Guild Wars 2

Evan Lesh.3295:

Ensign.2189:

Evan Lesh.3295:

/fifteencharacters

Because to make them play nice with each other, without impairing matchmaking, requires pips to behave in very specific ways that are more complex than anything currently on the table.

If they do not behave the right way, one or more of the three – MMR, matchmaking, or pips – will behave poorly. In seasons 1 and 4, you chose pips; in 2 and 3, matchmaking.

The current system is definitely trying to do too many things and each aspect suffers because of this. I think pips are an appealing reward system and I also think MMR is a good skill system. We need to work on getting each part of the system focusing on what they do best.

Took you only 4 seasons to realize that pips shouldnt be used to artificially decrease size of playerpool because bigger playerpool results in more accurate matchmaking, which in turn results in better match quality. /clap

In the meantime, match quality is horrendous and STAYS THAT WAY for at least the next 3-4 months.

R O C.6574:

Yasi.9065:

And sometimes it just shows how utterly ridiculous matchmaking is:

http://img.pichoster.eu/045ac51dgw074.jpg

Why is this an example of bad matchmaking?
(…)

Because I didnt die once while my team rallybotted on mid nearly all the time, most of the time fighting on enemy capped point to boot… hence the high personal scores of enemy team. On the other team, the guy with only 95 points contributed most of those points by back-capping my points, dieing quite often in the process.

R O C.6574:

(…)
You had 15 points more than the other teams top score, but the rest of your team had lower scores. You can’t cry bad matchmaking every time you lose. I agree that personal score does not capture every aspect of winning strategies, and that the system can be exploited to get points without contributing to the win (think rank point guild missions.) But overall you have to admit that the winning team USUALLY has the most personal score points.
(…)

In balanced matches, personal scores are similar and never mile high. Watch for it.

R O C.6574:

(…)
The game is so situational and sometimes the smallest things can change the game i.e. landing a stomp 0.5 seconds before your opponent can rezz and you have 2 downed allies that rally as a result. That is a HUGE play that comes down to 0.5 seconds. In less than a second the fight can go from a 2v1 to a 1v3. Plays like this can cause one team to run away with the game.
(…)

What you call a HUGE play is in reality just the difference between good players and bad players. You got the stomp because you cc’ed anybody getting ready to rezz or rezzing. You got the stomp because enemy team wasnt good enough cleave/rupt stomp/use stab or invul to get rezz.
Tbh, stomping/rezzing is in no way something thats gonna win you matches hands down.
And to top it of… you get points for it, so I dont see how this would even partain to the discussion.

R O C.6574:

(…)
Maybe one player on your team is really good, but in this specific match somebody just has his number and he gets outplayed
(…)

He cant be that good if he lets himself get outplayed in conquest 5v5. Sorry to burst your bubble.

R O C.6574:

(…)
Or maybe he has explosive diarrhea and can’t focus on the match very well.
(…)

Context?

R O C.6574:

(…)
There are so many factors involved in a match that it seems pretty short sighted to constantly blame Anet for bad matchmaking.
(…)

Anet promises improved matchmaking quality and delivers matches, in which I have players on my team that dont just double cap home… they tripple cap it and THEN continue to defend it against one thief with 3 people, not managing to even kill him.
Of course I can and will Anet blame for this. Those kinds of players are the bottom of casualness, they are complete beginners or absolutely unwilling to learn. And because Anet decided Im to carry those noobs now, to improve THEIR match quality… I get the worst kind of matchups possible. Thats not just because mmr is skewed… its because the whole system is kittened up. Whoever thought this would improve match quality should be fired. Its that simple. The whole matchmaking system is one huge design failure, that was already proven to be a failure in season1.

R O C.6574:

(…)
Now it sounds like they are going to match people based on MMR only next season and ignore divisions in an attempt to please the masses. This method seems to go against a competitive progression type of system with division standings.
(…)

It only goes against a grindy ladder where everybody can reach legendary.

R O C.6574:

(…)
If they can tune personal score to accurately depict winning strategies, maybe they can base MMR off personal stats as opposed to simple w/l records.

You can calculate pretty accurately how much someone contributed if:
- you add a negative score for dieing
- you punish zerging by at least halfing points (better would be splitting up points)
- reduce amount of points gotten from special objects slightly
- add a defense counter around capture points

But tbh, just adding a death counter will already improve the system by leaps and bounds.

Reikou, two words… self-fulfilling prophecy.

Why not just scrap seasons and hand out rewards according to mmr?

The solution to a non-grindy ladder is -> decay + placement matches

And sometimes it just shows how utterly ridiculous matchmaking is:

http://img.pichoster.eu/045ac51dgw074.jpg

I played necro since beta, so I know exactly how it feels being forced to re-roll due to bad balancing.

Nevertheless, I posted it several times already… I prefer a team with 4 good thieves to a team with perfect comp but bad players any day. And I can tell you… that team with good players will always win, no matter the teamcomp.

Because teamcomp isnt as important as people tend to think. Skill is way more important. You can compensate a lot with player-skill.

So you have 3 thieves on your team? Well, then you probably wont win by trying to hold 2 points the entire match. Instead you will have to go for kills, beasts, decaps/caps, always disengaging and keeping the enemy team running.

Lucred, please at least attempt to read the whole post you are quoting. What has class-stacking to do with role stacking? You can have 5 dhs and still get 1 roamer, 2 dps, 2 support. Why shouldnt they be all allowed to play together?

You are trying to solve bad balancing (op build is getting stacked) and lack of build diversity in pvp with some obscure no-profession-stacking-rule. You are only treating the symptoms, but not solving the problem.

I can tell you an easy way to solve a lot of complaints.

Hero builds.

PvP team creates lets say 3 hero builds for each role in pvp. The roles are fixed for each team… lets say 1 roamer, 2 dps, 2 support. You choose a hero build, queue with it, and get put in a team with always the same comp, since its fixed.
No role-stacking, pvp team has dominion over hero builds balancing, even mmr can be hero build dependent instead of general.

Of course, you also at the same time have to give up build diversity and general complexity in pvp.

Thats pretty much the only way to prevent role-stacking.

Lucred.1802:

(…)
HOW kittenING HARD IS IT to at least attempt to not class-stack teams? Sure, when 6 guards are up for queue, there’s gonna be stacked classes. But would it really be that difficult to do 3 and 3 instead of 5 and 1?

You could just as easily ask, how hard can it be for those thieves to log onto something else and play it passably well?

Its a trade-off. Either anet allows character swapping or they include a matchmaking rule to prevent profession stacking.

How would you like having to queue with the character you are gonna play during match?

And who says those dhs all run the same build? One could be a bunker, the others could be dps… Ive even seen a passably well roamer dh. Those thieves could be specced for roaming or for teamfighting.

Its not as easy as a lot of people seem to believe. Personally, I like being able to swap characters. I queue with whatever Id like to play, but if I see that the setup is gonna be very unfavorable, I have no trouble swapping to a different role.

R O C.6574:

The stat window should show all players combat and personal score breakdown. It would be cool to see all stats at once. But different tabs could work also.

Juking would definitely be next to impossible to track.

How would you award points for class specific things like mesmer portal? A properly timed portal can swing the momentum of the game.

That portal results indirectly in points. If you open it to rezz someone, you get rezz-points. If you open it to defend a point, you get defend-kill-points, you open it to get lord rush done -> points for pve content.

Same goes for juking.

No need to over-complicate things.

Most important thing is to finally put in penalties for:
- dieing
- zerging
- double capping

Everything else is fine-tuning.

Cynz.9437:

I think the idea of rewarding players with top stats isn’t bad. But not all tops stats. I would reward players for rezzes, caps/decap, kills on defense and remove things like treb shots or lord/beast kills. Surely, those help to win the game sometimes but it would lead to people farming animal or rushing lord just for reward and ignore the capture points.

Those PvE contents have their purpose. Well timed treb-shots can decide clocktower caps. Getting two beasts can result in an upheaval. Same goes for a succesful lordrush.

So, those contents should reward points. They however, shouldnt reward more points than caps, after all… the goal isnt pve content, but rather conquest

But thats part of the fine-tuning.

Deathcounter.

Splitting awarded score points between players participating (so people are double capping home? → make that only 2 points for each)

Defense-ticks for defending a capped point.

Dominik, please dont equate not wanting to play pvp in premades to not doing anything to get better -.-

The time I spent each day on golems, dueling and in unranked matches says definitely that Im not someone just lazying about and expecting easy wins.

Still Im not the least bit interested in joining a premade, Im a dedicated soloqueuer. Doesnt make me a lazy person.

Imo, a good player can anticipate pretty much everything in gw2 pvp, due to it being so predictable and limited. Voice comms are only necessary, if players arent good.

Playing gw2 pvp with voice comms is lazy. You only need one good player coordinating, and 4 pawns executing to win games that way <yawn>.

So, its rather debatable if playing gw2 pvp with full premade and voice chat is the best way. Its definitely the easiest way, no argument there.

Does this however have anything to do with wanting to improve oneself’s gameplay? Nope.

Ithilwen, there is no roof to hit in season1/4 matchmaking, due to even matchmaking (mind you, Im NOT saying balanced matchmaking).

In season2/3 you’d hit a roof where you always get matched against higher mmr teams.

Totally different things.

Even if Cynz screenshot would show close matchups, in this matchmaking system he’d just have to wait a few days for better players to move on and then get back on winstreak.

If Cynz were where he belongs, that would mean he would be somewhere on the ladder with players of similar skill. This would result in close matchups. I only see two matches that arent blowouts -> your argument about Cynz being where he belongs isnt valid no matter the perspective used to analyse it.

Josh Davis.6015:

(…)

MMR being adversely affected by S2/S3 style matchmaking is something we’ve been discussing – we’re evaluating a few different options to address it.

As for your other points, take a look at my recent post history – I’ve been discussing some of the problem areas we’re looking to hit in various threads.

Are you ever gonna change the way premades affect mmr and matchmaking? As it is, the way premades’ mmr gets calculated is such a rough approximation that it only really works in matching two full premades against each other. As soon as there are soloqueuers in the mix, the result is neither pretty, nor balanced, and for soloqueuers nearly always a total pain.

Also, queueing with friends that are leagues above someone in terms of skill, inflates mmr, and vice versa. This results in skewed mmr for players that enjoy playing with guildmates/friends. Something that always kept me from queueing with friends.

Saiyan.1704:

R O C.6574:

Obindo.6802:

R O C.6574:

When the other team’s lowest scoring player has more points then our top scoring player, and we still win the match XD

Then you donno how pvp works

??

It usually happens when we are outmatched in fights but we out-rotate the other team. FYI – you donno how spelling works. Save your hate for posts you actually understand. Are you saying that personal score DOES matter? Because my post is trying to communicate the opposite.

Personal score means zilch in this game… yet players use it as a reference for some reason. I wish it was removed entirely.

I wish it were fixed instead….

FiveGauge.1357:

soulknight.9620:

Atm we have balancing that only top 2% can use. Because no mid-low tier player can comprehend and use the complex system of spvp in gw2.

That’s just a bit silly… balance is out of whack for players who don’t quite know how to always step out of Scrapper/DH point cleave, but these things really don’t take a pro player to figure out, red circles and all.

Conquest is a game mode best played with a group on voice comms, but the number of players in a party is accounted for in the balanced matchmaking.

The PvP in this game is extremely balanced. Frustratingly so, even.

While I agree with the first half of your statement… the second half about premades being accounted for in the balanced matchmaking is so incorrect.
It might be (though I have the suspicion they broke that part this season) accounted for in terms of rostersize adding some padding, but in a balanced matchmaking for mixed-queue, every player would need to have two ratings. One for soloqueueing, and one for teamqueueing. Only then would we start seeing balanced matchmaking.
Without that second rating, every attempt at mixed queues is a failure from the beginning.

And as far as I know, Anet hasnt added that. I wouldnt be at all surprised if Anet went for the very simplistic approach of just averaging mmr’s of premades, then add some for rostersize. Thats a bit like solving problems using junior high math. You can still get a somewhat believable approximation, but you dont actually solve the problem for all cases with it.

With a separate team-mmr for everybody, Anet could scrap that horrible assumption that rostersize has anything to do with skill.

Here’s a list of things that are relevant for mmr:
- amount of gamemode’s matches played (all professions)
- winrate (all professions)
- amount of matches played with queued profession
- winrate with queued profession (might be redundant and probably can be removed)
- decay
- personal score (see below)
- separate mmr for queueing as part of team

For this, anet would have to make certain changes to personal score:
- Add negative score for deaths
- Add defense-counter (fighting on capped point ticks personal score over time)
- Split up any points awarded between participating players (two are capping → 2 points each… five killing one player → 1 point each player… etc)

To make a game attractive for gamers to spend their time in it, you have to solve balancing and matchmaking. Esports works nice as advertisement, but if gamers cant get “good” matches during primetime, they leave. If forums are full of people complaining about horrible matchmaking, people dont buy the game. Advertisement money spent on esports has its valid points… BUT its time for anet to fix fundamental problems otherwise the money is spent for nothing.

You want more “honor”, rewards and players in top percent? And I mean, thats the gist of that half hour of helseth’s whining… then you need a solid playerbase of dedicated pvp’ers. Not an influx of huge amounts of casuals like the year of ascencion provided.

And what is it dedicated pvpers want? Good matches, good balancing, good rewards.

As it is, as long as anet keeps on lacking in those regards, gw2 will continue to bleed dedicated pvpers… and no amount of casuals can fill that gap.

Thats whats wrong.. and missing honor, rewards and players in esports is only the symptoms, not the source of the problem in gw2 pvp.

And this is why daily tasks are bad…. Anet… please… make them into weeklies :/

OriOri.8724:

(…)
Good to hear. Looking forward to the changes. Hopefully it will help some with the toxicity but I seriously doubt it will :/

What definitely WILL help against toxicity, is better matchmaking. Noobs getting matched with dedicated pvpers will always result in namecalling and toxicity. Just as when casual players (“if I dont win now, Ill win later <shrug*>”) get put on a team with elitist players (“have-to-win-thishavetowinthishavetowinthisNOW”). Soloqueuer against/with premades… you get the picture.

Josh Davis.6015:

You’ll still be able to get the wings, even with the considerable league changes coming with Season 5.

Im taking you at your word, and stop destroying my mmr on my pvp account for the last division cross I need.

I managed one slam dunk… but all tries afterward just failed miserably because the dunking animation was executed after the jump?

At times we had like 3 balls because some picked up balls and immediatly dropped them from the ball spawning point…

And yes… seeing the ball is really not easy.

Its fun… though tbh a bit unrewarding In a game were everything rewards you for the time spent… this feels neglected….

Its quite easy, The V.

You run cleansing ire against a team with 2+ condition-dps (necro, warrior, mesmer are atm mostly condi builds). And you switch to rousing resilience against stun-heavy groups with lots of DHs. If theres more than 2 DH/druids on enemy team, you can swap in Outrage for even more stunbreaking…

Necromancer’s boon corrupt ability is absolutely defining for that profession, and has been for more than 2 years now. Removing it, reducing it… would simply completly destroy necromancer and reduce that profession to where they were during first two years of pvp… you think warrior/thief were hated on in the past? You havent played necro since beta then… until corruption change, necros were reviled. I got hate-ig-mails from whole GUILDS because I dared to play necromancer in arenas.

So, actually… necromancer atm is at a level where every other profession should be. Necromancer atm is pretty much perfect. No changes needed.

WARRIOR on the other hand… rousing resilience should be nerfed. Shouts should be buffed, arcing slice radius has to be decreased, Smash Brawler trait has to be changed to something like longer berserker modus instead of reduced cooldown on berserker burst skills.

So warrior needs a bit more tweaking (but not too much!), necromancer is fine.

Light Of The Abyss.5927:

Yasi.9065:

Id like to see YOU winning matches with teammates that die > 20 times. Thats NO exaggeration… last match I had a necro dieing 17 times…. match before that it was a DH dieing 21 times. A dh… the profession with most blocks atm.
And thats only the ones with most deaths. The rest dies usually around 10 times at least.

Sounds to me like you are spending too much time counting your teammates deaths rather than focusing on your own gameplay.

You know, like the good little pvper I am… Im recording my matches and analzying them afterwards to improve my gameplay even more. But I guess thats something only maybe 1% does.

Reaper Alim, you are correct, no season had anything to do with skill. All were grindy, all could be cheated somehow, to advance easier/faster.

Thats what happens, when you limit playerpool artifically by using piprange AND glicko2 in matchmaking. When you add pip-gain mechanics that make people overshoot. When you add failsafe pips to keep people from dropping down. When you use mixed queues, facing soloplayers against premades. When you dont have a decay system in place.

However, the match QUALITY was a lot different in season3. I had the most good, close, competitve matches in season3, with only premades annoying me to no end there.

Erzian.5218:

Yasi.9065:

Erzian.5218:

Burn.5401:

Season 3 > Season 2 >>>>>> Season 4 > Season 1

Kind of sucks, that your own performance actually influences the outcome of your matches in season 4, huh?
It kind of confuses me though, that you put season 4 over season1, since you could at least cheat the system for easy matches in season 1.

Kind of says a lot that my account with worst winrate (<40% ranked) actually reached legendary already – fastest yet for me.

While my account with >70% winrate hasnt even made it out of sapphire yet.

I mean… I didnt quite realize that my performance is accountbound. /sarcasm

You can be sarcastic all you want, but your post simply shows that you do not understand the concepts of match making and mmr/elo.
It is especially silly, when you tell others that they are bad but then you tell us that you cannot get out of sapphire on your high win rate account. Perhaps it is related to inflated mmr from seasons 2+3.

Id like to see YOU winning matches with teammates that die > 20 times. Thats NO exaggeration… last match I had a necro dieing 17 times…. match before that it was a DH dieing 21 times. A dh… the profession with most blocks atm.
And thats only the ones with most deaths. The rest dies usually around 10 times at least.

And you really think, just having a high mmr makes it okay to match me with the absolute worst players? That its okay, that I have to CARRY them to wins? So THEY can get to legendary on MY back? Thats supposed to be FUN for me? Thats supposed to keep me playing gw2 pvp? Reality check for you… it doesnt.

Btw, you clearly misunderstood my post. Of course Im getting out of sapphire. But not in the same amount of matches, as my low-winrate account

THATS whats broken.

I have to work a LOT harder because Im good. Not even just despite Im good? No, BECAUSE of it. So little rallybots that die 20+ times each match can get to legendary too. Casual players that dont even know what “rotations” is… or when respawn is coming… THOSE I have to carry all the way to legendary.

You think thats okay? Thats fair? Thats how it should be?

I hear only a lot of whining… esports so neglected… esports so toxic… esports so hated… esports not enough goodies…

And then how to make PvP better for esports.

As pretty much always, I cant agree with a lot of things stated in that video.

What needs to be done has been stated a lot on these forums… starting with a REAL soloqueue and support for 1v1 scene.

And balancing… dont get me started… tbh… the way anet keeps on “economizing” in that area… the only thing that would save pvp balance is removing all build creation tools… let the pvp team create hero builds everybody can pick from to queue with.

Not gonna keep on going on about it… there are enough posts about why pvp is kittened up, and its NOT because esports doesnt get enough love.

After getting accused of using bots and cheating because I do flippy dodges instead of “just” dodging most of the time… Im not giving forum statements without solid evidence any kind of credence.

And you shouldnt either.

However… making a skill-macro is quite easy, and Im sure quite a lot of pvp’ers use(d) those, especially on d/d ele.
Thing is though… d/d ele aside… its not that smart to use those. And a good player doesnt have any trouble against people that use those macros to set up burst chain. After all, the macro “only” chains certain skills that a good player can push just as fast.

d/d ele was another matter, but anet solved that by nerfing d/d ele into the lower regions of barely playable…..

Sorry to say this Saiyan, but that wouldnt be really believable.

After all… we were already promised:
“…a better system for ranked play…”
“…better matchmaking…”
“…a place for all skill levels to match up against similarly skilled players…”
Source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-pvp-leagues/

Lets see… we’ve got matchmaking like the one before seasons started, with the added hinderment of limiting the playerpool artificially through adding pip ranges.

We’ve got a toxic environment because now losses visibly hurt, with an influx of unwilling pve players only grinding achievements.

And the matching up of players with similar skill-level… lets just say… Anet didnt quite deliver on that one either.

Lets not even mention anything to do with balance, broken builds and class stacking.

I was not suggesting you tank your mmr.

Dont play ranked… thats what I suggested. If you dont care about achievements… just stop playing ranked… because it will HURT your mmr. A system that forces a 50% winrate also forces an average’d mmr. I posted about this in season1 and why this kind of system is VERY bad.

You cant just tank your mmr, just as you cant just inflate your mmr. If you played regularly so far, your mmr is pretty much set and only decreases a little bit with each match you loose. Its not just… loose 10 matches et voila… mmr is down.

And the thing is… to get your mmr back up… you need at least just as many matches won. Which is usually way more difficult.

So, no… dont do it… its a stupid idea. Take a break. Play another pvp game. Play custom arena to improve your 1v1 skills.

Tbh, best thing to do atm… is try out new games. Theres a few coming that are interesting, theres Overwatch which is already established and is getting nice attention from blizzard.

You will NOT get quality matches this season. You get blowouts. Either you loose, or you win. MMR only defines if you are someone that has to carry, or if you get carried. Match quality itself stays exactly the same, since the system itself is horribly imbalanced.

Actually, the “best way” to fix balance issues would be at cost of build diversity.

How about instead of splitting skills and create even more chaos… limit builds? If there’s lets say 9-15 fixed builds you can only choose from… that would solve balance issues… and class stacking issues.

And it would fit in nicely with Anets money spending policy…….

Things that need nerfing:
- elite specs in general
- amount of cc
- burst power/condition dmg
- boons
- invul/evade/block frames
- all AoEs
- traps (all kinds) have to go on cooldown on activation, not skill use, re-using trap skill re-positions the trap

sinject.4607:

(…) I play Daredevil exclusively so I’m leaving that out because of bias, however I genuinely can’t think of anything on it that needs nerfing. Tempest was excluded for obvious reasons.

Spike dmg/unavoidable dmg, 3rd dodgebar, vault. Everything else is fine…

Its quite easy and was answered hundreds of times already, mostly by Gaile Grey.

Every action your character does has to be caused by an action you, the player, have to do.

The only exception are those tools that GW2 provides for you, such as auto-casting a weapon skill of your choosing.

Is using macros in GW2 forbidden per-se? No. You can use a macro that binds a mousekey to a key-combination that performs ONE action in the game.

You click one key → your character does one thing → working as intended.

You click one key → your character does several actions not intended by anet → banable offense.

Because it doesnt sort by professions. Because anet cant figure out a way to:
a) prevent character swapping at start of match and
b) how to make a proper matchmaking algo in the first place.

Instead anet took an outdated algorithm meant for estimating outcomes of chess matches, and ever since tries to “modify” it in a way to adapt it to a soloqueue-teamqueue-mixed team vs team matchmaking algorithm.

Its basically like… you have a really good algorithm to describe what makes a successful relationship between a man and a woman… and you go and take that same algorithm to describe the relationship between a bull and his herd. Crude, I know… but… its the most fitting description.

In short… the matchmaking algorithm doesnt work, mainly because the way the defining parameter is calculated (mmr) doesnt fit.

If a chessplayer looses a match, its because he wasnt as good as his opponent.

If you loose a match in gw2, it can be because:
- someone dc’ed at a crucial moment
- you got saddled with bad players
- you got saddled with a horrible comp
- someone went afk (rl emergency, on purpose, whatever)
- someone deliberately threw the match
- you arent as good as the other team

Thats five more “reasons” to loose in gw2 than in a chess match. Five more reasons that you cant control, to loose a match. And it ALWAYS counts as if you are a bad player.

The way I see it, those problems arent gonna be solved with the current system. Anet didnt solve them in four years, they are not gonna solve them magically next big patch.

Anet would have to go the route of hero-based system with limits on how many same heroes can be chosen per team. This would solve a lot of balance issues also, since the pvp team would create those heroes themselves. So what if traps are totally OP, if theres no hero for them.

They would have to at least offer the option of disabling teamqueue.

They would have to modify the matchmaking algorithm to account for actual contribution (a win doesnt automatically count as a 1, a loss isnt always a 0).

azyume.6321:

So you are complaining about the 4 Dragonhunters on the other team but not the 3 Druids on your team? Do I have to point out that any player who have any idea how to play as Druid can counter a Dragonhunter?

Druid isnt DH’s hard counter. Against a good player on DH, you will have trouble surviving the 2nd or 3rd round of burst, while he still/again has block skills up.

But well, most DHs are so bad… they use all blocks at once (to make sure !) and after that you just burst them down easily with one “pet rotation”.

SneakyTouchy.6043:

Overwatch is a great game for the strategically challenged. If you’re struggling in PvP, I’d recommend Overwatch to start with and then later you can move back up to Gw2. It’s great for building fundamental team-play awareness because there’s less focus on builds and more on positioning.

Overwatch reduced pvp to essentials:
- positioning
- map awareness
- teamplay
- dexterity

Guild Wars2 on the other hand has so many “oh kitten” buttons/passives in each build… you dont need those things to get an average mmr.
Basically, in GW2 you get carried by your build.

duster.7013:

(…) they are only removing more and more elements in a nerf creep cycle.
(…)

Id wish Anet would do the same. Nerf AoEs, nerf cc, nerf passives, nerf duration and frequency of invul/block/evade frames, nerf healing, nerf unblockable/unpredictable damage, nerf elite specs in general.

At this point, Id even prefer a hero-system with new hero-builds every few months… to this unbalanced and kittened up system they have right now.

Because a low mmr shouldnt help you progress faster. You got it? It NEVER should help you progress faster.

Just as a high mmr shouldnt HINDER your progress.

Kuya.6495:

DH is probably the example of what every class should have. Multiple viable builds, from bruiser to dps to bunker.

Yep. The game needs more aoe, more blocks, more sustain and more cc.

Not.

Multiple builds? They all evolve around the same things:
- symbols
- traps
- meditations

Even the traits are extremely similar in each build.

Thats not multiple builds. Its the same build in different variations that can be played as a support/bruiser and a dps/bruiser.

bigo.9037:

(…) since youre not actually bad, you have an easier time getting to youre deserved division. thats why.

My mmr says Im bad, and because of that I progress faster. Logic?

bigo.9037:

(…)
if you had low mmr and you still sucked.. you would be stuck on 50 % winrate and only progress to ruby after a while.

Not really the reality. Since this is a TEAM effort, and if you get stuck with 4 good players, you have four times better chance to progress than vice versa.

bigo.9037:

(…)
system is working as intended.

The intention is for casuals like you to progress so you can finish your pve achievements easily. So yes, its working. Does it help to keep good players in pvp? No. Absolutely not. Because you get PUNISHED for being good.

Logged dh in, copied build, won 1v1, 1v2, 1v3. Full traps? Nah. Who needs that even.

I usually dont play melees, because Im way better at midrange and roamers…. but dh this season? Hilariously easy.

Exedore.6320:

(…)
With a progression-based system, you have two outcomes:

1. Match based on MMR. [season 1 and 4] Games are close and mostly enjoyable. However, progression is very slow, and the best way to progress is to exploit the system.
2. Match based on progress (tier/division). [season 2 and 3] Games are mostly blowouts and generally frustrating; blowout losses and even wins become boring after a while. All players progress; the better ones just progress faster. A frequent but mediocre player keeps pace with a less frequent good player (though the mediocre player spends more time playing).

Pick your poison. In both systems, tier/division is largely meaningless.

They are NOT close… not even the slightest bit. I get put in with FOUR bad players on my pvp account. And with bad players I mean the absolute worst. People that stand on point and DIE in splash dmg. People that should just never play PvP and only do it for kittening achievements.

So, Im a good player… and the incentive I get from anet to keep on playing… is…. I get to carry the worst of the worst so THEY can enjoy the game.

My winrate on my pvp account is < 40% for this season. My winrate on the inherited account > 80%.

Same player, same professions, same builds.

One account isnt even out of sapphire yet… the other account is nearly legendary.

One account is absolute HELL to soloqueue on… the other account its easy wins left and right.

THATS the reality of season4 matchmaking. THATS how much Anet kittenED up.

I have several accounts I play actively in pvp.

One of those accounts has a nicely high winrate (overall ranked winrate is > 70%), since I bought this account not too long ago.

Another account has lots of ranked matches played, and because of that a winrate < 60%. Its the account I started in beta.

If I queue with the high winrate account in Sapphire Rank… I get what I like to call “two thumbers”. People that have absolutely no clue how to play, period. They dont dodge, they dont rotate. They double cap, they die in <5 sec in evenly matched fights.

The other account gets at least one player each match, thats horribly bad… but the rest is okay… at least they know where their dodge key is.

So… now I inherited another account with a < 40% winrate on ranked matches… at around 500 ranked matches played.
That account blows through the divisions (started amber) and is now at mid ruby with <10 matches lost.

You know what that means, boys and girls?

Correct. The lower your mmr is, the easier your way to diamond in soloqueue.

Nicely done Anet. Nicely done.

For everybody that doesnt need anything in terms of these horribly designed achievements to get the legendary backpiece and doesnt play exclusively as part of a premade…. Id suggest you go save your mmr and only play unranked.

Because you WILL tank your mmr if you have a high mmr, this season.

You cant really compare overall complexity, since even though SKILL rotation on necro is ridiculously easy… positioning and map awareness are way more difficult / important than on lets say thief.

The only thing you can compare, is builds. And there, sorry to say this… I dont agree with your list at all.

You list thief as most difficult profession. Reality is though, that you can play a thief with so many failsafes, it becomes very easy to stay alive and decap/cap empty nodes while adding teamfights for faster kills.

Also, I dont agree with you on your “perfect world” scenario. Skill “level” or skill “cap” dont matter. What matters is a good balance and spread of dmg output and dmg mitigation.
Season1 was horribly unbalanced because dmg mitigation was way too high overall.
Season2 nerfed dmg mitigation, but at the same time didnt didnt have as much “spread” (support guard and mesmer were basically removed from game, leaving “only” druid, engi and ele)
Season3 was imo quite nicely balanced.
Season4 removed a huge chunk of dmg mitigation, making this season basically the reverse of season1.

An even distribution of mitigating and damaging skills over all professions… thats what is important.

Skill “level” or some kind of perceived skill “cap”? Isnt. With enough dedication, you can train a monkey to play thief (yes, a monkey has enough decision-making abilities for that).

If you want to raise the skill level in gw2… lower cooldowns to make the game faster paced… THATS what skill in computer games is about. Having faster reactions, making faster the correct decisions. Everybody can decide on the right move… given enough time to evaluate all parameters. Making that decision fast… thats skill.

And your post kinda highlights that. You perceive thief as having a high skill level and skill cap… truth is though… thief is just FAST. You die fast, you kill fast, you move fast. At least with a squishy build

Its because we are now getting matched with people that die in < 5 seconds because they cant even find their dodge buttons…. and we are not the slightest bit interested in carrying such bad players.

The goal is to make as many gw2 players quit as possible. HOW players are made to quit… Anet gets quite creative there… and those that would still stay, they get driven off by other pvp players.

Welcome to GW2’s endgame mode… it will certainly end for you there

Season One to Four Ruined by Anet Developers

I took the liberty to correct your title.

Honor to whom its due, please.

Topics like this happen, when PvE players are being lured into playing a competitive gamemode.

How about a “useless topic” jar?

Jourdelune.7456:

SneakyTouchy.6043:

The match quality in unranked is better.

It will be always the case. Pip range don’t show skill at all, except for the first week or two.

It would be better to match bads (1,2,3), average (4,5,6,7) and decent (8,9,10) together without the pip range for faster queue. A 10 Amber, is still a 10.

This. Make the pips the results, not the source of matchmaking.

Increase pips for wins/losses according to averaged mmr of both teams or according to personal mmr (depending on matchmaking used), to make people with higher mmr (and therefor tougher matchups) progress faster.

But the most important change needed, is a separate mmr for everybody, for when he/she is queueing as a part of a team. So nobody can inflate his/her mmr by queueing with players that are leagues above his/her skill level.

I urge you to take a look at the works of Max Scheler instead of trusting wikipedia. Personally, I dont like to recommend Nietzsche, because imo he was a sadistic pig, but if you really want to go all the way… Nietzsche actually was the one that mostly shaped the term “ressentiment”.

You totally missed the point of what ressentiment really is. On the one side, that term stands for negative feelings, correct… such as grudges, envy, revenge. BUT the other side of that term is just as important, and you are completely ignoring it…. its COVERTLY. To hold a grudge covertly. To secretly envy someone. To not do something about it, but keeping all those negative feelings bottled up. Staying polite while being internally eaten up by ressentiments. Slandering someone instead of telling him/her directly.

The opposite of ressentiment is a swift and open action against whatever frustrates someone. So if someone vents that frustration by cursing in chat…. thats just such a swift action that Nietzsche actually prescribed against ressentiments.

Im sorry, but most of the time, wikipedia just doesnt give you the full picture.

R O C.6574:

(…) I was in a W/L cycle for a bit, then i started partying up after my wins and i got a win streak going.

Wow, you discovered how truly kittened up the matchmaking is because it heavily favors premades… congrats… you are a bit late, but I guess better late than never.

However, all of this doesnt change the fact that the OPs 101 wannabe psycho-analysis of a problem is… well… very narrow-sighted, if not to say… completly wrong.

Lets get a few facts stated before starting the psycho-babble.

1. Current matchmaking throws together players of VERY different skill levels
2. Past matchmaking inflated mmr for especially players with few ranked matches
3. Current “balancing” makes holding a point against 2-3 nearly impossible
4. Current “balancing” doesnt have easy to play builds (aka bunkers)

The result is, that at midway point, the most experienced player of the team realizes how utterly un-carryable the whole match is, since he ALWAYS gets zerged, no matter what he does. After a handful of those matches, that player gets so frustrated, that frustration just needs to be expressed, hence the chat shouting or afking. Depending which outlet that player chooses.

This behaviour has NOTHING to do with ressentiment. Ressentiment would be if you loaded into the map, looked at your teammates and already decided its a loss because the looks of some of them reminds you of previous losses.

Getting frustrated after missing the last possible snowball-point and vocalizing that frustration doesnt have anything to do with some kind of unconcious aversion towards your teammates. From a psychological point of view, that vocalization is actually quite healthy, as long as it doesnt get too abusive.

andrew.5607:

(…)
Edit: it’s also worth noting that, if you find yourself frustrated and wanting to vocalize something, a much more constructive approach might be to politely offer advice for your team. Who knows, you might even help!

It might also be worth noting, that I tried that repeatedly, and 99% of all pvp players arent interested in listening to advice. You either get blocked, verbally abused or ignored.
PvP players are so emotionally invested in their own subjectiv view of the match, they never do anything wrong in their eyes.
Best example was a match yesterday in which someone told me how stupid I was for trying to decap a node instead of going mid to snowball that fight there. However, the score difference was so high, the enemy only had to hold a single node to win.
After re-watching my recordings I saw that on top of that, mid fight was already lost before I made the decision to go and try decapping close. If I had gone mid, I only would have added another +5.
He still believes he was right. I know, objectively thanks to my recordings, that I made a solid decision and the match was lost before that decision.
This little anecdote shows that trying to correct someone elses view of a match, forcibly or nicely, is never going to work. Because for that to work, the other person has to realize that they did something wrong. As long as they think they are in the right, you cant change a thing. Ergo, it wont help. The vocalization of frustration also is rarely aimed at actually improving a situation… and most often just used as a way to relieve the stress that frustration is causing. Hence why it can be quite healthy to do that… again, as long as it doesnt turn too abusive.

It is season one all over again. Im out. Was giving gw2 pvp a last shot the last few days, but matchmaking was absolutely horrible.

Getting matched with players that actually WAIT FOR BEAST SPAWN on forest map, double capping home node… nah… Im too good for that kitten. Im done.

Someone else can carry those, my time has gotten too valuable for this kitten.

God, dont spent real life money on a gamemode that gets ZERO attention from devs and has absolute HORRID matchmaking.

Buy overwatch. At least that game has a future.

Both has to be factored in… number of games played, and number of games won.

But most importantly… Anet HAS GOT TO STOP putting new accounts on average mmr with high volatility.

Seasons are too short, climbing is too fast, for this to ever be corrected.

And to be perfectly honest, mmr now is just so screwed up, the only thing left for anet to do… is reset mmr and make everybody play 20-50 placement matches (the more, the more accurate)

But thats something Anet wont ever do. They even went so far, as to go for the premade-friendliest matchmaking… clearly showing their disdain for soloqueuers.

Ramoth.9064:

beat some Steve Irwin themed full premade team yesterday. Premades mean nothing really. Terrible players playing together are still terrible.

Correct.

Bet you wouldnt have laughed so much if that premade was on your team though.

I really dont care much about premades on enemy team side. Most premades arent that good actually.

But sadly, most of the time, Im the padding to a really really bad guild team that wants to do… idk… daily, guild missions, whatever. Most premades I get matched with, are so bad, I sometimes think that its just badly designed bots, they remind me so much of GW1’s JQ bots.
Remember those bots? You know, the ones if you stood at stairs or corners, they just kept running into you until you killed them? ^^

Havent you realized it yet? Soloqueuers are padding for premades only. Thats the whole reason for your existence. To fill up that spot, to make queues fast for premades.

Live with it, or quit gw2 pvp.

Lets just face it. After 3 seasons, everybodys mmr is kittened up so much, any changes to matchmaking wont be even noticable.