Guild Wars 2

Sorel, I don’t know. But being expert at rotating and communicating is huge against an uncoordinated team.

Yet it’s the math of finding a match in a complex situation that drives my post. We can still discuss that. My example did not talk about desertions and “fake MMRs” that are artificially low.

So desertions should not end the discussion.

Justin,

It’s a tough, thankless challenge you guys have.

insanemaniac.2456:

dont forget to mention the low mmrs on team 1 are only low because they are deserters and before some tuesday deserting affected your mmr.

this is a classic case of match manipulation, which will no longer be possible since deserting no longer affects mmr.

Other likely explanations for low MMR is low experience and no skill yet. And that they joined ranked too early.

Justin said in another thread:

“I can mostly explain the first match (a blowout against top players). They had a very low rated player on their team, which skewed the average much closer to your team.”

Below is an example to think about. I’d like to hear your thoughts on it.

How should this be predicted by the Match Prediction?

Team 1:
MMR 2400 On TS, expert rotation knowledge
MMR 2200 On TS, expert rotation knowledge
MMR 2300 On TS, expert rotation knowledge
MMR 550
MMR 500

Average: 1590
============

Team 2:
MMR 1490
MMR 1600
MMR 1450 On TS , low rotation knowledge
MMR 1550 On TS , low rotation knowledge
MMR 1500

Average: 1518

Knowing the complexities of the game, can this situation be accurately represented by average numbers?

I’d like to hear the thoughts of people who know the game well about how this match would actually play out in reality, vs the math of averages.

With unload I can hit a heavy golem for 11,500 in about 6 seconds.

I enjoy plus one-ing a fight and using unload.

Is there an even more powerful weapon set for a plus-1 burst that is easy to land?

After January 27th?

Perhaps often the people we should be matched with are already playing in a a match at the moment.

If so, then making the waiting time long enough for a match to be played would allow those players back into the queue and provide better matchups.

“I personally think you should always get dinged at least 1 point for a loss regardless of win probability.

brannigan,

That seems unfair, though. You make people play in the wrong “bracket” and then penalize them for not winning against higher-bracket players.

The entire fixation with win/loss record assumes a player on a losing team must be a poorly skilled player.

The LB is basically ranking people who tend to score “above their bracket” more often…but the LB does not show these “virtual brackets”.

truthishly,

I queue solo and have not won a single match in two days now. Something changed.

truthishly.9513:

Is there a reason more premades would be queueing up just in the past few days?

Maybe because it is easier to win as a team and more and more people are teaming now.

And solo people get tired of being kicked around constantly and eating a loss no matter how hard they try.

It has a percentage win “chance” based on the average MMRs of the teams, how many are solo on a team or the other.

What is likely happening is that the queue has more premade groups than solo players.

The matcher cannot find two teams of pure solo players.

So it puts you against organized groups that are talking to each other in voice communications, and also have better team compositions and more experience playing together. They know their roles and their strategy.

Your team of random solos is at a big disadvantage.

When I respawn in a match, I am never quite sure how to best help the team as I leave the base.

I currently play a thief And I focus on two things: 1) flip any points and start the score ticking for my team, and 2) Plus-1 any important fights.

Who can share some good tips on using the MiniMap to get a fast idea of where to go?

What do you instantly look for?

I guess this problem is essentially the Personal Score Problem.

IF AnenaNet could come up with a Personal Score that closely reflected how well a player performed in a a match and how many team points they directly contributed to……then the Ladder would just need to be the player’s Average Personal Score for the season.

“Communication isn’t the issue so much as players being able to learn roles and smart strategies from gameplay”

I disagree. You can pass along so much crucial information and planning in a second with voice, and no one has to take their eyes off their fight. Knowing roles but not being able to share plans at lightning speed is a HUGE handicap.

When you join a Ranked match, what class are you generally happiest to see on your team?

Right now for me, it is Engies and Elementalists. I agree all classes can contribute.

Sorel,

No the team is not weak pe se…what I meant was the average MMR of two teams might be equal, but one is a group on voice comms, and the other is people without voice comms and who may never have played together before.

That makes the soloer’s a “weak team”, because they are handicapped by a lack of voice comms.

What is fundamentally a problem here is that the Ladder features individuals, but GW2 performance is team-based.

Logically, a GW2 season ladder would only have team names; not individual names.

The Problem:

How do you determine that a player assigned to a losing team played well enough to win if he had been assigned to the winning team?

We all agree (I think) that the best all around players should be at the top of the ladder.

We also know that solo people are at a disadvantage against teams with voice communications. And the Matcher cannot detect this in advance, leading to unfair advantage regardless of MMR matching.

*A good player placed on a weak team facing a real disadvantage should still rise in the ladder if that player plays very well . Agree?

If that player does everything right, rotates well, assists intelligently, does his job very, very well…should he be judged a poor player, based on the match loss?

That makes no sense. It was not the player’s fault that he was handed a no-win situation.

How could that be fair?

So how do do you determine when a player played really well on a weak team?

Suggestions? (Aside from separating team Q and soloQ, which does not seem likely again).

Have the professional ratings been “turned on” again, now that the test season is over?

They didn’t nerf Engineers and Celes as much as newer players would like because they know that with better playing you CAN now counter these builds because might is reduced. And they seek to have people rise to meet the challenge rather than making it too much easier.

I saw the PvP Team about a year ago on a video make allusions to the fact that nerfs are requested by newer players when really, people just need to improve and play better.

It’s like people complaining about turret engineers, but more experienced players are not worried about them.

I believe I read a post a month ago where someone showed that simply reducing might stacks from 3 to 2 would actually have a huge effect at stopping the “celestial” issue for the current meta that give huge might increases.

I don’t remember the math, and I dont play a celestial ele so I can’t reproduce the line of reasoning.

Josh Davis.6015:

Can confirm, Justin is awesome.

-Guy who sits next to him.

I can see from Justin’s comments that he values honesty and examining the facts objectively, based on evidence.

I suspect this attitude has earned him the respect of the team during internal discussions about what actions to take.

I have seen him admit he is wrong when he makes a mistake. That always earns my respect.

I like that he uses evidence-based thinking, rather than falling into emotional arguments…unlike so many posters on this forum.

Justin ODell.9517:

Yes, it is very likely we will be making changes and running another test season.

I’m busy crunching numbers right now and writing a ladder simulator so we can see what the results would have been with different rules.

That is SO cool. Great job.

“A lot of people understand one thing when it comes to pvp: pew pew.”

True. because that’s what nearly all other PvP MMOS and FPSers are about.

“You don’t take a high school basketball team and make them face the Knicks (and then subsequently reward the Knicks for winning (lol)! " —- ArrDee Frand

+1000

Boy is that ever true.

Lordrosicky.5813:

I used to be for a grindy leaderboard. But this experiement has shown me that it doesn’t work. The leaderboard must be about primarily skill or nobody takes team queue seriously at all.

But the skill measure MUST be fair. It can’t be your wins on weak PUGs against people on coordinated, experienced teams.

Justin ODell.9517:

Ekelon.7041:

Sorry Justin. I know you all had good intentions, but it doesn’t seem to have panned out as well. I am still impressed that Lexi managed to put in 800 games in the span of 4 weeks.

It was an experiment. We learn, we grow, we continue. I believe we’re going to do a postmortem on the forum about it soon where we’ll share what we found.

I look forward to it.

I, too, would enjoy a “blank track”. I spend too much time cleaning up bag space.

Justin ODell.9517:

Can you give me a little more detail that that?

So far today (and I assume you’re taking about today’s update) you’ve had 1 blowout. It was all solos, and had even ratings and ranks.

Thanks for the reality check, Justin.

Solstice.1097:

I assume MMRs will reset at start of a season if W/L does as well.

Otherwise pre-season start will be a tank-fest.

New MMR creates absolute chaos. Everyone starts with a temporary “middle-level” MMR regardless of their actual playing and map ability. It’s a mess.

They tried that Dec 16th and the first few days were terrible until they loaded historic MMRs from previous months.

Not too many lining up in the queue today, I suppose. Limited number of players. Not a mix.

I assume the leaderboard continue to automatically update?

Yup. Feel free to ignore the leaderboard if you don’t like what it currently measures.

Instead, keep a thoughtful eye on the matches you play and score yourself for how much you think you contributed.

Ultimately, that’s what you have to learn to do, I think.

See a match as a series of situations and decisions to be made. Examine how well you handled each one. Measure yourself. See if you get better….regardless of the final score.

I get the fewest points right now when I bunker and hold points all game and assist people.

I get the most points when I pew-pew from a distance with a ranged glass cannon.

That’s just not the way it should be.

Braghez is correct. And I think we are past looking at win rates given the way the matchmaking is for solo people at the moment. The leaderboard is what it is.

“I sympathize with the feelings people have, but feelings aren’t dictators of reality.”

No, but blowouts are. What about solo people mixed up against grouped players. That confounds the matcher when there are not all that many people in the queue.

Just had a Ranked match in Forest of Nifelel.

Before it starts, I say to my team

“Let’s not take the beast in the beginning, take MID instead.”

After an exchange, a ranger replies: “BEAST WINS MOST MATCHES NUMBSKULL”

Can someone please explain why you would want to start with the beast rather than mid?

Justin,

Is it possible the Match Prediction Algorithm/MMRs can only accurately predict at the extremes? And in the vast middle ground it often fails to predict unbalanced matches?

How did your simulations go applying the updated Match Prediction Algorithm against past games?

How would Blizzard’s system work if there are only 15 people in the queue at the moment?

Watching top players on Twitch reveals how FAST combat moves in this game compared to typical “stand and cast MMOS”.

To be really good in GW2 you have to be reacting to the other player’s move. That means you cannot look at your keys, but rather you have to be looking at the screen the entire time looking for the telltale animations by your opponent telling you what he is casting….so you can instantly counter it.

Full disclosure: I cannot do it yet.

If you ignore the turret engineer’s point, his team gets that node all match and all his team has to do is hold one other node to win.

style.6173:

The leaderboard currently has 2 people with under a 50% winning percentage in the top 5. Seriously?

Sure. They just got a lot of lopsided matches handed to them. But they tend to not lose points from it.

brannigan.9831:

They obviously need to adjust things a bit to avoid rewarding for quantity too much but you should be rewarded for playing more. I don’t know how you can consider yourself a serious player and not avearage around at least 5 matches a day. I am not saying every day but on average like in a week you should play 35 ranked games at least. This season has gone on for a few weeks now and you have people crying that they arent ranked that high on the leaderboard and they have lik 60-80 games played in three weeks. Simple math tells me that is 2-3 game per day. To those people I say stop being afraid to run without a full group. Stop feeling afraid to ever lose or take chances. The most active players should be rewarded. 20 games a day average is ludicrous though I agree but play the kitten game if you want to get high on the leaderboard.

I agree activity needs to be rewarded as well as skill in helping a team win.

I suggest that they should pick a number of weekly games that represents a “serious, active player who also needs to maintain a life outside of gaming”, and use that as a baseline factor in their calculations.

No, I don’t make that many posts about leaderboards. You’ll have to count them to be more more accurate.

I am interested in the matchmaking and I enjoy discussing it. But you’d have to count those.

brannigan,

Great points.

My second account does not appear for at least the last 6 pages. So, nope, you were way exaggerating on how much I post about the leaderboards.

imaclown.1628:

The only judgement I have made is that you seem to care too much about the leaderboards. But that is only because you post 1 or 3 new topics everyday with a “new” leaderboard problem.

Other than that it seemed as though you were judging other players for playing to much questioning wether it effected their job, family etc. While covering yourself with the old “just asking”

1) Look at the PvP forum and see how many new topics about the Leaderboard I have started in the past 2 weeks. (Look at the Author column).

How many was it?

2) I don’t criticize anyone for doing anything that makes them happy without hurting others, or themselves.

imaclown.1628:

None of that is relevant. Some people have more free time than others, oeggs has made a decent amount of money playing this game. I’m going to hazard a guess that he enjoys it as well.

Why are you so curious?

imaclown,

Actually, I am wondering why you are so adamant that this not be discussed. You seem quite judgmental about me even bringing it up.