Guild Wars 2

Ithilwen.1529:

There seems to be a prevalent view that only a specific group of players “deserves” to be Diamond / Legendary and that others should be kept out. The argument appears to be that only skill should be rewarded. This is an entitlement based idea.

Actually, that’s a meritocracy-based idea, where skill is rewarded. Your idea is an entitlement-base idea, where everyone should get a gold star because they tried.

Lahmia.2193:

Shroud flashing came to prominence mainly because baseline shroud wasn’t as high dps as dagger, back in the day. Now we have Reaper’s Shroud, it seems a waste to flash shroud.

Have you taken a look at the glicko 2 algorithm that ANet adapted for their use? It sounds pretty similar to what you’re describing, with the exception that glicko 2 only factors in a win vs. a loss rather than assigning different ratings for close games. I’m curious what your thoughts are on the math behind the current system:

http://www.glicko.net/glicko/glicko2.pdf

It’s actually used quite a bit.

Jaxom.7310:

Salamander.2504:

+1

That Salamander guy in some old post:

Necromancer:
Boon corrupt on the scepter auto attack?…ANet, ever heard of the phrase: “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”? These skills were perfectly fine already. That scepter boon corrupt shouldn’t even be in the game, but if it were to be put in the game, it should be on the axe auto because axe needs love, is the necro boon corrupt weapon, and desperately needs an auto-chain. What game are you playing where condi reaper needs a buff? …

That same guy in response to his own post:

Some folks disagreed with me on this one, but I think the past 3 weeks have shown us that the above comment is still spot on: the scepter auto-attack rewards auto-spam by perma-fearing anyone pulsing stability (ranger shout elite, RS#3, juggernaut, etc.). Robert Gee went to great length to explain to us that the underpowered necro axe auto couldn’t be buffed because it wasn’t a projectile, and then ANet went ahead and gave scepter an amazing auto-chain. The HoT elite specs introduced so many new forms of crowd-control that PvP these days is just an exercise in tossing (and being tossed) about like a ragdoll…so naturally, people bring stability. And now a non-projectile auto-attack can basically spam-corrupt stability. It’s so over the top. The boon corrupt on scepter auto needs to be removed ASAP….

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Disapointing-balance-preview/first#post5989378

were u jus quoting ur self in 3rd person? i lik it.

That Jaxom says some smart things too whoever he is. u all should really look into his comments.

yep, yep i agree.

but i do lik the boon corrupt. too much enchantments all around this place

Yeah. If I don’t no one else will

rwolf.9571:

Salamander.2504:

Thanks everyone for your participation. The attached figure shows the results. Too bad N=48 but I’m impressed so many people replied, even if it isn’t really a statistically significant number. In any case, if this was helpful at all to anyone we can do it for further weeks?

Looking at this so far. Looks like starting out on day 1 is a bad idea.

Yeah, although it’s impossible to say for sure since there are so few data points beyond day 1. One interesting feature of the graph is that there is no strong trend of day vs. division: even players who have only been doing ranked for a few days (as opposed to 10 days) can climb high in the league. It’s not a time-gated grind anymore, at least from these few data.

BTW, I’ve linked the graph to my OP for ease of access.

People would abuse the system by blocking all of the best players.

Thanks everyone for your participation. The attached figure shows the results. Too bad N=48 but I’m impressed so many people replied, even if it isn’t really a statistically significant number. In any case, if this was helpful at all to anyone we can do it for further weeks?

Well, there’s two ways to beat a condi reaper.

Option 1 is to play a condi reaper and just be better by out-transferring them and timing your jazz right. This is probably the most efficient because then you can use the OPness of condi reaper’s against everything else. Death magic (middle top middle with Rise) will give you an unfair advantage (use with soul reaping and reaper).

Option 2 is to remove condi reaper’s advantage. Condi reapers kick butt by corrupting boons and transferring condi’s. So if you don’t give yourself boons, and don’t give them damaging condi’s, you’re not giving them much to work with. This one is tricky to play as power though because you need to avoid giving yourself might through the spite or reaper lines—might corrupts to weakness, which will shred your dps. Also, power reaper simply isn’t as OP as condi reaper, so it’s tougher to excel with, though it does give you a small element of surprise.

Mysticjedi.7456:

My feedback: Don’t give new players or players with not enough games to have consistent data an average MMR. That is what is screwing everything up. Put them below average This let’s the good players get to Diamond and Legendary, average players in sapphire and Ruby and everyone else can fight it out in amber and emerald and as they improve move up.

Totally.

Jourdelune.7456:

…
Fix the division to the ranking of players:
Give Legendary to the top 1 to 200, Diamond to 201 to 400, Ruby to 401 to 600, Sapphire from 601 to 800, Emerald from 801 to 1000 and Amber are unranked.
…

Do you mean these as a ratio of players? Because 200 players in legendary are not enough to support that league population, and it’s generally known that the top 1000 players on the leaderboards are all legendary/diamond quality, and are within the 99th percentile of players. Can you clarify what you mean by those numbers?

Rebound.3409:

Problem with this system is, most people let’s be honest play ranked for the wings..even the competitive players. Hell if i want to be competitive i would just organize private rooms and go all out organized and all…this whole thing is just a circus-fest.

For the wings, there are certain achievements that ask u to for ex pass through 4 divisions and so on.

The system you talked about honestly i agree with and it seems 10x better then the circus we have now BUT in order to do that, they should remove the wings requirement for passing divisions.

Ideally, you would get credit for passing divisions when you are seeded into a higher division.

Shroud itself is 50% damage reduction, but I think its multiplicative rather than additive.

An idea for how to improve League Season 3: Seed players based on their divisions from the previous league system, but keep the current ranked matchmaking system.

Season X Division: —-————————>Season X+1 Starting Division:
Legendary/Diamond —-——————->Sapphire
Ruby/Sapphire——————————->Emerald
Emerald/Amber —-————————>Amber

This idea has been brought up here and there by previous folks, so here is a dedicated topic to discuss it.

How it works:
At the start of Season 3, players who attained Legendary and Diamond in Season 2 will be placed in Sapphire. Players who attained Ruby and Sapphire in Season 2 will be placed in Emerald. Players who attained Emerald and Amber in Season 2 will be placed in Emerald.

But won’t this system prevent people from dropping divisions?
No. This method accounts for decay as well. For example, if a player reaches Diamond in Season 2, he will be put in Sapphire at the start of Season 3. If that players never gets out of Sapphire in Season 3, he will then be put in Emerald at the start of Season 4. If that player then sits out of Season 4, he will begin Season 5 in Amber.

Will it work with the current ranked matchmaking system?
Yes. At the start of the league, The Legendaries and Diamonds from the previous season will have competitive matches in Sapphire. The better players will slowly rise to the top, but at a slightly slower rate than the players in Emerald, where the Rubys and Sapphires from the previous season are duking it out and quickly rising into Sapphire. The introduction of these players into Sapphire will continue to provide competitive matches that allow the better players to rise into Ruby, and so on. The same concept applies for the players fighting in Amber. This allows competitive matches to occur at the start of the season (so lower-tiered players won’t be farmed), while allowing players to quickly reach their appropriate division.

Played around with it a bit tonight. Definitely fun =)

A week has passed since the implementation of leagues. We all know it would be chaotic at the start, but it would be interesting to see if the chaos is declining with time.

So here is the 1-week followup to collect some data. If you can supply some quick information, that would be great:

1) Day you started ranked league (e.g., last Tuesday was day 1)
2) Your division.
3) Is your win-rate below 50%?
4) Stuck, or are you advancing?
5) Are you experiencing huge loss-streaks?
6) Are you continuing to play in Ranked?

Hopefully this will give us a qualitative sense for how the leagues are equilibrating with time (ANet has this data but we don’t!). Thanks!

EDIT: Data for week 1 (10 days into league, 3/3/2016) are attached below.

Zero Solstice.9754:

To be completely honest with you, GS is viable in casual+ PvP. I used it to climb the Ranked Ladder last season because the build is simply fun. While the weapon has some minor issues that could be addressed, I definitely think way too many people call it trash just because “Oh, it’s so slow compared to other Necro weapons!”

Shrug I don’t take issue with it’s speed. I think the auto and GD are fine, along with the fantastic #4. The problems I see with GS are the clunky #5 and the “lackluster” #3: it doesn’t feel good to use and has no impact on any fight. So, I think giving #3 a gap-closer that also ensures the LF generation would go miles to making GS a great weapon.

Dead.5829:

While this would be great, I’m curious why this would be “all” that needs to be done to the GS?

The weapon still has a lot of QoL changes that could be done to it.

I wanted to start small, hoping the dev’s might take more easily take notice to this one aspect. As mentioned, I feel this change would make the GS somewhat viable in casual+ PvP, but of course it still has a lot of room for improvement. But please feel free to share your other ideas to improve the GS QoL.

+1

That Salamander guy in some old post:

Necromancer:
Boon corrupt on the scepter auto attack?…ANet, ever heard of the phrase: “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”? These skills were perfectly fine already. That scepter boon corrupt shouldn’t even be in the game, but if it were to be put in the game, it should be on the axe auto because axe needs love, is the necro boon corrupt weapon, and desperately needs an auto-chain. What game are you playing where condi reaper needs a buff? …

That same guy in response to his own post:

Some folks disagreed with me on this one, but I think the past 3 weeks have shown us that the above comment is still spot on: the scepter auto-attack rewards auto-spam by perma-fearing anyone pulsing stability (ranger shout elite, RS#3, juggernaut, etc.). Robert Gee went to great length to explain to us that the underpowered necro axe auto couldn’t be buffed because it wasn’t a projectile, and then ANet went ahead and gave scepter an amazing auto-chain. The HoT elite specs introduced so many new forms of crowd-control that PvP these days is just an exercise in tossing (and being tossed) about like a ragdoll…so naturally, people bring stability. And now a non-projectile auto-attack can basically spam-corrupt stability. It’s so over the top. The boon corrupt on scepter auto needs to be removed ASAP….

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Disapointing-balance-preview/first#post5989378

BrotherBelial.3094:

Salamander.2504:

SqualZell.7813:

ok time for an unbiased statement

It doesn’t matter if you think the system is good or is bad or just don’t care. from what I am seeing on the forums and in game map chats there are more players disgruntled with the new system than players who think it’s fine.

Obviously the top players who got to the top where they should be are happy about it. lets take an arbitrary number of about 10%

Players that are not as good are stuck somewhere in the middle unable to advance. being stuck at some level unable to advance be it because your team mates are bad or simply because you are not up to par to go forth, there is no progression in this case.
lets take an arbitrary number of about 20%

and then you have the rest of the population, who is just not good, at least not on par with the game difficulty. these people will never leave amber no matter how much they try. again no progression.
lets take an arbitrary number of about 70%

so now you have the elite 10% that will be having fun and progressing. then you have the middle class who does not progress anymore… some will work and move up eventually. others will just quit. and then you have the base that will slowly bleed players.

in the end all you have is your 10% +-5% from the middle playing pvp… the rest will move on. either quit pvp all together (lets be serious, they won’t go back to unranked) or simply quit the game.

either way you are alienating a big chunk of your paying customers… who will not pay anymore. your 10%-15% of your elite will have long queues and be matched against each other just on rotation. and eventually those will also move on… with such bad press from a huge chunk of the GW2 community people won’t want to PvP thus you wont be able to replenish your pool of pvp players…

TL:DR.
doesn’t matter if the system is good or bad. You depend on your playerbase. It is in your best interest to keep the majority happy and paying.

Leagues are not a reward track. Not everyone is entitled to progress.

Then why stick something like a legendary back item as a reward for competing in the league, and let’s not forget ANet said that everyone could earn it. That means that everyone should be able to progress high enough to make it, not anytime soon, but eventually.

What you seem to want is a league for the “pro’s”. Where only the beat can play and the “entitled” folk are not permitted. The problem is the league is open to everyone, with rewards for progressing, like a reward track……. So the league really is a reward track, just not a simple one, or one you are guaranteed to finish. But the carrot is there to get people to play. With out that carrot the uptake would be small, and would not promote the ESport direction ANet want to take with PvP.

You are missing the point of the league. It’s to get people playing PvP. To make it popular. To grow talent. With out new players coming into PvP thanks to MMR people will start to see the same people all the time. This then gets boring at some point.

While I agree not everyone is entitled to get to ruby diamond or legend rank, they should still feel progression to some point, not spend days in the same T.

Ask your self this. If you hit a “skill” brick wall that you alone can not overcome, there are 4 other people on your team that need to be able to carry them self’s, you stop playing. There are something we all can not do. The PvP league requires us to be at the mercy of 4 other people to progress. Sure getting a team might be the answer to some, but not everyone knows 4 other people who are “good” enough at PvP who are not already in there own team, or do not play when everyone else they know can. This answer is one coming from people who think that if you cannot spend enough time playing, you should not be playing PvP in the first place.

Of course if someone from ANet wants to come in and tell us that your right, we need to be of a skill level to compete in the league and if we don’t meet that level to go play unranked. I will gladly never play PvP again.

Hard to argue with this. =)

Tim.6450:

The problem with that revert is that it gave a very poor PvE experience (yes I’m pulling that card): in group battles it was nigh meaningless due to chill rules and in solo play everything died so fast when you reached that 50% mark (especially since you procced, chill of death and chilling nova) that you were stuck with the very low 400 ticks most of the time.

Also shroud 5 scales well with condi???? It seems strange but chill and condi reaper make very poor buddies. I mean look at the skills, most involve power damage and no condition damage.

Chill is still useless in PvE environments because it can’t stack in intensity, so I don’t accept that card. :P

And I don’t know how you can conclude that RS doesn’t work well with Condi. Shroud 5 is a pulsing chill field that synergizes well with RS 4 for even more AOE chill. RS 4 is a crapton of poison damage (my condi reaper does 9k poison from RS4), and RS2, when traited with curses can apply chill and corrupt 2 boons. RS1 works with dhuumfire.

jessiestiles.9437:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I don’t think the problem is ppl wanting a reward track so much as being rewarded as they believe they DESERVE. Somewhere deep down there something on the level of justice that bothers ppl being victim of a system (any given system) while, not surprisingly, the successful aren’t seeing it that way at all or even as a problem…

+1 Very insightful

The pathology of power and the naure of evil: A person with power becomes addicted to it and they don’t respect people who have no power.

So these forums are becoming the Stanford Prison Experiment?

Salamander.2504:

Wow, what a great idea, and with tremendous support, too! You are right Salamander.2504: it is weird that the necro class mechanic prevents necro’s from seeing the cooldowns of their utility skills for a large duration of game-play. I agree with the dashingly handsome original poster that this should be changed.

+1 to you, sir.

Erzian.5218:

core nec is worse than any of the strong meta builds. reaper without deathly chill is worse than core nec.

`Until the Nov. 4 Deathly Chill buff, most Reapers were actually running power/cele and were in unanimous agreement that Reaper was better or equivalent to core necro (equivalence is the actual goal since elite specs shouldn’t be OP):

How is Reaper without Deathly Chill better than core necro ?
1) Faster RS auto that synergizes well with Dhuumfire and Spite (at the time of release it cleaved and core DS didn’t. This has since changed of course).
2) Reliable RS2 gap closer that synergizes extremely well with Curses.
3) Stability in shroud.
4) Meaningful AOE DPS shroud skills (4 and 5) that are good for both power and condi.
5) Alternative LF management (Chilling Victory and Blighters boon) that synergizes with Spite.
6) Fantastic, low CD shouts that are extremely versatile.

And perhaps the most important point:
No one here is asking to delete Deathly Chill: just to revert it to its Pre-Nov. 4 state, where it did 50% damage to foes above 50% health, but at the time was about 30% more powerful in the base damage. That made it do ~400 damage to foes above 50% health, and 800 damage to foes below 50% health, without any might/vuln.

epouvante.7392:

Today i have done some observations in pvp concerning deadly chill.
I was chilled by 2 reapers but i take really fast chill damage 2 ticks per sec. So i go to check the record and the two reapers damage me with deadly chill. BUT, chill is just one unique dot, without stacking possibility. It´s like i have two stacks of chill.
Solution: only one reaper could hit with deadly chill.

Actually we have to face 2,3,4 necros in pvp. Chill application is overcheated, chill itself is overcheated. Reaper is also over the top, so we have to stop this condi spam and the multi reaper condi spam…

You’ll need to show proof with a screenshot or a video.

ANet uses glicko 2, so thoeretically the MMR of your opponents should play a role in determining the MMR loss/gain from each match.

Generally speaking, if the Sapphire players you are fighting have lower MMR than the ruby/diamond players you fought last season, beating them will not increase your MMR as much as beating a similar- or higher-MMR team. The MMR change after a win/loss only changes drastically if you are performing inconsistently (i.e., you have high MMR but losing to a low MMR, or vice-versa).

http://www.glicko.net/glicko/glicko2.pdf

Bump.

On Feb. 25th, Deathly Chill received a 15% nerf to the scaling coefficient, but this nerf is not even noticeable.

If you want to balance condi necro, Deathly Chill needs to be reverted to its pre-Nov. 4 state, and the boon corrupt on the scepter AA (Jan. 26 buff) needs to be reverted.

<—condi reaper main

HipposWild.7185:

Salamander.2504:

HipposWild.7185:

Salamander.2504:

SqualZell.7813:

….

Leagues are not a reward track. Not everyone is entitled to progress.

But you should at least be sure that the good players are the ones being rewarded. Last game I saw a pistol pistol thief winning by a landslide because he got tossed in the high MMR category. Do you think it was skill carrying him?

It must have been his skill carrying him, for him to make p/p thief work.

You’re logic is so determined to prove itself right it could be ANET’s spvp matchmaking algorithm…

I have an entire thread dedicated to determining what’s wrong with ANet’s matchmaking—I’m not defending anything. But yeah, if someone using a bad build is winning by a landslide, chances are they are just very skilled to compensate—your logic didn’t make sense to me.

SqualZell.7813:

Salamander.2504:

SqualZell.7813:

ok time for an unbiased statement

It doesn’t matter if you think the system is good or is bad or just don’t care. from what I am seeing on the forums and in game map chats there are more players disgruntled with the new system than players who think it’s fine.

Obviously the top players who got to the top where they should be are happy about it. lets take an arbitrary number of about 10%

Players that are not as good are stuck somewhere in the middle unable to advance. being stuck at some level unable to advance be it because your team mates are bad or simply because you are not up to par to go forth, there is no progression in this case.
lets take an arbitrary number of about 20%

and then you have the rest of the population, who is just not good, at least not on par with the game difficulty. these people will never leave amber no matter how much they try. again no progression.
lets take an arbitrary number of about 70%

so now you have the elite 10% that will be having fun and progressing. then you have the middle class who does not progress anymore… some will work and move up eventually. others will just quit. and then you have the base that will slowly bleed players.

in the end all you have is your 10% +-5% from the middle playing pvp… the rest will move on. either quit pvp all together (lets be serious, they won’t go back to unranked) or simply quit the game.

either way you are alienating a big chunk of your paying customers… who will not pay anymore. your 10%-15% of your elite will have long queues and be matched against each other just on rotation. and eventually those will also move on… with such bad press from a huge chunk of the GW2 community people won’t want to PvP thus you wont be able to replenish your pool of pvp players…

TL:DR.
doesn’t matter if the system is good or bad. You depend on your playerbase. It is in your best interest to keep the majority happy and paying.

Leagues are not a reward track. Not everyone is entitled to progress.

you know that,
I know that (which is why i don’t pvp in this game)

but tell that to the rest of the community and hope they listen… cuz clearly, as seen on these forums it’s not the case. Also there are not real restrictions in place, thus people assume it’s for everyone,

it doesn’t matter if they are right or wrong! you are losing players (and paying customers) every day due to this, and eventually when not enough players pay? well ill let you figure out what happens to a company when they stop getting income.

Look at the front page of these forums in the past few days. We’ve had posts complaining about 20+ loss streaks right next to posts complaining about a 50% win-ratio because it prevents their progression! That is not a design flaw; it’s an issue in player perception and sense of entitlement. I don’t remember anyone complaining about a 50% loss-rate in Ranked before leagues—most of these players wouldn’t even step foot in ranked, but now all the sudden it’s supposed to be family friendly?

HipposWild.7185:

Salamander.2504:

SqualZell.7813:

….

Leagues are not a reward track. Not everyone is entitled to progress.

But you should at least be sure that the good players are the ones being rewarded. Last game I saw a pistol pistol thief winning by a landslide because he got tossed in the high MMR category. Do you think it was skill carrying him?

It must have been his skill carrying him, for him to make p/p thief work.

SqualZell.7813:

ok time for an unbiased statement

It doesn’t matter if you think the system is good or is bad or just don’t care. from what I am seeing on the forums and in game map chats there are more players disgruntled with the new system than players who think it’s fine.

Obviously the top players who got to the top where they should be are happy about it. lets take an arbitrary number of about 10%

Players that are not as good are stuck somewhere in the middle unable to advance. being stuck at some level unable to advance be it because your team mates are bad or simply because you are not up to par to go forth, there is no progression in this case.
lets take an arbitrary number of about 20%

and then you have the rest of the population, who is just not good, at least not on par with the game difficulty. these people will never leave amber no matter how much they try. again no progression.
lets take an arbitrary number of about 70%

so now you have the elite 10% that will be having fun and progressing. then you have the middle class who does not progress anymore… some will work and move up eventually. others will just quit. and then you have the base that will slowly bleed players.

in the end all you have is your 10% +-5% from the middle playing pvp… the rest will move on. either quit pvp all together (lets be serious, they won’t go back to unranked) or simply quit the game.

either way you are alienating a big chunk of your paying customers… who will not pay anymore. your 10%-15% of your elite will have long queues and be matched against each other just on rotation. and eventually those will also move on… with such bad press from a huge chunk of the GW2 community people won’t want to PvP thus you wont be able to replenish your pool of pvp players…

TL:DR.
doesn’t matter if the system is good or bad. You depend on your playerbase. It is in your best interest to keep the majority happy and paying.

Leagues are not a reward track. Not everyone is entitled to progress.

Mireles Lore.5942:

I think it is kind of a blind assumption that only high skilled players are shooting up to leagues.

I know new players that never played a day of PvP that won streak all the way to mid sapphire. They had the appropriate MMR to be matched with decent players from the get go.

Leagues are a game of luck this season. You play and hope your wins and losses are ordered in a way that permits optimal pip progression.
IE. Take two players in a division that can lose pips.

Player one plays 10 matches, win 5 in a row and lose 5 in a row you are at +3 Pips

Player two plays 10 matches but win or lose alternately you are at 0 pips.

Does that mean player one is more skilled than player two? Player one stands to gain two pips from his next win while player two only stands to gain one. Whats player two doing wrong that player 1 is doing right? Winning and losing in the correct order.

Doesn’t matter who you played, how you played, or how close the matches were. These were all things season 1 considered. They took a huge step back from Season 1.

It really doesn’t matter if a new player shoots up to sapphire on luck because sapphire is a perfect place for new players. Over time other players of varying skill will catch up to that player in sapphire, and the true test is whether they can advance further in Ruby or beyond.

Also, your supposition that they have never played a day of PvP in their life is patently false: you have to be at least rank 20 to even participate in the ranked league. And a new player with average MMR will be placed with others with average MMR.

style.6173:

I think you are mixing MMR and PIPS. For season 2, MMR is being ignored and you are instead being matched with others who are at a similar PIP level as you.

In the PIP model, you can have a newcomer to ranked being matched with a pro league player at the beginning of the season. That’s the cause of the issues. It will eventually get better, but the beginning is painful.

Thanks for the response, but I’m not mixing up anything. Your teammates are paired with you based on similar MMR, and your opponents (who have a self-similar MMR) are paired with you based on a +/-15 pip range.

This means that a high MMR emerald team can fight a low MMR emerald team. The high MMR team should quickly leave emerald if these types of matchups continue. That’s all well and good, but anyone with an average MMR will be matched with new PvP’ers, so a team with “average” MMR might contain a mixture of average players and terrible players.

Now, keep in mind we don’t actually know if this is really what’s going on, but the idea has been raised on the forums a number of times so it warrants consideration. On the other hand, Evan Lesh has come on the forums and mentioned that playing ~20 games is enough to get an accurate representation of your MMR (i.e., it should happen in Amber). If this is the case, new PvP’ers with ~20 games should have low enough MMR that they aren’t getting paired on teams with average players. Then we’d have to go back to the drawing board and figure out what’s going on. But realistically, we want to separate each variable individually to see how they affect the system, so perhaps the first thing to do is to make new PvP’ers start with a lower MMR and see if that has any effect.

Dirtyrascal.1023:

Salamander.2504:

……..
2) Most highly-skilled players are shooting up the leagues as intended.
……..

The big problem here is that those ‘Highly Skilled Players’ are the people who got to have a decent winning streak from the offset. However when the majority of them experience the inevitable losing streak they are not going to drop in division because going down division isn’t possible.

For this system to ‘Settle down in time’ kitten many people keep talking about it requires unrestricted movement DOWN as well as up.

Rank is as meaningless this season as last season.

You’ve got it all backwards. Those players who got to high leagues right off the bat won’t ever need to drop down divisions. In fact, no one needs to drop down divisions. Due to the way you can’t drop tiers until Ruby, the higher divisions (i.e., Ruby) will start to be filled with worse players through time as they grind their way through sapphire. So, if those players who shot up to Ruby quickly are better, they’ll move on to diamond. If they are not as good, they’ll stay in Ruby and fit right in because worse players will be joining Ruby constantly. So the net trend through the season is upward movement through the leagues. The system isn’t broken because you can’t drop divisions, that’s completely nonsensical. Rank is far more meaningful this season.

Barzhal.2640:

Fay.2357:

Barzhal.2640:

Salamander.2504:

If you’re a good player, but “not the best”, Ruby seems to fit. It sounds like you’ve come close to your appropriate league position, at least as a solo-queuer. That’s good news! (Leagues are not a reward track.)

Good news indeed! Your ranked season is over, thanks for playing.

I’m sorry, it sounds like you want a reward track, not a competitive ladder. A competitive ladder means you have to earn your way up. A reward track plops out rewards just for playing.

I said nothing about a reward track. A competitive ladder has …well… competition. The majority of games being played are not competitive, they are complete blowouts where one team has no chance of winning. How is this competitive then? Are you going to tell people to wait for the divisions to balance out? How long should people wait? As the OP stated he is frustrated because of loss after loss in his division. And someone told him he’s where he belongs. What’s the point of even continuing to play now?

Yeah, did you read his post? Rather than “loss after loss”, it sounds like he has about a 50% win-rate, although the sample size is too small to say for sure. That means he is where he belongs, at least as a solo-queuer.

If you’re a good player, but “not the best”, Ruby seems to fit. It sounds like you’ve come close to your appropriate league position, at least as a solo-queuer. That’s good news! (Leagues are not a reward track.)

As we’ve heard, Season 2 of ranked PvP leagues is unfortunately not fun for everyone.

What’s going on in Season 2:
1) Many players are experiencing huge loss streaks, which are discouraging.
2) Most highly-skilled players are shooting up the leagues as intended.

Why might this be occurring?:
1) New PvP’ers start with average MMR and are put on the same team with more experienced players that also have an average MMR. If this team fights any other team (with similar or greater MMR but lacking in new players), it will usually result in a loss.++
2) The league season is still fresh and match-ups will be chaotic` until league positions stabilize.

How it can be fixed:
1) Start new players with a below-average MMR. This one simple modification might allow the current Season 2 ranked system to work as the developers intended.

Caveat
1) If we on the forums are overestimating the number of new PvP’ers playing in Ranked, this solution won’t work. It would imply that people on losing streaks (of presumably average MMR) aren’t losing due to being paired with new players, but perhaps due to the inherent chaos expected during the start of Season 2. We won’t know this until (and if) a developer shares this kind of data.

++This also means that the influx of MMR complaints on the forum didn’t actually “reveal bad players”, but instead is showing us players who are average or bad (the two can’t be separated by this criteria alone since they are being matched together, and are losing together).

I’m going to quote someone else who put the issue in very clear terms:

Thiefz.3695:

New players are given an average rated MMR so if you are Average you will be matched with new players. So matchmaking is throwing average players and new players together on a team (because they share the same MMR) and then getting placed against teams that are +/- 15 pips. So, the issue at the moment is that the average team MMR is not actually pairing people with the same MMR as explained by Evan. So the expectation that you, as an average MMR player, will be matched with like minded or experienced PvP’ers is not true. So the expectations that people are being matched with like minded pvp’ers is mistaken. Now, all those average people have to adapt to a lower team rating than they were used to. I would say that it’s a valid complaint. Now that average players have a handicap, you add on that you are facing worse or better opponents is further different than unranked or season one matchmaking and it makes for more salt.

What I have been reading across all these forum posts is that people with higher and top MMR don’t see that the issues they have last season of carrying lower tiered players to legend is impacting average players this season. If you didn’t like having to carry lower MMR people last season then you should have some sympathy for average players this season who have to do the same thing.

Thiefz.3695:

Sardath.8524:

Kayberz.5346:

Most of the people complaining about the matchmaking seem to want everone to have their own personal reward track to legendary. The arguments like “the pros should have to face other pros from the start” or “good players shouldnt be farming win streaks at the expense of bad players” are just bullkitten.
The system isnt pairing rubys against ambers, its matching you with people in the same division, if your losing consistently in low divisions, im sorry, but your not as good as you think you are.
What do you expect? For the system to match bad players against other bad players in their own seperate “baddie mmr” matchmaking all the way to legendary while ACTUAL good players instead have to face ACTUAL good players to get to legendary?
The league divisions does not scale according to your PERSONAL mmr, its the same for everyone. The players in each respective division will be there because they won against the players in the previous divisions, its not like anet is just giving “pros” free pips when they queue, the people still have to PLAY the match and WIN, and they do, against players in their same division.
If your still struggling to get out of amber/emerald at this point, its not just “bad matchmaking luck” its probably you.

This guy gets it.

Incorrect. New players are given an average rated MMR so if you are Average you will be matched with new players. So matchmaking is throwing average players and new players together on a team (because they share the same MMR) and then getting placed against teams that are +/- 15 pips. So, the issue at the moment is that the average team MMR is not actually pairing people with the same MMR as explained by Evan. So the expectation that you, as an average MMR player, will be matched with like minded or experienced PvP’ers is not true. So the expectations that people are being matched with like minded pvp’ers is mistaken. Now, all those average people have to adapt to a lower team rating than they were used to. I would say that it’s a valid complaint. Now that average players have a handicap, you add on that you are facing worse or better opponents is further different than unranked or season one matchmaking and it makes for more salt.

What I have been reading across all these forum posts is that people with higher and top MMR don’t see that the issues they have last season of carrying lower tiered players to legend is impacting average players this season. If you didn’t like having to carry lower MMR people last season then you should have some sympathy for average players this season who have to do the same thing.

This is very well said, and brings up a good point that’s been raised before: new players shouldn’t start with an average MMR. Fixing this minor detail (with perhaps major consequences) could potentially make the current ranked system fun for all.

JTGuevara.9018:

Salamander.2504:

JTGuevara.9018:

Sardath.8524:

Kayberz.5346:

Most of the people complaining about the matchmaking seem to want everone to have their own personal reward track to legendary. The arguments like “the pros should have to face other pros from the start” or “good players shouldnt be farming win streaks at the expense of bad players” are just bullkitten.
The system isnt pairing rubys against ambers, its matching you with people in the same division, if your losing consistently in low divisions, im sorry, but your not as good as you think you are.
What do you expect? For the system to match bad players against other bad players in their own seperate “baddie mmr” matchmaking all the way to legendary while ACTUAL good players instead have to face ACTUAL good players to get to legendary?
The league divisions does not scale according to your PERSONAL mmr, its the same for everyone. The players in each respective division will be there because they won against the players in the previous divisions, its not like anet is just giving “pros” free pips when they queue, the people still have to PLAY the match and WIN, and they do, against players in their same division.
If your still struggling to get out of amber/emerald at this point, its not just “bad matchmaking luck” its probably you.

This guy gets it.

This guy DOES NOT get it.

I am in EMERALD and I have a team of AMBERS. This tells me that the entire existence of the league and pip system is ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT. It’s just there to give the ILLUSION of competition. It is the matchmaking that governs this whole thing.

If I am EMERALD I should have teams of EMERALD ONLY. PERIOD. Supposedly that’s how it’s advertised to work right? But it doesn’t….

Dude, just no. Your pip range of teammates is +/- 15 pips (common knowledge/as advertised), so the reason your getting ambers on your team is either: (1) your tier is extremely low in emerald; or (2) you are getting queued with a team that has an emerald paired with ambers. In this case, the ambers on your team are being placed in your division because they are partied with an emerald (common knowledge/as advertised).

P.S. That guy does get it.

Premades, pipsrange doesn’t mean much when matchmaking winstreak system governs this whole thing.

Then why are you upset that you get ambers on your team?

JTGuevara.9018:

Sardath.8524:

Kayberz.5346:

Most of the people complaining about the matchmaking seem to want everone to have their own personal reward track to legendary. The arguments like “the pros should have to face other pros from the start” or “good players shouldnt be farming win streaks at the expense of bad players” are just bullkitten.
The system isnt pairing rubys against ambers, its matching you with people in the same division, if your losing consistently in low divisions, im sorry, but your not as good as you think you are.
What do you expect? For the system to match bad players against other bad players in their own seperate “baddie mmr” matchmaking all the way to legendary while ACTUAL good players instead have to face ACTUAL good players to get to legendary?
The league divisions does not scale according to your PERSONAL mmr, its the same for everyone. The players in each respective division will be there because they won against the players in the previous divisions, its not like anet is just giving “pros” free pips when they queue, the people still have to PLAY the match and WIN, and they do, against players in their same division.
If your still struggling to get out of amber/emerald at this point, its not just “bad matchmaking luck” its probably you.

This guy gets it.

This guy DOES NOT get it.

I am in EMERALD and I have a team of AMBERS. This tells me that the entire existence of the league and pip system is ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT. It’s just there to give the ILLUSION of competition. It is the matchmaking that governs this whole thing.

If I am EMERALD I should have teams of EMERALD ONLY. PERIOD. Supposedly that’s how it’s advertised to work right? But it doesn’t….

Dude, just no. Your pip range of teammates is +/- 15 pips (common knowledge/as advertised), so the reason your getting ambers on your team is either: (1) your tier is extremely low in emerald; or (2) you are getting queued with a team that has an emerald paired with ambers. In this case, the ambers on your team are being placed in your division because they are partied with an emerald (common knowledge/as advertised).

P.S. That guy does get it.

Strictly speaking, your win/loss ratio is not what determines your MMR. The MMR of your opponents you won or lost against matters a lot. An upset where a low MMR team (Team Deadly Dolyaks) beats a high MMR team (Team Quirky Quaggans) increases the MMR of the Deadly Dolyaks moreso than if the Deadly Dolyaks had beat an even lower-ranked team. Likewise, if Team Quirky Quaggans loses to the Deadly Dolyaks, their MMR loss is much greater. And because the Quirky Quaggans were predicted to beat the Deadly Dolyaks (due to their higher MMR), a win by the Quirky Quaggans would not increase their MMR substantially.

So if all of your losses are predicted to lose, and some of your wins are upsets, your MMR can still be average or above.

http://www.glicko.net/glicko/glicko2.pdf

Now, all that being said, your advice is spot on. The fastest way to raise your MMR is to win “upsets” against teams with higher MMR, which is most easily achieved by playing with a coordinated group (i.e., using voice comms) that knows how to rotate (mechanical skill is useful but less important, as you need only force outnumbered fights to win).

Out of curiosity, how often are reveals screwing you over, and in what situations?

Can people stop saying that getting into one loss streak tanks your MMR and results in a downward spiral? It’s just not true. It will only do this if you have a very small sample size of ranked games already (i.e., close to zero), in which case the player in question is very inexperienced. If I have 1000 ranked games, losing 20 in a row is not going to make a dent in my MMR. Conversely, winning 20 games in a row is not going to substantially boost my MMR.

Eater of Peeps.9062:

Well, at least Ive stopped crying in real life. Its been hard to accept that I wont be playing GW anymore. I am now accepting that I cannot escape tier one of emerald. I am doomed to be there forever, because I played a lot early on and due to unfortunate circumstances (like getting trounced in my solo que by organized/ts/rerolling/meta pro league) and other unfortunate teammate garbage I am now stuck at the bottom with no way up or out.

I have asked people, and begged people to carry me. I have looked for teams willing to pair up. No one is willing to risk a downward adjustment in mmr for any reason.

So, seeking a team is out. Since the game is coded for me to win only 33% of the time, and my mmr is now so low that I am in the game with people brand new to pvping, my experiencing pvping is beyond frustrating.

Be clear. I primarily love to play pvp only for the strong competition. I do not like coaching noobs, teaching strategy, just like the rest of you riding your 66% winning streaks (yes the game is coded for you to win 66% of the time) – you don’t want to carry people. Yet I have to do that with the bottom players all day long. I don’t care about a backpiece – I don’t want it.

Many people think I belong where I am. I disagree. But more importantly, there is no way up or out if you cant get a team. People are getting stuck in different divisions (lucky then to be stuck in sapphire or ruby cuz at least there the players are somewhat decent). I did group up with a sapphire team who begged me to stay with them after 2 losses, because they admitted I was better than all of them who were in sapphire division.

I am tired now. The game has been ruined for me. I am not going to slog away at the bottom forever, with no hope of it ever changing, cuz I win two, and immediately lose 3 cuz of pairings caused by coding mechanics combined with absolutely clueless players.

So, you can all say what you want. Think whatever you want.

I just want to say I will be giving my stuff away – I have tons of materials, gold etc. I want to be nice to the players who play gw. I have always loved this game. I am a nice person and am an honest, good player with integrity and skill.

I will be giving my stuff away, probably this weekend. After 14 years, Im sorry to go, but I wont play at a frustrating bottom level forever where I cant get out of it and no one will help.

If there is anyone out there, before this weekend, who would like to offer help to carry me, I would greatly appreciate it, as I don’t really want to quit. I love GW. I loved pvping. I am sure anet didn’t really want this disaster (and all of you with your winning streaks who think how great it is – whatever).

I will freely admit it for all of you skeptics and smug people as well. I suck I admit it. I truly mean it. I suck. I am terrible. You will be risking a ding to your mmr if you help me.

Please help me. I am begging. That’s what people on these forums tell you to do. I am doing. I am terrible. Really awful. I have been practicing pvping for 14 years on GW so Im probably not going to improve. But at least if someone carries me to sapphire, if I suck, I would know it, cuz I would continue to play, and I would drop down in mmr, and I would be no threat to anyone next season.

I am looking for any kind souls who have a good team, willing to help craptastic me move up artificially. If not, please hang out this weekend in the lobby. Free stuff for everyone. And then you can all have the joy of not listening to me anymore.

Hey, hang in there man! It’s not as bad as it seems, trust me. No game is worth that amount of distress. Take a break for a few days and clear your head. Alternatively, go play a few unranked games to get your confidence back.

All you need to do to make the GS viable in PvP is to watch Zefrost’s video and implement his idea:

There have been so many threads on this already, but the cause is noble.

+1 to Freelancer

You might find sigil of renewal to be very complementary to LfD.

Well, there isn’t really a difference in emerald vs. sapphire in terms of how the pip-loss works and tiers, etc, so, theoretically, being in emerald/sapphire at the end of the season really just means you didn’t play enough games—a normal 50% win-rate with fluke win-streaks is enough to get anyone to ruby by the end of the season.

Fay.2357:

There may be issues with matchmaking, but this screenie shows none of them.

4-1 vs 3 and 2 solo. This is pretty reasonable, nothing wrong with this.

A bunch of sapphires matched with a bunch of sapphires. This is pretty reasonable.

A premade guild team at the top of challenger ladder stomping x players here. This is pretty reasonable.

What exactly do you expect them to do with matchmaking? You all are whining about the exact opposite thing as last time. Last time everyone and their mother was kittening that the mmr system tried to force a 50% winrate which made it very difficult people to rank up and encouraged mmr tanking.

This time everyone and their mother is kittening that the system doesn’t try to match high mmr people with high mmr people. You know what doing that forces? It forces a 50% winrate; the exact thing you kittened about last season.

Note that this isn’t a case of ‘some people want one thing and other people want something else. The op of this thread was whining about how mmr was being used last season grouping high mmr people against each other. The op is now whining that it isn’t doing that. The vast majority of the complaining here isn’t due to legitimate concerns; it’s due to people losing matches, having zero awareness of how and why the matchmaking works, and then immediately heading to the forums to whine instead of trying to become better informed. Quite honestly it makes me sick.

cosmicegg.8502:

then between seasons everyone’s mmr decays and cant go up so what’s your point

My point? You asked a question and I responded with an answer.

cosmicegg.8502:

Are you saying there was decay between seasons? How could they have decay when mmr wasn’t even changeable in unranked. And yes I didn’t play as much between seasons but I not sure mmr had decay in between either. I could be wrong though.

Teutos.8620:

Salamander.2504:

Azukas.1426:

I feel that threads like this are a direct indication of how well a company is doing.

There is a vocal minority of displeased people (happy folks don’t feel the need to post), so I don’t think these threads are representative at all.

Well, only a minority is vocal but it is a logical fallacy if you think that mean, that the minority is pleased.

My comment doesn’t really say anything about whether the majority/minority is pleased or not. All I’m saying is that you can’t gauge how well a company is doing by these types of threads because your sample is biased towards dissatisfied customers. Don’t read into it.

cosmicegg.8502:

Salamander.2504:

Azukas.1426:

I feel that threads like this are a direct indication of how well a company is doing.

There is a vocal minority of displeased people (happy folks don’t feel the need to post), so I don’t think these threads are representative at all.

Azukas.1426:

Most players don’t run to the forums and cry foul at the drop of the hat.

Yes they most definitely do. In fact, this is exactly how I would describe the PvP subforum to anyone to asked.

dude you really are a tool you can look at my list of complaints since release and see nothing till last week things have been bad before but not this bad if your happy go play and kitten what are you doing here.

You got me. I shouldn’t post in these forums since I’m “happy”. Teutos are you copying this?

cosmicegg.8502:

SO your saying because I didnt do much unranked my ranked mmr even though ranked wasn’t available decayed anyway?

The decay of MMR is separate between ranked and unranked. If you take a break from unranked, your unranked MMR decays. If you take a break from ranked, your rank MMR decays. So, when ranked is unavailable, your ranked MMR decays, even if you are playing unranked in the off-season. Everyone’s MMR decays in the off-season.