Guild Wars 2

Decay has nothing to do with matchmaking, or glicko 2. It just affects where you show on the leaderboard.

Your rating and deviation do. See these thread for an explanation.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/How-placement-matches-work/first#post6501962
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Suggestion-for-ranking-next-season/first#post6502151

When I bought the ascended skins in season 5, I bought a set that I haven’t unlocked with the glorious track. It did not unlock the skin, so you would sill need to do the glorious track to unlock it for transmutations unless the recent update changed something.

Haleydawn.3764:

If you want the Ardent skins you can just buy them, they’re in a seperate tab.

To me the quantity of time gated materials is a bigger deal than gold. There already is a time gate in that it takes more than a season to create a set of the armor. Even for the beseeker’s example, who would wait 1 plus seasons just save 70 gold? If it is going to be this expensive, it should at least have a new skin.

Comparing the amount of time gated materials for crafting normal light ascended armor:

• 36 silk weaving thread
• 24 thick elonian cord

Time gated materials needed for sPVP ascended armor for 20 grandmaster tailor’s marks. This equals one set of ascended armor:

• 20 lump of mithrillium
• 40 silk weaving thread
• 20 thick elonian cord

Why would anyone craft this now?

If you like the skin that much, you should be able to farm the skins in less than 40 days doing the glorious title track.

Magnito.6187:

A few months ago they came up with a poll about wether pvp should be restricted to to solo/duo queue only. And I was stunned by the fact so many people voted yes for that.
(I’d like to remind you this is a team based competitive game mode)

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.

Yet again, community, you’ve left amazed. Turns out a lot of people voted against it. And I just can’t find the reason why. Is this just me?

The way I read it, you couldn’t switch characters once the match started. However, once the match was made, but before you were locked in you had the option to switch up and roll 5 thieves if your team wanted. All it seemed to prevent was people from switching out of a build that you figured out wouldn’t work after the first fight, or switching at the end to get a profession based win for their backpack.

I have a suggestion that would incentivize the players at the top of the leader boards to play more matches against themselves, and play less on alts. Use the lowest value of the 95% confidence interval vs. the players rating, (the bottom of the error bar on the graph). Note: decay is completely different than deviation and is not factored at all into the rating calculations.

Why this will discourage “sniping”
There are currently two ways deviation will increase. Playing lots of matches against players that are rated much lower than you, and going inactive for a period of time. The advantage of getting a high deviation when ladder position is based only on rating is you can get much bigger gains than your peers for a win. If you combine that with queue dodging and playing off hours you have good odds of getting substantial rating increases for little risk. In the example plot, there are two scenarios of players that started at a rating of 2100 and deviation of 70. The blue player played 10 matches with a 60% win rate against players with a rating of 1950 and deviation of 70. The red player played 10 matches with a 90% win rate after they went inactive for a week to let their deviation grow to 150. As you can see the current system favors the person that takes time off and plays against lesser opponents. However, if you look at the bottom of the error bar after 10 matches the blue player is ahead. In fact the red player has to win 8 matches in a row just to catch up to the blue player even though he has a higher overall rating.

Why this encourages more unique players at the top
When you are at the upper end of the rating curve you run out of players above your rating. If you play a large number of games at a 50% win rate you end up with a deviation of around 60. Once you get above a 50% win rate, and run out of players above you, your deviation will increase. That means when you lose, you will end up losing a lot more points than you gain for a win. The bigger the gap between your rating and the opponents, the bigger your deviation will become. I attached a table comparing different win percentages over 344 games played against an opponent with an 1850 rating. It shows an approximate win % you would need to sustain a given gap over your opponents. If you have a 300 point differential, you will need to be able to sustain an ~90% win rate and won’t be able to get your deviation below ~78. For a 125 point differential you need a 70% win rate with a min deviation of ~64. However, if you queue with people near your rating, you will be getting the same amount of points for a win or a loss, and your deviation will be right around 60.

With the loss of the short term benefits of high deviation, the top players are better of ensuring they are always queuing when other top players are on. That way they won’t lose as many points for a loss, and they will be able to keep a lower deviation.

Here is a dump of the current NA rankings. As you can see if every player in the top 10 had multiple alts, it would be very difficult for top tier players to get matches where their opponents had a rating close to theirs.

Rank	Rating
1		2336
2		2223
5		2061
10		2008
25		1951
50		1865
150		1809
250		1794

TLDR: If you use (Rating – 2*Deviation) for the ladders vs. just rating and keep a high rate of increase for deviation, it will make rating “sniping” ineffective and will incentivize all players to play more matches. If you don’t increase deviation for inactivity, you have ELO where you can camp at the top once you get there.

I was bored this offseason so I put together a spreadsheet based on the glicko 2 algorithm to see how the system works. There had been a lot of questions about how the initial placement matches work, and I thought the following plot was useful for showing how the system works.

The glicko 2 system has two parts to it, a rating and a deviation. The rating is your “skill level” and the deviation is a measure of how well the system thinks it knows your rating. The system is 95% confident your “skill level” is +/- two deviations from your rating. The guild wars 2 system will start you with a rating of 1200 and a deviation of 350. So it is saying it is 95% sure you will be somewhere between a 500 and 1900 rating. As you play more matches your deviation will go down to a point.

The example plot shows two players who both went 6-4 over their first 10 placement matches. The blue player ended up in high tier gold while the red player ended up in mid tier silver. The dots represent their rating, and the error bars represent the 95% confidence interval of that rating. Each player played matches against opponents that were within 150 rating points. The blue player won their first 3 matches while the red player lost its first 2. The first matches have the biggest impact on your rating. Also, there is still overlap between the players predicted skill level even with a ~400 rating difference since they have not played enough matches to have a very accurate rating.

One other thing to add. Season 5 started with a “soft reset”. Player’s rating was averaged with the starting rating of 1200. So people with a rating equivalent to silver started between 1125 and 1275, gold 1275 and 1325, platinum 1325 and 1575.

References:
http://www.glicko.net/glicko/glicko2.pdf
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm as of 2/15/16

Just make sure you duo queue with them.

You probably lost to a mid/low tier gold team.

Ironically people are complaining about both ends of the deviation. One it makes it too easy to climb, the other it is too easy to fall. However, it is the core difference between gliko and elo.

Decay does not factor into the equation anywhere. It just artificially alters your leaderboard position or changes your badge color.

Pun.8153:

Gaile Gray.6029:

A message from the PvP Team:

In order to ensure the league leaderboard maintains a display of healthy competition, we will be enabling a new minimum games requirement. Players who do not have the minimum number of games required to stay on the leaderboard will be removed each time decay is calculated.

The current season is more than half complete, so the games threshold will be set to a lower value than what we expect future seasons to use. The current minimum is 40 games. Future seasons will ramp up the minimum game requirement over the length of the season and a UI component will display this value.

We are excited to see how fierce the competition gets as the season comes to close. See you in The Mists!

The biggest problem is own system, the game reward works terrible. I look wiki page that explain it and it dosn’t correspond to reality. Easy, you win you get 11-13 points ( 99% times ) you lose you get -13 /-14 points ( 99% times ) and don’t play with a friend then, if you win 3-4 points and if you lose -19/-24 points. This “system” it’s broken obviously.

And yes, you can tell me lot of info about this, about another one amazing thing of system that we can’t see, several improvements, but I look reality and it sucks.

It is related to your rating and your opponents rating. Queue with a friend that has a higher rating and you should be getting more points for a win than a loss.

Cal Cohen.3527:

This mustache creep is crazy

It’s official Pink sheep left the haters in Minecraft for GW2 PvP.

Solstace.2514:

I know you’re taking a beating in this thread, so I’ll give you some positive feedback. Most people wouldn’t have the courag to post videos of games they lost. Hindsight always makes your errors and play mistakes obvious but during a match it’s not that easy.

There’s lots of things to improve on and despite the vitriol, these guys have offered some good advice. Honestly this is probably best way to learn is to be critiqued. You can easily plateau in pvp if you don’t have someone show you the more subtle complexities

For a minute there I thought you were going to say I did something right that match :-). On a more serious note, it wouldn’t mind seeing more matches posted.

Only way I’d want that it’s of they track how many times people surrender and group those people together in matchmaking

Vicky.4563:

The match was winnable. The large difference in score is due to Temple’s snowbally mechanics with the buffs. Losing a team fight has a much larger consequence on that map, and you guy’s could’ve won those teamfights. Your team was not significantly worse than the other, and all your gripping about scores or whatever means nothing. You just tagged more dead guys than the rest of your team.

Not sure why you think I’m griping. I just stated the stats from the match. I was just trying to state both sides of the argument.
1) I didn’t play well enough to win and the loss was my fault.
2) My team wasn’t good enough for me to win.

You hear the argument between the two sides all the time on the forums. I intentionally posted a video of me losing where if you just look at the end game stats it looked like I played well, but if you watch the match, there was plenty that could have been done by me to turn it.

Welcome and enjoy the stay!

StickerHappy.8052:

Faux Play.6104:

StickerHappy.8052:

Faux Play.6104:

First off thanks for the feed back. I agree with most of it. However, I’m a little disappointed that some of you couldn’t pick up on the [/sarcasm] tag and the fact that I put a question mark in the subject line. Perhaps your thread awareness needs some work. xD

I don’t think I’m a great player, I have watched the top tier player play and there is a noticeable difference between how they play and how I play. There is a long laundry list of things I could have done better. Even though the final score was 501 to 308, (an unwinnable blow to some) if I would have made a few plays we would have had a lot closer match and possible won. If I were replaced with a druid that was legit high gold or plat my team most likely would have won.

However, I did post the video because I think it is a poster child for what people are QQing about. One could make the case that I lost because the other team had a duo, they had a better comp, and in general my team was bad compared to the other team.

• My team got 3 kills total.
• I got credit for all 3.
• My team had 21 total deaths.
• I got the only two resurrections on our team.
• I lead the team in every stat but total damage and defense.

If you want to be a defeatist, the match maker gave me an unwinnable match and I should have afk’d 5 minutes into the match. If you want to take a more positive view, I could clean up a few things in my game play and be able to turn the match.

The stats don’t mean anything in this regard. You guys were all terrible. Your stats might be inflated because everyone is bad. I have no idea how you reached gold. Seriously.

Yes I get your sarcasm but you posted a thread before that an average player can reach gold.

The answer is YES AT THIS TIME BECAUSE EVERYONE GOOD GOT OUT OF GOLD ALREADY. So this is basically bronze vs bronze/silver with a few outliers in gold division.

Judging by the fact that you are shocked a player of my level was in gold (NA) most of the season and is able to get back into it proves my point. You don’t need to be Helseth to get out of bronze or sliver. In fact you can be so mechanically bad that, that if a competent player views your game play they have the same reaction as people seeing 2 girls one cup for the first time.

However, the forum is flooded with people QQing about how the matchmaker is out to get them and they can’t carry 4 people. Someone with that attitude could easily look at the stat sheet for my match and say they aren’t at fault and blame the loss on their team. However, if you look at this thread, nearly everyone seemed to think my play was a major contributor to the loss.

Oh yes. Let us get this straight, you will not get to gold if all of us started at bronze. As long as the skilled players are there to keep you in check.

YOU DO NEED APPROPRIATE SKILL TO GET OUT OF DIVISIONS It just doesn’t look like it because there is no competition anymore there.

So here is the thing, this gives you a false impression that you are progressing just because there is no one to keep you in check for that. Now, let’s say gold is the top division, your argument is that you will stay in bronze am I correct?

Which ultimately leads to one answer The need to get better.

If you do not see this as an absolute truth, take in my example above. Gold is the top division, if you do not get better, you will be stuck in bronze.

If the ladder had the same tiers as we have now I would get there at a slower rate than the better players but I wouldn’t be stuck in bronze. There is plenty of room for me to get better so if I work at it I can improve.

StickerHappy.8052:

Faux Play.6104:

First off thanks for the feed back. I agree with most of it. However, I’m a little disappointed that some of you couldn’t pick up on the [/sarcasm] tag and the fact that I put a question mark in the subject line. Perhaps your thread awareness needs some work. xD

I don’t think I’m a great player, I have watched the top tier player play and there is a noticeable difference between how they play and how I play. There is a long laundry list of things I could have done better. Even though the final score was 501 to 308, (an unwinnable blow to some) if I would have made a few plays we would have had a lot closer match and possible won. If I were replaced with a druid that was legit high gold or plat my team most likely would have won.

However, I did post the video because I think it is a poster child for what people are QQing about. One could make the case that I lost because the other team had a duo, they had a better comp, and in general my team was bad compared to the other team.

• My team got 3 kills total.
• I got credit for all 3.
• My team had 21 total deaths.
• I got the only two resurrections on our team.
• I lead the team in every stat but total damage and defense.

If you want to be a defeatist, the match maker gave me an unwinnable match and I should have afk’d 5 minutes into the match. If you want to take a more positive view, I could clean up a few things in my game play and be able to turn the match.

The stats don’t mean anything in this regard. You guys were all terrible. Your stats might be inflated because everyone is bad. I have no idea how you reached gold. Seriously.

Yes I get your sarcasm but you posted a thread before that an average player can reach gold.

The answer is YES AT THIS TIME BECAUSE EVERYONE GOOD GOT OUT OF GOLD ALREADY. So this is basically bronze vs bronze/silver with a few outliers in gold division.

Judging by the fact that you are shocked a player of my level was in gold (NA) most of the season and is able to get back into it proves my point. You don’t need to be Helseth to get out of bronze or sliver. In fact you can be so mechanically bad that, that if a competent player views your game play they have the same reaction as people seeing 2 girls one cup for the first time.

However, the forum is flooded with people QQing about how the matchmaker is out to get them and they can’t carry 4 people. Someone with that attitude could easily look at the stat sheet for my match and say they aren’t at fault and blame the loss on their team. However, if you look at this thread, nearly everyone seemed to think my play was a major contributor to the loss.

First off thanks for the feed back. I agree with most of it. However, I’m a little disappointed that some of you couldn’t pick up on the [/sarcasm] tag and the fact that I put a question mark in the subject line. Perhaps your thread awareness needs some work. xD

I don’t think I’m a great player, I have watched the top tier player play and there is a noticeable difference between how they play and how I play. There is a long laundry list of things I could have done better. Even though the final score was 501 to 308, (an unwinnable blow to some) if I would have made a few plays we would have had a lot closer match and possible won. If I were replaced with a druid that was legit high gold or plat my team most likely would have won.

However, I did post the video because I think it is a poster child for what people are QQing about. One could make the case that I lost because the other team had a duo, they had a better comp, and in general my team was bad compared to the other team.

• My team got 3 kills total.
• I got credit for all 3.
• My team had 21 total deaths.
• I got the only two resurrections on our team.
• I lead the team in every stat but total damage and defense.

If you want to be a defeatist, the match maker gave me an unwinnable match and I should have afk’d 5 minutes into the match. If you want to take a more positive view, I could clean up a few things in my game play and be able to turn the match.

I placed into NA gold, have dropped down and come back up. But after reading the posts on the thread, maybe I’m really a top 50 player and the match maker is keeping me down. [/sarcasm] I’ll even post a video of gameplay.

https://www.twitch.tv/ccreynolds/v/116793391

Looks like some of the wow is dying crowd has moved to gw2.

How do you manage your mouse for ground targeting skills. I tend to lose track of mine because it disappears when you use your mouse to turn.

shagwell.1349:

Yeah, that’s the main problem. We don’t know how the mmr really works and “how are teams created”.
And I guess that may lead – under some circumstances – to terrible matchups and losing streaks.
My guess is that this problem is somehow related to the number of games, the matchmaking trying to create “fair” games and the lack of players in a certain mmr range.

The devs posted the sudo code for it. Not sure what you don’t know.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm

In the first 4 seasons I got diamond once, other seasons I was ruby. I started this season in gold. I had a loss streak that put me in bronze. At the time I started tracking in bronze I had a 40% win rate over 185 games played. I was able to climb back to gold solo queue by winning 63 of 102 matches. Since reaching gold my win rate has been ~56%.

Your rating will always be a range. Some days you will play several tiers better than your rating and some days you will be several worse. If you objectivly looks at your matches, you will see you are leaving points on the table every match. Yes you will get bad players on your team, but they are in your peer group. In order to advance, all you have to do is win more often than they do. Even average players can play out of bronze.

I posted a table of my results and screenshots below:

				Played	Won	Win %
Bronze Start   	185		74		40.0%
Reached Gold   	287		137		47.7%
Current        	        347		171		49.3%
Bronze to Gold 	102		63		61.8%
Gold to current	60		34		56.7%

Spoichiche.1290:

Typical na gamer :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfPOFSXQpdQ

Sorry, couldn’t help myself :^)

Haha. this is the reaction time of a typical NA gamer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIkgSJcRlF4&feature=youtu.be&t=96

Typical euro gamers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miOWJ4rKb_g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLDytJC655c

Bio Flame.4276:

Syncing only worked, or worked better with a lower population.
But you’re right, it did exist.

Still, I am pretty sure it could be solved if ANET had used as much resources and Dev work-hours as they do to this idiotic matchmaking system.

And what you didn’t mention was that the GvG scene had a better matching system than GW2 ever did.
As for balance, whether you agree or not, the fact remains that balance was A LOT faster and better in GW1.
Faster, quicker, happened more often.

People would just go to a weird district like romainian 2 and queue. It was nearly guaranteed to get the same people on your team as the people in your district. Balance was not a lot faster at the most it was monthly. Any build that didn’t have all the expansion packs was virtually useless. It was a great game, but there is clearly better matchmaking now. I thought GW1 had better PvP game modes, but not having a dedicated healer/prot character limits what you can do.

Ithilwen.1529:

@blaquefyre

….

It would be much more impressive if a more typical player were able to do the same.

….

Ironically you are ignoring the post right above yours.

shagwell.1349:

Just another thought on that. I remember a rumour that players were mixed in “winner” and “loser” teams in season 3 (or 4?) which made matches absolutely terrible and created that ruby hell.
What if this system still is in place?
Helseth would almost never end up in a “bad” team that way, because he had a 80% win ratio – only if there is no team with positive win stats and the system picks players available instead.
If the system ever worked (don’t remember if this was the case) in a way like that, there would be no way a “good player” with a new account would be stuck in bronze, because he would always get the good teams over the bad ones if enough players queue up.

edit: my bad, someone mentioned it already..

I’ll post some facts. In the first 4 seasons I got diamond once, other seasons I was ruby. I started this season in gold. I had a loss streak that put me in bronze. At the time I started tracking in bronze I had a 40% win rate over 185 games played. I was able to climb back to gold by winning 63 of 102 matches. Since reaching gold my win rate has been ~56%.

Your rating will always be a range. Some days you will play several tiers better than your rating and some days you will be several worse. If you objectivly looks at your matches, you will see you are leaving points on the table every match. I bet even Kittymeaomeao will admit that he could have squeezed a couple more points out of some of his matches if he would have made a different play. Yes you will get bad players on your team, but they are in your peer group. In order to advance, all you have to do is win more often than they do.

I posted a table of my results and screenshots below:

				Played	Won	Win %
Bronze Start   	185		74		40.0%
Reached Gold   	287		137		47.7%
Current        	        347		171		49.3%
Bronze to Gold 	102		63		61.8%
Gold to current	60		34		56.7%

Soothsayer.9206:

Your analogy with Michael Phelps will suffice. His personal MMR would necessarily have be determined by his efforts in an individual event and not in a team event, why? Simply put, his team MMR is determined by his team not him alone, and his personal contribution has the potential to help his team and that’s all it can do. His team is not guaranteed to win no matter how great he might be individually or how high his individual MMR might be (it is only the part and not the whole itself which is what you are confusing).
If his team stinks (has low MMR), no matter what his individual MMR might/would be (which could have only been determined in an individual event) it can only have a a partial bearing in a team event and that’s the nature of team sports (the larger the team the smaller the influence). If/when he loses, his MMR goes down with his team in spite of the fact that his personal MMR (current system).
Furthermore, his individual MMR will suffer (current system), not because of his individual effort, but because of his team, and that in spite of whatever his individual effort and MMR might actually be (again, individual MMR can only be truly determined in individual events and not team events because your contribution cannot be equated to the whole team itself, but is always and only a part of that team and nothing more).

The fact that the OP went from bronze to legendary is reflective of the fact that he took advantage of players that are inexperienced and not even remotely as skilled as he is. it debunks nothing. what do you expect when you put Michael Phelps in the pool to race against high school swimmers? wait though, Phelps went from high school to Olympic Gold competing from high school (although in reality he is an Olympic superstar), right? (the current argument) What did you expect the outcome to be? Do you genuinely think high school swimmers to even remotely compete with Phelps? if you do, then there’s nothing else to say.

Remember, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

If you took 1000 swimmers of varying levels, and had them race 4 person relay races using this system the Olympic caliber swimmers would end up on the top and the bad swimmers would be on the bottom.

If you are rated below your skill level, you will be able to “take advantage” of people you are playing against.

Shaogin.2679:

I’m really curious about all the logic flying around here. What conditions exactly must a player go through to prove that you will eventually end up in the division you belong? Apparently seeing a player start in bronze and climb to legend isn’t good enough. So what would it take to show you guys that it is possible, or are you guys dead set on denying ant evidence that doesn’t support your claims?

I doubt they will listen to anything that doesn’t support their viewpoint.

ReaverKane.7598:

Faux Play.6104:

ReaverKane.7598:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Bio Flame.4276:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Cynz.9437:

Evan Lesh.3295:

.

.

What was GW1s release schedule for balance patches? I’m pretty sure gw2 is either more often or on a similar schedule. I’ve yet to see a competitive game where people don’t complain about the matchmaker, or claim to know more than the developers. If only they all got together and made their own game we would finally have a perfect PvP game.

So a couple points:
1) I never said i knew more or less than any dev, i just pointed out the game is well on it’s 4th year of existence and matchmaking, which is a fundamental thing to have working properly is still not doing it’s job. And that if we count only the ranked seasons, this is the 5th. So it’s the 5th design/balance cycle and it’s still not right.

2) The fact that they got it right in GW1 just makes the fact that they can’t in GW2 that much worse. They had ~10 years of GW1 and ~4 of GW2 to get it right.

3) DOTA, the original one, was pretty much the perfect PvP, same for the original CS. And their new versions aren’t that much worse, LoL is pretty good if you discount the community. There’s a lot of great PvP games that work well, which is why, there’s lots of examples of how to do it right and what not to do.

The common denominator with what’s wrong with those games, is that as soon as they reach a commercial level, and grow a large enough community that community becomes the problem.
What’s the common complaint with LoL, DotA, CS:Go, Etc.? It’s the toxic elements of the community.

And GW2 still doesn’t address that, which is compounded by a flawed matchmaker, by the inability to queue as a team, which make the toxic elements more prone to not-so-legal actions.

4)Then there’s the whole calendar… It’s backwards…
Look at LoL, that’s my go to example since it’s the one that i play the most. Their seasons are pretty much 1 year long, BUT they have a WEEKLY update cycle, with constant balances, new champions and reworks.
We have 2 month seasons and 2 month update cycles. Which means we’re stuck with entire seasons of unhealthy gameplay. AND when there’s a cycle, the changes are usually too mild on the bigger picture, so we pretty much have the same meta since HoT released, sure there’s some changes or others, Necros went from powerhouse to meh, but Ele, Mesmer, DH are still pretty much the same classes they were 1 year ago. That leads to a stagnant game, a frustrating game and a game where EVERYONE that has any ambitions of progression HAS to play the meta. Any deviation leads to splat, and that’s before the MMR and matchmaking shenanigans.

Honestly, when leagues were announced i had a small nerdgasm, that was about the time i was most into PvP, which was my go-to for off-living story time. After HoT launched PvP was a mess, then leagues came, the mess didn’t improve much, they tweaked a bit here and there and the meta started refining, but it’s still close enough to that, except now you have unkillable classes that can kill you pretty fast, unlike at the beggining where you’d be dancing around for the whole match without doing anything to each other. It’s an improvement, but doesn’t address the flaw.
To this date PvP is still meh, i have to force myself to participate, because it’s just not fun, especially now that most of my friends don’t play, and even if they did we couldn’t play together.
So i get my off-living story fix on other games, which is actually fun.

The gw1 system was random, but it was exploitable and people would be able to sync join in randoms. As for balance, smiter’s boon.

Ragnarox.9601:

Hes lying he was playing duo with a thief.

Not sure if you are talking to me or kitty, but I have not played a single match as a duo this season.

Stand The Wall.6987:

skcamow.3527:

It very clearly proves that if you are skilled, you can get out of the lower tiers playing solo.

what was not proven is if you get a loss streak, and I mean a bad one, improve, and succeed leaving the tier.

This thread meets your requirement. Gold player ends up in bronze then climbs back out to gold.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Climbing-out-of-bronze/first#post6459694

BloodriverTim.2031:

This is a bad representation of the how the system works. If he played a good number of games in bronze, then tried to climb, it would show what most users complain about. His mmr was still volatile enough to have the system pull him out of bronze, but if he got a 50% win rate for say, 30 games in bronze and then tried to climb, he would have a much more difficult time of it.

Not true. I was able to climb from bronze to gold on my main. I did not get more than 18 gain on any single win. Most were in the 10 to 13 range. I don’t belong in plat/legend so I will continue to hover around in gold. Average players can get where they belong as well.

Personally I have very little interest in WvW because you need to grind gear to play it, and there would be considerable expense if you want to change your build. If I already have a set of ascended gear, I would be more likely to participate in WvW. Ironic isn’t it…

It’s special place Will be the trash since you posted their account.

ReaverKane.7598:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Bio Flame.4276:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Cynz.9437:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Found a couple minor bugs in addition to the lack of reshuffling. I’ve also worked on a new version of the matchmaker that will improve roster size and profession matching. We will likely trial it during the off-season.

If I remember, I will update the wiki!

So we have to endure the bugs and flaws of the current system (that certain players abuse) until next season? Lovely… :/

Perhaps you’d understand if you researched a bit on game development. Should be tons of resources if you feel like googling; things like quality assurance, build processes, release management, etc.

Since your reply was so disrespectful and pratronizing, I’ll answer on the same tone:

Perhaps you’re understand if you researched yourself on PvP-centric games and their balance schedule, such as GW1, LOL, DOTA2, Overwatch, etc…
There’s tons of resources if you feel like googling or better yet, just ask ANET’s Devs how they managed to do fast updates on GW1.

Get off your high horse, it’s not helping you, nor the players, nor the game, nor your job…

Didn’t mean to be disrespectful! I also don’t have access to a horse. I just didn’t want to try describing our entire internal build process to explain why a change won’t get to live as quickly as players may want. The bugs I mentioned for the matchmaker are so minor that they don’t warrant a hot fix. The new matchmaker is not worth risking game stability in a hotfix either. The earliest build to ship these on with adequate testing that doesn’t throw off the rest of the studio will be the off-season build.

There are a whole lot of other teams shipping things here that are part of the flow too, and its a fun dance to make sure we’re all getting things shipped with a comfortable cadence. If PvP was its own standalone product with no shared resources like the games you mention, then shipping changes quickly might be easier.

Yet you weren’t so worried on shipping at least 5 iterations of broken matchmaking, i mean its SEASON 5, 4 years post launch, and PvP still isn’t viable. Maybe when the game’s 10 years old and you’re working on GW3 you’ll have the chance.

I get it, you want to get it right, BUT the problem is, the game’s not getting any younger, it’s not getting more relevant, the competitive scene isn’t getting more competitive, and you’re still working on a proper matchmaking algorithm. That’s something you should have been iterating WEEKLY on season 1 or earlier if you wanted it to go right.
Oh, and seasons are too short, which, if you look at other competitive games, is one of the factors that increase match fixing, and other system abuses, now add that to already flawed algorithms, and people leave your game.

What was GW1s release schedule for balance patches? I’m pretty sure gw2 is either more often or on a similar schedule. I’ve yet to see a competitive game where people don’t complain about the matchmaker, or claim to know more than the developers. If only they all got together and made their own game we would finally have a perfect PvP game.

Kreweless.2196:

alemfi.5107:

Lucius.2140:

alemfi.5107:

Btw, gw2 efficiency only use the data of the people registered there?

Yes, it is not the complete database of players. Only anet has that.

gw2efficiency is pulling data from 24,550 accounts for PvP League Rating statistics; don’t you think that’s a large enough sample size to deduce trends like OP is attempting?

The sample needs to be representative of the population too.

To me it seems like you are playing against lower tier players. Let’s say yo are gold and he is bronze. You really should get rewarded the same for beating people that are below your level as he does for bearing people above his. Makes me think it is averaging the two ratings, or it is taking his vs yours.

Screenshots? When I have had decay is was in units of 100. So something seems odd.

I would expect a loss for a top player to be more significant than a mid gold player.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Cynz.9437:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Found a couple minor bugs in addition to the lack of reshuffling. I’ve also worked on a new version of the matchmaker that will improve roster size and profession matching. We will likely trial it during the off-season.

If I remember, I will update the wiki!

So we have to endure the bugs and flaws of the current system (that certain players abuse) until next season? Lovely… :/

Perhaps you’d understand if you researched a bit on game development. Should be tons of resources if you feel like googling; things like quality assurance, build processes, release management, etc.

Glad to see changes are in the works. Just from a layman’s point of view, having a trial period between seasons to iron out any kinks sounds a lot smarter than a knee jerk change in the middle of a season.

You forgot to nerf ranger pets and make a dps else with sustain.

I have had longer loss and win streaks this season than the others, but I don’t think there has been a huge difference.

Annabel.5127:

Archon.6480:

Annabel.5127:

http://imgur.com/a/r6p79

Yeah, sorry to see that Annabel. I am glad to see you bring this up. I just pulled my brother in from PvP and I kept showing him the leaderboard and telling him you should be in first place. That was a few weeks ago.

I started a thread or two with some, maybe bad, ideas about how to add something to the scoring to push alt accounts out of the running so they can’t be used to manipulate the matches.

Can you think of some ideas of how to do this? You are clearly one of the best and might have a better perspective. The best ideas I could come up with were:

1. Add some kind of account based grind component to keep seldom played accounts out of the running (everyone hated this idea… A lot)
2. A threshold to keep accounts out of platinum/legendary matches (50-100 games played or something)

What do you think?

Yeah a game threshold an account would have to play to qualify for top 25 placement was my initial thought, maybe require 50 games before your account would show up on the leaderboard regardless of your MMR. there’s a number of good solutions that have been posted across threads for this.
The thing I can’t figure out how to fix is match manipulation, how does Anet create a system that is punishing to those who would abuse it and friendly to those who might just get an unlucky DC? Moreover, how will they detect when someone is throwing games and who is just playing bad? What can be implemented to prevent a third person from queuing and throwing for the other team? unfortunately I don’t think theres any easy solution to this

1) Remove player’s names from matches, If you don’t’ know who is on the other team, or your team you won’t know if you should throw to knock a certain player down.

2) Have community based observers for matches. If names/guilds are stripped from the players, community volunteers could observe matches and administer punishment for obvious infractions. I’m sure there will be subtle ways to throw matches that can’t be easily picked up, but by just having an official observing the matches will reduce the amount of offenses.

I disagree with most of it. There is plenty of confusion and torment in the game which will quickly filter out the people that blindly spam skills or run around like a chicken with its head cut off. Maybe the game is more twitchy now, but do you really want reduce the game to turn based combat? It mostly sounds like someone that doesn’t like the current DH builds.

What I do agree with is there are passives that need to go. Passives that trigger immunity at 25%/50% health that is always active should go. Several of the rune passives need to go to. You shouldn’t be applying CC conditions to someone when they attack you for free, and no way for the attacker to know this will happen until they hit you.

Shaogin.2679

• #3 No, this would actually take away some of the fun of the game, and I really don’t understand what match manipulation or queue dodging this solves. Just no point in this.

• #4 Also not sure what match manipulation issues you’ve been experiencing that would make you suggest this, however, this could actually cut down on a bit of the trash talking during matches, so I’m in favor of this. Really, there is no reason players need say, whisper, or map chat during a match anyways.

It is a fact that people add people to their friends and block list in order to either avoid them or try to queue with them by chance. If you don’t know who the players are you are playing with and against you can’t do this.

Shaogin.2679

• #5 Only if they bring back Team Queue. Currently, blocking bad players/trolls/toxic players/afk’ers and queue dodging them is the only way to make sure you don’t get stuck with them on your team. I’m sure people abuse this to avoid better players too, but if you remove this feature you will screw over every player that just wants to enjoy pvp without other people that are deliberately trying to ruin it.

If player names are not available, you could implement community officiated matches. Then you could get someone to immediately validate reports of AFK players and feeding trolls. There is no way a-net could do this without free community help, but there is no way the community could do this if they knew the player/guild names of the people being reported.

Shaogin.2679

• More Radical Suggestions: No. All Ranked PvP needs is Team Queue, nothing else. I’m sure Anet will always keep Solo Queue around, but honestly it is just hurting PvP. People say they don’t want to have to bother with finding teammates, and then come to the forums to complain about the team Anet gave them. People say the population is just too small for Team Queue to exist, yet Anet can consistently find a team for everyone in the queue in under 2 min most of the time. Anet admits they can not accurately judge your individual performance in a match, yet you people think your individual rating is somehow accurate. What solo, duo, and trio players need is their own game mode.

There were two reasons for the suggestion. First, it would force people to play each other for final rankings. The way the system is now, people in the top 10 could theoretically never play each other during the season. Second, it would provide a way to get official team based tournaments for all levels.
The issue with teams is it takes time to make them and less people are going to be interested in them. I used to do HOH in GW1 a lot. Even with a good friends list it could take 30 minutes just to get into a match. God forbid you lose the first match and then you end up spending another 15-20 mins picking up more players. If they have scheduled events for the team based matches it would give people time to prepare in advance.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Faux Play.6104:

To me the biggest thing is still matchmaking. I think the system is way better than it was in S1-S5. Grind based rewards are separated from skill based ratings and you can see your MMR now. However, there are still issues (maybe just perceived) that need to be addressed: both match manipulation and the decisions behind the system that actually make the matches. To me the most important things to focus on for matchmaking are more transparency on skill ratings for who we are playing with/against, knowing what we want the match maker to do, and to eliminate in game tools that can be used for match manipulation.

1. Show all individual’s stats and MMR + gain/loss at the end of the match.
   —This will allow people to give fact based feedback, and see for themselves if the match making is working as intended.

…but it won’t, my friend, it won’t. We already have the pseudocode and constants used by PvP stuff, and the MMR display, and people still complain that it’s broken, they don’t understand it.

They also demonstrate that, eg, they firmly believe that the change in MMR is related to the MMR of the other team, not the expected win/loss and their own volatility, with comments such as “we shouldn’t lose 45 MMR for a loss against a higher MMR team”, etc.

Your suggestion is an “economist” suggestion: it would be absolutely correct, if only we were not all fluffy, kitten-headed kittens who made decisions, and hold beliefs, for all sorts of irrational reasons.

There have been a few cases where people have identified issues. If people have the tools, they will be better able to document things that looks suspicious in the MM system vs. venting about how the system is out to get them. No mater how good a job the developers do, there will be some stuff that gets through.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Show all individual’s stats and MMR + gain/loss at the end of the match.
—This will allow people to give fact based feedback, and see for themselves if the match making is working as intended.
^^^
no.
this will allow people to give hate based feedback to lower rating players.

Currently we have a whole thread dedicated to trying to figure this out. Based on what I’ve seen there is not a huge variation on an individual team’s rating, but the difference between two teams can vary quite a bit. Gold playing high plat/legend. If people see this happening all the time then they know they have a valid basis to complain. However, if it is only happening once every 300 matches then they should have more confidence in the match making algorithm. Right now most of the forum complaints are mostly exaggerations and wild speculation with a few legitimate concerns lost in the noise.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Give everyone and their pets a generic name for the match so you don’t know who you are playing with or against. (e.g. Red1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
—Prevent match manipulation and queue dodging
^^^
no. just no.
this removes individualism and uniqueness of players.

There is plenty of time for that while you are queueing. The match making system should be making the decision who plays whom. People dodging others puts players that exploit the system at a higher rating than they deserve. This in turn undermines the whole match making system. The most visible example is at the top of the ladder. While the people that are ranked in the top 5 with a 13-0 record are most likely better than any platinum player, they probably aren’t better than the player that has 200 matches under their belt but is ranked in the top 20.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Disable map chat, whispers, and say in matches.
—Prevent match manipulation
^^^
no.

I would like someone to offer up how often they have a meaningful discussion in map chat or whisper during a match vs. the normal “you suck”, “uninstall pleb”, and “I’m reporting you for hacking”. You can use emotes if you want to taunt people. It will require less time to type out too.

Thanks can’t wait!