What is up with the matchmaker?

[Crab Fear.1624]

@phantom.1675 said:

@Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

@phantom.1675 said:I guess I see ranked as "play to compete and win" and in such competitions, the best players are going to be rational and do the things that makes them win; can't fault them for that. And at the same time, I would expect Anet to structure the ranked system so that fair but competitive games are the goal. Now if that's fun along the way, I would say that's great.

For players not looking to compete, and looking purely for fun, there is unranked queue at all times. There are also occasional ATs.

Correct, Ranked is at its core a more competitive option; at least it's supposed to be.

I don't see how any sort of merged queue encourages competition and playing to your best, when it injects challenges that go far beyond just learning the game and your profession.

In a low population like we got, they only encourage that the best stay the best, because there's little to no hope of a top 100 DuoQ being mirrored; let alone the very top player and the second to top player.

Sure, you could find some friend on Discord to drag with you into playing Gw2 ranked and try to do it yourself, because apparently that's rational and playing to win. Of course, they'll be lower ranking starting out so that means you'll be gaining very little rank for wins, losing a ton for losses, and be matched with much lower rated players to compensate regardless. Eventually one of you will get sick of it, and the population drops further; you're right back to square one. It's a self-perpetuating issue.

You might say "well why not find someone close to your own rank?" Well that would be doing it purely for the sake of a number's advantage, and not for playing with friends. Not being able to play with friends is the main excuse a fraction of top 1% uses to justify the existence of a mergedQ... but not TeamQ, because the population is too low. Clearly it's working, and it's a self-perpetuating issue.

So you might say: "Why not adapt?" or "lol get gud." To say people can't adapt would be silly, because we can and do find ways to cope; like Queue dodging. Although, such a strategy encourages you to not play at all just to have a chance at decent matchmaking. It's a self-perpetuating issue. As to the whole "get gud" case that the same people responsible love to whip out, it's nearly impossible for someone to get any better when they're constantly being paired with and against people of vastly different skill ratings of eachother. Like for instance; if the two very top players queue together and get matched with golds to compensate, those golds can't learn anything from the impending 500-100 win or loss that's about to happen. They're going to be bored and disheartened and potentially even quit, and the population drops further. It's a self-perpetuating issue that this dude in this video talks about, only in the context of Apex Legends and Battle Royale, however; I found it really interesting and easy to compare to Ranked PvP as well as some of the top Ranked players atm:

@phantom.1675 said:I am on the side that competitive and skilled players should get more rewards, and I mention this since the difference between ranked and unranked is the rewards. This is what incentivizes becoming skilled, which I view as a good thing.

Basically if this is truly the case, then you'll understand or at least begin to understand that the most competitive, least exclusive games are the ones with the closest possible matchmaking and team structure. SoloQ/TeamQ in Gw2's case.

I think my entire point is that playing with friends, because it's fun, should be irrelevant to how ranked queue is designed. They should only allow solo ranked queue, ie remove duo, and if you want to play full team queue, you play unranked.

then let us earn the loot in unranked. yes we want cake and look at cake. keep leaderboard who gives shit

[Vancho.8750]

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

@"NotoriousNaru.1705" said:Dawg idfk who u are but heres some advice, actually know what you're talking about before you spout nonsense. EVERY.SINGLE.GAME i have played was duo'd with someone who is higher rated than me so save me that bs. You are literally the epitome of every forum pleb with 0 information acting like they know anything, you dont.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/494041688327847936/593334871129194505/unknown.png

We have been qing duo as r1 and r2 the entire season. He has more games played than me qing with other people so where is this qing with low alts to get easier games bs? I legit just explained to you why high rated players in low rated games = NOT WORTH but you're too dense to even understand basic concepts. Anyone that has run into us this ranked season knows we were both on our mains. This is the last time im posting here to clarify misinformation because clearly no matter how much I explain it some people just lack common sense but keep yelling wintrade and cry because some people are just better than you.

Edit: because both of us are qing on our mains and not using low alts to tank rating here is how our qs go, and it is exactly why we get put into games we shouldnt be in.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/478002000076996622/593175266663202847/Screenshot_271_LI.jpg

and before you cry about offhour qing, look at the time.

All i'm saying is it's a thing people do. Not directly accusing you or anything, but you did try and say that DuoQ isn't exploitable at all, when the reality is; it is being and has been exploited season after season since it was reimplemented.

Now I may be a misinformed nobody(As that seems to be the go-to insult for top rated players to dealing with any sort of criticism) but I understand at least that the top spots are really volatile, and the formula for determining rank gain screws you, but not to the extent of +2/-40. That isn't even close to normal for that rating. As a content creator that's been in that top spot consistently, I don't see how you can expect people to believe it is.

Like I say, not accusing anyone of anything. I recognized your mains from the OPs screenshot even. You had just said that DuoQ isn't exploitable even thought it is, and you also gave what is either a pretty gross exaggeration of rank gain compared to rank lost, or; like I say, it could be DuoQing with a smurf because that would do it.

And it is absolutely practical to do that. If you are satisfied with whatever spot you have on the LB, that would be an easy way to keep your spot and keep up with decay and/or the minimum games LB requirement.

And that is an argument against DuoQ, not you specifically.

Pretty sure John from my team was the smurf. Trebbed for 3m, then ran directly to naru to feed on respawn.

Maybe @Ben Phongluangtham.1065 can clear up how the matchmaker decided this was an even game?

I could try to look up the match. I'd need the display name of one person in the match, the approximate date/time of the match and to make it easier, the final score.

Thank you for the response!

• Egorum.9506
• 6/24/19 @ 0918 PST
• Red: 501 Blue: 61

Yep. That was definitely not a good match. Actually, probably the worst match I've ever personally looked up! Unfortunately, there is not much the matchmaker could have done in this case. 2 legendary players duo-queuing is near impossible to find another pair of legendary players playing at the same time.

I would bet the legendary players were in queue for close to 10 minutes at least. When a match is being built around you, the matchmaker looks for players within 25 rating of you. It doesn't start expanding the range until it's been looking for players for 5 minutes. After that, it expands slowly until it can find 10 players. To find the players it did for this match, it would likely have taken close to another 5 minutes.

We ran some experiments on the unranked matchmaker a while back, as some might recall. We tried several tweaks, but all it really did was make put some people in queue for 40+ minutes, with little discernible increase in match quality by the time they did finally make it in.

Here is a simple idea maybe make it so when a duo Legends farm a team, the farmed team doesn't lose that much points. Now you lose 7 to 10 points if you are g2 g3 amd even p1, if you are against mister AT winner and his friend the game is lost the moment it started. At least maybe people will stop dreading the Russian roulette that is the Matchmaker now.As in right now its not fun queuing more than 2 games a day( and even that feels a lot ), 1 out of 10 maybe even more is a good game the rest are blow out win or lose and with that the population is dropping by the day. I don't know what exactly is wrong in the matcmaker or in pvp overall but there is something rotting under there and the community can smell it.

[Reikou.7068]

@Vancho.8750 said:

As in right now its not fun queuing more than 2 games a day( and even that feels a lot ), 1 out of 10 maybe even more is a good game the rest are blow out win or lose and with that the population is dropping by the day. I don't know what exactly is wrong in the matcmaker or in pvp overall but there is something rotting under there and the community can smell it.

The thing that is rotten is that the matchmaker prioritizes putting together any match over putting together a fair/fun match. This has gotten so egregious that the matches being put together nowadays are now absolutely disgusting to play in.

This situation continues to deteriorate because anet has decided to prioritize the bandaid of pretending the game is alive, (throwing together any match so long as you are in queue long enough) instead of addressing the actual issue and making the game fun to play to keep the game alive. (Looking for a fair match no matter how long it takes.)

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

@phantom.1675 said:

@Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

@phantom.1675 said:I guess I see ranked as "play to compete and win" and in such competitions, the best players are going to be rational and do the things that makes them win; can't fault them for that. And at the same time, I would expect Anet to structure the ranked system so that fair but competitive games are the goal. Now if that's fun along the way, I would say that's great.

For players not looking to compete, and looking purely for fun, there is unranked queue at all times. There are also occasional ATs.

Correct, Ranked is at its core a more competitive option; at least it's supposed to be.

I don't see how any sort of merged queue encourages competition and playing to your best, when it injects challenges that go far beyond just learning the game and your profession.

In a low population like we got, they only encourage that the best stay the best, because there's little to no hope of a top 100 DuoQ being mirrored; let alone the very top player and the second to top player.

Sure, you could find some friend on Discord to drag with you into playing Gw2 ranked and try to do it yourself, because apparently that's rational and playing to win. Of course, they'll be lower ranking starting out so that means you'll be gaining very little rank for wins, losing a ton for losses, and be matched with much lower rated players to compensate regardless. Eventually one of you will get sick of it, and the population drops further; you're right back to square one. It's a self-perpetuating issue.

You might say "well why not find someone close to your own rank?" Well that would be doing it purely for the sake of a number's advantage, and not for playing with friends. Not being able to play with friends is the main excuse a fraction of top 1% uses to justify the existence of a mergedQ... but not TeamQ, because the population is too low. Clearly it's working, and it's a self-perpetuating issue.

So you might say: "Why not adapt?" or "lol get gud." To say people can't adapt would be silly, because we can and do find ways to cope; like Queue dodging. Although, such a strategy encourages you to not play at all just to have a chance at decent matchmaking. It's a self-perpetuating issue. As to the whole "get gud" case that the same people responsible love to whip out, it's nearly impossible for someone to get any better when they're constantly being paired with and against people of vastly different skill ratings of eachother. Like for instance; if the two very top players queue together and get matched with golds to compensate, those golds can't learn anything from the impending 500-100 win or loss that's about to happen. They're going to be bored and disheartened and potentially even quit, and the population drops further. It's a self-perpetuating issue that this dude in this video talks about, only in the context of Apex Legends and Battle Royale, however; I found it really interesting and easy to compare to Ranked PvP as well as some of the top Ranked players atm:

@phantom.1675 said:I am on the side that competitive and skilled players should get more rewards, and I mention this since the difference between ranked and unranked is the rewards. This is what incentivizes becoming skilled, which I view as a good thing.

Basically if this is truly the case, then you'll understand or at least begin to understand that the most competitive, least exclusive games are the ones with the closest possible matchmaking and team structure. SoloQ/TeamQ in Gw2's case.

I think my entire point is that playing with friends, because it's fun, should be irrelevant to how ranked queue is designed. They should only allow solo ranked queue, ie remove duo, and if you want to play full team queue, you play unranked.

Well, yeah! I mean, that's what i've been saying this whole time.

All TeamQ is, is essentially whiner insurance so when DuoQ is inevitably removed again, the same excuses used pre-Season 13 don't have us repeating history for a 3rd time. It's a competitive option to play with friends, that if split; would only have the rather insignificant impact of splitting the ranked player base, though I think how much is often overstated. The majority of players now are SoloQ. If they've stayed SoloQ this whole time, TeamQ probably isn't the most appealing to them.

Honestly, TeamQ is a luxury. What's most important is what you said. Getting rid of DuoQ.

[RisenHowl.2419]

It would honestly be easier at this point to have soloQ and teamQ instead of unranked and ranked. Keep the AT system, make both other queues ranked during the season and unranked during off season. Two leaderboards during the season, none during the off season.

Everyone gets rewards when the season is on. The downside is that you can't test and swap builds/classes during the season without affecting your rank, but that's a fair tradeoff for a healthier gamemode.

[Endorphin.9147]

@yanniell.1236 said:

@Endorphin.9147 said:Instead of complaining that you are getting these 1 sided matches. Maybe take the opportunity to teach yourself what these better players are doing to completely stomp your team! It isn't often you get to face the Best of the Best. Take it as a learning experience.

This is actually funny.

I am glad someone caught on to what I was doing