Guild Wars 2

Anomaly.7612:

I hope Anet reads these forums, because I know that I’m not the only person who’s stepping back from this game. It wasn’t easy for me. I’ve loved this game since beta, but the current state it’s in makes me hate it.

It’s like my partner/spouse I’ve been with for years suddenly turned into this different person that gives me anxiety and depression just to be around them. Thank you all for the support and help in the forums. It’s been appreciated.

Seriously, just give it a week and then try again. It’s to be expected that matchmaking is “terrible” (or at least very random) until people settle into their respective divisions. Uninstalling the entire game two days after a whole new matchmaking system is rolled out seems like an extreme reaction. Unless, of course, it’s just the last drop and you dislike HoT, the balance, etc.

Well, good luck to you, I guess.

blackysharky.7581:

Arenanet please, this is getting just out of hand, why am I always teamed up with 2-3 of the same class in one match, or against pre-mades or with complete and utter beginner lvl pvp players who don’t know kitten about the mode, this is just freaking killing the game for me

1. The game teaming you up with 2-3 of the same class has nothing to do with matchmaking, it’s just the fact that build diversity is kind of terrible right now. You’ll see reapers, scrappers and revenants everywhere.

2. The game fills your team up with people of the same MMR as you, so apparently you’re “utter beginner lvl pvp player” yourself or the matchmaking is broken. Personally I haven’t had any issues with it, so I can only assume it’s the former.

Wolfric.9380:

Some say get better… This is not the problem. the prlbem is the inbalace in advancing.
People with the same skill advance extreamly diffrent decided by their starting luck …
I will even out in the long run but is just plain unfair how you get up.
For me? I rarely give up… What bothers me most is build and team diversity. I play because of this this and while i won´t quit due to WvW maps or pvp matchmaking i propably will due to lack of diversity.

Complaining about diversity and lack of balance is perfectly valid… but it’s not the fault of the matchmaking system.

Edit: I’m not saying you said it was, just saying that this thread has been all about the matchmaking system, so throwing in complaints about diversity seems off-topic.

zinkz.7045:

snip

I would assume that if they made it to legendary with this system in the first place, MMR largely won’t matter.

Right, that makes sense. Sorry, I just assumed you meant you wanted Anet to implement some kind of feature actively matching low MMR teams against each other. My bad.

Nikola.3841:

Care to explain/point WHERE Anet stated that team with bad MMR can’t get paired with another bad MMR team to give them chance to win once in a while?

Pakkazull.6894:

Low MMR teams can’t get paired with other low MMR teams because MMR isn’t used in matchmaking (only in putting teams together). It’s not difficult to understand.

Nikola.3841:

Read again what you wrote.
I expect you’ll maybe understand whats wrong in your post if you read it few times

I really don’t.

You were basically saying, “low MMR teams should get matched up with other low MMR teams to give them a chance to win every once in a while”. My response is that you can’t actively match up low MMR teams against one another because MMR isn’t being used in matchmaking. Of course, low MMR teams could, by chance, be matched up because they were both within the same pip range, but that is something else entirely.

So what exactly was wrong with my post?

Nikola.3841:

Quadox.7834:

Nikola.3841:

Cynz.9437:

Nikola.3841:

shrek.1046:

Cynz.9437:

it is normal

Whats happening to some of us isn’t normal. I know how to rotate, play the secondary objectives etc. Almost every single match of my first night in the new season I got teamed with players who didn’t know those basics. Would prefer the old 50/50 matchmaking it wouldn’t be so frustrating.

Cynz seems to be bad at statistics, so he doesn’t understand

when no arguments left, use personal attacks

How is that personal attack?
What the fact that everyone is in the same division has to do with fact that some teams constantly win and some constantly lose? How come losers never meet other losers so they get some points?
If you have 24 teams in NBA, should those ranked 23 and 24 play all day all the time against #1 and #2 as its case now, or should #23 and #24 meet sometimes and decide between themselves who’s #23 and #24 (as it was in previous PVP season matchmaking)?

He is right, it is to be expected considering mmr drop from not playing ranked for a long time in combination with division reset

Care to explain/point WHERE Anet stated that team with bad MMR can’t get paired with another bad MMR team to give them chance to win once in a while?

Low MMR teams can’t get paired with other low MMR teams because MMR isn’t used in matchmaking (only in putting teams together). It’s not difficult to understand.

Anomaly.7612:

Spartacus.3192:

The phrase “Better to be lucky than good”

if you get lucky in your initial games (team mates, DC’s on enemy team, whatever), then you MMR will increase and you will get progressively better team mates. Which snowballs to the (pros wreck noobs).

Conversely if you are unlucky in your initial games. (your team mates DC or you get internet lag or simply get enemy teams with voice comms), you will get matched with progressively worse team mates. Now you will get wrecked more.

How is this even ok?

It will only be true until all the good players move up the divisions. A team with one good player and four bad players should still beat a team of five bad players most of the time, and if you can’t do that, find some bloody team mates to queue with. It’s a team game.

Also, it’s a hell of a lot better than last season where people tanked their MMR and farmed scrubs to progress and divisions didn’t matter because you always faced people with similar MMR to yourself, regardless of where you stood. This season actually rewards high MMR, and the old season punished it. How was that OK?

Is it a perfect system? No. Personally I’d prefer it if you could always lose pips and drop divisions after Amber. It might do with some tweaking in general, I don’t know. No one knows. It’s been two days. People need to chill the kitten out and stop whining until we see how it pans out over time.

Wolfric.9380:

I am quite shure this is done for fast matchmaking. If there are not enough teams to build within the divison it picks from below… An if it teams by MMR players with lower MMR will get the worse teams ….

No, like someone said in the thread, it’s -7/+7 your current pip, it doesn’t really use division per se. But yeah, it probably works like you said if there literally aren’t enough players within that range, but I find that doubtful at this time.

I vastly prefer this system to the old one. This one actually rewards good players instead of punishing them like the old one did, plus, hopefully, once everyone sorts into their correct division, it’ll actually be some kind of measure of “skill” unlike the last season.

Maybe read up on how the system works? If you’re having trouble, wait a few days for the good players to get out of Amber and Emerald and try again.

Callendor.1840:

Ohhh I see where you are taking this… That doesn’t logically pan out unfortunately.. if a good player is on a bad team vs a bad team they will run something which can carry and win, or win more than lose… If 2 teams are rubbish but one has a star player then the one with the star player’s team will obviously win more than lose. So my point stands… after 2 losses you may as well AFK the 3rd game to get 2 pips the next game and tank your MMR

While that may be true eventually, it isn’t right now, because most people are still in Amber and Emerald. If you want to progress now (and not later when everyone has hopefully shuffled into their correct divisions) then tanking your MMR is only detrimental.

Last season punished high MMR, this season rewards it. Lots of people whining, but I love it.

Frenk.5917:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

While we’ll be using divisions to match you against your immediate opponents, we’ll still use your MMR to place you on teams with similarly skilled players (from your division point range) to help ensure that you’re not forced to play with individuals that are of a much higher or lower skill than you.

I guess I’m God-level then, since I went from amber to sapphire in ~3h winning all matches but one.
TBH I really don’t think MMR has the correct weight into determing opponents, because in the 25 games I’ve played 24 of them felt like hotjoin.

Well it’s not used at all to determine opponents. I think that’s perfectly fine. You’re obviously just not supposed to be in Amber, Emerald or Sapphire league.

Also, Engel wasn’t saying better players are put against worse players all the time. It just places good players together with good players and bad with bad, and the matchups are completely random (within a certain pip range). It lets good players go up the ranks quickly, which is a good thing.

Anomaly.7612:

Engel.6029:

Anomaly.7612:

Engel.6029:

You are getting teamed with people close to your mmr too so them being amber shouldn’t matter to much.

I didn’t think MMR was even taken into consideration anymore.

It is for making a team. That’s why there are all the one sided matches the better players are all being put on one team. .

So…..It doesn’t seem possible to move up in the ranks with that kind of algorithm. That system just sounds awful, and I don’t even want to play anymore at this point.

How exactly are we supposed to rank up with this system?

It actually makes more sense than throwing any random guy within pip range into your team. This way (if it works) you shouldn’t be able to complain that your team is dragging you down.

And how you’re supposed to rank up? Easy. When people are starting to spread out into their “correct” divisions, it should be easy to progress if you’re good enough (provided there are enough equally good players to fill your team). I like it a hell of a lot more than the previous system.

I don’t remember exactly, but I’ve lost about 3 games in 20 total. Solo queue and duo queue.

Edit: Also what Shadelang said is totally true. People need to stop kittening complaining without even bothering to look up how the new system works. It’s working as intended so far, it’s been like two days.

Lexander.4579:

I thought we’ve already established that its my opinion which many people share with me that this word is used inappropriately in the actual context which made me start this thread, and not the false assumption that i dont know the meaning of word “pip”

Nowhere have we established this, in fact, there are several quotes in this thread that point to the opposite. The fact that you still insist that pip is inappropriate in the context shows that you still don’t understand the word.

Lexander.4579:

pardon me good sir but english is not my native language and here’s what i get from searching “pip” on google

Why would you have to google “pip” if you already knew what it meant?

Lexander.4579:

i said that its a buzz word, a word with a perverted meaning and sense

No it isn’t.

Lexander.4579:

how do any of these definitions fit to the purpose of word “pip” in guild wars 2?

Again, if you knew what pip meant, you’d know why these definitions fit.

… Because it looks to me like you had zero clue what pip actually meant.

Lexander.4579:

well considering that their game is already not quite taken seriously i can say that using silly words in the game’s “competitive mode” will make it even worse

Except it’s not a silly word, but whatever. Maybe it sounds silly in whatever your native language is, at this point I don’t even care.

Lexander.4579:

I’m fairly confident that I learn and read more than the certain hypocritical crowd of grammar kittens that started to attack me out of nowhere here

Technically they were attacking your vocabulary, not your grammar. And I don’t really see how they’re being hypocrites either.

Lexander.4579:

especially considering that i know my native language extremely well in addition to fluently speaking english

Not fluently enough to know a simple word like pip, apparently.

Lexander.4579:

yes and im not the only one who thinks “pip” sounds stupid, i doubt Anet will get any closer to their esports dream by using that word to define rank points in their game

Lol, I doubt it will help or hinder them either way.

Lexander.4579:

well, in some armies they use stars to define officer and/or soldier ranks, would it be correct if everyone started calling points you get for winning matches "stars?

Well no, they’re already called pips now, so it wouldn’t be correct; besides, they don’t look like stars and “pip” feels like a more generic term, so it works. But yeah, sure, Arenanet could have called them stars and it would have achieved the same thing, it’s still symbols representing numerical value.

I really don’t see what the issue is, except… you think pip sounds stupid. That’s your problem.

Lexander.4579:

Pakkazull.6894:

“one of the dots used on dice and dominoes to indicate numerical value”

“a diamond-shaped insignia of rank worn by a second lieutenant, lieutenant, or captain in the British army”

I don’t really see how the meaning has been “perverted”.

how do any of these definitions fit to the purpose of word “pip” in guild wars 2

Uhm, is it really that hard to figure out? In both of the examples, “pip” means a symbol used to imply numerical value. In Guild Wars 2, a pip is a symbol used to imply numerical value. It’s not quantum physics.

It’s true, you didn’t outright say that you thought the word was made up, but it’s at least implied. And here are two of the definitions for “pip” from Merriam-Webster:

“one of the dots used on dice and dominoes to indicate numerical value”

“a diamond-shaped insignia of rank worn by a second lieutenant, lieutenant, or captain in the British army”

I don’t really see how the meaning has been “perverted”.

Did you try actually, you know, looking it up in an online dictionary? No? Nothing to see here.

Both.

/15chars

Rezzet.3614:

and as mentioned previously nerfing survivability is gonna ruin scrapper in pve it is already near useless to run with a hammer in HoT due to everything dealing massive aoe damage or ranged damage

How the heck is hammer useless in HoT? It has the best defense of any engineer weapon while also being capable of dishing out decent damage.

Electro-whirl, reflects missiles and dishes out pretty strong AoE damage; Rocket Charge, evade, damage, and triple leap finisher, great for using in a water field; Shock Shield, block and AoE damage; Thunderclap, AoE damage and stun.

Have we even been playing the same game? Because hammer scrapper is the easiest time I’ve had in HoT out of all my (9) characters.

Safastak.4102:

What professions are fun to level and play in general? I’m leaning more towards a melee character but I’m not sure what to go with.

This question is kind of impossible to answer. What is “fun” is far too subjective. I’d personally say engineer (more specifically scrapper, since you were interested in melee. Hammer scrapper is kittening amazing), but judging by the fact that it is the least played profession, I’m in the minority.

Safastak.4102:

Also, is leveling a Human fun or are there more fun leveling areas for different races?

You can level in any area as any race. The only difference is the first part of the personal story, but I don’t know if I’d base my choice of race on that.

Good luck!

Painless.6149:

So this means what? … that actually the game is badly optimized? …

Yes.

mov.1246:

As a charr engi:
Some animation looks weird, like using “one-handed” mortar shots.

Charr bow to no recoil.

Seriously though, if you can stand having 80% of the armor look like kitten, go with charr.

/charr engineer main

Oh please god no, I want this nightmare of a PvP season out of the way as quickly as possible so they can perhaps balance the game and make it not suck. While they’re at it they should remove the current league system entirely and replace it with one that actually works.

100% yes. It’s what I thought the league system was going to be, but turns out it was just a reward track for a legendary backpack.

Pimsley.3681:

Despite the obvious flaws of this pvp platform, it’s really not that bad. It’s also not that great but at least it’s functional. I just hope that they are collecting data and plan on refining this product.

Lol, I guess for some waiting 3+ years for “functional” is OK. Good for you.

Arutha.9874:

Both at the same time should work much better.

Uhm, the game is already doing both at the same time and it works like kitten.

Just make division a reflection of MMR, how hard can it be.

Jiggawattz.2697:

While I fully agree with this, I am at the very least trying not to bash on them too much, at least they got to well of precog and condi rev before we had to play against that kitten for the next 3 weeks…

They deserve all the kitten they’re getting. We’re not pals, I don’t know these people, I’m a customer who paid for a product and if the product is crap, I’m gonna complain about it. You can be an Arenanet apologist and settle for crumbs and give them an easy time all you want; you’re not doing yourself any favors by accepting their kitten.

Yep, pretty much.

Astralporing.1957:

You can reach your skill cap at any point of the league progression – what is worse, you can reach it before the league season even starts. The moment you reach that point, your league progression stops (assuming good balance and working mmr of course, this league season has severe problems with both). Now, the system doesn’t stop you at the moment you reach division that is appropriate for your skill level, because, again, league divisions are completely disassociated from your mmr.

Elyndis.2130:

The problem with divisions is that, right now, they don’t represent MMR. This makes it just as easy for a terrible player to climb up to diamond as it is for a pro, at least for solo queue. For teams, climbing to diamond and beyond doesn’t necessarily imply skill, either.

What this system does measure is improvement. You are required to get better as a player or team in order to beat the 50% odds of winning consistently, but already being better nets you no advantage. This is why MMR tanking exists, of course.

If you want divisions that measure skill, then we would need to change divisions so that they are a reflection of MMR – not something separate.

Hammerguard.9834:

I despise the fact that someone can have a lower MMR than me but have a higher division/tier. It’s like having the little league win a match in baseball and giving them the rewards of a pro league team. They’re both playing under the same system with the same progression. MMR should have more meaning to the league system other than (trying to) creating even matches.

This exactly. This is all you need to know right here to explain why this system is utter kitten.

Nero.1730:

So my question is.. are there any really good celestial builds out there? annnd is it ever wise to use a FULL set of it?

Personally I just use celestial armor and switch out weapons and trinkets depending on if I want power or condition. Don’t know that there’s any time in WvW or PvE where full celestial is optimal, but it’s perfectly viable, sure.

I’m getting really tired of people who think the league system actually works as a way to gauge player skill. It’s currently utterly broken and the divisions do in no way reflect a player’s abilities because, as others in this thread have pointed out, player MMR is not reflected in their division, nor is it taken into consideration when calculating pip gain.

EgyptRaider.3946:

I’m honestly wondering why people expect that they should be constantly progressing through the tiers.

Because that’s the way the system is designed. It was advertised as a way to gauge player skill, but it’s really just another reward progression system.

EgyptRaider.3946:

If you have a 50-50 win lose rate at a certain point, you’re at the right spot. If you want to improve, either get better at soloq or find buddies.

I’ll just copy my post from another thread:

“Two players could have the same win/loss % ratio, but one player could be facing more difficult opponents due to higher MMR.

You’re not really trying to beat the average with the league system, you’re trying to beat your average, which is why it is a lot harder for good players who played a lot pre-league and have high MMR than it is for people who just started; they’re already at their correct MMR and at the peak of their skill level, while simultaneously being in the bottom of the league system. It’s an uphill struggle all the way.

“Practice more” won’t really do much when you’re already at the top, but the league system won’t recognize it because it doesn’t discern between high MMR and low MMR."

To make things even clearer: according to your logic, the “right spot” for ESL players is in Amber league, lol.

Boss Nomad.6487:

If you are better than average, your win ratio will be over 50% and you will climb tiers. If not, maybe practise more.

“Better than average” is a bit misleading. Two players could have the same win/loss % ratio, but one player could be facing more difficult opponents due to higher MMR.

You’re not really trying to beat the average with the league system, you’re trying to beat your average, which is why it is a lot harder for good players who played a lot pre-league and have high MMR than it is for people who just started; they’re already at their correct MMR and at the peak of their skill level, while simultaneously being in the bottom of the league system. It’s an uphill struggle all the way.

“Practice more” won’t really do much when you’re already at the top, only the league system won’t recognize it because it doesn’t discern between high MMR and low MMR.

Malpractice.7850:

bigmonto.4215:

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Chris.6089:

I am just curious what will you do if I put the pvp programmer in front of you

I would honestly laugh at them for thinking in a 50% odd of winning game having wins equal losses was a good idea.

Lol…. me too, me too. Like I said the most idiotic system ever known to man. Now I have seem it all. Seriously ANet designers use your brain a bit, use common sense a bit.

Oddly enough, Sc2 uses the same method, but no one complains in that game.

The huge difference is, SC2 uses placement matches to determine your starting league, and from there on your progression is based purely on your MMR.

It’s not the same system at all, since in GW2, the player with the highest MMR in the world could theoretically be in the same division as the player with the lowest MMR in the world. This isn’t possible in SC2.

But yes, in a sense they use the same method, except SC2 rewards high MMR with a higher tier, whereas GW2 punishes high MMR by making it harder to progress; you face more difficult opponents, but still gain pips at the exact same rate as someone with way lower MMR.

Rosia.9145:

Leagues connected to mmr are just utter stupidity and I wanna personally meet person who got this idea. Not everyday you’ve got a chance to see someone that careless.

Except they aren’t connected, that’s one of the issues with the system. They’re just two separate systems largely working against one another. Also, how would you suggest matchmaking would work without MMR? Purely through the divisions like Hearthstone? Suppose it might work. Would still prefer MMR with your division being a function of your MMR.

ZachAttack.3957:

As it stands, it’s way better than the ranked system we had before.

It’s not hard to be marginally better than “crap”. kitten Anet apologists.

muscarine.5136:

We finally have a system that makes sense and rewards being good vs non sense grinding (meaningless ranks, anybody can have it reward tracks) to show off where we actually stand skill wise.
I thought the pvp player base was dying for a system like that.

Except it doesn’t reward being good (in fact, it punishes being good by making it harder to progress, see my post above) and it doesn’t show off where anyone stands skill-wise (with MMR being separate from league, the player with the highest MMR in the world can be in the same division as the player with the lowest, etc.)

naphack.9346:

I don’t think, it’s a successful attempt, but the idea counts, right?

No. Quite frankly I don’t give a kitten about ideas or good intentions if the implementation is crap.

It’s a stupid system with the way MMR and divisions are disconnected. A player who played a lot of PvP and has a high MMR from before the league system was put into place will have a harder time progressing than someone who just started, because he has to start at the bottom while already being at his correct MMR.

Either they have to tie the league system to MMR, i.e. make divisions a reflection of your MMR, or they need to increase pip gain depending on your MMR. The current system is just casual-friendly bullkitten, they said we were getting a way of gauging player skill, but what we got was a glorified reward track for a legendary backpack.

Why are people bothering to even reply to this again?

They should just make it so that your division reflects your MMR, like every other successful PvP game in history. But no, that would make too much sense. Gotta let the casuals grind their backpacks.

Not until they reach a certain division.

My main problem with the new system though is that it was supposed to be a way of gauging player skill, meaning high MMR players should be in high divisions, but this isn’t the case. As it is, the player with the highest MMR in the world can be in the same division as the player with the lowest MMR in the world. What the kitten were they thinking? It’s utterly useless, it’s just another grindy reward system.

They lower their MMR so they can face low MMR players and progress through the divisions quicker, because the system is kitten and divisions don’t reflect your MMR.

This thing Helseth posted on Reddit pretty much sums it up:

“The fact that MMR is not tied to your placement in the league (meaning that the highest rated player in the world can be exactly the same place as the lowest rated player in the world) is absolute insanity. The MMR is supposed to put us at a 50% winratio so it gets increasingly more difficult as you win more games to climb the ladder. Problem is that a) ANET did not reset the mmr or put people in appropriate division for the MMR, meaning that top level players are already close to a 50% winratio matchup while being in the bottom and b) winstreaks arent factored for the division system while mmr is meaning that you’ll just get harder matches, longer times without any actual reward for doing better.”

I’d have preferred it if they reset everyone’s MMR, tied MMR to the league system, and then let us play placement matches. The leagues were supposed to be a reflection of skill, but that’s impossible as long as MMR and league are separate.