How is unranked pvp like ?

I have been playing this game for about 4 years and have never tried PvP because I read on the forums that it is full of toxic players. The small community makes it worse since I read about average players being put to compete against highly ranked players. I have only played WvW because I don't get scolded if I die or if I don't play well enough. I read about unranked pvp and have 2 questions. (1) Does it have a lot of toxic players ? (2) How is the matching system like ? Do you tend to meet highly ranked players ? My rank is rabbit by the way.

Unranked is fine for learning how to PvP, however it can get pretty frustrating to play in since there are many people who don't yet know what they are doing and there is almost no team communication. Treat it like what it is, a training ground, and don't go in expecting to win or have a cohesive team and you'll get out of it exactly what it can provide.

There's toxic people in every form of content, so don't let them dissuade you from trying something new.

Thanks. Im not worried about meeting new players since I am new myself :) Running around with a big blob in WvW has not made me any better at small scale pvp.

@Haziq.3907 said:I have been playing this game for about 4 years and have never tried PvP because I read on the forums that it is full of toxic players. The small community makes it worse since I read about average players being put to compete against highly ranked players. I have only played WvW because I don't get scolded if I die or if I don't play well enough. I read about unranked pvp and have 2 questions. (1) Does it have a lot of toxic players ? (2) How is the matching system like ? Do you tend to meet highly ranked players ? My rank is rabbit by the way.

I have only done 1 season of ranked PvP and I sometimes do my dailies by queuing up for unranked. However, in my limited experience, toxic players are rare. In the vast majority of matches I played, there was little or no communication in chat. Every once in awhile someone would get salty and talk trash either about another player or their own team's performance, but mostly the community reaction to this seems to be ridicule for the angry party or silence (usually following /block!).

My information on matching is half a year or more out of date at this point, but at the time I played in ranked the matching seemed pretty good. I placed appropriately (low gold 1), as evidenced by the fact that I was only able to advance to the top of that bracket before I'd fall back down again. However, once I switched to the meta build for my class (tempest auramancer, at the time), I moved up through the ranks and eventually finished my season in platinum 1. I believe my win% was around 55%.

This suggests to me that matchmaking is pretty spot on. First, I placed into a bracket that I neither dropped below nor advanced beyond. Then I changed my build to the meta and, predictably, climbed until I hit a new ceiling. Finally, my win% was a little over 50%. This is all exactly what I expect to see from an accurate matchmaking system.

Keep in mind, however, that I spent the first half of my season in the gold brackets and the second half repeatedly breaking into platinum and falling back down to gold 3. This rosy view of the matchmaking system mostly describes the gold bracket, where players seemed plentiful enough to make the system work. However, trouble started for me in the platinum tier.

Not only was I matched with top 10 players, if not frequently then certainly enough to notice, it was also common to see the same names match after match if playing multiple games in a row. Further, the top 250 consisted of plat 2, plat 3, and the legendary bracket as well. It doesn't take a high end computer simulation to tell you that only a small fraction of those 250 are going to be in the queue at any given time. It simply isn't enough players to avoid these issues.

In short, there is nothing wrong with the matchmaking system itself. However, due to insufficient population, the system cannot produce good matches at the high end.

Edit: Oh, and unranked PvP is fine. I find the level of competition is generally low and virtually nobody takes it seriously. Just go in and have fun. Many of the players you meet are likely just there doing dailies anyway! It's a great place to play with non-meta builds and still feel effective (believe me, that probably won't be the case in ranked play!).

Toxic players on occasion. The worse the match progresses, the more likely a player will start shift blame on others. I'd Say 1-2 out of every 10 matches at minimum.

Unranked is a mess. You have a mix of ppl goofing around, testing builds, and being too serious. At least half my matches are blowouts 100-500 matches.Ranked is a more structured mess. Players skill level is more evenly matched compared to unranked. Blowouts are less than a quarter of all matches in my experience.

Rank level does not mean anything anymore. So being "Rabbit" only says your new on the surface. Player skill is determined by match making rating (mmr).In Ranked your mmr is visible on your pvp panel once you've completed your placement matches. Unranked mmr is separate, and hidden from the player.mmr will determine the players you will face, and match making will try its best to put you with players of a similar mmr level.Mmr increases with wins, and of course decreases with losses. Higher mmr means the system will see you as a more skilled player.

The first months that I played unranked were pretty nice. Rarely someone spoke at all, even in your team. There are skilled players but also unskilled ones, so no one complained iirc. Months after months you'll eventually climb the ranks (even in unranked, although it's hidden) so you will be matched with more skilled players. You will start to see the first players who blame the team because they are good and the rest of the team are noobs, because they lag, etc. When you kill someone, they will eventually whisper you or jump on your body the next time that you're dead, and in general it's less funny (especially if you play a class with a non meta build).I'd suggest to try it though, at the beginning is pretty funny and harmless. Then you can decide later on when/if stop it.

You tend to find a mixture of everything in unranked so it's not a good place to learn PvP. You got people who are testing builds, tryhards, teams, toxic people etc. What it is good for however, is learning all the PvP maps. In terms of getting better at small scale PvP dueling is the best for that, and watching PvP streams/videos.

Unranked can be just as toxic as ranked but you will have to learn to deal with it because it will always exist.

@Haziq.3907 said:I have been playing this game for about 4 years and have never tried PvP because I read on the forums that it is full of toxic players. The small community makes it worse since I read about average players being put to compete against highly ranked players. I have only played WvW because I don't get scolded if I die or if I don't play well enough. I read about unranked pvp and have 2 questions. (1) Does it have a lot of toxic players ? (2) How is the matching system like ? Do you tend to meet highly ranked players ? My rank is rabbit by the way.

Unranked is a pain because you want to learn another class or you're starting pvp or whatever but your team mates are often completely useless mechanically and in map awareness, this is not a good learning environment, I do not recommend it at all. Imo you're always better off in ranked as long as you have half a brain to understand your class and map rotations.

People are toxic in both ranked and unranked, let it go over your head. You have to remember some people are on loss streaks, having bad days, somebody has been blaming them or w/e. You're going to get pissed off eventually and if you don't, well you must have a chilled out personality and/or life because I am a pretty laid back guy irl but on occasion I do rage in pvp and even in raids or fractals.