PvP Discussion: Matchmaking and Leagues

[yanniell.1236]

I really dont know what else to say

http://i63.tinypic.com/20qjtbl.jpg

[Nightmare.1234]

you cant rate people on individual performance in a TEAM game, where the team comp is random, you don't know the build your team mates are running or their playstyle. better off going down the shooter route, rewarding people for team play with an individual point system.

-give points for the objective (capping, neutralizing and de-capping)-give points for a kill(double for a stomp).

• give points for an assisted kill (a set damage figure done to target before kill within a set time frame)
• points for downing an enemy
• points for a revive
• team bonus points for your overall team score divided by 10 (gives more reason to keep fighting even in losing games) means rank not changed as much for close games
• negative points for deaths

if ratings based on these stats not on the simple win or loss, people who at least on losing teams can keep fighting in games to offset the rank point drop

say a team win gets you 100 points and a loss gets you -150 (each tier you get -10 more points for a loss)

bottom tier(winning side) you get a individual total of 35 points (lets say this is you playing average) with the team bonus of 50.total 185 pointsnext game scenario (losing side but you played like a god) individual points 60 team score 45total -45current total 140 (didn't take a big point hit)next game scenario (losing side but you played like a noob) individual points 10 team score 30total -60current total 80 (dropped down a bit)next game scenario (winning side but you played like a noob) individual points 20 team score 50total 170current total 250

easy to rank up at lower tiers

but with losses equalling more point decay at high levels getting a big wins will be far more important for keeping your rank up.(only just come up with this I expect it flawed but just throwing ideas out there)

[Forgotten by Jana.7819]

Classes need to be balanced by MM , and not like MM is doing now , so it needs to be programed from the start and updated on how things in game stand now .

So i many times , i say many times i was in a team with 2 thiefs me as a Rev , eli and who cares about the last one , enemy team 2 necros and warrior ( last two classes dont matter give em whatever), I mean 85 % chance that we gonna lose . That needs to be programed , cos your balanced out class MM doesn't work at all ....

[Sindrener.1592]

A random note that I think you need to fix and thats people not being seen on leaderboard when they do not have enough games, it's being abused and takes away the excitment near end of a season. Take last season as an example where you had top5 being really close in rating to each other meanwhile a player has been playing less than maximum games required to be seen on leaderboard and then boom appears on last day without anyone knowing. This is being abused and IMO should be fixed

[saerni.2584]

How is the plan going to run pvp league back to back with no gap between seasons?

If you didn’t have a gap we could reduce or eliminate the mmr reset so people aren’t facing the same “got lucky” people in their matches every season as much.

[Ben Phongluangtham.1065]

@saerni.2584 said:How is the plan going to run pvp league back to back with no gap between seasons?

If you didn’t have a gap we could reduce or eliminate the mmr reset so people aren’t facing the same “got lucky” people in their matches every season as much.

I don't think we're ever going to go without any break at all. Currently, we're aiming to have about 2 weeks between seasons on average.

[Twyn.7320]

As a Gold T2/T3 player, I'd totes like to think I'm the idea of an 'average player' in the PvP Matchmaking System, so I hope my throwback idea reflects a few people's opinions.

Basically, I've read every comment here, and yah, it took a while to understand everything in the technical aspects of 'algorithms' and things like that. However, a lot of the complaints seem to boil down to a very simple: 'Don't allow duplicate classes on the same team, match-making is too random, winning a game is a lottery'. So, a very controversial idea: Why not put Team Queue back into Ranked, with a lock to one person playing a single class per team, and you can only queue with team members that are within 250 rating of you? I can already hear the hissing and 'this didn't work before so we removed it!' but seriously, it'd actually solve quite a few of the issues mentioned above.

Originally, it was removed because people believed it was unfair for one team to have full voice comms and co-ordination, while the other team was made up of random people making the game unbalanced. However, isn't this the point of an MMO? Making friends, making groups, creating teams and talking to people to complete a similar objective? It's more of an issue and discussion of 'game identity'. Is GW2 a game where people will work together to achieve the same goal and make friends along the way? Or is it a game that's convenient but lacks the co-operation of other MMOs, causing systems to not work as intended?

Also, with the rating restriction, it'd encourage people to improve in PvP to play with friends that are higher rated. And maybe, they'll create more bonds with new people, and climb divisions with different people than they started with. There are so many instances where we have 3 people in a group, and we have to make the decision as to who drops out so the other two can have fun, leaving the one person alone to sit around and play with their thumbs. How is this actually helping the game's longevity? With this in mind, it's no wonder that some people are becoming disillusioned with PvP (along with the balance patch length), when they aren't allowed to play with their friends because the game promotes an anti-co-operation system.

And ofc, the typical thing will be: "Play Automated Tournaments." Unfortunately, they're so infrequent and often at silly times, so in a lot of cases, while I'd love to play them, I either have to play at 5pm or 11pm (UK), as they seem to happen every 6 hours, which isn't really convenient in any way for the average person that has to go to college/university, or work the next day.

Overall, I really do think that Team Queue needs to be added back in, just to keep the PvP Ranked 'scene' alive, with the restrictions I've mentioned above in bold. It incorporates a lot of ideas mentioned in the thread, but solves and assesses the very obvious 'drawback' that Team Queue possesses.

[yanniell.1236]

Hi, Anet

Can u explain this matchmaking decision?

https://ibb.co/mXu8qR

Two thieves in our team, no necros, and two necros on their team. Why?

[Bossun.2046]

@Bossun.2046 said:

@Forsty.7968 said:I dont know if this got covered already but i have a question about rating rewarding based on currrent rating/mmr. Currently it

seems

to me that you gain and lose rating based on your rating solemly versus the average rating of the enemy team instead of both team averages. If that is the case, why is it so?

Is it to try to keep the matchmaker from having to group up the higher rated players with even lower rated players than they are currently to compensate?

Its been bugging me for a while and i thought i knew the answer to it some months ago.

I would also like to know this pls

Is this question a taboo or something, Ben?

[Ben Phongluangtham.1065]

@Bossun.2046 said:

@Bossun.2046 said:

@"Forsty.7968" said:I dont know if this got covered already but i have a question about rating rewarding based on currrent rating/mmr. Currently it

seems

to me that you gain and lose rating based on your rating solemly versus the average rating of the enemy team instead of both team averages. If that is the case, why is it so?

Is it to try to keep the matchmaker from having to group up the higher rated players with even lower rated players than they are currently to compensate?

Its been bugging me for a while and i thought i knew the answer to it some months ago.

I would also like to know this pls

Is this question a taboo or something, Ben?

Forsty is correct in that we use the composite opponent method for rating changes. I think we may have tried the composite team method in the past and it didn't work well. I could be wrong about that, as it was before I joined the PvP team. The problem with composite teams is that it basically never gets people to a rating that reflects their real skill.

There's a graduate student master's thesis on the topic if you're interested.

http://rhetoricstudios.com/downloads/AbstractingGlicko2ForTeamGames.pdf

[Forsty.7968]

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@Bossun.2046 said:

@Bossun.2046 said:

@"Forsty.7968" said:I dont know if this got covered already but i have a question about rating rewarding based on currrent rating/mmr. Currently it

seems

to me that you gain and lose rating based on your rating solemly versus the average rating of the enemy team instead of both team averages. If that is the case, why is it so?

Is it to try to keep the matchmaker from having to group up the higher rated players with even lower rated players than they are currently to compensate?

Its been bugging me for a while and i thought i knew the answer to it some months ago.

I would also like to know this pls

Is this question a taboo or something, Ben?

Forsty is correct in that we use the composite opponent method for rating changes. I think we may have tried the composite team method in the past and it didn't work well. I could be wrong about that, as it was before I joined the PvP team. The problem with composite teams is that it basically never gets people to a rating that reflects their real skill.

There's a graduate student master's thesis on the topic if you're interested.

http://rhetoricstudios.com/downloads/AbstractingGlicko2ForTeamGames.pdf

Ty for offering insight. I dont know if the method was used in the past in a soloQ only environment or not but i dont know if that could even make a difference.

[MithranArkanere.8957]

I see it the same way I've seen it since forever: We need better personal participation measurements. Without that, luck will be too much of a factor in matchmaking.

I am glad that after months of incessant nagging they finally listened in Heroes of the Storm.

Yes, measuring personal scoring is very hard. Specially in a game with so much variation in build making. But once you have one that is good enough, it is always worth it. It's a lot of cases and situations, and not everything can be measured, so the system also needs a way for players to vote who deserves to get a bit more credit even if the system didn't pick them as "MvP". So it takes time to build up, and it needs to take many things into consideration.

Once we have a system that can determine enough personal participation, that can be used to weight on the rating. For example, when losing a match, a player that scores as much or more than anyone else but dies much less deserves to lose way less rating than someone who is basically feeding the enemy.

Personal participation being clearly advertised as factor in rating also reduces the likelyhood of players giving up. Someone may not win a match, but they may still get enough control time, kills and stay alive to cushion their loss of rating, or even still gain some if there was enough difference between the teams.

[ukk.9603]

I know a lot of other people already said this, but please give people the opportunity to queue as a team in ranked. I don't think that copying moba's way of doing pvp is something that will ever work in an mmorpg; unless of course you balance the whole game around 1v1 which will basically would kill class diversity.Current matchmaking system is very frustrating, the gap between skill levels in the same team is too high, group composition isn't taken into account for the most part, and player's rating depends on the random teammates one gets, which is very unfair.The possibility to chose your own team and to have group coordination on voice comms will allow people who want to put effort in the game mode to do so; as it is now each match is just a lottery imho.

[Abazigal.3679]

@"MithranArkanere.8957" said:I see it the same way I've seen it since forever: We need better personal participation measurements. Without that, luck will be too much of a factor in matchmaking.

I am glad that after months of incessant nagging they finally listened in Heroes of the Storm.

Yes, measuring personal scoring is very hard. Specially in a game with so much variation in build making. But once you have one that is good enough, it is always worth it. It's a lot of cases and situations, and not everything can be measured, so the system also needs a way for players to vote who deserves to get a bit more credit even if the system didn't pick them as "MvP". So it takes time to build up, and it needs to take many things into consideration.

Once we have a system that can determine enough personal participation, that can be used to weight on the rating. For example, when losing a match, a player that scores as much or more than anyone else but dies much less deserves to lose way less rating than someone who is basically feeding the enemy.

Personal participation being clearly advertised as factor in rating also reduces the likelyhood of players giving up. Someone may not win a match, but they may still get enough control time, kills and stay alive to cushion their loss of rating, or even still gain some if there was enough difference between the teams.

But it is rather subjective in this game to know what is a good participation. Lately in PvP, there are a lot of people chasing targets offpoints. If, as a thief, i'm making sure i have 3 players on me while my team is winning on capture points 4v2, stats will probably say i was completly useless.It's the same about scourges : it is very likely that they are going to neutralize points and deal a lot of damage due to their build. But that won't necessarly mean it was a good job.

[Crinn.7864]

@Abazigal.3679 said:But it is rather subjective in this game to know what is a good participation. Lately in PvP, there are a lot of people chasing targets offpoints. If, as a thief, i'm making sure i have 3 players on me while my team is winning on capture points 4v2, stats will probably say i was completly useless.It's the same about scourges : it is very likely that they are going to neutralize points and deal a lot of damage due to their build. But that won't necessarly mean it was a good job.

You are overthinking it. You don't value participation by trying to value a individual action or play. You value participation a player's contribution to the win condition. In other words you value participation by a players ability to deny the other team points, or to gain point for their team.

For example if a thief goes and decaps a node, the value of that decap is the number of ticks between the decap and the node being contested again.

[Link.1049]

Did anything actually come of this? Would be awesome to have fewer gold vs team of legends matches.

[Frozenblade.6039]

If there are 10vs10 and 15vs15 battlegrounds, the distributon will be much more normalized. Even if you put up your best effort in 5vs5, one team-mate's bad play can easily take the game from your team to another. This may also result in better distribution of team balance, and also increase the variety of builds used, for more crowded game tactics. What do you think?

[Link.1049]

Is there a way to find out if matchmaking is broken? I'm in gold, and based on tags and friending people after matches, most of my matches are against the top 250.. I've even had the "God of PVP" tag running around in my matches. I understand it's going to happen occasionally...but when the top player on our team is plat 1, and the other team is 4 legends and a plat 3... c'mon, it's not fun.

[Lone Wanderer.2760]

heysome new map will help the pvp

[Zypp.7921]

I believe the system is doing a great job making balanced teams, based on the known ratings of players. I also believe there are other flaws in the system:

Here's what I noticed when playing together with a friend who has a lower rating:

• When we win, the player with the highest rating gains less than the other player
• When we lose, the player with the highest rating loses more than the other player

Both options converge the rating of both players. This means that if I have a rating of 1600 and play exclusively with a friend who has a rating of 1000 we will converge to the same rating sooner or later. For example we might both be rated at a solid (high confidence) 1300 after playing together for a while even though I'm still a 1600 player and my friend is still a 1000 player. We part ways and now I'm set up for a winning streak back to 1600 and my friend is set up for a painful losing streak back to 1000.

Another thing is playing on a build or character the player is not used to. It seems the system does nothing to compensate for this. I.E. when I'm playing on a new class I get a bad losing streak. What happened to that? I though I read at some point the system uses a different rating for each class you play. If that were the case I would expect something close to a 50% winrate because I'm playing with lower rating players but I would be awarded a lot less points for winning while losing more for losing. There are a lot of players trying to do the 'year of the ascension X' achievements where you have to win multiple ranked games with multiple different classes. It's great that players are learning how to play different classes because I think it's making everyone better at playing their main class as well, but the system is not currently handling it very well when players are not on their main.

I know it's a balance team issue but I'm posting it here anyway. The TIMING of balance patches is hurting PvP. Please pass this on to the balance team or find another way to restructure the teams or the way pvp is balanced. The meta is not balanced often enough and at unfortunate moments. Last season you dropped an expansion mid-season. This season you dropped a balance patch at day 1 of the season. Whenever there is a significant balance change during a season, some players will adapt faster than others. This means that the skill rating will be incorrect for some players and it will create winning or losing streaks before the system updates the skill rating of every player. It's also frustrating, I want to use the downtime between seasons to test builds and determine which build(s) I will main during the next season. I can't do this when the balance patch is dropped on day 1 of the season, this makes the downtime between seasons extra boring. Here's what I envision for balance patches for pvp:

• Keep the current schedule of balance patches, but move them up a few days. They should be at the end of the season or in the middle of the time inbetween seasons. This is a very easy and obvious change, I really don't understand why this hasn't happened a long time ago.
• Introduce a mid-season pvp only mini balance patch. This patch tweaks skill and trait numbers for pvp only and the pvp team should be in charge of this patch entirely. Players know exactly when and what to expect: for example in this season I would expect slight changes to scourge, firebrand and maybe mirage. This would motivate me a lot more to play in the end of the season and try to place well on the leaderboards. Currently I'm just not playing at all until the next balance patch because I don't want to slug through scourges supported by firebrands until the end of the season :(

There need to be improvements to team compositions with matchmaking. Currently the system limits each team to 2 of each profession. But it is still possible to get a team with too many roamers or bunkers. I'm very unhappy when my team has 2 roamers and the enemy has 1, or the same for bunkers. This is a tricky problem to solve, but a step in the right direction would be to mark certain skills with a mobility value or a support value. For example, thief's shadowstep and steal moves have a high mobility value. The matchmaking system can now make a better effort of balancing the total combined mobility and support values of both teams.

Finally, I suspect match maniplation is still a big issue in < 1600 rating games . I base this purely on the amount of disconnects I see. As a platinum 2 player I barely get any disconnects anymore, but some of my friends who are trying to break into platinum are still experiencing a lot of disconnects, especially on the losing team. There is no reason to do this unless you're working together with someone you know on the winning team.

With all of these issues in play, way too many matches are onesided even though the matchmaking system can correctly balance the skill ratings of both teams.

By the way, I love this game and gamemode to bits. I've been playing since the beta and I have more games of pvp than hours played in this game. Please don't take my comment for hate, I'm just trying to make pvp a slightly better place. I'm very glad to see these threads on the pvp forum and I hope we can have a civilized discussion on this topic. Thank you for everything!

Edit: Do you have any statistics on the average score of the losing team? I think something like "95% of games end with a score of at least 400 for the losing team" is a lot more meaningful than "95% of games have well balanced skill rating on both teams". I think this metric is a lot closer to perceived quality of the matchmaking system because balancing the skill rating is just one part of a good matchmaking system.

[yanniell.1236]

Hi, Anet.

Why?

https://i.imgur.com/G5fa8jX.jpg

[Mogar.9216]

just like to state a fact. With 500 + matches played in 1 season, my mmr should not move by 200 pts in 2 days. You match system is obviously not working. I bet you my mmr will move another 200 pts before the season end, same toon same spec same person playing.

[Aden.9306]

Just bring back duo queue. Matches still blowout or are lopsided which is funny cause you'd think duo queue would cause this; either way its a clown-fiesta. At least I can play with a friend.

[yanniell.1236]

Dont bring back duoQ. Or make some adjustments on the way points are awarded to this people. If you are duo queuing, you have no place on an INDIVIDUAL leaderboard.

[Bazooka.3590]

Hmm it seems server population does nothing with unbalanced matches. Even with the highest population most of the matches are total unbalanced(class and lvl) blowouts.My new record is 0-500 with no leaver :D Lol Anet Cmon! This game is a pile of shit right now.And blowout matches come in row of 6-12 games of course to let the player fall 100-150 rank points. Nice!