PVP is a game of luck

[Godfather.9058]

I NEVER have any balanced games. It is always a stomp from either team. I also feel like what I do has absolutely 0 impact on the game. No matter if I do bad or good. It is all about luck. Will my 4 team mates refuse to hold still for 30 seconds to group up and charge one by one into an enemy 5 stack? Will the enemy team do the same thing? Will someone afk?

 

How do I play PVP? Just hit the play button and run around while loling?

[Huskyboy.1053]

Did you post this after losing too many games in a row? Log off if that's the case.

 

Luck is absolutely a part of it but so is skill; if you want to feel like you're having a bigger impact on the game, learn one bruiser build and one roamer build. Play the roamer build predominantly unless you see that there's another roamer on your team before the match, in that case switch to the bruiser build. Problem solved.

[RayssaMoreira.3728]

It's definitely a game of luck. No matter how good you are, if your team is bad, you will be lost !! Of course, the fact that you play well contributes a lot to the game (obvious), but from the moment you find yourself in a team with two people who do not know how to spin, nothing, absolutely nothing, you can do. The only thing you have to do is pray that the other team is worse than yours.

[Poseidon.3852]

Well, remember that aaaaalll those people in GW2 are real people and not just NPC or bots. Therefore, find a nice statick and group que and rofflestomp everything besides others who do the same but are just better. Problem solved. Don't rely too much on the comfy mechanics of the game that made it possible to do everythin asocial.

 

As for solo-queing, try to talk a strong narrative from the beginning and order people around and tell them what to look out for. I my self forget sometimes that i should not 3vs1, but instead go somewhere where I am more useful. Call targets and tell them to focus targets firsts. Be smart who you target. Tell them to regroup if you see everybody dying sporadically, and if you are on EU... hope that they speak english.

 

Also, play ranked. I mostly play un-ranked to just try out builds or learn a spec, so it doesn't really matter to me who wins as long as I get enough gameplay experience and such.

 

Get a discord, encourage people to join your discord at the start of the game.

 

Of course, most of these advices work only some of the time... but still, they really do help.

[Kitarpa.8143]

I mean it is and it isn't. It definitely shows when a team knows what they're doing and supposed to be doing as individuals. Which, as much as some want to deny or take the time to make a comment that you're raging, etc sPVP is team orientated - period. You don't have to be a god, you don't have to know what you're doing 100%, it helps for sure but in the end your team _showing up_ where and when it counts is what wins you games.

 

There's some pug games where I simply can't do anything. Like where my team is all a playing solo game and doing things like 3v1ing someone off point for 5 minutes. There's things that you just can't help when it comes to your team and trying to push them to play the match correctly.

 

I get where you're coming from and I get where others are when it comes to "its skill" but in the end, **you** _and_ your team making smart rotations, decapping, and constantly being on alert with your minimap is how you get solid wins in. You only need to hold two points semi consistently to win a game. I always put effort in communicating with whatever pug team I end up on, and trying to reroute myself to best accommodate whatever they're doing if it will help push your team ahead in points and get a point capped or get their attention off whatever it is they're fixated on and get them back to capping/decapping. It's really the best you can do solo.

[Sampson.2403]

Yes keep telling yourself its luck instead of analyzing ur game to improve. The top 50 each season which are mostly the same people each season are all just super duper lucky then, right?

[Jayce.5632]

> @"Sampson.2403" said:

> Yes keep telling yourself its luck instead of analyzing ur game to improve. The top 50 each season which are mostly the same people each season are all just super duper lucky then, right?

 

Lol, and the **soft** reset of MMR season after season has nothing to do with it right?

[Brother.1504]

Play the broken profession of the season. Don’t be a purist and play what you enjoy. Feeling powerful is fun. Play fotm. Balance in spvp has always been bad. Not being negative just pragmatic.

[Peutrifectus.4830]

^^ what they said. Team talk. Call targets. Don't fill the chat with, "UNINSTALL NOOBS" "WORST TEAM EVER" encourage, support and fingers crossed that PUG will perform.

 

Most of all remember that the aim is to win but the point is to have fun. Don't mix up the two ;)

 

- glhf

[Sampson.2403]

> @"Jayce.5632" said:

> > @"Sampson.2403" said:

> > Yes keep telling yourself its luck instead of analyzing ur game to improve. The top 50 each season which are mostly the same people each season are all just super duper lucky then, right?

>

> Lol, and the **soft** reset of MMR season after season has nothing to do with it right?

 

You could put the top 50 in silver and theyd be the top 50 in one weekend. I had a bad internet connectiln during my placements ended up in gold 1. First weekend with new internet i jumped to plat 2 like it was nothing. But i guess that was all luck.

[AliamRationem.5172]

Man, you are so right. It's amazing how luck is the only factor that matters for every player in this game! I mean, you'd thing that would make all things equal and sooner or later skill would have to come into play to make the difference between bronze rank and legendary. But nope! Not here! No sir!

[RayssaMoreira.3728]

That is not the point. If you play with a broken class and you are good at it, obviously you will be able to rise because your enemies (who are usually bad players) will not know how to deal with you and they will die all the time. However on the other side there is a player who is better than you, but has a class that is not broken (ranger, guardian or any other) and he will not have that opportunity.

[zerorogue.9410]

Its the same problem that all ranking PvP games face. How do you rank a player? Ranking a player is very hard. You can't easily build a system that can determine what was a good move and what wasn't. And any system built would have to survive under people trying to manipulate it. If you score purely on numbers then players are not rewarded for coming up with strategy, and are instead encouraged just to farm for the biggest numbers.

 

Most games (gw2 included) use the team ranking instead. This is easier to enforce and determine good and bad behavior as anything that doesn't lead to victory would be punished by loss in rank. However this leads to the simple problem; Why is my personal rank determined by my team's performance? A pro player can easily be tiered in last rank if all they get is bad teammates vs good enemies. The algorithms have no idea how skilled a player is, they just know you lost 10 times in a row so you must belong in the bottom rank. This is the main cause of imbalances in games.

 

A true solution to this problem has not been discovered yet. However there are things that should be done to mitigate it.

-Bring back the tutorial. Too many people come into sPvP thinking it's all about kills or controlling one point. Teaching players the basics such as rotating would go along ways to raise the floor on player skill in sPvP. If the meta is everyone goes to center to fight, then something has gone wrong in the design.

-Ranking should be determined by player's participation percentage modified by team win/loss. Essentially sorting players on teams biased on their participation then giving/removing points for the wins/loss. The best player on the winning side gets the most points while the worst player on the losing side, loses the most. This should also be clamped so losing players who are significantly better than several on the winning team lose no points and vice versa.

-Bring back 5 man teams in ranked. This is a must and probably the # 1 reason why sPvP is in the decline. Team match-ups should account for the ranking through, where 5 man team vs randoms would be a (approximate)1:1.5 difference in ranking. Other PvP games do this, so this shouldn't be hard.

[MyPuppy.8970]

> @"zerorogue.9410" said: Teaching players the basics such as rotating would go along ways to raise the floor on player skill in sPvP.

 

While I agree this is a basic skill, I also think this is what demands the most experience.

 

 

[eksn.7264]

My personal experience is that if I play a bunch I'll often go on long win streaks and long loss streaks. Loss streaks are by far more punishing though since the more you win, the less points you'll tend to earn (especially at around plat 2+) and I've noticed sometimes loss streaks can spiral out of control for some unknown reason. This season I was comfortably in the top 50-100 with close to 60% winrate, and in the last 3 days my winrate is way less than 50% and I went from plat 2 to gold. I *never* blame matchmaking in any other game, but this also doesn't happen in any other game. I can just play more and climb back, but what do I really get out of that? I'm not entitled to a rank nor do I care about my rank, but a veteran of 5 years who can't even maintain a 50% winrate in gold 3? Sorry but that's not on me anymore. It's really not all the matchmaking's fault either. It can't predict if my teammates are going to do game losing mistakes game after game. I can try as hard as I can but if I have a teammate trebbing for half the game and a necro who pushes far all game (actual games played earlier today), there's no carrying those people. I'm just over it at this point.

[Chuck.2864]

> @"RayssaMoreira.3728" said:

> That is not the point. If you play with a broken class and you are good at it, obviously you will be able to rise because your enemies (who are usually bad players) will not know how to deal with you and they will die all the time. However on the other side there is a player who is better than you, but has a class that is not broken (ranger, guardian or any other) and he will not have that opportunity.

 

I had terrible placements and landed low gold 2, climbed over 300 rating to Plat 2 on Rev\Core Guard. Are these broken classes?

If you actually have shit luck and end up playing at a much lower ELO than where you should be, you realize how easy it is to actually climb. During my placements I was 1-5 after my first 6 games and pretty sure my rating was low gold 1 or even Silver - I was winning 1v2's and farming people all game, on Rev.

 

I can accept a 50 or even 100 rating difference between 2 players being somewhat down to luck. But if anyone believes they're Silver\Low Gold and actually "belong" in Plat but are just unlucky, they're delusional.

[Abazigal.3679]

> @"Chuck.2864" said:

> I can accept a 50 or even 100 rating difference between 2 players being somewhat down to luck. But if anyone believes they're Silver\Low Gold and actually "belong" in Plat but are just unlucky, they're delusional.

 

Issue here is what eksn said, who i 100% agree with. It's still very common to have series such as :

30 games : 1520 -> 1510

30 games : 1510 -> 1395

30 games : 1395 -> 1386

30 games : 1386 -> 1540

If you consider 120 games, anyone will agree you should be back to your rating if you truly deserve it. But you generally will have to deal with several unplayable matchs compensated by several unplayable matchs for the opponent.

 

All in all, unplayable matchs tend to happen at any rank, the problem is that you shouldn't have so many mistakes happening in gold 3. Not even about players losing all their 1v1's, but mostly about common sense ( what eksn said as example)

[Chuck.2864]

> @"Abazigal.3679" said:

> > @"Chuck.2864" said:

> > I can accept a 50 or even 100 rating difference between 2 players being somewhat down to luck. But if anyone believes they're Silver\Low Gold and actually "belong" in Plat but are just unlucky, they're delusional.

>

> Issue here is what eksn said, who i 100% agree with. It's still very common to have series such as :

> 30 games : 1520 -> 1510

> 30 games : 1510 -> 1395

> 30 games : 1395 -> 1386

> 30 games : 1386 -> 1540

> If you consider 120 games, anyone will agree you should be back to your rating if you truly deserve it. But you generally will have to deal with several unplayable matchs compensated by several unplayable matchs for the opponent.

>

> All in all, unplayable matchs tend to happen at any rank, the problem is that you shouldn't have so many mistakes happening in gold 3. Not even about players losing all their 1v1's, but mostly about common sense ( what eksn said as example)

 

Yes, matchmaking is streaky, I know that and I have no idea why that happens. Best solution I've found is know when to quit or take a break. Massive losing streaks become a lot less common when you start to taking 10 mins after a loss before queueing again. 10 mins should be enough to untilt yourself, clear your head, and ensure you don't get basically a rematch of the loss with the same players.

 

At the end of the day though as you say given a large enough sample size everyone ends up roughly where they "belong". If anyone who claims "it's all luck" plays 40 games a season then they don't really have a leg to stand on. The streaks exist but that doesn't change my point.

[Malediktus.9250]

Yes, PvP is a game of luck if you are not at the very top and the matchmaker cannot find people in your skillrange anymore.

Not like it matters anyway, PvP is utter garbage since HoT release. Balance is so crappy its far beyond repair (everything far too spammy and time to kill time must be increase tenfolds).

Most people who still PvP are just there because they get bribed by rewards (including me)

[xp eke xp.6724]

Tournamets are the best PvP you can get atm.

 

ranked isn´t compeditive.*

* imo it´s not posible to tell a player compeditive if his skills are based on pushing buttons and get emotional, without knowing what that action affects. So maybe on p3 most actions arent random anymore.

That also means, as more you know/ understand about the game, as easyer you get out of low "ratings", cause you can easyer impact on the right time and you can get to a point with less randomness. It also helps if you duo-q, to get higher chances. If you don´t do, you choosed for yourself the much harder way.

 

On a matchmaker you will see exactly what i mean: As bigger the differents between the theoretical best actions are to the practical best actions a player can do, as bigger are the rating spikes, cause as more randomly the player acts! As more players act as randomly as others as more stabillity you have on that rating-lvl.

 

It counts on all aspects: skill, knowless, reaction, mindgame, teammoral and and and. Cause it´s posible to theorise about all this points and to collect informations about that. As more background theory you have, as more controll you have about a match and as less frustrating the game will be. (maybe the biggest frustration, on that point, is that you have too less players, that force you to use that theory...)

 

At end thats the easyest way to "Balance". Not everyone want´s to know the theory behind most points, but that also means they choosed to not be compeditive players and it´s nothing wrong about being casuall^^. If someone want to tryhard, he can do it. But pls not, with flaming others or try to force them to work on the way you want, thats not tryharding, it´s more about bad education and selfcontroll

[Gamble.4580]

Just moved to na to proove this wrong so I can reset my games. I won 7/3 and placed gold t3 won the next 20 games I am close to leg already. Once I hit 60 games if I keep playing well I will 100% still be leg, only problem now is I am getting 0-3 for wins and looseing 40 lmao

[maxwelgm.4315]

Conquest as a game mode is far more reliant on who your team mates are than say, a deathmatch or a MOBA. In most competitive games, playing well against other players is the primary requirement (sometimes the only one) to win the match and win ranks. In League of Legends you can compensate for not being a decent farmer if you can play one of the "assassin" champions and murder everyone on your lane while ganking sides. This is precisely what gets you to their nexus, you know where they will be coming from and they absolutely have to get through you to reach yours.

 

In here? You can have a team dying left and right on point to the enemy zerg that will still win as long as they can reliably rotate in a smart way so as to keep 2 points for most of the time and land cheap off-point kills. You can have a 2-necro killdozer rampaging single points together on barrier builds while the other 3 rotate and the enemy team can't do anything about it, and so on and so on. The game text does make it clear that fighting is NOT the primary motive of the game, so it is unfortunately not surprising that very good players that can outperform 2 or 3 enemies at once still find that their rank only partially portrays their skill.

 

What this game need I think is more game modes for ranked. We've been playing conquest for years on end, and Anet even tried to make it an Esport (rofl) instead of developing more modes for us to play. While fun (and incredibly complex which takes away a lot of the individual player decision power), it would have been much better if our ranked was based in Team Arenas or even Random Arenas from GW1. Or at least revamp WvW faster.

[Delweyn.1309]

> @"eksn.7264" said:

> My personal experience is that if I play a bunch I'll often go on long win streaks and long loss streaks. Loss streaks are by far more punishing though since the more you win, the less points you'll tend to earn (especially at around plat 2+) and I've noticed sometimes loss streaks can spiral out of control for some unknown reason. This season I was comfortably in the top 50-100 with close to 60% winrate, and in the last 3 days my winrate is way less than 50% and I went from plat 2 to gold. I *never* blame matchmaking in any other game, but this also doesn't happen in any other game. I can just play more and climb back, but what do I really get out of that? I'm not entitled to a rank nor do I care about my rank, but a veteran of 5 years who can't even maintain a 50% winrate in gold 3? Sorry but that's not on me anymore. It's really not all the matchmaking's fault either. It can't predict if my teammates are going to do game losing mistakes game after game. I can try as hard as I can but if I have a teammate trebbing for half the game and a necro who pushes far all game (actual games played earlier today), there's no carrying those people. I'm just over it at this point.

 

it's somewhat as if the game puts an invisible cumulative debuff when you win too much, and same with a buff when you lose too much.

 

Exemple : you gain a virtual rank each time you win (1st win + 50 to your rank, 2nd win + 100, 3rd win +150 etc...) so that the games puts strong players against you. And it last until you lose numerous times and you lose your debuff.

Same if you lose, -50, -100, -150 etc... to your rank until you lose too much.

 

And this buff or debuff influence your matchmaking for numerous matches.

 

And it seems that the game needs a lot of wins/loses streak to begin to adapt, instead doing it immediatly at every match.

 

It's maybe not coded like this but it really works like this.

[eksn.7264]

> @"Delweyn.1309" said:

> > @"eksn.7264" said:

> > My personal experience is that if I play a bunch I'll often go on long win streaks and long loss streaks. Loss streaks are by far more punishing though since the more you win, the less points you'll tend to earn (especially at around plat 2+) and I've noticed sometimes loss streaks can spiral out of control for some unknown reason. This season I was comfortably in the top 50-100 with close to 60% winrate, and in the last 3 days my winrate is way less than 50% and I went from plat 2 to gold. I *never* blame matchmaking in any other game, but this also doesn't happen in any other game. I can just play more and climb back, but what do I really get out of that? I'm not entitled to a rank nor do I care about my rank, but a veteran of 5 years who can't even maintain a 50% winrate in gold 3? Sorry but that's not on me anymore. It's really not all the matchmaking's fault either. It can't predict if my teammates are going to do game losing mistakes game after game. I can try as hard as I can but if I have a teammate trebbing for half the game and a necro who pushes far all game (actual games played earlier today), there's no carrying those people. I'm just over it at this point.

>

> It's like if the game puts an invisible cumulative debuff when you win too much, and same with a buff when you lose too much.

>

> And this buff or debuff influence your matchmaking for numerous matches.

>

> And it seems that the game needs a lot of wins/loses streak to begin to adapt, instead doing it immediatly at every match.

 

The only way I've been able to counter this effect is to stop queuing after 2 or 3 losses in a row. It's kind of my fault for continue queuing, but I was like fuck it boys let's do this for science. The next day after posting this I won about 17 of my 20 matches and I'm back near plat 2, so go figure. At the end of the day, this is all anecdotal evidence though.

[Delweyn.1309]

> @"eksn.7264" said:

> > @"Delweyn.1309" said:

> > > @"eksn.7264" said:

> > > My personal experience is that if I play a bunch I'll often go on long win streaks and long loss streaks. Loss streaks are by far more punishing though since the more you win, the less points you'll tend to earn (especially at around plat 2+) and I've noticed sometimes loss streaks can spiral out of control for some unknown reason. This season I was comfortably in the top 50-100 with close to 60% winrate, and in the last 3 days my winrate is way less than 50% and I went from plat 2 to gold. I *never* blame matchmaking in any other game, but this also doesn't happen in any other game. I can just play more and climb back, but what do I really get out of that? I'm not entitled to a rank nor do I care about my rank, but a veteran of 5 years who can't even maintain a 50% winrate in gold 3? Sorry but that's not on me anymore. It's really not all the matchmaking's fault either. It can't predict if my teammates are going to do game losing mistakes game after game. I can try as hard as I can but if I have a teammate trebbing for half the game and a necro who pushes far all game (actual games played earlier today), there's no carrying those people. I'm just over it at this point.

> >

> > It's like if the game puts an invisible cumulative debuff when you win too much, and same with a buff when you lose too much.

> >

> > And this buff or debuff influence your matchmaking for numerous matches.

> >

> > And it seems that the game needs a lot of wins/loses streak to begin to adapt, instead doing it immediatly at every match.

>

> The only way I've been able to counter this effect is to stop queuing after 2 or 3 losses in a row. It's kind of my fault for continue queuing, but I was like kitten it boys let's do this for science. The next day after posting this I won about 17 of my 20 matches and I'm back near plat 2, so go figure. At the end of the day, this is all anecdotal evidence though.

 

Yes but it's not normal. The game should adapt immediatly, to get you 50/50 when you reach your level. That would be normal. Not doing yoyo with 200 points of differences.