Why is NA top 250 so low

[Belial.9350]

EU top 250 is 1517

NA top 250 is 1438, literally gold tier.  Even NA top 100 is lower than EU top 250.

Why is NA so low?

Edited January 8 by Belial.9350

[Bunbury.8472]

yeah. NA pop is a dead and sometimes it feels like wading thru a septic tank in ranked

you have 10 games in a row with the same players. it's putrid

I actually farmed someone for 4 games in a row on meme rifle mecha what is this

Edited January 9 by Bunbury.8472

[Master Ketsu.4569]

Lower population results in lower average rank due to how the rank point system works.

[ArthurDent.9538]

1 hour ago, Master Ketsu.4569 said:

Lower population results in lower average rank due to how the rank point system works.

Average stays the same regardless of population in theory. The bell curve just doesn't have the girth to allow as extreme of ratings on either end. There probably aren't any legitimate bronze players on NA.

[Sereath.1428]

RIP Bozo

Same dogshit game mode as ever, and "balance" that rewards any and every kind of degenerate play style, regardless of effort or risk.
Won't be missed.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

5 hours ago, ArthurDent.9538 said:

Average stays the same regardless of population in theory. The bell curve just doesn't have the girth to allow as extreme of ratings on either end. There probably aren't any legitimate bronze players on NA.

Would tighten the curve up though.  There most likely haven't been bronze players for a long time, mostly just silver 2 - gold 2 as high g3 has been top 250 for over a year now on NA.  This is the first time I remember it being so low, prior to this week, top 250 was actually around 1380.  

EU also may have less alts clogging up the top 100 portion.  This will also drag MMR down as if you have multiple alts, no need to sweat them all up to plat--just leave them g3 for better / easier farming.  

In that light it is funny when we have topics like this as if rating means anything anyway.  It's been said in several topics--one which may still be on first page--that the top 250 in NA is really the top 50 (maybe 100 if generous) and then 2-3 alts a piece.  

[maxwelgm.4315]

Personally I always end up low plat/g3 and this season in particular I went down all the way to 1400 quite often (ended at 1460 or so). I don't care about the rating itself but just what I noticed from grinding them Byzantiums. There may be many reasons but I think it's just how many alts there are, I've basically fought top 50 players 3x more often than I normally have because no one else is playing but their alts and mains. At some points I was just getting farmed because they also play duo very often. I know I don't suck particularly but I acknowledge very well the above average gameplay is too fast for me which is OK, I just wish I didn't match to obviously top players so much. Maybe I'll move to EU next season to see if the matchmaking does improve there. In other words I think there's just not enough "truly average" players like me to go around, it's either trolling bots or someone with pretty good reflex, which in the end takes everyone down.

[oujiboardspamname.1932]

I'd like to know the comparison of bot quantity in EU vs NA because bots can absolutely be a cause.. and anet doesn't ban. 

[Saiyan.1704]

EU has nearly 3x the amount of active players than NA does, even during after hours. Skill level wise, our Gold 3 players = EU's Plat players.

The player quality on EU's after hours felt a lot worse than NA's after hours. The meta over there feels very different, too. Just an absurd amount of condi oriented builds everywhere I look.

[Random Weird Guy.3528]

3 hours ago, Saiyan.1704 said:

EU has nearly 3x the amount of active players than NA does, even during after hours. Skill level wise, our Gold 3 players = EU's Plat players.

The player quality on EU's after hours felt a lot worse than NA's after hours. The meta over there feels very different, too. Just an absurd amount of condi oriented builds everywhere I look.

Makes sense, as EU is mostly concentrated within 2-3 timezones, while NA has a much wider range. Australians seem to mostly play on NA too.

Although I’m not sure what you’re saying about condi builds, I didn’t encounter any condi in EU platinum this season except for the occasional condi druid. Even condi zerkers have been replaced by spellbreakers as the warrior sidenoder.

Edited January 9 by Random Weird Guy.3528

[Saiyan.1704]

10 minutes ago, Random Weird Guy.3528 said:

Makes sense, as EU is mostly concentrated within 2-3 timezones, while NA has a much wider range. Australians seem to mostly play on NA too.

Although I’m not sure what you’re saying about condi builds, I didn’t encounter any condi in EU platinum this season except for the occasional condi druid. Even condi zerkers have been replaced by spellbreakers as the warrior sidenoder.

Oh let me elaborate, it was mostly after-hours when ever I did queue ranked. I was amongst lower rated players. We have a lot of lower rated condi players in NA as well. It just seemed more apparent in EU, but that's just because of the larger player base (and time zones) overall.

[Eddbopkins.2630]

Other then it being a low population, Hardly anyone plays 150 games a season and that the only way to be seen on the leader boards. 

Edited January 9 by Eddbopkins.2630

[Lighter.5631]

not worth play, more fun game available, specially with big sales

haven't logged for more than 2 hours in 3 weeks

i feel empathy for whoever still plays this game hardcore.

worth playing it from time to time tho

but it's the best time to get titles, if you still care, you can easily get better titles than you would normally get with current pop, lol

[Ruufio.1496]

.

Edited June 13 by Ruufio.1496

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

If you reward builds that dont need to react to their opponent to win and punish builds that do long enough, eventually nobody will want to play your game. 

Nobody is forced to be here. The product needs to be good for you to have a playerbase. 

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

my rank has dropped every year despite my skill level only increasing exponentially over time, with me originally being platinum-2 and now usually placing gold-2 at the start of a season after placements. this is a natural consequence of the lower population, which is compressing the curve on both sides.

 

i think what is happening is you get long strings of games with the same players, with only a few faces changing, if any at all. this means the games generally have the same outcome repeatedly and lead to winning streaks of the good team of 10+ games at a time. as a result, its easier to climb than it has ever been, but when you start falling, you fall down hard since you end up on the other end of the whole process. the higher population of the past effectively randomised this into noise.

 

a few years ago i finally trained myself to quit at the first loss of every day to not feed the beast and end up on losing streaks.

 

it's not just on the top end either, bronze players basically no longer exist and get ranked in as silver and don't drop back down. the way the matchmaking algorithm is designed seems to move everyone towards the center when all other variables are removed, and as we all know, there's almost no variables remaining.

 

the tl;dr is, there's no randomness introduced into the system to remove the continuity errors.

 

many experienced players have discussed, repeatedly, on these forums the topic of just randomising the games with sufficient entropy (and merging ranked with unranked), this way it will average out over time and result in less predictable gameplay and match outcomes with the low population.

Edited January 10 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Zekent.3652]

I don't know if this one wintrader guild with a bunch of shadow abyss sylvaries still exist, grieffing the competitive part NA's PvP, but many of them still just playing like nothing happens.

This is ANET's fault due to their lack of moderation, they just killed the PvP gamemode by ignoring it + these lifeless wintraders and system abusers.

And it's sad, because even if the PvP population is low these days, this gamemode with its combat system IS STILL a good selling point for GW2.

Edited January 10 by Zekent.3652