My perspective on sPvP right now (take with a grain of salt)

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

@"KryTiKaL.3125" said:Truthfully the ideal situation is that Team Queue would be 5 player premades only, an argument could be made for 3 and 5 man teams being allowed in the Team Queue, League does this for its "Ranked Flex" option, but I don't know the logistics on how that specifically works. League also, however, has the benefit of its other matchmaking options like Blind Pick, Draft Pick and yes Solo/Duo Queue (again they provide this as one of several options). The point is that back when League made this change, because they as well being a competitive PvP game had only allowed Solo/Duo Queue as an option for their Ranked play and it was not exactly popular with players wanting to actually participate in Ranked with a full team.

Idunno anything about League really, or their matchmaking. I can really only speak for Gw2 and where I think Gw2 goes wrong when it comes to Gw2's problems. I've played some other games, but they usually have higher populations, and very different matchmaking.

IE a lot of them refusing the reach lower than a certain rating threshold when matchmaking; sacrificing speed for something that is more even, or allowing parties of any size within the aforementioned parameters, and with the catch of not being able to queue with someone too far below you.

I kind of just prefer something simple and traditional like that. I feel like if there were a lot of ways to queue, i'd probably just pick one or two and stick with them. If the options were limited to Unranked + Solo Ranked + Teams Ranked that would also be something very easy for me to understand and I could probably put time into all 3 so i'm more for that.

I don't really mind how they go about splitting the queues though. The arguments aren't mine, or something i'm even all that passionate about, but as soon as you mention split queues on here, you'll be told that the population is too small to try it, and that it was tried before and failed so therefore it cannot ever be tried again.2/3/5 split would help the first one for sure... and that's really all i'm trying to keep in mind when saying that, otherwise I completely agree with you.The second doesn't make any sense, and was created by top players exploiting the current Solo/Duo system for the purpose of being able to continue to exploit the Solo/Duo system.

[KryTiKaL.3125]

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

@Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

@"Dantheman.3589" said:I actually have a question though. How will they make a duo q only q? There are 5 players per team, so will one of them be a solo qer at random? This would just hurt solo qs more as they will have little coordination than the duo qers at times. Or do we make a new game mode for them?

Honestly? I think it should be a two-way split.

You can SoloQ or you can TeamQ. TeamQ applies to teams of 2/3/5.Don't want to spread out the population too much.

It does leave out people who specifically want to queue as a 4 person party. But uh...I don't know why anyone would want to queue as exactly 4 people. Just LFG a 5th at that point.

Truthfully the ideal situation is that Team Queue would be 5 player premades only, an argument could be made for 3 and 5 man teams being allowed in the Team Queue, League does this for its "Ranked Flex" option, but I don't know the logistics on how that specifically works. League also, however, has the benefit of its other matchmaking options like Blind Pick, Draft Pick and yes Solo/Duo Queue (again they provide this as one of

several

options). The point is that back when League made this change, because they as well being a

competitive PvP game

had only allowed Solo/Duo Queue as an option for their Ranked play and it was not exactly popular with players wanting to actually participate in Ranked with a full team.

This is where it gets a little...amusing, at least to me. While GW2 went and

added

Solo/Duo Queue

only

as their Ranked option to move away from Dynamic Queue in December of 2016, League of Legends added

more

Queue options to move away from Dynamic Queue in December of 2016. Granted these are two games that do not exist in the same genre, and the only similarity they share is that there is a competitive PvP mode on them both, however on GW2 it is a "piece" of the game whereas League is essentially entirely built around it.

I'm not saying GW2 should be a MOBA (I am not a fan of MOBAs) however I do think that ANet should at least consider that for their "competitive" modes they should probably take some hints, especially in regards to matchmaking and systems oriented with it, from the games that are built around such things.

I think it is also somewhat noteworthy to mention that the general view of solo/duo queue on League is that it has bred a

lot

of toxicity, much like it has done on GW2. The issues the game has seen in solo/duo queue also almost exactly mirror the problems GW2 has been facing with it(the following will be what someone has said is the problem in Leagues solo queue); soft inting (throwing matches), AFKers, queue sniping to throw games for players they don't like (or beat them), ghosting streamers, and a general attitude of not playing to win. These issues in League were all explained by someone in the community who had become fed up with it, and many of the pro players in the game commended and supported that view. In a sense it is like the players who participate in Solo/Duo queue don't have any respect for the integrity of the ladder or the players participating. Sounds familiar.

The key difference here between the situation with GW2 and LoL is that these problems happen

the most egregiously

in Solo/Duo Queue and it is only an

option

on League, whereas that is the

entirety

of the Ranked experience on GW2. Sure we have ATs, but the problem with those

again

is that they are time gated and the pool of teams and players that routinely participate in them is

small

.

I didn't mean for this post to be this long, but I hope some time is taken to read it. Its just an interesting observation in my opinion. I also certainly didn't intend to mention League that much, but oh well.

As someone that played every season of league since its release I will explain things.unranked doesnt matter.Flex is made for people to troll, throw, feed, wintrade, or play drunk or high out of their mind with friends. grandmaster/master is equivalent of diamond in flex queues.( its like legend being on the level of plat1/g3 ) Nobody really gives a kitten about flex, you play it with friends to have fun, and only reason you chose it over unranked is to have somewhat more balanced games ( if I play unranked Im playing against uber noobs and go 30/0 and make them quit the game its so bad )

I don't imagine GW2 would be any different. The thing is they at least have the option available, even if "nobody really gives a shit about flex" the option is at least there for people to use and like you said the choice would at least give somewhat more balanced games; which I think is something GW2 is in desperate need of with Ranked. Also of course unranked doesn't matter, hence its very nature of being "unranked" but again we, and League players, do at least have that option.

ANet at least needs to try to do more to pull Ranked out of the gutter, to make the matchmaking better outside of "lower queue times" because the way it currently functions is directly responsible for why games are so off balance on a consistent basis and why the system has been abused.

@"Jekkt.6045" said:In a perfect scenario a 1-5 queue would be best. but guild wars 2 doesn't have the player pool for that so it's basically impossible because it will lead to either extremely long queue times for 5 stacks or unbalanced matches. even the system right now is really unbalanced and the ranking spread in your team can be really volatile.

on the other hand, solo q + 5 man q would not work either. i really dislike solo only because conquest is a team based mode. 5 man q would just be dead because most players don't have access to 4 other players they can play with in a somewhat competitive environment. also, there's really no incentive to play ranked with 5 people right now (even if there was a 5 man queue).

now as for leaderboards, they're really terrible. reaching plat is way too easy and it feels like everybody is plat. on the other hand, reaching legend is way too hard. the curve needs to be evened out a bit. more people should be in silver/gold, less in platin, more in legend. the leaderboard should in fact only start after you reach legend where you can accumulate points/mmr/whatever to rise or drop on the ladder similar to how other games work.

players should also be rewarded for their ranking after the season ends. you should get 500 gems for reaching legend, 250 for platinum and 100 for gold. that's really not that much for how long a season lasts.

do away with ladder titles, all they lead to is win trading. placing high on the leaderboards should be rewarding enough.

to put this in perspective:

the leaderboard should start after you reach legend, which should probably be around 1650mmr in the current system.

many people get placed too high after placement games. even i got placed at 1550 when i came back after a 3 year break. more players need to be in silver and gold.

mmr gain/loss after a match needs to be looked at too. it feels very frustrating gaining 4 mmr for a win or losing 15 for a loss. i know this is the result of bad matchmaking when you win/lose a match in which your team is extremely favoured. something like that should never happen, yet it happens and it's frustrating so something needs to be done about that.

True, the mode does not have the player pool currently to where team queue would be able to avoid long queue times, which is exactly why ANet needs to be doing more in the way of giving people a way to have better matches and trying to bring more people into sPvP. ATs didn't do it, Swiss didn't do it, so what next? Historically ANets approach to trying to improve the health of the mode has been to try to add some new thing to it like they did with the aforementioned systems, but neither of those really even did anything.

Ranked is the most accessible platform to try and draw in players but currently that system is also a tragic, grotesque nightmare that has gotten to the point where no one respects the leaderboard or the rating. Clearly something different needs to be done, either going back to having a split queue but doing it differently this time or ditching Conquest as the Ranked mode; the latter being the more drastic approach and likely not very popular.

They have tried the split queue before, unfortunately the team queue was also a dynamic queue which is precisely what lead to the infamous Community Poll where players voted to have solo/duo queue. To be fair, though, even in the very thread posted about it players had been saying that would be fine if the queues were split but that is unfortunately not how ANet approached its implementation. They went all in on the Solo/Duo Queue and had it as the only option...and I already have the timeline in the opening post as to how things played out after that.

Another possible drawback to ANets approach to its competitive mode is that its rather barebones in comparison to others. There is no actual dedicated "pick" stage outside of the brief moments before the match begins, and this doesn't even need to pertain to class picks but even just build picks. I'm sure it would be a programming nightmare considering the spaghetti code of the game, but they do have Build Templates now and have had the PvP Build system there for a while now, but maybe they could look at a way to make class swapping before matches more of an integrated system for Ranked. Even having the ability to define what ones role would be in any given match might be helpful, but that would require actually defining the roles needing to be filled. Really I'm just spitballing ideas out into the ether, but its really just because they clearly need to be doing something different or better and they just haven't. Again, all they have really done is skirted entirely around the problem.