Guild Wars 2

Magnito.6187:

That being aside, hey now, there’s a new poll up! They want to avoid class stacking. They want to AVOID, the one thing people have been crying their eyes out about. It was obvious. I had to go vote yes. Because why would we not want fair match ups and leaderboards reflecting your “true skill”, through linking it to the class you main.

The poll wasn’t about class stacking. People who took 10 seconds to think realized that and voted “No”.

There’s been a matchmaking factor for unique profession, but it’s always been turned off or set low. When it was enabled, it generated worse and slower matches compared to letting players fix their groups once they loaded in.

If a profession is stacked because it’s really good (usually because it’s easy to play compared to how well it performs), then it’s a balance problem, not a matchmaking problem.

Funny thing is, GW2 used to have a solo queue and a team queue (parties of 1-5) option.

Solo queue was popular early, but dropped off after a couple months. Solo queue was based mostly on luck in getting the least number of clueless players, was full of “solo queue heroes” who tried to 1v1 everything and ignored capture nodes, and general toxicity and blaming everyone else.

Team queue allowed for coordinated strategy and tactics, which added way more depth to the game. Larger queue size was far from guaranteed victory (contrary to claims of solo queue backers).

GW2 doesn’t have the population for split queues. Why repeat the same process again?

@OP:
You claim to be talking about pros and cons, but you laud the desired outcome as pros over the realistic outcome while not listing the real and overwhelming cons.

Reasons to vote “Yes”

• Profession stacking can be lessened (but not eliminated) by the matchmaker.
• Shorter queue times for less popular professions.
• Profession/Character-based MMR can be employed. This is good for people who want to learn a new profession.

Reasons to vote “No”

• Profession stacking won’t be eliminated even by voting “yes” because low population and trying to minimize queue times will overcome the multiple profession penalty.
• Voting “yes” would lead to longer queue times for popular professions since the matchmaker would initially prefer 2 per match.
• Voting “yes” would lead to worse matches because larger skill differentials are preferred over smaller differentials with stacked professions.
• Inability to change profession to balance out a teams roles and eliminate weaknesses. If you get two thieves, you’re stuck with two thieves. Almost every profession has one good build with small variation and one role, so switching build isn’t a viable solution.
• Because you can’t change profession or build to make a more balanced team comp, winning or losing becomes more based on luck with matchmaker.
• Profession stacking actually gets worse because players avoid queuing as professions with clear-cut weaknesses (thief loses to DH, Necro gets farmed without support, support ele needs good DPS, etc.).

To any rational person, the reasons for “No” far outweigh the benefits of “Yes”. The “Yes” vote was initially winning because people make rash, uninformed decisions based on what they want it to do. As people read arguments for “No” and realized that “Yes” had unrealistic outcomes attached to it, “No” overtook “Yes”.

I would also make a suggestion to ANet: Before you enable voting, post the poll choices and let players debate it for a day or two.

Emdrix.6124:

Idk why most people voted no, if classes were locked it would be possible to see the best players of each respective class and the matchmaking would have been more accrurate.

I don’t know why so many people voted “yes”.

If professions were locked, winning or losing would be largely based on luck with getting a better team comp. Get 3 support or 5 DPS? Oh well, bend over and take it! That makes rating less accurate, not more accurate.

To counter the luck element, more players would play strong 1v1 builds which can survive in team fights like warrior and dragonhunter. Playing something which has clear weaknesses like support ele (can’t win if DPS is weak) or thief (not good against lost of DHs) is too much of a liability.

And this truth is hilarious considering most people voting “yes” probably thought this change would reduce class stacking.

kdaddy.5431:

ummm i have the pictures at plat levels of engys and druids hard countering the DH/warrior teams i was on.

DH dramatically over-performs compared to skill level until you get to platinum. DH has a low skill ceiling, so it gets stuck there.

Warrior is similar in that it can do crazy damage while being effectively immune to CC and damage more than long enough to kill. At lower skill levels where players don’t think to avoid damage and watch for the burst setup, they dominate. Like the DH, warrior over-performs compared to skill level until you get to platinum.

So yes, warr and DH need nerfed – what needs nerfed about them is how the build carries players at lower skill levels.

chask.6028:

People live in this white and black world. Here comes anet with a solution to their problem, and having NO one capable of telling the future to predict the consequences they still assume it’ll have a devastating impact. Overwatch did it. JS.

Comparing GW2 to OW is apples and oranges. OW has fixed builds and roles. And most importantly characters (role+build) is selected once in the game – not before. It’s also not locked inside the game – you can change characters in the spawn area.

Wait – the trio actually played as a team and was aware of the map, and they ended up beating the PUG which didn’t? Seems fine to me.

Ya, no.

Game Modes
We’ve had two alternate games modes (Courtyard and Stronghold). Both fell flat. If gameplay is interesting, lack of variety is acceptable. If gameplay is stale – like it is with HoT – then no amount of mode variety will make it interesting; new modes will just be a new toy that everyone abandons after a few weeks.

Anyone holding up GW1 GvG as the pinnacle of PvP needs to take off their rose-colored glasses. GW1 GvG had numerous flaws and would have even more when translating it to GW2.

Balance Patches
Frequency isn’t the problem. The problem with the balance patches is the scope. HoT elites have been way too strong and faceroll for over a year, yet they’ve barely been scratched.

Rewards
The current reward system is infinitely better than the old locker system. With ranked rewards, we have PvP-exclusive items. As long as ANet continues to add more PvP-exclusive items, we’ll be fine.

Here’s how you really improve PvP

Nerf HoT elite specs
The brain-dead strength of HoT elite specs has been the biggest detriment to PvP. We have thieves killing people by spamming dodges and evades. You have dragonhunters which do crazy damage while sitting behind massive heals and blocks. You have warriors which are immune to damage and CC while butting out high damage and CC. Everything is throwing damage and CC around with no consequences for playing poorly. Maybe the very top can deal with them, but for the majority of the playerbase, this is not fun.

No, you can’t buff core up to elite level. Elite specs go with two core specs and this will just exacerbate the power creep. Nor does it address the overly forgiving gameplay. The biggest thing which needs to be addressed is the ability to deal heavy sustained damage while being immune to damage or CC or strong effects which are virtually guaranteed to land.

Team Competition
Competitions for organized teams need to return.

Solo queue is a joke; it removes the element of teamwork and coordination for no benefit, while increasing hatred between players. All solo queue does it let 1v1 champions and far pushers thump their chest.

Poelala.2830:

Exedore.6320:

S/F fresh air ele is mostly fine. A few of the weapon skills (I’m looking at you, Shatterstone) could use improvements.

The massive power creep from elite specs is what needs nerfed. They’re holding back not only s/f ele, but many other specs which used to be viable before HoT.

Wrong. Every meta build counters it, most war builds counter it, most scrapper builds, mesmer builds, revenant… Tell me this. Do you expect to EVER see an s/f ele in legendary? No, you don’t, because they suck.

Every meta build is an elite spec. Nerf elite specs back to core levels, and s/f is fine. How is that hard to understand?

S/F fresh air ele is mostly fine. A few of the weapon skills (I’m looking at you, Shatterstone) could use improvements.

The massive power creep from elite specs is what needs nerfed. They’re holding back not only s/f ele, but many other specs which used to be viable before HoT.

Apolo.5942:

2- A change is gameplay design is by no means all inclusive, its simply a change in how the game is played. Since HOT pvp has become ever increasingly more frenetic and spiky, while pve tends to be more methodical and technically based (generally speaking). PvP popularity has greatly decreased while pve has increased. So you can either double down on your current design and say kitten it let be what it can, or you shift the design, but something has to give.

It’s easy to fix: nerf elite specs.

PvP got worse because elite specs added more stuff total, were over-tuned to make up for playstyle shortfalls, and added a lot of “get out of jail free” cards. PvE got better because the creature and encounter mechanics became more challenging. You can nerf elite specs without affecting PvE.

When we had both solo and team queue, team queue was actually for any size group (1-5).

Team queue consisted of players who tried to work as a team and were generally smarter, better, and more enjoyable. The solo queue was a crapshoot and the winner was the team with the fewest clueless players. There was also a ton of whining in solo queue with many players focusing on winning their 1v1 fights instead of winning the match.

Spartacus.3192:

Exedore.6320:

People whining against team queues in ranked are just using it an excuse for their own failure and unwillingness to improve themselves or work as a team.

Alternative view

People whining against Solo/Duo queues in ranked are just using it an excuse for their own failure to win solo and requiring a premade to help carry their low skill kitten . .

So let me get this straight. Assuming that those players are bad as you claim, you’re saying that simply by queuing together as a group, they dominate? Despite still all being bad and likely unable to work together as a team. That’s ridiculous.

If you’re talking about top players queuing with bottom players, then there’s a limit to how far they go, and it will be well below the top 250. This can be addressed by putting a limit on the difference between min and max rating in a team queue.

Players asking for team queue want it :

• So that they can play with friends
• Because they enjoy the depth of teamplay which is absent from solo/duo queue

The original vote for solo/duo was poisoned by the horrible pip system of the previous seasons. Players were matched against other players of incredibly disparate skill levels because there were so few people in their pip range. They incorrectly blamed teams.

Running season 6 with full queue would serve as a good contrast without the extra variable of the matchmaking system.

Bad idea. Limiting ranked queue size is hurting PvP more than helping.

The arguments against larger queue sizes in ranked are nonsense and full of holes:

• Premades have Voice Comm Many group queues don’t use voice comms or don’t use it well.
• Premades Always Win I’ve seen them lose quite often. The fact that the group queued together doesn’t mean their more coordinated than a PUG. Premades also get an inflated matchmaking value, making them more likely to fight higher rated solo players.
• Premades have a Better Comp Anyone can swap professions before the match starts. Talk to your teammates.
• Team Queues get higher ranks It’s a team game. Coordinating as a team should be reflected by a higher rating.

People whining against team queues in ranked are just using it an excuse for their own failure and unwillingness to improve themselves or work as a team.

Here’s the harm that the restriction causes, which are related and build on each other:

• Discourages PvP Participation Many players don’t play or don’t play as often because they can’t play with multiple friends. MMOs promote groups, but the queue restrictions prevent that.
• Degrades Teamplay PvP includes working as a team – playing your build’s role, rallying allies, being aware of the map, etc. Solo and duo players ignore these and when both sides do this, it just degrades further. There are no true teams to show the others they need to work together in order to win.
• Promotes Toxicity When you don’t have teams, the blame for a loss goes flying. And when players can’t escape the toxicity by playing with friends, it frustrates them.

Yes, let’s kill GW2 PvP even more!

1. Disagree. Elite specs should be nerfed so that they’re not so stacked. This would also promote skillful play. The benefit to buying HoT should be more variety – not more power.
2. Wouldn’t help much. Most people don’t bother reading those.
3. Good for a stretch goal, but there are more immediate issues.
4. Some passives are okay. The problem are the passives which completely negate mistakes. Getting protection for a few seconds when stunned is reasonable. Breaking out of stun and getting another bonus when being stunned is too much.
5. You’re mixing instant-cast skills and procs. Instant-cast skills are okay when they can’t be excessively stacked or have a down-side. Instant damage procs are almost universally unhealthy.
6. Balance patch frequency is subjective. Doing a few small things every month is one way, but doing more substantial things every 2-3 months is also reasonable. The problem we’re seeing is that we have substantial outliers which don’t get addressed in balance patches at all. So it’s less about frequency and more about scope.
7. Agree
8. Disagree. The matchmaker already tries to match players of similar rating, but with low population in off-hours, you can’t have players wait forever. Your boosting change affects nothing as players who want to boost will just make an alt account where they intentionally lose games before they boost.

1. We have placement matches
2. There’s a minimum PvP level requirement to do ranked matches
3. Making it the same as PvE is too extreme and unnecessary. They just need to split the amulet into 3 items and allow mix-and-match.
4. Having every line be viable in every mode is unrealistic. Elite specs do need nerfed in order to promote skillful play and open up diversity, but it’s okay if some trait lines are more PvP-friendly as long as you have significantly different playstyles within a profession.
5. See #4
6. Nope. Conquest is fine and 1v1-3v3 is a side-show. Your view of conquest shows that you don’t understand its depth.
7. Nope. If you want large-scale, go to WvW
8. Way too much work for very little return
9. Automated PvP tournaments would be nice.

YarrCaptainJuan.7248:

When I read this topic I can’t figure out what’s different about having just a poor player in general reach platinum by being carried in the same example.
His F2P, Vanilla, or HoT status shouldn’t matter?

Nothing. OP is just looking for an excuse because he can’t accept that he’s not as good as he thinks he is.

Ithilwen.1529:

I don’t agree. I remember the days of 5 rangers and the days of 5 hambow wars rolling over everything in sight.( Hambow continued to be dominant for weeks or months before it was addressed. )

Lol wut?

Hambow was strong, but nowhere near as strong as elite specs are. Hambow also had weaknesses, like being able to dodge or kite their CC chain.

Dhuumfire was nerfed in PvP a few weeks after it made its debut. Even then, you couldn’t just stack necros outright. Same with petting zoo rangers.

martin.1653:

Pretty sure stacking is problem in any MMORPG.

Not a problem in WoW. Wasn’t a problem for most of GW2 up until HoT.

The problem is runaway power creep. HoT elites need nerfed.

Decay is added at midnight UTC (when dailies reset). I believe the decay for that day is based on the time since last game played (you don’t get -100 on the first day).

No, there can’t. “Ruby Hell” existed because of how flawed the S1-S4 pip system worked.

Player skill is not really a fixed number, but a range which includes their current rating value. That rating number can move around in that range. The way you got “Ruby Hell” was because you couldn’t fall out of Ruby and prior divisions had safeguards every few pips. When a player had a good day, they progressed and passed a boundary, so they couldn’t go back on their bad days. But once those safeguards are removed, they can’t progress at all because their bad days would cancel their good days.

LouWolfskin.3492:

Stacking was a problem though.

Stacking was a problem because balance was (and still is) bad. That’s why ESL decided on their rule.

What OP is saying is that any future tournaments should allow class stacking. That makes the balance problems more apparent, and the thinking is that it will force ANet to address them faster.

You have to balance for both the top and everywhere else. That’s what many people forget. If something dominates at low and mid skill levels, it chases away a lot of the playerbase. However, you don’t have to balance as finely below the top the top. You just have to balance enough to stop a few low skill, high reward builds from dominating.

Right now, there are a few of those low skill, high reward builds: dragonhunter, berserker warrior, evade spam thief. They aren’t a problem for top players, but for the other 95% of the playerbase, they’re extremely frustrating to play against.

Stability was changed from duration to stacks mostly because of WvW. When it stacked duration, having a large number of guardians gave you huge stability durations.

In PvP, the stacks typically outlast the duration of stability or the pulse rate is high enough to not matter. The only difference in PvP is the potential to stun through pulsing stability (mostly for elite transformations) without boon strip.

They have a terrible company communication policy. About the only thing they can talk about is acknowledging bugs. Explaining design goals is a no-no.

So because a small fraction of players abuse it, none of us can have it? No thanks.

You can ignore that player and I think you can make a custom chat without map chat.

sephiroth.4217:

I’m trying, I’m just not as good as these players :’( (duo q ranked 19/20)

So hard to climb out of Silver I swear….

Trying to figure out a way for that matchup to happen during NA primetime, but I’m at a loss. That’s one for Evan to investigate. You may want to make a new thread about this so that it gets more visibility.

The rating system is good enough, the reward system for ranked is almost there.

The problem is power creep. It’s just so repetitive and spammy.

Sooloo.1364:

This was voted on between seasons, what we have now is what won the vote. Devs aren’t going to look into this again anytime soon.

It’s only for this season, however. There will be another vote whether to keep it, which needs to get a super-majority to win.

Celtus.8456:

Gw2 PvP in 2017 is like: “Guys if everyone is broken that means the game is balanced right?!?!”

Pretty much.

OP’s list is funny. Builds which “play themselves” like DH and warrior are fine, but revenant, which requires actual thought and decision making, is underpowered.

On #3 Developers

Here’s my beef with developer interaction: there’s barely any! We can’ get basic class design philosophy answered. It’s one thing to have a goal and do poorly, but we don’t even know what the goal is!

The biggest unanswered question surrounds elite specs. When elite specs were first revealed, ANet said they were side-grades and not intended to be more powerful than a core spec. It’s now over a year since HoT launched and elite specs are still blatantly more powerful than core. But ANet has yet to come out and say, “It’s still the intent that core and elite are equal; we goofed” or, “We changed our minds; elite specs are stronger than core.”

A few paragraphs every few months saying what they thing is too strong or too weak and in what areas would be sufficient.

Isn’t ability to carry part of skill?

Population isn’t big enough to support separate queues.

Win ratio doesn’t matter. What matters is who you win or lose against.

The goal of the matchmaking system is to put you with and against players of similar skill. As such, you’ll win about half your games. Other people with higher ratings and similar win ratios are playing people at their skill level.

Since I was curious, the latest completed arena season in “that other MMORPG” had ~114,000 players on NA.

Kokoro.8437:

logic fail.

Top 1% of the population is still 1% of the population regardless of if the distribution is gussian, or linear or normal or circular or inverted.

Ya, you got me there.

But your analysis is still flawed because NA and EU have different rating distributions. EU’s ratings spread out a bit more, so it’s picking up a disproportionate amount. If you go to 2.5%, that’s currently rank 194 in NA, which ends up being over 7700.

Further, there’s a good chunk of players who have decayed off the leaderboard. GW2Efficiency is likely using real rating and not decayed rating. If it used decayed, the 50% mark would be well below 1200.

I’d wager NA is closer to 10,000.

Kokoro.8437:

I am of the opinion for my second example, that since both teams have an average of 1800, the reward and punishment for all players on both team A and B should be normalized.

That doesn’t work well. What you describe is the “Composite Teams” approach in this paper:
http://rhetoricstudios.com/downloads/AbstractingGlicko2ForTeamGames.pdf

Stand The Wall.6987:

Exedore.6320:

Glicko2 can be adapted to games of random teams and a matchmaker applied. Many games besides GW2 have done it.

I am very curious to know what games use glicko 2.

• GuildWars2 of course.
• CS:GO uses modified Glicko2.
• Various online chess systems use it.
• Dota2 uses what is similar to Glicko based on their descriptions.
• Microsoft’s Trueskill has a Bayesian approach just like Glicko. The biggest selling point of Trueskill is that it has built-in support for random teams whereas Glicko2 has no official method for that.

fishball.7204:

500 rating is too far, even 400 is. Anything above 250 should be scrapped, there’s a massive skill difference between someone at 2000 and 1750.

Yes, a 2000 player vs. a 1800 player is night-and-day. But what about a difference between 1000 and 1400? Your example of the very top is an outlier. You can’t hinder the majority of players to address a very specific case. And if a top player did queue with someone much lower, do you think their carry potential at the average rating is strong enough to outweigh the risk of losing big?

Kokoro.8437:

just to put things into perspective regarding total pvp population, according to gw2efficiency, a skill rating of 1850 is about where the top 1% of the population is.

Looking at the current NA leaderboards, 1850 MMR is at about rank 70.

Thus, one can extrapolate that there are maybe up to 7,000 players in TOTAL on NA that have played 10 or more PvP matches in the last one and a half months.

That’s not a very good estimate. It’s unclear if GW2Efficiency is counting real rating or decayed rating. The leaderboard is decayed, so you’re likely underestimating by a lot.

Kreweless.2196:

And I’m still a little weary of starting new accounts (or players new to sPvP) at 1200. A brand new player most-likely doesn’t have the average set of skills that an active PvPer does.

“Average” is based on the population; it’s not based on any set of skills or knowledge. If 90% of players smash their face into their keyboard to control their character, then someone who smashes their face to PvP is pretty average.

Kokoro.8437:

Exedore.6320:

You can get larger differences in the ratings of teammates because of:

• Group queue when the two players have a large rating difference.
• Low population – being at the extreme (top or bottom) of the ratings or playing at off-hours.

Volatile rating aside, why should these two affect the the MMR gains/losses of players on the same team by up to 10 times or even more?

Being at the top or bottom end of the ratings means nothing if the matches you are put in also have people at the top/bottom end of ratings on the other team.

And why should two players who have any difference in rating be rewarded differently for playing the same match?

Rating gain or loss is based on the player’s rating relative to his or her opponent’s rating. Using a 1500 opponent as an example:
- A 1800 player is expected to win. He or she receives little for a win, but loses a lot in a loss.
- A 1200 player is expected to lose. He or she receives a lot for a win, but little for a loss.
- A 1500 player has a 50% chance to win. He or she will lose or gain the same amount.

Low population comes into play because the matchmaker expands rating range for a match the longer a player is in queue. That means a player 1900+ can end up in game where the average rating is 1800. The 1900 player won’t gain as much for a win as the 1800 players.

With group queue, you can have people of disparate ratings in the same match. If the 1200 and 1800 player from my example were in the same group, their average rating would be the same as the opponents’, but they would have different gains and losses.

Should’ve mentioned it originally, but each game you play removes up to 100 decay. None of the decay is permanent as Orangensaft.7139 pointed out.

The decay system is pretty bad since it punishes people who play in bursts (especially weekend players), but it can be defeated by one game every 3 days. Decay should only affect the top, be based on games/week, and have a permanent component.

Kokoro.8437:

From my understanding, the matchmaker tries to put together equally rated teams. If this is the case, shouldn’t the MMR gains and losses from a match be more uniform across the board for all members of the team?

You can get larger differences in the ratings of teammates because of:

• Group queue when the two players have a large rating difference.
• Low population – being at the extreme (top or bottom) of the ratings or playing at off-hours.
• Uncertain or volatile rating. Glicko2 will adjust ratings by a larger magnitude if it’s uncertain of a player’s rating. As that player plays more often and his or her outcomes are more predictable, that uncertainty goes down. It can go up if the player does not perform to expectation or has been inactive.

sephiroth.4217:

Exedore.6320:

One important thing to note is that Overwatch does limit the skill differential on a group queue. I think it’s 1500 rating (in a system of 0-5000) between highest and lowest member of the group.

Do you think it may be beneficial for GW2 to implement the same cap on matches and skill rating?

Say maybe 200? I know our playerbase is not as big and this could result in slightly longer queues but I think it would be better for measuring ones skill rating more accurately.

The purpose of the differential cap in OW was to stop top players from trolling average and bottom players (average group rating is used for matchmaking there) – basically stop outlier matches.

Assuming 1200 is the true mid-point in GW2 ratings, the equivalent differential in GW2 would be 720. I would say dropping that differential to 500 would be reasonable, but anything more and you’re hurting the ability for friends to play together.

Three days before it starts and -100 per day to a maximum of -700.

Saiyan.1704:

I’m curious where your faith in these test-run Placement matches came from because so many people got screwed over because the system “wasn’t perfect.”

A DC player meant an instant loss. Some unlucky blokes have gotten 3x DC in a row. My 60% winrate means, statistically, i’ll win 6 out of my 10 games. Well I got a DC and another 1 unlucky game where some one dc’d but came back before 2m.

Meanwhile you have those certain few who duo on alt account where one person DC’s to prevent a loss… cheating the system completely. You’re right it’s not perfect, it’s down right broken.

“so many people”

I doubt that. You’re using a few accounts from the vocal minority and assuming it’s the norm. When I look at my friends who PvP, all but one landed in the ballpark (within a couple hundred points) of where they should have been (based on personal assessment and where they are now). So clearly it’s not perfect, but nor is it too flawed to trust.

In the case of DCs and AFK trolls, they typically account for a small percentage of matches and affect teams equally. The only exception would be intentionally trying to snipe someone’s matches.

Some info and studies:
http://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/The_Glicko_system_for_beginners1.pdf
http://rhetoricstudios.com/downloads/AbstractingGlicko2ForTeamGames.pdf

Microsoft Trueskill is another rating system. The FAQ has a comparison between Glicko and Trueskill, but Microsoft’s write-up is just a little biased.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/trueskill-ranking-system/
Glicko2 can be adapted to games of random teams and a matchmaker applied. Many games besides GW2 have done it.

Kreweless.2196:

Chase.8415:

I much prefer Overwatchs division split

I don’t think they divide the leagues. We’ve seen plenty of anecdotes in the forums about Silver players matched with / against Platinum and higher players.

Overwatch does not have league restrictions on matchmaking. However, they do have a much larger playerbase, so finding a close match is easier and faster.

One important thing to note is that Overwatch does limit the skill differential on a group queue. I think it’s 1500 rating (in a system of 0-5000) between highest and lowest member of the group.

Saiyan.1704:

What I meant was, Placements are utterly broken in doing what they’re suppose to do.

I was placed in Silver and made it to Plat in a month.

So you’re one out of how many? Rating systems aren’t magic and there are sometimes outliers like your example. But I’m skeptical that there wasn’t some other factor within your control causing you to end up that low.

1. Spam. This is mostly true. HoT meta builds are mostly spam except for the very top of the playerbase. The spam needs reduced in general so that decision making is more important at all levels of play

2. Rewards. Agree. Ascended shards need spread out and the cap removed. Decay needs adjusted and only affect the top of the playerbase.

3. Top Player Groups. They have to play someone. The only solution is a larger population, especially at the top.

4. Build Diversity. Agree. Power creep drove out a lot of “just under meta” builds.

5. Non-meta. There are some non-meta builds which can work, but you have to play significantly better than an opponent on a meta build. Most meta builds are far too forgiving of mistakes.

6. Amulets. The stat system in PvP needs to offer more variety. I suggest limiting to 3 items of 3 stats each and allowing mix-and-match. ANet needs to stop using it as a balance stick and balance the real problem: skills/traits. Even with amulet removal, the same things remained powerful. The four-stat amulets are pure power creep.

7. Communication. What we have is okay. It could be better, but it’s not holding PvP back.

8. New Maps. They’ve added new maps, but most are terrible, even new Skyhammer. New maps aren’t holding the game back though. If we had build diversity, games would play out differently on the same small map pool.

9. Perma-Evade. This is a duplicate of #1, #4, and #5.

10. Small Community. You’re exaggerating. Fixing the power creep would help a lot.

steelheart.7386:

We don’t need more placement matches necessarily what we need is a hard MMR reset.

Is this the new excuse when you aren’t as good as you think you are?

You can’t go to a basically solo queue league system and rely so heavily on MMR a lot of people built up playing mainly in groups in the past for initial placement.

Full resets have much more volatility. It’s harder to make good adjustments up and down when you know nothing about anyone. If you leave rating intact (or a soft reset), then any outliers who were boosted in previous seasons can easily and quickly be adjusted. Your claim is based on a an awful assumption that everyone’s rating is incredibly wrong.

hackks.3687:

“Skill rating” is accurate??? lol

It’s 5v5 and you can’t queue with a team but you are rated only on team performance. That’s 80% of the effort and decision making on your team that is entirely out of your control. That’s 80% of your rating that is not derived from your actions.

Accurate he says… ROFL

Researchers have run simulations on rating systems, including ones with random teams. For the most part, players are properly distributed based on rating, even with random teams. There’s room for improvement, but it’s not like an average player ended up near the top or bottom.

Saiyan.1704:

It’s why the Placement matches is an utter joke and it’s why things always start to “settle” towards the end of a season.

You’re misinterpreting the purpose of placement matches and are vastly exaggerating their inaccuracy.

Placement matches basically exist to mask the large rating shifts when your rating is relatively unknown, especially if you haven’t participated at all or in a long time. If players saw rating changes of +200 or -200, they’d freak out. By the time you finish those placement matches, your rating is relatively close to where it should be and shifts will mostly be small. There are outliers, but the majority will be in the ballpark.

It’s important to remember that rating should not be thought of as an absolute number. In Glicko2 there’s actually a second number, rating deviation, which expresses the bounds where you skill actually is. Shifting up or down 50 points from day to day is perfectly reasonable and doesn’t mean the system is inaccurate.

Another thing to note is that when you compact ratings (like the soft reset), it does take a while for players to spread out again, especially at the top and bottom. If you’ve been near the top since the start of the season, you’ve probably noticed your rating go up by 50-100 points since the start. This isn’t an affect of individual games played, but requires all players to play more games.

1. Some stun/daze needs to removed or scaled back. It’s part of HoT power creep.
2. It does work the same, but it has a lower range.

On your matchmaking rant, you’re probably just looking at people’s decayed rating value, which can be up to 700 below their real rating. Their real rating is used for matches.