Sundoor.5630

Yesterday there were two really wacky matches. An overall well performing team with 1-2 very low ranked players and a team of complete lemons with one decent player. It was a no-effort 0 death easy win. +4 rating. Next match, matchmaking switched the decent player with me. Otherwise same. Unwinnable game. -20 rating.

Answering the OP question: Rewards Sometimes a bit of fun, sometimes a bit of frustration I completely stopped caring about ranking, I only care about playing well, so losses are not that stressful anymore - there is really no point caring about ranking in a PVP system that heavily incentivizes playing FOTM builds and match manipulation.

Cannot do anything even if I restart the game it starts loading back there After the game finally let me back in (not in PVP) and tried to PVP again, again to Hall of the Mists, it became an endless loading loop again... edit: confirmed by multiple players

Almost definitely a graphics driver issue. Is GW2 the only game with this problem? Is it a new problem? If it is new, then a driver update might be buggy, and you might need to roll back with the driver version. Also some computer setups just hate the crap that is installed with the driver (you know the fluffy nonsense stuff that is supposed to enhance gaming but does the exact opposite, like Adrenaline for AMD). There is usually the option in the installer to install only the driver. If there is no option, there are workarounds to manually install just the driver (I needed to do this on a newly purchased Radeon 5600XT) It might also be a VRAM issue, I recommend dumbing down the graphics settings in the game and/or removing GPU support from your web browser so that it is truly dedicated to the game. Also, have you tried running GW2 in a window? What happens if you alttab then? Good luck

What KINDA worked for me is the solution to change the "Target" of the GW2 shortcut to "<whateverisyourgw2installfolder>\Gw2-64.exe" -assetsrv origincdn.101.arenanetworks.com -patchconnections 20 Got the game downloaded to a playable state, then it crapped out. But once you play the game it "remembers" the already downloaded files, so it doesn't start over every time. Took about 3 cycles to fully download the game. After having many random crashes lately it was advised (both official and unofficial sources) to reinstall the game. I wish I hadn't. It took about 8 hours with a lot of forum and reddit reading to finally get it to work. THIS IS A PUSSYCAT TRAVESTY. IT IS A PURRING KITTEN SHAME. WHOEVER DEVELOPED THIS IS A BIG FELINE. This is a YEARS-old issue. I wonder how many potential customers Anet lost just they are too cheap to either develop a good content delivery system, or pay for one. I mean hello? It's 2023. Downloading something is the basicest tomcat thing.

Hehe, yeah, I actually discussed this phenomenon in a different topic. They way the system is designed, it is very hard to advance as skill only marginally affects outcomes. Aaaaaand yet we now have a single person in the legendary division with 150% more wins than losses... those must be legit numbers 😄

I've seen quite a number of posts by veterans having "good old times" nostalgia. I started this game last year, but as I got more experienced, I see what their problem is now. Again, I play gold2 so if this doesn't apply to plat+ then sorry. sPVP has too much condi/boon spam. In a teamfight if you don't have stability or stability is on CD, you will be CCed endlessly, I remember getting killed on my tanky build without ever having a chance to pop my heal skill (well... any skill - my stunbreak was on CD) by being lifted, ragdolled, stunned etc. Healing skill just kept resetting. And it wasn't a result of smart execution by the opposing team, this was a bunch of random professions spamming their skills in a chaotic teamfight. On the other hand those who have plenty access to stability/block/aegis are outright unCCable (spellbreakers, guardians usually) - which breaks professions relying on CC for survival With some builds you can be near immune to projectiles - these days I play mace+shield tanky mechanist and against a deadeye I dont even have to use heals, I'm basically immune to their build Probably you can name plenty more examples such as the above. My point is Reduce the duration of all boons and all conditions. In addition, dont let nonstackable boons and conditions stack duration in sPVP. Stacking might, burning, confusion etc. is fine. Stacking stability, stun, ragdolling already prone people etc. are not good. Someone gets prone, stands up, gets launched? Fine. Someone gets prone, gets pushed on the ground by a launch, gets lifted while still prone, and gets stunned while lifted? Not good. Stunlocks are fine as long as they require precise execution. Just random spamming of abilities resulting in a stunlock is not fun to anyone.

That's pretty much how my games are. Usually a streak of 3-4 wins followed by 3 losses on an endless loop.

The entire PVP system as it is today is biased towards resulting in imbalanced results outside of the top tier plays. The reasons are: The matchmaking system wants you to play instead of wait (nothing wrong with that) - if you PVP in less busy hours, you get large variations in ratings between players Even a single AFK/throwing player/bot will result in a hugely imbalanced result The game has extreme build diversity (both a good and bad thing) - a certain set of builds will completely wreck another set - imagine a CC heavy team vs a team that lacks Stability. Players dont discuss/change builds in lower tier play (they don't in gold and lower anyway) Anet is kind of in a no-win situation here - how the game is played is so different platinum+ compared to the rest, that if you balance for the top tiers you create imbalance in the lower tiers screwing 90+% of the population. However if you balance for lower tiers the top tiers will be horribly imbalanced and you screw the top 10% who actually know how to pvp. It's an unsolvable problem. Exactly why you see people whining about balance all the time no matter what patch comes out.

I'm sure in most of your games the player with least caps, defense, revive etc. is the most valuable and contributive Please read again. Didn't suggest stats are the be all end all. But stats are a very good indicator of performance. A player with good stats should be rewarded for effort. A loss will still be a loss, but at least you wont get -20 while having 4 top stats. Which is quite nonsense.

Yes, this. For 100% clear, severe offences, such as intentional manipulation of ranked or AT games, account sharing, repeated racist abuse etc. they should just perma ban the offender. You lose a couple of customers, sure, but I think it is a necessary sacrifice in order for the rest of the playerbase not to lose faith in the system And a lot of this can be automated I think. First, as discussed by myself and others above, there are not that many real bad apples. Also I kinda agree not to jump on every single reported player (many times reports are just used to call out a scapegoat or a less skilled player) but if someone gets 10+ reports in a single day, it is pretty clear that something is going on.

Which region is this? I've been playing for 10 months now and only seen bots once during an automated tournament. Also, in normal ranked pvp, how do bots get past the bronze division?

Very few people are actually bad to the bone. Most of them _become_ malicious by being frustrated. Some people don't require much, the inherent stress of PVP is enough. But there are also many that are pushed over the edge by the little systemic annoyances. I think in game design for a large number of players, developers should strive to eliminate as much frustration of the system as possible. Also look up Philip Zimbardo's The Psychology of Evil TED talk, same rules apply here as well, actually he highlights the lack of consequences as one of the primary contributors. Exactly my point. The rating system combined with GW2's PVP mechanics actually prevent people to become Legendary ranked without resorting to manipulation. That is because the rating system does not rate your individual performance, it rates the performance of the set of random teams you had the fortune/misfortune to participate in. If you are really good, then you lift every team's performance, but this contribution is always marginal Unlike, say, League of Legends, unless the skill difference is huge, a single person cannot carry a match, while at the same time a single bad performing person can 100% lose a match. Sure you can be MVP, contributing a lot to win (your rating slowly improves after all if you get better) but it is always a nudge towards winning, never a carry per say. Combine this with the bias the system has to push you towards your average rating, it is not hard to understand why almost no one is organically in the legendary tier. Edit: Currently in the world I play in there is only one person in Legendary tier. with 1850ish rating. While I do not know the statistical distributions, in chess a rating of 1800 should account for about 2% of all PVP players Take a look at the below ranking distribution of LoL, diamond+ is the equivalent of legendary https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59af2189c534a58c97bd63b3/1623766079478-NSNKONSUFMHDZU6JYP8S/League+of+Legends+rank+distribution+June+2021+Season+11.jpg?format=1000w I think in GW2 the legendary tier is underrepresented, and I think the reasons I outlined above are to blame

The more and more I do sPVP the more I'm convinced, that it's not mostly played by kittens. People on average play nice with each other, and I don't think the PVP population would be any different. However just as in driving (road rage) a stressful environment can bring out the worst in people who can't handle that stress. PVP is inherently stressful, there is no fixing there, but I think Anet did not consider minimizing the effects of its virtual environment to make sure the systems around PVP don't add to that stress. Civil engineering actually considers this factor pretty seriously, and so should it be in virtual environments. Moreover it is surprising to see that PVE has a LOT of systemic safeguards to reduce toxicity and the same philosophy is notably lacking in PVP. For example people having their own loot drops. Those that are old enough might remember old-school MMOs where the boss only dropped ONE item. Remember the drama that happened over and over? Individualized loot made it go away. Now most of you who read this will, about now, scream BALANCE! Personally, I don't think balance is a big factor here. The game is pretty well balanced considering the enormous diversity of professions and builds. It is an impossible task to balance it perfectly, but we should all be aware of this. If you want a perfectly balanced game there is always chess, go etc. Glicko-2 might also be suspect to increase toxicity as it basically assumes that people play at their peak capacity in their preferred roles, playing current meta etc. While it is possible at the top level of this game, the vast majority of players play in teams with random builds and no pre-discussion of strategy. Generally speaking this rating system is unfit for 90%+ of all players, but I cannot offer any constructive contribution here as I am not a mathematician. I am not sure if better rating systems exist specifically tailored for 5v5 (maybe MOBAs have better rating systems?). Here are my - I think - feasible recommendations to reduce the toxicity of the PVP environment in GW2 specifically: The rating is system is biased towards keeping you locked in a certain rating level As said earlier, I am not very familiar about the minute details of Glicko-2, but I know that it was an improvement of the Elo system as it mutes the effects of winning and losing streaks and rewards consistency. Unfortunately in GW2 PVP it is difficult to stay consistent (as far as your wins and losses go), maybe it is just me, but it is really unusual to have alternating wins and losses. Usually it is a streak of 3-5 wins followed by a streak of 3-5 losses. The scoring system is such, if your skill rating is 1300, if you have a streak of wins that pushes it to 1350, the algorithm considers that a swing and will punish you harshly for any loss. I believe that is why you see a +13, +11, +10 and then a -18, -16. The same thing is true for going under your normal rating. This effect is exactly to blame why you see people with a lot more wins than losses not progressing, but also people with a lot more losses also hovering around their original rating even though they no longer contribute as much (maybe their go-to build was nerfed). Seeing hard-earned wins yielding only +13 and then a -18 from a loss due to an afk I believe incurs a massive negative psychological impact. A perceived undeserved punishment creates a lot of frustration while a seemingly undeserved reward barely gives you any positive feeling. Recommended solutions: Reduce the impact of events out of your control (that have nothing to do with your skill) Monitor player performance during the game. Damage dealt, damage received, healing done, capping done, defense done, including secondaries (Capricorn bell, Skyhammer etc.). If a player's per-minute normalized combined score of all these is lower than -2 standard deviations its a 100% clear indication of an AFK or an intentional throw. This player would receive, say, 150% of the negative score as it would be with a normal loss, while the teammates would not receive a negative score (just as in disconnects) and the opposing team would receive, say, 50% of the positive score they would normally receive. If the normalized combined score is lower than -1 standard deviation, but higher than -2 standard deviations, it is a sign that either the matchmaking system put a much lower skilled player in the team or an otherwise correctly rated player is out of their element (new build try out, new profession etc.). Either way the team with this player is almost 100% sure to incur a loss and the scoring system should take this into account by lowering both the negative and positive scores by a little. Make individual contribution matter more People who give their all and truly shine should not receive the same reward/punishment as those who either don't care or even actively work against their team. People who have a combined score higher than the match average OR if they earn a top stat should receive a little higher score for winning and a milder negative score for losing. Does not have to be a lot to go a long way, say +-2. Make scoring more transparent People tend to assume unfairness, hostility, and other negative emotions if they do not know who or what is on the other side. Opaque systems make people assume that the system is working against them. I think it would go a long way if the scoring system would detail at least a bit why a person received a certain score. Say you get a -18. Normally you would either assume that you, an ace player, were put in a team of idiots causing you to lose against lower rated players. People would be unlikely to think that this is just Glicko trying to normalize your score. So instead of just a -15, it could be detailed say -10 default loss score, +1 for rating difference, -4 streak normalization, -2 ending score difference. This way people would understand better that this wasn't the fault of 'idiotic' team mates, in fact they were lower rated in this game than the average. Limit the effectiveness of duo-queue Playing with a friend is great, but in the perspective of the vast majority of the player base who PVP alone this is a sort of unfair advantage. I think duo-queue should be retained, but should yield slightly less rewards in ratings due to the increased consistency compared to playing alone (and the possibility that you might be carried by a friend). Lack of positive and negative reinforcement In order to create a less toxic environment, good behavior should be rewarded and bad behavior should be punished. Currently it seems bad behavior is only very mildly if at all punished, while good behavior and fair play yields exactly zero reward. Recommended solutions: Make the dishonor record count Reports actioned by Anet, massive numbers of unactioned reports, game throws and afks (as detailed above) should automatically yield a tangible stain on the dishonor record. Players with a high dishonor score should not get ANY PVP reward pips at all for losing (but should still get for winning). The system should allow for the occasional personal mistake (some bad words in a stressful situation, or an unintentional afk, eg. due to life event) without punishment and should primarily target repeat offenders. The dishonor record should slowly go away. Consistently serious offenders should be barred from PVP for a longer period. If you cannot clean up your dishonor record over a long period of time, the PVP community is better without you. Reward consistent good behavior People who have a consistent record of good behavior ie zero to minimal entries on their dishonor record should get a fair play reward of +1 pip both for losing and winning. Always allow players to reconnect to a match The system should be ironclad, in case of a random disconnect due to game crash, ISP etc. always allow players to rejoin a match I believe the above changes would go a long way to make the PVP environment nicer as people's ratings and rewards will be less dependent on other people and things out of their control, resulting in less blame and hostile behavior against their teammates. At the same time the above would not hurt the top echelons in the game who truly deserve their high ratings. It would also give both positive and negative incentives for people to be just a little nicer to each other. I am honestly not expecting anything to change, but still felt good to brainstorm ideas of viable fixes.

Today logged in for some PVP. First match, the game crashed (why does this game crash on my decent computer is another discussion....................). Previously when relogging it let me back in the game. Not this time. Got put back in PVP lobby with a dishonor lockout. Match ruined for 4 other people who probably hate my guts now for "bailing" on the match. If PVP wasn't toxic enough. WHY?! Why are decent people punished harshly for game bugs, while malcontents can join and intentionally ruin many games in a row?

Thank you for the suggestion, I've played this build almost exclusively in the past 2 weeks. It is pretty good at gold2 level. In fact I've grown to prefer it over Condition mech due to the sheer prevalence of r*pist professions in the current meta (the ones that get in your face and you cant remove them eg. Spellbreaker). Power mechanist is dead in pvp, so this is a very decent build

On paper it looks like as if it could work, lots of heal skills, boon dispenser bot and elixir gun with lots of synergies. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PegAk6lNwcZesWWJe6SrRVA-z5YXGZmAVXAGNAA Is it viable or I'm going to get hate? (rhetoric question, mechs get hate by default no matter what you do :D)

It would be very good if people could personalize jade mech more. Many a times I was totally confused which mech is mine especially for mechanical genius 🙂

It is very strange. In PVP there are quite a number of toxic people who either feel entitled to get carried by others to legendary rank (which is just that... kind of a pointless goal by itself) or just outright malicious, for what reason I dont know. I agree that it is partially Anet's fault that people who are reported by dozens of others can keep joining in games, completely destroying all the fun. It is ironic, because in PVE this game has one of the nicest communities I've ever seen in an MMO

Been playing since June 2022, sPVPing almost on a daily basis. Despite what many on the forums say, the system itself is fine. Yea balance issues are there, but there are always going to be, it is impossible to balance out this many professions with this many builds. It is acceptable. Problem is the few toxic players out there. Not too many, but even those few can ruin the game for a lot of others. Many of them just cannot handle the stress that comes with PVP and become prima donnas, but there are others who are just outright MEAN. It can be really disheartening, especially that they can go on and participate in many games in a row, ruining games for around 30 people before they get bored and/or ragequit. It's one thing that bad behavior isn't penalized, but it is another that terrible behavior isn't either (harsh verbal abuse, intentional game throwing etc.). Personally never seen any bots/cheaters in normal ranked games (I'm currently gold2)

YOU ARE RIGHT! I even had the description in mind, just forgot to write down, let me make up for it: The Blade Runner They are naturals at performing Voight-Kampff tests on people in online games. They can spot a bot just by the way they are running. They excel at finding them in their own teams, but since friendly fire is not a feature of the game they cannot terminate the terminator. They will still try to throw some insults to see if they work as killphrases or override commands, usually to little avail. The Lame Chameleon These players excel at shape-shifting and do so literally after each balance patch. Not in the beginning of course, they have a cocooning period, but an update to Metabattle will prompt the imago to emerge in form of a new Build of the Month (well... 3 months). As they usually never have enough time to mature they are fazed why they keep losing while playing with the 'overpowered' build. Surely must be the teammates' fault.

The Latent Talent Well, no matter the rank, they truly belong to Platinum 3. AT LEAST. It's only the kitten matchmaking system that keeps assigning bronze-level potatohead teammates to them. Their true skill only manifests on those rare occasions when they are assigned to teams higher ranked than them, but then it really does... with a vengeance. Until the next round with the useless nubs again. The Mouser Apparently they have no keyboards, only a mouse, so they can log in, sign up for PVP, accept, choose an arena, but once there they cannot move or type. Truly sad indeed. Somebody please donate them keyboards! The Gladiator Who needs points when you can KILL?! Isn't that the point of PVP? It literally means Players Killing Players. They heavily favor duelist builds, run straight to far in the beginning curse you when you cannot win your 4v3 fight at mid, and will propagate their heroic 1v2, 1v3 etc. fights when the score is 480-300 in the opponent's favor. Prefers chasing and considers fighting on points a tactical disadvantage. The Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde The say hi. They politely tell you what build they have. Participate in discussing tactics. Then they will throw the nastiest things at your head on the first sign of weakness, or just because. Once a Dr. Jekyll turns into Mr. Hyde there is no turning back. The Hairtrigger Often a Dr. Jekyll, these people combust easier than kerosene... and will flame just as much. The moment you identify one, they have already gone ballistic it is already too late. The Strongest Link Obviously the weakest link is you. And you. And that guy over there. And that one is completely useless. Obviously. The Oracle They have a rare gift of predicting the outcome of matches with a very high degree of probability very early on, usually after the first fight. Once The Sight tells them how the match will go, all they have to do is sit back and let Fate do the rest. The Renegade They are the wronged. They are on no one's side, because no one is on their side. They are the loners people only mention in whispers. Don't be happy if you see one in the opponent team. He will come for you next. The Obsessive Close Disorder I go close. No I go close. You kitten useless kitten motherkitten I am going close idc. They usually come in pairs. They go to close paired too.

Thanks for the answers, but honestly, the difference seems to be overblown. Is there a _real_ difference between pressing 10 buttons while having breakfast and pressing 5 while having breakfast? Are people jealous because their class has to press 10 buttons in order not to be a slacker during raid/fractal etc rather than 5 buttons? FYI, any "2 button play" is called slacking for any class Did anyone other than actually impaired people choose mechanist because it requires fewer buttons to be pressed? I certainly didn't. Just trying to find the rationale why it has to be put behind everyone else stat-wise. Edit: an analogy: this whole argument seems like which one is the more intense riff, Smoke on the Water or Whole Lotta Love. Sure on paper Whole Lotta Love is more intense, but does that mean that Smoke on the Water deserves less fans? Also as far as actual effort goes, they are both pretty simple. And for the record there is no Through The Fire And Flames in GW2, just riffs between the former two in complexity.

Not a veteran yet, can someone educate me? While I lack the jaded clarity of veteran players, I found so far that all classes (those that I tried, Mechanist, Holosmith, Tempest, core Thief, Deadeye) are low-intensity in PVE and all of them are high-intensity in PVP. In PVE I found everything is just muscle memory. While there are significant differences in the learning curves (tempest vs mechanist comes to mind), once learned it's just autopilot. Where is the high intensity in that? Holosmith more intensive than Mechanist? How? I haven't found any difference. Are there differences in the number of things to do in order to be completely balls-to-the-wall 100.00% efficient maxed out damage dealing so that the boss dies a whole tenth of a second faster? Is there a thing as 'low-intensity' in PVP? Can you 'AFK-win'? Maybe I don't have the years yet but I havent seen that happen. Whichever team has an AFK loses. Do you mean it is just standing around spamming skills randomly? Well go ahead, try it. Maybe it works in wood division, but not S1+ and anything below that is just people learning the game. Does auto-attack strength measure the performance of a class? Can any class 'AFK' out-damage another that is playing attentively? I need answers :(

Very helpful, thank you!