
Obviously, you cannot win a 4v4 or 5v5, assuming both parties are on same level. I’m not even sure you can win a 5v4 in some situations…
I agree that foefire is generally not fun to play, especially when you have 5 squishies against 3 bunkers + 2 dps. Now, the question is to know whether the problem is the map or the meta…
Playing on a map which is quite small, where you can view easily where opponents are going, clearly rewards bunkering. But if bunkers are also able to kill…
I love Skyhammer, but there are good reasons some maps aren’t in ranked. Skyhammer is heavily in favor of cc oriented builds/professions (think necromancer, engineer). Spirit Watch is heavily in favor of movement oriented builds (thief, and again, engineer). They’re not in ranked because your team composition shouldn’t exclude you from the possibility to win.
Legacy of foefire is heavily in favor of bunker builds. 5 thieves/mesmers/necros are excluded from the possibility to win most of time….
Let’s say we went from an extrem to an other. I’m pretty sure you remember those ( many) players top100 with less than 20 games played( we could even say 100 actually…). It was way too volatile, and in 1 day of bad luck, you could drop 500 ranks..
Now the problem might be for team queue players, which probably have the same issue i posted, which is getting +1 point only for any win..
On a finer note people who are persevering are not getting anywhere : I see people with 7 wins 27 losses – 0 points on the leaderboard. They were on the top 500 last season so I have no idea what’s changed but this just doesn’t feel rewarding or any fun at all now.
What i’m not getting is that people in front page aren’t getting really hurt from loses ( i checked once +0 for 4 loses…), but meanwhile all my wins are giving me +1 only. The same happened yesterday : i lost 2 matchs like 500-350 ( 1 with beginners , 1 against premade all champions) and won 3 matchs, and i ended up with +2 points only…
Although it’s clearly better than the previous leaderboard, i kinda fail to understand how this works. It might be helpful having team statistics when the match starts in game ..
This seems like a double punishment for being unlucky with 4v5 matchs…You have a guy that disconnects and doesn’t join back, the match is a lose ( and a win for other team), the player gets dishonor, and you get normal points for losing a match. Right now, if i understood correctly, all the party gets in addition -3. Seems unfair and rather complicated. Wouldn’t an increasing dishonor alone be enough ?
Also 30 sec seems short. I rarely experienced disconnects, but i had many players who did have it in my team from solo queue experience, and they generally reconnected in a bit more than 1 min…
The only lottery concerns builds. You can’t do anything when you’re teamed all day with mesmers and necros( yourself running full zerker), and being teamed against guard + ele + engis + dps every match, especially on legacy of foefire.
Several matchs we played we lost 500-250 in these situations, but we could have won 500-50 if we all exchanged builds. Players who don’t know how to rotate is a minor fact in my opinion ( and furthermore, it’s not easy to rotate in the situations mentionned above..)
How you don’t even want to play anymore after you’re done with your daily with a class you don’t enjoy in a PvP system which brings you the most frustrating matches ever.
At least when solo queue existed, you didn’t have to deal with idiots AND premades.
Personnaly, it’s not about idiots and premades, but about build wars. I’m quite done having to deal with heavy + ele + engineer + dps, having myself mesmers necros and thieves. Having beginners in a party makes this even worse, since you just get rolled 500-150, match ending with one of them on each point.
Also, it’s not neither entertaining when all wins are giving me +1, and meanwhile, #3 gets 4 loses but doesn’t seem to lose any rating point.
I agree with branningan. Sometimes, it’s even worse when you put a tactic and it’s not followed by all players. You got 3 guys who want to play in 1 way, 2 others who don’t want, it ends up in a huge chaos( especially when you have a crap setup and opponent does have the bunker festival).
In addition, people( i do several times) start complaining and you lose the match 500-120..