Is Guild Wars 2 Ranked PvP Doomed? (Possible Solutions)

[Malak.7042]

From all the information I can gather right now, ranked PvP in GW2 has become a “pay to win” or “cheat to win” phenomenon that is stacked greatly against the game’s population of solo queue players. I personally believe that one of the biggest causes is ArenaNet’s forced 50/50 win ratio. It’s very clear that match making is set up to try and keep wins as close to 50/50 as possible.

Cheat to Win:

With teams being set up with a maximum of two players, there isn’t much we can do to affect this outcome other than smurfing or botting (botting is basically speed and teleport hacking). Botting will get an account banned so when its used, it is usually done by a player on a throw away account teaming up with the player that actually wants to benefit from the cheating. This way the account that’s actually cheating stands no risk of a ban.

Smurfing is another way to affect the outcome so that the desired account can get a higher rating while running no risk of losing rating himself. To smurf, one simply levels an alt account up to a rating that your main account would see in a ranked match when Qing. Wait until down time or when there are very few players on and q up at the same time as the alt. The alt will likely get q pop with or against you. If it’s with you, have a friend play on it and do his best but leave game if you start to lose. If he’s against you, he simply needs to play horribly and throw the match.

If your q pops before the alt then have your friend take the alt out of q. If the alts q pops before yours then take yourself out of q. If your friend’s q pops without you, he would try to win to maintain his rating.

The smurfing can be extremely annoying when combined with ArenaNet’s already annoying 50/50 push. This will lead to a lot of those 500-20 type losses. ArenaNet’s win/loss rate push caused me to be put against a full team of players sporting “Relentless Legend” titles. Two premade and a solo q player all with the title, while at least two of the players on my team were silvers that I seen after match in HoM. I was plat and the other two were probably gold or silver as well based on performance.

I think that this is the reason that ArenaNet removed the part at the end of a match that shows the division of each player. I think that they are making at least some attempt to hide how hard their match making pushes for that 50/50.

Pay To Win:

There are many accounts for sale online that are being sold at high prices for PvP titles. One for sale with “God Of PvP” title obtained in EU but transferred to NA. There are paid carries that use either smurf accounts or throw away bot accounts to level buyers up starting from $1.25 a win or up to 400 euros for top 10 placement.

I understand the buyer’s motivation for doing these things, especially solo q players. I am at a loss though as to ArenaNet’s motivation for encouraging all this by hiding player divisions and pushing so hard with a 50/50 win rate. Of course this is complemented by the fact that we can only have up to a two man party. With three horrible players and two good ones vs five good players, the duo of two good players will not be able to make up for the difference in gameplay enough to carry a win. Not unless they are using a speed or teleport bot, and maybe not even then.

A method used by almost all successful players is the classic “Q Dodge”. If you see a horrible player, a bot using player, a dangerous duo, or a match thrower, add them to your block list and set their nickname to something that will help you remember what that player is and only q when the majority of what you are trying to avoid isn’t in HoM.

Solutions:

Bring man 5 v 5 matches to Ranked,

This will give some control over the Arena Net push when combined with Q Dodging to avoid teams that yours just can’t handle. FYI, Arena Net will beat your head against the same team on repeat if you allow them to in the name of the great 50/50.

Bring 1v1 to ranked,

This is something that has never been done but would greatly increase a feeling of control over a player’s own wins or losses. Of course something would have to be done about bunker builds as no one really wants to 1v1 a knock back rev or chase an engi around all day. Things like that or a druid’s infinite stealth/reset ability could be addressed by a few different methods,

One: Have preset builds that can be put on before the match begins. These preset builds would have something for each class and specialization but would avoid bunker style set ups or stealth builds.

Two: The final score of the match could include things that would make running a bunker build be at a severe disadvantage. For example, rewarding damage done more than time spent on point.

Three: Keep the arena small with no walls that a sword two spamming condi thief can use to teleport back and forth through.

Bring Solo q back: This won’t help will a lot of the problems but it would help with a solo q player having to face two duo teams armed with Arena Net selected pugs. Arena Net will still have all the control and will likely still try to push for that 50/50 for whatever reason but at least now, if you get tired of it, you can Rank 1v1 or make friends and 5v5.

 

[ugrakarma.9416]

ppl who are against pre-mades, simply traded rage against pre-mades for rage against a ocean of random afkers, abusers, trolls, in best case "im here for having fun, i dont read team chat". not a good deal.

 

[Shirlias.8104]

I'd work on smaller maps for smaller teams instead.

ANET should push players to create their own group to queue with.

I do understand that 5 players per team could be hard, but what about 3 or 4?

[Aeolus.3615]

Anet just need to make pvp lilke it happens on other games....

 

solo ladder for solo pvp room

dual ladder for dual pvp room

team(5v5 self made team) ladder for self made teams

 

This is what decent pvp games have..

 

@Malak.7042, about balance dont expect anythign decent and clever, its towards pve in 1st place....they rather remove trinkets to avoid balance than actually tune the build with those stats to work in pvp and pve (it has happened in the past several times).

 

[Shirlias.8104]

I guess we don't have enough players to have active 3 different modalities.

[Erzian.5218]

There is no "forced" 50% winrate. Match making just tries to make teams as equal as possible. This is based on mmr. So, assuming you are not cheating the system, your win/loss ratio should average out at 50% once you have hit the mmr that reflects your skill level. This is how every match making should work. If you are not making progress anymore (without cheating), your mmr matches your skill level.

Gw2 has some issues, but neither of them is the match making:

Low playerbase makes it sometimes impossible to create fair matches.

People are cheating the system and anet does not do anything about it, which renders the top end of the leaderboards completely meaningless as it only shows us who is best at abusing the system. I think less than 50% of the current EU top 10 are actually legit. Last season's rank 1 player has pretty much dodged all other top players and only duo queued at late night to avoid balanced matches (and then actually made a complaint on forums about other top 10 players who were win trading).

Some matches are inherently imbalanced, although mmr is about equal, because one teamcomp is vastly auperior to the other.

Rating gain/loss seems rather unfair if you solo queue as it is based on your rating compared to the average rating. This means that even if the match is against your favor, you are going to lose more rating than you would gain just because your personal mmr is higher than the average. While it does make sense to reduce the rating gain in such matches, as you should not gain much rating for participating in games that are well below your skill level, you also should not lose much for your inability to carry teammates if the overall win chance is still about 50%. If the match is 50:50, the possible gain should match the possible loss. If that match is below your own skill rating, this gain/loss should be smaller but still equal to each other e.g. +3/-3.

 

The last thing is very important imo, as the current design heavily promotes abusing the system. If you have more rating than 90+% of the population, chances are that your rating is often higher than the one of the average player in your matches (because the low population makes it impossible to only match you with comparable players). Therefore, you will end up losing a lot of rating even if you maintain a winrate above 50%. As a result, there is no incentive to queue for players at the top apart from decay and if they want to gain rating, many of them will resort to whatever yields the best results (more precisely: abuse the system to maintain the ridiculously high winrate that is needed, but should not even exist, to stay in the top 10).

[Ziggityzog.7389]

Solo queue only and a 2-5 man que only leaderboards. Let teams play teams and solo play solo. Then make playable modes where all classes are useable and not one sided with speed teefs or even port mes because conq is about speed and zerging not skill.

 

Then fix all the afk and bot issues

[MarkoNS.3261]

yeah i agree pvp is not in a good position i only go there when im borred and want to farm some gold, i have the wings since season 3 and i have absolutely no reason to care about rating so if the match isnt going well it doesnt really affect me.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

I'm curious as to why they got rid of solo / teamq in the first place. I wasn't active in pvp back then so some insight into this would be appreciated.

[MarkoNS.3261]

as far as i know 5 people premade was removed because people constantly complained they were getting stomped by premade teams vs pugs 1 v 1 i dont think was ever a thing.

[Wolfey.3407]

There's zero motivation for people to try competitive PvP.

Everything PvP has to offer, you can acquire faster and with 500% less salt / death and rape threats via WvW & PvE.

 

If you want true competitive scene that's not filled with the same 10 people being douche bags

(selling spots, selling accounts, rigging matches, being drunk on tournament streams, shit talking anet on stream and still being partnered or affiliated by anet)

You'd be better off playing a game actually meant for competitive play.

 

It's almost impossible for me to convince new guild members or friends to try pvp after everything they've read and seen online.

 

[ugrakarma.9416]

> @MarkoNS.3261 said:

> as far as i know 5 people premade was removed because people constantly complained they were getting stomped by premade teams vs pugs 1 v 1 i dont think was ever a thing.

 

neither me, i come from pvp from other games, pre-mades wasnt a issue. in these other games, those want improve search for their premades if they feel its a issue.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

> @MarkoNS.3261 said:

> as far as i know 5 people premade was removed because people constantly complained they were getting stomped by premade teams vs pugs 1 v 1 i dont think was ever a thing.

 

which I suppose begs the question: why didn't they try out making team q **require** a full team (which should've been the case from the get go imo) instead of allowing solo q'ers to enter, cry about being solo, and messing everything up for everybody.

[ugrakarma.9416]

> @"Stand The Wall.6987" said:

> > @MarkoNS.3261 said:

> > as far as i know 5 people premade was removed because people constantly complained they were getting stomped by premade teams vs pugs 1 v 1 i dont think was ever a thing.

>

> which I suppose begs the question: why didn't they try out making team q **require** a full team (which should've been the case from the get go imo) instead of allowing solo q'ers to enter, cry about being solo, and messing everything up for everybody.

 

thats why i never see a premade being a issue in other games.... just join a pvp guild. and GW2 have tons of guilds.

[veslarius.8425]

> @Erzian.5218 said:

> There is no "forced" 50% winrate. Match making just tries to make teams as equal as possible. This is based on mmr. So, assuming you are not cheating the system, your win/loss ratio should average out at 50% once you have hit the mmr that reflects your skill level. This is how every match making should work. If you are not making progress anymore (without cheating), your mmr matches your skill level.

> Gw2 has some issues, but neither of them is the match making:

> Low playerbase makes it sometimes impossible to create fair matches.

> People are cheating the system and anet does not do anything about it, which renders the top end of the leaderboards completely meaningless as it only shows us who is best at abusing the system. I think less than 50% of the current EU top 10 are actually legit. Last season's rank 1 player has pretty much dodged all other top players and only duo queued at late night to avoid balanced matches (and then actually made a complaint on forums about other top 10 players who were win trading).

> Some matches are inherently imbalanced, although mmr is about equal, because one teamcomp is vastly auperior to the other.

> Rating gain/loss seems rather unfair if you solo queue as it is based on your rating compared to the average rating. This means that even if the match is against your favor, you are going to lose more rating than you would gain just because your personal mmr is higher than the average. While it does make sense to reduce the rating gain in such matches, as you should not gain much rating for participating in games that are well below your skill level, you also should not lose much for your inability to carry teammates if the overall win chance is still about 50%. If the match is 50:50, the possible gain should match the possible loss. If that match is below your own skill rating, this gain/loss should be smaller but still equal to each other e.g. +3/-3.

>

> The last thing is very important imo, as the current design heavily promotes abusing the system. If you have more rating than 90+% of the population, chances are that your rating is often higher than the one of the average player in your matches (because the low population makes it impossible to only match you with comparable players). Therefore, you will end up losing a lot of rating even if you maintain a winrate above 50%. As a result, there is no incentive to queue for players at the top apart from decay and if they want to gain rating, many of them will resort to whatever yields the best results (more precisely: abuse the system to maintain the ridiculously high winrate that is needed, but should not even exist, to stay in the top 10)."

 

I'm pretty sure that the forced 50/50 thing is real. I placed plat after my 10 games on one alt account and on another account, I duo'd with my wife and she is brand new to pvp. Trying to carry her landed me just under gold. I decided to finish leveling this account to plat and during the course of this, I found that when my wins were so many above 50/50 I would get matched with teams that were impossible to win with. I literally had every top stat and aside from me only one other player managed to stay alive. The other 3 would insta die to players that I beat 1v2 and 1v3. In the end, we lost 489-500. I had every top stat and worked harder than I ever had. It wasn't enough, it was an impossible win. There are many such matches that I see when solo queuing and my wins are 60-70 percent.

 

On my main account just last night there were certain players that were just extremely easy to kill and seemed more like bots than anything. I was placed against the current number 1 NA slot's duo on his rev. My team consisted of all the easily killed players that I been killing all night. It turned into a zergfest as these guys basically just insta died or walked aimlessly. It was Capricorn map and I actually caught his rev in a 1v1 near far. To my surprise, he was an easy kill. I was power guard and he was power rev. I know hj revs that are much harder to kill. Now did ArenaNet give me all the insta die bot players and put me up against current number 1 duo because I was too far above 50/50 or is it smurfing in action? Either way, something is very broken.

[veslarius.8425]

> @MarkoNS.3261 said:

> as far as i know 5 people premade was removed because people constantly complained they were getting stomped by premade teams vs pugs 1 v 1 i dont think was ever a thing.

 

It also gives ArenaNet's matchmaking much more control over match outcomes. If you can only control two of your players, and ArenaNet can pick three along with all five enemy players, what can you if they decide you need a few losses. At least with 5v5 you can control each player and if they try to get you farmed my a top rated 5v5 team, Qdodge.

When the rankings were Amber - Legend on my trip through Diamond I actually got placed against 4 Diamonds and a Legend vs me, 1 ruby, 2 emeralds, and an Amber. I would take screenshots of matches like this an post about it. Now I can't-do that because they removed the division icons from the post-match info. Convenient for someone who doesn't wanna deal with complaints from players having to fight legend pre-mades armed with silver pugs. They need to bring those icons back to post-match info.

[jeyhu.1325]

> @Erzian.5218 said:

> There is no "forced" 50% winrate. Match making just tries to make teams as equal as possible. This is based on mmr. So, assuming you are not cheating the system, your win/loss ratio should average out at 50% once you have hit the mmr that reflects your skill level. This is how every match making should work. If you are not making progress anymore (without cheating), your mmr matches your skill level.

> Gw2 has some issues, but neither of them is the match making:

> Low playerbase makes it sometimes impossible to create fair matches.

> People are cheating the system and anet does not do anything about it, which renders the top end of the leaderboards completely meaningless as it only shows us who is best at abusing the system. I think less than 50% of the current EU top 10 are actually legit. Last season's rank 1 player has pretty much dodged all other top players and only duo queued at late night to avoid balanced matches (and then actually made a complaint on forums about other top 10 players who were win trading).

> Some matches are inherently imbalanced, although mmr is about equal, because one teamcomp is vastly auperior to the other.

> Rating gain/loss seems rather unfair if you solo queue as it is based on your rating compared to the average rating. This means that even if the match is against your favor, you are going to lose more rating than you would gain just because your personal mmr is higher than the average. While it does make sense to reduce the rating gain in such matches, as you should not gain much rating for participating in games that are well below your skill level, you also should not lose much for your inability to carry teammates if the overall win chance is still about 50%. If the match is 50:50, the possible gain should match the possible loss. If that match is below your own skill rating, this gain/loss should be smaller but still equal to each other e.g. +3/-3.

>

> The last thing is very important imo, as the current design heavily promotes abusing the system. If you have more rating than 90+% of the population, chances are that your rating is often higher than the one of the average player in your matches (because the low population makes it impossible to only match you with comparable players). Therefore, you will end up losing a lot of rating even if you maintain a winrate above 50%. As a result, there is no incentive to queue for players at the top apart from decay and if they want to gain rating, many of them will resort to whatever yields the best results (more precisely: abuse the system to maintain the ridiculously high winrate that is needed, but should not even exist, to stay in the top 10).

 

I don't agree with you on the no forced 50% win rate. I've noticed countless people complain and witnessed how the system litterly will set you up with basically completely unfair match ups and it isn't a "git gud" thing, it's litterly trying to force you into the 50% win ratio. When you end up getting 75-90% of the medals in a match where you get completely decimated, I don't call that a balanced MMR.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

on the subject of a "forced 50% winrate"...

how exactly can the game affect the outcome of 10 individuals? all it does is pit similar mmrs together. that's the only force at work. everything else is on the player. stop this nonsense!

[zinkz.7045]

> @ugrakarma.9416 said:

> > @MarkoNS.3261 said:

> > as far as i know 5 people premade was removed because people constantly complained they were getting stomped by premade teams vs pugs 1 v 1 i dont think was ever a thing.

>

> neither me, i come from pvp from other games, pre-mades wasnt a issue. in these other games, those want improve search for their premades if they feel its a issue.

 

Well if you are referring to MMOs, then frankly they are all a joke in terms of PvP, if you mean other genres like MOBAs, FPS, etc, then well they generally do matchmaking much better for all sorts of reasons - much bigger playerbase, much stricter matchmaking, games that have roles like MOBAs can also matchmake better in that respect , they do a much better job of communication for non (or smaller) pre-mades and so on.

 

And even then, when LoL, a game with 65 million players dropped solo queue they brought it back because "dynamic" queuing was failing miserably at higher MMR levels.

 

The reality is most players in PvP games play solo or duo most of the time, which is why every game caters to that, GW2 just did a really poor job much of the game, albeit with a small playerbase, and now the playerbase is so small they are in the catch 22 situation, where they don't even have enough players to facilitate the better solutions, so they will just lose more players...

[jeyhu.1325]

> @"Stand The Wall.6987" said:

> on the subject of a "forced 50% winrate"...

> how exactly can the game affect the outcome of 10 individuals? all it does is pit similar mmrs together. that's the only force at work. everything else is on the player. stop this nonsense!

 

I don't believe that at all once you reach over a certain threshold the MMR gives you teammates that explode on contact and do dumb crap while the enemy team is working together and rotating and you're going to tell me they are similar MMR? Lol I don't think so....

[Geikamir.6329]

> @MarkoNS.3261 said:

> as far as i know 5 people premade was removed because people constantly complained they were getting stomped by premade teams vs pugs 1 v 1 i dont think was ever a thing.

 

Oh boy was that ever a thing. As a player that very heavily solo-ques and seldomly duo-ques, back them that was the most frustrating experience possible. It made me quit the game for a while. Ever since I've came back, this new system is far superior in almost all aspects.

 

While it is unfortunate that sometimes the matchmaking creates a noticeably unbalanced match, generally speaking it does a really good job at match-making. The fact that most people settle around 50% is a sign that it's working. If the win ratio was too heavily leaning in one direction or another for 1 player, that means that another player has the opposite. That is not an enjoyable experience. Having tense and challenging matches is. And I think that thr current matchmaking does a pretty decent job at that.

 

Now, if they would only punish leavers more...

[Atrox.3109]

I'm just getting into the ranked pvp and I'm stunned that it is done this way. Absolutely retarded. There is no skill to be in the top, it's all luck at this point.