Guild Wars 2

ronpierce.2760:

Malediktus.9250:

ronpierce.2760:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

fishball.7204:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Zuko.7132:

will cause many of the new, average, and bad players to just give up before matchmaking becomes balance again. Call it quits and go home.

we don’t need such players.

true pvp players will rise out of the ashes of defeat and emerge victorious.

failure is the mother of success after all.

Not sure if you’re being sarcastic but every game mode needs new blood or it just dies a slow death. Taking WvW as an example, not having new pugs/guilds/players drains the playerbase as hardcore/vets move on, the same will happen in PvP.

There aren’t even enough players/teams for those ESL weekly matches, the last thing PvP needs is a ‘we dont need those players’ mentality.

you need “real” new blood and not cry babies.

That’s the problem here. “Ranked” is just another farming spot, now. People don’t want it to be ranked, they want to be able to farm pips at a nice steady rate until they’re Legends just like everyone else. And ANet did it to themselves by saying the Legendary back pack is for everyone, now everyone thinks it should be easy to rise through the Ranked gameplay.

At this point, Unranked has pretty much no use, because everything thinks they’re “ranked worthy”, or at least, should be, and no one understand that in order for anything “ranked” to work there has to be winners and there has to be losers, and some of them lose hard. Not everyone is or needs to be cut out for Ranked, but because it is essentially just a glorified reward track to a lot of people, they feel that they’re entitled to gain a Division or two in a few days, regardless of the fact that the Season lasts until April, which should be VERY easy to hit Sapphire/Ruby by then. Not everyone will be Legend… that’s okay. It’s not meant to be knocked out in a week, and in some cases, at all if you’re not a good player. And that’s okay.

Ranked just means that your gameplay gets evaluated and ranked. It does not mean that average players cannot take part. Everyone is “ranked worthy”.

Yes, to some extent. But that doesn’t mean very low or even below-average deserve the highest divisions. Nor does it mean they should be even Ruby in a week. Seasons last well over a month.

The old way was far worse, in which poor players got carried and better players got held back all in the sake of a “fair game”. Fair games are for unranked. In ranked, players deserve to be able to rely on their team mates as well as they can be relied on themselves. That’s fair as far as competition goes.

Actually can we also just debunk this oft said rubbish:
"The old way was far worse, in which poor players got carried and better players got held back all in the sake of a “fair game”."

If you Solo Queue you are going to be relying on your team. If you are playing in a system that has calculated you have a 50/50 chance of winning with your current team that is REGARDLESS of the MMR distribution across your team. Noone is carrying anyone, Noone is holding anyone back. You are being matched and rewarded around a 50% chance of winning target.

People really need to stop bandying around this whole Carrying Myth from season 1.

You weren’t carrying a team against difficult odds in a system that was manipulating odds of 50/50.

Cynz.9437:

@Dirtyrascal.1023
My statement comes from almost 3 years of playing this game. Even before leagues the system was there. It is such an illusion if you actually think that matchmaking puts you in 50/50 matches because they were anything but 50/50. I mean i understand that you face better teams when you win more but shouldn’t your teammates also be better? Then how do you explain that i was getting guards stomping mesmer clones, zerging animal, getting point capped literary behind their back etc. while enemy could 1v3 my team with ease?

Certainly i couldn’t prove it before leagues but thanks to lovely 3 pips per win i can now. I won some matches i wasn’t supposed to win from begin with and we got 3 pips for it. And i had such matches few times in a row after having win streak. I think i can even dig out some screenshots of having 10 wins and followed by 10 loses in a row.

The problems you describe aren’t inherent in a system that tries to create a 50/50 match-up for every game. Simply by definition you must be able to see that is true.

The problems you describe arise for other reasons, predominantly suitable player availability. The problem you describe is a population issue. The system cannot give you what it doesn’t have. The INTENTIONS of the season 1 system, i.e. 50/50 match-ups is solid. Anet’s implementation of it’s League and reward system, not so much.

ronpierce.2760:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

fishball.7204:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Zuko.7132:

will cause many of the new, average, and bad players to just give up before matchmaking becomes balance again. Call it quits and go home.

we don’t need such players.

true pvp players will rise out of the ashes of defeat and emerge victorious.

failure is the mother of success after all.

Not sure if you’re being sarcastic but every game mode needs new blood or it just dies a slow death. Taking WvW as an example, not having new pugs/guilds/players drains the playerbase as hardcore/vets move on, the same will happen in PvP.

There aren’t even enough players/teams for those ESL weekly matches, the last thing PvP needs is a ‘we dont need those players’ mentality.

you need “real” new blood and not cry babies.

That’s the problem here. “Ranked” is just another farming spot, now. People don’t want it to be ranked, they want to be able to farm pips at a nice steady rate until they’re Legends just like everyone else. And ANet did it to themselves by saying the Legendary back pack is for everyone, now everyone thinks it should be easy to rise through the Ranked gameplay.

At this point, Unranked has pretty much no use, because everything thinks they’re “ranked worthy”, or at least, should be, and no one understand that in order for anything “ranked” to work there has to be winners and there has to be losers, and some of them lose hard. Not everyone is or needs to be cut out for Ranked, but because it is essentially just a glorified reward track to a lot of people, they feel that they’re entitled to gain a Division or two in a few days, regardless of the fact that the Season lasts until April, which should be VERY easy to hit Sapphire/Ruby by then. Not everyone will be Legend… that’s okay. It’s not meant to be knocked out in a week, and in some cases, at all if you’re not a good player. And that’s okay.

Dude are you even reading anything. No-one is complaining about losing fair games. The problem is decent players being rostered with players who don’t know what they’re doing and then deliberately ‘matched’ by the system to play against a team that the system has rostered only higher MMR players onto so that the inevitable outcome boosts the higher MMR players onward. That’s great ‘n’ all… but it is also boosting the lower MMR players downwards. That’s not so cool.

Hopefully this helps you out from under your rock.

Cynz.9437:

“A system that tries to manipulate a 50/50 win/loss ratio creates a challenging, competitive environment and fun games.”

Except it didn’t. Instead it forced you into losing matches if you won too many games. It was absolute waste time as you had to sit for 10 min queue and then another 10 in lost match. And on opposite, if you were below 50% win rate you would get stupidly faceroll matches which weren’t fun either. Actual 50/50 matches were rare.

As i said before, i think current system is better it just needs better placement across divisions.

I really think that you mis-understand how a 50/50 targetted matchmaker works.
It isn’t counting how many games you win and then trying to make you lose some if you win too many. What it does is ALWAYS try to give you an opponent that it calculates you have a 50% chance of beating. If you’ve won several games in a row then your MMR will increase and it will therefor calculate that you have a 50% chance of beating a team that also has a higher MMR so you face a harder team. At no point is it trying to make you lose.

If it cannot match you against a team that it calculates a 50% chance for then it tries to get as close as possible – this is what lengthens queue times. Eventually it will take the best it can find – HOWEVER if that team you are matched against has higher MMR than you then you will be rewarded a greater increase in MMR for winning and lose a lesser amount of MMR for being defeated by them. The converse is true for being matched against a team of lower MMR.

It doesn’t force you into losing matches, and it doesn’t force you into winning matches. It adjusts your MMR and then attempts to set up an evenly matched 50/50 game out of the available roster.

It’s fair my friend… I think you’re drunk on the ease of your season 2 success and don’t want to let it go.

50/50 matchmaking is OK, it is other elements of Anet’s PVP league setup and rewards that are screwing things up. Like for example, where players start in the league at the beginning of the season and the MMR that is allocated to new players and a lack of adequate gating to prevent people playing ranked who likely aren’t up to the base standard required etc.

Zuko.7132:

I’m just concerned about player population declining due to excessive loss streaks. I still believe that in a competitive game mode there should be some rewards for being better.

This really sums it up.

People who PVP want competition. Lopsided games aren’t a challenge. A system that tries to manipulate a 50/50 win/loss ratio creates a challenging, competitive environment and fun games.

It isn’t really fair that the high MMR players have to compete with High MMR players ALL the way through every division from Amber up to Legendary.

It also isn’t fair that average MMR players should be getting into this spiral of never-ending losses because of the current season’s mis-matchmaking system.

No-one wants to be teamed with people less skilled than themselves and have their MMR dragged down undeservedly.

MMR has been so skewed for so many players now… some having it inflated and some deflated by incredible win/loss streaks that really an MMR reset is needed. Not to mention the issues that allotting average MMR to completely new players has caused.

I don’t see how Anet can rectify this without resetting MMR.

A system that attempts to set up evenly matched 50/50 games is good. If they’d have kept season 1 matchmaking and allowed players to stay in their divisions at the beginning of season 2 – things would be a LOT better than they are now. The levelling rewards could be given for wins – say every 15 wins players get one set of levelling rewards that they have missed by starting in a higher division. I also think in a system like this you should be able to lose pips and tiers and go down divisions across the whole league. There would also need to be MMR decay, so players can’t just sit in a division relatively inactive forever.

JTGuevara.9018:

Dirtyrascal.1023:

I actually just had a game where it was so obvious my team were running around Temple literally not knowing what to do that me and 4 members of the OPPOSITE team just stood in the middle of the map by the stillness buff laughing at the mini map and chatting for about a minute, and they still won the game by over 200 points.

This is nuts.

hahaha this is out of control! Everyone go play unranked right now!

Unbelievably sad – but if I can’t find a better game… that’s what I’m going to have to do.

I actually just had a game where it was so obvious my team were running around Temple literally not knowing what to do that me and 4 members of the OPPOSITE team just stood in the middle of the map by the stillness buff laughing at the mini map and chatting for about a minute, and they still won the game by over 200 points.

This is nuts.

I like this game a lot and have played it since launch – 99% sPVP – I’m down to logging on, playing 3 unenjoyable games, logging off.
And I’m actively seeking an alternative PVP game until this is fixed because this is totally broken.

morrolan.9608:

Vargamonth.2047:

MMR based divisions would be great and would definitely produce way fairier matches, but they are also a LONG term competition.
It’s not reasonable to expect people to vastly improve out of sudden in the span of a few weeks, so players would see a very slow, if any, progression.

It only matters if you make the rewards depend on them. Award tickets based on some other criteria.

Yeah totally – like league position.

Are you playing less this season?

I am playing less.

Cynz.9437:

Ofc dropping everyone in same division wasn’t great idea but so wasn’t season 1 where people with high MMR had to fight esl teams just to get out of amber while low mmr players drooled their way to ruby/diamond.

Two wrongs don’t make a right…

…although apparently 3 lefts do.

Season 1 isn’t the answer either… but the current system needs to change.

Laraley.7695:

Cynz.9437:

Helly.2597:

Cynz.9437:

snip

If someone has a high enough mmr to balance out for being matched up against the entirety of the abjured it wouldn’t be fun for his team, but it would be considered fair yes.

Balancing the mmr on each team seems to be a superior way to match players. It does get skewed with how Anet does not separate solo and team queue though.

I can use the example of dota 2 in how it uses an mmr average to match the teams who play against each other in rmm (ranked match making). As long as anet sets an acceptable mmr range that slowly expands (until a max range so it doesn’t expand forever) as the queue time increases it should be acceptable.

Now the issue with mmr has always been the extreme cases. High or low extremes will always cause imbalances in the matchmaking. However if your mmr is so high supposedly according to the game you should be able to carry your team to a victory in 50% of the games.

You do understand that if that suggestion was implemented divisions would never balance out?

How wouldn’kitten People around the same MMR would be matched against people around the same MMR. This is the fairest matchmaking you can get. A guy with high enough MMR to balance out being matched againt the whole abjured team is an extreme case that doesn’t even exist.

Edit: I have no clue why “How wouldn’t it” was censored into kitten.

last 3 letters are rude… apparently.

Yeah but you can say ‘phuk’ as much as your like… go figure.

What you’re suggesting would make every match fair and challenging. However this isn’t what a lot of Higher Tiered people want because it means more work climbing up the ranks. This could all be offset though if they started in higher ranks.

Cynz.9437:

Helly.2597:

Dirtyrascal.1023:

snip

Thanks for the reply.

So since I got placed with better players or got lucky the first few matches my mmr has increased giving me better players on my team.

And since the league just started and everyone is low division I’ve been playing against majority of teams who are well below the mmr of my team simply because the pip ratings are close to the same?

And I’ll keep doing well until I hit the ceiling of my mmr skill level?

Honestly this feels very backwards from Anet. I understand desiring to make the good players rise to the top, however it seems to me they reversed how the teams should be formed. Have pips dictate the teammates and team mmr dictate the opponents. (Similar average mmr teams playing each other).

LOL it would be quite unfair to teammates of a player with high mmr. Let’s assume 1 guy has high mmr, he gets a team based on his division (begin of season, so amber, so noobs are possible). He faces enemy team of abjured because of his MMR. Take a guess how much fun he and his low ranked teammates will have. There would be just as much crying and divisions will never balance out.

Current system is indeed more skill/wins based. Ppl with higher mmr will just move faster through divisions. If you don’t want to face them, just wait few days, it will balance out.

To answer your question, yeah you will. I started to lose some games around sapphire (feels bit similar to old matchmaking), i am also facing players with legend title (doesn’t say much but you do need to play a lot of games to get there so their MMR is higher).

Sorry mate, but how is this a more skill based system. Where is the skill in roflstomping your way up through rigged match-ups. Sure, high players should be in high ranks, but you don’t ask premier league football teams to annihilate the lower division first at the beginning of the season.

If Anet want Higher Tiered players to start in Amber – how is it fair that they start there with a huge advantage so the lower MMR players have to suffer a week or 2 of being trampled over?
It’s not OK. If Anet are going to make it a foregone conclusion that higher MMR players all get rostered together so they can rise out of Amber, then just start them outside of Amber.
Subjecting lower MMR players to these deliberately rigged impossible odds is a massive phuk you to a LOT of people.
Anyone who argues this system is OK clearly doesn’t care much about PVP because this isn’t going to increase player numbers. How many new players are going to stick around for this?

Vargamonth.2047:

Slightly above average is, however, a quite dangerous placement. You could be being paired with fresh players (probably with way higher MMR than they should) for catastrofic results.

Dude, so we agree… have you been pulling my leg…!

Vargamonth.2047:

Dirtyrascal.1023:

Vargamonth.2047:

Dirtyrascal.1023:

UmbraNoctis.1907:

If you have a decent amout of ranked games, your MMR should be pretty stable and few lost games won’t affect it much. New player’s MMR should drop faster. And if you have an average MMR it means there are about as much ppl with lower MMR as there are with higher MMR so it is very unlikely to get matched only against those better players and it is getting less and less likely the longer the league is going on.

“few lost games”

Well yes – but the problem has been that people are getting massive losing streaks 10-15 games not being uncommon. This is going to have a significant impact.

If the games were really unbalanced, the MMR shift could be as little as losing a couple of regular fair matches.

I don’t think you can really say something like that confidently without knowing the numbers.
What we can say is that people’s actual experience is that their matches, win or lose, are generally significantly lopsided – in my last 10 games I’ve only had 2 come within a 200 points difference. The losses are brutal, the wins are a cakewalk.

Glicko2 formulas are public.
For a 1500 MMR player, losing agaisnt a 1900 team weights 5-6 times less than agaisnt a 1500 one.
For a 1100 MMR player, losing against the 1900 team wights about 50 time less than against a 1100 one.

“Glicko2 formulas are public.”

Anet’s algorithm isn’t.
Saying our system is based on the Glicko2 formula is like saying this film is BASED on a true story.
Also actual accounts of people’s experience is reality.

I hope you’re not from the “you’ve lost 15 games in a row?!… lol l2p, matchmaking’s fine” camp.

edit: actually their algorithm IS public: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm

… enjoy the read.

Helly.2597:

Dirtyrascal.1023:

snip

Thanks for the reply.

So since I got placed with better players or got lucky the first few matches my mmr has increased giving me better players on my team.

And since the league just started and everyone is low division I’ve been playing against majority of teams who are well below the mmr of my team simply because the pip ratings are close to the same?

And I’ll keep doing well until I hit the ceiling of my mmr skill level?

Honestly this feels very backwards from Anet. I understand desiring to make the good players rise to the top, however it seems to me they reversed how the teams should be formed. Have pips dictate the teammates and team mmr dictate the opponents. (Similar average mmr teams playing each other).

You my friend are awesome :-)

Vargamonth.2047:

Dirtyrascal.1023:

UmbraNoctis.1907:

If you have a decent amout of ranked games, your MMR should be pretty stable and few lost games won’t affect it much. New player’s MMR should drop faster. And if you have an average MMR it means there are about as much ppl with lower MMR as there are with higher MMR so it is very unlikely to get matched only against those better players and it is getting less and less likely the longer the league is going on.

“few lost games”

Well yes – but the problem has been that people are getting massive losing streaks 10-15 games not being uncommon. This is going to have a significant impact.

If the games were really unbalanced, the MMR shift could be as little as losing a couple of regular fair matches.

I don’t think you can really say something like that confidently without knowing the numbers.
What we can say is that people’s actual experience is that their matches, win or lose, are generally significantly lopsided – in my last 10 games I’ve only had 2 come within a 200 points difference. The losses are brutal, the wins are a cakewalk.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

If you have a decent amout of ranked games, your MMR should be pretty stable and few lost games won’t affect it much. New player’s MMR should drop faster. And if you have an average MMR it means there are about as much ppl with lower MMR as there are with higher MMR so it is very unlikely to get matched only against those better players and it is getting less and less likely the longer the league is going on.

“few lost games”

Well yes – but the problem has been that people are getting massive losing streaks 10-15 games not being uncommon. This is going to have a significant impact.

Fluffball.8307:

…. and everyone is miserable because for most of us, your teammates are almost guaranteed to be significantly worse than you are.

And this is exactly what has happened to decent players who have come into this season and had unlucky matchups – perhaps against whole teams of pro-leaguers – in their first few games causing their MMR to tank – thus putting them on even worse teams.

It does beg the question – If the Pro League players don’t want to be in that situation because they are going to find it hard work to pull themselves out of a mire of sub-par team mates, how is that going to effect good but non Pro League players?

…Check the front page of the PVP forum to find out.

Fluffball.8307:

Dirtyrascal.1023:

@Fluffball – Season 1 is relevant… where do you think you got your MMR from?

I got it from years of PvP. The season itself was irrelevant, obviously a game is a game though.

I won’t argue back and forth with you but we do agree that your MMR was brought into season 2 with you.

Fact is a player’s MMR earned outside of the environment we are currently competing in is trivialising the challenge that should exist in a league.

Dragon gets my vote +1
At least it’s something.

Helly.2597:

Fluffball.8307:

Helly.2597:

Anyone care to explain if I’m missing something?

You’re not missing anything. It pairs you (your team) with people of your own MMR and season 1 is totally irrelevant.

OK see this makes a lot more sense to me than the season 1 argument. Thanks.

@Fluffball – Season 1 is relevant… where do you think you got your MMR from? MMR was not reset at season 2 beginning. The player base requested that it was reset but Anet chose this direction instead.

@Helly – there is no reason why you shouldn’t have had that experience.

People with no MMR are allocated one – Average MMR (I think 1200)
However you must surely see how giving people average (1200)MMR to start with means there will be a lot of players starting on average MMR who should be starting much lower. If you are one of the unlucky ones to be in a similar situation as yourself but get rostered in your first few games with people who are absolute beginners then your MMR will tank and the cycle will only get worse. This has happened to a LOT of people.

Your team = similar MMR
Your opponents = similar rank

As such if you are lucky and get good match-ups in your first few games then your MMR will go up and you will get better team mates.

If you are unlucky – which you obviously weren’t – then you will not get favourable match-ups in your first few games and your MMR will decrease and you will be rostered on with worse team mates – making winning even harder.

Zuko.7132:

…At least this season will probably indicate skill more.

Only if you don’t believe in maths.

lighter.2708:

This is a team game, there’s nothing they don’t deserve, if they win, that means their team’s overall performance and average skill level is better then the other team
1 bad player can completely throw the game even there are 2 decent players carrying..

Have you been under a rock?

The matchmaking system is matching woefully unfairly rostered teams against eachother.

And what you say here…
“1 bad player can completely throw the game even there are 2 decent players carrying..”
…this is exactly why decent players who are being repeatedly rostered on teams with newer, lower skilled players because of a lower MMR, are having an undeservedly rough time.

Fluffball.8307:

You’re confusing MMR with league division. You could be a legend from last season with a horribly low MMR, or be a pro-league player in last season’s amber fighting other pro-league players.

MMR isn’t just +1 if win, -1 if lose. If you expose yourself to a 50/50 win ratio longer than someone else you will have a higher MMR.

Some people deserve to win, some people deserve to lose.

However there are a lot of people not getting what they deserve.

People saying that this matchmaking system is ‘sorting out the HIGH TIER players’ or the ‘HIGHER SKILLED’ players are wrong.

Season 1 matchmaking was considered flawed because an AVERAGE player could keep progressing through the ranks all the way to Legendary just by grinding out enough games.

Season 2 matchmaking is carrying over people’s MMR from Season 1.

So all those who are blitzing through the ranks with killer win streaks like Golden Gods and being condescending towards people on this forum who have legitimate frustrations -

You don’t deserve it. It’s not an indication of your skill. It doesn’t mean you’re a High Tier player. You are being handed ‘rigged’ game after ‘rigged’ game on the basis of your progress in an environment (season 1) where you were rewarded for just turning up and playing the game – OK.

I know this sounds salty – but there are a lot of genuinely frustrated decent players who are being punished for only playing last season casually, and a lot of average players who are still being rewarded for just showing up.

And it doesn’t matter that the SYSTEM will hopefully provide more balanced games as time goes on… we’re still left with players not being where they deserve to be.

We wanted an MMR reset. THEN the High Tier, Higher Skilled players would rise up the ranks, and do so on merit. Right now, those little gems over our heads mean even less than last season.

Keira Ferland.5619:

I’m up to 22-0 now solo queueing. Playing with and against ESL players now.

…and look at the score difference… that surely cannot have felt rewarding.

TPMN.1483:

Hi All,

This is a question ;
How will the MMR algorithm update in the league system given matches are no longer around 50% win ratio manipulated ?

I mean if players get to diamond (which means they have at least broken some decent win streaks to get out of ruby)- and the. Lose every match heavily in diamond – will there MMR end up being lower than when they started playing when back at amber?

Would it be possible your MMR would end up lower than Someone who has played lots of matches but cannot get out of tier 1 emerald (they are bad).

If you end up in Diamond does that mean you have average MMR?
Or does it mean you have above average MMR?

Too many questions

Because your Rank is prevented from going down a division but your MMR is effected by every loss, it is entirely possible that someone in a higher division could have a lower MMR to someone in a lower division.

At the moment my favourite game is ruined. I’ve literally only been putting up with unranked for the last month because ‘everything will be alright’ when ranked starts.

If this doesn’t improve soon I know I’ll just quit the game for a while and try some different ones. I’ve been playing on and off since the pre-launch beta weekends so it’s a shame to see them literally kill the fun.

It’s just not fun playing game after game when you know what the result is going to be after the first minute or two.

In all the time I’ve played MMO’s this sits right up there as being in the top 2 kitten ups I’ve witnessed, right next to WoW Garrisons for those who know that game.

AFK kicking should be a thing.

However… the state that matchmaking is in at the moment I actually find myself not even resenting some of the AFK’ers I’ve come across.

At the moment I think it’s fair to blame the game for the huge increase.

What we’re seeing is people turning up hoping for a good competitive game, seeing they clearly aren’t going to get one and just wanting the inevitable to happen quicker rather that slower in the hope that the next match is fairer. Which unfortunately it generally isn’t.

Yeah… can somebody remind me why matching 2 teams with similar MMR is a bad thing again…?

My last 10 games.
In Emerald.
Always solo queue.
Still seeing people playing like they are absolute beginners.
Only 1 out of 10 was actually balanced enough to be fun. All the others were either way too easy or a complete waste of time.

So what is there…?
Hotjoin – hmm
Unranked – that’s been horrendous for the last month.
Ranked? – this is not fun.

Right now I don’t get any feeling of accomplishment from winning games because the wins are always faceroll easy.
I don’t get any feeling of responsibility for a loss because I can see it coming from the 1st couple of mins of gameplay.
There’s been absolutely no sense of competition because every game is a predictable foregone conclusion.

Shadelang.3012:

As MANY other players have said. The new matchmaking is alot more accurate as to your skill level than the previous one. The previous matchmaking ALWAYS balanced you against as near odds as possible making it hard to progress for everyone equally. Meaning that it was also equally EASY to progress.

Alot of people ended up in diamond/legendary despite being what in the current system would be the ruby tiers.

The new matchmaking takings a few days to sort out. But the end result is where you end up will be a more accurate representation of your actual skill level not just how many games you played. The previous leagues matchmaking favored perseverance more than anything else.

Unranked follows this set up still. Trying to match you with opponents near your level to promote even games and steady growth.

Ranked favors your placement more. Meaning that where you are decides who your opponents are. So even if you have the skill of a legendary. You will PROBABLY be fighting amber opponents…saphire opponents..emerald ones. Etkittenil you get to legendary tier.

Atm Most players are still in the first two tiers. And alot of high skill players may only play half as much as others meaning they likely havn’t even reached ruby yet despite having an extremely high win rate. So theyl continue fighting low division players until they also progress. The entire process will start being sorted out in a few days.

It doesn’t really hurt anyone either. This is EXACTLY what many players have asked for. What I find ironic is that quite a few of those players are wondering why there suddenly losing alot. Meaning its likely they got to there previous ranking through games played as opposed to skill. And there only just realizing that.

I wish that this matchmaking method had been used for the first league. As it seems ALOT of players have false impressions of how they are in the PvP hierarchy. Starting out with this would have given people a more accurate impression of there skill level.

Id reccomend playing casually for a few days. Let it sort itself out. Once it has youl find your average game is probably alot better for you. Once people are where they actually belong. Theyl start to get the close games they want.

Be patient and don’t overestimate yourself too much. This is probably going to be the first time in this games history that people actually get a fix on where they really are. And I think its gonna hit alot of people hard. Hell I might even find out as I play that I am no where NEAR as good as I think I am. Despite hitting legendary last season through soloqueing. And If I do thatl be good for me. Cause itl give me an idea on what players I need to target and hunt down in order to improve.

This is a lovely theory and SHOULD be what is happening.

However I know when I see my entire team standing on close at the beginning of a game that they are not at my skill level.

When I am capping an empty node and 1 or 2 other players stop by to hang out for some glitzy points I know they are not at my skill level.

When they flop in match-ups they should win I know they are not at my skill level.

When they are obviously not looking at the map and running around randomly I know they are not at my skill level.

When they charge on their shining steeds in single file one by one to feed mid all game I know they are not at my skill level.

When the game starts and they are all telling me in team chat where they are going to go… and it’s obviously going to be a cluster phuk from the offset, I know they are not at my skill level.

etc. etc. etc….

The new matchmaking is NOT a better indication of skill level. Fundamentally because it is based off calculating an individual players personal MMR from the result of a whole team’s performance.

A lot of good players are not being represented accurately for some reason by the current system.

I should not EVER be in any of the situations I describe above but they are the majority of my games.

I am winning matchups 1vX on my Thief that I have absolutely no right winning during my victory games because of the huge skill gulf. And in the games I lose it is an absolute blood bath.

Also seeing as the pre-season MMR has been calculated from Season 1, by your very own logic, there are people with inflated MMR enjoying all the benefits that brings… i.e. being matched with other high MMR players. Those people who only played last season casually are absolutely carrying a HUGE disadvantage into this season by being teamed with worse team mates.

Kuya.6495:

Dirtyrascal.1023:

People want to FEEL like they are progressing at a pace which is FAIR given their own PERSONAL performance.

But what if your performance is kitten?

Well this is the conflict of interests: Maths vs Feelings.
If you want a pure meritocracy then you need to have rules that necessarily put everyone on an equal playing field, i.e. only allow 5 man premades into ranked.
If you want to be all inclusive, there HAS to be compromises.
Which compromises are made will determine how happy your player base is.
A lot of people are unhappy at the moment.
Arguably it is better to reward a few players who don’t deserve it than it is to penalise players who don’t deserve it.

Regardless of whether you personally are having a smooth ride through Amber or not, it is clear that there are a LOT of people having a bad time.

People want to FEEL like they are progressing at a pace which is FAIR given their own PERSONAL performance.

^^^THIS in the context of a TEAM game where the performance of 4 other players will DIRECTLY effect YOUR MMR.

Maths vs Feelings:

Matchmaking is exactly this:
1. Your team is made up of available people close to your MMR
2. Your opponents are made up of people who share similar MMR that could vary wildly from yours but who have a similar RANK to you +/- 7pips so a 15 pip range.
3. Your MMR will increase and decrease with losses and wins
4. These changes in YOUR MMR will be reflected in the MMR of people allocated to your team in subsequent games.

Now where the maths falls over is that, what it is attempting to do is adjust an INDIVIDUAL PERSON’s MMR on the basis of the performance of a 5 PERSON TEAM.

This absolutely cannot be accurate for people who solo queue.

It is arguable that it’s accuracy will improve over time, however this is not a science experiment it is a game – and being subjected to it’s inaccuracies is quite clearly not fun for a LOT of people.

The algorithm can only judge the performance of the team.
The player wants to be judged by their own performance.

Or put it another way:
It’s never fun to play well and then lose.
It’s really un-fun to play well, lose and get penalised: i.e. reduction in MMR and potentially being bracketed with even lower MMR team mates.

Have your cake and eat it:

1. You cannot balance all the classes and specs.
2. As a team game it is balanced – in the sense that any class/spec/team comp is open to anyone, equally.
3. If ONLY 5 man premades were allowed to play ranked then this system would be fair and there would be far fewer people actually playing – it would possibly just die out.
4. They have to allow non premade’s to participate because that is the majority of the Ranked player base.

So how do you have a TEAM BASED Esport League that fairly rewards INDIVIDUALS and accurately reflects their SKILL LEVEL.

The answer is – you can’t.

The season 1 system – was better for Solo Queue people – It FELT good and rewarding because games were evenly matched. However Rank progression was also an indication of TIME spent playing as well as actual SKILL LEVEL.

Season 2 – is better for TEAMS – because your progress will absolutely be effected by the performance of the other players on your team. As such people who solo queue more casually, who are good players but don’t have a high MMR are going to have a rough time.

The system needs to not upset the hard core players because without them there is no Pro-League and no Esports.
The system needs to not upset the more casual players because without them there is no INTEREST in Pro-League or it’s Esport.

Suggestions:

1. If a player’s MMR is unkown (new player etc.) then start them with Zero MMR so they are not potentially sabotaging an average MMR player’s game. Also they will not need to suffer repeated losses in order to find a competitive level and as such are more likely to continue playing, rather than quit out of frustration.

2. If a player’s MMR is known then automatically put them into their correct division at the beginning of the season – or one below, leaving Legendary empty and to play for. This way they are not grinding through Amber in teams full of high MMR players, artificially lowering the MMR of good players on much over-all weaker teams.

3. Players of Competitive games like Statistics.
Have LEAGUE TABLES within the divisions. People should be able to see where their TEAM sits and also should be able to see where they PERSONALLY sit within their division.

4. Managing Expectations.
If Anet is open and vocal about how this system works and it’s implications for people who play the game differently e.g. Solo Que players, Pre-made players, then some of the stigma attached to Ranks will go away and people won’t have to put up with the bad feeling of carry around an e.g. Amber gem above their heads because they solo queue. Anet need to be more vocal about the fact that this system is only accurate on a team level.

The current system cannot accurately indicate and reward your personal skill level when it is only measured in the context of a team’s performance. Ranked is a TEAM game that NEEDS non-premade players to make up the numbers.

An individual’s MMR is not a direct indication of that player’s SKILL LEVEL it is an indication of that player’s SUCCESS, and as in life these are not necessarily directly proportional.

Edarkness.7543:

. . . . .bang for your buck . . . . .success in ranked?

I love an optimist…

jk

Teutos.8620:

Dirtyrascal.1023:

Question: How is you’re pre-season MMR calculated or do we all start equal?

The ranked MMR was not reset. You have the same MMR on which you ended up in the last season.
Careful: MMR, not league.

Example (MMR is calculated pre-season) –
1. Chaith begins the Season before even playing a game with a high MMR
2. Chaith gets teamed with good players
3. Chaith is on the winning team
4. Chaith’s MMR is adjusted up
5. Chaith continues to get teamed with good players
6. Chaith will rise steadily until he is playing at a comfortably competitive level having had a fun-fest through the lower ranks.

Pretty much that.

There are a few questions, I can’t answer yet. E.g. What happens if Chaith only plays three matches a day? Even he wins all of those, will he ever be able to get a good quality match throughout the season?

Thanks Teutos – Seems then (at least for Solo Queue players) that the system makes keeping a High MMR once obtained easier and gaining a high MMR if starting out very difficult.

By the system already knowing who the high MMR players are before the season starts and always putting them together on the same teams, it was only ever going to be a complete blood bath, whilst also artificially driving down the MMR of a lot of average to above average players, sending them into teams of even worse players, through multiple losses in deliberately un-balanced matches.

So, for a good player with low MMR because they didn’t play last season or played very casually it is actually detrimental for them to be playing at the moment because their MMR is likely to only go down further, and the further it goes down, the worse team mates you will get and the harder it will be to climb.

Dirtyrascal.1023:

claytonmorby.3751:

What Teutos said. Let me try to break it down theoretically.

Team 1 has Chaith and Toker (2 pro league players) que up for their first match of the season. They have extremely high MMR so they are teamed with similar people. However they are Amber 0 so that determines the team they are matched against.

Team 2 has Ned the Noob who is playing his 20th pvp match and wants to try ranked. This team 2 is formed with people similar to ned the noob.

Obviously Chaith and co win handily and move on.

Now there are 100s of high end players who will end up on team 1 and will quickly climb up. Once they are high enough team 1 will only face teams that are similar to them.

Team 2 has the same chance of fighting another team 1 until the high end players move up. So in some cases people in team 2s MMR rating might be stuck for a while.

Really sucky how it punishes one group of players, kinda the opposite of last season.

Also win rate is an average. The opponent you face might have only 47% but still be a much better player.

Question: How is you’re pre-season MMR calculated or do we all start equal?

SOLO QUEUE:
For example (we all start with the same MMR) -
1. Chaith is a pro-league player.
2. Chaith is 1st game of season and has no (base) MMR.
3. Chaith through bad luck is on the losing team (they’re really bad)
4. Chaith’s MMR is adjusted down
5. Chaith gets teamed with even worse players with lower MMR
6. Chaith loses again because even Chaith can’t carry that hard
7. Chaith is digging hole.

OR…

Example (MMR is calculated pre-season) –
1. Chaith begins the Season before even playing a game with a high MMR
2. Chaith gets teamed with good players
3. Chaith is on the winning team
4. Chaith’s MMR is adjusted up
5. Chaith continues to get teamed with good players
6. Chaith will rise steadily until he is playing at a comfortably competitive level having had a fun-fest through the lower ranks.

Example: Chaith has a team (of 4 people because 5 player teams will only play 5 player teams).
1. Their team blitzes through with absolutely no challenge until they reach high level.
2. Pretty grindy and boring for top tier players… Chaith quits and takes up piano instead.

Is this how it works?
And is this system basically punishing good solo queue players?

claytonmorby.3751:

What Teutos said. Let me try to break it down theoretically.

Team 1 has Chaith and Toker (2 pro league players) que up for their first match of the season. They have extremely high MMR so they are teamed with similar people. However they are Amber 0 so that determines the team they are matched against.

Team 2 has Ned the Noob who is playing his 20th pvp match and wants to try ranked. This team 2 is formed with people similar to ned the noob.

Obviously Chaith and co win handily and move on.

Now there are 100s of high end players who will end up on team 1 and will quickly climb up. Once they are high enough team 1 will only face teams that are similar to them.

Team 2 has the same chance of fighting another team 1 until the high end players move up. So in some cases people in team 2s MMR rating might be stuck for a while.

Really sucky how it punishes one group of players, kinda the opposite of last season.

Also win rate is an average. The opponent you face might have only 47% but still be a much better player.

Question: How is you’re pre-season MMR calculated or do we all start equal?

SOLO QUEUE:
For example (we all start with the same MMR) -
1. Chaith is a pro-league player.
2. Chaith is 1st game of season and has no (base) MMR.
3. Chaith through bad luck is on the losing team (they’re really bad)
4. Chaith’s MMR is adjusted down
5. Chaith gets teamed with even worse players with lower MMR
6. Chaith loses again because even Chaith can’t carry that hard
7. Chaith is digging kitten.

OR…

Example (MMR is calculated pre-season) –
1. Chaith begins the Season before even playing a game with a high MMR
2. Chaith gets teamed with good players
3. Chaith is on the winning team
4. Chaith’s MMR is adjusted up
5. Chaith continues to get teamed with good players
6. Chaith will rise steadily until he is playing at a comfortably competitive level having had a fun-fest through the lower ranks.

Example: Chaith has a team (of 4 people because 5 player teams will only play 5 player teams).
1. Their team blitzes through with absolutely no challenge until they reach high level.
2. Pretty grindy and boring for top tier players… Chaith quits and takes up piano instead.

Is this how it works?
And is this system basically punishing all solo queue players?

So basically…

Bad players lose because bad players should lose.
Very good players win because they carry the bad players.
Good players lose because they carry their weight but can’t carry the team.

Seems to me that each ‘end’ of the spectrum gets where they should be going but the middle guys are gonna have a rough time for a while.

Zero Day.2594:

:P if it’s not vault spamming …
It’s stealth spamming, and if it’s not stealth spamming…
It’s evade spamming, and if it’s not evade spamming…
It’s heartseeker spamming, and if it’s not heartseeker spamming…

You get the drift. Don’t take offence to it, just do w/e you wanna do.

Except Vault is big damage AND evade spamming. Other in game evading-while-you-damage abilities do exist but tend to have drawbacks eg less damage, have to be stationary, have a cooldown, share damage between targets etc. Weird thing is – there’s so much ‘easy mode’ damage available across other classes right now I don’t even think Vault deserves a nerf.

Salt incoming… Either understand that you have to play FotM to be relevant or keep banging your head up against the forums calling for nerfs whenever your favourite class isn’t Meta… and don’t say it’s for the good of the game. It’s what MMO’s do… if I hear the word ‘Balance’ again… I swear, I’ll screvelereap you’re kitten so hard!

Ario.8964:

No I agree it’s not really worth perma stealthing in pvp. The point I’m getting at isn’t that it’s gamebreaking #1 needs to be balanced priority level, it’s that the functionality of it goes against the fundamentals of balance. The reason it is so hard to argue the necessity of this change is because it’s not brokenly op or being mass abused by players.

The reason I brought it up is because the trait with EA gives you all the utility of SA with the extra fighting utility dd grants when using d/p. I’d much rather see leaps added onto sets like p/p and s/p and give the sets more interesting combo play through that then justify not making changes to sets based on the fact that bound gives them leaps. If bound is too strong on d/p in comparison to what it offers the other sets then changes like this can be made to bring it’s interaction with d/p in line with it’s interaction with other sets. Then at the same time you make it necessary for people who want to possess high stealth uptime to make the investment into a stealth based line to do so.

Doing all this sets a balance precedent overall which is something the game desperately needs. The idea behind balance is that you get what you invest into, no more and no less. Bound’s leap undermines this and removing it and spreading the utility elsewhere 1) removes the mandatory nature of this trait for some styles and 2) opens the door for weapon redesigns and other balance changes similar to this the would be beneficial to the game as a whole.

So should it be their top priority? No because as you said it’s not a gamebreaking problem in the meta but it definitely needs to be looked at in the near future.

Yeah cool… or maybe just remove Thief’s access to stealth via the clunky BP>Leap Finisher route altogether and give Thief an F3 ability of 3secs stealth on a 15 seconds cooldown. Not stackable, not abuse-able, non-variable, easily balanced. I’d be up for that.

Liewec.2896:

i LOVE vault spam :-3
i even made a new alt called “Kitty Slam Slam” just to spam vault and dodge XD
its hilarious spamming 10k AoE evades in Spvp
the salty hate whispers are delicious!

10k AoE Evades… skill-soup.

Well this is my build:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoaVn0MBlOhVmCGmC8PhFYCbOEeCbheph4QbQLBEAyAA-TZBFABiXGggDBQ87PAwTA4hTAAA

And in this thread I talk about how I use it:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Teef-Your-way-to-play-thief/first#post5994506

Fist Flurry is devastating – The Sigil of Rage means you will get a quickness proc on your opener:

Basilisk Venom>pre-cast Heart Seeker>Steal>Fist Flurry>Palm Strike

Bandit’s Defense (Reflexive Strike) is good for setting it up as well.

Pulminary Impact: When you daze/Stun someone (e.g. Steal, Palm Strike, Basilisk Venom) it will interrupt your opponent if they are casting a skill. Whenever you interrupt an opponent you’ll inflict significant damage 2 seconds later via Pulminary Impact.

Ario.8964:

Dirty, The issue is that the build is not really that clunky. The only difference from the standard build is channeled vigor over withdraw. Roll for ini was left over from my s/d build as that skill slot is filled through preference.

OK – I think we disagree on this at least for sPVP because imo it is simply not worth having a sub-optimal build just for perma-stealth that you’re never going to waste time on in a match.

If this was an issue I’d be seeing thieves abusing it, and nobody is abusing it because it’s a clunky gimmick.

With all that endurance you’re generating you’d be much, much more effective using it for evades that matter in a fight than a one-off needlessly long pre-fight stealth. Sorry I’m just not seeing the problem here. Removing the leap means only one weapon set has access to stealth and absolutely no impact will have been made to anything other than that really.

Maybe down the line somewhere in some Meta at some point in the future this will be a problem – but it’s not an issue now.

Thanks for posting you demonstrating Thief in perma-stealth.

I hope everybody who complains about Thief perma-stealth watches that video so they can see how clunky it is to maintain, how kitten the thief’s build needs to be and how generally useless and undesirable it is for the Thief.

No Thief is going to compromise their build and usefulness to obtain that functionality – certainly not in sPVP.

Great to see someone who complains about something actually being able to demonstrate what he has a problem with, but I personally think the demonstration shows what a non-issue it actually is.

Not trying to be funny but just checking… are you sure you weren’t Taunted by the pet?

EthanLightheart.9168:

That’s all I see in pvp and it’s just tiring and so boring. Cheap ridicolous high hp, perma cc, self sustain, condi spam, permaevade.
You really made pvp boring with this update, and noone seems to bother.

Really? A guy in another Thread seems to think all HE sees is Thieves… must be something in the water.

everyman.4375:

First of all, thief is not hard to play, ok ? The burst is quite easy and you basicly can’t die, exept if you’re a realy bad player.
Thief is too easy too play and too strong, like a dragonhunter a bit harder but still the same.
Well actually thief is not realy OP in this meta, even if they’re 100 times stronger than a mesmer.

That’s cool… pls post a video of you showing how easy to play and invincible Thief is.

Simonoly.4352:

In WvW, I just steal to people and dagger auto-attack them to death.

Please post a video of you doing this. I’m obviously over-complicating things when I play thief.