Mike O’Brien has just announced on reddit that Colin is leaving Arenanet and he will be taking over as Game Director for the moment. Mike is conducting an AMA on reddit and of interest to WvW is that he states that Stephen Clarke-Wilson is now the WvW Director and seems to state that John Corpening is only working on PvP. So yet another change.
Here’s the link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/
Hmm Colin is leaving Arenanet.
We know the feature exists and could easily work in WvW. We know WvW masteries have been around longer than PvE ones. How ANet could have created an entirely new mastery for PvE and simply did not copy the same one into WvW is annoying to say the least. Some features may be more difficult to program than the look but this one is right there… sitting on the feature self… has almost all the work already done.
Yep this is what gets me as well. It appears to put a lie to their statements about working on WvW.
I think the matchmaking issues are highlighting problems with the actual mmr calculation, that its simply not all that accurate with regard to player skill because it doesn’t take into account things like rotation, how you play secondary mechanics etc…
The main problem with mmr is that it’s supposed to reflect player skill, but instead is based on team performance. In the current league matchmaking system, that distinction has severe negative consequences.
Quoted for truth
I want to get a better grasp of what state the cost of ascended materials are in. If you have your ascended gear, check the prices and comment about your thoughts before and after you check the price. If you are crafting ascended now, what are your thoughts on the cost/amount of materials. For me, ascended materials seem inflated in price.
Yes
What minor changes have already been made?
This is how devs should communicate about works in progress which can’t be discussed in much detal. Succinct, lets us know the general area of things being worked on.
Bravo, John. First time I can say that in a while.
Hmm IMO the post is far too vague IMO. Why can’t they say whether its to do with full HOT maps closing just for example?
The issue is that in Season 1 the punishment for losing wasn’t the same. Right now, each time I lose, the system messes up my standing and throws me lower with worse teams. In Season 1 (in pvp in general for as long as I played), my biggest loss streak was 6-7, usually mended by having several days of 3-4 win streaks. Today I got to 15 losses in a row (or more, I’m not sure). It’s… weird because most of those losses were completely out of my hands. The progression is far more unpredictable.
I think the matchmaking issues are highlighting problems with the actual mmr calculation, that its simply not all that accurate with regard to player skill because it doesn’t take into account things like rotation, how you play secondary mechanics etc…
It really should have been reset for the season.
That is the whole point of S2, glad it took you 10 hours of play for the first week to finally figure it out when people have known this since the first couple days. S1 was the grind ladder and S2 they are trying to change it up so that you don’t need to play 15-20 matches a day to reach legendary.
I don’t see how the changes to the matchmaking specifically make it not grindy. I agree for your own sanity that after 1-3 losses that you should take a break however its possible that under this system you could keep coming back and have 3 losses day after day and get nowhere and still have your mmr spiral downward. The issue with the system is that opponents aren’t matched based on mmr at all whilst your teammates are.
Give some time for the players with higher MMR to move up and then you can carry a group of 4 bads against 5 bads, at least you should be able to if you are truly a much better player than the people you are complaining about being matched up with 20 times a night.
Been a week now this idea now starts to fall a bit flat.
As we all know the last wvw lead, Devon Carter, left anet. This left a void in wvw leadership within anet. Instead of hiring someone else, they simply added the wvw leadership role on John Corpening. John Corpening is very much a pvp focused leader at the moment. Going through the last 3 months of his twitter shows 0 posts about wvw and tons about pvp.
John Corpening took over before Devon Carter left I think and Carter never had a grip on WvW anyway. I think at some point a couple of years ago the WvW and PvP teams merged so Carter was working on both anyway.
True about ac’s and siege in general. In DAOC people used siege to open up keep walls & doors. But the core of the RvR gameplay was always player vs player combat. Siege was just a tool to enable player vs player combat.
[…]
6. ppt is an outdated concept. The need to ppt creates issues for many servers in all tiers. It also deter fights, forcing people to knock on doors and spend excessive boring time doing PvE. This also leads to where a server gets too far ahead by Monday, and then there’s a serious lack of action as other servers give up playing for the week. My suggestion is to cap the amount of ppt you can gain per hour, so no server can do nothing but ppt. There’s too much emphasis on ppt right now when majority of players really don’t care for it. Make it so if you want to gain the scores like you are now, you have to kill players for it once you’ve hit your hourly cap.
On these 2 points 1 of the pivot points where the game took a dive was when the power of ACs was increased yet anet don’t get it and I don’t even think a lot of players realise how bad that change was. I don’t play ESO for other reasons but siege in that game was done correctly and done as you say, siege works against objectives but is clumsy against players. Even now its not just the power of ACs its the fact that they are able to reach places they shouldn’t be able to looking at LOS, ACs set way back from a wall able to reach a cata directly beneath a wall just for example.
And most of the gimmicks added to the game with HOT as you say directly take away from the player vs player aspect because they are overpowered mechanics which dramatically influence fights mainly to help defenders but certainly in the case of the banner also help attackers because they can be taken anywhere.
As for PPT it was a mistake from the start to base scoring entirely on it. It doesn’t motivate players to participate in the most dynamic aspects of the game. All it does is appeal to PvE heroes who want to play at being in a RvR game but don’t actually want to fight.
The other big issue IMO is of course population, which has been exacerbated by anets misconceived change to the way population was calculated which set limits far too low because anet still clung to the belief that the remaining WvW pop was enough for all the servers they had when in reality it was far too small even then, and has decreased dramatically with the poorly implemented HOT changes.
Good idea but still need to get the crossing threshold achievements
Its pretty clear the ‘evaluated metrics’ was just a disingenuous rationalisation and they never intended to change it back.
you got 4 seasons to finish that achieve
even pve players can finish that one
You have to get what ruby twice and sapphire twice, with the league system the way it is now that is not necessarily that easy.
The ascended looks prettier than legendary. What a shame.
No it doesn’t.
I have been contacted a lot, both by mean trolls (I know, I suck) and kind souls and also by people who understand the system is defective and punishing to solo que players. So I will address what you have stated above madvisions in your effort to not be unkind.
I took the advice of many and made a free alt char on a HoT account and immediately went into spvp. In one day, I am in sapphire, caught on the winning side tide. How is this possible? How can I be a sapphire player on one account in one day on an alt char playing the same exact build as I did on day one with my main. What’s the difference? How is this possible? Did my skill really improve dramatically in 6 days (despite the fact that I purportedly suck on my other character after nearly 3 years of pvping on it). The only difference I see is the playing field.
This really points to something being wrong in the matchmaking and indeed the mmr itself. Perhaps anet would like to address this point. It just seems that the system allows players to get stuck in a vicious cycle downwards and its hard to break out because opponents are not selected based on mmr. I’d argue as well that the mmr calculation is not a good indicator of skill level at all, its far too blunt an instrument to properly reflect skill.
Sorry you aren’t the first, someone on reddit made it a couple of days ago.
awesome, it should be promoted more then. I’ve heard of it before, but i’ve never known any place as an official pvp meet up. it should be clear enough that if some gaming news magazine comes here for the first time, they know where to go. In that sense it should be official and not mistaken for just another gw2 fan site covering pvp.
I wouldn’t be redirecting anyone to gw2wvw especially not in any official capacity. It is probably the worst cesspool of a forum I’ve ever spent an amount of time in and now pretty much just consists of in jokes and trolling.
From a different thread, but brilliant:
Fivedawgs.4267:
You know why league. Smite or Dota are popular or enjoyable (subjective term)? Because they use the 50/50 algorithm; they match against people you have a 50% chance of winning or losing; unlike what we have now, where one side is GROSSLY FAVORED over the other.And that’s why there’s unranked.
You think average players don’t want to pit themselves against players of similar skills and improve? You don’t get that in unranked.
I disagree. I got that in unranked.
No you don’t because you don’t specifically get matched with and against others of similar skill.
From a different thread, but brilliant:
Fivedawgs.4267:
You know why league. Smite or Dota are popular or enjoyable (subjective term)? Because they use the 50/50 algorithm; they match against people you have a 50% chance of winning or losing; unlike what we have now, where one side is GROSSLY FAVORED over the other.And that’s why there’s unranked.
You think average players don’t want to pit themselves against players of similar skills and improve? You don’t get that in unranked.
Yes….on my staff elementalist this fight was hard whereas on my staff necromancer it was relatively easy (but not short) because of all the minions attacking the dog. All I can say is – as an elementalist launch the rock elemental and then kite in a circle firebombing the dog. Whenever the dog is dead firebomb Eir. Rinse and repeat.
Tip – buy some armor repair canisters. You will need them before you complete all 3 fights.
Wow thats probably why anet refuse to do anything about this quest they want you to buy repair canisters. kitten that.
Your mmr that is used in ranked is account based. They do have profession based mmr as well but it is not being used.
I did that fight with staff, I think I may have had tempest when I did it so my build would have been something like tempest/water/air, kite Garm then air overload Eir, rinse and repeat.
Be warned though you have 2 more difficult fights to go in that quest in particular the last fight which has a lot of bugs in it as well as being difficult, and every time your armor gets broken and you have to repair you have to do the entire quest over again.
Then the team ques……………… after 4 years of PvP meetings in the Anet board room. You would think they would have had a better set up then this.
Its pretty clear looking at development across all modes that anet’s review structure of game developments and their QA are both deficient.
That’s sort of a two-way street. For lower MMR players (who would have been lower MMR before this catastrophe, or they’d have been on the rising side, instead) it feels unfair that you have to face anyone better than you.
For people with Higher MMR, the story isn’t the same. From my perspective, it’s nice to see people actually on teams with people in their bracket, that way, I don’t feel the need to carry someone who barely knows what a node is. Prior to now, my frustrations with PvP would be having to deal with people who goof off, then start raging in chat or AFKing. So in a sense, before now, I was the one with the problem, but people being carried certainly didn’t mind getting wins that were far-beyond unearned.
The psychological mumbo-jumbo is a far-reach, and is quite silly. The only psychology here is “everyone wants something different, and if it’s not what they want, it’s wrong”. This includes people who want even matches (both low tier and high tier) and people who only feel the Divisions should matter for who you face, so long as people are teamed with people in their skill range.
No one is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, people have unique needs and wants, and that’s not possible to deliver on them all. Certainly the low-tier players are the most frustrated, and it’s understandable.
It is objectively wrong that players should be forced to suffer through long losing streaks when anet could have adopted alternate systems that avoid this. Heck they had 1 last season, there was no need to change it other than to make it easier for top tier players to get to legendary and kitten the rest of us. I’m an average player but I know how to play the mode so why should I be forced to suffer through poor teams doing stuff like all the team going straight to the beast, problem is my mmr clearly doesn’t reflect my gameplay.
And being a higher ranked player surely you should want better matches rather than just being given a free ride to the top. There’s really not much to engage empathy for with players who get that free ride, so its not a 2 way street.
As for going to unranked and working towards the legendary in future years this has only just been stated 2 days ago, prior to that the implication was that we only had this year to get it. And we don’t even know how they will change the path to get it in future years will our progress to get it be taken into account. And some of us are having holidays in the middle of the season so we have to work get to the right division to ensure we are still in a position to earn the achievements over the rest of the year.
IMO they will have to change the achievement structure next year to provide a better match to a more appropriate ranked pvp structure, in that case if we haven’t finished the achievements in terms of say crossing divisional thresholds and they get rid of those achievements what happens? Too many questions so its reasonable to want to get the achievements while they are known.
@Dirtyrascal.1023:
- old system wasn’t looking for 50/50 matches most of the time
- old system promoted farming, there was literary no difference wether you are good or bad player, you just had to farm matches; it was literary old farmboards with sprinkles
Exploiting the losing streak bonus is already appearing in this system.
AN are watching and twiddling thumbs.
Fiddling while ‘Rome’ burns
Hi All,
Okay this is the second beta season – with some major changes to the system…
They are trying to design something which is fun and has some meaning.
You don’t put a legendary behind a beta.
will cause many of the new, average, and bad players to just give up before matchmaking becomes balance again. Call it quits and go home.
we don’t need such players.
true pvp players will rise out of the ashes of defeat and emerge victorious.
failure is the mother of success after all.
Hope you’re happy with your population of 100 people playing your elite mode then.
Losing 15 times in a row would be “wrong” if the system was built to be fair (Unranked). Losing 15 times in a row means nothing in a system designed to be competitive. Get a team that’s even somewhat good, and you should not have that issue.
The system isn’t designed to be competitive though.
Here’s the issue with that. While I love the fact that I am progressing quickly as a reward for being one of the more highly skilled players, this type of matchmaking can be quite discouraging to a majority of the playerbase. If the game doesn’t already rate you as good, you will be more likely to lose and the game will think more and more that you suck. Anet’s answer to this is as time progresses matches will become better. I fear however that this new matchmaking will cause many of the new, average, and bad players to just give up before matchmaking becomes balance again. Call it quits and go home. And let’s face it, that’s bad for the game. I would ask anet if having the few really good players progress faster is worth angering and harming the gaming experience of the vast majority of the player population. Also for the unlucky people who actually are bad whether it be from being unable to commit enough time or just lacking skill, there matches will never get better as they are always going to be below average and so will always have more of a chance to face teams better than them, and will always be on a losing streak and thus quit the game.
Feel free to share your thoughts.
Well said, the above is very true and a salient point for anet to acknowledge and deal with. Good luck in the Challenger Cup.
Ranked is for testing your mettle against people who are better than you and establishing a ladder position. If you’re at the lower end of the skill level, you’re going to lose a lot. That’s literally how every single competitive tournament sport works in the real world. Why should Tyria be different?
Other ranked systems in online games pit you against players of your own level therefore you do have a better chance to win while offering progression.
We’re at the very start of the league system—ANet warned us it would be like this. Remember all the QQ posts yelling at ANet to reset MMR last season? That’s basically what they did, and all the QQ’ers come out again.
They didn’t reset it, the old mmr stills factors into matchmaking and them not resetting it is part of the reason why its so bad this season.
ANET is dying. They aren’t the same company that use to honor the player, now they are all about selling outfits, wings and other useless junk for gems.
WvW will never be good again because ANET has lost their soul. You can thank Mike O’Brien for that.
Was Mike part of ANet with GW1? I never played it, but have heard good things about it. If so perhaps it’s the publisher that’s the issue. Who knows, but it’s not the game now that it was 2 years ago that’s for sure.
Mike O’Brien is 1 of the 3 founders of the company and the only founder left.
To be honest I have no problem with Matchmaking this season. Season 1 was so bad that you get people in Ruby who have no idea what they are doing.
Ruby was the filter level that you could get to with grinding but that you weren’t going to get past if you were a higher level so of course it had bad players in it. Your statement proves nothing.
@Ohoni
You shouldn’t generalise that much dude. I don’t know you, you don’t know me, you don’t know how i play. Don’t make easy assumptions. This happens too much in this forum, really :/
And if you want to blame the “system”, do it correctly. Bring statitics, numbers, some elements of proof. Your response is made of personnal opinion and no facts, it’s worth nothing, unfortunately.And, hum… if the system was trully broken, even recognized excellent players would have lose streaks and wouldn’t climb the ladder ? Is it the case ?
Btw, i just got to sapphire o/ (20/0)
1. You are also making generalisations
2. The proof is in the anecdotal experience of players providing evidence here and other places, circumstantial yes but its adding up to an issue.
3. Your final statement shows ignorance of how this system is working, excellent players are being matched up with excellent players and are being matched against significantly worse players just by being the bulk of the playerbase.
To “keep” a population high, you need it to be high to begin with. At this point they only need to focus on balance, balance, balance, pvp population is next to non existent.
Out of curiosity, what is the population like?
Not very high at all if all they can gather for the ELS finals world wide amounts to 7k concurrent viewers.
At what point was it 7K all I saw was around 4k.
Ranked is for testing your mettle against people who are better than you and establishing a ladder position. If you’re at the lower end of the skill level, you’re going to lose a lot. That’s literally how every single competitive tournament sport works in the real world. Why should Tyria be different?
Other ranked systems in online games pit you against players of your own level therefore you do have a better chance to win while offering progression.
Had a 3v3 on home point in temple, we win and I lead out to go for mid or far. Looking at the mini map I notice home xed up immediately after we left, the rest of my team were behind me. I reverse go back into home point, no-one follows me, the other 2 of their team then a 3rd comes back in kills me and take our point. None of my team even tried to stop them or even seemed to realise what was going on even though I’d put a message in chat, they just blithely went on to mid or far.
To people already losing their kitten again:
I suggested what can be improved. Read it.
As of something like that not existing for other games? Totally wrong. This happens in any league/season based game. Even in hearthstone. The only difference is that hearthstone is 1v1 and has in general more players plus they already kind of do what I suggest.
If its 1v1 then its totally different from Gw2 and other esports games do not have this kind of system.
???? this system is the competitive system we asked for, no idea why are ppl crying a river on forums about this particular addition.
‘We’ didn’t ask for this kitten show of a system. S1 with teh addition of the anti smurfing measure would have been far far preferable to this.
MMR based divisions would be great and would definitely produce way fairier matches, but they are also a LONG term competition.
It’s not reasonable to expect people to vastly improve out of sudden in the span of a few weeks, so players would see a very slow, if any, progression.
It only matters if you make the rewards depend on them. Award tickets based on some other criteria.
if its “random”, then how is it possible that i have not been “randomly” placed on a team that wins? How is it that every game has been a destruction?
Because its not random. Thats exactly what we were trying to tell you.
Edit: Infact it will become LESS random the longer the league runs. And even matchups will start to form NATURALLY instead of ARTIFICIALLY. Which is what the PvP playerbase asked for.
The teams he plays are random within a range, how come he hasn’t played teams with a worse mmr than him? Average and low mmr players should vastly outnumber high mmr players why are so many average and low mmr teams being matched solely against high mmr teams? As for evening up time will tell.
And this isn’t the best system for GW2 pvp to progress as ESPORT, the best would involved seeding players into divisions or players being matched against those with a similar mmr. And in fact for average and low mmr players the S1 system is better.
ArenaNet has no plans to bring back soloQ. They want it to be a team game. But since this is a free game (no subscription) they already have your money and if you quit playing it does not hurt them financially.
Of course it does because you won’t be buying gems. And the revenue they received from HOT sales was not enough to sustain development long term.
I’m pretty happy with the matchmaking so far. I haven’t seen any players on any team I’ve been placed on go directly to beast in Forest so right there that’s already an improvement over last season.
Sounds like you’re one of the lucky ones.
But they didn’t, and they’re aiming towards a skill based ladder instead of a grind based ladder. I agree with the overall direction it’s headed, the downside is that Amber and Emerald will be random as hell.
For some of us it isn’t random, for some of us we continually get placed against teams with significantly higher mmr then us leading to huge loss streaks. If you and anet can’t see how this is a problem for player retention well…………….. There is a player on another thread who says that he had a 65 match losing streak, assuming he is right thats ridiculous.
Its easy to say a wait a week its only a short time, if you’re in the middle of loss streaks it feels like an endless grind. And the theory of it improving once the high level players moving out is just that a theory, my mmr would have taken a hit from the large losing streaks which means I get placed with worse and worse players and as an average player I can’t carry 4 bad players.
Not to mention that a lot of the time I am not getting placed with players of my own skill level I’m getting placed with players who don’t know how to rotate who don’t know how to play the secondary objectives etc.
(edited by morrolan.9608)
I think after you get a losing streak longer than 5. It is a good time to stop and reconsider your gameplay. The chance is that if you keep playing, you will keep losing because you didn’t perform well and you are also getting more tired. You can’t expect to magically get a few good players to carry a win for you.
Think about how you lost the games, what went wrong. Current meta tends to generate snowball effect much more easily since ppl die if they are not careful.
Good gameplay from 1 person cannot make up for moronic team mates. I and a guildie both started the season at the same time soloqing so we were at the same level for matchmaking, he got 11 straight wins I got a raft of moronic teammates in every match who couldn’t even manage the basics of the game mode. I dunno what it is but anet are going to have a lot of disheartened players who may quit within a week.
They did have the balance patch in between seasons that destroyed bunker mesmer. However there are some clear issues that could have been addressed in a smaller balance patch as the season started eg. search and rescue. They appear to be trying to balance by getting rid of certain amulets but that is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and doesn’t address the actual issues surrounding the game in fact if anything its reducing build variety even further.
To me it appears that there are not enough designers working on balance, maybe even only Karl which is a frightening thought.
So you can’t click on someone to see if they’re in a party any more?
Participate in a ranked or unranked PvP match
Like, I get that you want to make Stronghold relevant by removing dailies that can only be completed in Conquest, but why this way? Why not make it able to be completed in custom arenas? Why force players to participate (participate, not win) a ranked or unranked game?
All this accomplishes is forcing all the people who farmed dailies in custom arenas to bleed out into the unranked and ranked matches. They’ll just go afk or they will throw the game to make it shorter. They don’t care about winning; they just want to farm dailies to get potions for the reward tracks.
There is no positive outcome to this. Nobody wins. You just annoy farmers and force them into the other matches and make the trash tiers an even worse experience for people who want to legitimately play and win.
So people can’t exploit to get their dailies, good riddance.
Probably current meta pvp scrapper.
Don’t see why given its powerful but most of the skills are active. I love the meta scrapper.
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