Changing the Rating System

How would a rating system based on completing objectives work for spvp. As you complete objectives your rating improves. Player kills, capping and decapping points, general activity, etc. Rating goes down if you die, lose objectives, lack of activity, etc. I often have no idea why my rating went up or down other then win or lose in a match. It’s not intuitive and very unsatisfing as it stands right now.

It would be too easy to exploit and then folks would focus just on capping / objectives and not on winning the game. The system the use was developed by a chess master because chess is too complex to accurately "score" a players performance ... so it's just based on wins/losses. GW2 is the same... I think conquest is too complex to accurately know how well a player did (top stats is not it, either).

It would be nice! But it's tough.

I think what would be better is if ranked was team only, and unranked was solo- or group-q ... and both had pips. One for people who want to compete and get prestige (which should always be based on premade teams) ... the other for casual farming with friends and trying fun builds, etc.

how bout we make a loss not be 3 times the negative points than a win is positive? lol All this does is drive players away as they feel they are making zero progress.

After reading up on Glicko-2 and checking the ANET website and C# code for glicko-2...

I am no longer sure what I said before was accurate.

In the end the rating system needs to convey a general feeling of satisfaction or qualifiable fairness with an out come. Not I win yay 3 matches in a row + 5, +4,+5. I lose 1 match, -24, wtf!! If anet wants to retain players in this mode the rating system needs to feel good.

@"Brother.1504" said:In the end the rating system needs to convey a general feeling of satisfaction or qualifiable fairness with an out come. Not I win yay 3 matches in a row + 5, +4,+5. I lose 1 match, -24, kitten!! If anet wants to retain players in this mode the rating system needs to feel good.

That's likely why ANET doesn't use a system where you can lose points for a win and gain points for a loss if there is a serious mismatch. If I were Queen at ANET, I'd hide the ratings and MMR. Then, I'd fix the ratings math.

Here's the basic problem with "a general feeling of satisfaction." ANET has created and encouraged a culture in which a person's worth is determined by their PvP rank. I end up feeling bad about myself every season, because I'm low rated. Today, a player suggested I kill myselfwhen I commented unhappily about scourges.(I admit, I've become pretty nasty in pvp, myself. I've been trying to mitigate that. The culture has rubbed off)

Until PvP is treated as a sport rather than a cutthroat competition, it will continue to not be attractive to many players.

@pah.4931 said:

I think what would be better is if ranked was team only, and unranked was solo- or group-q ... and both had pips. One for people who want to compete and get prestige (which should always be based on premade teams) ... the other for casual farming with friends and trying fun builds, etc.

The only problem with that is players who don't have an organized team, or don't want one, can't compete in ranked play. I think both systems need to exist.

I would like to see individual player ratings within a match so that people who play well aren't losing rank when the matchmaking system fails.

@Ithilwen.1529 said:The problem isn't the system, it's the configuration.

When I played rated Chess, I wasn't put against Master rated players. It wasn't a fair match. In the instance that I was matched against a rated Master.. I actually gained rating for losing, because of the mismatch.

ANET doesn't appear to allow gain of points for losing a mismatch, nor losing points for a mismatch win. That's the first problem. This is an important aspect of the rating system that is not being used. So, the ratings are distorted from where they would be.

The second issue is that ANET permits too wide a difference in player skill levels in one match. This goes back to the first point.

The third and lesser issue is that the classes still aren't genuinely balanced. That's a different discussion.

TLDR: The rating system doesn't appear to be being used as designed. So, the results tend to be distorted.

Gaining points for losing and losing points for winning should never be a part of anything competitive.

@Frostmane.9734 said:

@"pah.4931" said:

I think what would be better is if ranked was team only, and unranked was solo- or group-q ... and both had pips. One for people who want to compete and get prestige (which should always be based on premade teams) ... the other for casual farming with friends and trying fun builds, etc.

I don't see this as a problem because "ranking" individuals in a game not designed for it is just silly and leads to frustration. It's like saying their needs to be a Major League Baseball that allows players who don't want a team to still have a chance to compete. If you want to truly compete, you'd get a team. That's the only way to ensure the ranking is legit.

Not trying to hate on solo players (I am one, after all), but a leaderboard system in 5v5 conquest where you play by yourself is just not really all that accurate. Nobody really takes those ranking all that seriously, except for a few people who will do whatever it takes to earn a high one.

@"AngelLovesFredrik.6741" said:

@Ithilwen.1529 said:The problem isn't the system, it's the configuration.

When I played rated Chess, I wasn't put against Master rated players. It wasn't a fair match.

In the instance that I was matched against a rated Master.. I actually gained rating for losing, because of the mismatch.

ANET doesn't appear to allow gain of points for losing a mismatch, nor losing points for a mismatch win. That's the first problem.

This is an important aspect of the rating system that is not being used.

So, the ratings are distorted from where they would be.

The second issue is that ANET permits too wide a difference in player skill levels in one match. This goes back to the first point.

The third and lesser issue is that the classes

still

aren't genuinely balanced. That's a different discussion.

TLDR: The rating system doesn't appear to be being used as designed. So, the results tend to be distorted.

That's like saying Calvin Johnson shouldn't get into the hall of fame because the Detroit lions sucked when he played there.

@"AngelLovesFredrik.6741" said:

@Ithilwen.1529 said:The problem isn't the system, it's the configuration.

When I played rated Chess, I wasn't put against Master rated players. It wasn't a fair match.

In the instance that I was matched against a rated Master.. I actually gained rating for losing, because of the mismatch.

ANET doesn't appear to allow gain of points for losing a mismatch, nor losing points for a mismatch win. That's the first problem.

This is an important aspect of the rating system that is not being used.

So, the ratings are distorted from where they would be.

The second issue is that ANET permits too wide a difference in player skill levels in one match. This goes back to the first point.

The third and lesser issue is that the classes

still

aren't genuinely balanced. That's a different discussion.

TLDR: The rating system doesn't appear to be being used as designed. So, the results tend to be distorted.

I've been reading up on glicko-2 and reading C# code for implementing it. I'm no longer sure I'm right on what I said before.

@pah.4931 said:Nobody really takes those ranking all that seriously, except for a few people who will do whatever it takes to earn a high one.

...so, nobody takes ranking all that seriously, except for the really really skilled players.

Gotcha. Explains why all the posts complaining about it are from people who don't top the leaderboard, too!

@Ithilwen.1529 said:

@"AngelLovesFredrik.6741" said:

@Ithilwen.1529 said:The problem isn't the system, it's the configuration.

When I played rated Chess, I wasn't put against Master rated players. It wasn't a fair match.

In the instance that I was matched against a rated Master.. I actually gained rating for losing, because of the mismatch.

ANET doesn't appear to allow gain of points for losing a mismatch, nor losing points for a mismatch win. That's the first problem.

This is an important aspect of the rating system that is not being used.

So, the ratings are distorted from where they would be.

The second issue is that ANET permits too wide a difference in player skill levels in one match. This goes back to the first point.

The third and lesser issue is that the classes

still

aren't genuinely balanced. That's a different discussion.

TLDR: The rating system doesn't appear to be being used as designed. So, the results tend to be distorted.

GLICKO-2 is designed so that you only ever gain points on a win, and lose points on a loss, with the magnitude of change determined by the question "was this result the one we expected?"

Gaining small amounts, and losing large amounts, means that the matchmaking system is consistently putting you in matches you are expected to win -- basically, instead of a "fair" distribution of matches, with a 50/50 expectation that you will win or lose, you are in a biased distribution where you have a 100 percent expectation that you will win. Congratulations, the game tipped the scales in your favour.

So, when you match expectations and win you gain a small amount, and when you break expectations and lose you lose a large amount. If you were in a "fair" distribution of matches, you would also see small losses of rating (expected to lose, and did) and at least sometimes large gains (expected to lose, but won), but ... the evidence you supply says that the game actually gives you what it expects to be easy wins all the time.

Congratulations. All y'all playing PvP on easy mode, I guess. (or, IDK, maybe y'all forgetting when you lose small, or win big, because they don't stand out in your memory.)

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@Ithilwen.1529 said:

@"AngelLovesFredrik.6741" said:

@Ithilwen.1529 said:The problem isn't the system, it's the configuration.

When I played rated Chess, I wasn't put against Master rated players. It wasn't a fair match.

In the instance that I was matched against a rated Master.. I actually gained rating for losing, because of the mismatch.

ANET doesn't appear to allow gain of points for losing a mismatch, nor losing points for a mismatch win. That's the first problem.

This is an important aspect of the rating system that is not being used.

So, the ratings are distorted from where they would be.

The second issue is that ANET permits too wide a difference in player skill levels in one match. This goes back to the first point.

The third and lesser issue is that the classes

still

aren't genuinely balanced. That's a different discussion.

TLDR: The rating system doesn't appear to be being used as designed. So, the results tend to be distorted.

This is not the full truth.The version of Glicko-2 that Guild Wars is operating, doesn't take team rating into account. This means that if I queue at 1800 rating off-peak and the closest players to my rating are hovering around 1650, I am expected to win every single game. Further-more. To balance out my 1800 rating, people with 1500 rating gets put into my team against the middle 1650 players. This makes it so that the legend player gets put in a seemlingly un-winnable scenario while the match-maker (Glicko-2) sees this as a 100% guaranteed win.What needs to be done instead of this is that Glicko counts the Average Rating of Everyone in the team and distribute the won / lost rating evenly.

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@Ithilwen.1529 said:

@"AngelLovesFredrik.6741" said:

@Ithilwen.1529 said:The problem isn't the system, it's the configuration.

When I played rated Chess, I wasn't put against Master rated players. It wasn't a fair match.

In the instance that I was matched against a rated Master.. I actually gained rating for losing, because of the mismatch.

ANET doesn't appear to allow gain of points for losing a mismatch, nor losing points for a mismatch win. That's the first problem.

This is an important aspect of the rating system that is not being used.

So, the ratings are distorted from where they would be.

The second issue is that ANET permits too wide a difference in player skill levels in one match. This goes back to the first point.

The third and lesser issue is that the classes

still

aren't genuinely balanced. That's a different discussion.

TLDR: The rating system doesn't appear to be being used as designed. So, the results tend to be distorted.

@"pah.4931" said:Nobody really takes those ranking all that seriously, except for a few people who will do whatever it takes to earn a high one.

"all those complaining about it" ... about .01% of the player base. Not a great argument to say, "BUT LOOK AT THE FORUMS" when:

1) Only upset people take their time to post.

and

2) The forums have staggering low engagement. That's why you see the same names over and over posting. There are fewer here than reddit and even reddit is just a small fraction of players.

Rank doesn't matter. Player rating is all that matters ... because that's what determines matchmaking. Ranking is just an illusion that coerces people to play in ranked (and because pips) and convinces people to play the same 4 builds. It's sad, really. PvP could be fun if Anet had any clue how to properly support it.

It's not right to punish the top player on the losing team so harshly if their stats are actually stronger than half the winning teams bottom stat players.

@Sanity Obscure.6054 said:It's not right to punish the top player on the losing team so harshly if their stats are actually stronger than half the winning teams bottom stat players.

But what stats are relevant? How does the system know the difference between someone who is making an impact toward actually winning the match vs. someone who is simply farming top stats?

For example, if I'm playing a healer I should score top healing every match, right? But how does the system know if I'm simply soaking damage and healing myself off point in a useless 1v1 while my team is getting slaughtered?

@"AngelLovesFredrik.6741" said:This is not the full truth.The version of Glicko-2 that Guild Wars is operating, doesn't take team rating into account. This means that if I queue at 1800 rating off-peak and the closest players to my rating are hovering around 1650, I am expected to win every single game. Further-more. To balance out my 1800 rating, people with 1500 rating gets put into my team against the middle 1650 players. This makes it so that the legend player gets put in a seemlingly un-winnable scenario while the match-maker (Glicko-2) sees this as a 100% guaranteed win.What needs to be done instead of this is that Glicko counts the Average Rating of Everyone in the team and distribute the won / lost rating evenly.

You are indeed correct, as well as your insight as to what should be changed about rating.

MMR gains and losses based of individual MMR vs Opposing team MMR works if there is absolutely 0 matchmaking involved. No trying to make even teams. Nothing. Just pure random arena. First 10 players queued are put into a match at completely random.

However, if matchmaking is involved, like in GW2, where the matchmaker attempts to pit even teams against each other, all individual MMR gains and losses should be based on team average MMR vs opposing team average MMR.

What we have right now is a system with matchmaking that attempts to put even teams vs each other, but still with the individual mmr vs opposing team mmr dynamic, which is absolutely terrible to play in.

@"AngelLovesFredrik.6741" said:

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@Ithilwen.1529 said:

@"AngelLovesFredrik.6741" said:

@Ithilwen.1529 said:The problem isn't the system, it's the configuration.

When I played rated Chess, I wasn't put against Master rated players. It wasn't a fair match.

In the instance that I was matched against a rated Master.. I actually gained rating for losing, because of the mismatch.

ANET doesn't appear to allow gain of points for losing a mismatch, nor losing points for a mismatch win. That's the first problem.

This is an important aspect of the rating system that is not being used.

So, the ratings are distorted from where they would be.

The second issue is that ANET permits too wide a difference in player skill levels in one match. This goes back to the first point.

The third and lesser issue is that the classes

still

aren't genuinely balanced. That's a different discussion.

TLDR: The rating system doesn't appear to be being used as designed. So, the results tend to be distorted.

According to the wiki documentation the win/loss prediction uses the same data as the matchmaking itself, which is explicitly team oriented. If you are asserting that is incorrect, can you point to any documentation to support that?

What needs to be done instead of this is that Glicko counts the Average Rating of Everyone in the team and distribute the won / lost rating evenly.

As far as I can tell, GW2 does exactly this.

@"Brother.1504" said:How would a rating system based on completing objectives work for spvp. As you complete objectives your rating improves. Player kills, capping and decapping points, general activity, etc. Rating goes down if you die, lose objectives, lack of activity, etc. I often have no idea why my rating went up or down other then win or lose in a match. It’s not intuitive and very unsatisfing as it stands right now.

Unfortunately this would encourage players to complete side objectives rather than aim to win the match. Some classes would struggle to reach those "top stats" while others would easily get "top DPS", "top healing" etc.

Consider this - if everyone on your team was given 1 "top stat" but overall your lost the match, do you deserve to gain points? what if this happens for both teams - all 10 players get "top stats" - so nobody loses rating? That doesn't sound right..At present, you get 1 extra pip for your top stats, which is really all the credit that deserves. The current system just can't determine how much a player truly contributes.

Although I agree there could be improvements made in sPvP, I don't see side objectives as being the way forward.

@MarshallLaw.9260 said:

@"Brother.1504" said:How would a rating system based on completing objectives work for spvp. As you complete objectives your rating improves. Player kills, capping and decapping points, general activity, etc. Rating goes down if you die, lose objectives, lack of activity, etc. I often have no idea why my rating went up or down other then win or lose in a match. It’s not intuitive and very unsatisfing as it stands right now.

I think my point is more that rating should be half about team performance, half about personal performance, and a bonus for the win. The rating system would feel better if people know how their actions contribute to their +- rating imo.

In the end the tragedy with gw2 spvp is we all see the potential but the match making and rating system feels so bad to play. It’s a game I want to feel entertained, not somehow ripped off by an outcome.

@Brother.1504 said:

@MarshallLaw.9260 said:

@Brother.1504 said:How would a rating system based on completing objectives work for spvp. As you complete objectives your rating improves. Player kills, capping and decapping points, general activity, etc. Rating goes down if you die, lose objectives, lack of activity, etc. I often have no idea why my rating went up or down other then win or lose in a match. It’s not intuitive and very unsatisfing as it stands right now.

Are you saying that nobody is aware that their work toward winning the game contributes to their gaining or losing rank? I'm pretty sure that can't be what you mean, so we are clearly in a position where your actions are known to contribute toward the rating change.

In which case, what do you actually want? Simply that competing for personal glory generates greater rewards, encouraging people to abandon any pretense of team play and focus exclusively on getting top stats on things?

Remember: you get what you measure. What, in your proposal, is being measured?

In the end the tragedy with gw2 spvp is we all see the potential but the match making and rating system feels so bad to play. It’s a game I want to feel entertained, not somehow ripped off by an outcome.

I assure you that you can feel just as "ripped off" about the outcome of any reward system as you do today, and not only that, you most assuredly will feel that way.

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@Brother.1504 said:

@MarshallLaw.9260 said:

@Brother.1504 said:How would a rating system based on completing objectives work for spvp. As you complete objectives your rating improves. Player kills, capping and decapping points, general activity, etc. Rating goes down if you die, lose objectives, lack of activity, etc. I often have no idea why my rating went up or down other then win or lose in a match. It’s not intuitive and very unsatisfing as it stands right now.

In the end the tragedy with gw2 spvp is we all see the potential but the match making and rating system feels so bad to play. It’s a game I want to feel entertained, not somehow ripped off by an outcome.

My point is this. Streak of 5 wins +4 rating gained each win wether the match was close or a blowout. Then one loss -24 rating wether the loss was close or a blowout. I don’t know what I did in the games to contribute to the rating gain or loss other then then win good, lose bad.

@Brother.1504 said:

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@Brother.1504 said:

@MarshallLaw.9260 said:

@Brother.1504 said:How would a rating system based on completing objectives work for spvp. As you complete objectives your rating improves. Player kills, capping and decapping points, general activity, etc. Rating goes down if you die, lose objectives, lack of activity, etc. I often have no idea why my rating went up or down other then win or lose in a match. It’s not intuitive and very unsatisfing as it stands right now.

In the end the tragedy with gw2 spvp is we all see the potential but the match making and rating system feels so bad to play. It’s a game I want to feel entertained, not somehow ripped off by an outcome.

That is exactly what contributed to it: "win good, lose bad."

If you want something more, be specific about it, but ... again, you will get whatever it is you measure, so make sure that your idea isn't going to give people the incentive to ignore the actual game (eg: winning) in favor of whatever gives them the most points (eg: whatever specific metric inside a game you measure.)

Unless you are looking for some sort of "tutorial mode" where the game gives you feedback on what you did well or poorly?

IMHO the MM engine should value more total ranked matches played. That should be the decisive factor when picking players to form a team. Then of course personal performance should also count, and maybe they could present this indirectly like a small + on the rank points gained for win or a small - for points lost for a loss.