Guild Wars 2

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

It’s been a while since we’ve commented on leagues, so here’s a brief update.

There’s definitely room for improvement in the league system, and it’s safe to say that it’s the team’s highest priority now that we’ve signed off on everything going in for the July release. It’s still a bit early to talk about specifics, but I do think we can talk about some of the goals we have for the changes:

• Improve match quality
• Make divisions more reflective of player skill
• Make leagues feel more rewarding after you’ve placed in your appropriate division

We’re still determining the scope of the project, but I do want to be clear that it’s unlikely that these changes will be in for S4. Once we get a bit further in the dev process I’ll see if I can give an update on our thoughts/direction.

-Grouch

Please tell me you are aware of how the matchmaking works right now:

Stack all “lose streaks/low MMR” on one team against “all win streaks/high mmr” on another.

This creates unwinnable/unlosable matches a vast majority of the time. In games you win, you could be afk and still win, in games you lost you couldn’t do anything to help win. This is a common occurrence by players of ALL skill levels(yes, even legendary) a vast majority of the time. Your contribution to winning or losing basically never matters, which isn’t fun.

A major reasoning for this is your division/pip system. It simply cannot exist in it’s current state. You could be the worst player in the world but still make it to ruby, eventually, by grinding games. Once you get there you’re never going to make any progress at all(as the worst player in the world) as this is when a proper ladder/division system starts. This makes bad/new players unable to progress, while also making good/veteran players angry and unmotivated to continue to “carry” lesser skilled players. Newbies/bad players are placed against people nowhere near their skill level, and veterans are placed with people waaaay below their skill level. Both the veterans and new/bad players end up disliking the system. Both the new and veteran players are put into matches that are not balanced for either of them. A matchmaking system is supposed to create proper matches – the way the division system currently works CANNOT. The only way to fix it would be to make it so you lose pips and tiers even at amber.

Please try to create a ranked pvp system for one type of player – those seeking a competitive PvP environment, and stop trying to create a ranked pvp system for EVERYONE, this includes people who probably shouldn’t even be doing ranked PvP. You are trying to make a ranked system that lets new/bad players feel “happy” about progressing while also trying to create a competitive matchmaking environment. You cannot create a good system while also trying to make sure new/bad players are capable of playing it while also trying to create good matches for veterans. Create the system for a single type of player, not all of them at once. The people the amber-ruby division systems are designed for(as in, you basically can just grind out progress) should be playing unranked, not ranked.

What you end up with by trying to create a system that caters to everyone at once is a non-functional system that doesn’t make anyone happy.

The Zealous Templar.3861:

Shiyo.3578:

Idk I went into a training run with 1 experiened player and 9 new/“knows some” to the fight and killed KC in less than an hour. I didn’t watch a video or have any idea what the boss did prior to fighting it.

My bad, I guess your cherry picked anecdotal evidence of an outlier clearly disproves the trends observed by most.

I’ll be looking for only new players from now on, I’ll get the raid done super quick guaranteed.

Just did sloth and bandit trio with 0 experience on a class I’ve never played before in group content and barely played at 80(like less than 10 hours played) with a bunch of new players(but a lot of experienced). Killed both in less than an hour.

People just need to give others a chance! We had a fantastic leader leading us to victory and it made it pretty easy.

Accuracy for staff because you don’t sit in air(or use aeromancer’s training) and thus have 190 less precision and need the 7% crit to reach 100% in raids.

fivestar.7830:

Its not out of the question to want experienced as i know alot of people who have cleared the wing already. I was able to clear it myself 3 days after it came out. People just want others that invest time and knowledge of then class they play to beat it. And as far as people saying they are exp and they are not it normally shows that’s why people ask for ping insights or trophy’s but that can be lied too. That’s why when we pug we have rules like you get egged in gor u get kicked, hit flame wall kick, drop the aoe on zerg in solth kick. Things like that weed out the ones that are just trying to be carried thur. You could try joining a training guild (randomguy.1283 host one) to get your exp. So in short some people have paid there due to get the exp (over 8 hours for 2 days in a row).

This is why I have stopped trying to raid. These raids are easier than things I’ve done in other MMO’s yet the community is beyond strict. It isn’t fun being treated like a complete moron just because I haven’t been playing since the raids release. The few bosses I’ve killed I’ve done going in blind and learned all mechanics in less than 20 minutes then cleared in less than an hour with 5+ brand new players.

Every run should be a training AND clear run. I should not have to suffer through ‘“destined to fail” runs where people “learn mechanics” for hours before I’m allowed to join “clear runs”. That isn’t fun, that’s too much grind and commitment, and it isn’t enjoyable playing with subpar players to learn fights before I can play with competent players. I should be able to instantly hop into playing with competent players – something I could do in every other MMO I’ve been playing for over a decade. Much more difficult raiding MMO’s, to boot.

People need to treat people like humans and be understanding and helpful. These are very, very easy raids.

Raiding isn’t hardcore. Raiding is the most casual form of content. The problem is the requirements the players themselves create in order for you to join raids. Example: 50+ legendary insights to join a raid? No, that’s not ok.

Every single group should be a “training” group. It takes less than 20 minutes to learn every single mechanic on a boss you have 0 idea about(no video watching, no reading up on it, etc).

This community needs to be less demanding, raids are not difficult in this.

You can buy charged ambrite off the TP.

No, I do not like this idea. It makes the raiding experience feel less epic.

Killstreak boosters with birthday boost guild boost food and a potion. Go around running through zones murdering every enemy you see.

Killstreak boosters are what make this good.

Retreat on a 30s cooldown with 20s duration is as good as a 25% move speed signet, except it’s AOE. Actually, if you use staff as well, you can probably reach 100% uptime on swiftness in AOE now!

Idk I went into a training run with 1 experiened player and 9 new/“knows some” to the fight and killed KC in less than an hour. I didn’t watch a video or have any idea what the boss did prior to fighting it.

Ark Bladesteele.2943:

Sarrs.4831:

if you want to not soloqueue and instead queue up as a 5man team why don’t you just queue up as a 5man team

Not many people looking for 5 man premades because they can simply quueue up alone.

If you force people to have to find 4 others, the pool of players seeking and trying to form a party greatly increases. It’s basic human psychology.

I agree 10000% in removing solo queue from ranked PvP. If will make it easier to find a group since you will NEED one to be able to do the content, just like needing a group for fractals/raids means more people are looking for one.

It’s not mathematically possible to create a system that creates proper matches with good matchmaking queueing 10 random people together, so the only real solution is to make it ranked only. A proper matchmaking system can EASILY match a 5 man premade team against another equally skilled premade team based on MMR alone.

This is the only solution to making matchmaking good.

This will overall create a better PvP experience for almost everyone.

Absurdo.8309:

This seems to be an odd complaint with the release of wing 3, because no one has any experience.

People already require experience for wing3.

This wing isn’t even a week old, and people already expect experienced only.

What is going on?

Erzian.5218:

make the game fun because as it is now, the game is simply not enjoyable to many people:
- matches are unfair and you can tell the winner 90% of the time before the match has even started
- skill/class design is awful and literally every meta build is unfun to play against because of passive dmg/cc, AI and too many spamable high damage and/or high defense skills and evades.

I agree with the first part. The second part is indeed true and really sucks how passive and spammy the game is but the combat/classes are still fun enough to fight. While I do prefer pre-elite spec/HoT talent trees I’d be ok with PvP as long as the first problem(matches being unfair) was fixed.

Right now unfair matches just make me not enjoy pvp at all.

Crowley.8761:

This doesn’t bother me at all, but I’m not an entitled kitten or a bad gamer so guess the premise is not really comparable.

Main problem I think is that people aren’t used to working for anything, it’s much more appealing to complain endlessly.

Video games are meant to be fun. Right now playing ranked and trying to gain pips is like banging your head against the wall, the complete opposite of fun.

The matches are one sided stomps 99% of the time and that makes it not an enjoyable experience. Even if you don’t care about pips at all, or rank, or anything, you rarely, if ever, will have decent fun matches. You can go hours without getting a single one.

That isn’t ok. Something needs to be done about matchmaking to make pvp actually fun to play.

UBcktieDL.5318:

Possible drops: versatile simple infusion, various types of mist essence, mist potions and as a final reward 1 or 2 ascended crafting materials (such as deldrimor steel ingot or bolt of damask). This reward track should help pvp’ers who want to start with fractals.

What do you think?

Only unlockable once you’ve cleared all t4 fractals and you got yourself a deal.

T3 Thaumanova Fractal is actually more difficult(by a lot) than the T4 version because of the instability. Kinda funny.

I personally think this fractal should be split into two because it’s over double the length of any other fractal, yet gives the same reward. A bit silly.

BrotherBelial.3094:

The only reason this was changed was to get people back into WvW after the HoT changed decimated the WvW population.

Making people do content they don’t want to do always makes the content massively worse for the people who actually want to be there.

Unless you’re playing for a pro esl team you playing guardian/DH will not negatively impact the game in any way. The class is perfectly fine in a pug setting.

Dara Potocska.8196:

Good day friends,
This issue is being investigated by QA and no ETA on a fix has been made at this point. =( But we are aware its going on.

It’s a very annoying bug and makes doing things such as the dragon stand tower meta event a headache because you can’t ever see where your teammates are!

Thank you for the update and I hope you get it fixed ASAP!

I think a lot of the reason blobs/karma trains exist is because roaming isn’t fun anymore when you fight nothing but condi mesmer/thieves.

Forcing people to do content they don’t want to do to finish their PvE items is not good at keeping players happy.

It also makes the content worse for people who WANT to do it. WvW is going to suffer from this change.

Please just readd the vendor for a week for people who were not aware of this change.

Has something changed about this option in the graphics settings? I’ve had it on lowest for 2 years now, and suddenly when I do teq almost NO ONE loads around me. It feels like a completely barren zone(when before lots of people still loaded) and then suddenly enemies are stacked full of condis and taking tons of damage, so there is people around me. For some reason, a lot less people are loading now with the option on lowest?

Other people I play with are experiencing the same thing. Has something been changed with this option? I haven’t seen ANY posts about this issue but it’s not just me having it and I’m curious what’s up with it.

Covis.6037:

30 wins no losses. from instant sapphire to diamond (just today so i didnt even get any players of my MMR in my side because they are already higher). did it 100% with my least played classes too. just by that experience i can tell u that its not the MMR thats keeping people back, they are most likely where they deserve to be at…

Several multi-legendary players have said the matchmaking is messed up and stacks teams so that the people with high MMR who are doing well continue to do so. Your story is proof of that.

There’s multi-season legendary players who are struggling with awful unwinnable games. I’ve even heard of ESL players having this problem on occasion too. They deserve legendary, but the matchmaking is making it hard on them.

It’s the matchmaking 100%. It needs a huge fix.

Drussthelegend.2630:

The matchmaking has basically been the same since season one with minor changes. Stop waiting for some magical fix its not coming. They have been looking at it for 7 months so either they are the dumbest people ever and can’t find any meaningful fixes to improve it or this is what they think is the best based on how everything works.

I find PvP unplayable just because of the matchmaking system.
The combat is great, the balance is pretty good, fighting other classes is enjoyable, but I simply cannot have fun because nearly all matches are one sided stomps.

Playing PvP where your contribution means almost nothing isn’t PvP to me. PvP should be decided by who is the better player(s), right now it’s not. The way matchmaking works is making PvP completely unfun for me.

dekou.6012:

This annoys me because it seems to be a repeat of the Phlanx armor debacle. For those who don’t remember, this is what Phalanx looks like:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Phalanx_armor_human_male_front.jpg

Wow, that’s cool! I’ll just go and buy it for my female Warrior…

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Phalanx_armor_human_female_front.jpg

…wait, where’s the cool helmet? The sleek breastplate? The practical, yet slightly intimidating pants? Why’s the female version made from a different material?

The issue isn’t as noticeable in the Envoy armor designs, but they still look off. The medium male design has a nicely detailed shirt, while the female one is just a bikini. It looks dumb, not sexy.

Phalanx pants are my favorite heavy pants for female humans.

All this will accomplish is making the blobs bigger for every server. Blob vs blob fighting isn’t fun, neither us killing walls and npcs to take camps.

Roaming doesn’t give enough participation and fighting condi roamer builds isn’t fun – as this is all every roamer runs.

I wouldn’t mind being forced to do WvW if it was FUN. it isn’t fun though, because it encourages blobbing HARD and punishes you for trying to do small scale roaming because of condi stealth specs and perplexity runes.

If this change is going to remain in the game, make, please make WvW fun. That’s all I ask. I just want to have FUN.

xarallei.4279:

I’d like more skimpy medium armor. There are so few choices for skimpy medium it’s not even funny.

Agreed. Plate too.

I love how unlocking elite specs works and really enjoy the challenge HoT hero points brought.

mauried.5608:

There are no essential items in the gem store.
Players now seem to be claiming that items that are nice to have are essential.

I don’t think playing the game without buying bank slots would be very fun. You wouldn’t even be capable of swapping your ascended gear between characters because your bank would always be full of things you can’t put into storage(and the amount of items that can’t be put into storage keeps increasing every patch).

Lopez.7369:

Seems like a few people are hitting their skill walls and blaming the game. If it’s the game, why is it that some players (solo, duo, or not) are having no trouble carrying their teams up to legendary but others aren’t? Remember that legendary isn’t for everyone.

That isn’t the problem. The problem is that the matches are simply not fun to play(due to massive imbalances between teams) regardless of if you’re an amber 1 player or a legendary player.

Multiple multi-season legendary players have been saying that this seasons matchmaking is a disaster and that they had completely one sided matches their entire journey to legendary. They consistently say that when they won games, they could’ve been afk and still won, and when they lose their contribution to the match was next to pointless. In both cases, they were simply along for the ride, and not actually doing anything to help win or lose the match. I think even Chaith has commented on the matchmaking saying it’s extremely bad right now and stacking winning teams and losing teams nearly every single match.

If the matches are so one-sided, like they currently are with this matchmaking, they aren’t fun. Spvp is losing players at an alarming rate, sure, people are finish their legendary backs, but it’s a much deeper issue than that.

I could lose every single game for weeks in a row, but if I had close games, felt like my contribution mattered, felt like I had decent teammates equal to me, and my enemies in skill, I would have fun. That’s all I want, fun. The current matchmaking system is as far from that as humanly possible.

I think this is most peoples problem with the matchmaking as well. Then, as soon as you reach legendary(or whatever you wanted for backpiece), most people simply wash their hands of the game and either move onto another game, PvE, or WvW. There is little to no fun to be had right now in Spvp. PvP should be fun, it’s not. People want to have fun, they are not capable of having fun at a moderately decent rate due to the games current matchmaking system.

This is why I want a full reset.

I love this games economy. Best of any MMO ever and I’m glad we have John Smith. However, I would like much more gem sales on “essential” items like bank/bag slots for new players to not have to suffer so bad if gold – > gem prices are going to only continue to rise.

I like it how it is and want more revealing female armors.

ImperialWL.7138:

I guess that’s that then. Don’t suppose this can be overturned, but I’ll give it a shot anyway; like I stated above the only reason I bothered with PvP leagues at all was to have legendary badge next to my name. Is it vain? Absolutely, but there is no difference between this and why people farm for better skins/legendary weapons, I just liked the badge better; and now it is suddenly taken away, in the middle of the current season no less…sorry but you don’t just give people a goal to work towards and then to take it away just like that. So I’m asking for you to revert this decision, if not then at least re implement it for the start of season 4.

I would’ve been perfectly fine had you kept PvP badges away from WvW in the first place, then it would’ve given me no excuse to step foot in PvP during seasons. For me, reaching legendary and having the badge next to my name was the reward, just like a legendary weapon or the legendary backpiece was the goal for others, so I’m sure you can imagine how it feels like to me, for it to be taken away in the middle of the season like this, like all the hard work I put in was for nothing.

Agreed.
I find it extremely silly that your PvP prestige emblem is now disabled in every single PvP mode.

I’m curious, why exactly was this done?

Your PVP league rank is now not shown in either pvp mode – Spvp(ranked only? Not sure) and WVW. It’s now only shown in PvE.

Why exactly? Shouldn’t you be able to show off your pvp prestige INSIDE of pvp modes? That makes no sense to me. I can’t exactly wrap my head around this change.s

Gaile Gray.6029:

People, people, people.

You have a legitimate question, all of you. But some of you are going off the rails with a really high level of snarkiness, grumpiness, and general unpleasantness.

I have asked around, and after some discussion amongst teams, we think we may understand what happened. What you want (need) to know is this: The change to the Silverwastes drops was not intentional, and it will be corrected.

If you could please avoid the name-calling and the other tin-foil hat comments, I’d appreciate it. I can get down into core issues a lot more quickly, save myself a pair of permanently-raised eyebrows, and save my team members another muttered “Oh really, you guys?” if you just ask the question straight up and let us get you an answer!

Thanks! And I’ll update when we have more info!

Thank you for the update! Yay.

Slashmeehup.1495:

I don’t understand this forum at all. When they nerfed Chest farming by ~40%, no one batted an eye. They trim one reward off a single event, and people flip out.

SW events/meta is fun to do.

Chest farming isn’t fun to do.

Nerfing SW, which doesn’t need a nerf anymore after the HoT map reward buffs which made them all as rewarding kitten doesn’t make any sense. What makes even less sense is nerfing SW NOW when AB is being multi-looted and didn’t get nerfed. Everyone is doing AB now, why would you nerf SW when it’s not even the best gold/hour or an exploit or anything? SW didn’t need any changes.

I’m baffled.

What do people think about having to do an entire season with this matchmaking?

Is it healthy for this game? Is it better to keep the matchmaking how it is now, and let people keep playing for an entire season with no changes to it?

Or would it be better to hotfix it, reset everyone’s rating, MMR, everything, then create a much better matchmaking system mid season? Maybe give out free tickets to EVERYONE as compensation or something?

Which is healthier for the game as a whole when it comes to PvP, this matchmaking, or resetting it and compensating people for their time and apologizing?

I’d prefer a complete reset and hotfix of the matchmaking, over the current matchmaking. How about other people? I’m honestly curious what people think.

A 50% reward nerf seems overboard. It didn’t need a nerf, honestly. It was a fun and enjoyable zone. I really hope it wasn’t nerfed intentionally because it’s one of my favorite zones to do and wasn’t more rewarding than other zones anymore.

Ele’s cannot carry anything.
If your team cannot kill anyone, runs into the middle of nodes and into AOE CC circles when focused(so you can’t heal them) and never exists, you can’t do anything.

Sure, you can hold a single node 1v1 for a while, and 2vs1 for a bit, but that doesn’t win games. It just makes you lose slower.

Can people please stop acting like Ele is some godmode solo winner? It’s the worst possible class to play to carry, by far.

I dunno, it’s just like. Matchmaking is a complete mess, you push yourself to get to legendary so you get better teammates and can have more fun enjoyable games, but then once you arrive at legendary you have hour long queues and can’t even play the game, after barley being able to play the game for 100+ games of grinding to legendary.

I’m not sure what anet can do, but the entire Spvp ranked system needs another complete overhaul.

I’d honestly rather have no legendary back, no pip system, no reward tracks, no 30s from wins, no rank up bonuses, no rewards at all, but a working matchmaking system that lets me play fairly balanced games so I can actually have fun.

Having fun should be the main focus, not rewards. Fun. PvP should always be about fun. The balance is relatively good, the classes are fun to play as and fight. The game mode is pretty fun. It’s just the matchmaking. The matchmaking makes it not fun.

Please make PvP maches fun again, anet.

You’re min/maxing for more survivability in a game you should never do that in for PvE.

Berserker’s is optimal damage, valks is not always optimal damage because things don’t always have 25 vuln, adds exist, etc.

It’s not worth sacrificing damage for survivaiblity, it’s always been a thing people odn’t do because you can dodge and max DPS is the most important thing – which zerker armor gives you.

Valks armor is silly. You’re not always going to be hitting things with 25 vuln stacks and having a super specialized armor stat combination on ascended can mess up you potentially being able to play ele/mesmer as well.

Berserker is a much better choice overall.

Greatsword isn’t even good in PvP so there’s no reason they can’t buff it to be better in PvE.

DH is perfectly fine outside of pro esl matches.

I still don’t get why they added a longbow and traps to guardian as an elite spec, very weird decision.

I simply stopped queueing and now PVE or WvW.

Agemnon.4608:

Shiyo.3578:

Thief is currently the best class in the game. Is it overpowered? No. Is it easy to play? Not at all. Is it currently capable of solo winning games and team fights if you’re good at it? Yeah(assuming your team is moderately competent – aka almost never in ranked matchmaking).

The class is incredibly strong and back to it’s vanilla glory days again. It also can beat most classes 1v1, when it couldn’t do that during vanilla celestial meta.

Thief is very very powerful and I’m not sure why people are slow at realizing this. Maybe because thief is the only class remaining that takes skill to be good and useful at.

It might be fun to play and be extremely useful in the proper hands, but to say best class in the game is a bit of a stretch. Ele has more abilities as well as group cleanse, healing, and can create big no-go zones for a time and has an invuln.

Yeah, that’s true. The problem with ele is you’re only as good as your team, and with this games current matchmaking playing an ele outside of a premade is a big no-no and will result in anger and frustration.

Thief is really versatile and good. It can 1v1 a bunch of classes, it can decap, it can +1, it’s pretty ok in team fights too if you know what you’re doing.

Ele is by far the best class right now, you’re right, but from a pugging perspective I’d say ele is the WORST class to play, imo, and thief the best, again, imo.