How does Top 10 player appear in Gold 1 match?

Can anyone at Arenanet explain how a Top 10 player with a rating of 1789 (teamed with a partner who is not in the top 250), ends up in match with Gold 1 ranked players?

I was under the impression that where there was a difference in duo partners ratings, the duo would be placed in a match at the higher rating. If that is incorrect, then what will it take for it be a reality? To date, I have resisted the temptation to whinge & moan about the matchmaker. I understand a decreasing playing population and time of day has a major impact on MM quality. But seeing this happen is basically the straw that "broke the camel's back" for me. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should this match have occurred.

Just for the record, I was on the winning team, a team that had an unfair advantage. I'm not accusing any individual player of anything. But I am accusing Anet of, at best, poor administration of the sPvP game mode. At worst, the circumstances which allow this to happen might indicate a blatant disregard for the player community and the not unreasonable expectation of a fair match up.

because this game has like 30 people playing pvp thats why. its more dead than death itself thus resulting in terrible matchmaking

This is why you kinda just play. The populations too low for any meaningful rating system.

@Skyronight.6370 said:because this game has like 30 people playing pvp thats why. its more dead than death itself thus resulting in terrible matchmaking

Umm there's at least 80 people if u include the bots. Then again I gues u have to aproximate all the afk players during a lot of the matches, yeah the math is getting too complicated lol

You already know what it is. It's DuoQ just like you said.

It's a bit of a widely-accepted myth that a DuoQ consisting of 1 top 10 legend and 1 Silver will automatically use the higher rating of the two, but I have no clue why people assume this.

There doesn't appear to be anything in the actual matchmaking algorithm that would suggest this, but then again; I don't have the understanding of how to even read this. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm#Matchmaking

What I do have is experience. I've tested it back in Season 13 when DuoQ was first added back, with a friend coming over from PvE. They were placed in Gold 1 and I was barely Plat2 starting the experiment. Playing 5 games about 15 games in after placement to avoid the little rating boost that follows, yielded these results:

•Rank gain/loss for me at Plat2 queuing with a G1 was limited to +3 to +7 for a win and a whopping -30 for a loss. Since how much rating you gain/lose at the end of a match is largely, if not solely determined by the ratings of every other player in the match; this would suggest that the majority of players in those 5 matches were substantially lower rank than myself.•The matches were also noticeably easier than SoloQing. Not only because merging people with coordination against people with none is a huge advantage, but because I genuinely felt better than the majority of people I was being matched against. 4 of the 5 matches played were back to back blowout wins. The 5th was a loss which deducted -30, at which point; I noped out of contributing further.•Rank gain/loss for my friend was pretty average at G1.

If you wondering how this could be abused, since -30 is a reasonable penalty at that level... The person I was playing with was actually Gold, and didn't have an experience outside of playing PvP for dailies. That was their first PvP season like... ever to my knowledge. What someone could easily do, is make an alt, tank the effective rating down on their own to silver, and queue with a much higher rated friend whom they want to help keep up with the leaderboard requirements, or in holding a certain position on the LB.

If the games are filled with lower ranked players, and if the DuoQ partner is actually a legend or high-plat player masquerading as a Silver just to exploit the matchmaker, those games are going to be way easier for them than they were for me and my DuoQ partner.

Although they don't gain much out of it, you don't really have too much more you could possibly gain once you reach a LB position you're satisfied with. The ease of the matches makes keeping that spot while getting those 120 games played and avoiding decay very simple. Of course, this would be most beneficial at the end of a ranked season, and wouldn't you know; it's the end of a ranked PvP season.

Not that the person in your video is doing that of course! I only mention all of this as a theoretical explanation to the problem you encountered, so that hopefully this undisguised exploit gets addressed.

Also, there are plenty of alt accounts. For example, you saw the other team has a scourge but no support and the scourge is not on the leaderboard. But you find it never dies, kite like hell, and does a lot of dmg. Later you found on the twitch that the scourge is Posi's alt and he was duo quing. This is just an example. But yea, but this kind of games will get you a 50-500 game and get -13 or even -16.

@Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

Not that the person in your video is doing that of course! I only mention all of this as a theoretical explanation to the problem you encountered, so that hopefully this undisguised exploit gets addressed.

@Crozame.4098 said:Also, there are plenty of alt accounts. For example, you saw the other team has a scourge but no support and the scourge is not on the leaderboard. But you find it never dies, kite like hell, and does a lot of dmg. Later you found on the twitch that the scourge is Posi's alt and he was duo quing. This is just an example. But yea, but this kind of games will get you a 50-500 game and get -13 or even -16.

I've got plenty of theories about the who/what/why of this match. But I think the real question is how does Anet allow this to happen?

@"MrAmputatoes.6031" said:This is why you kinda just play. The populations too low for any meaningful rating system.

I couldn't care less what the number is beside my name. I'm happy with my level of mediocrity. However, I'm sick to death of being force-fed BS that the MM is "working as intended".

@Crozame.4098 said:Also, there are plenty of alt accounts. For example, you saw the other team has a scourge but no support and the scourge is not on the leaderboard. But you find it never dies, kite like hell, and does a lot of dmg. Later you found on the twitch that the scourge is Posi's alt and he was duo quing. This is just an example. But yea, but this kind of games will get you a 50-500 game and get -13 or even -16.

I've got plenty of theories about the who/what/why of this match. But I think the real question is how does Anet allow this to happen?

I am not saying about your particular case, but in general. Recently had many games 50-500 and -13+

@Crozame.4098 said:

@Crozame.4098 said:Also, there are plenty of alt accounts. For example, you saw the other team has a scourge but no support and the scourge is not on the leaderboard. But you find it never dies, kite like hell, and does a lot of dmg. Later you found on the twitch that the scourge is Posi's alt and he was duo quing. This is just an example. But yea, but this kind of games will get you a 50-500 game and get -13 or even -16.

I've got plenty of theories about the who/what/why of this match. But I think the real question is how does Anet allow this to happen?

That’s like 90% of games, sadly.

OP, there is not enough people queuing. It probably is 10-15 players queuing with 5 minute time frame or so. Add to that some highly rated players manipulate the system by having one of them que on an alt account with no or bad rating, to game the rating.

If you are looking for fair well balanced PvP experience, GW2 is not the game for you.

PvPers were talking about problems in this mode for years now. And they received:

• Malicious responses from more casual players or short-sighted newcomers which were saying over and over that everything is fine. And gw2 is best, flawless game everBecause most of them thinks that when queue time isn't long it means the game mode is very popular and fine.
  And they don't feel like they need pro scene in their game. Because they don't want to play on that level.

• Silent from Arena Net and ignorance.

As a consequence so many good pvpers already left. But there will be always someone who's going to stay.And this small % of survivors which still plays pvp can't compete with other pro players right now. Because there's not enough of them in game.So they have to beat low rated ppl now :) Not their fault.

flysofar is naru, which is also a purchased account , my friend kedam sold him the account

xd

@otto.5684 said:

@Crozame.4098 said:

@Crozame.4098 said:Also, there are plenty of alt accounts. For example, you saw the other team has a scourge but no support and the scourge is not on the leaderboard. But you find it never dies, kite like hell, and does a lot of dmg. Later you found on the twitch that the scourge is Posi's alt and he was duo quing. This is just an example. But yea, but this kind of games will get you a 50-500 game and get -13 or even -16.

I've got plenty of theories about the who/what/why of this match. But I think the real question is how does Anet allow this to happen?

Nah, simply enjoy the fighting mechanics. But wish to have higher quality games.

All comes down to depopulation:Players naturally leave over time. So for any game mode to survive, it needs both replayability and repopulation.

1. Lack of novelty. Even after we 'recently' got Djinn's Dominion, there wasn't much ado about it. There's many ways to get players to feel novelty, but not all of them require new game modes, maps or elite specs/heroes/classes. Take festivals. Whenever there's a festivals, we get a PvP track. But that's it. There also PvP activities, but they are not accessed from PvP, and they do not give PvP rewards. This makes PvP feel disconnected from the rest of the game. If an activity like Snowball Mayhem got 'rated' matches with teams ready at the start instead having only the hotjoin version, and the rated matches gave PvP track progress, even if it was only on the Wintersday track, way more people would be enticed by PvP thorugh these activities. Festival activities and weeklong special events like those PvE and WvW have been getting would being a regular feel of 'novelty' in PvP between batches of new content.
2. "High tier" players dismiss feedback from lower tier, less experienced or less skilled players, alienating them and making them feel like the game mode is 'toxic' and hostile to newcomers, and eliminating any hopes of improvement if such dismissive treatment is heeded rather than discouraged. This feedback is hard to process, but extremely invaluable. If the game mode doesn't feel welcoming to new players, it will naturally die.
   • If players are not getting how something works, that tells you the game isn't properly telling them how it works. If they die too fast but can't kill anything, that tells you the gap between skill floor and skill ceiling may be a tad too large. If they tell you things are too fast, then that means that things are actually too fast, and there has to be options for being successful with slower reaction times, like how a Heavy can't react as fast as a Scout in TF2, but both have their niches.
3. No proper learning paths. The very basic tutorial is gone, there's no learning challenges like those in Shing Jea and the Battle Isles in GW1 teaching basic and then advanced concepts, no vs AI training, no replays or deathcams, an obscure death recapt, and no decent comprehensive combat logs. The game can't rely on players teaching other players, there has to be a tiny bit of handholding at the start, at least just enough to make sure players won't be so ignorant of the game's basic mechanics that they won't be a liability to other team members and treated with hostility.
4. Rewards that feel like they'll take too long to attain, or that are outright unattainable. It doesn't matter if they aren't really unattainable, what matters is if they feel like that. People do not generally do math before closing down a vendor panel and leaving the Heart of the Mists and never looking back. They will see the numbers, check what they've got so far, compare it quickly and judge based on that.

With alt accounts there are less then 100 people actually trying in ranked pvp these days. Most play off hours with a few buddies and click at the same time over voice chat.

Ranked has been a laughing joke with pvp in gw2 since season 6.

We've been saying that the matchmaker is broken for ages. At this point, I'm not even asking for a fix anymore, just add something in the algorithm to account for that, be it the difference in points (to account for blowouts and, therefore, matchmaking failure) or any other similar system.

it's not duo queueing that is making you matchup with them, it's because of the PvP population is extremely low that higher ranked is put into lower tiered games... I've also had a top 10 (could tell because he had his title on) in a silver game, pretty much demolished my side all by himself

a rather a sticky situation for high ranked players, the higher they go the lonelier they become, because the population at their skill level is so much smaller to lower tiers.. and if other high tiered players arent playing, who can they play against?

it's also very tricky for the system to know the exact skill level of players and match them together

• The skill level during participation level
• The actual overall skill level over the lifetime
• Judge solely on the player's performance, not by if your team's win or loss
• Alt accounts, I've seen plats players so bored that they are playing on alt account with core specs only

These are quite difficult to be judged by a computerised system; there was a guy that I saw, he was winning after winning because he always seems 'lucky' to be paired up with good teammates, but the way he played was one of the worst I've seen, all he did was running around the map, not even try to steal caps

not sure how updated the article on matchmaking algorithms is on the wiki, but it seems it is trying its best to do the fair matchupshttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm

... well, I'm against duo queueing, i think ranked should always be solo, I've had a couple out surprised matchups with and against guildies

@"Loki.1763" said:I've got plenty of theories about the who/what/why of this match. But I think the real question is how does Anet allow this to happen?

That's a really good question actually, and i'm going to guess that those are some pretty accurate theories, whatever they are.

Arenanet gave a half-response and made their stance on DuoQ clear most recently over in this thread(Page 1):https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/80419/what-is-up-with-the-matchmaker/p1

@"Ben Phongluangtham.1065" said:Re: the matchmaker not keeping high rated players in queue longer: The reward for getting better at the game can't be, "You don't get to play anymore."Re: Duo queue - We thought about this for a long time. In the end, we decided it's just not fun to not be able to play with your friends. Additionally, removing a feature is a poor reward for getting better at the game. It also motivated all sorts of bad behavior, which I won't go into.

But it's just a half-response, as it doesn't give us much closure. It gives us insight to how and why DuoQ was added back in. It's not a full-response, because all the "bad behavior" it(?) motivates aren't explained, and it also stands in stark contrast to their original reasons for restricting it back in Season 9:https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/12161/season-9-queue-changes/p1

I like duo q. I mean who doesn't like to play with friends?

But I think it is hard for the MM to find matches the higher rated the duo.

Here is Ben:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:Hi folks!

Starting with Season 9, legendary players will no longer be able to duo queue. Because we have so few legendary players, it’s very difficult to get legendary players into an appropriate match. When legendary players duo queue, it greatly compounds this difficulty. Our goal with this is to improve matchmaking at higher skill levels.

Why didn’t we restrict duo queue all-together? We didn’t want to remove this option for everyone, when the problem we are trying to solve exists within a tiny fraction of the player base.

We’ll be keeping a sharp eye on how this affects Season 9. This will be a fairly easy thing for us to adjust if we feel it necessary in the future.

I bolded the two most important bits.

They acknowledged what allowing the highest tiers to duo does, but still left and out in case they changed their mind.

They may have changed their mind, but obviously the situation for the change in the first place.....has not changed.

So, we have many people complaining about their unbalanced matches facing player 400 points or more higher than themselves, and people leaving pvp discouraged.

Making any suggestion will just be shot down.

So now we just wait, watch, and see.

This is nothing new. Part of it is the algorithm expands the rating window if someone was in queue for a while. So if two 1800+ people duoed, they wouldn't be likely to find a match at their rating so their effective rating for the match maker keeps increasing. Most of the smart people that are on the leader boards will wait until that duo gets a match before they queue, so they end up going to down to gold level matches.

Appreciate the walk down memory lane of Anet's previous responses. Just a reminder the player in question was not Legendary & neither was their duo partner.

TBH I don't know what is worse....That Anet allow this to happen, or that the general response has been apathetic & resigned to the status quo.

@Loki.1763 said:Appreciate the walk down memory lane of Anet's previous responses. Just a reminder the player in question was not Legendary & neither was their duo partner.

TBH I don't know what is worse....That Anet allow this to happen, or that the general response has been apathetic & resigned to the status quo.

@Loki.1763 said:Appreciate the walk down memory lane of Anet's previous responses. Just a reminder the player in question was not Legendary & neither was their duo partner.

TBH I don't know what is worse....That Anet allow this to happen, or that the general response has been apathetic & resigned to the status quo.

I see two parts to the solution.

1. Fix the match maker so they can't play matches with people more than 200 rating away.

To avoid queue time issues...2a. Allow AT results to count towards rating.2b. More frequent ATs. Preferably ones with a start similar to the World Cup where the first round is a guaranteed 3-4 matches. You could easily do them hourly. The way the timing works, if you made the play off round top 2 in your group, you would miss the next round of the tourney, but would allow for more teams to be able to win one.

Dead game mode.

At least there is a chance they can be in your team, in tournament you have a high chance of facing them and a very low chance to get them in your team