Ranked System Needs to be Reworked. It's Terrible

[Yerlock.4678]

If you lose a single match because your team is trash, you lose massive rating when in platinum and fall right back to gold 3. Just for context in other games you can steadily climb ranks as long as you're winning more games than you're losing. But here, you can win 10 games in a row, lose one, then oops you lost a kitten ton of rating. This is poor design that forces players to cheese the system. The rating loss shouldn't be as extreme in higher ranks, that way we could actually see more than one Legend rank every season because that player wintraded with his duo at the tail end of the season.

 

Make it require effort to be placed in gold. You should work your way up from bronze into silver, gold, then platinum if you're very good. Then only the best players become Legends. Right now the vast majority of people are stuck in gold because the system is DESIGNED to place players in gold. You have to be beyond garbo to be any lower. 

 

TLDR it's too easy to be in gold and too difficult to climb past plat 1.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

The whole reason the ranking system is so aggressive with punishing you for losing is because there are a bunch of people that queue synced and only play during off hours that have a better winrate than you the moment you lose even a single match.

The way the system is now, it encourages  not interacting with it, save for the bare minimum games required to not decay.

[SevlisBavles.3059]

This wouldn't be an issue at all if PvP were more populated and the ratings of the players involved in matches were closer together.

The issue is ANet not giving a kitten about PvP and letting it die (or even worse, maybe even actively encouraging it to die), not the rating system.

[Morwath.9817]

Tbh Ranked should be avalible only during ~6 hours of prime time. So matchmaking could do magic.

[Yerlock.4678]

1 hour ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

The whole reason the ranking system is so aggressive with punishing you for losing is because there are a bunch of people that queue synced and only play during off hours that have a better winrate than you the moment you lose even a single match.

The way the system is now, it encourages  not interacting with it, save for the bare minimum games required to not decay.

Yeah that sucks. Maybe having something that prevents que’ing in off hours around 4AM. Like from 12 AM to 6 AM in your time zone you can’t que if that’s even possible to design? Either that or a higher population which is like asking for magic to be real.

Regardless the ranked system getting some modicum of attention would go a long way in my opinion.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

3 minutes ago, gmmg.9210 said:

Yeah that sucks. Maybe having something that prevents que’ing in off hours around 4AM. Like from 12 AM to 6 AM in your time zone you can’t que if that’s even possible to design? Either that or a higher population which is like asking for magic to be real.

Regardless the ranked system getting some modicum of attention would go a long way in my opinion.

I don't think closing down ranked based on time zones is the answer. Remember, people work the graveyard shift. I'd be upset if myself and some fellow night owls wanted to do matches but the queue was closed because someone arbitrarily decided we need to play between 9AM and 10PM or whatever. 

I think that you should instead be looking toward weighting rewards in a way that playing with friends gets you rewards slower (since playing with friends makes the game easier) and playing as PUG gets you rewards faster (since having to assemble a team mid match and pull a win is harder.) 

Whichever poison you pick though, it -does- need work. Leaving it the way it is now - well, you see the results. Nobody really wants to interact with the mode. 

Edited June 21, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[SlayerXX.7138]

"My teammates are at fault for my loss not me. Pls change the game so my feelings don't get hurt."

Buddy the game is low pop, if you are in plat you play against the best players, who simply kick your teeth in. Live with that. Low pop + top players gaming the matchmaker are at fault, not your teammates.

Tldr: OP doesn't know how matchmaking works.

 

Edited June 21, 2023 by SlayerXX.7138

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

7 minutes ago, SlayerXX.7138 said:

"My teammates are at fault for my loss not me. Pls make the game worse so my feelings don't get hurt."

Buddy the game is low pop, if you are in plat you play against the best players, who simply kick your teeth in. Live with that.

Tldr: OP doesn't know how matchmaking works.

 

He's right about the duo part, but I'd go further and say that if you expect to get anywhere further than plat 2, you'd better find a friend because relying on pugs to pull out wins against pairs of players that are good enough to be in plat to begin with is playing handicapped. 

Either you get yourself a duo and pull the wins or you dont and accept that the matchmaker has a good chance of tossing you together with 3 golds and a silver when everyone's sleeping. 

As long as duoing is legal it is also meta, and not taking advantage of it is playing off meta. You may be good but you're gonna crumple just like everyone else when that herald and deadeye on discord realize you're the strongest point in your team and make sure you can't get anything done while your team gets eaten alive by aoe. 

Edited June 21, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

1 hour ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

The whole reason the ranking system is so aggressive with punishing you for losing is because there are a bunch of people that queue synced and only play during off hours that have a better winrate than you the moment you lose even a single match.

The way the system is now, it encourages  not interacting with it, save for the bare minimum games required to not decay.

It's worse than that now. The games are 9/10 times hilariously joke level bad quality where there are several people sandbagging and AFKing for throws not even trying to hide it and or it's just so insanely lopsided with the rare organic queue that there is no match worth playing for the game to even start to begin with.

Then there is this sudden outburst of obvious speed/tele hacking and people who "evade" attacks at random times when they aren't using evade frames, along with glancing blows and all this damage mitigation that's coming from some place that isn't actual game mechanics.

The ranked mode is 110% ruined, dead, and beyond repair. Only unranked has fun games where people don't care to cheat. Either Arenanet seriously needs to do something different at this point, or us as the community needs to organize an all day everyday discord community based around a custom server for a perpetual inhouse that never ends, so people who are invited can actually get GGs "good games" again. As it stands now, ranked and even ATs at this point, are absolutely cluttered with people who exploit, cheat, and ruin the game.

Edited June 21, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[shion.2084]

The last two or three seasons I will say that even gold matches I've been in (when my rating dipped) have had incredibly good players.   Likely directly attributable to the low population.  But the net effect is that I routinely see a better roster of opponents and teammates when I'm below 1500 MMR then matches where I'm top 50.   If I didn't know the players and didn't know the population thing I'd get very discouraged as a gold 2 facing people who I should never never be in a match with.

[SlayerXX.7138]

13 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

He's right about the duo part

Op didn't say anything about duo. Chesse in general, but that has many form. There is a high chance OP just got stomped by the second or third account of a top player. That seems the mostly likely explanation for a massive ranking loss. Op waiting in Q get padded with worse player, surprise! the worse player is a smurf maybe even two. OP loses, then the matchmaker subtracts a hefty sum of his rating because he lost against vastly "worse" players.

Edited June 21, 2023 by SlayerXX.7138

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

20 minutes ago, SlayerXX.7138 said:

"My teammates are at fault for my loss not me. Pls change the game so my feelings don't get hurt."

Buddy the game is low pop, if you are in plat you play against the best players, who simply kick your teeth in. Live with that. Low pop + top players gaming the matchmaker are at fault, not your teammates.

Tldr: OP doesn't know how matchmaking works.

gmmg is one of the top warrior player in NA.

You need to sit down.

[SlayerXX.7138]

8 minutes ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

gmmg is one of the top warrior player in NA.

You need to sit down.

Then he shouldn't whine on the forums about rating and his bad teammates. He also should know the people manipulating the system by name. My point about underestimating his fellow top players on their smurf account still stands. That is way the matchmaker subtracts so much.

Edited June 21, 2023 by SlayerXX.7138

[Asuran.5469]

Just now, SlayerXX.7138 said:

He also should know the people manipulating the system by name.

pretty sure everyone knows about team usa running the show

[SlayerXX.7138]

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

gmmg is one of the top warrior player in NA.

You need to sit down

Oh wow, gamers now think being good in a game makes them good at Math or game design. As long as top players don't do Algebra while waiting for the match to start their opinion on the matchmaker isn't worth more. Arguably less because they have a vested interest to profit themselves. Being a god on warrior doesn't have any correlation to making smart decisions. The fact OP realizes player manipulating the matchmaker is a problem. but rather focuses on changing the matchmaker is crazy talk.

OP lobbies to change the matchmaker to ease his own legend climb in a game that is dying and people eat that kitten up. It is comical.

Wait a year and he is the best warrior out of ten. So please use your head for something that isn't a PvP rotation.

Edited June 21, 2023 by SlayerXX.7138

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

45 minutes ago, SlayerXX.7138 said:

Oh wow, gamers now think being good in a game makes them good at Math or game design. As long as top players don't do Algebra while waiting for the match to start their opinion on the matchmaker isn't worth more. Arguably less because they have a vested interest to profit themselves. Being a god on warrior doesn't have any correlation to making smart decisions. The fact OP realizes duo q is a problem but rather focuses on changing the matchmaker is crazy talk.

OP lobbies to change the matchmaker to ease his own legend climb in a game that is dying and people eat that kitten up. It is comical.

Wait a year and he is the best warrior out of ten. So please use your head for something that isn't a PvP rotation.

Nobody wants DuoQ removed more than me, but the OP isn't wrong for not choosing to focus on it. While its true that DuoQ destroys matchmaking and is probably the most damaging 'feature' in the game, there's actually many other ways to make a difference. Pretty sure everyone is just praying for any change at all because there's been none; zero, and I mean no changes to PvP since 2v2/3v3 was added, and even that didn't necessarily fix any of the existing problems.

If even one aspect of this incredibly flawed gamemode could change for the better, then we could; given time, take this gamemode back from the bad top players. Without hope, there is no purpose to vengeance. 🙏

 

Speaking of bad top players; I agree, I don't like them, but the OP is one of the good top players. Good top players do exist in this game, surprising as that may be. They are just forced to take a backseat to the bad ones because the bad cheat, knowingly.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

~ edit nvm

Edited June 21, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Yerlock.4678]

2 hours ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

I don't think closing down ranked based on time zones is the answer. Remember, people work the graveyard shift. I'd be upset if myself and some fellow night owls wanted to do matches but the queue was closed because someone arbitrarily decided we need to play between 9AM and 10PM or whatever. 

I think that you should instead be looking toward weighting rewards in a way that playing with friends gets you rewards slower (since playing with friends makes the game easier) and playing as PUG gets you rewards faster (since having to assemble a team mid match and pull a win is harder.) 

Whichever poison you pick though, it -does- need work. Leaving it the way it is now - well, you see the results. Nobody really wants to interact with the mode. 

Yeah I was thinking of that idea also, like you get more rating or more rewards when q’ing solo. That way it at least reduces the duo spam that people use (with lots of other methods) to cheese the system.

[Yerlock.4678]

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

It's worse than that now. The games are 9/10 times hilariously joke level bad quality where there are several people sandbagging and AFKing for throws not even trying to hide it and or it's just so insanely lopsided with the rare organic queue that there is no match worth playing for the game to even start to begin with.

Then there is this sudden outburst of obvious speed/tele hacking and people who "evade" attacks at random times when they aren't using evade frames, along with glancing blows and all this damage mitigation that's coming from some place that isn't actual game mechanics.

The ranked mode is 110% ruined, dead, and beyond repair. Only unranked has fun games where people don't care to cheat. Either Arenanet seriously needs to do something different at this point, or us as the community needs to organize an all day everyday discord community based around a custom server for a perpetual inhouse that never ends, so people who are invited can actually get GGs "good games" again. As it stands now, ranked and even ATs at this point, are absolutely cluttered with people who exploit, cheat, and ruin the game.

Yeah let’s be honest, ranked is and has been a joke for a long time. I know the pop is low but that doesn’t excuse all these players in the cartel openly hacking/cheating/win trading etc. Just any sign that anet cares like incentivizing solo play or giving less rewards/rating on off hours or more rewards/rating in prime time would go a long way imo.

Edited June 21, 2023 by gmmg.9210

[SlayerXX.7138]

1 hour ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

Nobody wants DuoQ removed more than me, but the OP isn't wrong for not choosing to focus on it.

If he would focus on the actual problem, but he seems more concerned on the legend climb. I get the part about Gold being to high of a starting point. But the big loss op describes isn't affected by that. Big loss mostly occurs when rating isn't accurate. With OP apparently being on of the best, it is unlikely that player accidently fall that high. Big loss occur when your team(yourself included) plays worse then they should according to rating or the other team plays better then expected.
The normal factors for that "wrong" rating are: counter or being countered; different profession, as rating is tied to, you not your profession; the frequent mental breakdowns, People fast tracking to their real rating: bronzes falling through gold and plats 2 flying through gold etc.
Extra factors: People smurfing, duo Q, other methods of match manipulation and the generous padding making these big mismatches possible in the first place.

With op being as good as he is, all the normal factors besides maybe the mental consistency of his teammates should be minimized. All the reason that remain, are his peers match manipulation and Anet's generous padding. The solution to his problem is banning the offender or higher Que times, everything else is unproductive cope.

Edited June 21, 2023 by SlayerXX.7138

[shion.2084]

4 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

gmmg is one of the top warrior player in NA.

You need to sit down.

Yerloqq right?  Yeah his SBI don’t bother v1’ing

Edited June 21, 2023 by shion.2084
Wring specialization

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

53 minutes ago, shion.2084 said:

Yerloqq right?  Yeah his SBI don’t bother v1’ing

Fight him wdf

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

2 hours ago, SlayerXX.7138 said:

If he would focus on the actual problem, but he seems more concerned on the legend climb. I get the part about Gold being to high of a starting point. But the big loss op describes isn't affected by that. Big loss mostly occurs when rating isn't accurate. With OP apparently being on of the best, it is unlikely that player accidently fall that high. Big loss occur when your team(yourself included) plays worse then they should according to rating or the other team plays better then expected.
The normal factors for that "wrong" rating are: counter or being countered; different profession, as rating is tied to, you not your profession; the frequent mental breakdowns, People fast tracking to their real rating: bronzes falling through gold and plats 2 flying through gold etc.
Extra factors: People smurfing, duo Q, other methods of match manipulation and the generous padding making these big mismatches possible in the first place.

With op being as good as he is, all the normal factors besides maybe the mental consistency of his teammates should be minimized. All the reason that remain, are his peers match manipulation and Anet's generous padding. The solution to his problem is banning the offender or higher Que times, everything else is unproductive cope.

I feel that, but its okay for multiple things to be true at once. Should DuoQ be removed? Absolutely. Could rating gain be tied more to personal contribution? Yes, of course, and its far better than leaving it to an RNG matchmaker to decide, especially considering DuoQ can be used to break the matchmaker. 

Its a win-win no matter how you look at it. The real problem is Arenanet isn't going to do anything for any one of us. They won't remove DuoQ because the cartel loves it, and they won't redesign ranked because that would steal away precious developer time that could better be spent making some terrible balance patch; that will take half a year to release, all for people to argue over and distract from the real issues.

Have faith though. We may be forgotten, but we will be redeemed. 🙏

[Khalisto.5780]

The best they can do is remove duo q and tweak the algorithm so plat players dont q up into silver in 5 min q

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

@SlayerXX.7138

Dude I'm pretty sure he's just pointing out how broken glicko becomes in extremely low population. Regardless of solo or duo queue, this is what starts happening:

1. You got P2 worthy playing with S2 worthy and this equates to highs and lows winning and losing the same games together. So you have players who are worthy of being P2 if the population was high and players who would be S2 if it was high, but due to P2 worthy always being in the same game as the S2 worthy, they end up at roughly the same rating.
2. The algorithm is PUNISHING you for getting ahead even a little bit in rating above everyone else, so it starts making you carry alone with a bunch of S2 worthy.
3. When the P2 worthy is getting +8s on wins and -19s on losses "this was just happening me today", but the S2 worthy is getting +17s on wins and -7s on losses, since the P2 and S2 are all in the same games together all the time, it ends up making P2 worthy and S2 worthy, result in both of those guys being like G2-G3, which is just busted and all wrong when very clearly the P2 worthy is far far far better of a player than the S2s.

The whole glicko thing is just severely broken and entirely dysfunctional with extremely low population. Absolutely nothing is going to change this, not solo queue, not duo queue, it's too late to do 5man premades, it's just done, it's dead, the gone. Arenanet waited way too long to fix any of these things. The opportunity is past.

And this isn't even to mention all the win trading which just makes it worse.

They've got to do something different if they want the pvp scene to survive with a breath of life at all past the next quarter here. I mean like a new game mode or remove ranked and just leave unranked/ATs. I dunno man, just something different. Ranked as it is now is kind of like a bad **** stain on the game that immediately drives new players away it's so dysfunctional, busted, and full of cheating at this point.

Edited June 22, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524