Anet should just turn off skill rating for ranked.

While everybody is complaining about mirages.

Anybody else now averaging 7-8 blowouts per 10 matches these days? (blowouts happening whether you win or lose)(Blowout = losing/winning by over 200 points)

I mean it's at a point where I get more consistent matches playing unranked, however there aren't any gold rewards attached to it.

Clearly matchmaking no longer works with such a low population. Turning rating off would make sense at this point right? If matches are going to be so volatile...

I've also been getting much better/fun matches in unranked. every ranked match seems to be a huge blowout either way, and losing streaks happen more often than not. winning streaks practically don't exist.

unranked should just award pips too.

@Cicada.6298 said:

unranked should just award pips too.

I'd love that too. I'm sure it keep the pvp population healthier too. Leave ranked for ppl who want the titles, and unranked for fun.

The problem is people afk even sooner in unranked. People wipe in the 1st mid battle 1 or 2 afk like spoilt children.

Don't get me wrong, this happens in ranked all the time too, but it seems worse in unranked as they have nothing to lose.

The problem, though, is that awarding pips for unranked would negate the factors that make people want to play ranked. We have the reward tracks for that, to be honest, and they give out some valuable stuff (cough cough, those 1000 obsidian shards I had to already discard due to too many of them across all characters, on my two accounts). I don't know at what level you play ranked, but those said blowouts usually don't happen in my games, being a P1 player. We always win by a maximum of 150 points, or lose because of a DC (in which case you don't lose rating either way). I saw Ben talking about some new rewards possibly being added in an official PvP Discord I'm in though, that may be interesting for you to take a look! The name of the discord is Welcome to PvP.

@"Cicada.6298" said:I've also been getting much better/fun matches in unranked. every ranked match seems to be a huge blowout either way, and losing streaks happen more often than not. winning streaks practically don't exist.

unranked should just award pips too.

I take it you haven't been facerolling ez-mode, unbeatable Mirage that's guaranteed carry to the top like you tried last week?

Honestly not trying to target you, but contradictions jump out to me hard.

Whether you mean turning off hidden mmr or the actual rating that you see, I think both would be... pretty bad ideas. Especially if the purpose is to fight blowout losses/wins. Feels like removing actual rating... that would just make ranked mirror unranked, and in unranked; blowouts wins/losses are so common that it happens about every other game. If you remove the hidden mmr the already terrible matchmaking just gets worse; which would also be like unranked, and that means even more blowouts.

@Multicolorhipster.9751 said:Whether you mean turning off hidden mmr or the actual rating that you see, I think both would be... pretty bad ideas. Especially if the purpose is to fight blowout losses/wins. Feels like removing actual rating... that would just make ranked mirror unranked, and in unranked; blowouts wins/losses are so common that it happens about every other game. If you remove the hidden mmr the already terrible matchmaking just gets worse; which would also be like unranked, and that means even more blowouts.

I'm saying since blowouts are pretty much happening every game (for me at least) whats the point of rating, if it's going to be rng like unranked? So far unranked has more cohesive matches than ranked.

Now, If i'm just a outlier in the statistics, then my rant shouldn't matter. But if it's happening to the majority of the player base, then it is.

@rwolf.9571 said:I'm saying since blowouts are pretty much happening every game (for me at least) whats the point of rating, if it's going to be rng like unranked? So far unranked has more cohesive matches than ranked.

Now, If i'm just a outlier in the statistics, then my rant shouldn't matter. But if it's happening to the majority of the player base, then it is.

True, I think ranked nowadays is very RNG, but for reasons that are more exclusive to ranked. You play Unranked and you have to consider there's stacks of up to 5 players, people may be testing builds, people may be messing about, among other factors. I'm just saying some of those are exclusive to unranked where these blowout wins you mentioned are way more common. There's also the rating itself which; along with the rewards, is incentive enough for some people to play. If Ranked was just Unranked restricted to 1-2 players with the promise of better rewards, then I think everyone would just play ranked. The competitive players who might care less about the rewards and are playing to climb would be pretty ousted in such a scenario.

I'm not going to call your opinion invalid. It's just something to consider because, people are going to agree with you. That might not mean they're on board with removing rating from the game though.

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@"Cicada.6298" said:I've also been getting much better/fun matches in unranked. every ranked match seems to be a huge blowout either way, and

losing streaks happen more often than not. winning streaks practically don't exist

.

unranked should just award pips too.

I haven't -- I've gone back to playing my weaver.

...which would explain some things

Ranked and Unranked should both reward pips for wins and nothing for losses. Ranked should then reward MORE stuff at certain thresholds. That would solved most everything right there.

@Cicada.6298 said:

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@Cicada.6298 said:I've also been getting much better/fun matches in unranked. every ranked match seems to be a huge blowout either way, and

losing streaks happen more often than not. winning streaks practically don't exist

.

unranked should just award pips too.

So... those 3 whole games you happened to win as a mesmer/mirage were all the proof you needed that anyone can roll the class ftw?

Just wondering why you didn't continue with it if "winning games feelsgoodman."

Or... did you indeed mesmer some more, get destroyed by people who aren't absolute noobs, take some Ls, and realize that streaks run both ways, RNG mostly determines outcomes outside high tiers, and confirmation bias makes for bad conclusions?

Again, not trying to single you out. Totally respect that you stay loyal to underdog Ele. But the "I rolled a mesmer once and dominated; ez mode ftw" isolated anecdotes are getting as old as they are empirically meaningless.

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@Cicada.6298 said:

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@Cicada.6298 said:I've also been getting much better/fun matches in unranked. every ranked match seems to be a huge blowout either way, and

losing streaks happen more often than not. winning streaks practically don't exist

.

unranked should just award pips too.

I've played 10 total since then, and went 8/10 -- again, this is in Silver/Gold, so I feel like it's a decent representation of the average player, or the largest chunk of the pvp community in the game, which I feel is relevant to the discussion of balance.

And, while I tend to win more as a Mesmer, it just isn't as "fun" a play style for me. Even though Ele is bad, it's the class I know best and have the most fun with, despite losing more often than not. I've just been using the time to learn the class better (since I've been out for 3 years).

And while I'll agree that anecdotal "evidence" isn't particularly meaningful on the whole, I still think its signals a problem when someone who hasn't played in years (and literally never played a Mesmer) can grab a cookie cutter build, and, within 5 minutes, have more of an impact on their games than a class they know much better.

@Cicada.6298 said:

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@Cicada.6298 said:

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@Cicada.6298 said:I've also been getting much better/fun matches in unranked. every ranked match seems to be a huge blowout either way, and

losing streaks happen more often than not. winning streaks practically don't exist

.

unranked should just award pips too.

It doesn't add up, man. You can't say that nearly every match is a huge blowout and then say that it's your mesmer making the difference over a whole 10 games. You're 1 out of 5. If the match is a blowout chances are pretty slim that you were just owning so hard all by yourself that you went from losing by hundreds of points to winning by hundreds of points on that alone.

@Cicada.6298 said:

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@Cicada.6298 said:

@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@Cicada.6298 said:I've also been getting much better/fun matches in unranked. every ranked match seems to be a huge blowout either way, and

losing streaks happen more often than not. winning streaks practically don't exist

.

unranked should just award pips too.

11 games as mesmer (3 before, plus 8 more) still isn't enough to make major conclusions, though you may well have had an easier time than with your ele. In solo queue at least, outcomes are largely determined by team comps, which is mostly RNG. Any one person, regardless of spec and skill, seldom makes a huge difference. Rather it's how each team does as a whole. Like @"AliamRationem.5172" said, it's doubtful things would have been any different in those "blowout" games you mentioned had you been playing mesmer instead of ele. The other team simply performed much better than yours did. And that can go both ways... like maybe some of those wins you had as mesmer.

And while I'll agree that anecdotal "evidence" isn't particularly meaningful on the whole, I still think its signals a problem when someone who hasn't played in years (and literally never played a Mesmer) can grab a cookie cutter build, and, within 5 minutes, have more of an impact on their games than a class they know much better.

A better indicator of how much of an impact you had on games would be your individual stats on the scoreboard at the end of each match. Not necessarily whether you got top stats, but how close to 20% of your team's contribution were you for each one (20% being an exact equal share of the 5-person effort). Higher for some, lower for others is of course fine. But these stats are more useful than overall wins and losses, because again those are highly dependent on team RNG (which the frequency of blowouts both ways should tell you).

And, while I tend to win more as a Mesmer, it just isn't as "fun" a play style for me. Even though Ele is bad, it's the class I know best and have the most fun with, despite losing more often than not. I've just been using the time to learn the class better (since I've been out for 3 years).

Right there with you on this. Outside of serious competition, I'm all for playing what you find fun versus what the meta says you must play to win. Welcome back btw. :)