Ladder Systems and Team Games - Doing it Wrong

Excellent video from Extra Credits detailing how the ELO system with random teammates doesn't work.

Perfect Video

This is why I always greet players in PvP matches with 'Hello team!'. In general, just be nice to teammates and things should go according to plan.

Good points.

Edit: figured I should mention that allowing prems in ranked is still a mistake in gw2 specifically and it was proven before. Aside from that though, good points.

Common sense video is common sense, but still nice to see it done well.

I wish GW2 overhauled their PvP system... but the investment probably ain't worth it.

Good video. Very nice thoughts on it. But no one cares it seems...

That + the fact that Anet persists to focus on their unique game mode of conquest 5v5. This mode is made for teams but is working very bad with randoms.

There's not much more illogical than rewarding a solo player, based on team performance! Ugh.

@FyzE.3472 said:Good video. Very nice thoughts on it. But no one cares it seems...

The first one is Anet.

@Vagrant.7206 said:Excellent video from Extra Credits detailing how the ELO system with random teammates doesn't work.It was good at explaining the problem, but here's the catch: ELO variants are still the best system around.

@BeLZedaR.4790 said:Good points.

Edit: figured I should mention that allowing prems in ranked is still a mistake in gw2 specifically and it was proven before. Aside from that though, good points.

Proven? How? The only evidence we have from actual devs actually points towards the opposite direction.

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@BeLZedaR.4790 said:Good points.

Edit: figured I should mention that allowing prems in ranked is still a mistake in gw2 specifically and it was proven before. Aside from that though, good points.

s1 - whenever duo q ceasedLegend/top 250

All the “pros” that got stomped without a 5 man roster, or still got stomped by random 5s of a decent rating while having a full roster.

Prems are too large an advantage. However, most people who care to play in prems are not that great in the first place, or the skill difference between members tends to be large and they get stomped quite regularly.

@JayAction.9056 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@"BeLZedaR.4790" said:Good points.

Edit: figured I should mention that allowing prems in ranked is still a mistake in gw2 specifically and it was proven before. Aside from that though, good points.

LOL!First you mean season 5?Second duo Q never ceased?Third: You mean the people that only played with teams won/played less because it's a team game, and it's not a game you can easily carry, so your team is a RNG factor you can't control, meant that those players experienced a less consistent win record?Sure! I'll buy that!Does that prove that teams in ranked is a mistake? NO?First the only point where that would ever be a issue would be at the very top tiers, like top 50 - 100 players. Since at anything less than that the MMR can easily "punish" teams by making them fight "above" their level, which it was doing in double fashion, not only did the Matchmaker up-scaled teams a bit, but the base MMR for teams was the highest player MMR instead of the average, which meant that teams were always fighting against theoretically better players than the team's average.

Second, it has been proven in every team game, that you don't want to remove teams from ranked competition. League of Legends tried that out for a season, and was returning it back with a vengeance (via the Flex Queue) by the time GW2 was voting to remove it.

It takes a huge bout of mental gymnastics and anti-social character to believe that any team game is healthier when teams are removed from the equation.It makes individual game play inconsistent, because you can have a good game where the team is cooperating and synergising, or you can have a game where your team is just inting and throwing the match. And you can't do anything about it.And worse off, GW2 has the WORSE, but the very worse communication tools available for teams to communicate (not even talking about VoIP, just the pings), which just compounds the issue of lack of pre-arranged teams. Up until like a month ago, the pings where extremely subjective, and to this day, you still don't know who's communicating what. Which basically rnders it useless, since and this is like communication 101 for there to be proper communication you need to know at least 3 basic things, the Sender (which is impossible to know with current ping system), the Message (which until recently was entirely subjective, still isn't perfect, but better now), and the Receiver (which in this case would be the whole team).Without a system message accompanying the ping, with who said what, we don't have proper context to the ping to know what's happening...Take League of Legends for example...Someone pings enemy is missing, the "?" ping... You look at the chat, and you see it's the top laner. If you're middle, you'll probably play a bit more defensive until you get vision back on the enemy top laner because he might be going for a gank on mid (unlikely he'll go bot), If it's the mid laner, the top and bottom lanes will be guarding for a roam, etc.IF that same ping is used on an objective, it usually means you lack vision there and enemy might be going for it, so ward it.If it's on you after a good or bad play, it means people are like "What was that!"Etc.And that's just one ping!!

I GW2, we don't have enough context to use those tools effectively, also don't have teams to make up for that lack of communication, which means your "e-sport" is now a meme.

Structured PvP should be introduced like it was in the first game. A structured team could go against a random team. If you're a random team, and you repeatedly lose against a structured team, I am sure there will be a point where you will actively seek a team just to emulate them. That should promote active teamwork.

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@BeLZedaR.4790 said:Good points.

Edit: figured I should mention that allowing prems in ranked is still a mistake in gw2 specifically and it was proven before. Aside from that though, good points.

Seasons 1-4.

@BeLZedaR.4790 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@BeLZedaR.4790 said:Good points.

Edit: figured I should mention that allowing prems in ranked is still a mistake in gw2 specifically and it was proven before. Aside from that though, good points.

Again, all stats we got from the Devs point to a win rate of slightly more than 50% in favour of solo queue. (In plain english, solo player teams were winning more vs premades than vice-versa).So again, what evidence do you have?

@"BeLZedaR.4790" said:Good points.

Edit: figured I should mention that allowing prems in ranked is still a mistake in gw2 specifically and it was proven before. Aside from that though, good points.

So exactly how is GW2 so different from every other multiplayer, team-based PvP game, that this entire video doesn't apply to it?

Just stating, "It was proven that premades were bad for GW2." without actually providing evidence or reason for saying so, isn't enough.

Newsflash! Competitive PvP in GW2 is terrible. Why? Watch the video again if you didn't understand it the first time.

@ReaverKane.7598 said:Again, all stats we got from the Devs point to a win rate of slightly more than 50% in favour of solo queue. (In plain english, solo player teams were winning more vs premades than vice-versa).So again, what evidence do you have?This statistic you keep referring to is so insufficient in its information that it's completely worthless as an argument. What is the worth of knowing whether premades won or lost more often when we do not differentiate between different ratings? I present to you the extreme example of every premade in legendary and platinum league winning, while every premade in the leagues below these loses, this is an entirely possible scenario with the given statistic.

On the other hand we have plainly recorded evidence of top players who took advantage of premade queueing having disproportionately high win/loss ratios.

@Cougre.6543 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:Again, all stats we got from the Devs point to a win rate of slightly more than 50% in

favour

of solo queue. (In plain english, solo player teams were winning more vs premades than vice-versa).So again, what evidence do you have?This statistic you keep referring to is so insufficient in its information that it's completely worthless as an argument. What is the worth of knowing whether premades won or lost more often when we do not differentiate between different ratings? I present to you the extreme example of every premade in legendary and platinum league winning, while every premade in the leagues below these loses, this is an entirely possible scenario with the given statistic.

The best teams naturally win more. This also encourages the formation of new teams to try and take first place from them.

It works this way in real life, except for some reason, people like you seem to get extremely sensitive over it in a video game. Why don't people complain about the best teams in sports having a higher win rate compared to a lesser known team? It's a silly argument.

Anyways, it's evident that the current system isn't working. It's a good thing that we have people like you telling us it is. 8^)

@Cougre.6543 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:Again, all stats we got from the Devs point to a win rate of slightly more than 50% in

favour

of solo queue. (In plain english, solo player teams were winning more vs premades than vice-versa).So again, what evidence do you have?This statistic you keep referring to is so insufficient in its information that it's completely worthless as an argument. What is the worth of knowing whether premades won or lost more often when we do not differentiate between different ratings? I present to you the extreme example of every premade in legendary and platinum league winning, while every premade in the leagues below these loses, this is an entirely possible scenario with the given statistic.

The extreme tiers should be all premades, especially in the context of the time, where the best premades would be invited to the Professional competitions. So of course it would be teams at the top.Your problem is that you have a tiny vision, pinpoint focus... Only a tiny percentage of players will be within the exception zone of being afected by premade vs solo. And those, if they're so good, should be vying for a pro spot. But even then, those would be an exception to the rule (like we have now for duos), what happened is that the rule was established only for that small exception that could be hurt by premades, or rather, the global perception of the issue was skewed by the minority opinions.

The end-result is in plain sight, sPvP has only decayed considerably in terms of quality and quantity of players and the community since removing teams from ranked play. So, the proof is even more evident that that decision only hurt the content. You and others like you can keep on fooling yourselves, i'm past caring. sPvP is broken way past the point of fixing with small platitudes, and unless something massively changes within Arena net, that's all we'll be getting.You can keep farming those Byzantine chests (pretty sure that's what you care about, if you really think removing teams was a good thing), i'll keep on getting my pvp fix from games that are still actually competitive, and not a meme.

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Cougre.6543 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:Again, all stats we got from the Devs point to a win rate of slightly more than 50% in

favour

of solo queue. (In plain english, solo player teams were winning more vs premades than vice-versa).So again, what evidence do you have?This statistic you keep referring to is so insufficient in its information that it's completely worthless as an argument. What is the worth of knowing whether premades won or lost more often when we do not differentiate between different ratings? I present to you the extreme example of every premade in legendary and platinum league winning, while every premade in the leagues below these loses, this is an entirely possible scenario with the given statistic.

It is statistics. It could happen, that in Platinum/Legendary the premades were extremely dominant, because that is where the premades made out of active PVPers played. They just farmed all the solo players, no matter that their technical skill and awareness were much better - the premade just had teamspeak.

On the other hand, in lower tiers a lot of premades consisted of players, who just had a look into pvp, being motivated that they could play together while not really being interested in PVP. They just got ridiculously farmed by any average PVPer and yes, they used teamspeak - for having a good laugh.

In total, the two values added up being around 50%. But the message is very different. Don't trust statistics where you can't really observe the actual data. ;)

@Megametzler.5729 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Cougre.6543 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:Again, all stats we got from the Devs point to a win rate of slightly more than 50% in

favour

of solo queue. (In plain english, solo player teams were winning more vs premades than vice-versa).So again, what evidence do you have?This statistic you keep referring to is so insufficient in its information that it's completely worthless as an argument. What is the worth of knowing whether premades won or lost more often when we do not differentiate between different ratings? I present to you the extreme example of every premade in legendary and platinum league winning, while every premade in the leagues below these loses, this is an entirely possible scenario with the given statistic.

First off, you're assuming players in high plat/legendary don't know how to rotate. The primary advantage to having voice chat is so that players can communicate for better rotations. However, good players don't need voice chat for this. So fights STILL come down to technical skill and awareness in the higher divisions because the advantage of voice chat is nullified.

Second, I played solo 95% of the time even when premades were a thing. I've won against 5 man groups with pug teams more times than I can count. Voice chat =/= auto win.

But yes, we should listen to what you're saying because ignoring official statistics and taking "what ifs" as reasons for supporting a flawed system makes plenty of sense. 8^)

@shadowpass.4236 said:It's a good thing that we have people like you telling us it is. 8^)You'll find it difficult to be taken serious with that ad hominem, and apples and oranges comparison. I'd like to watch that sports league where participants randomly get matched into a team. And nowhere did I even imply how functional I feel the current system to be, check yourself.

@ReaverKane.7598 said:So actual statistical information from a developer about that precise issue is invalid, but your anecdotal evidence is more valid...Your response leads me to believe that you completely ignored my reasoning for why that statistical information should not used the way you do use it. Perhaps you're the flat-earther projecting here?The extreme tiers should be all premades, especially in the context of the time, where the best premades would be invited to the Professional competitions. So of course it would be teams at the top.Your problem is that you have a tiny vision, pinpoint focus... Only a tiny percentage of players will be within the exception zone of being afected by premade vs solo. And those, if they're so good, should be vying for a pro spot. But even then, those would be an exception to the rule (like we have now for duos), what happened is that the rule was established only for that small exception that could be hurt by premades, or rather, the global perception of the issue was skewed by the minority opinions.Who are you to declare who should be playing with whom? Furthermore, who are you to determine what percentage of players is affected? You're not even presenting anecdotal evidence here.The end-result is in plain sight, sPvP has only decayed considerably in terms of quality and quantity of players and the community since removing teams from ranked play. So, the proof is even more evident that that decision only hurt the content.You're linking cause and effect with zero proof that they belong together.You and others like you can keep on fooling yourselves, i'm past caring. sPvP is broken way past the point of fixing with small platitudes, and unless something massively changes within Arena net, that's all we'll be getting.And you're here anyway? Either you care despite what you say, or you are bait that is no longer worth responding to.

@shadowpass.4236 said:First off, you're assuming players in high plat/legendary don't know how to rotate.

And you're assuming that they do? Infallibly so?The primary advantage to having voice chat is so that players can communicate for better rotations. However, good players don't need voice chat for this. So fights STILL come down to technical skill and awareness in the higher divisions because the advantage of voice chat is nullified.The way you phrase this makes it sound as though top players are never conflicted about rotations, so I doubt you've ever experienced being a good player yourself, and simply make assumptions about those you aspire to.Second, I played solo 95% of the time even when premades were a thing. I've won against 5 man groups with pug teams more times than I can count. Voice chat =/= auto win.Obviously having voice communication doesn't guarantee your win. Your statement is slanted toward saying nothing about whether it can offer an advantage. Stop moving the goal posts.

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@Megametzler.5729 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Cougre.6543 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:Again, all stats we got from the Devs point to a win rate of slightly more than 50% in

favour

of solo queue. (In plain english, solo player teams were winning more vs premades than vice-versa).So again, what evidence do you have?This statistic you keep referring to is so insufficient in its information that it's completely worthless as an argument. What is the worth of knowing whether premades won or lost more often when we do not differentiate between different ratings? I present to you the extreme example of every premade in legendary and platinum league winning, while every premade in the leagues below these loses, this is an entirely possible scenario with the given statistic.

I only pointed out that these kinds of numbers often are not that easy in statistics and critical thinking is always good. ;) That is actually a big problem in research, even in known papers. A lot of mistakes happen even there. And as long as they didn't specify their numbers, we should be careful with its interpretation.

And of course, I overexaggerated. I would actually be fine with different ladders for solo and teams, but I'd prefer a more rewarding rework somehow. I like that point in the video actually.

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@JayAction.9056 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@"BeLZedaR.4790" said:Good points.

Edit: figured I should mention that allowing prems in ranked is still a mistake in gw2 specifically and it was proven before. Aside from that though, good points.

Have you ever been high rating?

I’m confused how you are so clueless.