Can you please limit the matchmaking system to tier rank

[Flowki.7194]

Despite class or spec balance, the matchmaking system is by far the most game breaking thing in pvp. Please give people the option to only que at their rank level. The skill gaps of players who are put in the same game is absolutely horrenous, its not fun to fight against a plat player, while at gold 2, I am frequently killing low silver/bronze players who are very clearly new to pvp at least.

 

I have also found that the lower the rank a person is, the more selfish they seem to be, just wantind to go 1v1 on far all game, trolling, not even trying to work as a team, and so on. Such players will enevitably sink to bronze, and I'd like the option to not play with them.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Flowki.7194

[Psycoprophet.8107]

Waiting for a quality pvp match is far better imo, especially since u can jylustbrun around in wvw and do some world pvp while waiting.

[Fueki.4753]

And how do you ensure there'll be enough players in each tier at all times? That's a necessity for your idea to work.

The way the population currently is, some people would literally never get any matches, because there'll never be enough players in their tier during the time they play.

The idea of "just limit it" simply doesn't work, because the remaining population in sPvP is just too low. Limiting the potential match mates would just lead to a even faster decrease in the population.

And no, "just wait longer" is not a solution here. Not everyone is willing to wait for prolonged periods of time.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Fueki.4753

[Flowki.7194]

1 hour ago, Psycoprophet.8107 said:

Waiting for a quality pvp match is far better imo, especially since u can jylustbrun around in wvw and do some world pvp while waiting.

Exactly, its not even worth playing games for +6 wins when im losing +13 on average, not that it matters becuase even in high gold I would still be getting and facing low silver, there is no escape, and it just seems to get worse the higher you get. This would be the biggest game balance change that could currently be made to pvp, all good catas (or any player for that matter) would rise to plat, where the rest of us could then find our true level. I'd be happy in low gold, if thats where real team play starts, I actually don't care about rank.

[Flowki.7194]

3 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

And how do you ensure there'll be enough players in each tier at all times? That's a necessity for your idea to work.

The way the population currently is, some people would literally never get any matches, because there'll never be enough players in their tier during the time they play.

The idea of "just limit it" simply doesn't work, because the remaining population in sPvP is just too low. Limiting the potential match mates would just lead to a even faster decrease in the population.

And no, "just wait longer" is not a solution here. Not everyone is willing to wait for prolonged periods of time.

There will always be fewer plats than the rest of the player base, and then fewer gold than below, thats just natural hierarchies playing out, unavoidable. Right now, the entire pvp playerbase is suffering, just so plat players don't have a long que time. Even some plat players are tanking rating due to the RNG matchmaking of newb/less skilled team mates. In that case, its better to give plats longer que times so that 80% of the playerbase actaully get to fight more equally skilled players. It sucks for plat sure.. but this current system isn't helping anybody but duo plats who que dodge to farm people in lower tiers. Im also safely assuming that some plat players would also rather wait longer, and get qued up with players of equal level. 

 

At a push, if waiting more than 10 min, plat could be matched with gold 3 players. Any further than that (once people reach true skill level tier) would simply be unfair, and begin bringing back the issues above. Plat 3 vs gold 3 would litterally be like the best premier legue football team playing the best championship football team.. worlds apart. Any futher than that (which is already a big gap) is outright rediculous.

[Fueki.4753]

17 minutes ago, Flowki.7194 said:

In that case, its better to give plats longer que times so that 80% of the playerbase actaully get to fight more equally skilled players.

I'm currently at silver and regularly have 10+ minutes queues. And that's with everything from platinum to bronze in my matches.

How long am I supposed to wait, if I can only get matched with other silver players? 30+ minutes? An entire hour? multiple hours? The queue times wouldn't be any less than that.

Limiting the match maker to tiers is not ending with platinum players not being matched with others. It'll end with everyone (except maybe people playing at their service region's prime time) having far harder times to get into matches that'll be unbalanced anyway (because that's just what sPvP is these days).

Leaving the match making as in its current state is the least bad option. It certainly is not a pretty one, but the population is far too low to offer a better one.

Before touching the match making, Arenanet needs to deal with all the match manipulation and at least try to attempt having something resembling balance.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Fueki.4753

[Saiyan.1704]

3 hours ago, Flowki.7194 said:

Despite class or spec balance, the matchmaking system is by far the most game breaking thing in pvp. Please give people the option to only que at their rank level.

Queue dodgers will never get a match and I'm OK with that lol. What I'm not OK with is having to wait 10minutes for a match if i'm queueing after hours, which will certainly happen.

People are asking for more quality matches but we're always going to have bronze/silver players amongst a sea of Gold1 - Gold3 players. We even have Gold 3 players calling Gold2 players trash not knowing they're basically in the same bracket. So where should we draw the line? Even if we increase queue times there's no guarantee on match quality. And if that's the case then I rather just have quicker queue times.

You're right about matchmaking being game breaking in a sense that players can queue dodge all the way to top 50. I never even see top 25 players play against other top 25 players. A part of this has to do with population, another part has to do with MMR rating abuse/duo queue abuse/bot abuse. It's why pvp titles don't really mean anything.

[Flowki.7194]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

I'm currently at silver and regularly have 10+ minutes queues. And that's with everything from platinum to bronze in my matches.

How long am I supposed to wait, if I can only get matched with other silver players? 30+ minutes? An entire hour? multiple hours? The queue times wouldn't be any less than that.

Limiting the match maker to tiers is not ending with platinum players not being matched with others. It'll end with everyone (except maybe people playing at their service region's prime time) having far harder times to get into matches that'll be unbalanced anyway (because that's just what sPvP is these days).

Leaving the match making as in its current state is the least bad option. It certainly is not a pretty one, but the population is far too low to offer a better one.

Before touching the match making, Arenanet needs to deal with all the match manipulation and at least try to attempt having something resembling balance.

What you completely fail to consider is that the matchmaking system is a huge part of what pushes people away from pvp, due to newbs or less skilled players being put against experianced dps who can kill then in seconds, even in 2v1s. Matches based more on skill level will increase the pvp playerbase, I absolutely garuntee it. It is simply against human psychology to ''have no chance'', and expect the majority of prospective new pvp players to keep playing.

If you genuinely think putting plat players in with silver players is the least bad option, I won't waste any more time with this.

[Fueki.4753]

2 hours ago, Flowki.7194 said:

What you completely fail to consider is that the matchmaking system is a huge part of what pushes people away from pvp, due to newbs or less skilled players being put against experianced dps who can kill then in seconds, even in 2v1s. Matches based more on skill level will increase the pvp playerbase, I absolutely garuntee it. It is simply against human psychology to ''have no chance'', and expect the majority of prospective new pvp players to keep playing.

If you genuinely think putting plat players in with silver players is the least bad option, I won't waste any more time with this.

And none of that matters, if those new players may never get into a match in the first place, because such a change would cause the population to dwindle even faster than it already does.

That aside, the match making itself is not a problem. The insufficient population is the true problem. And that one keeps dwindling because the mode is not being cared for sufficiently.

The match maker does not need to be addressed. Touching it will not do anything good, if the population doesn't drastically increase. And limiting the number of players you can be matched with, thus significantly increasing queue times, will result in a loss of population.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Fueki.4753

[Flowki.7194]

1 hour ago, Saiyan.1704 said:

Queue dodgers will never get a match and I'm OK with that lol. What I'm not OK with is having to wait 10minutes for a match if i'm queueing after hours, which will certainly happen.

People are asking for more quality matches but we're always going to have bronze/silver players amongst a sea of Gold1 - Gold3 players. We even have Gold 3 players calling Gold2 players trash not knowing they're basically in the same bracket. So where should we draw the line? Even if we increase queue times there's no guarantee on match quality. And if that's the case then I rather just have quicker queue times.

You're right about matchmaking being game breaking in a sense that players can queue dodge all the way to top 50. I never even see top 25 players play against other top 25 players. A part of this has to do with population, another part has to do with MMR rating abuse/duo queue abuse/bot abuse. It's why pvp titles don't really mean anything.

Again, I think this current matchmaking system actaully turns  alot of people away from pvp, while the lack of team work from newbs makes all good players just ''play for themselves''. This in turn results in yet less team work, further making the pvp experiance toxic for those who want to teamwork, while only good dps players benefit from chaos ranked games, and less skilled players just get farmed even harder from it.

 

For example, I started out playing mostly tempest support to help the team, finishing the average lost game with 600k healing, and likely just as much in aura/clensed mitigation. It didn't take long to realise that players either don't know how to peel (newbs or low skill), or just don't care, while all the support in the world cannot make up for a lack both both skill AND teamwork. I would litterally get attacked by a dps for over 30 seconds, have to survive that, while also healing other team mates who have tunnel vision on some other dps, it was that or lose. I don't play support now, becuase ironically, trying to be a team player in most ranked matches works against you, for various reasons. Its better to play dps and try to take advantedge of the chaos, becuase it is more reliable than playing support and relying on newb/selfish team mates. Again, the reason I  think the game got this way is becuase a lot of the good players give up trying to team work with many lower ranked newer players (who refuse to ever listen). If players will not team work, and refuse to work with their team, they will fall into low bronze, and I want the option not to play with such people (right now such selfish players are getting RNG carried into silver/low gold if lucky). I want to play with those who rise through the ranks becuase of team work, not becuase they are some selfish low skill player, who hit lucky and had the best gold/plat dps on their team 10 games in a row.

 

I genuinely think the player base would increase with fixed matchmaking. Both new and more experianced players would have a better experiance, and player retention would be higher. There is no way this current system encourages a healthy pvp player base, absolutely no way.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Flowki.7194

[Bazsi.2734]

I agree. We need to stop players on the very top from getting games! Being good at the game should be a punishable offense, like log off touch grass get a life REEEEEEE!

[Saiyan.1704]

51 minutes ago, Flowki.7194 said:

I genuinely think the player base would increase with fixed matchmaking. Both new and more experianced players would have a better experiance, and player retention would be higher. There is no way this current system encourages a healthy pvp player base, absolutely no way.

Fixed matchmaking as in, G3 play strictly with G3 players? Plat1 with plat, bronze1 with bronze 1?

If that is indeed what you mean then there's no possible way it will work unless you increase queue times to 2 hours and top 25 players will get 1 game a week, probably around 3am, because they love queueing after hours with a newly-made duo partner named xeipumpqpgodxabc

[Flowki.7194]

27 minutes ago, Bazsi.2734 said:

I agree. We need to stop players on the very top from getting games! Being good at the game should be a punishable offense, like log off touch grass get a life REEEEEEE!

Clearly a plat player who got use to wins against vastly inferior enemy. Click option 3.

[Flowki.7194]

7 minutes ago, Saiyan.1704 said:

Fixed matchmaking as in, G3 play strictly with G3 players? Plat1 with plat, bronze1 with bronze 1?

If that is indeed what you mean then there's no possible way it will work unless you increase queue times to 2 hours and top 25 players will get 1 game a week, probably around 3am, because they love queueing after hours with a newly-made duo partner named xeipumpqpgodxabc

No, all of gold v all of gold. All of plat V all of plat.

 

Their will be plenty of ''true gold'' players stuck in silver because of the current RNG wide range matchmaking. There will also be a number of plats stuck in gold, who will rise once they are away from the RNG bronze/silver supports on their team, while the enemy team have gold/plat dps. Gold plat DPS >> silver support.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Flowki.7194

[SlayerXX.7138]

7 minutes ago, Saiyan.1704 said:

Fixed matchmaking as in, G3 play strictly with G3 players? Plat1 with plat, bronze1 with bronze 1?

Gold 2 with gold 1 and gold 3. Gold 3 with plat 1 and gold 2. Something like that.
Not gold 2 with plat3 and silver 1.
Plat and silver in the same game shouldn't be a possibility. How that smaller range should look like may be debatable. The current implementation is a joke.

Edited July 8, 2023 by SlayerXX.7138

[Saiyan.1704]

17 minutes ago, Flowki.7194 said:

No, all of gold v all of gold. All of plat V all of plat.

 

Their will be plenty of ''true gold'' players stuck in silver because of the current RNG wide range matchmaking. There will also be a number of plats stuck in gold, who will rise once they are away from the RNG bronze/silver supports on their team, while the enemy team have gold/plat dps. Gold plat DPS >> silver support.

This triggered an old memory, before AT's and before the PiP reward system (so several years ago). Anet added a bracket system like that. The average queue times were between 8minutes to 12minutes. It looked for your bracket first then expanded to other brackets after an allotted time. According to anet, "there wasn't an improvement in match quality when increasing queue times" - [paraphrasing][forgot where and when it was said].

(Edit: found a source)

"The problem is the system will trash until those rosters are matched, causing everyone behind them to be stuck waiting. Also, just because we can't find a match customized for a specific roster doesn't mean the roster won't be picked as part of another match customized for some other roster. E.g. a high MMR team may not be able to find 5-9 players at the same high level, but they may be able to fill the a spot with someone lower but whom they're still in range of. Justin ODell (talk) 16:35, 2 December 2014"

Source: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm

TL;DR version: Increasing queue times strictly for Brackets didn't work very well. Majority of players were frustrated with long queue times and it didn't drastically increase match quality.

[Flowki.7194]

13 minutes ago, SlayerXX.7138 said:

Gold 2 with gold 1 and gold 3. Gold 3 with plat 1 and gold 2. Something like that.
Not gold 2 with plat3 and silver 1.
Plat and silver in the same game shouldn't be a possibility. How that smaller range should look like may be debatable. The current implementation is a joke.

Yeah I don't care about the details, anything like that.

 

I just had another typical match where our dps (a mesmer this time) went far the entire game, while their thief/warrior also went far. They litterally traded points all game, over and over and over. The rest of us killed the warrior/thief on near for the game, and their team mates were left 4v3 almost every mid fight. Next game that will be my team.. its pure luck of the draw on who gets the most players with an attitude like our mesmer; ''I'm a roamer, I'm built to 1v1'' (going far all game isn't romaing..)

[SlayerXX.7138]

4 hours ago, Saiyan.1704 said:

E.g. a high MMR team may not be able to find 5-9 players at the same high level, but they may be able to fill the a spot with someone lower but whom they're still in range of. Justin ODell (talk) 16:35, 2 December 2014"

In range shouldn't mean a whole division. That is just silly.

Edited July 8, 2023 by SlayerXX.7138

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

Realistically speaking we wouldn't need any drastic changes to the matchmaker if option 3 were not an option. If DuoQ is removed or split into a separate ranked arena then matchmaking would; objectively speaking, be a lot better even with the low population.

As it stands DuoQ uses an average of both player's ratings for MMR and it can be used to deliberately snipe one's way into games with lower-rated players. The very concept of 2 players against 1 doesn't belong in any competitive gamemode in any game.

[Fueki.4753]

30 minutes ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

As it stands DuoQ uses an average of both player's ratings for MMR and it can be used to deliberately snipe one's way into games with lower-rated players. The very concept of 2 players against 1 doesn't belong in any competitive gamemode in any game.

Duo-queue should use the higher rating for both of the players queueing together, not the average rating.

A small change like that would probably go a long way to diminish that one problem.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Fueki.4753

[Flowki.7194]

34 minutes ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

Realistically speaking we wouldn't need any drastic changes to the matchmaker if option 3 were not an option. If DuoQ is removed or split into a separate ranked arena then matchmaking would; objectively speaking, be a lot better even with the low population.

As it stands DuoQ uses an average of both player's ratings for MMR and it can be used to deliberately snipe one's way into games with lower-rated players. The very concept of 2 players against 1 doesn't belong in any competitive gamemode in any game.

This might be a rank or region thing, I don't actaully see a lot of duo que (luckly) becuase that is also BS. At least from my experiance however, that is not a problem for me. Its the range of matchmaking.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Flowki.7194

[Alaeacus.9635]

People severely underestimate how many players will return to PvP if they restricted matchmaking by tiers.    Hundreds of WvW and PvE people would come back to PvP on patch day.  Maybe they will play long enough to get better, and reach Platinum themselves, giving the current Platinum players more people to legitmately fight.  The problem is, people try PvP out, realize how garbage the mode is, and never return.  They don't stay long enough to get better.

I personally detest the game mode for this very reason, especially when Anet refuses to allow us to resign mid-fight.  Unfortunately, tons of truly gifted Platinum people left the game years ago for other games with better PvP, and a lot of those Platinum players who stayed are low-quality people who enjoy farming Silvers and Bronzes for easy wins while they watch Youtube on the side.  

Edited July 8, 2023 by Alaeacus.9635

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

25 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Duo-queue should use the higher rating for both of the players queueing together, not the average rating.

A small change like that would probably go a long way to diminish that one problem.

That's not good enough though. Its remove or split, no half-measures because no amount of tweaking and adjustment will remove how unfair 2v1 is.

That's not to say it wouldn't be a good change still. It would be a good step in the right direction so long as that direction leads us to a fair and functional gamemode with no out-of-game advantages.

25 minutes ago, Flowki.7194 said:

This might be a rank or region thing, I don't actaully see a lot of duo que (luckly) becuase that is also BS. At least from my experiance however, that is not a problem for me. Its the range of matchmaking.

I'm sure you already know, but the way matchmaking works in ranked is it tries to form two teams of a similar average rating and the longer you spend it queue, the more broadly it searches just to get you in a game regardless of the quality of that game. This does make it pretty dependent on population like @Fueki.4753 is saying, so the only two reasonable solutions are to either boost the population so it can function as intended, or like you said; limit the range the matchmaker is willing to go to put you into a game as fast as possible instead of fun and evenly-matched.

But the population will never grow while DuoQ remains because DuoQ has always been for the top-most % of players at the expense of everyone else and the top% makes up a tiny handful of an already barren gamemode.

And even if the range of matchmaking was limited, DuoQ would still be an exploitative workaround. When I still played, I was plat2 around 1600 rating. If I were to DuoQ with a 'friend' playing on a gold1 alt at that rating our combined effective MMR would be ~1400(gold3) meaning the restricted rating range would never be a problem to us, it would actually be a great benefit to our scheme because that would ensure that we're going solely against people playing at around the gold3 skill-level, and the lower my friend tanks his rating, the lower the skill-level we can choose to engage with, with more certainty afforded by the better matchmaking.

Regardless of how one chooses to go about improving matchmaking, it will never truly be improved unless DuoQ goes away forever, and in all ranked games, not just gw2's pvp.

[Flowki.7194]

32 minutes ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

That's not good enough though. Its remove or split, no half-measures because no amount of tweaking and adjustment will remove how unfair 2v1 is.

That's not to say it wouldn't be a good change still. It would be a good step in the right direction so long as that direction leads us to a fair and functional gamemode with no out-of-game advantages.

I'm sure you already know, but the way matchmaking works in ranked is it tries to form two teams of a similar average rating and the longer you spend it queue, the more broadly it searches just to get you in a game regardless of the quality of that game. This does make it pretty dependent on population like @Fueki.4753 is saying, so the only two reasonable solutions are to either boost the population so it can function as intended, or like you said; limit the range the matchmaker is willing to go to put you into a game as fast as possible instead of fun and evenly-matched.

But the population will never grow while DuoQ remains because DuoQ has always been for the top-most % of players at the expense of everyone else and the top% makes up a tiny handful of an already barren gamemode.

And even if the range of matchmaking was limited, DuoQ would still be an exploitative workaround. When I still played, I was plat2 around 1600 rating. If I were to DuoQ with a 'friend' playing on a gold1 alt at that rating our combined effective MMR would be ~1400(gold3) meaning the restricted rating range would never be a problem to us, it would actually be a great benefit to our scheme because that would ensure that we're going solely against people playing at around the gold3 skill-level, and the lower my friend tanks his rating, the lower the skill-level we can choose to engage with, with more certainty afforded by the better matchmaking.

Regardless of how one chooses to go about improving matchmaking, it will never truly be improved unless DuoQ goes away forever, and in all ranked games, not just gw2's pvp.

The rating should be based entirely on the highest player, its actaully quite astonishing that it is anything other than that.

 

I find it very unlikely somebody is going to take the time to get to plat, then invite a genuine bronze level friend into duo.. his rating will tank. On the other hand, I often see returning or rating degraded plat players rising through the ranks in gold, they are clearly much better than that. Those players could ofc join a plat friend, and save all us lower rated guys from being their stepping stone. Im sure they would prefere that too.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Flowki.7194

[Bunbury.8472]

5 hours ago, Flowki.7194 said:

What you completely fail to consider is that the matchmaking system is a huge part of what pushes people away from pvp, due to newbs or less skilled players being put against experianced dps who can kill then in seconds, even in 2v1s. Matches based more on skill level will increase the pvp playerbase, I absolutely garuntee it. It is simply against human psychology to ''have no chance'', and expect the majority of prospective new pvp players to keep playing.

If you genuinely think putting plat players in with silver players is the least bad option, I won't waste any more time with this.

Two points

Firstly, this is by design. Anet wants new players to get farmed by good players.

Why else would they give new accounts 1200, gold 1 rating? New accounts in ranked should be in bronze and have the opportunity to play with low skill players, and be able to climb the ladder as they learn.

But nope, anet gives new players gold 1 and makes them fight golds climbing to plat and the plat players themselves. New players get matched with people with years of experience on their first ranked game. No wonder all the new players don't continue playing PvP. The system is designed to make sure they get farmed.

 

second point, it's less important so no need for bold. basically it's this, I doubt there are enough plat players, especially in NA to actually make full plat games.

I think if you restrict it to the same rank for matchmaking you might end up as a plat player in queue for over an hour with no game.

However my counterpoint would be that as a plat player, PvP is so putrid right now I'm not even playing so I wouldn't actually care kekw.