Discussion About "What Is Killing Our SPvP Community?" And What Can We Do About It?
Trevor Boyer.6524
Member ✭✭✭✭
Most people would just say "Toxicity!" or "Bad Balance!" Let me explain what I believe to be the reason why all of it is happening. I believe it has nothing to do with general toxicity and very little to do with general balance issues. I believe the root and bulk of the problem begins with how the algorithm functions on a core foundational level:
- 1700 does a duo with a 1500
- Algorithm counts them as a 1600 duo "averaged out"
- The algorithm attempts to place the 1600 duo against other 1600 opponents.
- So RED Team has (1700 1500) 1600 1600 1600 vs. BLUE Team 1600 1600 1600 1600 1600
- So now if the 1700 loses that match, he is losing to all 1600s and gets his rating torn from his wazoo more than likely something like -20 or more, but if he wins he gets like +5. But even stranger and more non-sensical yet, is that the 1500 will receive something like -8 or -9 on a loss, but like +14 or +15 on a win. So somehow, even though the 1500 is being carried AF by his duo partner he is rewarded the most, and even though he is clearly the weak link amongst 1700 an 1600 players and probably responsible for most of the loses they accrue, he is somehow penalized the least.
- Everything about this feels bad when playing and it spiderwebs into many social issues.
Let me explain why I believe these Glicko mechanics ^ are bad for a team based competitive mode's function & community health.
In terms of the algorithm itself and why it is inept at what it is supposed to do:
- Lower skilled players get drawn up the leaderboards in ways that they shouldn't be getting drawn up the leaderboards. This results in effects such as a player who normally plays at 1400, getting carried by a plat 2+ friend on some alt up into 1500+. Then when the normally 1400 goes to solo que again, the system is placing him with his inflated rating, expecting him to perform at that level, when he can't. Then he draws his entire team's rating down when he can't perform, essentially leaving his team 4v5.
- High rated players losing games and dropping rating in chunks of -25 or more, due to stupid things they cannot control that are not their fault. Like having some guy in their team that is aiming at getting his wings so he's playing on classes that he's never played before. Ect ect.. there are dozens of examples I could give of these "gambits" that are in play each and every time we hit the que button. But the point being is that it is ridiculous when I look at the leaderboards and see the strongest players in the game bouncing around from bottom 1500 range, back and forth up to 1700 and back down again and then back up. That is some serious volatility going on with the accuracy of the algorithm gauging their true skill level. It would be better if the algorithm displayed a player's lowest rating and highest rating achieved. This way we could all get a better feel for what kind of low/high margins everyone plays at. Because right now, people just wait till a good streak, and then they sit on a high rating instead of playing games. This is just bad for the activity of the game mode.
- A bit more about gambits: You have things like this going on: Some guy trying to get his wings, playing on classes he's never played before, but still being placed at the rating of his main. People just plain having a bad day, maybe a bit hung over, maybe a bit distracted from work, but still trying to que ranked competitively. We have A LOT of general smurfing going on, people with several alt accounts to help duo their buddies into higher positions or to que snipe other high rated players down the leaderboards. Then of course we have a small community of players who run win trade circles. Sometimes a person genuinely DCs. Sometimes a person has to AFK to answer the door because a pizza arrived. Sometimes we roll a team of FB Necro Necro Ele vs. 2x DPS Soulbeasts Holo and good Rev, just some absurd counter situation where we aren't going to win the match unless a miracle happens and the opponents have a DC or they're just all terrible players. Ect ect ect, the point being is that having an individual rating in a solo/duo only que that is a 5v5 game mode designed for 5 man team ques, with all of these gambits in play, is just kitten inaccurate. All players who play within the top 50 know what I mean what I say: "Playing high in the leaderboards is about a lot more than going into the game and being good at conquest." There is all of this social stigma involved in playing high. We have to make the right friends and avoid pissing off the wrong people. We have to know who to que dodge, what ALTs they're playing that season so we can que dodge those. We have to do things like identify players who seem to sincerely have bad ping and DC often, que dodge them. We have to que dodge players who are just that bad. We have to disappoint friends who want to que with us, because we know they can't quite keep up. Sometimes we know the friend can keep up, but he is currently placed at 1450 or something, after queing with his low rated buddies, which means we can't afford to que with him when we're sitting at 1700. <- All this is toxic and leads to the next points.
In terms of what Glicko does to the community over the course of time:
- You have a group of friends who begin as a guild group together. It all starts with not giving AF while playing unranked and everyone is having fun.
- Some of them start getting good and want to seriously try in the ranked season.
- Now they have to be picky with who they play with. Friends that were once friends that they played with every night, they start going offline to avoid. They don't want to disappoint these people by telling them they don't want to que with them. They do this because those players can't keep up with them or because their current ratings are just too much of a gambit to que with. They also have to que dodge those people so the people don't see them in a match.
- Eventually people find out what they are doing and it pisses everyone off and they lose friends.
- Those good players hover into a new group of players who currently play at their skill level and play at very similar rating margins. For awhile it always works out. For awhile it's always good.
- Then during a particular season, a few of those players didn't paly so often and didn't adapt as strongly to some current meta. Now their friends have to dodge them or flat out tell them as nicely as they can, which always pisses people off: "Sorry man, I don't think you're keeping up as well as you did last season" or "Your rating is just too low to que with right now, regardless of how good you are." Now bridges are getting burnt again. Best case scenario, there is a 1 out of a 100 player who understands and who stays your friend but hey, you're still not playing with that friend in ranked or ATs.
- Over the course of years this goes on and on. When population gets smaller, now we're left with few new friends to meet, and everyone already knows each other, and everyone has some kind of judgmental bias towards each other in terms of if they would or wouldn't play together. And most of it is because of how the algorithm has made us have to do so. You seriously couldn't devise a system that was better at destroying a community's cohesion over time, than using the Glicko algorithm for individual ratings in a 5 man team based game mode, and then turning that 5 man game mode into a solo/duo only que. No insult intended, Arenant. Just pointing out that this stuff has driven away many players who would normally been the type to stay & play for a decade or more, if there wasn't something going on that they truly felt was unfair, that was removing their incentive to even meet new friends to begin with.
There are a couple other threads to mention where others are recently identifying with these same aspects that are tearing apart the community. These are worth reading the OP's complete statements & responses, as well as all of the users who have contributed. These users are amongst the veteran player base that is now looking back and identifying what happened with our game mode:
@incisorr.9502 said:
if this is a tactic to get people to quit gw2 so they can announce gw3 or something i can understand but if they honestly think this is doing anything positive to the game then they're very deluded and wrong
-> https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/73251/removal-of-free-tourney-format-ruined-the-game
@Eurantien.4632 said:
TL;DR: leaderboards Make it so there is too much to lose now for little gain. Max duo queue means no way to form new bonds anymore. [Edit: Free tourneys incentivized teams and allowed them to spam games together and not have to wait ages for ATs]. There is little reason to try new things besides to counter meta now because it just triggers teammates. This combo is a complete 180 from the community of free tourney days And it's leading to a toxic community.
@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 The social effects of individual Glicko ratings over time when applied to solo/duo only Conquest, is interesting indeed. My point in creating this thread was not to harp at Arenanet, but rather to stir healthy thought & discussion. I fully understand that Glicko is what we are working with. I was however, hoping that maybe someone had an idea for a quick & easy fix, something that might steer the sociology of the community back towards something cohesive, in terms of incentive to play together rather than avoid each other like the plague. I won't claim to have a "miracle suggestion", but I do know that it's the smallest things within a system that dictates how players conduct themselves within and around that system. I believe my initial statement in this thread about "the core of the social problem" to be absolutely true. There has to be something, some small tweak, that could be done to at least lighten the load of this social problem. Possibly something within or added to the algorithm, or something to alter with the que system.
If anyone has any well thought out and sensical suggestions, shoot. I'll try to sort out a few myself. Think small and be reasonable, don't ask for big game overhauls.
Comments
Just brainstorming ideas, they could be good or bad.
Depression and anxiety are the worst...
It's a vicious cycle:
low population --> subpar matchmaking --> not fun --> low population
First, particularly at the high end, I think separate queues and leader board for solo and teams would address many of the shenanigans enabled by them cohabitating now.
Next, wins versus losses is too simplistic a measure of individual performance in a team-mode. It requires too large a sample of both players and matches (both of which are currently lacking) to work.
A different or additional measure is needed, such as factoring in top stats. However, top stats themselves are not perfect and favor certain builds and roles. So maybe use the "percent of team" stats instead of top stats. The key is shifting the emphasis from match outcomes (which usually depend more on each team's overall effectiveness than on any one person's skill) to how much we contribute individually, win or lose.
Then, adjust based on the "team percent of game" stats to account for bad matchups. The more one-sided a specific team stat, the less weight it will have on the individual ratings for that stat, for that match. We should neither reward nor punish people for the results of a blowout.
Maybe the current system already does things like this, I don't know. But if not, they seem feasible since these suggestions only use existing stats. It's just a matter of shifting ratings away from match outcomes, which are team-dependant, to individual performance, regardless of outcome. (The reward chests can still serve as motivation to actually win.)
As individuals get rated and ranked more accurately, matchmaking will improve. With better matchmaking, and outcomes that aren't so RNG based on which team you're on, the mode should feel more competitive and fun. A big reason people give up is feeling they have little to no control over outcomes. Shifting the measure of success to individual performance will help alleviate this. With attitudes shifting from "I can only climb if my team doesn't suck" to "I can climb if I get better," and reality reflecting this, fewer newcomers will be turned off, more will stick around, and a healthy population can be reached.
Somehow, someway, we need to break the cycle.
No and no.
To the OP: Yes, ranked duo queue was a mistake.
I surely have said this before but as long as the game itself is fun, people don't just stop because of a couple bad matches. Bad matches happen everywhere, yet games like LoL and dota2 remain very successful. People quit because they don't enjoy the gameplay experience, which might be related to balance but is not necessarily the same. After coming back to the game from a longer break, I thought that many builds (actually most meta builds) are simply obnoxious which makes playing and especially losing against them a very frustrating experience. I might be alone with this opinion but I doubt it, especially since a friend of mine (who had taken a break from pvp but not the game itself) kept complaining how unfun the pvp is even when we were winning.
That the power gap between what's meta and what's not is so big that winning is literally impossible to win 1v1s/2v2s makes this even worse (e.g. dh vs soul beast, heck even core ranger feels nigh unbeatable as a dh). While this doesn't matter at the very top where everyone is just focused on playing the most effective builds, it does matter at lower levels where people like to play classes that they like. If pvp at lower levels is discouraging unless you are willing to reroll flavor of the month, thepopulation will shrink as many new players will be deterred from entering pvp, this there won't be enough replacements for leaving veterans.
The last thing might apply to toxicity in some extend too, but it is less dramatic as the game provides you with the option to work around that (disable team chat/ignore list).
Thank you for this insightful response. Truly a remarkable contribution.
Some suggestions of my own:
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice!
Absolutely agreed on all points here. Quote is imo the crux.
To elaborate: you can't improve duo queue without removing it entirely or at the very least forcing the number of duos in both teams to be equal.
To elaborate on your point: the last thing PvP needs is a new artificial system to play instead of playing the game to win.
Raid-oriented balance means the way of no return
At cost of devastated pvp balance, GW2 still have inadqueate raid quality/attractiveness.
The easiest solution is just to remove DuoQ as it makes the issue of rank gain/rank disparity substantially worse than it is with Solos. The social option for playing ranked should be TeamQ in a split lb and queue to SoloQ. Or maybe even 2v2 as a separate Arena, while keeping it as a seasonal AT.
This is also a really good idea.
It encourages people to play and do their best, and It somewhat counters the terrible rank disparity DuoQs can create, which ultimately negatively affects rank gain/loss at the end of a match. Even if DuoQ gets removed completely, this would even make poorly matched Solo games better and worth trying in.
Sure, it might be tough to implement into a game like Gw2, but it's certainly not impossible by any stretch as many other smaller games already use this in determining how much rating you gain/lose at the end of a ranked match.
Ranked DuoQ 😡👉🚪
Patch-culture is awful
Nerfs should be reserved for extreme cases and only done in creative ways that make the game more interesting to play and watch.
I think there are 2 main factors as to why the PvP population seem to be declining;
The difference in power between the least effective "decent" builds compared to the most effective "meta" builds is nearly insurmountable. On one end of the spectrum you have elementalists in general and many HoT speccs, and on the other you have soulbeast/holo/spellbreaker/mirage/sw.d thief/shiro/scrapper. People like to play what they play in all other modes, and although not everyone wants to be the most efficient, they try to be as effective as they can within the builds they like. Of course, when you are forced to go through meta-checks builds, it drives people away.
A leaderboard that rewards abusing the system. Ranked depends on the human instinct of competition. 4 billion years of evolution that depended on us out-competing everyone around us, if you made it to this day, you have to thank your ancestors for winning, and it is your duty to compete once again if you want to leave someone after yourself. Leaderboard is about competing, however, when you add an extra layer of being at a disadvantage if you dont duoQ with others, it now becomes more than just YOUR contribution, while the leaderboard does not reflect this at all. I know plenty of people who quit for good and I havent seen them back in PvP since dynamicQ, and they were very active in PvP, and they still log in, their reasoning is similar to mine; " i wont become farm for these people".
Overall, games with PvP are dependent on their game-mode to be fun itself, the play-loop has to be fun. PvE succeeded, HoT meta did too, all other PvP games like LoL or OW have too, despite having little variation in maps/modes/characters to play. You have to have to like your options. Everything boils down to that; "Is it fun?". If it isnt succeeding, then you gotta as yourself; is it because it is not fun? Then what isnt?
**- Is playing against frustrating sidenoders like spellbreaker/scrapper/mirage fun?
Thank you for elaborating. Now that I know why you disagree, we can actually discuss.
First, like almost everyone who's posted in this discussion so far, I agree that solo and duo queue need to be separated. I said right at the beginning:
As for implementing a different measure, most of my post was basically aimed at addressing point 2 here:
while keeping within OP's parameters, which I think are good:
The smaller, and more feasible, the more realistic. So I proposed a system, based on existing stats, that could achieve Zexanima's suggestion. Note that I said different OR additional:
I also said "The reward chests can still serve as motivation to actually win." But that's somewhat irrelevant. No one actually plays to lose. Almost everyone plays to win.
It's simple: If we want to base rank gain and loss more on individual performance, as Zexanima proposed, then it can't be based solely on match outcome (win/loss ratio). That's because outcomes in a team-based competitive mode, are--surprise, surprise--mostly determined by team performance. Team performance is not something we individually have much control over, and when people lose or hit a wall because of it, it isn't fun, and people quit.
No system is perfect, but instead of simply saying "no", how about proposing better (realistic) solutions?
I'm very happy someone else noticed this! Smart
@Trevor Boyer.6524
Over the past few months, I've been trying to promote this thread: New Scoreboard. I believe the system I proposed would greatly improve the quality of matchmaking if it were to be implemented. It's simple, but very effective. And, it boils Conquest down to do's and don'ts while providing clear incentives and guidelines as to what helps your team win and what doesn't. It punishes AFKing and griefing, and rewards trying hard till the very end.
In essence, if you consistently perform well, you will receive a small rating buffer. For example, for someone with a high Total Value average, instead of gaining/losing 10 rating per match, they'd gain 11 and lose 9. For someone with a low Total Value average, they'd lose 11 and gain 9. So, after 50 matches played, that would result in an additional 50 rating that can be gained or lost.
Over a short period of time, this system would allow matchmaking to be able to more accurately rate individuals. And, match quality would improve significantly as matches filled with people who have similar Total Value averages will be a lot more competitive than the ones in the current system.
Like a political candidate's promises, these all sound good, but the likelihood of them actually happening is a different matter. Unless Anet's interest in this game mode has suddenly surged overnight, I don't see how even a fraction of these things are likely to happen any time soon, if ever. That's not a knock against these ideas, but a reality check, which I think @Trevor Boyer.6524 emphasized in the last sentence of the OP.
One thing I would like cleared up, if anyone knows, because I'm seeing conflicting information throughout the forum: What is the effective rating of duos? Some say it used to be based on the lower player, which allowed people to game the system. Trevor's saying it's an average. And others have said it's now based on the higher player, to combat the manipulation.
I think separating solo and duoQ, or simply removing duoQ, is feasible, since it has been that way before.
Taking reports more seriously is a matter of internal policy. It could change overnight or not, depending on their priorities.
Everything else honestly sounds like a pipe dream at this point.
@Twilight Tempest.7584
Duos use the higher-rated player's rating during matchmaking.
This is my experience as well.
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice!
I think it's something much more simpler...
Theres no option to play with friends for fun and farm rewards.
I only log on for a friend now days because that's what we are limited too.
Are we sure that it still works that way? I know it did for awhile, but I almost certainly remember an Arenanet dev recently responding in a thread and stating that the matchmaker uses the average of a duo's ratings. I tried to go back and review Arenanet response threads from the last 30 pages but I can't seem to find any answers. The notes on the algorithm functions say nothing either. Not trying to argue with you guys, just trying to figure out exactly how this works. This season I have been running ques with quite seriously anyone who asks, and I am noticing this:
I assumed it was averaging a 1600 and a 1400 into a 1500 rated duo for the purposes of who was against us, but still giving us gains & loses to our individual ratings, depending on the ratings of the opponents in the match, who were set against us in accordance to a 1500 duo, meaning the opponents were all lower rated than I was. That would certainly explain the rating gain/loss that I was experiencing. But hey, I certainly could be wrong.
It would be awesome if Arenanet could give an answer to this question.
My Twitch Gank Channel
Duos use average. Been that way for at least a year.
I did an experiment with a friend who was in silver while I was in platinum. When we won, he got a ton of rating and I hardly got any (indicative of me being expected to win easily and him being expected to lose horribly). The "ton" and "hardly any" are relative to what I got solo queuing. It was also readily apparent that our opponents had absolutely no clue what they were doing compared to the average platinum player. If matchmaking used max rating, then my gains on a win would be the same as if I had solo queued.
this is my 4º or 5º season, I just have something to say:
main pvp: Khel the Undead(power reaper).
It wouldn't be a BadMed post without the words "Condi Mirage" in it, would it? xD
With current state of PvP and it's community bringing back TeamQ (and removing DuoQ, separating TeamQ and SoloQ), would be at least "something", it might not solve anything, but like I said; at this point something has to be done/tried out, after all it would be a stir up that many many people asked for, for a very long time.
Never! 😀
I hate to be a jerk - but you're dead wrong.
What killed GW2 PvP is:
It all comes down to: Is the game fun to play? And for the past few years, PvP (though some may say GW2 in general) is not fun to play regularly.
Power Creep / Balance
This is by far the biggest problem for a myriad of reasons. First and foremost is the frustration in the gameplay. Power creep - particularly with elite specs - has made it so that for a significant duration of a combat time, you can't do much to stop your opponents. But when you can finally hit them, oh boy does it hurt hard. The receiving end is the same. I can tank damage for days, but then I melt. That feast or famine experience is a huge turn-off. It's hard to learn what you should and shouldn't do when every instinct just says to spam abilities - eventually a huge amount of damage will go through. If you don't spam your defenses, you'll die quickly. This coincides with the first order optimal strategy problem. It doesn't feel like there's any depth as you go along, and trying something different gets you destroyed. You become bored with the skill use repetition and frustrated with "randomly" winning or losing. So you quit or take long breaks.
Second, elite spec power creep has also alienated players by forcing them to give up on established characters. Many players started out by picking a profession and a playstyle which suited them. They felt comfortable with that choice and became attached to it over time. Then a new round of elite specs hits, leaving everything before it as non-viable for PvP. You have three choices: re-roll, continuing playing the sub-par spec, or quit. For players who make the second choice, a huge divide in power drives them to quit because they simply can't compete against the immense power differential by substituting greater skill.
Third, the power creep has also forced out a lot of the team-play aspect of the game. How often do you cover for stomps or revives? Most revives come from power creeped abilities which revive in the blink of an eye. Support specs are pretty much gone (support as in help the team - not live forever by yourself).
Inability to Play with Friends
So, you can't play PvP with friends... in a team-based format... in an MMORPG. Seriously, who thought that was a good idea? Unranked has effectively next to no matchmaking (the margins are so wide it doesn't matter), so it's pointless to try and team queue there - the games are completely lop-sided. The automated tournaments are so infrequent and times are constantly shifting that it's not worth the hassle to corral a group of friends only to sit around waiting for 10-15minutes and then play 1 or 2 games. So basically, there's no reasonable way to PvP with friends against players of roughly even skill level. That makes it difficult to maintain or grow a circle of friends.
The social aspect of games is strong; people will stick with something a lot longer if their friends are still doing it. When you can't do anything with friends, it's easier to give up, especially in the presence of other detractors (see power creep).
What isn't a big deal
The solo queue arguments are all completely ludicrous. Back in vanilla GW2, we had a solo queue and a team queue. Eventually most players moved to the team queue - as solo players. The solo queue was full of toxic "solo queue heroes" who only cared about besting people in 1v1's and bragging; there was almost no teamwork or coordination. The team queue was full of teamwork and a play to learn and make friends. If you went up against a full team, it was a challenge and learning opportunity. As ANet has said, full teams tended to lose more games than they won; in the big picture, the full teams are friends or guildmates who are PvP'ing for fun.
The rating system issues are also completely overblown. The "big loss, small gain" rating adjustments only happen at the extremes of the rating range - around top 100 or so. Less than 5% of the population. Problems with rating differential are also overblown and are due to the power creep more than the rating system. Because of elite specs being relatively skill-less, very few people know map awareness, teamplay, kiting, etc. That huge actual skill differential happens over a relatively small range at the top. If those soft skills were more important, the differential wouldn't be as large in as small a rating range.
i want more game modes. i do not care whatsoever for conquest anymore. it has zero appeal.
te lazla otstara.
fingers crossed meta ~
Alright, you got me thinking.
First off, I can see your point. Your suggestions address the premise that the rating system will somehow be improved if some measure of individual skill is added, which I still can't agree with. Some simple examples would include, in the case of existing top stats, players dropping every action to try to revive their teammates to score top revives; players spamming heals off cooldown to get top healing; players damaging downed enemies to get top damage when it's more beneficial to finish them. It's difficult to account for all similar cases that will surely arise.
That being said, the suggestion I've come up with is a bit weird, but let's see.
Remove ranked duo queue, only leaving ranked solo queue; this solves the duo problem in ranked. Now, every unranked win/match played (whichever makes more sense) rewards you with one "grey pip" if you were premade with somebody. Accumulated "grey pips" are then redeemed in solo ranked: you get +1 pip for every victory in ranked queue. (The actual numbers can be changed to make more sense.)
This way players are hypothetically encouraged (though not forced) to play unranked together with their friends and are motivated to play solo ranked to redeem "grey pips". For someone who only plays unranked, nothing really changes. Those who are forced to play ranked to farm pips (and are lamenting the fact) are slightly more likely to spend more time in unranked queue and less time in ranked, which can be seen as a plus. Those who are playing ranked competitively don't have to deal with duos anymore and don't need to avoid their friends.
Supposedly, some people will leave ranked at some times (making the queue emptier), but some other people will come to redeem their pips to balance it out.
Other games have tried augments to rating systems, including votes, top stats, role-related stats, etc. Not surprisingly, win vs. loss is still by far the best indication of skill. In all cases, the augments were either removed or heavily de-emphasized leaving win vs. loss as the overwhelming factor.
The number of games to have an accurate rating also isn't that huge. Keep in mind that accurate means that your true rating falls within some range of your current rating. I don't have the numbers ANet uses, but once you settle (probably 20-30 games for most of the population; when your rating gain/loss stabilizes around ±15-20), it's likely that your true rating lies within ±100 of your current rating. So while many people complain about going down 100 rating in an evening, that's normal! Glicko2 uses a statistical model and the uncertainty of your true rating is baked in as a rating deviation. It means that your current rating before the "loss streak" was a little too high; though your new rating may be a tad low, it's still within the margin of error from your true rating.
Arguing that the rating system is unfair or doesn't work only demonstrates that you don't understand the math behind it.
The one possible flaw is the soft reset which is done at the beginning of each season. This causes the population to bunch up near the middle (1200 rating based on the range of 0 to 2400) more than it should be. Over time, the population will spread out to normal distribution. But the further you belong from the middle, the longer it will take to reach your prior season rating (assuming unchanged skill), because you need to wait for the inner population to spread out as well. But during that time, your rating relative to the others is still accurate.
Everyone is saying so much as to what is killing the pvp community. As for me its the lack of game modes. I can only do so many 5v5, 3 capture point circle jerk. After 5 years and almost 5k games. Iv hung up my towel in december 2018. And unless some equivalent or better then its predicsessor gw1 comes into gw2, im gone from this community forever.
As far as what we can do about it is nothing really. Its all on the developers table and only they can maken delicious meals (new game modes) for us.
I think it is two things:
Maybe you could add a 3rd point about the stale and old pvp gamemode with little variance. Aside from these three points, especially point 1, I think every other issue pales by comparision.
// Yanim
1700 does a duo with a 1500
Algorithm counts them as a 1600 duo "averaged out"
Is not how it works, they changed this seeeeeeeeeasons ago due to abuse of lowrated alts of friends. It takes the highest mmr and only counts as that
www.twitch.tv/sindrener - Rank 55 Dragons/Orange Logo/Team Aggression
Balance team doesn't even pretend to care about PvP at this point. None of them were laid off which only reinforces that this is a company policy. There is no hope because balance is the #1 problem.
meta wiki is killing build diversity
This proposed solution of yours is not correct at all to the problem you are posing.
Duos have not presented any problems that weren't already present. PvP has been in a steady decline for years now.
I'm never angry about duos. Sometimes they are good, sometimes they are not, and not even remotely related to the problem. You need to be able to compete with your friends without needing to wait 5 hours for an AT, so duos is atleast something. An honest team queue would be better.
There is a number of problems that have lead to the decline of the PvP Community. PvP'ers have this misconception that competitiveness is what makes PvP fun, and good balance can fix everything, but that's just not true for the casual player because their mindset is different.
A. Lack of variety and support for alternative game modes. Seriously, who wants to do the same game mode years on end? ANet needs to start supporting and developing game modes other than Conquest. While they may never be on the same level of competitiveness, they don't really need to be. They just need to be fun, and different to Conquest, and they need a queue. Hotjoins as a platform for matches, other than tournaments and as a practice ground, is a thing of the past.
B. Casualization of professions. It's the little things like shortening movement distance by facing the camera down and other things like this that give interesting nuances to playing the game. They raise the skill cap in ways that have less to do with your class. Removing skill cap things make the game less interesting, not better. Reducing Portal duration made the game less interesting, and I don't even play Mesmer.
C. Skills that have been useless for half a decade now. This ties heavily into balance and diversity obviously. It's about things that should work, like Support Tempest, but don't, and it's about being forced into skills and traitlines to be viable. You are pretty much never surprised by what your opponent brings to a fight, and that's no fun, is it?
D. Rewards and exclusivity. PvP exclusive stuff should not just be aimed for only the absolute best. There should be some skill involved in how fast you gain it(the exclusive area is fine IMO, this is about other things) but PvP should have a much better reward structure, and better things to go for than a backpack that can be assembled in 2 seasons, or an ugly weapon set.
Those are in addition to the obvious one, which is balance.
This is mostly about bringing in the casuals. No scene can withstand and stay healthy if there's no new people being infused into it. An in-game event of some kind that brings people to the game mode every now and then, would be really good for this. Like a double/triple rewards weekend for unranked, a little incentive for people to try it out. You bring in 100 new people, out of which 10 will stick around for a while and 1 of those will play PvP until they stop playing the game altogether.
And reserve your toxicness for ranked, people. That kitten has no place in unranked.
If you read my 2nd post, and what Exedore said, I don't think this is true anymore. Duoing with someone 200 rating or lower is most certainly creating easier matches for the higher rated player in the duo, and heavily effecting his gain/loss in terms of the gains being extremely small and the losses being very large. All of the patterns that I've seen and what he confirmed, indicate that it's averaging a duo que rating before setting them in the match making. Why would it do that if it was using only the higher rated player's rating for match making?
Would be great if Arenanet would make a statement on this. At this point we'd really like to know for sure if something was changed.
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Yeah and I believe that 2pac is alive as well.
www.twitch.tv/sindrener - Rank 55 Dragons/Orange Logo/Team Aggression
@bluri.2653 Please don't skunk up the thread. Just keep it clean man.
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I duo with my friend who's also in the 1700(same rating I'm in) and we still get a bunch of plat 1-2 players in our games.
I notice enemy team who usually in the 1800s get's the same skilled rated players from plat2-plat3 . The whole system Needs a rework and reconsider for it's low population aint no one trying to lose -20 points for a game that was completely 1 sided and in favor of an other team.
In LoL if a team is favor to Lose they don't lose a lot of points....IMO it should be the same for Gw2 especially when MOST games are pretty 1 sided now days.
Anet has already experimented limiting on how far the system can search for a matchup, it ended with them not getting qpop. I have had rating differences in my team with over 500-600 rating
www.twitch.tv/sindrener - Rank 55 Dragons/Orange Logo/Team Aggression
which again isn't a good sign lol. That's horrible to even know that your getting players that low.
Answering the title:
the devs, and nothing, it's gone past the point of no return...
The devs mismanaged sPvP since HoT came out, they broke it, were late to create alternatives to their messes, and have yet to deliver a convincing balance patch that matches the time between balance iterations.
All this drove people away, to the point that its almost impossible for the game to match people in a desirable way (as in all similar ranks, no stacked builds or premades, in a timely manner), and because this has a snowball effect, the less people, the worse the match making, the worse the match making, the less people want to play, and so on.
Right now, it would take something utterly revolutionary to get a decent amount of people to come back to sPvP, and given that they've been working on something as BASIC as Swiss rounds pretty much since PoF launched, you KNOW, it's going to die.
Well theres no possible way to fix this unless the playerbase significantly increased which wont happen and people still believe its tied to duoq and not balance/meta/playstyle but hey what do i know
Right now theres no limit on how far the matchmaker search for a matchup, so if im 1900 rated and theres not enough plats it will keep searching until it finds a match.
You are right tho, it's not enjoyable for me or the lowrated players.
The only time we had good "balanced" games was S5 when the population was "big" enough to sustain plat/legend, now it just isnt
www.twitch.tv/sindrener - Rank 55 Dragons/Orange Logo/Team Aggression
I was going to make a long multi paragraph post but rather then be the target of a witch hunt and getting flamed, wouldn't hurt if the community was a bit more helpful and a touch less stingy. I know PvP isn't supposed to be a friendly hugbox but where it is now, wouldn't hurt not to scare off new and returning players. Perhaps even help them.
+1
Well said.
'Situations that are present are there because you allow and tolerate them to continue'
I think there are a lot of interesting points about how Fortnite makes players feel like winners even if they lose, and how that keeps players playing the game over and over.
Best Dressed Memser NA.
What if... there was a betting system. Where at the start each player could bet on which team would win. The larger the spread, the larger the potential point gain for winning being the winning team and the less points for losing if you're the losing team. But then the winning team loses way more if they lose. Then of course the losing team also wins way more if they win. It'd have to be balanced well, and maybe be team independent instead of match independent.
Or let each player wager mmr points Infependetly?
Just a random thought. It could probably still be really abused though by making it really easy to climb by knowing the players you're fighting and with
One issue that's been glaring from my pov is the hindered replay value by the limited types of pvp modes. While catering to conquest for 5+ years, adding in new maps and updating the old ones, other modes such as deathmatch and stronghold are made then neglected to rot with no sign of any new modes for the future.
In no particular order:
Jroh | Former SOAC Ranger Podcaster | Top 100 PvP
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Won't make a difference. TrueSkill was only shown to be marginally better than Elo. No comparison was done against Glicko2, which addresses deficiencies in Elo.
I recall that ANet actually experimented with this idea and found no difference in matching, but with a significant increase in wait time.
Yes.
Frequency and timing of balance is not the problem. ANet is not doing anything to tackle the egregious power creep. It doesn't matter how often you patch if the patches have almost no impact.
Disagree here. Skill splits are a double-edged sword. They can help you balance one mode, but now developers have more skills to manage (i.e. more chances to screw up), and players are frustrated when skills have noticeably different behavior across game modes (need to retrain their brain when they swap modes).
Disagree. The duration is largely unused already. True DCs don't come back on an extra 30 seconds.