Why is there no (easy) way to see the WvW rank of our teammates?

[Sonderm.4639]

Unless I am missing something, the only way to see the WvW rank of players on the same team is to be in a party with them and use the big party frames. Since it is very seldom that a player announces that they just started playing WvW and are looking for help in chat (they are often rewarded for that with snide remarks) the average WvW noob is kind of left on their own.

I think many more experienced players would be more lenient and willing to give advice if they saw the person next to them that keeps dying or is not very effective is new to the game mode by just glancing at their nametag.

 

 

[Knighthonor.4061]

Who kitten cares about ranks? It doesn't denounce skill, just time played. I have a high rank and I can't command a kitten thing. Don't get me started on Borderlands maps

[Jitters.9401]

I agree with the original poster.

 

I would like to have a "New Driver" sign on the person so I can offer advice.

 

I've gone as far as to offer advice to brand new players on the enemy side. Especially tricks on how to kill stealth abusing thieves.

 

Like when you use a "pull" ability on a thief that is in the process us doing his/her "d/p stealth. That move is not an evade.

That thief may be invisible but odds are it is now right in front of you so just murder the empty space in front of you.

 

Using scorpion wire I've taken thieves down fairly often with that little bit of knowledge.

[Dawdler.8521]

5 hours ago, Sonderm.4639 said:

Since it is very seldom that a player announces that they just started playing WvW and are looking for help in chat (they are often rewarded for that with snide remarks)

Yes, because "Hi I'm new and need help teach me everything you know" isnt a particularly good introduction to someone knee deep in the corpses of his enemies currently busy strangling another.

I cant even remember the last time I saw someone asking for advice on anything specific.

[KrHome.1920]

Rank means nothing.

Low rank could be an experienced PvP player entering WvW every now and then, could be an alt accout etc.

On the other hand your high rank server mate could be a keyboardturning zergling that is instadowned in any 2v2 (e.g. when you defend a camp) and less of a threat than any sentry guard.

And seriously, there would be more players insulting newbees as noobs and "go back to PvE" instead of offering constructive advices.

[Caedmon.6798]

2 hours ago, KrHome.1920 said:

Rank means nothing.

Low rank could be an experienced PvP player entering WvW every now and then, could be an alt accout etc.

On the other hand your high rank server mate could be a keyboardturning zergling that is instadowned in any 2v2 (e.g. when you defend a camp) and less of a threat than any sentry guard.

And seriously, there would be more players insulting newbees as noobs and "go back to PvE" instead of offering constructive advices.

Rank means experience. It doesnt mean that youre a good player but it means you know the game mode,or atleast should.

[Svarty.8019]

9 hours ago, Knighthonor.4061 said:

Who kitten cares about ranks? It doesn't denounce skill, just time played. I have a high rank and I can't command a kitten thing. Don't get me started on Borderlands maps

Did you even read the post?

[Sonderm.4639]

9 hours ago, Jitters.9401 said:

I would like to have a "New Driver" sign on the person so I can offer advice.

Sure, doesn't have to be rank. They could add something like FFXIV's sprout icon that you get on your nameplate as a new player. This sprout disappears when you reach max level AND have 100h or so played. But - and that's probably just as important: you can deactivate it on your own if you think it is not necessary to be identified as a new player.

 

Edited July 4, 2022 by Sonderm.4639

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

On 7/4/2022 at 12:02 AM, Knighthonor.4061 said:

Who kitten cares about ranks? It doesn't denounce skill, just time played. I have a high rank and I can't command a kitten thing. Don't get me started on Borderlands maps

Exactly this...

You know how many ppl used to K-train in EotM and ranked up to mithril/diamond that way? You can tell who these ppl are as in a normal fight they arent that great.

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

first u can know the rank roughly if u know how it is described

 

second, as others mentioned: it matters simply NOT. alt accounts can be players with several thousands of ranks... and mostly ktrain/ppters have very high ranks

[Ronin.4501]

The first player I knew who hit rank 10k was an elderly retired lady who played 10-12 hours a day (or more) and simply followed the k-trains.  I doubt she could even solo a camp after all these years.  The only thing rank will truly tell you is whether or not that player has all their WvW rank ability points allocated or not.

[Ronin.4501]

On 7/3/2022 at 9:06 PM, Sonderm.4639 said:

I think many more experienced players would be more lenient and willing to give advice if they saw the person next to them that keeps dying or is not very effective is new to the game mode by just glancing at their nametag.

 

 

I think some more experienced players would be more lenient and willing to give advice, but I think the majority of experienced players can be more harsh and try to stay away from the players who are new and don't have much experience.  Conversely, when I've tried to offer advice to newer players, 9 out of 10 will either offer no response or tell me they're here to get GoBs and how much they hate WvW.  Showing a player's rank doesn't really offer much information on the player themselves.  You can get a much better feel for a player's skill/experience by seeing how they handle themselves in a fight against other players or even in how they fare trying to solo a camp.

[ArchonWing.9480]

1 hour ago, Ronin.4501 said:

I think some more experienced players would be more lenient and willing to give advice, but I think the majority of experienced players can be more harsh and try to stay away from the players who are new and don't have much experience.  Conversely, when I've tried to offer advice to newer players, 9 out of 10 will either offer no response or tell me they're here to get GoBs and how much they hate WvW.  Showing a player's rank doesn't really offer much information on the player themselves.  You can get a much better feel for a player's skill/experience by seeing how they handle themselves in a fight against other players or even in how they fare trying to solo a camp.

Sometimes I actually don't trust experienced players, because some are stuck in their ways and refuse to adapt or learn.  in other words, they are very experienced... at being bad. New players that are willing to do that will quickly become more useful.

It's like I see the same players over the course of years, and you see them doing things like just standing there autoattacking when multiple enemies are charging them, or they ping objectives without context, or they do something dumb like build gate catas.

Then there's  like stuff that might be acceptable if you're new to the game, but would still be kinda bad.  Like, going down somehow in a zerg vs a tower lord with no enemy players. . Or coming in @ full health and being unable to kill an enemy.... in downed state.

I mean yes the balance is crap and nobody wants to learn this crap. You also don't need to actually be good at fighting to be useful in WvW. But this is not the worst part.

Some of these people have the nerve to troll new players for asking simple questions. Maybe it's because they don't have the answer?

In these cases experience tells you the best way is  to wait the 5 seconds it takes them to die and take this opportunity to dps the attackers instead.

 

Edited July 7, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

what u describe are not experienced players tho, just players that have many hours but are kinda eternal newbies.

 

for me it took like 3 months to decide that i wanna play the game more serious, i searched for builds probably first time 1 month after i had discovered Wvw. if u don't do it in the first months, i guess u never will. and we have many never-will ppl at the moment in the game, unfortunately.

 

the balance was problematic, bc anet actually tried to make thing harmless for everyone, but in that way they also stole a lot of damage from worse players. like, those who had in first hand no clue how to do dmg, lost more sources to deal dmg. (things like bubble and herald dmg spam were very easy long time ago and yet effective)

 

so basically, this led to the casual guilds handhold and running in big numbers, so they have like all the advantages possible from this scuffed balance... and many of the good guilds just are month-long on breaks yet. useful combat and competition on 20v20 /25v25 basically dries out in openfield fights.

 

(casual guilds are basically those who raid with 30 or more players, it was usually not done by anyone seriously in 2019-2020 but heavily increased and is the majority of guilds by now...)

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I have a simple solution: New option in WvW panel - Show Badge. You know, just like PvP. Its optional for those who don't want it, and beneficial to those who do.

 

Maybe even add a specific "I'm new and need a group/help learning to play" badge.

Edited July 7, 2022 by Hannelore.8153

[Justine.6351]

I can pretty much tell you a person's ability in wvw by just looking at them. I don't know what showing allies ranks is really going to accomplish other than having low ranks ghosted by server mates.

[Sonderm.4639]

The amount of people telling me that skill and rank are not necessarily correlated is staggering. I didn't claim it was. The point was to help new players who can by and large (excluding alts) be identified by their rank. We are talking about players sub rank 100 or so. I couldn't care less whether players are Bronze, Plat or Diamond.

The point is - I am not going to give unsolicited advice, doing so isn't helpful in 99% of cases. If you are a veteran who sucks at WvW, no amout of giving advice will help and you will probably be offended by me suggesting I think you could improve.

If there was a way to tell if a player is new, however, there would at least be an option to start a conversation with "I see you are probably new to WvW...". That was all.

[AlCapwnd.7834]

On 7/4/2022 at 2:35 AM, Dawdler.8521 said:

Yes, because "Hi I'm new and need help teach me everything you know" isnt a particularly good introduction to someone knee deep in the corpses of his enemies currently busy strangling another.

I cant even remember the last time I saw someone asking for advice on anything specific.

On BG I see new people fairly often. Literally just last night a guy needed a keep for his warclaw and we took Hills for him. I go out of my way to try and help new people. I was new once. We all were.

[ArchonWing.9480]

1 hour ago, Sonderm.4639 said:

The amount of people telling me that skill and rank are not necessarily correlated is staggering. I didn't claim it was. The point was to help new players who can by and large (excluding alts) be identified by their rank. We are talking about players sub rank 100 or so. I couldn't care less whether players are Bronze, Plat or Diamond.

The point is - I am not going to give unsolicited advice, doing so isn't helpful in 99% of cases. If you are a veteran who sucks at WvW, no amout of giving advice will help and you will probably be offended by me suggesting I think you could improve.

If there was a way to tell if a player is new, however, there would at least be an option to start a conversation with "I see you are probably new to WvW...". That was all.

I think you're missing the point. As Justine noted, it's quite obvious if someone is new or needs help just by a few seconds of observation. It is just not a useful feature for most of us here, but there are some downsides. You may personally  not abuse the feature, however...

There's a good reason Anet keeps stuff like this hidden. This is the same game where people belittle others for having low Achievement points. People find reasons to blame others in faceroll pve  content. Now considering WvW is a little more serious than open world due to players actively being able to beat each other, it's not hard to see how new players would quickly be branded as scapegoats.

Case in point, some people on my current link are super paranoid about spies, and pretty much accuse anything out of the ordinary as spying. They go as far as hiding tags because of fear of tag watching, but I assure you they are not dying because of that. They just go on a witch hunt every time something goes wrong. So naturally they will think the low levels are spies.

And of course gatekeeping. Some squads may just see low ranks and just not invite them. Of course, they could still see the ranks once they join the squad and kick them, but that's another step and more effort required.

From my experience, anything that can be used as a gatekeeping mechanism, will be used as one regardless of how little it is correlated to skill, such as the aforementioned AP.

Finally, the game already has a ton of clutter already, and it is very difficult to identify others once numbers get bigger.

On an unrelated note, I think it would be cool if titles would be unlocked by rank and you could use any of them. Currently you only have one for 10,000, which is as out of touch as it gets.

Fractal titles are a good example, as you can still wear the lower title if you want, even if you get a higher one.

Edited July 8, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[TheGrimm.5624]

51 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

I think you're missing the point. As Justine noted, it's quite obvious if someone is new or needs help just by a few seconds of observation. It is just not a useful feature for most of us here, but there are some downsides. You may personally  not abuse the feature, however...

There's a good reason Anet keeps stuff like this hidden. This is the same game where people belittle others for having low Achievement points. People find reasons to blame others in faceroll pve  content. Now considering WvW is a little more serious than open world due to players actively being able to beat each other, it's not hard to see how new players would quickly be branded as scapegoats.

Case in point, some people on my current link are super paranoid about spies, and pretty much accuse anything out of the ordinary as spying. They go as far as hiding tags because of fear of tag watching, but I assure you they are not dying because of that. They just go on a witch hunt every time something goes wrong. So naturally they will think the low levels are spies.

And of course gatekeeping. Some squads may just see low ranks and just not invite them. Of course, they could still see the ranks once they join the squad and kick them, but that's another step and more effort required.

From my experience, anything that can be used as a gatekeeping mechanism, will be used as one regardless of how little it is correlated to skill, such as the aforementioned AP.

Finally, the game already has a ton of clutter already, and it is very difficult to identify others once numbers get bigger.

On an unrelated note, I think it would be cool if titles would be unlocked by rank and you could use any of them. Currently you only have one for 10,000, which is as out of touch as it gets.

Fractal titles are a good example, as you can still wear the lower title if you want, even if you get a higher one.

 

This ^^^^^.

 

Agree I think most of us would like to help others if they want it, but far more it would be used like the up level indicator was where people would tell others to go away and don't be rally bots. Better to let the player ask or after observations, whisper the person and ask them. Now that said an optional display like sPvP isn't a bad idea either so people can pick and choose. 

[ArchonWing.9480]

24 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

but far more it would be used like the up level indicator was where people would tell others to go away and don't be rally bots

Or focus fire them as enemies, lol. It's just natural to go for the easier targets.

Before the power creep of the expansions, uplevels could still do some stuff but nowadays it's just too big of a difference.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

3 hours ago, Sonderm.4639 said:

The amount of people telling me that skill and rank are not necessarily correlated is staggering. I didn't claim it was. The point was to help new players who can by and large (excluding alts) be identified by their rank. We are talking about players sub rank 100 or so. I couldn't care less whether players are Bronze, Plat or Diamond.

The point is - I am not going to give unsolicited advice, doing so isn't helpful in 99% of cases. If you are a veteran who sucks at WvW, no amout of giving advice will help and you will probably be offended by me suggesting I think you could improve.

If there was a way to tell if a player is new, however, there would at least be an option to start a conversation with "I see you are probably new to WvW...". That was all.

 

There are myriad ways to tell someone is new...the biggest being they don't have a warclaw.  As usually by time they get one of those they're just experienced enough to know how the general mode works.  

Then from there it's just figuring out their build which leads into the above discussion of high rank button mashers vs. medium/low ranking 'skill/roaming/xv1/duel' oriented players.  

[Bias.4306]

Not showing the rank of teammates is great, please leave it as it is. 

 

If you could see the rank of people on your own side there would start to be discrimination and poor attitudes by Squads etc limiting people by rank. 

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

Im only rank 2050ish (no ktraining...all solo/duo with a splash of small scale) and even tho im not that high (I have friends in 6k-9k range) I have no problem h elping anyone old or new (heck I gave someone a stack of Memories of Battle because they were working towards a WvW leggy...I have like 10 stacks sitting in my bank lol). Im a huge pay it forward person as ppl even helped me. Yeah you can tell (as I prev stated) who earned their rank and who didnt, you can also tell a persons rank/ability from if/how they help other folks regardless of rank 🙂

[Custodio.6134]

On 7/4/2022 at 1:36 PM, Caedmon.6798 said:

Rank means experience. It doesnt mean that youre a good player but it means you know the game mode,or atleast should.

I wish this wouldn´t be the case, but sadly it is exactly true. 

There´s multiple reasons why rank means absolutely nothing: 

• WXP-gain is generally lower when roaming solo compared to zerging (because of higher kill count on average and higher capture-count on average)
• Especially in zerging or at least groups of considerable size, it heavily depends on the played class (DPS-classes in general have a significant higher chance of EXP-gain from kills)
• it also doesnt reflect the expierience on a specific class, since world rank is account-wide. extreme example: you can have a teammate with rank 10k, and hundreds of hours on scourge. But the same player could be playing firebrand for the first time and still be horrible on it. 
• Anyone can reach high ranks, as long as they manage to do the minimum damage required to get credit for a kill. And everyone gets full exp almost 100% of the time when capturing an objective as a group. this again, doesn´t reflect game knowledge at all
• general playtime. this includes how much people play on average per week (which means nothing for their "skill level") and also when they even started playing GW2 and WvW. 

I also know a lot of players (especially commanders) that have high skill, tons of expierience in WvW, but are a very low rank.