Trevor Boyer.6524

Vindicator is OP and needs hard nerfing.

More like dismissal. His statements are completely upside down and in no way factual based off historical data. What is intellectual cowardice, is telling everyone they are a "tinfoil hat" when they are simply stating historical truths we've been witnessing for 12 years now. If he wants to hold a real conversation, he needs to buck up and spit some wording that isn't entirely comprised of logical fallacies, otherwise he's going to have a lot of people telling him "No" and moving on with their day.

Agreed.

It would work the exact same way it does now, just add in Courtyard/Stronghold/New Mode. If 4 players select Legacy, 3 select Forest, and 3 select Stronghold, then we play Legacy. It literally can't get any fairer than this, in terms of votes cast for which map/mode the players want to play. And the roulette itself just randomly selects 3 maps to present as usual. So there would be possibility that it could throw Courtyard/Stronghold/New Mode as the only 3 selections for that game queued. But statistically, due to how many Conquest maps there are, we would likely see most queues as just 3 Conquest maps. That's just what would happen most of the time. I mean they could alter the rates in which these maps pop or set it up a certain way to make sure every map/mode gets some fair representation rate of play, but that is a different discussion. What I'm talking about is presenting completely fair RNG for which 3 are rolled and then the 10 players in the game get to vote on which one they want to play. The same way they deal with not feeling cheated when they were the only one who selected Djinn when everyone else selected Coliseum. No no no no no. It would just take every map from every mode and do this: Khylo Forest Legacy Temple Spirit Skyhammer Capricorn Coliseum Djinn Courtyard Stronghold New Mode So the roulette is like a 12 sided die. It rolls the 12 sided die three times, to see which maps are selectable for the players. Say it rolls 3, 7, and 11. So the players get to choose from Legacy, Capricorn, or Stronghold, for that given queue. 10 players vote on the three maps. The map with the highest vote count is the map played. Simple as that. But if the new mode is more than a 10 man game queue, then what we are discussing here only applies to the implementation of Courtyard and Stronghold. If this new mode is going to be 10 v 10 or something, then it will certainly need its own queue.

When there aren't enough people wanting to play a mode, no one queues up for it, and then the mode never starts. This is undeniably exactly what happened to both Courtyard and Stronghold, and it happened because everyone chose Conquest. This isn't a debate or theoretics. That actually happened, and it's going to happen again if they don't learn from what went wrong with the implementations there. The things I said in my post there are very real. They cannot force this new game mode to compete in its own queue against Conquest queues, or it's going to fail. I mean it's possible this new mode could be the most fun mode anyone has ever played and everyone will only want to queue that mode. But if this is not the case, the same things will happen, everyone will play the new mode just long enough to get w/e achievements are set for it, and then they'll all go back to conquest queues. And even though it would be "a nice break" to play the mode from time to time, not enough people will ever feel that way at the same time for the mode to ever have realistic queues to join. The population is just too low for adding more separate queues. As I said before, they just need to shuffle all this content together in the same roulette selection as Conquest maps so we do have a reason to enjoy it in a way that is convenient, based on community vote, that doesn't divide the queue population. I mean in most matches we're going to see 3 selections of Conquest maps because there are more Conquest maps than anything else. Then every once in awhile, it'll give players the option to vote for Courtyard/Stronghold/New Mode. I don't see why anyone would be opposed to this. Honestly at this point, they may as well throw Spirit Watch into ranked/ATs. People want variety man. We've been playing in the same maps for 12 years.

Oh trust me, you're preaching to the choir. Some of us have been riding this topic hotter than you are now for like the past 10+ years. What happens is people stop trying to talk about after 10 years when they realize Arenanet seemingly isn't listening at all. Yup, it isn't even about winning or losing at this point, it's just about players wanting GGs again "Good Games". It's just boring going from one match to another, knowing you're either going to win 500 to 80 or lose 80 to 500. There are many reasons why this is happening, but I'm not going to go all into it here. You're right though, there are many things that are just seriously wrong with the ranked match making. It goes much deeper than what you'd probably think. The best thing people can do is avoid that game mode and move on to Unranked/AT play, or maybe even get more involved in WvW. Ranked is actually entirely dysfunctional and completely ruined in 2024.

It uses those total games played/glory rank for unfair sand bagging vs. the older accounts. For example, I'll notice that on my main account if I play at prime time, it will often throw me into games that look the final rounds of an MAT, even when I'm in like gold 3. But on that alt with 600-700 total games, I won't even see games like that until I'm nearing plat 2, like around 1580+. Whatever is going on here, Arenanet really needs to review that total games played/glory rank thing. Because in 2024 when we have older accounts with like over 1000 glory rank and 30,000+ total games played, and I'm pretty sure these inflated metrics are at times outweighing actual seasonal rating in the match making. From what I've seen running stream tests on the main vs. the alt, it definitely looks like it will choose a gold 3 with 30,000 games played to be thrown into a MAT like match before it will choose a 1500+ with 700 games played to be thrown into that same match. The most outstanding proof of this that I've caught on stream was the very start of a fresh season, where there was a handful of guys like me, saiyan, cuilan, lordofnonsense, ect ect, who have really old accounts, and it just kept throwing us in the same queues together. Like an inhouse, it was mixing & matching us differently match to match, but it was making us grind into each other for the first 10 games and when everyone began to place at the end of that, we all had bad placements from feeding into each other. Everyone came out like middle or low gold 3. I can't remember who I was queueing with but he was in the discord with me and he pointed out around the same time we all started placing, there was this group of other people standing around the FFA who were also finishing their placements who were appearing with plat badges. These were all clearly pve guys standing around with titles like "been there done that" coming out of their first 10 games with plat badges, and we were like wait.. what? Where were these guys in our queues? Why did we just have to play 10 straight games worth of MAT level sweaty try-hard, and then these pve casual accounts somehow completely avoided seeding into our games, and were being put only with the other casuals for an easy walk into 1500+? What the hell is that? I mean if anyone has a better explanation for this outside of the glory rank/total games played, I'd love to hear it. Effectively what it's doing, is it's creating an invisible division segregation, where one man's plat isn't equal to another man's plat. Did you get your plat grinding your face into a bunch of old boys with 30,000 games played?, or did you get your plat on a new account grinding into the casuals of the community? People who play ATs with me, during formations when people join who we don't know, this is what I mean when I ask people: "Yeah but is your plat badge old plat or new plat?" because there is a difference now in 2024.

Oh yes it does. That's not all it does. For some reason no one ever notices this. Read this -> PvP Matchmaking Algorithm - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) " The first phase, called filtering, gathers players based on their current MMR. The primary purpose of this phase is to both reduce the number of players being considered for a match, and to ensure that the match is appropriate given each player's skill level. Over time, padding is added to your player rating. While this may decrease match quality, it helps ensure that outliers still receive matches. The second phase of the algorithm is the scoring phase. During this phase each player is scored against every other player being considered for matchmaking. The metrics used during this phase include: rating, rank, games played, party size, profession, and dishonor. With each metric the system is looking for players that are as close as possible to the average of those already selected. The system also attempts to keep the number of duplicate professions to a minimum. " It's talking about glory rank and total games played on the account. I'm not sure quite exactly how this effects your match making or how much weight it has, but I can definitely vouch that my main account with 1,176 glory rank that is nearing 31,000 total games played, gets much more difficult matches than my alts. I mean like noticeably much more difficult matches. Quick example of typically what happens, and I've streamed this live for tests many times in many different seasons over the years: Do placements on my main with the big numbers. The matches will be noticeably sweaty, every single one of them. Usually I'll come out gold 2 or gold 3 and have to fight like hell to even touch bottom plat over the course of nearly a hundred games. And even keeping bottom plat on that account, is a herculeic struggle. Do placements on my alt that has maybe 600-700 total games played. The matches are noticeably easier. Usually I get games that are easily carried by a simple DPS build and I'll finish 1500-1520 every single time at the start of every single season. And then maintaining between 1500-1560 is generally fairly relaxed and not difficult to do as long as I don't mindlessly queue into obvious win trade streaks. I've been saying it for years, they need to ditch those extra metrics during the scoring phase of glory rank & total games played. In the early years, this probably didn't impact things too much, but in year 2024 here, it's just plainly unfair for 12 year old accounts who are stacking on more and more handicaps for being active. This is especially true due to how many people are playing alt boosting, which all of those have very low glory ranks and total games played, yet are being smurfed. These two metrics just need to be gutted out of the algorithm. They are definitely weighing down the progress of old accounts that have been very active. Why do you think there are so many bad Barons out there? Because these newer accounts benefit easier match making with those metrics.

Nah Nah

Listen to what @Mne Malo Tebya.2965 is telling this thread man. He's already explaining to you why. The fact that you don't understand any of this is actually relieving and reassuring to me that you are not a win trader or throw patsy.

Nah That's like saying: "No one would have played dungeons or fractals if they would have been 5 man parties, and absolutely no one would ever party or squad up in wvw". What you're saying is just this clinging onto the idea of being used to solo queue. The same people who play now would still play. If you made them try something new, they just might find that they like it. In fact, I be willingly to bet that 98% of the community who vouches against 5man premades now, would vouch that they liked it better after seeing how much it would actually improve match quality. Yeah, because win trading, bots, multi-boxing, f2p accounts weren't a massive issue in that era. Back then the queue system actually worked. Now, it doesn't. If you want to seriously argue this, you can't avoid how much things have changed from then, to now. We don't have the population for it anymore. They need to be condensing queues, not creating more queues. Dude this isn't difficult. We aren't talking year 1 try-hard formations attempts to make a team on VC good enough to compete in the ESL. We are talking say "Gold 2 players" posting an LFG that says "Gold 2+" in the ranked LFG. This is absolutely no different than a fractal LFG saying something like "Fresh Recs" or "T4+Recs" or "CMs + T4s". You wouldn't even need to barely speak to your team mates. Just get in the LFG with other Gold 2s if you're Gold 2 and push the queue button, or whoever it is you want to play with. Except due to the hoops of rampant match manipulation, the population is getting lower and lower, and pushing a button to wait in a queue is getting longer and longer and the pool of players is too small to even create game quality match making, IF you can get into a game where there aren't throw PUGs on your team. There aint bigger rings & hoops of fire preventing you from having "fun" than the ridiculous amount of match manipulation going on in this community. Ya'all need to stop being so narrow in your points of view about this. You're just conditioned to "what you think is normal" and you're not able to see out of it. Um, no It's pvp. This is a competitive game mode. Years and years ago before games added rank numbers, I was sitting in a basement with my friends playing on Nintendos, trying just as hard or harder at pvp games than I do now. Pvp games are competitive my guy. That's why it's pvp. Well that goes directly into what I'm saying, Endo. If they want to play more frequent games, they can stop queue dodging each other. It's as simple as that. This is the way it's supposed to be to begin with. Reenabling 5man queues would just solve so many problems. I'm telling you if they ran a 2 week beta test of this as a mini season, people wouldn't be arguing with me on this anymore. It's true. I don't care so much about soft manipulations. I really don't. It's the synch queueing as a squad bull**** that drove me off the game mode. I don't even play ranked anymore due to it.

Not gonna lie, I'm also a bit confused as to how they can pump right through the creation of massive zones like Cantha maps & all of SOTO and now Janthir, but they can't finish a pvp map? I dunno man, maybe there is something I'm just not understanding.

HOW TO MAKE THIS NEW GAME MODE GG That's what we all felt about Courtyard/Stronghold, but the way it was implemented, everyone just went back to Conquest and there are several reasons why. I'm worried the same thing will happen with this new mode. They need to provided exclusive rewards/titles/tournaments/reasons in general for players to want to play the new game mode, otherwise its fate will end up just like Courtyard/Stronghold. But they cannot divide the queues. New players don't want to grind a mode that the veteran players are not playing. No one wants to feel like "they are playing the stepping stone mode". Anyone who joins pvp in general is inherently a competitive player. These types of players want to get involved in and begin learning the main mode everyone is playing as soon as possible. After all, you're not going to learn Conquest until you go in and start playing Conquest. I get the idea behind what they are doing, but I have a few things to say about how to implement this correctly so it is successful, and Arenanet would be wise to read this and consider it, coming from a player who's been here since day 1 release with nearly 31,000 games played in pvp, who knows this community and the flow of its history quite well. I'm not even being a negative nancy troll here. I'm being completely serious: The real reason why Courtyard/Stronghold failed is because you gave us a CHOICE of which modes to enter queues on. This inherently divided the player base, which put people into a position of being made to choose between: "Should I queue into this mode or that mode? The population is higher in this mode, I guess I'll queue that one mode only." People chose Conquest for several reasons. Mainly because it isn't a simple training mode. It is the more competitive mode. There is just a lot more of a technical game to be played with elaborate strategies than the other modes. No one wants to go from "a high level of mental stimulation" to "a moderate level of mental stimulation". The competitive players want mental stimulation and they will always hover to the game mode that does this the best. Even the new players who are looking to be competitive, feel the same way. Players do want to play Courtyard/Stronghold from time to time, they are fun. But due to the CHOICE of "which queue should I enter?" they get ignored. The correct implementation would have been to make say Unranked, just involve those modes as map selections in the roulette wheel. This way the player base is not being divided, we are all in the same Unranked queue, but now from time to time, we get a chance to select Courtyard instead of Skyhammer or Legacy, or select Stronghold over Temple or Forest. Guarantee you in 2024 here, everyone would enjoy that. We want reasons to play those maps, it's just the population is seriously too low to divide the player base. We all need to be playing in the same queue nowadays or we get some very real problems entering queues that never draw enough players to begin. It would also be enjoyable to see occasional ATs that hosted Courtyard/Stronghold as well, rather than just Conquest or now 2v2s. I mean the content is there, use it. Just don't make us have to CHOOSE between different queues, because everyone will only choose Conquest. If they want this mode to be successful at all, it will either 1) need to be superior to Conquest in mental stimulation so players begin identifying it as the new competitive mode, or 2) Be implemented in a way that doesn't divide player population amongst different queues. If it is another separate queue to choose from, everyone is going to ignore it. It'll get a week of activity for people to get achievements and then players will be right back in Conquest queues. Most importantly, remember that the people who have been asking for a new game mode are all the veteran players, not new players. New players have been asking for an in-game tutorial for Conquest "They clearly want to learn Conquest". It's the veteran players who have been asking for a new technical competitive game mode. Look, the players don't want to have to choose between this mode or that mode due to individual queue systems. The population is too small for it to work. What they want is VARIETY in the one queue we are all in. The only way to achieve this, is to put these modes together into one queue. Just put all of these new modes together in the same map roulette shuffles. And for crying out loud, make more ATs different. Players want reasons to see a fun Stronghold AT or a Courtyard AT or more 2v2s or w/e this new mode is going to be. Just whatever you do Arenanet, don't make the new pvp game mode have to compete against Conquest in "making players have to choose which queue to enter" because you already know what's going to happen there. We want the new mode to be convenient to play and succeed. Just put this stuff together in the same queue in a roulette shuffle. This is real easy to solve.

You're missing the point. People will win trade, whether it is solo queue, duo queue, triple, quad, or 5man premade. The more slots in your team that are open for PUG rolls, the higher your chances are of getting throws. But in a 5man premade, there are no spots open for PUG throws and people will have to actually beat your team to deal you losses, rather than get easy wins through throwing. Imagine a queue system like ATs, where ONLY 5man premades are allowed. In this event, sure you'll have multiwindow kids trying "keyword there" to queue only against their own multi-boxed teams for easy wins. But what you're not looking deeply enough into is how this would make such a better queue environment and even for moderation, and actually even help to separate the win traders from the organic queuers: They'll be waiting so much longer for games. When they can't distribute and mix/mash up solo queued alts, the algorithm will identify when a clear blocking of players has gone against each other too many times, and it will begin to try harder and harder to avoid making that match. This will also make it more difficult for them to moderate actual rating gains/losses for the alts they're orchestrating because they'll have to be siphoning rating off of ONLY alts that are always throwing, which means the ratings will be low as hell. They won't have actual players to throw on to siphon their rating. This will make the process of performing these multi-boxed throws extremely obnoxious and boring, which would serve as a general deterrent for people to even want to do it to begin with. Because you're not gonna log in and run 6 or 8 games for a +14 on each game to get ahead for the day. You'd be looking at grinding some +4s for 20-30 games to get the same kind of boost. Then we are also talking about queue dodging will be more difficult for them. Because then they are trying to synch in 5 full alts in a premade into their premade, instead of a squad of solos who can fill slots into many games. So the amount of times they'd need to "decline match - reenter queue" would get to be very very boring and tedious after awhile, especially when the algorithm realizes these certain accounts have gone against each other too many times. Again, it would be another natural deterrent. It would also be much much much easier for the legitimate community to straight queue dodge the janky teams they don't want to play against. It's a lot harder to queue dodge 5 cheaters who are yolo being placed amongst several matches, than it is to queue dodge them when they are in a single team only going into one queue at a time. This really would encourage the win traders to pull their jank in their own games, entirely separate from the organic queuers. If they want to drop your rating, they'll have to queue normally and actually do it for real against your 5man team. No easy games from 2 throws going AFK on your team. It would also quite literally "line-up" the win trading activity to become soooo unbelievably visible, that it would be easy for any Arenanet dev to just peer into some matches at times, and very clearly see who is performing bull****, when you got some team of 5 guys trying to queue into a team of 5 mult-boxes all day. It would be insanely easy to spot from the amount of queue declines, accounts going against same accounts too many times, and god forbid they go into spectate and see an obvious scenario of 5 bots or AFKs standing there letting one team win. Going back to 5man queues is the only way forward if they want the ranked game mode to heal. I know it sounds so insanely inconvenient to have to socialize with others and form your own team, but I'm telling you, it's the only way at this point. And honestly guys, it is no more or less inconvenient as opening the LFG and joining a fractal group. You guys need to get over this "let's save solo queue" dream. It doesn't work, it's not going to change anything, and it will backfire on you when you realize the win trading is even more difficult to play through when you aren't allowed to have a good partner to duo with you. Again, your chances of being effected by win trading greatly rise, the more people we drop from 5man to 4, to 3, to 2, and then to 1 when you have only PUGs.

He's not trolling. If you have a 5 man premade, there are no ways for a person to synch queue in a throw onto your team. If you have a 4 man team, there is 1 slot open that could land a PUG throw. If you have a 3 man team, there are 2 slots open that could end up as throws. If you are in a duo, there are 3 slots open in your team that can land throws. If you are solo, there are 4 slots open in your team that can land as throws. I've been trying to explain the obvious nature of this to you guys for years.