Ranked Matchmaking for PVP Rigged against older players?!

[Whalekisses.1345]

So, crazy thing happened, the PVP rush even comes up and I completed it for myself and while doing so I am having these crazy volatile matches where some games my team can play well and sometimes they can't. I end up getting top stats and am in a position that wherever I'm not currently at on the map my team is losing. I go on a losing streak and go from Gold 2 to bottom of Gold 1 almost top of Silver. I get myself halfway back up by sweating my brains out, but I manage to do it with the teams being so 50/50.

 

Now here's where it gets interesting. My brother is on a work trip and wants the rewards for PVP rush, but due to the length of the trip he will surely miss the event. So I play his account for him, recreate my character and use one of my builds and I destroy. He is on bottom of Gold 1 and I win 6 games in a row, and win 7 of 8 games. Now I would think this is a coincidence and just good RNG with who I played against, but it wasn't. Not only were my enemies worse at the game, but so were my allies. I was destroying the enemy team getting over 400k damage per match without issue. And if I did less it's because the game ended so early and I easily destroyed multiple players alone over and over. I take his rank from bottom of Gold 1 to just below middle of Gold 2 in just 8 games, something I can't do on my own account with the same build in 50 games. It's consistent, whenever I play on his account the game is easy and I rank up without issue on my account I sweat my kitten off to barely make ground and even sometimes get unlucky and go on a losing streak. I wondered what could cause this drastic variation between the two accounts and player skill and I found that the GW2 algorithm doesn't just use rating to determine who you face, but also takes your overall PVP rank into account.

 

This essentially punishes you for having more time in PVP and intentionally places players with more time in pvp with players with similar times in pvp without giving them the propper rating since other players with less time just won't face them. This creates a system where newer less skilled players can easily outrank better high skilled players with more time in pvp. WHY?! Why do this? Why make it easier for less skilled players with less time to rank up? Remove the ranked weight it should only go off current rating! Why are we punishing players for having more time in the games pvp? Those players should just be facing each other at the top of the leaderboards. To anyone that doesn't believe it, I challenge anyone who's ranked dragon or higher to make a smurf account and see for yourself. Post what you find here, let's get people together to bring this to Arenanets attention and show them how offal this system is, give us proper ranks based on our skill rating, let everyone be capable of climbing on an even playing field. No wonder people hate the PvP constantly rigging the matchmaking against better players. This system needs to be changed, I don't know who thought this would be a good idea, but it's a massive reason for why the games feel so volatile and 50/50. If they changed this balancing between player skills would mellow out and make a better experience over all for the entire player base. 

[Last Crab.6054]

he didnt play on his brothers account, that is a typo. 

he would never violate terms of service

Edited July 21 by Last Crab.6054

[arazoth.7290]

7 hours ago, Last Crab.6054 said:

he didnt play on his brothers account, that is a typo. 

he would never violate terms of service

smart thing to openly say yea

[WhoWantsAHug.3186]

8 hours ago, Whalekisses.1345 said:

So, crazy thing happened, the PVP rush even comes up and I completed it for myself and while doing so I am having these crazy volatile matches where some games my team can play well and sometimes they can't. I end up getting top stats and am in a position that wherever I'm not currently at on the map my team is losing. I go on a losing streak and go from Gold 2 to bottom of Gold 1 almost top of Silver. I get myself halfway back up by sweating my brains out, but I manage to do it with the teams being so 50/50.

 

Now here's where it gets interesting. My brother is on a work trip and wants the rewards for PVP rush, but due to the length of the trip he will surely miss the event. So I play his account for him, recreate my character and use one of my builds and I destroy. He is on bottom of Gold 1 and I win 6 games in a row, and win 7 of 8 games. Now I would think this is a coincidence and just good RNG with who I played against, but it wasn't. Not only were my enemies worse at the game, but so were my allies. I was destroying the enemy team getting over 400k damage per match without issue. And if I did less it's because the game ended so early and I easily destroyed multiple players alone over and over. I take his rank from bottom of Gold 1 to just below middle of Gold 2 in just 8 games, something I can't do on my own account with the same build in 50 games. It's consistent, whenever I play on his account the game is easy and I rank up without issue on my account I sweat my kitten off to barely make ground and even sometimes get unlucky and go on a losing streak. I wondered what could cause this drastic variation between the two accounts and player skill and I found that the GW2 algorithm doesn't just use rating to determine who you face, but also takes your overall PVP rank into account.

 

This essentially punishes you for having more time in PVP and intentionally places players with more time in pvp with players with similar times in pvp without giving them the propper rating since other players with less time just won't face them. This creates a system where newer less skilled players can easily outrank better high skilled players with more time in pvp. WHY?! Why do this? Why make it easier for less skilled players with less time to rank up? Remove the ranked weight it should only go off current rating! Why are we punishing players for having more time in the games pvp? Those players should just be facing each other at the top of the leaderboards. To anyone that doesn't believe it, I challenge anyone who's ranked dragon or higher to make a smurf account and see for yourself. Post what you find here, let's get people together to bring this to Arenanets attention and show them how offal this system is, give us proper ranks based on our skill rating, let everyone be capable of climbing on an even playing field. No wonder people hate the PvP constantly rigging the matchmaking against better players. This system needs to be changed, I don't know who thought this would be a good idea, but it's a massive reason for why the games feel so volatile and 50/50. If they changed this balancing between player skills would mellow out and make a better experience over all for the entire player base. 

The matchmaker 100% does not take into account how old or new your account is. That would be stupid as kitten. You just got lucky matches vs bad players 

[Saiyan.1704]

11 hours ago, Whalekisses.1345 said:

I challenge anyone who's ranked dragon or higher to make a smurf account and see for yourself. 

I have another account, matchmaking doesn't change. Point volatility at the start of the season will differ a little but match quality has been pretty much the exact same.

There is such a thing as elo hell, though. I've done so terrible in my initial Placements that I end up in Gold1 and have to make the long grind to Gold 3 (NA). Sometimes you'll be the MvP going 20kills 2 deaths, farming everyone... but still manage to lose because your teammates got farmed harder. That's what elo hell is. Grinding out of Gold1 can be such a hassle but not impossible.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

inb4 account suspension

[Eddbopkins.2630]

You can't play ranked on someone else's account boosting there rank score. That is against the tos not that it's ever enforced though. If he wanted something he should play it to get it him self.

Edited July 21 by Eddbopkins.2630

[Gotejjeken.1267]

4 hours ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

The matchmaker 100% does not take into account how old or new your account is. That would be stupid as kitten. You just got lucky matches vs bad players 

We sure about this? It does remember MMR from season to season.

Not confirming or denying OPs theory, but I've also had some pretty volatile matches the past couple seasons--I typically sit around mid-1400s, but this season can't seem to get past 1350 without some wild matches happening.  

Same seems to hold true for a few accounts here that I noticed are in low 1400's despite usually sitting mid-1500s.  

[Eventine.8024]

5 hours ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

The matchmaker 100% does not take into account how old or new your account is. That would be stupid as kitten. You just got lucky matches vs bad players 

Maybe not. But I really do not understand this "shadow MMR kitten". It's in Gw2, as well as other games. I hate it

[Kozumi.5816]

Can confirm this is true, I have a release account and a newer one and the release one gets hilariously unfair matches

[Laureh.2097]

Noticing this trying to come back to pvp after long time away. Am old veteran every match is 0-100 vs 600+ win and I am top everything every match so no it's not me. Really bad experience. Will probably have to wait for next season to play.

 

[Bizgurk.5639]

10 hours ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

The matchmaker 100% does not take into account how old or new your account is. That would be stupid as kitten. You just got lucky matches vs bad players 

I don't intend to put your statement out of context, but new accounts haven't played yet and will therefore have a higher volatility. If the account was recently played, then the volatility will be lower.

Quote from the Wiki page:

Quote

A volatility measurement is also included to indicate the degree of fluctuation in a player's rating. The higher the volatility, the more the rating fluctuates. Volatility changes over time in response to how you play the game. During periods of stability, your volatility should remain low, and reciprocally. The point of this is to allow the system to hone in on your appropriate rating as quickly as possible.

 

[Mythras.2091]

I play on my wifes acc for daily pvp, exact same build and there is almost 100-150 points difference between them 😄 I had terrible placement matches on my acc and cant get out of g1, though im usually g3-p1 😄 

(And playing on another acc doesnt violate ToS, playing both acc at the same time to cheat the system will though)

Edited July 22 by Mythras.2091

[Sahne.6950]

waiiit....  first of all... you are making things up......   and secondly:

are you saying that its a bad thing, when a game tries to match people with more experience against people with more experience?

Are you saying its a bad thing, when low level players, tend to face other low level players? 

 

is that the essence of this Thread?      really bro? 

Edited July 22 by Sahne.6950

[arazoth.7290]

31 minutes ago, Mythras.2091 said:

I play on my wifes acc for daily pvp, exact same build and there is almost 100-150 points difference between them 😄 I had terrible placement matches on my acc and cant get out of g1, though im usually g3-p1 😄 

(And playing on another acc doesnt violate ToS, playing both acc at the same time to cheat the system will though)

In summary, buying and selling of runs is acceptable. However, ArenaNet does not officially support buyers or sellers; these activities are done at your own risk.  Accounts which are shared or compromised can often be locked for an indefinite period or permanently terminated due to a dispute of ownership. We very seldom are able to retrieve and return a previously shared account to its owner, which is why we strongly recommend that you never share your account with anyone.

Surely it isn't 

[Mizu Misa.8730]

Match balance seems even more uneven than usually during this "pvp rush event".

I sometimes see teams that just stand no chance right from the start.

Edited July 22 by Mizu Misa.8730

[Mythras.2091]

3 hours ago, arazoth.7290 said:

In summary, buying and selling of runs is acceptable. However, ArenaNet does not officially support buyers or sellers; these activities are done at your own risk.  Accounts which are shared or compromised can often be locked for an indefinite period or permanently terminated due to a dispute of ownership. We very seldom are able to retrieve and return a previously shared account to its owner, which is why we strongly recommend that you never share your account with anyone.

Surely it isn't 

I dont plan to go on a dispute on my wifes acc ownership, so its not violating the ToS, they just dont recommend it 😛

[arazoth.7290]

1 hour ago, Mythras.2091 said:

I dont plan to go on a dispute on my wifes acc ownership, so its not violating the ToS, they just dont recommend it 😛

I don't mind what you both do lol, just linked what is said in there 🤷

[Deathstrike.1803]

 # adjust score by games played difference
  distance = abs(match.averageGames - roster.games)
  score += distance * config.rating.distance

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

[Vancho.8750]

9 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

waiiit....  first of all... you are making things up......   and secondly:

are you saying that its a bad thing, when a game tries to match people with more experience against people with more experience?

Are you saying its a bad thing, when low level players, tend to face other low level players? 

 

is that the essence of this Thread?      really bro? 

See nothing wrong with the idea its just badly executed , at some point the game considers your shity casual account for legend player that has to Carry every game. And let's not kid ourselves if someone with 5k games made like 7 years ago but started playing again now  vs someone with 500 from this year, the one with the current knowledge will be winning while the grandpa account will be forced to carry people that are not on the level of the 500 games one.

There is also the whole smurf situation where mister legend decides to smack noobs with fresh account or the duo with legend and smurf to drop the duo rating and other stupid kitten.

Quite frankly these few lines of code just add volatility instead of reducing it since grandpa is no longer at p3 level because the bones ache and is at like g3 level but the game treats him like its his job to win the game.

 

[Severiun.6495]

I recently created an alt account, and have noticed the exact same match quality behavior difference between the 2 accounts as OP explains.    

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

On 7/21/2024 at 7:14 AM, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

The matchmaker 100% does not take into account how old or new your account is.

Oh yes it does.

On 7/21/2024 at 11:36 AM, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

We sure about this? It does remember MMR from season to season.

That's not all it does. For some reason no one ever notices this.

Read this -> PvP Matchmaking Algorithm - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W)

" The first phase, called filtering, gathers players based on their current MMR. The primary purpose of this phase is to both reduce the number of players being considered for a match, and to ensure that the match is appropriate given each player's skill level. Over time, padding is added to your player rating. While this may decrease match quality, it helps ensure that outliers still receive matches.

The second phase of the algorithm is the scoring phase. During this phase each player is scored against every other player being considered for matchmaking. The metrics used during this phase include: rating, rank, games played, party size, profession, and dishonor. With each metric the system is looking for players that are as close as possible to the average of those already selected. The system also attempts to keep the number of duplicate professions to a minimum. "

It's talking about glory rank and total games played on the account. I'm not sure quite exactly how this effects your match making or how much weight it has, but I can definitely vouch that my main account with 1,176 glory rank that is nearing 31,000 total games played, gets much more difficult matches than my alts. I mean like noticeably much more difficult matches. Quick example of typically what happens, and I've streamed this live for tests many times in many different seasons over the years:

• Do placements on my main with the big numbers. The matches will be noticeably sweaty, every single one of them. Usually I'll come out gold 2 or gold 3 and have to fight like hell to even touch bottom plat over the course of nearly a hundred games. And even keeping bottom plat on that account, is a herculeic struggle.
• Do placements on my alt that has maybe 600-700 total games played. The matches are noticeably easier. Usually I get games that are easily carried by a simple DPS build and I'll finish 1500-1520 every single time at the start of every single season. And then maintaining between 1500-1560 is generally fairly relaxed and not difficult to do as long as I don't mindlessly queue into obvious win trade streaks.

I've been saying it for years, they need to ditch those extra metrics during the scoring phase of glory rank & total games played. In the early years, this probably didn't impact things too much, but in year 2024 here, it's just plainly unfair for 12 year old accounts who are stacking on more and more handicaps for being active. This is especially true due to how many people are playing alt boosting, which all of those have very low glory ranks and total games played, yet are being smurfed. These two metrics just need to be gutted out of the algorithm. They are definitely weighing down the progress of old accounts that have been very active.

Why do you think there are so many bad Barons out there? Because these newer accounts benefit easier match making with those metrics.

Edited July 24 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Mythras.2091]

5 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

I've been saying it for years, they need to ditch those extra metrics during the scoring phase of glory rank & total games played. In the early years, this probably didn't impact things too much, but in year 2024 here, it's just plainly unfair for 12 year old accounts who are stacking on more and more handicaps for being active. This is especially true due to how many people are playing alt boosting, which all of those have very low glory ranks and total games played, yet are being smurfed. These two metrics just need to be gutted out of the algorithm. They are definitely weighing down the progress of old accounts that have been very active.

This must be done ASAP along with dou que delete. Its so frustrating, when you have shtty placement matches and you cant climb to your real rank, because matchmaker says: "Ohh, he is silver rank, but lets have him a plat player on enemy team just to maintain challenge and i dont care he is on a class he was never a plat player and also played casually for 10 years." 😛

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

2 hours ago, Mythras.2091 said:

This must be done ASAP along with dou que delete. Its so frustrating, when you have shtty placement matches and you cant climb to your real rank, because matchmaker says: "Ohh, he is silver rank, but lets have him a plat player on enemy team just to maintain challenge and i dont care he is on a class he was never a plat player and also played casually for 10 years." 😛

It uses those total games played/glory rank for unfair sand bagging vs. the older accounts.

For example, I'll notice that on my main account if I play at prime time, it will often throw me into games that look the final rounds of an MAT, even when I'm in like gold 3. But on that alt with 600-700 total games, I won't even see games like that until I'm nearing plat 2, like around 1580+.

Whatever is going on here, Arenanet really needs to review that total games played/glory rank thing. Because in 2024 when we have older accounts with like over 1000 glory rank and 30,000+ total games played, and I'm pretty sure these inflated metrics are at times outweighing actual seasonal rating in the match making. From what I've seen running stream tests on the main vs. the alt, it definitely looks like it will choose a gold 3 with 30,000 games played to be thrown into a MAT like match before it will choose a 1500+ with 700 games played to be thrown into that same match.

The most outstanding proof of this that I've caught on stream was the very start of a fresh season, where there was a handful of guys like me, saiyan, cuilan, lordofnonsense, ect ect, who have really old accounts, and it just kept throwing us in the same queues together. Like an inhouse, it was mixing & matching us differently match to match, but it was making us grind into each other for the first 10 games and when everyone began to place at the end of that, we all had bad placements from feeding into each other. Everyone came out like middle or low gold 3. I can't remember who I was queueing with but he was in the discord with me and he pointed out around the same time we all started placing, there was this group of other people standing around the FFA who were also finishing their placements who were appearing with plat badges. These were all clearly pve guys standing around with titles like "been there done that" coming out of their first 10 games with plat badges, and we were like wait.. what? Where were these guys in our queues? Why did we just have to play 10 straight games worth of MAT level sweaty try-hard, and then these pve casual accounts somehow completely avoided seeding into our games, and were being put only with the other casuals for an easy walk into 1500+? What the hell is that? I mean if anyone has a better explanation for this outside of the glory rank/total games played, I'd love to hear it.

Effectively what it's doing, is it's creating an invisible division segregation, where one man's plat isn't equal to another man's plat. Did you get your plat grinding your face into a bunch of old boys with 30,000 games played?, or did you get your plat on a new account grinding into the casuals of the community? People who play ATs with me, during formations when people join who we don't know, this is what I mean when I ask people: "Yeah but is your plat badge old plat or new plat?" because there is a difference now in 2024.

[Battle.1245]

It's definitely rigged, that's why no one takes PVP seriously. Too many cheating behavior that Anet encourages. Too many with alts account padding their main for rating. Duo que shouldn't be allowed on solo que. PVP and WVW total failure. Only reason I'm doing them nowadays cause of vault.