Quality of Matches, Soft Reset, Matchmaking, PvP Novice Development, Duo Disparities (Rating between partners)

[Gundam Style.8495]

The long title is just about everything I wanted to rant about discuss. From my observation the quality of matches is being affected by the overall liberty the matchmaker is being given to expand matches for the highest rated players. Who ultimately gets affected by this? The pvp casuals, the novices, and the potentials. The should have matches stewed together with low golds and high silvers, high golds and plat tier one, silvers and bronzes. But, matches should not have plat tier 2 and 3 and legendary in gold one matches, ever, period. (Sacrificing quality to get the highest rated players games is terrible for the mode. It is literally admitting you are sacrificing the average and largest player group for the 0.01% of the game. That is what is called poor management, and a symptom of terrible business)

(more on this)

Soft resets are probably something that need to go away. This has a way of elevating lower skilled and novice players into matches they don't belong, at that moment in their development. Finished the previous season at 900 and get a (1200+900)/2 little boost to 1050. They are handed a free 150 rating points higher, and now can be fodder to more higher level players. Now, the common advice is that players should avoid the first few days of the season until the dust settles because of the novice rush and rusty players may affect match quality. You know who doesn't avoid the first few days? The highest tier players, and even if they wait a little longer, they are getting all of these sprats fed into their matches. The volatility and rating gain makes up the lower rating the would have normally made from fodder matches. This is one of the reason they get to (big number and 0) early in the season.

(hold this one too)

Duos allow some players to play with friends, and it also has a major flaw. Unfortunately, anyone can play with anyone of any rating, even if they are actually a legendary player and the other is also a legendary but on a smurf account. The matchmaker does not take an average, nor does it only consider the highest rated player in the duo. It considers each player of the team formed by the matchmaker, and being a duo has no weight on that. So, a 1800 player with an 1100 rated smurf can get some easier matches as the match maker will try to balance out the other team with an equal handicap. duo's should only consider the highest rated player, or duo should only be within 100 points of each other, or they should go away. It cannot stay as it. This is ruining match quality, as it is being gamed.

The Grand Conclusion

1. Duos might not be healthy for the game, and if they are, the rating must only account for the highest rated player as it currently considers each, verified by the code and psuedo code provided by the developers.
2. Soft resets should probably be eliminated at anything below the average rating, so they can continue to develop, and not suddenly be placed in harder games or lose massive rating and not understand.
3. The range for the matchmaker needs to be halted at 300 for legend, 200 for plats. Watch for the golds, adjust from there.
4. The main purpose is to improve match quality, reduce gaming, and give the novices a chance to fight other novices without any top 10 in their games. The only time that low golds, silver, and bronze players should see these guys is on stream, not in game.

 

 

It will make a slower game, at first, for the players that are actively gaming and dodging and smurfing. It will make it harder to maintain a rating without fighting equal opponents. BUT, it will improve the game for a majority of the players and perhaps we can finally see some growth.

 

TL:DR Cater the game to the majority and not the 0.01% TOP

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

4 hours ago, Gundam Style.8495 said:

The matchmaker does not take an average, nor does it only consider the highest rated player in the duo. It considers each player of the team formed by the matchmaker, and being a duo has no weight on that. 

^ I don't know how at any point that we nearly unanimously started believing the same people who exploit the feature.

"Some dev said so in a stream once that it uses the highest rated player's rank-" Objection, hearsay. The matchmaking algorithm is available on the wiki and there is nothing in it related to DuoQ specifically that says they aren't treated like individual players in matchmaking.

 

DuoQ doesn't even need to be removed. It just needs to go away from SoloQs. All teams need to go away from SoloQs.

It should be split between Solos/Squads. Ranked is most fun and competitive when everyone plays at the same advantages/disadvantages and there is scant chance for misadventure.

The moment that changed, Ranked became a bad joke.

Merged Solo/Duo is so easy manipulable that former wintraders hardly even need to wintrade anymore. Replaced by match manipulation through boring metagaming that revolves around avoiding anything remotely close to competition.

4 hours ago, Gundam Style.8495 said:

It will make a slower game, at first, for the players that are actively gaming and dodging and smurfing. 

This made me want it more. They should count themselves lucky to still be playing the game at all after 3 years of blatant match manipulation.

And bless the people that used DuoQ honestly just to play with friends. You guys will be fine without random SoloQs. We will also get to see just how many of you there are. 🤔

[Hotride.2187]

I would play ranked conquest a lot more if I would get matched with g3/p1 only instead if being used as fodder for p2+ players. p2+ players go "why are you in my game" (peppered with whatever insults they could think of), I go "why are you in MY game"...

I'm used to playing against more skilled opponents, since I duel a lot in wvw. But there no1 bitches about losing/winning. At most they get bored with you and go duel someone else.

There is even this really skilled ele that one of my duel buddies mentioned, as an example of "special" spvp players that badmouth a lot. Imagine getting famous that way (we both know the ele and have the same experience of the ele being in the game and shittalking all game).

Edited May 31, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[Gundam Style.8495]

Poor balance definitely hurts the game, but I am certain that these cannon fodder matches are one of the worst thing about this mode. It is almost as if it is on purpose, and it serves no purpose except to speed up the games for an extreme minority. Quality over quantity. What is the point of a quick match when it still takes about 7 minutes to get stomped out? Where is the thought process at? It is clear to see that waiting 5 minutes, 10 minutes for a good match is better than 2-3 minutes for an one sided asswhooping. This is infuriating, and no wonder why it is as dead as it is.

[JTGuevara.9018]

 Yes, I agree with you on everything regarding duos and soft resets, but the matchmaking is just a disaster. It can never be fixed. Ever. It needs to be abolished. The algorithm uses a Glicko-2 system which basically enforces a 50/50 win rate (the math is not important, here) . People can exploit and game the system by smurfing and shooting up the ladder by getting winning streaks and then stop playing or playing sparingly. It's been a thing for years. It's the only way to actually "progress".

But yup. The 1% doesn't care. Anet listens to them anyway. In an actual competitive environment, the 1% rotates. Not in this game.

[Khalisto.5780]

On 5/30/2022 at 10:29 PM, Gundam Style.8495 said:

The long title is just about everything I wanted to rant about discuss. From my observation the quality of matches is being affected by the overall liberty the matchmaker is being given to expand matches for the highest rated players. Who ultimately gets affected by this? The pvp casuals, the novices, and the potentials. The should have matches stewed together with low golds and high silvers, high golds and plat tier one, silvers and bronzes. But, matches should not have plat tier 2 and 3 and legendary in gold one matches, ever, period. (Sacrificing quality to get the highest rated players games is terrible for the mode. It is literally admitting you are sacrificing the average and largest player group for the 0.01% of the game. That is what is called poor management, and a symptom of terrible business)

(more on this)

 

Agreed. Average players should have the best match quality as possible, early 2018 when i started playing it was very rare getting matched with any plat player before you got past 1450 rating, why cuz there was this "wall of casuals" preventing this to happen, the moment this ppl started feeling bad and leave and matchmaking getting worse and worse. Late 2019 i woulg get past 1350 and be matched with top 50 or higher duos.

On 5/30/2022 at 10:29 PM, Gundam Style.8495 said:

Soft resets are probably something that need to go away. This has a way of elevating lower skilled and novice players into matches they don't belong, at that moment in their development. Finished the previous season at 900 and get a (1200+900)/2 little boost to 1050. They are handed a free 150 rating points higher, and now can be fodder to more higher level players. Now, the common advice is that players should avoid the first few days of the season until the dust settles because of the novice rush and rusty players may affect match quality. You know who doesn't avoid the first few days? The highest tier players, and even if they wait a little longer, they are getting all of these sprats fed into their matches. The volatility and rating gain makes up the lower rating the would have normally made from fodder matches. This is one of the reason they get to (big number and 0) early in the season.

(hold this one too)

i agree top players get a better deal with placements, but not sure how big of a deal this is, top players are going to win anyways (exploiting or not), some of those casual will lose, some will get carried to higher rated till their luck is gone and they matched against top players. Removing soft reset will prolly do more good than harm, max it will happen is the ppl that are already on top of the leaderboards get some super inflated mmr.

On 5/30/2022 at 10:29 PM, Gundam Style.8495 said:

Duos allow some players to play with friends, and it also has a major flaw. Unfortunately, anyone can play with anyone of any rating, even if they are actually a legendary player and the other is also a legendary but on a smurf account. The matchmaker does not take an average, nor does it only consider the highest rated player in the duo. It considers each player of the team formed by the matchmaker, and being a duo has no weight on that. So, a 1800 player with an 1100 rated smurf can get some easier matches as the match maker will try to balance out the other team with an equal handicap. duo's should only consider the highest rated player, or duo should only be within 100 points of each other, or they should go away. It cannot stay as it. This is ruining match quality, as it is being gamed.

duo average mmr is the least of duo q problems

duo q is like the most exploitable feature when it comes to matchmaking

duo allows the only 2 legendary players online to play together and free farm mmr, when the fair thing would be they facing each other

 

Even if they q dodge each other the quality of their teammates will be increadibly low, and they risk losing to a p1+g3+2g2+g1
while their team is like legendary+g2+2g1+s3

Also duo makes wintrade way easier, it doesnt even have to be offhour anymore, duo qs up as a class that is not largely played, right now it would be engi, so their friend or bot or multibox account qs up as engi too, it just needs to be like gold 2, there you go, they're facing each other.

with pop this low it can be done solo q too, duo is just way easier.

 

duo q should just be gone

 

[Khalisto.5780]

On 5/31/2022 at 3:17 AM, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

DuoQ doesn't even need to be removed. It just needs to go away from SoloQs. All teams need to go away from SoloQs.

they have to make 2s and 3s and solo qs. Allowing 2+3 vs 5 will be the same problem as solo vs duos, when lol released this data 2+3 were only winning 30% against 5s, imagine this in gw2, there will be like 2, 3 full teams dodging each other for free mmr

[JTGuevara.9018]

On 5/31/2022 at 2:28 AM, Hotride.2187 said:

I would play ranked conquest a lot more if I would get matched with g3/p1 only instead if being used as fodder for p2+ players. p2+ players go "why are you in my game" (peppered with whatever insults they could think of), I go "why are you in MY game"...

I'm used to playing against more skilled opponents, since I duel a lot in wvw. But there no1 bitches about losing/winning. At most they get bored with you and go duel someone else.

There is even this really skilled ele that one of my duel buddies mentioned, as an example of "special" spvp players that badmouth a lot. Imagine getting famous that way (we both know the ele and have the same experience of the ele being in the game and shittalking all game).

You must be joking. Clearly, you've never read wvw map and team chats. The amount of salt there can fill up the Atlantic Ocean three times over.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

1 hour ago, Khalisto.5780 said:

they have to make 2s and 3s and solo qs. Allowing 2+3 vs 5 will be the same problem as solo vs duos, when lol released this data 2+3 were only winning 30% against 5s, imagine this in gw2, there will be like 2, 3 full teams dodging each other for free mmr

That would be fine too if it was Solos and then 2-3 size Teams. 👍

Separate queues still though, of course.

 

EDIT:

I would not care if DuoQ was straight up deleted. Honestly, I would probably enjoy that a lot more.

The problem is that we tried that, and while we were able to have some fun for a little while the top clowns immediately started whining to get DuoQ back, and Anet caved into their demands almost instantly without any regard for the other side.

There is nothing stopping history from repeating itself if we do this again.

Edited June 1, 2022 by Multicolorhipster.9751
saw earlier comment

[Crab Fear.8623]

1 hour ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

That would be fine too if it was Solos and then 2-3 size Teams. 👍

Separate queues still though, of course.

 

EDIT:

I would not care if DuoQ was straight up deleted. Honestly, I would probably enjoy that a lot more.

The problem is that we tried that, and while we were able to have some fun for a little while the top clowns immediately started whining to get DuoQ back, and Anet caved into their demands almost instantly without any regard for the other side.

There is nothing stopping history from repeating itself if we do this again.

I'm tired of the DUOs.

Remove them from the game, let's all just play solo quest and rotate in a team only conquest cycle.

NO MORE MIXING.

Anet either does this or we know they are boosting their "partners"

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

9 minutes ago, Crab Fear.8623 said:

I'm tired of the DUOs.

Remove them from the game, let's all just play solo quest and rotate in a team only conquest cycle.

NO MORE MIXING.

Anet either does this or we know they are boosting their "partners"

I'm game, but i'm telling you they're going to snake their way back in. They hate competition that much.

I'm not sure Arenanet cares if we know they're boosting their partners. They've done it for 3 years straight now.

 

For the sake of fairness, we need some separate, random arbitrary TeamQ mode that nobody will probably play just to quarantine the counterfeit gods of pvp and their excessive handholding.

Maybe others might end up enjoying it as well, which wouldn't hurt anybody if they did.

[lysico.1297]

There’s just not enough players playing right now. I’m a few wins away from being the top 250. There is no way that I am that good.  I am not.  Mid gold.    So just tells me the player pool is shallow 

Edited June 2, 2022 by lysico.1297

[JTGuevara.9018]

2 hours ago, lysico.1297 said:

There’s just not enough players playing right now. I’m a few wins away from being the top 250. There is no way that I am that good.  I am not.  Mid gold.    So just tells me the player pool is shallow 

It's rare to have someone admit that they're not as good as the system "says" they are. I respect that. And yes, no matter what matchmaking you have, it WILL crumble to the dirt if there are not enough players.

[otto.5684]

I think these changes are great, however the issue is the same, not enough population. From what I understand is that the match making starts with 50 rating disparity. Though it keeps expanding if there is not enough players to que, and thus you get 1,600+ players matched with 1400 or less players. Outside of matches needing 15-30 minutes to start (potentially more) there would not be a solution to this.