Guild Wars 2

It’s possible that your MMR may have been inflated last season due to their logical error in matching. You should eventually creep back up to a 50/50 rate if you keep playing.

Is it actually “grindy”?? It seems more like it’s setup to stop progress completely for anyone who’s not tanking their MMR.

If you’re SoloQ and don’t cheat by deliberately throwing games, you won’t progress period.

Which guild? I should do the same.

The match quality in unranked is better.

Only 1 that didn’t involve someone intentionally throwing the match or losing connection. Almost all the wins I’ve had was because someone on the other team was literally pretending to participate.

Anet PvP team, you are insane.

I just want a legitimate ranking system. Matching wouldn’t be such a problem if ranking had been designed to keep bad players from achieving high ranks. The safety nets are the biggest issue.

Saiyan.1704:

You literally created a downward spiral for players with low mmr,

Preferably yes. Matches will never be even unless players are being matched among similarly skilled players.

chungiee.8764:

The problem with having a varying spread for losing is that it makes it ever harder for the people with low MMR to get pips. Imagine if they lost 5 pips for losing and only gained 1 for winning. I would personally quit very quickly as there is no progression.

Also, losing is a shared responsibility. For example, the top MMR guy shouting and flaming in chat is definitely not helping the team and should be punished accordingly.

I think it is fine for pips to be inflationary as long as better players go up quicker than worse players. This way, you could grind your way up (rewarding playing) yet get there in 20% of the time if you were good.

Players with lower MMR shouldn’t be getting pips. They should be losing them.

This is how it should have been to start, though I’d probably go further and suggest that the losing team also get a varying spread that works in the same direction.

The whole point is to let pips catch up to MMR. If everyone on a losing team loses 2 pips, the effect would be slowed down unnecessarily. The best of the losing team shouldn’t lose more than one.

It’s also vitally important that pip safety nets be removed.

It would only get you so far…

Not anymore. As far as soloQ goes, progression is now based on luck and how many games you’ve played. In fact, due to player mixing between team/solo and the abundance of people who know how to tank their MMR, playing ranked may actually net you a slightly less than 50% win ratio all around until the season ends. Waiting won’t make any difference.

Edit: It might actually work if you plan on queuing with a 5 man team that stays in saphire for a few weeks.

Otherwise it’s probably best to just skip this season to save yourself the frustration. You’re only going to submit yourself to a more toxic environment.

Spartacus.3192:

The problem i see with this is that with the artificial floors we have in Emerald/Sapphire and Tier 1 Ruby. You will truly get MMR hell since the system will pick from a pip range and if you have the lowest MMR in your pip range you will be forced to grind your way up. Each loss moving your MMR lower and causing you to lose 2pips. If at the start of the tier you will not lose more pips but your MMR will keep getting lower.

I thought what you meant was your MMR should get adjusted by how your MMR relates to the average of the enemy team. Not sure exactly how its done right now.

You’re absolutely right, I just didn’t mention it because this is something that has been painfully obvious to the hordes of people posting on this forum and reddit. The safety nets would have to go, otherwise distortions prior to ruby would amplify and maintain imbalance within ruby so drastically that it may continue to be present all the way up through diamond, and if diamond has a pip safety net, it will just perpetuate and ruin the entire system.

To further elaborate what I meant, it would seem most practical to have the rewards work such that:

• Top 4 highest MMR players in a match should get +2 for a win, -1 for a loss.
• Bottom 4 MMR should get +1 for a win, -2 for a loss.
• The middles of course +1 -1

This would move players based on their MMR, and if pips follow MMR, then matching based on pips should result in more balanced matches. That means there won’t be as much of a need for 1 or 2 players to have to “carry” a team every game.

As it stands, there doesn’t seem to be any progression differentiation between a pro-league player and a level 20 complete newb.

It should be based on personal MMR compared to everyone else in the match, not based on your team and their team’s total MMR.

Players who are better/worse than the rest need a factor that moves them towards their skill range so that matches are balanced and promote competitive play.

It sucks.

The best it can do is provide support, but the form of support it provides doesn’t compare to that of the AOE pressure, control and blocks that a guardian can.

As far as support goes, the only difference between ele and guadian right now is that the guardian has plentiful access to aegis, a long lasting f3 block, heal on dodge, an invulnerability skill that recharges a major heal and the f3 block, and a number of skills that fully negate damage through more blocks. The ele has to face tank what the guardian doesn’t have to, meaning it can survive on point much longer and continue to support the rest of the team where the ele instead would have fallen long ago.

Any other type of build that is non supportive or hybrid simply doesn’t work. Cast times are too long and the damage of individual skills are too low. The source of an ele’s DPS largely depends on long duration/low burst AOE skills that are easily avoidable. Best I’ve seen so far is an arcane fresh air build that can provide pressure similar to that of any other class but has nearly zero ability to counter pressure or cleanse conditions. You have to play it like it’s a thief that can’t dodge well, teleport, or stealth away to safety. You get one chance to plus for someone and if you mess up, you’re toast.

They made the same mistake a few times in a row now without learning.

PvP team and Balance team should not be separate. Every pass ends up doubling down every nerf and buff.

I never thought I’d see so much blatant disrespect against the competitive community with these “ranking” systems.

I’ve seen so many posters here and on reddit go through great efforts analyzing the system and its flaws. They came up with nearly perfect solutions and all have been declined based on some weird fetish for the less competent.

I’ve been playing guardian religiously since this patch hit. It’s unstoppable right now.

They should just start everyone off in legendary.

I have to agree with the premise of this entire topic. I PvP a lot and I see the same players over and over again. I am even familiar with some of the various character names associated with half the people in this thread.

I blame the PvP team for providing such a strong incentive for the balance team to be so uncooperative by introducing such an unfair league and ranking system. I also blame the balance team for their incompetence as their efforts are required to support PvP development, but still, I understand it’s like asking them to wax a rusty car.

It does kinda seem like adjustments to classes are made halfheartedly. It may be their intent to limit build diversity so that they game doesn’t get to complicated for the masses of low IQ players we have. In a way, it’s insulting, and doesn’t leave much room for those who enjoy on-the-fly strategic adaptation towards unexpected builds.

All they have to do is tone down what is overused and enhance what isn’t. Instead it appears they are diverting their resources to PvE content drought complainers. I think this was a mistake, because PvP doesn’t require nearly as much content. It just requires refinement. Adding a map like Capricorn is nothing compared to what’s involved in Bloodstone Fen. As result, we see things like the PvP team crutching their neglect against a Balance team that’s apparently not permitted to comply with PvP balance requirements.

Just to pick at the guardian for examples:

• The guardian’s current most powerful utility -the trap- was buffed recently. Meta-builds, especially ones complained about because they can instantly nullify a player without skill, shouldn’t be buffed.
• Spirit weapons are useful nowhere. They don’t last. I figure they should be on par with gyros. That means cool downs and death effects and benefits to match.
• Shouts, why? They are half as useful as meditations, don’t heal, and have insane cooldowns for what they provide.

Rangers:

• Ever seen those things that look like little glowing plant dogs? Why do they even exist? They sit there and have a one in a thousand chance of providing a one in a thousandth percent benefit to just one of a thousand attributes. Again, these things could have been more like Gyros.

Engineers:

• They used to have these things called turrets. I don’t even think they are available in the game anymore. It was dumb they could just camp and lock down a point with them, but locking down a point by yourself is a waste. The map is 4v5 everywhere else, which usually means sacrificing the other two points AND the map’s main mechanic. Their problem was that they caused their team to lose far more often than not, and the solution was to weaken the turrets instead of shifting them to a more offensive role.

Warriors:

• Shouts are stupid. They are worse than the most overlooked traits in the game.

Rev:

• Tablet doesn’t do damage
• Dwarf stance taunt and brick road are wastes of energy.

There’s plenty more underused and overused skills and traits in the game and I agree that it does take away from what GW2 is overall.

This build seems like it handles a few 1v1’s pretty well, but overall it’s hard countered by the majority of other classes. Any team of decent skill will recognize this build is to be focused first and they will always be able to kill it quickly.

It’s viable on a perma-quickness/stability/25 might juggernaut as long as you’re not fighting necros, thieves, or anything that carries retaliation. It’s basically power engi on steroids except it has too many hard counters.

Bah who am I kidding, this amy sux.

I like.

However due to the lack of dedicated development to this game mode and the ill-constructed league system, I’d suspect competitive play with a game mode like this would flop harder than Stronghold.

Not going to name names, but I encountered an Asuran thief the other day dressed as Sonic the Hedgehog who was using blinding powder and blast finishers to prevent his team from capping points.

This is an issue I’ve seen on rare occurrence for quite some time but it’s hardly ever talked about.

With the introduction of the new skill key binding from bloodstone fen, could we get a skill for all that allows us to cancel cloak while out of combat?

This used to be something that happened rarely, like once every two days.

I’d be running forward using “W”, then tap my dodge key “shift” with my pinky, but instead of dodging forwards as usual, the character dodges backwards.

Now this is occurring at least once in every PvP match and is especially frustrating while playing as thief.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m having nearly game breaking issues with latency. After 3k matches, I’ve gotten well used to where exactly all evade and block frames begin and end, but I’m getting downed mid dodge, thieves are evading everything I throw at them while out of frame, and my blocks are getting interrupted at unusually high rates. Players are warping to many locations within the local vicinity, causing my projectiles to be wasted and it’s all getting really frustrating because I no longer have a valid sense of timing.

I use shift for dodging in PvP. If I want to ping, I have to waste this dodge. I tried using control for dodge but my keyboard really doesn’t like that input because it nullifies other inputs.

ANET STOP RUINING MY LIFE

Tanner Blackfeather.6509:

Those aren’t exhaust. They’re the airflow from (essentially) a quad-copter, so pointed against the direction of the fall – downward.

But they point forward, especially when holding S. It should be pointing slightly backwards when moving forward, straight down when holding S.

When you’re a rocket and you want to fly forward, you don’t point your exhaust in front of you.

The glide-r-tron is tilted in the wrong direction.

This is LITERALLY unplayable.

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

MMR is by a long shot not perfect, but the concept of MMR HELL is not real. its just a way for others to blame the system rather than their short comings.

Ignorance at its finest

Post about matchmaking # 4209271:

I think the reason S1 failed was because of how pips were handed out and how it attempted to infect matchmaking with division considerations. I want the matchmaking system back and I’d advice a few simple changes to its pip system. If you see logical errors, please comment.

Pros

1. Matches were close, competitive, and challenging.
2. Slightly less toxic because skill diversity wasn’t as apparent.
3. Matching based on a 50/50 split of skill. If you won while not expected to win, your MMR goes up a lot. If you lose while expected to lose, it doesn’t go down much. As more matches are played, statistics begin to reflect actual skill level. Creating matches based on 40/60 or 20/80 splits does not work. MMR evaluation can not do it’s job unless the split is 50/50. We need this back.
4. Fighting as a solo team against a 5 man premade is much more likely to remain balanced.

Suggested modifications

1. Internally rank players based on their percentile with pips and MMR.
2. Base pip rewards on a player’s MMR standing with the active player base by comparing the internal percentiles. Example: If you’re top 10% in MMR but bottom 10% in pips, you will get 5 pips for each win and -1 for each loss. If your MMR is bottom 10% and your pips top 10%, you will get 1 pip per win and -5 per loss.
3. This means the pips you will end up with in the end will match your MMR and actually for once represent ranking.
4. It means there can not be endless legendary divisions. They have to be capped somewhere. I’d personally prefer 1.
5. It means there can be no pip safeties.
6. Display player’s MMR score somewhere. It’s deplorable this hasn’t been done yet.

If they try to “rank” GW2 PvP in any other way, it won’t actually reflect rankings at all. It will be a delusional grind fest filled with attempts to exploit and competitive players will continue to quit the game. Allowing so many low skilled players to climb to the top has severely degraded the quality of GW2 ranking. The system is a joke as it stands.

Faux Play.6104:

Losing to ESL players isn’t going to “tank” your MMR nearly as much as my losses to ruby players mid season. Based on my experience the system seems to match you with matches that are a little above your level for a while, then it gives you matches at your level. I’m sure if you played the account as much as I have mine you would play yourself out of it.

lethotix.2973:

imagine that. let me rain on your parade a bit. of course its easy to get diamond this late into the season. all the good players have already got legendary/high tier diamond.

the mmr hell is real. i have 1 account where i made legendary quite easy in the first 2 weeks of the season. on my other account im stuck in ruby. win a game lose a game win a game lose 2 games. i can never progress. i can play warrior/ele/and druid proficiently and switch according to team comp. i know how to rotate and counter rotate, i know how to communicate and i try to impress these ideals on those around me who have no clue. in the end you can only carry so much. i was legendary on both accounts season 1 and 2 as well.

on the said account stuck at ruby i was unfortunate to come across several FULL premades and went against many pro league players and it tanked my mmr. the mmr hell is alive and well.

This was exactly my experience.

I got stuck in a losing streak, a big one, so hopped in a 5 man party and to no surprise found myself fighting against a few ESL players. However, because my 5 man party was chosen, the game couldn’t stick me with garbage. The MMR bias had essentially been bypassed. I actually won a few of those games.

The thing about MMR is if you win against players with higher MMR, your own personal score will skyrocket. If you lose, it will hardly change.

After that, SoloQ couldn’t have been easier. The enemy team got all the garbage and I didn’t have to deal with it anymore. This was early during the first 2 weeks long before the good players stopped playing.

It’s not an issue for me anymore, but I certainly wouldn’t be stupid enough to deny that MMR hell doesn’t still exist. Season 2 and 3 matchmaking have been utter garbage, especially season 2.

What they should have done is change the way pips were handed out for season 1. The matchmaking was perfect, but the pips simply didn’t reflect ranking and made matching more difficult as time went on.

MMR give you a score that reflects where you stand among everyone else. They could have geared the # of pips awarded to be based on reaching equilibrium with the MMR rank players had. For example, lets say you’re in the top 5% of MMR score but your pips are in amber among the bottom 5%. Each win simply gives +5 pips and each loss -1 until your pip percentile gets close to your MMR percentile. This way, matching is based on one solid proven matchmaking system and not conflicting with a second.

Mutaatti.2789:

In chess tournaments ELO is used. While our MMR isn’t calculated the same way it has something similar. In chess if your ELO is 1500 and you play against player who has 2000+ ELO and you win your ELO rating gets a big boost because you are defendant in that match. If you lose, your ELO drops less than higher ELO players if he loses.

But as you advance in a ladder and get winstreak going you are going to face bigger and bigger MMR players. It doesnt mean those matches are guaranteed losses, it just means if enemy plays classes that they are familiar with and have equal teamcomp, they have bigger chance to win. Most of those 3rd or 4th games in winstreaks are these kind of matches (atleast for me) no matter do I soloQ or duoQ. I see from enemy movement, splits, skill uses and map coordination that they are equal/better skilled players. But the win isn’t guaranteed to those players. Because humans make mistakes. And those mistakes can costs them whole match if enemy recognizes them and uses them to their own advantage.

But what gets you to losing streak after losing win streak is your mentality. You just won 5 games and now lost 2? Take a break, breathe, calm down and try again. My guildmate got into diamond with this strategy in 2 days after he was stuck in T3 Ruby for 5 days. You have still a month to play this season so no need to hurry.

This is why I record my matches, study them, and sometimes have others review them. Poor mentality causes us to spew boring old platitudes without considering evidence and recorded data – Blaming fault on what’s not at fault. It also demands we stroke our kittens any chance we get because something within us is broken and we have to fake success to lift ourselves back up. Poor mentality does not cause team-mates to lose connection or or accidentally throw their keyboard out the window every time they get near a point.

wolfer.1587:

There’s also a secret scenario: Your MMR does not accurately represent your skill level at the moment. This can be due to being on different profession or build than you had been using, as well as natural gameplay quality variations. This scenario can and probably will apply to some number of players in any given game. If this is the case, then higher MMR team might actually be the weaker team and the lower MMR team the stronger.

I don’t know about secret scenario, it may be permanent. I have to duoQ with diamonds to get anything done. In solo, I get an AFK or disco about 25% of the time. It has not yet happened to the enemy team for me. My win rate at the bottom of Ruby as solo is about 20% right now, while in duo/party with diamond is roughly 70%. I may not be losing pips for all these discos but I suspect it’s having a negative effect on my MMR.

I’ve been keeping logs on paper/excel and have nearly 500 gigs of video to help me study my own personal statistics. I want to see what personally contributes towards my progress, both in terms of skill and in terms of matching manipulation. Back in season 2, I had an even more drastic problem. Of all the matches I went SoloQ, I won only 11%, in duo 55%, and 4-5 man 65%. Once I hit legendary, my soloQ winrate climbed drastically, probably because there just wasn’t enough garbage present to hold me back. In season 1, gw2pvp.de ranked me in top 2000 for ranked play, which plummeted drastically for season 2. The line graph goes almost straight down. My observation tells me this pip system is hugely flawed somehow.

Maybe this MMR and Pip system is ideally good enough, but how MMR itself is calculated may be the actual issue. As I understand, it was intended to evaluate players based on an equal 50% skill split between the two teams. If you win, it’s because you may have been better than the estimated 50/50 split, thus adjusts it upwards. However if the teams are not split as such, losing still drops MMR. They admit it doesn’t affect it as much, but it still effects it enough to make an unusual win against prediction too rare to have positive results. Especially considering there are hard coded walls (the pip/division loss prevention) that completely inhibit recalibration. This should be resulting in runaway MMR issues (elo hell?).

Frankly, I just stick with joining parties. It hasn’t been much of a problem as I think the matchmaking has no choice but to drop MMR considerations and rely only on pip ranges when queuing as a 5 man party. My team mates feel I contribute much more than the random pugs they get and I have been showing much better performance considering my teammates are always where I expect them to be and doing what I expect them to be doing.

They don’t lose pips when you disco unless you were partied with them

Elia.7193:

So what makes player B better than player A?

Nothing. The ranking system is really inaccurate in the +- 15 pip range. As a soloQer, you will either be biased for losing or winning until you can single-handedly carry a team up or drag it down enough to make consistent progress or regression. This is partly because your MMR will either be locked above or below average in that range until your rating makes a notable difference among the average player in that range.

Plus you also have to consider that ranking can only be done with statistical considerations, and statistics always involve a degree of error and luck.

Shiyo.3578:

I don’t think matchmaking is good at all.

I’m being GIVEN loses handed to me on a silver platter. Constantly being given the same exact players who do not own HoT or do not wish to win games. They suicide far over and over while we control 2 nodes already and don’t defend a node once the entire game. I’m also getting people who zerker amulet guardian and instantly die at the start of every team fight and then I ask very nicely if they could play more defensive and stay further back, they say no and say they’d rather feed and lose the game.

You’re not supposed to defend what you have, you’re supposed to maintain offensive pressure, keep tabs on their respawn, and suppress their efforts from every angle.

You choosing to sit on a point while the rest of your team “suicides” is exactly why you’re eating losses. If you have mid and home, it’s because you had momentum, and momentum is something you never want to let go of.

Nope. Blood still does nothing, leeching only heals.

Rabid. Toughness is better than vitality if you can cleanse. Power is better than precision. It balances out just fine.

You’re technically right in that it’s not fair some people were unfairly awarded a piece of progression. I got an extra point only from moving into part 4, but it really doesn’t matter. If you are worthy, you will finish the achievements. If you slacked off season 1, that’s on you sir.

I’ve been playing warrior under vipers amy and defense line. It’s practically unstoppable 1v1 with any class. Why are we asking how to improve this? It’s probably overtuned if anything.

The 10 second count down no longer puts players back to the spawn point if they are in the spawn area. This is leading to a lot of late starts and team mates not realizing the match has started. Some of them are busy goofing off and don’t realize the timer is up, because they are so used to relying on the repositioning. Please revert

They already tried it, several times. It didn’t work out. They moved on. Get over it.

A sore loser will argue that being matched against better players is “poor quality.”

You guys don’t understand that what you’re asking for won’t fix your problem.

Ellie.5913:

Yes you are correct I love playing alone as a solo player as do a lot of people. Does that mean I should be punished for it?

Punishment:
noun
1. The infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offense.

As you did not commit an offense, this is not a punishment. The word you are looking for is:

Consequence:
noun
1. a result or effect of an action or condition.

If you are trying to imply that for whatever special reason, you are not personally accountable for your actions, then I can understand how you’d be motivated to play victim. This is the opposite of being fair, as you are attempting to shift blame onto a matching system that doesn’t favor you with privilege rather than the appropriate blame of yourself.

Ellie.5913:

Rocketship Virus.6732:

Ellie.5913:

Andy.9137:

those fools…playing 4 bunkers1 reaper in unranked 5q. here is them losing to duo q since they are just 5 noobs tryharding unranked

Yea I know they had a lot of bunkers, my poor unsuspecting PUG couldn’t even capture one point when we went up against them….. And he was trying to say they were just some random people that just now started playing together….. I’m pretty sure they’ve been playing together for a long time, seems like I’ve seen them before like ages ago.

Def wrong man. I have known 1 of them for sometime but we fractals together more than we ever PvP. The other we met on Saturday. 3rd guy added his guildie in and then we found that last after queing. He was a random that talked back to us in map chat so we just que’d up for the laughs. Think what you want but those are the facts my friends. Randoms trolling in PvP turning into friends that actually understand how to play. What you missed out on was all the crazy jokes and crazy laugh we had going after queing up.

OK I don’t know why you keep calling me “bro” and “man” but I’m definitely not either one of those and that’s getting annoying FYI. Also I recognize at least 1 or 2 of those people’s names from pvp from a way long time ago, and they usually have a premade, so these people aren’t your’e every day solo players like your’e trying to make them out to be. If they play alone they are way easier to beat……my point was premades have an unfair advantage (unless they are PVEers) and that’s never gonna change.

No sir, this is called a fair advantage. The game didn’t force you to have a poor team. That’s just what it’s occasionally going to roll for you. You have to play against better people once in a while. I know it can be tough, but it couldn’t be more fair. Learn from what you see, make friends, apply corrections, and progress like everyone else.

This party was random. I had one guild member in it, and it was the first time I had met him.

I made it to legendary, but the matchmaking system is definitely broken for soloqers. There’s way too much garbage in legendary and too much skill floating around in Ruby for this to be appropriate. I hope in s3, they use something like what we had in s1 but where pips are used as a reflection of MMR instead of a matching criterion. The dual consideration from s1 and s2 is a logical error. Two ranking systems working at once can and will fight each other, either by slowing down someone good, or speeding up someone not so good. A lot of my guild mates left the game over this and I’ve had to join 3 new guilds to continue having a social experience with sPvP.