Poor new player experience - matches are one-sided way too often

[ShionKreth.1542]

I'm a pretty new player to spvp, and thus far my experience has been that a good 2/3rds of the time my team is so strong they could 4v5 the enemy team and I'm only putting token arrows in my opponents for credit... Or the enemy team is crushing my team so thoroughly there's nothing I could do to make any difference. Why do the teams end up unbalanced so often? It feels like the skill level of the players are nowhere close to each other. I just reached Dolyak rank and it seems even more pronounced than before, which is not making for very satisfying games... and I feel like it's hard to improve when it's like that; win or lose. Does it get any better at higher ranks?

[Shao.7236]

Ranking means nothing.

 

Rating does in ranked only, this is the result of high discrepancy in between ratings, normally games tend to be more interesting the more balanced player skill is in between teams.

[lightDestroyer.1265]

4 hours ago, ShionKreth.1542 said:

I'm a pretty new player to spvp, and thus far my experience has been that a good 2/3rds of the time my team is so strong they could 4v5 the enemy team and I'm only putting token arrows in my opponents for credit... Or the enemy team is crushing my team so thoroughly there's nothing I could do to make any difference. Why do the teams end up unbalanced so often? It feels like the skill level of the players are nowhere close to each other. I just reached Dolyak rank and it seems even more pronounced than before, which is not making for very satisfying games... and I feel like it's hard to improve when it's like that; win or lose. Does it get any better at higher ranks?

When you start playing ranked it will br different. 

[Vancho.8750]

22 minutes ago, lightDestroyer.1265 said:

When you start playing ranked it will br different. 

Yes, it will be worse, lol.

[lightDestroyer.1265]

4 minutes ago, Vancho.8750 said:

Yes, it will be worse, lol.

No,  it won't.  You can carry teams if you have skills. 

[Vancho.8750]

2 minutes ago, lightDestroyer.1265 said:

No,  it won't.  You can carry teams if you have skills. 

And the OP is a new player. So lets put 2 and 2 together.

[THF.9672]

As someone who just started getting into pvp myself, That's just the way this game is.

 

Sure as you get better you can do things that increase your carry potential/increase your teams chance at winning, but at the end of the day it's almost always going to come down to which team gets more dead weight. Which almost always has the matches being pretty one sided.

 

Occasionally You'll get a close match that doesn't feel one sided, but the majority of them are going to be one sided. That's just the reality of solo que that nobody likes to admit.

[Ragnar.4257]

This is, unfortunately, a problem of new players own making. Not you specifically of course.

 

Back in the day, new players didn't like the fact that they had to start from zero and work their way up from right at the bottom of the ratings ladder. "Why should I have to play 100 games against scrubs before I start playing decent players?" they said. "Why should my bad rating from last season handicap me in the next season" they said. So now, new players "default" rating that they start off with, and the rating which the soft-reset between seasons drags players towards, is Gold-tier.

 

If the "default" rating is gold-tier, it means that gold-tier contains a mix of total newbies and seasoned veterans. It makes it impossible for the matchmaker to make balanced matches, because how can the matchmaker know if this 1300 rated player is an "actual" 1300 rated player, or a "defaulted" 1300 rated player.

 

It basically defeats the purpose of a matchmaker, and is why gold-tier is such a clusterfk, and why you generally start to get better games the further away from gold you move.

 

Totally insane decisions all around.

 

There is also just the fact that GW2 is a very "snowbally" game. Even two teams that are quite similar in skill level, once one of them gains an advantage they can easily snowball that to a lead of 200pts or more.

Edited October 10, 2021 by Ragnar.4257

[Zyreva.1078]

While some matches can be very onesided, a big score difference at the end is not neccessarily indicative for a big imbalance between teams. The game can be very "snowbally", especially (but not exclusively) at lower ratings, so winning a very close fight at the start of the game can be pace setting for the rest of the match, because players (on either side!) don't know how to recover from a bad situation and just run in one by one to get farmed. Which does not mean the game is decided at that point, it can very much tilt at any point and the teams end up in the exact opposite situation, so never give up. Also, you don't learn anything by afking in base.

I wouldn't worry too much about the score at the beginning and more about learning how to win fights, how to create winnable fights and which fights to avoid (pro tip: you won't win a 1vs4).

 

@Ragnar.4257 The default rating is 1200 (for ranked, idk about unranked which the op is most likely talking about) and according to the devs, that's the rating, where most new (to ranked) players belong to (and those who don't belong to gold are going to drop out of it very quickly). It is also nothing "new", has been the case at least since we have mmr based rankings (and probavbly even before that). Has nothing to do with "new players not wanting to start at zero".

Edited October 10, 2021 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[lightDestroyer.1265]

2 hours ago, Vancho.8750 said:

And the OP is a new player. So lets put 2 and 2 together.

Well,  if you are a new plater and you think you will win easily,  wrong expectations. 

[ShionKreth.1542]

On 10/10/2021 at 5:35 AM, THF.9672 said:

As someone who just started getting into pvp myself, That's just the way this game is.

 

Sure as you get better you can do things that increase your carry potential/increase your teams chance at winning, but at the end of the day it's almost always going to come down to which team gets more dead weight. Which almost always has the matches being pretty one sided.

 

Occasionally You'll get a close match that doesn't feel one sided, but the majority of them are going to be one sided. That's just the reality of solo que that nobody likes to admit.

Feels bad..

[ShionKreth.1542]

On 10/10/2021 at 7:36 AM, lightDestroyer.1265 said:

Well,  if you are a new plater and you think you will win easily,  wrong expectations. 

My post didn't say anything about winning easily, though - it was that the matches were incredibly one-sided, both in my favor and against. If a single strong player carries the team in ranked, it sounds like it WILL remain the same or worse, as the other guy said. 😛

[Kuya.6495]

There are so many factors that can make a match one sided in unranked or low skill rating ranked, that it's almost not worth considering.  A better use of your time would be to focus on getting better at the game, and finding the professions and specs you most excel  at than worrying about balance that isn't even really relevant until you're at gold 3 skill rating and above. 

 

You will get closer matches are you rise in skill rating, which is not determined by your pvp rank (dolyak, dragon, etc).  When you began the conversation by saying your rank is dolyak, it pretty much told everyone everything they needed to know about how little experience you have with the game mode.

Edited October 15, 2021 by Kuya.6495

[Genesis.5169]

3 hours ago, Kuya.6495 said:

There are so many factors that can make a match one sided in unranked or low skill rating ranked, that it's almost not worth considering.  A better use of your time would be to focus on getting better at the game, and finding the professions and specs you most excel  at than worrying about balance that isn't even really relevant until you're at gold 3 skill rating and above. 

 

You will get closer matches are you rise in skill rating, which is not determined by your pvp rank (dolyak, dragon, etc).  When you began the conversation by saying your rank is dolyak, it pretty much told everyone everything they needed to know about how little experience you have with the game mode.

This is 100% correct your a rare one post more here we need you!

Edited October 15, 2021 by Genesis.5169

[Bazsi.2734]

On 10/10/2021 at 6:10 AM, ShionKreth.1542 said:

I'm a pretty new player to spvp, and thus far my experience has been that a good 2/3rds of the time my team is so strong they could 4v5 the enemy team and I'm only putting token arrows in my opponents for credit... Or the enemy team is crushing my team so thoroughly there's nothing I could do to make any difference. Why do the teams end up unbalanced so often? It feels like the skill level of the players are nowhere close to each other. I just reached Dolyak rank and it seems even more pronounced than before, which is not making for very satisfying games... and I feel like it's hard to improve when it's like that; win or lose. Does it get any better at higher ranks?

Population is low. You cannot make decent matches without enough players queuing at a time. The neglect of the gamemode started years ago, and now after years of rot, this is where we are.
 

The release of EoD might result in an influx of players, "so hold out until then". (or play something else if this terrible matchmaking really annoys you)

Edited October 15, 2021 by Bazsi.2734

[Falan.1839]

Low population is obviously a major issue. Volatility of rating is another factor, a good or bad streak can take you quite far away from where you belong. Obviously this is even a bigger issue at the start of the season with soft MMR resets. Duo Q and other ways to play for LB (off peak queing) can also further distort the rating. It's not uncommon to have players of similar skill level 200 rating apart because of these factors, or even the same player on two accounts (one for tryharding and one just for spamming games casually) with similar rating deviations.

Comp is another issue, one team might end up with a nearly perfect comp of core supp guard, nec, rev/holo, sidenoder and thief, while the other team gets a random DH and hence basically autoloses every teamfight even if their skill level is equal. And lastly, conquest as gamemode has a tendency to snowball, especially on maps like Foefire or Capricorn, so even a very close teamfight that gets decided by one team getting their kill a second earlier and rallying their downed teammate can easily result in a threecap, then leading to a vast score difference when this state is held for a few minutes.

Edited October 15, 2021 by Falan.1839

[anjo.6143]

On 10/10/2021 at 6:45 AM, Ragnar.4257 said:

This is, unfortunately, a problem of new players own making. Not you specifically of course.

 

Back in the day, new players didn't like the fact that they had to start from zero and work their way up from right at the bottom of the ratings ladder. "Why should I have to play 100 games against scrubs before I start playing decent players?" they said. "Why should my bad rating from last season handicap me in the next season" they said. So now, new players "default" rating that they start off with, and the rating which the soft-reset between seasons drags players towards, is Gold-tier.

 

If the "default" rating is gold-tier, it means that gold-tier contains a mix of total newbies and seasoned veterans. It makes it impossible for the matchmaker to make balanced matches, because how can the matchmaker know if this 1300 rated player is an "actual" 1300 rated player, or a "defaulted" 1300 rated player.

 

It basically defeats the purpose of a matchmaker, and is why gold-tier is such a clusterfk, and why you generally start to get better games the further away from gold you move.

 

Totally insane decisions all around.

 

There is also just the fact that GW2 is a very "snowbally" game. Even two teams that are quite similar in skill level, once one of them gains an advantage they can easily snowball that to a lead of 200pts or more.

Such a perfect anwser. This should be an auto message on pvp stuff.

[ShionKreth.1542]

21 hours ago, Kuya.6495 said:

There are so many factors that can make a match one sided in unranked or low skill rating ranked, that it's almost not worth considering.  A better use of your time would be to focus on getting better at the game, and finding the professions and specs you most excel  at than worrying about balance that isn't even really relevant until you're at gold 3 skill rating and above. 

 

You will get closer matches are you rise in skill rating, which is not determined by your pvp rank (dolyak, dragon, etc).  When you began the conversation by saying your rank is dolyak, it pretty much told everyone everything they needed to know about how little experience you have with the game mode.

 

They didn't even need to read that far since it was right in the title that I was a new player. 😛

The issue, however, was that the matches were unsatisfying and that it seems hard to improve when you're utterly stomping or utterly being stomped - that's the 'worry' about balance. 

From the feedback, it seems like that's just how it is and you either grind it out until you can carry your team, or play a different mode. Unfortunate, it seems like it'd be a pretty cool game mode, otherwise, but I think I know why the pool of high level players is not as big as it could be, now.

Edited October 16, 2021 by ShionKreth.1542