Guild Wars 2

Jekkt.6045:

not if there is enough healthy counterplay.

bombers weren’t the best 1v1 builds. they were not meant to fight prolongued fights but to nuke. in gw2 that translates to finding the right opportunity to dive in and kill, by killing yourself.

If there is enough counterplay then the bomber will just end up like DH and gunflame warrior – a gimmick for killing new players in the low MMR bracket, and that has no place in high level play.

Jekkt.6045:

because it’s not a suicide build. contagion bomber killed enemies by sacrificing its own life. laying down traps involves no risk for the dh at all lol.

self-sacrifice is a awful mechanic.
In order to make a suicide build effective you’d have to make the suicide effect a near guaranteed kill as otherwise if the suicide doesn’t kill anything then the death was in vain.
Of course if the suicide effect is so strong, it leads to a terrible PvP experience for anyone fighting against such a build, along with a bad experience for the bomber themselves since they are always dying.

Jekkt.6045:

after this stale meta it would be refreshing to have something that is a bit more bursty.. warranted that there is enough counterplay and i feel like a high risk / high reward bomber build could benefit the game.

Adding more burst isn’t going to fix the bunkers. Adding more burst just cements the bunker meta because anything not a bunker would just get annihilated.

Jekkt.6045:

dh and bomb kit engi are not bomber builds.

A bomber is a type of build which purpose is to deal a high amount of AoE damage in a short amount of time, similarly to nuking or spiking, by using skills with an AoE centered on the user, therefore requiring to enter a group of foes. The main difference with spiking builds such as those based on Vow of Strength or Hundred Blades is the endangerment of the bomber, which is often a caster such as a Necromancer, an Elementalist or a Ritualist. Due to the low armor rating, the frontline position, the frequent use of Death Nova and the tendency of some builds to self-sacrifice (especially with Necromancers), a bomber usually dies in the process.

I fail too see how DH isn’t a bomber build by that definition.

Legendary and Ascended QQ again?

Legendary and Ascended are status symbols nothing more. You don’t need them unless you’re raiding. Moreover they’re status symbols that reward the player that goes the extra mile, they’re for the dedicated players.
Which is fine, just because a game rewards the dedicated players doesn’t mean it’s unfriendly to casuals. People just need to accept that not everything is going to be instantly accessible.

caveman.2304:

50% win rate, the dream anet always wanted, makes it impossible to advance in ranked

50% is the mathematical point where you’re playing at your skill level. Which is what the goal should be. (sorry no farming lesser players is not “competitive”)

You can however advance in ranked even at a 50% rate. It just takes time.

I don’t see the problem.

sephiroth.4217:

I’m on 65% win rate…

If I have too many wins in a row, somehow I end up playing with a bunch of rabbits… The system definitely tries to enforce 50/50 on you but if you can out rotate the influx of zergers on foefire lately, you should be right.

I don’t think it actually works like that.
I will concede that what could be happening is that it’s trying to find easier matchups for the other team (remember the matchmaker applies to everyone) but it is unable to find a full team at the necessary MMR so it cobbles one together by mixing lower with higher to get a team whose net average is where the matchmaker wants it to be.

Although honestly I think it’s more of a case of you doing what so many players do and blame the pugs for a loss.

Warlord.9074:

It’s easy to push buttons apply a few condis then run around. If you can’t deal with Diamond skin you are probably bad and use condis to carry you. They need to nerf condis not diamond skin.

Seriously?

Running condi means that you

1) have to be able to get around blocks and invulns in order to apply the condi
2) have to cover important condis so that they don’t get wiped by the 101 cleanses in this game.
3) have to watch out for players running condi transfers so you don’t kill yourself with your own condi
4) have to deal with the fact that the majority of condi builds have little burst.
5) have your dps hugely affected by condi duration reduction traits.
6) have to deal with lolimmune diamond skin.

The other thing with Diamond Skin that people never talk about is that Diamond skin also gives immunity to things like Fear and Cripple. In the case of Necro (whose only forms of CC are cripple and Fear) which means that not only can the Necro not apply their main form of damage, but the Necro cannot even apply any form of target control. Which makes getting them below 90% that much harder.

Krysard.1364:

Crinn.7864:

Pakkazull.6894:

Except it doesn’t reward being good (in fact, it punishes being good by making it harder to progress, see my post above)

This is a myth, it isn’t easier for a casual to progress. That myth comes from a total misunderstanding of how the matchmaker works.

The matchmaker works on two assumptions:
1) If a player is below 50% W/L then the player is fighting against opponents that are better than the player, and the matchmaker should move them down.
2) If a player is above 50% W/L then the player is fighting against opponents that are below their skill level, and the matchmaker should find better players for them to fight.

This leads to a natural equilibrium at 50% win rate where the player is playing against their own skill level.

This does not make it easier for casuals as it just leads to casuals fighting other players at their skill level, while experienced players fight other experienced players at their own skill level.
The entire system just leads to everyone fighting at their own skill level.

And thats exactly the point. Lets say you have a mmr of 500, and someone a mmr of 50. You will be matched against someone with a mmr of 500, and the other guy with someone with a mmr of 50 no matter the division, so you have the same tough matches when playing emerald than diamond, and so divisions doesnt mean shiet

The problem with divisions is divisions are basically a rating system added onto a pvp system that already had a (invisible) rating system.

Yes divisions are somewhat arbitrary. Realistically they should just determine division by MMR, but that would require making MMR rating visible, which is something the devs might not want to do. (you think mmr exploits are bad now, just image what players could do if they could see their mmr.)

TPMN.1483:

Bad Design = Bad Results.
Wont say any more.

It’s not bad design. There just simply is no way to fix smurf accounts.

It’s not technologically possible for the matchmaker to tell the difference between a new player on a new account, and a experienced player on a alt account.
Yet at the same time the matchmaker has to put new accounts somewhere, and it just makes sense given that the majority of new accounts are new players to put said new accounts at the bottom of the MMR.

Laraley.7695:

Crinn.7864:

Pakkazull.6894:

Except it doesn’t reward being good (in fact, it punishes being good by making it harder to progress, see my post above)

This is a myth, it isn’t easier for a casual to progress. That myth comes from a total misunderstanding of how the matchmaker works.

The matchmaker works on two assumptions:
1) If a player is below 50% W/L then the player is fighting against opponents that are better than the player, and the matchmaker should move them down.
2) If a player is above 50% W/L then the player is fighting against opponents that are below their skill level, and the matchmaker should find better players for them to fight.

This leads to a natural equilibrium at 50% win rate where the player is playing against their own skill level.

This does not make it easier for casuals as it just leads to casuals fighting other players at their skill level, while experienced players fight other experienced players at their own skill level.
The entire system just leads to everyone fighting at their own skill level.

Except this doesn’t work. Hence why we have games with very low/high chance to win.

There are only three problems with the system.

The first weakness in the matchmaker is that it doesn’t account for the meta. i.e. it might throw a bunch of reapers against a bunch of DS eles, because it doesn’t give a kitten about where class balance is at.

The second weakness is that the matchmaker also wants to reduce wait time as much as possible, so if there are not enough players at a given skill level it will start to move outside of that skill level in order to make a match.

The third weakness is that the system’s accuracy is largely dependent having larger numbers of matches played for everyone. The less matches played a player has the less accurate the matchmaker is.

EDIT: other potential problem is that the matchmaker has no way to compensate for external effects outside of a players skill level. Example: A player playing a crappy computer with a crappy internet connection being given a low MMR, but then one day that player gets a new computer and upgrades their internet. It will take a long time for the matchmaker to readjust. Another example is people deliberately tanking their own MMR.

Pakkazull.6894:

Except it doesn’t reward being good (in fact, it punishes being good by making it harder to progress, see my post above)

This is a myth, it isn’t easier for a casual to progress. That myth comes from a total misunderstanding of how the matchmaker works.

The matchmaker works on two assumptions:
1) If a player is below 50% W/L then the player is fighting against opponents that are better than the player, and the matchmaker should move them down.
2) If a player is above 50% W/L then the player is fighting against opponents that are below their skill level, and the matchmaker should find better players for them to fight.

This leads to a natural equilibrium at 50% win rate where the player is playing against their own skill level.

This does not make it easier for casuals as it just leads to casuals fighting other players at their skill level, while experienced players fight other experienced players at their own skill level.
The entire system just leads to everyone fighting at their own skill level.

While I don’t particularly like the pip system, and don’t particularly like socialism, I can’t for the life of me see how socialism has anything to do with the pip system.

Sunshine.5014:

I agree nothing is going to change for bunker Mesmer. 1v1 you are still immortal. And the amount of quickness/alacrity you can pump out in teamfight is amazing.

It’s not bunkers that are the problem. It’s conquest itself.

In a game of three points, it’s not rocket science to figure out that getting the first cap and then stalling one of the other nodes will result in a eventual win.

They need to make capping easier, and then require having at least a double cap in order to gain points.

They also need to come up with better defensive mechanics for bunkers that aren’t evade/block spam. Absolute damage negation is dumb.

mysterion.1276:

How can this happen ???
3 days I played 10 hours per day and ended with 10% winrate(including 15 lose 0 win)
Is there a secret to get more luck? pls tell me (im ruby)

It’s called the matchmaker is streaky.

Chris.6089:

haven’t play SWOT, but sounds more fun than what we have in gw2

It’s not, Bioware took a great thing and progressively ruined in the name of “classic Bioware storytelling”
Huttball is great, no mistake. But the terrible things they have done to PvP along with absolute zero support for any kind of group content has killed that game.

PowerBottom.5796:

swtor had some preeeeetty big problems as well though…. I remember playing PvP on an underpopulated server without cross-server pvp and the dark side heavily dominating the population: since not all modes are light vs dark only, the dark side was able to PvP and farm gear while the light side couldn’t even muster up one team outside of the prime-pvp times. :P

And server-transfers weren’t even possible!

It was a disgrace how long it took for Bioware to fix this issue with server-transfers, i literally wasn’t able to play the game because no Q’s popped for months until sth. was done.

To be fair most of those issues where because bioware had zero experience with managing server populations since bioware had never done a mmo before. They cleared a lot of it up by 2.0, and imho 2.10 swtor PvP was the best PvP I’ve ever done. Sadly 3.0 happened and the game went downhill from there.

That said I do wish Anet would take a look at things like Huttball and the resolve system.
Huttball is like a esport waiting to happen, since it has good depth of play, but is also extremely easy for a spectator to follow. (it’s like American football, except you kill the quarterback instead of tackling him)
The resolve system was nice because it provided interesting tactical decisions both on the part of the aggressor and the target, but unlike the stability system it discourages spamming CC constantly.

Hatter.8159:

Lol for real? In SWTOR you have one Stun break with zero immunity after. Getting stun locked to death is super common and one of the most complained about things.

Google swtor resolve system.
The only time stunlocks where ever a problem was during the hardswitch meta in season 2. Outside of that the only time people died from CC was if they where getting focus fired by 2+ people. Of course if they where getting focus fired by 2+ people they where probably dead anyways.

That said I would not say that anet should learn anything from bioware considering Bioware has spent all of the 4.0 patch cycle making it clear they don’t give a crap about PvP or Raiding and only care about their precious story content.

There is a reason I’m over here and not over there.

Agemnon.4608:

the only teams that make a comeback are always someone else’s team?

Please remember that you are someone else, to someone else.

Diamond skin should only affect damaging conditions. Having passive immunity to fear, cripple, weakness, etc is too much.

I understand why the matchmaker pushes 50% w/l.

But this…this is not a good way to do it. This isn’t fun for anyone

Ansau.7326:

Are we discussing this again?
Real issues are more related to the game engine. This is a mmo, and there’s a huge amount of cpu calculations, which have nothing to do with graphics, aka the api is irrelevant here.
Dx12 and Vulkan cpu improvements are related to the graphic rendering managed in the cpu , but cannot do anything to the game engine stuff that is rendered solely in the cpu.

Btw, Gw2 can use multiple cores. What it can’t do is to take advantage of multithreading rendering (a gw2 thread can only be executed by 1 cpu thread).

this needs repeating.

Fortus.6175:

I think rank should be no weight in determining MM. Right now it account for 50% of MMR. I also think they shouldn’t show it at the end of the match.

If you are good, and your premade is good, then average the MMR for that and bump it up by more than 2% per teammate in the same party. Then match agaisnt someone with the same or around MMR without taking into account divisions either.

I dont mind fighting diamonds, I do mind being given team mates that just farmed to sapphire and the MM thinking they are good just because they got there. I know plenty of good emeralds, i know plenty of decent ambers. Give me those players if their MMR is good enough to give me a “fairer” match.

I vaguely remember reading that the matchmaker already inflates your MMR if you’re in a team.

4kb download here

JediYoda.1275:

Dreamslayer.7659:

I think it’s very presumptuous of everyone to constantly say GW2 is “poorly optimized”.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but what evidence do we have?

From my observations, I think the network is the real bottleneck – the game has no trouble rendering large numbers of entities, but the network traffic for 70 people to play together is kind of insane.

Maybe a graphics overhaul would make sense in 4-5 more years, but not at this point.

Well one could argue that the out of memory issues that plagued the 32 bit client is poorly optimized to handle 32 bit client memory restrictions. 64 Bit client is just a band aid fix/workaround to the out of memory issue that they haven’t been able to fix for over 3 years.

It’s not that the 32bit client wasn’t optimized for 32bit restrictions, it’s that 32bit restrictions weren’t made with modern mmorpgs in mind.
(to put it in perspective 32bit operating systems started in the 90s)

The fact of the matter is optimization is just that optimization There are only so many optimization tricks that can be done until you reach the point where you just can’t make it require less.
Of course there are other tricks to fixing 32bit, For example Bioware’s SW:TOR fixed the memory problem by having the game run two different instances.

SlayerSixx.5763:

I’m not one of the people who believe that you alone got minstrel removed, but if ANET doesn’t take suggestions from their best players, who DO they listen to?

Metrics. Data.

Developers basically have a model for what a perfectly balanced version of the game looks like. Things get nerfed when they deviate too far from this model.
Minstrel was likely removed because they have a target goal for how long fights should last and they believed that minstrel was causing matches to exceed that target.

They still monitor player feedback, but they aren’t going to do anything about it unless the hard numbers support what the players say,, since taking what player’s say on blind faith is foolish.

nearlight.3064:

Crinn.7864:

Why is it that people immediately jump to calling for things to deleted?

Seriously this game’s meta is too unstable for such drastic changes to be justifiable.

Because its unhealthy for the game’s build diversity.

On nearly every build I try to make I end up taking durability runes because they are by far the best rune for almost every build in the game unless you want to cleanse people with shouts. If you make any boons at all you’re practically gimping yourself by not running it.

The main point was that the meta is too unstable.

We haven’t had any major balance patches since HoT, yet despite that we’ve gone from Druid being considered most OP, to DH being considered the most OP, to reaper being considered the most OP, to revenant being considered the most OP, and now we’re complaining about bunker mesmers.
In a couple weeks people will have probably have forgotten all about mesmers, and it’ll be some new build that everyone is QQ’ing about.

This is why they shouldn’t be making such drastic changes on such short notice. They should only ever nerf things once it becomes absolutely certain that it’s dominant, and won’t be leaving the meta. Durability runes are a recent thing, it’s unclear if they will remain dominant.

Doon.2364:

Crinn.7864:

Doon.2364:

Not true anymore. A lot of lower tiers are picking up the metas themselves. I see a lot of mesmers, rev, reapers, tempest nowadays. I don’t think those buffs will make them OP just helps them against the crazy strong metas we have now.

Lower tiers always pick up metas because they don’t know any better and just blindly copy what they see on ESL.

That doesn’t mean DH isn’t OP in low tier. DH provides a large amount of power for a low amount of skill, which in low MMR means it’s horrendously imbalanced.

If DH was OP in low tier then we would see an increase of them in low tier however that’s not the case. Less and less dragon hunters out there now. Low tier players might not be the best at using the metas but they don’t have to be because they are fighting other low skill players. Since the emergence of the bunker metas, the traps are not as effective anymore, even low tier players can survive the traps and out sustain the dragon hunters.

There are more factors than just capability that affect how popular a class is.

A interesting thing about low MMR is that it’s comprised of casuals, a interesting note about casuals is that casuals don’t experiment much or try to optimize, typically most casuals will either blindly copy something off of metabattle, or will just play whatever looks cool.

Why is it that people immediately jump to calling for things to deleted?

Seriously this game’s meta is too unstable for such drastic changes to be justifiable.

Doon.2364:

Not true anymore. A lot of lower tiers are picking up the metas themselves. I see a lot of mesmers, rev, reapers, tempest nowadays. I don’t think those buffs will make them OP just helps them against the crazy strong metas we have now.

Lower tiers always pick up metas because they don’t know any better and just blindly copy what they see on ESL.

That doesn’t mean DH isn’t OP in low tier. DH provides a large amount of power for a low amount of skill, which in low MMR means it’s horrendously imbalanced.

warbignime.4610:

OMG Anet added gem store cosmetic that no one need unless they want to. How dare they profit off of their work.

The funny part about all this whining, is that cosmetics take little development effort beyond a couple people in the art department.
Putting in new gem store items doesn’t detract at all from anet’s ability to develop real content, and it certainly doesn’t detract from their ability to fix bugs.

There is zero reason to complain about them adding gem store items, since adding gem store items has zero opportunity cost.

morrolan.9608:

I just want to reiterate this. I have played swtor and Wildstar and the grind in GW2 is worse than both those games.

You’re right the ascended grind is worse.

But here is the thing. Once you have ascended you’re done forever.

In SW:TOR for example, every time they release a raid or a expac they increase the gear tier, rendering the previous tier of gear junk, and requiring everyone to grind the new tier.

In guild wars 2 I can grind ascended, quit the game for a year, and come back and ascended will still be the best gear.

Nebilim.5127:

Yes, i rather that Anet admitted they are too lazy or don’t have enough drive to want to balance the game that use this kitten poor excuse. Saying casuals would quit the game because the skill is different is just completely asinine.

I can provide a example. I used to play TOR back when it actually had good pvp, in that game taunts in PvE force the target to attack the user, but in PvP they reduce the targets damage dealt by 30% while target is not attacking the user. In teamfights taunts should be used almost on CD. However unless your doing ranked, you don’t see taunts being used often. Why? Because the players where trained by PvE that only tanks should taunt, and thus never even think to use a taunt in PvP, despite the difference being clearly stated on the tooptip.

Also expecting players to go read wikis is insipid. You shouldn’t need third party websites to play a game, unless you are the type of person that is obsessed with optimizing everything. (which is fine, but it’s not something the majority of the playerbase does.)

And if they do, they will quit in the first moment a dragon player stomps them when try to keyboard turn or LoS others to kill them in a corner

No because any sane person expects that engaging in combat in a game may result in your toon dying. What sane people don’t expect is for otherwise dependable game mechanics to change.
Like seriously, it’s like growing up in a country where you drive on the right side of the road, and then going and trying drive in a country with left-side driving. It’s a totally unsettling and definitively negative experience.

Burn.5401:

Crinn.7864:

Terrorsquad.4802:

3. They could make a separate Leagues for SoloQ’ers only, an exact copy except for those ESL stages. Just like before we had Solo and Team Arena (Leaderboard).

Which would result in the game being pure soloQ, because there are not enough teams in existence to population a team queue, which leads to long queue times, which invariably results the teams quitting, and thus alienating players that enjoy social PvP.

Because putting teams against solo queuers is the best way to promote team creation? Are you not aware that most of the better teams were created during the glory days of solo queue where people enjoyed the game? Oh wait you haven’t played the game back then, my mistake.

Of course the better teams where from that era, team queue is a haven for dominant teams, but it’s kitten for new/mid level teams because the population is going to be too small for the new/mid level teams to get even match ups, resulting in farming which leads to the new teams getting discouraged and usually quitting.

Death Aggro.9602:

I loved the change in gw1 when they did it. I didn’t find it difficult to adjust to at all. It would be no harder to learn than say…. the new mastery system. I don’t think anyone else was either. I don’t recall many complaints from the players that actually focus on PvP. There are ways to make it easier to see. And most people are just copy pasting builds anyway. Lets be honest.

For players that keep up with developments, and research things, it’s a easy transition. For the vast majority of the playerbase that just cares about logging in and enjoying themselves, it’s a crap system that will come off as arbitrary.

What makes games playable in the first place is the ability for a player to count on something always working a same way. Having spots in the game where otherwise dependable mechanics suddenly change functionality is bad design.

Terrorsquad.4802:

3. They could make a separate Leagues for SoloQ’ers only, an exact copy except for those ESL stages. Just like before we had Solo and Team Arena (Leaderboard).

Which would result in the game being pure soloQ, because there are not enough teams in existence to population a team queue, which leads to long queue times, which invariably results the teams quitting, and thus alienating players that enjoy social PvP.

egzius.9031:

I’m not saying everyone who has HoT is a scrub, I’m just saying scrubs with HoT are given so much power, that it overwhelms their scrubness so they wouldn’t just file a complaint and get a refund.

That’s a fallacy, giving scrubs more power to compensate only works if nobody else is given said power. The majority of players have HoT which means the majority of players those scrubs are playing against have access to that “power,” thus preventing said “power” from giving said scrub a advantage.

But really, I don’t think you’re fighting scrubs. I think you do what the majority of the population does when they die and look for a scapegoat. In this case elite specs.

Celtus.8456:

Balance and fun makes an e-sport, not how many times you throw around the buzzword ‘e-sport’ and promote the hell out of it in and out of game. Right now we don’t have balance or fun.

Because League of Legends is such a shining example of a balanced game right?

Splitting balance makes balance easier but it doesn’t make it a good decision. The problem with split balance is that it is extremely hard on new players, which isn’t good if you are trying to grow your playerbase.

The reason it’s hard on new players is that it’s a rule change. A new player gets used to abilities in PvE, if then then go into PvP and all of a sudden their class is working completely differently it tends to make the game feel completely arbitrary, which quickly leads to a /quit.
One of the big rules of game design is never change how the rules work. If X ability does Y thing in most of the game it shouldn’t just change to doing Z thing for some other part of a game.

Also this game’s balance isn’t perfect but it’s well within the scope of reasonable, especially by mmorpg standards. Players need to realize that balanced games still have metas and bad builds. Metas will always exist for any game with asynchronous class design.

egzius.9031:

It’s already p2w. Don’t have an expansion? You’re meat now for the people who buy an expansion, but suck so hard, they can only put their face on keyboard and roll it around. That’s why they made PvP open to f2ps, now f2ps serve as filling to sate the hunger of the people who bought HoT but have absolutely no capability of PvPing.

Expansion is b2p not p2w.

Also buying HoT doesn’t make you a scrub. I can’t even begin to fathom how warped your mind has to be for you come to that conclusion.

Morwath.9817:

Crinn.7864:

Espire.9723:

Lost 2 pips in last defeat, final score 87 – 502. kitten you Anet.

If you lose 87 – 502 you ought to lose pips because obviously you’re out of your league. (both meanings intended)

…or 4 guys he got matched with by random MM system are out of his league.

MMR isn’t random. And I’m getting sick of all the people running around that seem to think that they (and everyone else) is entitled to diamond tier, which is a complete misunderstanding of the purpose of both leagues and MMR.

Any system where rewards are predominant based on win rate is going to result in half the population getting perma stuck in low tier by the simple rule that in order for someone to win, someone else has to lose.

For you to gain pips someone else has to lose pips. Guess the poor OP got to be the guy that lost pips.

Espire.9723:

Lost 2 pips in last defeat, final score 87 – 502. kitten you Anet.

If you lose 87 – 502 you ought to lose pips because obviously you’re out of your league. (both meanings intended)

ReaperJr.5967:

Actually it is true, worse players with low mmr to start with climb divisions faster than better players with high mmr. Divisions then account for 50% of matchmaking.

Just today i got matched with a ruby and 2 sapphires and all 3 of them had no basic idea of rotations, are inept mechanically, wolf rank and in a party. Needless to say, they told me to l2p once i tried to tell them how to rotate and who to focus. -shrugs-

I know that. But how does that make his opponent team automatically better, while making his team bad?

Also if low MMR climb faster does that not imply that the OP could be low MMR?

darres.8203:

i’m facing better players, get worse players on my team

I’d love to know where you are drawing the conclusion that ranking up means worse pugs. That’s not how the divisions work.

ehtom.5047:

It’s very simple - the ELO rating system trys to enforce a 50% win and is somewhat effective at that task.

When you combine it with your league system, where a higher tier is defined as winning X games in a row, you are simply making people "luck out" into a higher tier or "exploit" into a higher tier.

What you have done is quite stupid and you should feel ashamed.

Thanks,

You said this was coming from people who know math, and yet you failed to use any.

Moreover it’s possible to advance with a 50% W/L both because it’s possible to gain a pip on a loss, and because you can’t drop below certain tiers.

Oh and the matchmaker is using a MMR (glicko) rating system, not a ELO system.

PowerBottom.5796:

Simply not true, all those builds (maybe druid not so much) get countered pretty heavily by condi-rev + bunker-mesmer comps…. That’s why we see almost no DH’s and reapers anymore when just a few weeks ago they were all the rage.

That doesn’t sound like imbalance. That sounds like people simply applying counters.

It’s a no brainer that if reapers and DH are everywhere then people will start stacking what counters reapers and DH.

Don’t worry in a few weeks revs and bunker mesmers will be out of meta because people found a counter comp and stacked it.

circuitnerd.5863:

Everything with GW2 brings toxicity. It’s literally everywhere.

Correction everything in competitive gaming brings toxicity. Don’t believe me? Go play League.

Toxicity happens because player’s invest a little bit of their self worth and ego into their games, additionally players tend to have a overinflated opinion of themselves because of this.
When you add in a leaderboard it gets worse because now you’ve added a system that gives players a definitive value to their skill, and rarely if ever is that value anywhere near where their ego thinks it should be, which results in players blaming whatever scapegoat is handy, be it premades, bad matchmaker, evil MMR tankers, class balance, Obama, etc.

That said, I don’t think this game is overly toxic. Most of the rage is directed at the devs anyways, which is fine since the alternative is players raging at each other.

Aomine.5012:

Anet would get alot of lawsuit issue if they just ban players when they didn’t play as well as they previously did.

Anet would get zero lawsuits because they have the power to regulate their game as they see fit.

Agemnon.4608:

Inquisitor vail.7421:

Regardless of how unlikely this is to actually happen (read on for why), we’re still not cool with players intentionally losing as this is in direct violation of our Code of Conduct.

I read on, there was no why. This whole post could have just been dumbed down to. “We have no answers, and just know there are problems.”

Not merely the code of conduct but simple sportsmanship too. In games like chess it’s highly regulated with rating floors and sandbagging being a bannable offense. I think banning would be too extreme so maybe an MMR clean and a couple of dishonor stacks.

The best punishment I think is that people caught trying to tank their MMR should have their MMR locked at ESL level and make it impossible for them to lose MMR for the rest of the season.
That’ll stop anyone from thinking about tanking their MMR.