Two Redpills That Would Actually Make Teams More Balanced

[Yerlock.4678]

There’s 2 things anet could do to make the matchmaker give us more balanced teams:

A) Remove duo’s and premades in Ranked. This actually would help the matchmaker give us fairer games in a lower population (which this game has). 
B) Combine Stronghold/Conquest in Unranked. What’s making the low population even worse as far as selection goes is dividing up the crowd even more into stronghold/unranked/ and ranked. Combining Stronghold/Conquest into one Unranked mode would let the matchmaker have an easier time with a larger pool to choose from for Ranked matches.

How would this work? Players in unranked get to choose either Stronghold or Conquest in the map selection, letting casual play with premades in conquest still be a thing unless they want to change it up with Stronghold.
 

 

Edited December 8, 2023 by gmmg.9210

[Sahne.6950]

I dont think taking the ability to play with your friends will help this gamemode one bit. 

Not at the current state. 

Its too late to Strive for competetiveness. 

Fun is all that matters. And for alot of people playing with 4 randoms of which 2 are just there for the dailys.... isnt exactly fun.

 

Scrap ranked, allow 5 man Q,  get rid of all form of leaderboards, increase the rate at wich you can get legendary gear. Give Newcomern a protectee bracket, until they reach level15. 

 

Thats what i would do. But i know alot of people wont like that.

Edited December 8, 2023 by Sahne.6950

[DoomNexus.5324]

3 hours ago, gmmg.9210 said:

B) Combine ranked/unranked. What’s making the low population even worse as far as selection goes is dividing up the crowd even more into stronghold/unranked/ and ranked. Combining ranked/unranked into one ranked mode would let the matchmaker have an easier time with a larger pool to choose from.

Hard No for me for two reasons and:

3 hours ago, gmmg.9210 said:

I would actually be for these two solutions or at least the second one if they added more AT’s throughout the day so that teams could join up and do their thing.

is not really a solution because
1) none of my friends are at my level so queueing up with them in ATs is kinda nonsensical + I think on-demand ATs have been planned since 2018 or so and we still don't have it with 0 mentioned upcoming changes for PvP either. So I don't think anyone is even working on sPvP at all and even if, in this low population environment there would probably never be enough demand for on-demand ATs anyway.
2) I like to theorycraft and like to test either my own builds, other meta builds or simply other classes without performance pressure (either from ranked or in a tournament)

And testing stuff in Stronghold as the only casual mode doesn't work either because the objectives are completely different so builds won't translate super well.

You'd also need to find way to "introduce" new players since so far they need to reach pvp rank 20 via Unranked before they can join Ranked, which I think makes sense.
Removing the requirement doesn't sound good to me and neither does forcing new players to play Stronghold until they hit rank 20, then throw them into a completely new (to them) game mode with different objectives and everything.

I don't know where this hate for queuing with friends comes from?
I get why duo-Q is bad design but why also take away the possibility to full team in unranked? ATs are the ONLY place for full teams then with no possibility to practice or anything other than private arenas.

Edited December 8, 2023 by DoomNexus.5324

[Yerlock.4678]

7 hours ago, DoomNexus.5324 said:

Hard No for me for two reasons and:

is not really a solution because
1) none of my friends are at my level so queueing up with them in ATs is kinda nonsensical + I think on-demand ATs have been planned since 2018 or so and we still don't have it with 0 mentioned upcoming changes for PvP either. So I don't think anyone is even working on sPvP at all and even if, in this low population environment there would probably never be enough demand for on-demand ATs anyway.
2) I like to theorycraft and like to test either my own builds, other meta builds or simply other classes without performance pressure (either from ranked or in a tournament)

And testing stuff in Stronghold as the only casual mode doesn't work either because the objectives are completely different so builds won't translate super well.

You'd also need to find way to "introduce" new players since so far they need to reach pvp rank 20 via Unranked before they can join Ranked, which I think makes sense.
Removing the requirement doesn't sound good to me and neither does forcing new players to play Stronghold until they hit rank 20, then throw them into a completely new (to them) game mode with different objectives and everything.

I don't know where this hate for queuing with friends comes from?
I get why duo-Q is bad design but why also take away the possibility to full team in unranked? ATs are the ONLY place for full teams then with no possibility to practice or anything other than private arenas.

Unranked could be combined with Stronghold, either picking Stronghold if voted on or Unranked in map selection. Actually that would really help cuz then Stronghold and Unranked get combined and then the players can vote on which one in map selection, and it would consolidate the game mode for more fair matches in Ranked. This would make the matchmaker have a better time choosing people, and would allow casuals to still enjoy both Stronghold and Conquest in Unranked.

You could still 5 man in unranked and play conquest, unless the team wants a change of pace and votes Stronghold in map selection. Then if you wanna rank, you have to solo and get much fairer quality matches due to there only being two modes the matchmaker is working on rather than three, thus a larger pool of players to draw upon, and no duo's or premades for even better quality matches. Thoughts?

 

Edited December 8, 2023 by gmmg.9210

[Gamble.4580]

Taking away duo que will lower the population 

[Marckan.9526]

Honest question, does anybody actually play stronghold?

I played two games when it first came out and never touched it since.

[Flowki.7194]

They should add perminant 2v2 and 3v3, full premades AND solo ques only (seperate rank system). You can play alone against other solos if friends are not on, play with friends when on, seperate ranks to encourage solo play at no loss to premade rank (the real rank lets be honest). Lock MMR to within elo range, MMR is decided on the teams highest ranked player, this would regulate itself for range manipulation. All teams/players start from last seasons finishing elo, or from bronze 3 if no previous season. A "booster" can be added for good returning players, if you win 5 games in a row you gain double points every win after, reseting at loss, or once reaching gold. Obviously this would get decent players out of lower elos faster, as to not "farm" newbs any longer than neccersary.

 

Premade 5v5 never worked well in wow, over years of it being a thing, it was just too hard to organise 5 players across a playerbase. GW2 kill times are fast, with a lot of low skill floors, doesnt feel fun/skill based in ganking or being ganked in under 3 seconds, becuase somebody took the time to apply a red circle. That said, 5v5 would be alot better if it was stronghold only, this would spread players out and make things more tactical, while reducing the rewarards of low skill zerg bursts.

Edited December 8, 2023 by Flowki.7194

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

1 hour ago, Gamble.4580 said:

Taking away duo que will lower the population 

Holy crap, a Jedi mind trick 😨

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

2 hours ago, Gamble.4580 said:

Taking away duo que will lower the population 

The population is already low because duos avoiding each other to fight solo groups makes match quality worse for everyone. 

[DoomNexus.5324]

4 hours ago, gmmg.9210 said:

Unranked could be combined with Stronghold, either picking Stronghold if voted on or Unranked in map selection.

But you can already pick either Stronghold only, Conquest only and both for Unranked, I don't really understand your suggestion.. Do you want to combine the queue so nobody will ever  be able to play Stronghold again because you can't queue for Stronghold only anymore and you'd get voted out 100% of the time?
 

2 hours ago, Marckan.9526 said:

Honest question, does anybody actually play stronghold?

I played two games when it first came out and never touched it since.

Yes, and I think Stronghold is actually way more fun than Conquest ngl.

[Yerlock.4678]

32 minutes ago, DoomNexus.5324 said:

But you can already pick either Stronghold only, Conquest only and both for Unranked, I don't really understand your suggestion.. Do you want to combine the queue so nobody will ever  be able to play Stronghold again because you can't queue for Stronghold only anymore and you'd get voted out 100% of the time?
 

Yes, and I think Stronghold is actually way more fun than Conquest ngl.

It would consolidate the amount of modes into only ranked and unranked, which would allow for a larger pool of people to be chosen from. Larger base of people means the mm has an easier time getting fairer matches. The problem rn is ranked is entirely a joke because of low pop and duo's making elo hell scenarios a real thing. The only way to get the best titles is to game the system.

You could still play with friends and just tell them to vote for Stronghold in map selection. The other option anet could do that would require more work would be just making more modes and content for pvp, and enticing players with more rewards. But ranked rewards rn are pretty legit so really just making more content that isn't only balance. 

The reason I came up with this suggestion is because anet has barely any incentive to care about sPvP, and thus barely any reason to give us new things outside of balance. This way things could at least be consolidated to allow most players to have fairer matches in conquest (you're in the minority for preferring SH I'm sorry). You could still play SH though it's not like it would be deleted.

[jdawgie.1835]

22 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

I dont think taking the ability to play with your friends will help this gamemode one bit. 

Not at the current state. 

Its too late to Strive for competetiveness. 

Fun is all that matters. And for alot of people playing with 4 randoms of which 2 are just there for the dailys.... isnt exactly fun.

 

Scrap ranked, allow 5 man Q,  get rid of all form of leaderboards, increase the rate at wich you can get legendary gear. Give Newcomern a protectee bracket, until they reach level15. 

 

Thats what i would do. But i know alot of people wont like that.

You said something that made a lot of sense and got confused reacts. I love this forum lmao. Removing friends at this point outright isn't going to help. Unified voices in a solution where the community agrees might work though. Ive made the suggestion many times. 

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

i don't understand the "we need to be able to play with our friends" comments. it seems like you aren't the poor solo-queued pugs getting stomped by a coordinated duo in voicechat game after game, while they try to secure a few wins towards their ascended armor.

 

this is one of those things that's completely different on the other side, which is the whole problem. pvp is meant to be artificially balanced, so when you get into a situation where its just tilted one or way or another from the start, you've essentially ruined the game mode, and at that point players might as well just exit and go play world. vs. world because its the same thing, except with less players yelling at you for being bad.

 

(it also gives more or less the same rewards at this point.)

Edited December 9, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[maxwelgm.4315]

The playing with friends argument is so hilarious. Unranked is right there and you can even play with four friends at once.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

On 12/8/2023 at 2:04 AM, gmmg.9210 said:

There’s 2 things anet could do to make the matchmaker give us more balanced teams:

A) Remove duo’s and premades in Ranked. This actually would help the matchmaker give us fairer games in a lower population (which this game has). 
B) Combine Stronghold/Conquest in Unranked. What’s making the low population even worse as far as selection goes is dividing up the crowd even more into stronghold/unranked/ and ranked. Combining Stronghold/Conquest into one Unranked mode would let the matchmaker have an easier time with a larger pool to choose from for Ranked matches.

How would this work? Players in unranked get to choose either Stronghold or Conquest in the map selection, letting casual play with premades in conquest still be a thing unless they want to change it up with Stronghold.
 

 

I made a similar suggestion not long ago in a different thread.

IMO here is what needs to happen moving forward:

1. Remove ranked game mode and shove all the related pip rewards/achievements to unranked. This will funnel remaining player base together, allowing the algorithm better proportions to do its job correctly. We can keep mixed queues of 1-5 for unranked. No one will care to abuse any of this because 2 ->
2. Remove visible rating/badge icons/titles. Just get rid of it. This clout display is 95% of the reason why people win trade/multi-box/bot throw to begin with. Just get rid of this garbage. I hate saying that because I like the idea of competing for these things, but it is true that all the clout display does is create motives for match manipulation. I know the people who cheat get bored of doing it, but they keep doing it because they feel like "they have to keep up". Even those guys would probably feel relieved if clout display was removed so they could just relax and play the game again. If they removed clout display, no one is going to cheat in unranked, and if they do, it would be way way less frequent than what we see in ranked now. And because it's unranked, the people who were getting cheated, if that happened, it wouldn't kitten them off as much. Everythinig about removing rating/badges/titles would just be healthy for the game at this point. If people didn't feel like: "Oh I just hit the rating I wanted so now I want to stop for 3 days and sit on it" or "There is throwing going on right now so I should stop queue today" or "The strong people I duo with aren't logged in so I have to wait to queue so I don't lose rating" or "I just won a game and get +5 and then lose a game get -21 now I'm kind of angry and don't feel like playing anymore" we would see a lot more queue participating if these factors were not giving motives to "stop queueing". I mean seriously though. The times that I queue the most and have the most fun, is when I'm queueing unranked with groups of friends and no one has to worry about rating. Arenanet REALLY needs to consider this reality check, moving forward into year 12.
3. Shove stronghold & courtyard into the normal map shuffle selections for the now merged unranked. Removing ranked and pushing all rewards to unranked will already merge player base together, but then merging stronghold & courtyard into normal map shuffle will merge even more player base together, which feels rather necessary at this point for the algorithm to be able to do its job. I don't think anyone would have a problem with playing the occasional stronghold or courtyard on a roulette shuffle for some different to do from time to time. It really wouldn't be a big deal now with build templates, when we can so easily swap builds for different modes.
4. Leave competitive for 5man premade ATs, the way it was supposed to be to begin with. There are a lot of suggestions I could make as to how to make the AT scene better, but I'll save that for a different post.

Edited December 9, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[magickthief.6492]

12 hours ago, jdawgie.1835 said:

You said something that made a lot of sense and got confused reacts. I love this forum lmao. Removing friends at this point outright isn't going to help. Unified voices in a solution where the community agrees might work though. Ive made the suggestion many times. 

Unranked, stronghold, and 2s, tourneys...plenty of chances to play with friends. DUO in ranked conquest is sanctioned exploitation. Next excuse

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

The "I just want to play with friends" excuse is just that, an excuse.

Every one of you who says this is a liar and a cheat. Plenty of ways to play with friends and more than 1 friend outside of ranked, and if it were really about that, you'd be for split queues at the very least and be asking to play with more than just 1 other person. But you can't allow soloqs to have their own separate arena because that would go against duoq's true purpose: farming others who are disadvantaged. Take your medicine 💊Tell the truth

[Shagie.7612]

4 hours ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

Every one of you who says this is a liar and a cheat.

I guarantee you the vast majority of duo queues happening are two random friends just having fun and earning some pips in the process.
You're utterly delusional if you think that isn't true.

That doesn't mean it doesn't cause problems, like with the rank 1 and 2 being thrown up against golds or whatever, but friends are in fact a very real thing, despite your inability to imagine what it's like to have them.

Well, more delusional than I thought anyways.

[magickthief.6492]

All of the devs would need to be from somewhere other than washington state for them to consider taking a red pill.....wait...nevermind, isn't washington state all drugs legal? they might take the pill

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

9 hours ago, Shagie.7612 said:

I guarantee you the vast majority of duo queues happening are two random friends just having fun and earning some pips in the process.
You're utterly delusional if you think that isn't true.

I'd buy it if it were teams vs other teams only, but it's not, and it's obvious why its not. Call it delusion all you want, you can't tell me why they need the soloqs to be there.

Not even saying remove duoq, saying split the queues. If it's about playing with friends, there should be absolutely 0 issue with that and it should only be about playing with buds. It's common sense, which is apparently delusion to you.

Kudos for lasting 3 sentences before resorting to insults this time though. That was almost a complete thought and I am very impressed 👏

[Sarako Mindweaver.2786]

It's so funny to me, we had all the crying years ago to take away 5 man rank group pvp(most pvp guilds dissolved then). It killed pvp back then, and making it where you can't play with anyone at all in rank pvp, would be the final nail in the coffin.

[jdawgie.1835]

On 12/9/2023 at 11:41 AM, magickthief.6492 said:

Unranked

This is a trash game mode that offers people nothing and needs to be removed entirley - this is not an option or a solution.

On 12/9/2023 at 11:41 AM, magickthief.6492 said:

stronghold

This is also trash - its under developed for what the original goal was and is signficiantly less relevent as a game mode than unranked. 

On 12/9/2023 at 11:41 AM, magickthief.6492 said:

and 2s

Needs to be year round to count same with threes - outside of that I agree with you here. However as it currently stands its not an actual solution. Yet.

On 12/9/2023 at 11:41 AM, magickthief.6492 said:

DUO in ranked conquest is sanctioned exploitation. Next excuse

@magickthief.6492 You know whats so funny? I actually responded to each of your little items (excuses) in good faith - because I didnt read the response to the very end to see the "next excuse" part. Here you go buddy - Do yourself a favor before making flippant comments. Read peoples post historys. Its the best way to differentiate troll from genuine poster. Heres a quote from a different post that offers an actual solution to the problem. 

On 11/16/2023 at 12:10 PM, jdawgie.1835 said:

Conquest (5v5) Since we will not have 5v5 premade vs premade anymore because that time is over unfortunately - We need to make 5v5 a solo que mode only. (My oppinion is you will still have people stacking on each other so theres that) however removing duo que makes it a bit easier. Give 5v5 to Solo quers. Adjust top stats for solo que. For example that fact that is no stats for engagements survived in 5v5 is wild to me. You pushed far and engaged two people and did not die? Should be noted in *Least deaths vs damage done ratio* or something to that effect. 

Team Death Match (2v2/3v3) Needs to be premade only. What I mean by this is unless you are partied up you cannot que and if we dont want to do that at least ensure an understanding that queuing solo will put you at a significant disadvantage. This will allow people who want competitive team play (that is what this mode is afterall) a way to do it with out having to organize 5v5. 

Separate the ladder and have them both up all year round. Give individual rank, titles, etc to solo 5v5, and give the teams their rank and I think it would be cool to put the name of the duo or trio team name up on the leader board along with account names.

Ensure the titles are the same - IMO my of the arena title is something I favor over the 3v3 and 2v2 elite titles. I think many other people feel this way. Unified rewards for placement the boards.

What your left with is a game mode for solo quers, a game mode for teams year round, and unified rewards. Pugs not colliding with established teams, and something for everyone to do. Remove unranked all together and this way you have 3 total game modes (instead of two) it reduces population split, and add pips based on engagement in the match not on loss to reduce farming, botting. 

Edited December 11, 2023 by jdawgie.1835

[jdawgie.1835]

1 hour ago, Sarako Mindweaver.2786 said:

It's so funny to me, we had all the crying years ago to take away 5 man rank group pvp(most pvp guilds dissolved then). It killed pvp back then, and making it where you can't play with anyone at all in rank pvp, would be the final nail in the coffin.

Yeah exactly. Removing 5 mans quite literally killed this game mode and about 250 active guilds inside of a week. 

Edited December 11, 2023 by jdawgie.1835

[DoomNexus.5324]

It's so kittening hilarious.
If you told anyone in CS2, LoL, Dota2, Valorant,... basically ANY competitive team game ever, that you can only solo Q in ranked games and "yOu CaN pLaY wItH fRiEnDs In UnRaNkEd!1!!!" you could watch this game collapse and die in real-time, yet in GW2 soooo many players are obsessed with the smallest issue imaginable.
I've never experienced a game where people are so kitten about being in a 4+1 stack against a full-team that the devs had to remove arbitrary team sizes altogether and people are still crying about "uuhhh duo is broken uhhh".
Idk about your matches in particular but I didn't feel any difference back when duo-Q was only until plat2+ or when duo was removed entirely.
Been playing solo on a top250 level for the last 5 years too, so I don't know what to tell you. It's not duo-Q that's holding you guys back, seriously.

Real talk: If you think duo queue is the only reason why you aren't in the leaderboard then please just stop playing this game because duo is one of the least problems ranked has.
Also, you do realize that 5v5 in ranked was the original change that killed competitive game play in gw2, right? Why would anyone form a pvp guild or join any community if you can't even play the single most important queue in pvp together?
Like I said many times in the last 2 weeks or so: I couldn't give any less kittens about duo-Q being in the game but remove duo-Q and the game will lose even more players + it's really not nearly as much of an issue as you guys make it look.

I'm out, this topic is so utterly ridiculous, it's insane.

Edited December 11, 2023 by DoomNexus.5324
Correction

[jdawgie.1835]

2 minutes ago, DoomNexus.5324 said:

It's so kittening hilarious.
If you told anyone in CS2, LoL, Dota2, Valorant,... basically ANY competitive team game ever, that you can only solo Q in ranked games and "yOu CaN pLaY wItH fRiEnDs In UnRaNkEd!1!!!" you could watch this game collapse and die in real-time, yet in GW2 soooo many players are obsessed with the smallest issue imaginable.
I've never experienced a game where people are so kitten about being in a 4+1 stack against a full-team that the devs had to remove arbitrary team sizes altogether and people are still crying about "uuhhh duo is broken uhhh".
Idk about your matches in particular but I didn't feel any difference back when duo-Q was plat2+ only or when duo was removed entirely.
Been playing solo on a top250 level for the last 5 years too, so I don't know what to tell you. It's not duo-Q that's holding you guys back, seriously.

Real talk: If you think duo queue is the only reason why you aren't in the leaderboard then please just stop playing this game because duo is one of the least problems ranked has.
Also, you do realize that 5v5 in ranked was the original change that killed competitive game play in gw2, right? Why would anyone form a pvp guild or join any community if you can't even play the single most important queue in pvp together?
Like I said many times in the last 2 weeks or so: I couldn't give any less kittens about duo-Q being in the game but remove duo-Q and the game will lose even more players + it's really not nearly as much of an issue as you guys make it look.

I'm out, this topic is so utterly ridiculous it's insane.