Make Ascended Shards of Glory Obtainable from Unranked

[foogison.5067]

I think that spvp would be enormously improved if ascended shards of glory could be obtained by playing unranked, here's why:

 

I have been playing spvp since ranked season one, and I earned legendary rank is seasons 2 and 3. I took a break from the game for awhile and have recently returned. I'm VERY FAR from the best pvp player out there, but i have a bit of experience and i think i know the general lay of the land. The meta has changed a lot in 30+ seasons, and idk if its just me but it feels horrendous right now? The meta is very narrow, and is not very fun to play. Glass cannons and CC spam for days.

 

The player base feels microscopic! I am constantly seeing the same names in my matches, and fortunately a lot of the names are quite salty individuals - which makes the game /s so much fun /s.

Half the games i play some teammates will start bickering with each other and someone will sit at home and throw the match.

 

There are more than enough salt posts with the above items on this forum, so here's the point:

 

I think a big reason why spvp feels so bad right now is because of the tiny player base. In order for the MMR system to actually work there needs to be a big enough pool of players so that your rating is not being based on constantly getting lined up with the same people.

 

So why not make ascended shards of glory obtainable from unranked? This would bring in a new players who would want to farm for the legendary armors in a more casual setting, and eventually they will develop some spvp skills. Unranked tends to be a lot more forgiving than ranked, and is much less toxic in my experience. Incremental balance updates are not going to bring in any new players, there needs to be some more incentives. An easy way to add this would be to have a repeatable reward track that gives ascended shards of glory. Say somewhere in the ballpark of 250 per reward track completion.

[asket.5674]

Just remove rewards for afking in any mode. But yeah, ranked rewards in unranked would be nice, let ranked have their badges, title and pseudo epeens. But i guess this would kill ranked entirety. 

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I've made arguments over the years that ranked and unranked should just be merged. Instead of having leagues just have all game modes and all rewards available at all times to all players who are willing to participate, grade matches by individual performance and allow players to keep badges permanently.

 

You would just enter PvP, play the game, and get rewarded, period. If you lost the game, you would still get personal rewards for top scores and your individual performance until the very end.

 

Whenever I talked about this, there were actually alot of players who were in support of it (mostly burned out ranked players, but still..), but it would require ArenaNet to actually work on restructuring PvP and that doesn't seem to be a priority right now, and possibly not for the rest of the game's life time unfortunately.

Edited March 17, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Shagie.7612]

3 minutes ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

I've made arguments over the years that ranked and unranked should just be merged.

Nah, I don't think that's a great idea. Rewards being the same, game's 10 years old, make spvp/wvw legendary armor faster who cares lol

But if I were trying for rating but wanted to go goof around for a few matches as gunflame zerk or something, I wouldn't want that to hurt my rating.
For people who don't care about their rating, it wouldn't matter, but for the people who do, you'd be removing their ability to play niche builds. That's not cool.

[Greyrat.2378]

This goes hand in hand with suggestions like removing duoQ or removing ranked all together, both would be viable options at this point since main reasons are rewards anyway, without them majority of people would not bother with ranked in first place.
As a result you get people that are playing for rewards clashing with people that care about their rank.
Person that plays for reward does not care that much whether he loses or wins since you get some progression towards the reward anyway, person that cares about rank gets griefed if one of the teammates goes afk and loses their progression. How is that healthy enviroment?

Trying to maintain this illusion of "competitive" enviroment in sPvP is just a joke at this point, considering that the mode still remains neglected after all these years, lacks any moderation, and the best thing we got recently are balance patches because there are actually few devs that care about PvP and are not balancing things based on wiki.

You could still have some kind of leaderboard for people that actually care about having some kind of "prestige" in this mode based on their performance.
Make 2v2, 3v3 modes regular instead of seasonal, either remove duoQ or merge ranked with unranked and just let people play what they want. Is it that hard to implement? No.

Problem is that any of these suggestions that were brought up multiple times over the lifespan of Guild Wars 2 requires ANet to actually care on bigger level than just occasional balance patch to make the meta more bearable.
They did not know what to do with this mode after whole e-sport fiasco, and after 10 years they still don't know what direction they want to go with PvP, so their natural response is to ignore it and hope that the problem disappears, which seems to be more of a culture thing for this studio at this point, and I am honestly tired of it (not just PvP but other modes as well where game clearly lacks any direction).

Edited March 17, 2023 by Greyrat.2378

[Anonynja.3172]

10 hours ago, foogison.5067 said:

The meta has changed a lot in 30+ seasons, and idk if its just me but it feels horrendous right now? The meta is very narrow, and is not very fun to play. Glass cannons and CC spam for days.

The player base feels microscopic! I am constantly seeing the same names in my matches, and fortunately a lot of the names are quite salty individuals - which makes the game /s so much fun /s.

Half the games i play some teammates will start bickering with each other and someone will sit at home and throw the match.

Yes. This is the worst meta I've experienced. PvP will remain a game mode you endure, rather than enjoy, unless ANet ever decides to give it a lot of attention. Competitive integrity, balance, new content, reward structures, revamping HotM... lots on the to-do list if they ever decide it's worth the effort.

[Shao.7236]

PvP and the player count is always going to be the issue no matter how PvP is done. Balance had the opportunity to be good several times and that's not even something the average player knows.

Game only attracts casuals that never will have the desire to play against other players in a setting that puts considerable pressure on them.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

This is a good idea with a lot of potential.

The only reason Unranked is entirely unrewarding is because they're desperate to fill Ranked. If there weren't rewards; nobody would play it, because it's poorly designed and appeals to neither competitive nor casual players.

Mixing casual and competitive players is always a bad idea because the casuals aren't playing to compete, and the people who are playing to compete have to deal with casual players who are typically only there for rewards, leading to a lot of toxic interactions in game between two ideologically opposed groups of guildie gamers.

Personally I think the way pips are earned needs a small bit of redesigning.

Unranked should offer pips exactly as they are now; so long as you're playing PvP, you're getting rewarded for it.
Ranked should offer (double, or even triple what Unranked offers) with the caveat that losing a Ranked match without significant contribution means potentially earning little to nothing for a loss which is exactly what losing is at a baseline, fundamental level.

[Khalisto.5780]

I'd say move all "ranked rewards" to unranked and double the rewards in ranked if you win, but if you lose you get nothing in ranked

[Gibson.4036]

17 hours ago, Khalisto.5780 said:

I'd say move all "ranked rewards" to unranked and double the rewards in ranked if you win, but if you lose you get nothing in ranked

So with the matchmaker tracking most players into a 50/50 win/loss ratio, people would average 10 pips/game in ranked or 7 pips/game unranked.

Why would people pursuing legendary armor move into unranked?

Edited March 23, 2023 by Gibson.4036

[Khalisto.5780]

12 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

So with the matchmaker tracking most players into a 50/50 win/loss ratio, people would average 10 pips/game in ranked or 7 pips/game unranked.

Why would people pursuing legendary armor move into unranked?

Cuz they could 5 man it

[Ashen.4061]

I would rather just have more ascended shards in general. The grind is ridiculously long at 100 per final chest, especially since the gear is already time gated through tickets. Add an ascended shard reward track that gives 100 per completion and bump up the final chest to 150-200. Alternatively, you could bump up pip rewards by 50-100% for the same effect. Still want a track though, and that would mean there is at least some way to earn ascended shards outside of ranked (but you would have to lower the gold to compensate, if they have a set amount of gold they want coming from PvP).

Edited March 24, 2023 by Ashen.4061

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

On 3/23/2023 at 2:19 PM, Gibson.4036 said:

So with the matchmaker tracking most players into a 50/50 win/loss ratio, people would average 10 pips/game in ranked or 7 pips/game unranked.

Doesn't seem right with the system proposed.
From the wiki: "Pips are earned by winning and losing matches and earning top stats. Winning a match will award 10 pips, losing a match will award 3 pips, and earning any amount of top stats will earn 1 pip. Losing a ranked match with a score equal to or greater than 80% of the winning team’s score will award a Near Victory bonus worth 2 pips. Being in the Platinum division will also award you with 2 extra pips after each game and being in the Legendary division will award you 4."

This puts the max amount you could possibly earn in a Ranked match right now at 18 (below plat), 20 (at plat or higher), or 24(if you're a wintrader) but i'll just use 18 as the typical norm

The least amount you could possibly earn in Ranked as it is right now is 3, though that's ignoring all the other variables so that really isn't accurate or reliable information. 

This puts the sum of both the highest and lowest possible amount of pips you can earn at 21 and when divided by 2(because we're assuming everyone has an exact or near-exact 50-50 winrate and that things will always be the worst or best they could be) this puts the average amount of pips earned in current Ranked (would be unranked in theory) at ~10.5 pips per game.

 

If you were to go double or nothing like @Khalisto.5780 is suggesting, then you would double the max possible value (18 -> 36)

adding 0 (the amount you should get if you lose) and averaging out the 2 values to come back to ~18 pips per game because you cannot divide by 0.

 

On 3/23/2023 at 2:19 PM, Gibson.4036 said:

Why would people pursuing legendary armor move into unranked?

So even though the pips per game would be higher in a double or nothing Ranked system, you would still have to be consciously aware of the principles behind double or nothing to determine whether or not that was consistent enough to justify ignoring Unranked.

There is a cognitive bias present in many living beings called Loss Aversion (there's even a spellbreaker trait named after this) and Loss Aversion describes why; for individuals, the pain of losing is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of winning/gaining. The loss felt from money, or any other valuable object, can feel worse than gaining that same thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion (If you'd like to read more)

Studies have indicated that in order for humans to overcome this psychological bias, the potential gains from any particular scenario have to at least double the potential losses, meaning this theoretical Ranked mode would need to offer even more than double the amount of pips in order to remain consistent with theoretical Unranked. At least 21 pips per game to be exact.

Then; as added benefit, casual and competitive players could finally play separately in the way that they want & chose to, and different from how they might have in current Solo/duo Ranked and we'd have a lot less of this 

Edited March 25, 2023 by Multicolorhipster.9751

[Gibson.4036]

49 minutes ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

Doesn't seem right with the system proposed.
From the wiki: "Pips are earned by winning and losing matches and earning top stats. Winning a match will award 10 pips, losing a match will award 3 pips, and earning any amount of top stats will earn 1 pip. Losing a ranked match with a score equal to or greater than 80% of the winning team’s score will award a Near Victory bonus worth 2 pips. Being in the Platinum division will also award you with 2 extra pips after each game and being in the Legendary division will award you 4."

This puts the max amount you could possibly earn in a Ranked match right now at 18 (below plat), 20 (at plat or higher), or 24(if you're a wintrader) but i'll just use 18 as the typical norm

The least amount you could possibly earn in Ranked as it is right now is 3, though that's ignoring all the other variables so that really isn't accurate or reliable information. 

This puts the sum of both the highest and lowest possible amount of pips you can earn at 21 and when divided by 2(because we're assuming everyone has an exact or near-exact 50-50 winrate and that things will always be the worst or best they could be) this puts the average amount of pips earned in current Ranked (would be unranked in theory) at ~10.5 pips per game.

 

If you were to go double or nothing like @Khalisto.5780 is suggesting, then you would double the max possible value (18 -> 36)

adding 0 (the amount you should get if you lose) and averaging out the 2 values to come back to ~18 pips per game because you cannot divide by 0.

 

So even though the pips per game would be higher in a double or nothing Ranked system, you would still have to be consciously aware of the principles behind double or nothing to determine whether or not that was consistent enough to justify ignoring Unranked.

There is a cognitive bias present in many living beings called Loss Aversion (there's even a spellbreaker trait named after this) and Loss Aversion describes why; for individuals, the pain of losing is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of winning/gaining. The loss felt from money, or any other valuable object, can feel worse than gaining that same thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion (If you'd like to read more)

Studies have indicated that in order for humans to overcome this psychological bias, the potential gains from any particular scenario have to at least double the potential losses, meaning this theoretical Ranked mode would need to offer even more than double the amount of pips in order to remain consistent with theoretical Unranked. At least 21 pips per game to be exact.

Then; as added benefit, casual and competitive players could finally play separately in the way that they want & chose to, and different from how they might have in current Solo/duo Ranked and we'd have a lot less of this 

That was very thorough, thanks.

My numbers were a quick 10 for a win, 4 for a loss (3 or 5 if close) under current rules, or 20 for a win, 0 for a loss under proposed. So average 7 per match under current, 10 under proposed.

Top stats isn’t connected to winning or losing, so I felt safe ignoring it.

And our hypothetical leggie grinders who’d move to unranked aren’t likely to be in plat or legendary for those bonuses.

Maybe you’re right with the loss aversion, and players would opt for some rewards each game rather than averaging better rewards but having to play matches where they earn none.

For my part, all other things equal, I’d stick with the mode that rewarded more even if it meant matches with no rewards at all. I tend not to pay much attention to pips per match, but do track on chest progress per game play session.

I’m all for finding a way to guide us casuals toward each other and the competitive rank pursuers toward each other. I’m just not sure double for win, nothing for loss would do it.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

3 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Top stats isn’t connected to winning or losing, so I felt safe ignoring it.

But they are with pip gains since they directly affect how many you gain, up to +6 if you got every top stat regardless of whether your team wins or loses.

3 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Maybe you’re right with the loss aversion, and players would opt for some rewards each game rather than averaging better rewards but having to play matches where they earn none.

For my part, all other things equal, I’d stick with the mode that rewarded more even if it meant matches with no rewards at all. I tend not to pay much attention to pips per match, but do track on chest progress per game play session.

I am right. What you're describing is a competitive-oriented mindset, willing to risk doing extra to potentially get more, that is what makes a competitive gamer a competitive gamer.

A casual gamer plays for no risk, just enjoying the game for what it is, and there's nothing wrong with that. Therefore a consistent, casual and rewarding unranked experience would be the most optimal way for them to play the way they desire without them stepping on the toes of people who do play to compete.

3 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

I’m all for finding a way to guide us casuals toward each other and the competitive rank pursuers toward each other. I’m just not sure double for win, nothing for loss would do it.

I just hope they do something at all. I am a single father of 10 boys and we are all of us, very close red-blooded go-getters that want to compete while also still playing with eachother, and in order for us to be appealed to specifically, we're going to need a lot less of these casual gamers hogging up the queues getting between our family and some quality guild wars gaming. Every time me and my angels are accidentally forced into a game with casual pipfarmers, they rightfully go off on them, and Arenanet is the only entity to blame for such.

I'd prefer the choice between Ranked and Unranked personally for these reasons, because it would uniquely benefit us and our situation. I know this is entirely selfish and may inconvenience you and several other people, but I am hoping you will understand and accept where I am coming from. Thanks again. 💜
 

[Gibson.4036]

On 3/25/2023 at 1:12 AM, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

 I know this is entirely selfish and may inconvenience you and several other people, but I am hoping you will understand and accept where I am coming from. Thanks again. 💜
 

I don’t know how it would inconvenience me. If they could separate two modes, one that would suit rank climbers and one that would suit people who casually play for the fun of matches and steady reward progress, seems like it’d be win-win.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

4 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

I don’t know how it would inconvenience me. If they could separate two modes, one that would suit rank climbers and one that would suit people who casually play for the fun of matches and steady reward progress, seems like it’d be win-win.

Just being cautious when asking from my selfish, uncaring, and potentially harmful point of view. I step on a lot of toes often, and I'm not really sure why. All I know for sure is that I'm a victim and I very much appreciate you saying this. 😭 Thank you again.