Drop In Population - Discussion - Suggestions

I can't help but to think that the population would actually grow or at the least stop shrinking, if new players showing up on the scene weren't getting rolled by top 10 players in every other match they join. It's one thing to lose a match, but getting absolutely destroyed just makes a person feel bad man. That kind of thing makes new player base turn around and leave the game mode as soon as they get their feet wet.

I've felt this myself from the other perspective. Lately I have been able to 1v3 often again as a Druid, and it isn't because I had a sudden mysterious skill growth. It's because that's how far down the rating boards the match maker is reaching.

At this point I don't really know what to suggest as I know the game is aging and this is just what happens. But considering that GW2 is still viewed as the better engine out there amongst mmorpgs, I don't understand why the problem has gotten THIS bad. Few things come to mind though:

1. We are in the most boring and least diverse meta we've ever seen. There are only 5 specific builds that are even seriously viable for tournament or high tier play: Mantra Bunker with its Blood Sage, Power Shiro, Elixir Rifle, and Strength Dagger. When you're talking high end performance team comps, you have to run those builds. That right there is enough to make players throw their hands up in the air and walk away for awhile. We have 9 classes with several options to select from, but only 5 classes and 5 very specific builds are even viable for top tier play. I know many players personally, who have specifically said to me: "I'm gonna take a break for awhile. I'll be back around to check in on how balance is developing. Maybe my class will get viable again." Then they disappear into unranked or pve or sometimes go try a different game. I think that maybe 7 years in, people are getting exhausted with the ever-changing power shifts and overhauls to how a class/build runs or feels or how it needs to be played. I think that 7 years in, it would be a good idea to start honing in on some iconic playstyles that people enjoy playing and fighting against, and let them settle as is. Then work on the balance of OTHER classes/builds, and try to bring them to a standardization of viability amongst the others, and the quality of how they feel while playing as or against them.
2. The power creep concerning how most classes are able to devise a build that can quite seriously do everything, is beginning to take away the flavor of class individuality, which makes things feel boring, and it takes away from the purpose/job roles of individual classes. This in turn creates several balance issues within the intra-class dynamic. The reason why is because the only difference between 9 classes that can do everything, is who can do it all better, which is why we are in a meta with 5 builds only. How to better explain this? Remember in the beginning before HoT? Guardian was the support. Warrior was the solid team fight. Engi could bunker a side node with heavy CCs. Ranger was the ranged damage but died easily if caught. Thief was the hard to catch highly mobile stealthing decap and single strike high damage +. Mesmer was the team utility. Necro was the boon removal/conversion with a lot of status control. Ele was the original "I can sort of do everything" class, but didn't excel at any one particular thing. <- When the game is like this, every class has a strong individual purpose, so even if a class is weakened during a particular meta patching, one cannot replace a Support Guardian because it is the only thing that can do what it does so it is still relevant, or one could not replace a Necromancer because he is the only one who can mass strip boons and have such powerful status bar control. But now, everything does everything. Everything is at least a half support. Everything spits every boon. Everything mass heals itself. Everything has A LOT of damage. Everything removes boons. Everything has LOTS of CC. And almost everything has even stealth or could be stated for great mobility. <- When the game is like this, where everything can do everything, the meta turns into which classes are doing it all the best, and then the other classes which are still doing everything but doing it worse, fall away and aren't used because they have no individual purposes. To support the truth to this effect, I'd like to point out that this is why Ele is so bad, because he was originally supposed to be the jack of all trades, but right now everything does that better than the Ele due to power creep. And the reason why a Thief is always still relevant, no matter how much it gets nerfed, is because he is still the one class that moves the fastest, which keeps his individual purpose intact, and thus he is still used. A Thief could literally have its weapon skills removed, and it would still be relevant in matches due to its decap role through sheer mobility alone. The classes/specializations need to have more individual purposes again. This would immediately bring a great deal of balance back to the game. That way, everything would always still be relevant, no matter how weak it was in a given patching. This loss in flavor and individual job roles and feel of playstyle, is also a loss in player base.
3. Match manipulations are out of control. Between f2p accounts being allowed to join ranked, general smurfing, general throwing, organized win trading, not enough administrative action taken against it, and solo/duo que only which empowers it because players no longer have the choice to form 5 man teams to block themselves from it, people no longer take the game mode seriously. Really though, like 90% of the player base is now completely aware of how bad this has gotten, and as such many of them have walked away. F2p accounts should not be allowed to join ranked whatsoever. Ranked should be reenabled as 5 man que so players have the choice of blocking themselves from the effects of match manipulations. There needs to be more administrative action taken towards all of these problems. INB4 discussion about hOw ReAl oR nOt WiNtRaDiNg is. You can follow this thread and argue all you want right here -> https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/79747/5-matches-5-match-manipulaters/p1
4. It might be time to do something different with conquest. I highly doubt that Arenanet has any incentive to create a new game mode at this point so people need to focus away from that. However, altering how conquest is played could suffice. The first thing that comes to mind for me, is lowering the amount of players in a conquest match. Has anyone ever gone into a custom arena and done 4v4s or 3v3s? It's actually quite fun to the point that the game mode feels more functional in a way. In the case of 3v3, the game mode becomes more intuitive in terms of 1 person on each node and try to situate yourself to counter a player instead of being countered. All of the job roles still remain intact, Supports, Team Fighters, Decap Plusers, Side Noders whether Bunker or Duelists. And in fact, the team comps make more sense. You can run say a FB and Scourge for a stronghold on a single node and then have 1 Side Node Bunker or Duelist or a Decap Plus. You could have 3x Duelists on more versatile classes. Or you could attempt to run some kind of snowball comp like Herald/Holo/Soulbeast. I'm sure this would change things a bit in terms of build archetypes used and what would be meta. But I felt it important to point out that conquest is most certainly functional with less than 5 players, and in some cases it actually feels better. Go try it out if you haven't. This also would serve to help the problem with high rated players being qued with and against low rated players. If the teams were 3 players only, that would essentially almost double the player base again, in terms of what the match maker has to work with, to create more balanced matches. Fishing in 6 players for a match is a lot easier than fishing for 10. This would also lower the hell out of que times. I think that at the least, we should have a beta season of this to see if people like it. It could be 3 man que. ATs can remain 5 man play.

Anyway, I believe these to be the core problems contributing to the sudden plummet in population. And I believe these suggestions would certainly help to remedy the problem. Oh and @zoopop.5630 had mentioned the idea of merging NA and EU servers. I'd be down, even if I had to be swapped onto a EU server and pick up a bit of ping, I think the pooling of population is going to be more important in the end. Speaking for myself here of course.

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:A Thief could literally have its weapon skills removed, and it would still be relevant in matches due to its decap role through sheer mobility alone.

Buff thief

get some new modes in... been waiting since release.more frequent at's.buff bad weapons/ traits/ utilities.action taken vs cheaters.

I approve of your ideas. Even for people who only play the meta builds, PvP is incredibly stale. More variety is necessary, and we need to do something about it.

Low population means low priority to fix issues, and pvp has a lot of issues. Some problems are pretty much impossible to fix, like power creep of elite specs. Other problems like duo que and match manipulation should be easy to address but probably wont be anytime soon. Im sure anet would like to make pvp balanced and fun for the few players left, but there will always be other things they are working on that take priority.

I can only offer my opinion on why I personally don't play PvP any more. It's quite simple:

I want to play condi engi. I don't want to play bunker scrapper or holosmith.

Condi engi is not viable .. at all. like, not even a little.

So I don't play.

In the past, the difference between the "meta" builds and "off-meta" builds was small. Like, sure there was one best spec, but the rest of the possibilities were all roughly 80-90% as effective as the meta spec.

Now, it feels like the meta builds are a full 200% better than off-meta builds. It's a difference that can't really be overcome except by extreme skill differential, and that doesn't make for fun gameplay.

Balance this game.Oh wait, its like a cancer in 4th stage, not much you can do about it because its too late.Previously only veterans had known what was going on when were they leaving this mode/game, now even newbies see that something is wrong and mode seems kinda dead. Its inclined plane, some specs are left in a dead space for ages while the others are OP for months and ANet barely does anything about that (or at least in time, im sorry but if something that ppl said was wrong after 2-3 days update you "hot-fix" after 3 months or so, i wouldn't call it proper taking care of the game mode).

If they listened to the community, I think we might've went other path. And im not talking about the "community" of bronzes that go into PvP forum, create thread "Q_Q insert class that pwnd me here" and whine about things that are L2P and Learn 2 dodge issues. Im talking about ppl that know this game, been playing for years and post valuable suggestions that should be considered. Lets be honest, how many of us at some point have read Patch Notes and had the feeling that we and Devs were playing another game? I have it like every 3rd update.

@"coro.3176" said:I can only offer my opinion on why I personally don't play PvP any more. It's quite simple:

I want to play condi engi. I don't want to play bunker scrapper or holosmith.

Condi engi is not viable .. at all. like, not even a little.

So I don't play.

In the past, the difference between the "meta" builds and "off-meta" builds was small. Like, sure there was one best spec, but the rest of the possibilities were all roughly 80-90% as effective as the meta spec.

Now, it feels like the meta builds are a full 200% better than off-meta builds. It's a difference that can't really be overcome except by extreme skill differential, and that doesn't make for fun gameplay.

Trying to make condi engi work in today's meta is like pulling teeth. I know, because I've seen people try it and I always feel bad when I wreck them on a meta engi build. :-\

Beautifully laid out and true.Forum Gw2 became more interesting than the game itself.The funny thing is that some people think playing one and the same a few years and know what kind of build against you this is the highest skill.P. S. I haven't played GW2 for a long time. Now I'm playing the game where I choose build. All weapons and all talents are competitive.

it's true i already feeling stupid i given GW2 a try been playing it in the past but come back to play the game a few day'sand PvP is like suffering i not planning on playing this game any longer guess i check it out again in 2 years or so.

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@"coro.3176" said:I can only offer my opinion on why I personally don't play PvP any more. It's quite simple:

I want to play condi engi. I don't want to play bunker scrapper or holosmith.

Condi engi is not viable .. at all. like, not even a little.

So I don't play.

In the past, the difference between the "meta" builds and "off-meta" builds was small. Like, sure there was one best spec, but the rest of the possibilities were all roughly 80-90% as effective as the meta spec.

Now, it feels like the meta builds are a full 200% better than off-meta builds. It's a difference that can't really be overcome except by extreme skill differential, and that doesn't make for fun gameplay.

Not really, just make pistol skills overpowered and make tool kit do much more conditions than just confusion and bleed.

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@"coro.3176" said:I can only offer my opinion on why I personally don't play PvP any more. It's quite simple:

I want to play condi engi. I don't want to play bunker scrapper or holosmith.

Condi engi is not viable .. at all. like, not even a little.

So I don't play.

In the past, the difference between the "meta" builds and "off-meta" builds was small. Like, sure there was one best spec, but the rest of the possibilities were all roughly 80-90% as effective as the meta spec.

Now, it feels like the meta builds are a full 200% better than off-meta builds. It's a difference that can't really be overcome except by extreme skill differential, and that doesn't make for fun gameplay.

Powercreeping everything up to the existing powercreep is kind of the opposite idea from the OP. If you want defined roles, that is not how you do it.

I'm curious as to what people think about the idea of having a beta season where ranked is a 3 man que, 3 players per team only.

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:I'm curious as to what people think about the idea of having a beta season where ranked is a 3 man que, 3 players per team only.

Would be cool, much like WvW gets no downed state weeks. Why not have events that toy with the fundamental mechanics?

I agree with OP. I t I have a couple of specific issues, some came with PoF, but some came after. Before that I want list the meta builds. It is clearly my opinion, but looking at the forums feedback, there is a general acceptance for this stance.

Top meta (S tier): FB, Holo, SBMeta (A tier): Scrapper, Soul beast, herald, scourge.Fringe meta (B tier): Core thief, weaver, reaper.

1. Boon application. If you just look at the builds in S tier and A tier, there boon spam is a common thread. Fighting one of these with 6-8 different boons is not uncommon. And it is not only quantity, it is also quality. 15+ might stacks are not uncommon. 50% protection uptime. Some classes have high uptime on quickness too.. If your build cannot dump that many boons, you have a disadvantage against a build that does, you will also run into the second issue...
2. Boon RIP. Boon rip was always in the game, but it was always kind of limited. It started to become an issue with the introduction of annulment sigil, but with PoF, we had an explosion of boon rip. Your class is highly reliant on 1-2 boons and you cannot dump them like no tomorrow? Too bad. No sPvP for you bud.
3. No condi damage. Okay we have 1 build (used to be 2). The decision by Anet to nerf condi intensity and increase duration was the worst balance decision in the game's history. For scourge, only the ridiculous amount of boon corruption is what keeps it viable. Mirage (until the recent nerfs) was viable through the sheer amount of condi dumping + high difficulty to land to damage against. Nothing else is remotely viable. There is another side to this issue as well. Classes/build that are specifically weak to condi damage have know limited to no counter. Hi SB and hearld!
4. Sustain. It is one thing for a build to have good sustain with high investment in toughness and/or healing power. It is another thing to be able to sit there with mara/demo/bersrker amulet and being able to avoid, block or heal incoming damage, from more than 1 target, for a prolonged period of time. SB, holo and scrapper are particularly problematic in this regard. Technically FB and weaver. But FB, you must invest in healing power heavily to do that, and weaver damage is meh, is susceptible to CC and will eventually run out of evades.
5. CC. CC is necessary in PvP games. It allows the players to skillfully interrupt key opponents skills. Or that is what CC was supposed to be. Now it is more chain CC the target to death. SB and holo in particular have multiple spammable CCs. Though, every single build listed, even the B tier, have at least 2-3 CCs, of which the majority are on demand. I used to think that herald with 3 AOE CCs had too much CC at HoT release. Now I miss those days.. Well there is stability. And honestly, there is a lot of stability. But unless your have a pulsing stability skill or your build can dump stability, I would give you 2 secs before it is ripped and you are CCed in a team fight.
6. HP pools. Only FB support is in the top meta builds. It is no coincidence that low HP pool classes are falling out of favor. The issue has many folds, but to narrow it down, whatever is the primary reason guardian, ele or thief had low HP pool, is now completely invalidated (particularly with PoF elites release). This makes the low HP pools a liability with no other advantages. Thief still has some exception to this, since the mobility and high evasiveness is still highly viable, but even here, classes with higher HP pool can give them pretty strong competition on both.
7. Passive play. To be fair, Anet did take a stab at reducing passive procs, but that was a mediocre move. It either completely invalidated the proc, making it an unusable sPvP trait, or did not resolve the issue. Anet should just remove all passive traits and procs completely and substitute them with active skills/traits. MMOs will always have a degree of inherent passivity in the design, since to a large extent is what separate classes. But things like auto breaking CC or auto boons, should not be a thing.
8. Spam. This is a combination of the above. When boons are too spammable, CC is too spammable, unblockble damage and so on, the need to skillfully apply skills is becoming more limited. Also, the counter to counter mechanics, is just a bad design. If we have too many blocks, you do not add more unblockble damage. Instead, you reduce the number and/or duration of blocks. And you definitely to not add unblockble CC :/ . This is the part of power creep that surely needs to go.

To summarize, you need a high sustain build, with a large amounts CC, that can dump boons like no tomorrow and preferably high damage. These builds should not exist to begin with. But they do, and they are limited. That is why we have no diversity in sPvP. And Anet, if you read this, NO THE SOLUTION IS NOT TO GIVE EVERY OTHER BUILD MORE OF THIS KITTEN.

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@"coro.3176" said:I can only offer my opinion on why I personally don't play PvP any more. It's quite simple:

I want to play condi engi. I don't want to play bunker scrapper or holosmith.

Condi engi is not viable .. at all. like, not even a little.

So I don't play.

In the past, the difference between the "meta" builds and "off-meta" builds was small. Like, sure there was one best spec, but the rest of the possibilities were all roughly 80-90% as effective as the meta spec.

Now, it feels like the meta builds are a full 200% better than off-meta builds. It's a difference that can't really be overcome except by extreme skill differential, and that doesn't make for fun gameplay.

Right. The point wasn't about condi engi specifically, although that is the one I care about.

It's more that there are a HUGE number of non-meta builds that are severely outclassed by the power creep that has rolled through and made them obsolete.

I liked PvP better when that power creep wasn't around. I don't find it enjoyable fighting an uphill battle to compete with the current specs.

I can't beat them. I don't want to join them. So.. I don't play.

I wonder if it would be possible through merging NA and EU, to have the match maker also take ping into account? Ie so less likely to have someone with 250 ping matched with someone with 50, but if too few players will work to minimise the spread while also increasing the player pool? I am a layman so have no idea as to how realistic this is.

Or give players a checkbox as to the range of ping they want to be matched against - wider range meaning less waiting and larger player pool to pick from.

On a separate note I'd like to see 8v8 hotjoin return - jump in straight away, no waiting and can leave whenever you like for some quick casual action. The main reason I haven't played for a long time is the waste of time waiting around when not having much time to play IRL - even unranked being less "serious" still doesn't allow for the quick drop in/drop out action that hotjoin used to.

Bad balance kills PvP modes. Same thing happening in WvW.

@otto.5684 said:I agree with OP. I t I have a couple of specific issues, some came with PoF, but some came after. Before that I want to not the meta builds. It is clearly my opinion, but looking at the forums feedback, there is a general acceptance for this stance.

Top meta (S tier): FB, Holo, SBMeta (A tier): Scrapper, Soul beast, herald, scourge.Fringe meta (B tier): Core thief, weaver, reaper.

1. Boon application. If you just look at the builds in S tier and A tier, there boon spam is a common thread. Fighting one of these with 6-8 different boons is not uncommon. And it is not only quantity, it is also quality. 15+ might stacks are not uncommon. 50% protection uptime. Some classes have high uptime on quickness too.. If your build cannot dump that many boons, you have a disadvantage against a build that does, you will also run into the second issue...
2. Boon RIP. Boon rip was always in the game, but it was always kind of limited. It started to become an issue with the introduction of annulment sigil, but with PoF, we had an explosion of boon rip. Your class is highly reliant on 1-2 boons and you cannot dump them like no tomorrow? Too bad. No sPvP for you bud.
3. No condi damage. Okay we have 1 build (used to be 2). The decision by Anet to nerf condi intensity and increase duration was the worst balance decision in the game's history. For scourge, only the ridiculous amount of boon corruption is what keeps it viable. Mirage (until the recent nerfs) was viable through the sheer amount of condi dumping + high difficulty to land to damage against. Nothing else is remotely viable. There is another side to this issue as well. Classes/build that are specifically weak to condi damage have know limited to no counter. Hi SB and hearld!
4. Sustain. It is one thing for a build to have good sustain with high investment in toughness and/or healing power. It is another thing to be able to sit there with mara/demo/bersrker amulet and being able to avoid, block or heal incoming damage, from more than 1 target, for a prolonged period of time. SB, holo and scrapper are particularly problematic in this regard. Technically FB and weaver. But FB, you must invest in healing power heavily to do that, and weaver damage is meh, is susceptible to CC and will eventually run out of evades.
5. CC. CC is necessary in PvP games. It allows the players to skillfully interrupt key opponents skills. Or that is what CC was supposed to be. Now it is more chain CC the target to death. SB and holo in particular have multiple spammable CCs. Though, every single build listed, even the B tier, have at least 2-3 CCs, of which the majority are on demand. I used to think that herald with 3 AOE CCs had too much CC at HoT release. Now I miss those days.. Well there is stability. And honestly, there is a lot of stability. But unless your have a pulsing stability skill or your build can dump stability, I would give you 2 secs before it is ripped and you are CCed in a team fight.
6. HP pools. Only FB support is in the top meta builds. It is no coincidence that low HP pool classes are falling out of favor. The issue has many folds, but to narrow it down, whatever is the primary reason guardian, ele or thief had low HP pool, is now completely invalidated (particularly with PoF elites release). This makes the low HP pools a liability with no other advantages. Thief still has some exception to this, since the mobility and high evasiveness is still highly viable, but even here, classes with higher HP pool can give them pretty strong competition on both.
7. Passive play. To be fair, Anet did take a stab at reducing passive procs, but that was a mediocre move. It either completely invalidated the proc, making it an unusable sPvP trait, or did not resolve the issue. Anet should just remove all passive traits and procs completely and substitute them with active skills/traits. MMOs will always have a degree of inherent passivity in the design, since to a large extent is what separate classes. But things like auto breaking CC or auto boons, should not be a thing.
8. Spam. This is a combination of the above. When boons are too spammable, CC is too spammable, unblockble damage and so on, the need to skillfully apply skills is becoming more limited. Also, the counter to counter mechanics, is just a bad design. If we have too many blocks, you do not add more unblockble damage. Instead, you reduce the number and/or duration of blocks. And you definitely to not add unblockble CC :/ . This is the part of power creep that surely needs to go.

To summarize, you need a high sustain build, with a large amounts CC, that can dump boons like no tomorrow and preferably high damage. These builds should not exist to begin with. But they do, and they are limited. That is why we have no diversity in sPvP. And Anet, if you read this, NO THE SOLUTION IS NOT TO GIVE EVERY OTHER BUILD MORE OF THIS KITTEN.

I agree with you. Only FB does not need to invest heavily in healing power. Look here where there is a theme FB with Sage amulet video. He's not even dodging.I tried playing Ventari in Plat. I had to run like a scared rabbit even with mender am. Sometimes there were good fights. I liked when the enemy FB was nervous.FB itself is tanky. It feels like the balance is built around a few spec. The rest of the simply dessert.

The sPvP game mode right now.

Drop in population will get worse. The more time it takes Anet to actually do something to try to revamp pvp the more people will leave.Here are suggestions: start to kitten talk to the community, work on balance of classes and instead of dishing out another pve event why for a change don't you start actually working on game mode you clearly don't care at all? Because circle quests, few new maps and tournaments are not enough for 7 years of the same thing.

Bros.

This isn't on the back burner, they haven't even went to the store to buy the ingredients.

There are definitely some powerful specs within the game, but the fact that each class is able to obtain a jack of trades mode, does not make that necessarily power creep. A jack of all trades build isn't so bad. Because it lost certain things to obtain that status. Whilst a class who specializes in something, is going to outdo the other in that particular manner if they did it right. Also, giving classes mobility where once it was lacking or the options to help support, evens the playground vs other matchups who were outclassing the other for little reasons like mobility etc, why do people have to pick a thief for mobility when you could get a more team fight orientated class just with some added mobility? Sounds intriguing right? Thus making more room for viable match ups and comps. Albeit this isn't always the case as sometimes a new form of outclassing happens and no matter what you do this always happens, a tier list if you will with any pvp game anywhere...But this also opens up ways for unique specializations to shine, not necessarily in high tier gameplay, more so in casual or in ranked in general, all it takes is understanding of your build and the enemies playstyle/build and generally be a good player to understand what they're capable of. Literally, with any "pro" team, a player can come in with X, do well and wow, its viable just like that. There was a point where ele was not seen at all, support staff ele came into the competitive scene and switched it up eons ago....With the new specializations and the old, it opens up doors to see different specs do different things.New things, i think people kind of get freaked out about it.. oddly enough whilst enjoying it at the same time. Everygame has changes, people come and go based on those changes and the amount of fun they are having while adjusting to those changes definitely varies. I know i have left repeatedly based solely on balance and came back when things settle down. Hell i have even left when my classes are buffed!Another thing is, match manipulation is in every pvp related game... Everyone knows this. Doesn't make it right, but thats video games with equal skill level friends right? Things can seem a little op compared to a lower ranking where two friends are doing the same thing but may not be achieving the same results. So do you nerf a good player for being good?lastly, that sounds really harsh to push aside new players or free to play players from ranked. They dont want to pve, they want to compete, they want to play the same game as you and i, let them indulge in the bloodrushing heart pounding amazingness that Guild Wars 2 has to offer. Denying new players and free to play players from ranked would also make players leave as well, it is an incentive to purchase new expansions, but at what cost? That would create an even more stale player base than it currently is. And as new expansions come, do new players have to buy a bundle pack of expansions just to play pvp? what... get real we want to bring players into pvp not remove them.

Give ranked a ban phase before the match starts like in mobas. Let us mitigate the bad balance by using elite spec bans to create more interesting games.

Duo herald on other team and your team lacks the comp to handle it? Ban herald and experience a fairer game.

One trick player on the other team? Ban that spec and force them to improvise.

maybe just allow team queue again..

people play games for fun, PvP doesn't allow fun.lets bring the fun back to pvp.Swiss was supposed to be our 5 man queue replacement but a lot of players I knew left after 3 months of waiting.

theres only a handful of players that care about rank and the whole system is designed to cater to that small handful of players.

cater to a much larger portion of the player base and we will see population go back up.cater for 100..80 rock up.cater for 1000.. 800 rock up.

also..punish win traders and throwers.. they are speeding up the death of this mode. used to be a plat problem but now it happens from silver upwards.no one wants to play with that and appears most havent.