Guild Wars 2

A decision was made to turn off matchmaking over the weekend in the Unranked Queue.

It was known this causes blowouts as solo players get farmed by premades.

Why not set the matchmaking to high in Unranked, causing the majority of players, who are average MMR, to get a challenging match?

Yes, the queues would be very long for top skill players in Unranked.

But the majority of players would have had fun.

I don’t understand why they chose to let the blowouts happen instead of letting longer queues happen for the top skill players.

I dunno, when my MMR sank I got the worst possible teammates.

NeXeD,

I am not trolling at all.

Earlier you spoke that “weak players should get ‘rekt’ or get better”.

In the GW2 matchmaking system when it is set to strict matching, you are going to be facing players just as skilled as you are. Nobody is going to be “rek”-ing anybody.

The entire GW2 design is to have challenging matches with no huge advantage to one side.

But playing people you can easily “rek” because you are a lot more experienced and skilled goes entirely against the game design.

You tell them “suck it up; get better”. But you ignore that you had the advantage because you were “playing a lower bracket” in effect. The matchup was lopsided. The matcher screwed up. That’s what people are complaining about.

Your “get better” comment implies it was an even match and they played below their skill level. But they played AT their skill level.

GW2 has a Glicko 2 MMR system. It’s there so that people play opponents that are tough for them, not easy.

GW2 is instituting the Ladder Point grid that gives you points even if you lose. THAT, by the way, is a kind of handicap system.

GW2 gives everyone the same gear so there won’t be a WoW-type gear advantage.

In WoW, people can destroy people because their gear is typically much stronger and they have an advantage.

Playing a team from a much lower “bracket” is the same thing. Doesn’t matter if it’s a skill advantage or a gear advantage, it’s a lopsided match.

Anyway, I am old enough to be your grandfather, probably. I am going to bed.

“The #1 player is a horrible player, most people think shes a bot.”

But apparently her teams do better than expected consistently even though they still lose some.

Why would the buff team always win? The buff is just to make for an EVEN match by giving just enough buff to level the playing field.

I can see how the gear-based MMO mentality is behind some people’s thinking. That thinking is: if you have earned the power and a big advantage, you get to use it to dominate.

That’s WoW, etc.

NeXeD.3042:

We don’t have brackets…..

A team made up of players that are on average worse than their opponents shouldn’t be given an advantage… they should get better or get rekt. That’s what competition is.

No, I’d say that completely mismatched teams are the opposite of competition. LOL.

NeXeD,

Well, please explain how the “contact” thing makes a difference on why you should have not have handicapping in GW2?

Aren’t brackets a form of handicap? Do you think there should be brackets?

NeXeD.3042:

Every team I have ever played against in ranked pvp has been premade all rank 80 most of them in sparkly glorious hero armor, and all of them in the top 5 on the leaderboards, this was even when we had soloq.

Clearly you must be awesome if you won games.

NeXeD.3042:

Laserbolt.6731:

Archaon.9524:

Justin ODell.9517:

That would suck for the more rated team, since you’re lower than they are they wouldn’t be getting points. All lose and no win doesn’t seem very fun, so I doubt they’d enjoy it. Could be wrong though.

Losers are NOT meant to get points omg…just look at old freaking gw1, in GvG losers were just losing…never getting points for that, in ha was the same: high ranked teams facerolling and bad players just sitting in a corner with nothing until they managed to get better and somehow winning…this is how a competitive game should work…rewards for losing is only gonan promote farming that is the worst thing that can possibly happen in a pvp wannabe esports

stop

rewarding

losers

just…stop.

That only makes sense if every match has a 50/50 win chance for each team.

Which means a handicap system to level the playing field. Such as faster score ticks for the weaker team.

Why should a weaker team have an advantage?

To make the winner the team that played better than their average ability.

Do you know what handicaps are in golf, bowling leagues, etc? Maybe you are not aware of these things.

I agree. The goal is to have games that you have a chance of winning if you play really well, and lose if you play worse than your average play.

Lopez.7369:

Justin basically turned off matchmaking until next Tuesday. It should get better then.

More precisely, it should get better after the 16th and during peak hours. In the off hours the matchmaking will generally be “off” to speed up the queues, just as it is this weekend so far.

Dave,

I’m seriously wondering if can they really predict, with 95% confidence level, that Team A has exactly a 20-39% chance of winning… based only on the MMRs of the players (which were calculated in matches full of confounding factors like 4×5s, afkers, teams on Teamspeak, groups playing with each other against them and knowing each other;s typical roles!)

I guess we’ll find out when they start adjusting the numbers of the predictor on the matches that already happened. My best guess is that they aren’t going to be able to make it predict the previous games all that accurately. I HOPE they can, but I have my doubts. Too many random factors in the creation and adjustments of MMRs.

Dave,

I meant there is no computer calculator that accurately predicts pro football games at the accuracy GW2 needs for FAIRLY awarding Ladder points from it’s grid.

I used fantasy football because it somewhat parallels the GW2 situation where you try to predict games using individual player stats that were gathered with them all playing on different teams.

It recently occurred to me that if you cannot accurately predict pro football games even with all the stats they have…

…how can we create an Expected Win prediction that is accurate enough to fairly award ladder points?

How accurate are the BEST football predictions? Consistently.

Isn’t it something like 60% accurate at predicting which team will win on any given Sunday?

Personally, I think the Expected Win function is going to prove to be a real challenge.

I mean, just look at Fantasy Football predictions! They are only about 60% accurate for a given game. And the have all kinds of stats to feed it.

Lopez,

Yes, I am certain they will adjust something to prevent the leaderboard behavior observed since the Dec 2nd patch, and any other unexpected anomaly found in the Dec-Feb “test season”.

Lopez.7369:

The ladders have already proven to be junk, anyway. They’re based far too much on playing a lot, not being good.

Can’t you play a lot and lose points because you consistently cause your team to score fewer points than the Matcher predicts, though?

If your points go up its because your team wins or plays at expected skill, right?

I wonder if weak teams will troll Unranked for lawls because they have an advantage farming solo players using Teamspeak and well-rehearsed roles on every map.

Maybe they will enjoy that more than having a low ladder ranking from being destroyed in Ranked Queue.

Been reading all the main threads. Been reading developer’s posts. Been playing a lot.

Here’s how it seems to be shaping up:

The better you get, the harder it will be to find a challenging match…unless the entire player base improves at the same pace.

New matchmaking can be tightened up to give really good games for the average MMRs in the queue. But then high MMR players get long wait times until more top players join the queue to give them someone challenging to play against.

Ladder points are awarded based solely on how well your team scored compared to the matcher’s expectation. So, the accuracy of matcher’s expectation is absolutely CRITICAL.

Here’s why: if the matcher calculates that your team has a 60% chance of winning, but in reality you have a 5% chance of winning, you are in big trouble. You will lose a couple of ladder points when you naturally get blown away.

So…the Expected Winner function has to be very accurate or you get junk ladders. They are running simulations of matches using the actual results of all the real matches that have been recorded since Dec 2. They are using them to “tune” the Expected Win calculator.

Once it accurately predicts what really did happen in the recorded games, they will be ready for ladders. They have to get this right.

style.6173:

Matchmaking has been broken since the update. What makes you think they’d change something just for this weekend?

Matchmaking gets pretty good when Justin raises the minimum acceptable matching score.

Queue times get long for top players, but average players tend to have good to great matches.

Justin stated that he has to monitor the wait times and lower the minimum acceptable match score if the queues get too long. If he is on duty this weekend, he said he can do this again (in an earlier thread).

By the 16th, the monitoring will be automatic and will not require Justin to baby sit things.

If they let you queue from anywhere, you should automatically be yanked from whatever you are doing and put right into the match you queued up for.

Otherwise, it’ll create 4×5s or longer Q times waiting for people to “just finish up real quick this thing I am doing”.

Chaith.8256:

80%+ Winrates from queuing into unranked solo are possible, so I think your luck is to blame man. Either that or you’re playing downedstate glass Warrior/Ele/Engi

Exactly. If top teams are stomping all night, then 5 people are getting stomped each time. Those that hang in there and keep trying can easily rank up 17 losses if there are mostly top MMR teams in the queue.

When Justin is on duty he turns on stricter matching and the matches even out, the queues get longer for players of high MMR and to some extent very low MMR. If they get too long, he sets it to start “mixing brackets”.

If Justin works tonight I would expect he’ll do that again.

Archaon.9524:

Justin ODell.9517:

That would suck for the more rated team, since you’re lower than they are they wouldn’t be getting points. All lose and no win doesn’t seem very fun, so I doubt they’d enjoy it. Could be wrong though.

Losers are NOT meant to get points omg…just look at old freaking gw1, in GvG losers were just losing…never getting points for that, in ha was the same: high ranked teams facerolling and bad players just sitting in a corner with nothing until they managed to get better and somehow winning…this is how a competitive game should work…rewards for losing is only gonan promote farming that is the worst thing that can possibly happen in a pvp wannabe esports

stop

rewarding

losers

just…stop.

That only makes sense if every match has a 50/50 win chance for each team.

Which means a handicap system to level the playing field. Such as faster score ticks for the weaker team.

I don’t think it is his skills at all. He is a tenacious player. I’ve seen him on the boards over the years. He doesn’t give up and seems to keep joining queues even when the matcher is not matching.

If he was being thrown against high-MMR teams that are on Teamspeak repeatedly, I can see him joining again and again, and getting the same result.

I think anyone making the “you must suck” argument (in so many words), really don’t know how bad it gets when there are several top tier teams in Q and solos are being fed to them game after game for hours and hours.

I admire him for being honest on the forums. Lots of people would hide the losses for fear of exactly these “you must suck” comments that ALWAYS appear in these cases. But by being honest he helps the rest of us know that it is not just us.

“People look to the leaderboards to see who is the best.”

Best at what, exactly?

Not as simple as it may sound. It’s worth discussing.

Relentliss.2170:

tsawr.7905:

Lose 10 in-a-row? Must be a balance issue and not a lack of skill. Blowout happens, but if it happens consistently then you’d have to figure out that the only consistent thing in each map is you.

It is hard to believe that the op is so bad that he has that sort of effect on a game. Truth is he was likely placed in comps where he was facing a mob of stronger players playing cheese builds over and over.

Not to mention his opponents in groups communicating in TeamSpeak lightning fast about where to go, how many, and what to take next.

I spend lots of time deleting those chests and crafting materials.

“Playing against people higher than your own rank is crucial to improving yourself”.

No, I’d say WATCHING streams of top players and teams improves your ability… because you can replay and analyze and think about it.

In game it happens so fast, and with no combat messages to look back on, new players never really know what and when you did something wrong and how you could avoid being killed by that class in the future.

Chase.8415:

Playing against people higher than your own rank is crucial to improving yourself and overcoming those obstacles. The best PvP thrills are when you know you killed a player who is presumably better than you.

People just need to accept that there are winners and losers in PvP, and the system will try its best to make sure you get a 50/50 win rate, just give it time and it will place you in the proper brackets.

Right, matchmaking should be strict to enforce “brackets”. I agree.

The “thrill” of killing a top player 1v1 will be a long time coming for a casual player. And if it ever does happen, it will be because the top player screwed up. Not because the casual is as good as the top player.

Ryan.9387:

The game will lose its most dedicated players.

I cannot see how the answer is 500-0 games for them, demoralizing new players and casual players.

Strict matching creates a “bracket” for high skilled, top-tier team players.

They are only given matches in their Super Platinum bracket.

Seems fair to me. Brackets are standard in all serious games.

Gw2 match strategy and team combat tactics get a lot deeper as you begin to master them.

It’s much like the game of chess, I think.

And I believe the skill difference between casual solo players and a coordinated team on voice communications ramps up exponentially. It’s not a “linear” increase as communication and experience increase.

That’s why I personally believe it is essential to keep the matching at a strict level, regardless of queue time. This game is too deep for anything else.

There is no point, ever, to matching grandmasters with new players still learning the game.

Learning comes in 2 stages, and each takes time:

First, there is gaining the basic ability to use your class skills properly.

Second, there is knowing where to be and where not to be, in order to win the match. And you have to make a lot of good decisions in a match if you are playing an evenly matched, talented team.

If necessary, open some free custom arenas only for high MMR people and teams to enter… so they have someone challenging to play when no one at their high level is in the queue.

I am hoping that by February after the test season, this is all worked out so that people can find a fun match 90% of the time.

Also, your team’s score could tick faster when you hold a point, based on how much of an underdog you are predicted to be.

The top team has to hustle. But points would be awarded for wins, not losses at 300 pts.

You can use the “recently played” server on the list to get back with your team mates.

Justin,

Thanks for clarifying.

I realize you are not in control of all this, and the total PvP team makes the decisions.

But here’s a thought:

Long Q times turn off the top players (they get the longest Q from strict matchmaking)

Short Q times make them happy and all the rest of the people VERY unhappy (because they all get rolled and feel really ineffective and weak).

Looking at the MMRs, what is the largest population? Where do they cluster? I think that would be the group to favor in the Q time issue. The largest population of players.

The best time for the most amount of people.

QPT (Quality Playing Time) in player-hours.

Can that be arrived at by looking at blowouts and. assuming the loser hates them, and the winners mostly don;t enjoy them, multiply the QPT by 10 players * blowout match.

Also factor in QPT for long waits for high-skilled teams.

Compare and adjust to maximize QPT.

butch.8136:

Silentshoes.1805:

And what did a night of “testing” like this do to our MMRs?

Will we be getting these sorts of non-serious teammates for the near future then? And in the test season?

As Justin said, they got a fix coming. It’ll be def. in by next tuesday.

butch,

If solo-Q’ing tanked your MMR, won’t we be placed with low MMR teams from now on, unless we laboriously raise our MMR by “tending to win” of 40 or 50 games?

Thanks. I will plan accordingly.

:D

Just wondering when the peak playing time for sPvP is in North America, Central Standard Time?

Guess the budget is shrinking. Now they want unpaid, volunteer workers.

GhOst,

We’re just disagree on this.

“All you have to do is outplay and out rotate”.

Yes, all you have to do is play better than the high MMR team.

So simple! Even a low-skill player can do it.

:)

Relic Hellfire.6534:

I am currently in Avg. queue time of 22 minute in Ranked Arena. Seems like queue times are a little screwed up!

If you could see the few people waiting in queue, and their MMRs, you would see why it is taking so long to find you a good match for your skill rating.

I think Justin meant your average skill should not be the absolute determinant of a reward. The Ladder Point Grid gives points for “exceeding your current skill level” in a match.

I have started to just do hotjoin for practice during offpeak hours.

You will avoid the high MMR players in groups farming Unranked Q.

In hotjoin you won’t get a real match, but you won;t get a real match in Unranked during offpeak hours anyway.

Agree. I have also pushed for this.

I almost wouldn’t mind losing if I knew how skilled of a team I had faced.

And don’t discount the importance of voice-communications among grouped opponents. That alone should mean that 1+1+1+1+1 teams should have their odds of winning lowered significantly in the Expected Win calculation. I think Justin does use an adjustment factor that might capture the voice communication potential by noting the number of solo players on any team.

You either have to have brackets, or in-game handicaps like increasing the points-per-tick for the weak team…if you are going to have teams of different skills play against each other.

That’s why sports leagues like golf or bowling have handicap systems to make the awards go to the “most improved team”, not the absolute most skilled team.

Yes, the Ladder Point Chart (LPC) is now the “handicap mechanism”. It turns losses into “wins” by awarding ladder points in the event of an upset.

But these “virtual wins” confuse the actual Win/Loss percentage.

If you had in-game handicapping, such as greatly increasing the “points per tick” on the underdog’s score…the high MMR team would not get the win…the underdog would.

Chaith.8256:

Yep, quite simply, 500-0ing people repeatedly 60 times in a row sadly is about as slow as molasses at recognizing that your MMR needs to be… higher. Much higher.

The strongest teams I doubt will ever be reflected at the top MMR because they play the game assuming it won’t be fun 500-0ing and spawn camping some poor noobs for their entire playtime.

You are right. Brackets needed. One bracket cannot hold the range of skill that is possible with the GW2 game mechanics.

Perhaps they should just stop recording wins and losses.

If it’s going to be “Ladder Points”, so be it. Win/loss confuses things.

The only way Win/Loss would be correct is if there was actual handicapping employed within the match. For example, if high MMR teams got fewer “points per tick” on their score when they play a real underdog team of newbies (because that was the only match available from who was in the queue).

But now that handicapping is done in the Ladder Point Chart…. making the win/loss misleading.

This is what brackets are for, right? I wonder if any system can accommodate people of WIDELY divergent skill levels in one single “bracket”.

Some people have such amazing reaction time, quick thinking time, and super keyboard-dancing skills that they should always be playing against people at their level.

I know I am happiest when playing in my bracket.