Something is Wrong With the Placement MMR

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Finished placement games at 6-4, and...end up in bottom of g1? Like 1208.  

My last season MMR was 1380 I finished at, even if it started me at 1350, or 1250 even, should be at bottom of Gold 2 at least with this winrate.

Starting this low means zero chance of ending up in the 250 with time allotted, even if I keep a 60%+ winrate, which is pretty much impossible.  It's not even just ending in Top 250, its the quality of games I'm going to get here is, no thanks.  

Oh, and I also have friends on my list that are very near 50% winrate (like 8-7) hovering at 1300+....I couldn't get there right now if I went 8-7, I'd end up in silver 2 lol.  Guess my beta test is over as don't need the gold from it, and really am not going to suffer through very low-quality games to...well accomplish nothing.  

Edited Sunday at 05:09 PM by Gotejjeken.1267

[coro.3176]

9 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Finished placement games at 6-4, and...end up in bottom of g1? Like 1208.  

My last season MMR was 1380 I finished at, even if it started me at 1350, or 1250 even, should be at bottom of Gold 2 at least with this winrate.

Starting this low means zero chance of ending up in the 250 with time allotted, even if I keep a 60%+ winrate, which is pretty much impossible.  It's not even just ending in Top 250, its the quality of games I'm going to get here is, no thanks.  

Oh, and I also have friends on my list that are very near 50% winrate (like 8-7) hovering at 1300+....I couldn't get there right now if I went 8-7, I'd end up in silver 2 lol.  Guess my beta test is over as don't need the gold from it, and really am not going to suffer through very low-quality games to...well accomplish nothing.  

I lost 9, won 1 placement match and started at ~900

It took me like ~100 games to get up to 1350, then lost a bunch of games down to ~1200 thanks to back-to-back afks and 4v5 games. I have now played 210 games, and am back to 1300. Not sure if I'll get higher than that, since I'm playing condi engi grenades, and it gets shut down so kittening hard by any support (reflects, bubbles, cleanse, etc. etc.)

but it is possible to get some rating back, I guess

[maxwelgm.4315]

I see a lot of players who typically rank under 100 placed >200 in this season, and unlike other seasons the vast majority of top positions have only the bare minimum or close to minimum games (this always the case with top 10 or so but you always have the tryhards with 400 matches still highly ranked, not this time).

I think early adoption made a lot of difference this time around. I started playing the moment the mode released and immediately placed 100 something after briefly being one of the first 20 to reach minimum number of games, and now I'm planning to just fend off decay because it's easy to fall with the influx of players trying for their placements. Let alone your typical top player alts going around fearlessly throwing games if needed.

All things considered I think it was a mistake to beta test a leaderboard at the same time as beta testing a new mode.

[Mne Malo Tebya.2965]

22 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Finished placement games at 6-4, and...end up in bottom of g1? Like 1208.

1208? Not bad, above average gamer ggwp!

23 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Starting this low means zero chance of ending up in the 250 with time allotted

Maybe being an above average gamer is not enough to claim a top 250 leaderboard place.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

1 hour ago, maxwelgm.4315 said:

All things considered I think it was a mistake to beta test a leaderboard at the same time as beta testing a new mode.

Yes, seems something does work differently here.  Every season I start the same way as solo q only on non FoTM build, but always place from 1350-1380 with same winrate.  Not 1200 level.

55 minutes ago, Mne Malo Tebya.2965 said:

Maybe being an above average gamer is not enough to claim a top 250 leaderboard place.

Clearly not, I'm going to need about 5 more alt accounts.  

[Flowki.7194]

The players I know who have spent a lot of time on support/group fighters, are doing well in this mode. I personally ended up in plat with 15-5, but I think a lot of that is luck as its only core rev.. I basically get carried into plat once or twice most seasons, although this mode does favour group fight preference/experiance.

Edited Sunday at 06:49 PM by Flowki.7194

[Last Crab.6054]

Maybe the matchmaker is actually working.

I have a very hard time believing many most folks naturally beling above silver 2 or 3 

Edited Sunday at 06:47 PM by Last Crab.6054
Should have said most

[Mne Malo Tebya.2965]

24 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Clearly not, I'm going to need about 5 more alt accounts.

Stop smoking 5-meodmt

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

They said they are beta testing something different in the algorithm/leaderboards? I didn't catch this.

All I know is, w/e is going on, these matches feel worse than normal in terms of quality & gaining rating. A lot of this could be due to Push's dynamic for one thing, as this is a mode where you really can't carry. In Conquest, a single good player can make great rotational decisions, surprise opponents, win 1v2s, yada yada, and make quite an impact even in bad games. But in Push, it's just one big team fight more like a wvw small skirmish over a single objective. In this type of scenario, the good player kind of blends in with everyone else. There is so much going on in that one place, it's not like you can rope-a-dope a 1v2 very often for a good play. You are more often than not just trying to dodge 3 or 4 or even 5 man focus when a target is called on your head. The more numbers that show up to fight in a single place over a single objective, a single strong player starts to matter a lot less than it does in a mode like Conquest when he can pivot himself into a strong position to pretty much guarantee farming 1-2 players while holding and even kiting/surviving 3 players for a big stall. With the nature of Push's dynamic, you just can't do that. The node debuffs and all opponents being central to the single objective, means you can't just stand on the node and carry a 1v5 stall or even a 1v3 really, at least not for any longer than about 10s even if you're good. If your PUGs are just bad in Push, there really is just no way to carry the match.

That being said, here is my experience and what I've noticed during this Push beta:

• I come out of my first 15 games at 1540 rating. Every single game queued was solo, and I did this like the first 2-3 hours of Push release.
• During this first 2-3 hours of release, all the top players were on their mains queueing. I'd say about 90% of the games queued felt really balanced and things made sense. I was having a lot fun actually. None of the games were really blowouts. I was surprised to see a lot of clutch back and forth back and forth gameplay. Each game was pretty rough struggle for both sides, regardless of which team ended up winning. The dynamic felt like it was working. I took a break on day 1 after tagging 1540 out of placement.
• Day 2 I log in and clearly see that all the top player mains have also completed their first 15 games to get their desired rating. I begin queueing on day 2 and things immediately feel funky. It's just one wave after another of account names I've never seen before, the usual suspicious activity, including a lot of obvious alt accounts being wielded by players who are seriously overperforming for the rating brackets those accounts are in. The queues have become volatile and weird, and I start seeing massive blowout situations where one team has everyone playing the node, while the other team has like 1 guy trying to play the node and his PUGs seem to be avoiding it on purpose. Bad matchmaking? Who knows man. Make of it what you want. But the bad matches keep flowing and don't seem to stop. Nothing really makes sense and the mode starts to feel kind of bad to play.
• I keep queueing every day, to the point I have probably 150 games queued in Push at this point. I only see main accounts logging in to play 1 game to kill decay then they log off. Then most of the time those weird accounts are online queueing, names no one knows. Of course all of the top player main accounts are never online at the same that these weird no name accounts are online. And when those no name account are online, the matches are ultra volatile, usually massive blowout situations where one team mysteriously has a group of PUGs that absolutely refuse to touch the node, and none of the match making makes any sense at all. Make of it what you want. I keep queueing all the way up to the point when I made this post, and I have dropped down into gold 2 at this point, somewhere around 1390. I've been as low as like 1315 and haven't been able to get past about 1450 ever since the end of day 1. I also notice all of those no name accounts coming out of their placements in plat and then they disappear.

It looks to me like things work fine when everyone is on their mains and not using alts.

But when people start smurfing and/or synch queueing & throwing, everything & anything related to the algorithm just gets botched, the matches don't make sense anymore, good players organic queueing legitimately get screwed, and to be perfectly honest the game mode actually starts to feel pretty bad to play.

If Arenanet cares at all to encourage more activity/fairness in any pvp mode, they absolute must do two things:

1. REMOVE the algorithm functions that involve total games played and glory rank during phase 2 of the matchmaking. Read it -> PvP Matchmaking Algorithm - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) I've been talking to you guys about this for years now. This does nothing but drag down old accounts with overly difficult match making that is in no way fair. The system should only use current rating as a metric for match making. When an old account is 1500 and a new account is 1500, why does the old account get placed into a match where he can be carrying hard but still lose, but the new account gets placed into a match where he can make several mistakes and die often while still getting carried into a win by his PUGs? This means the veteran who can carry hard loses his bad match and goes down to 1480, but the new account plays poorly and due to his better PUGs carrying him he gets a win and goes to 1520? This is total bull**** and they need to remove how total games & glory rank effects the phase 2 of match making. It just needs to be eliminated. Someone had told me Vallun had also been discussing this in one of his recent streams. Apparently he had said: "I get noticeably worse match making on my old main than if I play on newer alts". And this total games played/glory rank phase 2 thing is why. It needs to be removed. It isn't fair.
2. For the love of common sense, tend to the ridiculous amount of hard and soft match manipulation. There is so much garbage going on in these queues anymore, both hard and soft manipulations, it really does drive off the player base who wants to queue fairly for a good game. Sometimes I really don't think Arenanet understands how many players they've lost due to this. This is a game that people really wanted to play, but they wanted to do it fairly. If they don't want to do direct bans or w/e, they need to just ENABLE 5 MAN QUEUES so people can't plant throw PUGs on teams. I know all the yap yap yolo advocates will come in here and shut down that suggestion, but those tend to be all the people who haven't logged into GW2 for 5 years. The only way around this garbage throw styled match making, is to intrinsically configure the queue so that they can't screw people over to begin with. The only way is 5 man premade teams. Sorry guys but it's true. Sure they can try to get into queue against their own throw teams to farm themselves up the leaderboards, but they can't force YOU to lose if you have a 5 man premade. If they want your team to lose rating, they have to actually beat you, not just synch throw PUG you.

If Arenanet would listen to these 2 suggestions, they might have a game on their hands again.

Edited Sunday at 08:27 PM by Trevor Boyer.6524

[maxwelgm.4315]

2 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

They said they are beta testing something different in the algorithm/leaderboards? I didn't catch this.

All I know is, w/e is going on, these matches feel worse than normal in terms of quality & gaining rating. A lot of this could be due to Push's dynamic for one thing, as this is a mode where you really can't carry. In Conquest, a single good player can make great rotational decisions, surprise opponents, win 1v2s, yada yada, and make quite an impact even in bad games. But in Push, it's just one big team fight more like a wvw small skirmish over a single objective. In this type of scenario, the good player kind of blends in with everyone else. There is so much going on in that one place, it's not like you can rope-a-dope a 1v2 very often for a good play. You are more often than not just trying to dodge 3 or 4 or even 5 man focus when a target is called on your head. The more numbers that show up to fight in a single place over a single objective, a single strong player starts to matter a lot less than it does in a mode like Conquest when he can pivot himself into a strong position to pretty much guarantee farming 1-2 players while holding and even kiting/surviving 3 players for a big stall. With the nature of Push's dynamic, you just can't do that. The node debuffs and all opponents being central to the single objective, means you can't just stand on the node and carry a 1v5 stall or even a 1v3 really, at least not for any longer than about 10s even if you're good. If your PUGs are just bad in Push, there really is just no way to carry the match.

That being said, here is my experience and what I've noticed during this Push beta:

• I come out of my first 15 games at 1540 rating. Every single game queued was solo, and I did this like the first 2-3 hours of Push release.
• During this first 2-3 hours of release, all the top players were on their mains queueing. I'd say about 90% of the games queued felt really balanced and things made sense. I was having a lot fun actually. None of the games were really blowouts. I was surprised to see a lot of clutch back and forth back and forth gameplay. Each game was pretty rough struggle for both sides, regardless of which team ended up winning. The dynamic felt like it was working. I took a break on day 1 after tagging 1540 out of placement.
• Day 2 I log in and clearly see that all the top player mains have also completed their first 15 games to get their desired rating. I begin queueing on day 2 and things immediately feel funky. It's just one wave after another of account names I've never seen before, the usual suspicious activity, including a lot of obvious alt accounts being wielded by players who are seriously overperforming for the rating brackets those accounts are in. The queues have become volatile and weird, and I start seeing massive blowout situations where one team has everyone playing the node, while the other team has like 1 guy trying to play the node and his PUGs seem to be avoiding it on purpose. Bad matchmaking? Who knows man. Make of it what you want. But the bad matches keep flowing and don't seem to stop. Nothing really makes sense and the mode starts to feel kind of bad to play.
• I keep queueing every day, to the point I have probably 150 games queued in Push at this point. I only see main accounts logging in to play 1 game to kill decay then they log off. Then most of the time those weird accounts are online queueing, names no one knows. Of course all of the top player main accounts are never online at the same that these weird no name accounts are online. And when those no name account are online, the matches are ultra volatile, usually massive blowout situations where one team mysteriously has a group of PUGs that absolutely refuse to touch the node, and none of the match making makes any sense at all. Make of it what you want. I keep queueing all the way up to the point when I made this post, and I have dropped down into gold 2 at this point, somewhere around 1390. I've been as low as like 1315 and haven't been able to get past about 1450 ever since the end of day 1. I also notice all of those no name accounts coming out of their placements in plat and then they disappear.

It looks to me like things work fine when everyone is on their mains and not using alts.

But when people start smurfing and/or synch queueing & throwing, everything & anything related to the algorithm just gets botched, the matches don't make sense anymore, good players organic queueing legitimately get screwed, and to be perfectly honest the game mode actually starts to feel pretty bad to play.

If Arenanet cares at all to encourage more activity/fairness in any pvp mode, they absolute must do two things:

1. REMOVE the algorithm functions that involve total games played and glory rank during phase 2 of the matchmaking. Read it -> PvP Matchmaking Algorithm - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) I've been talking to you guys about this for years now. This does nothing but drag down old accounts with overly difficult match making that is in no way fair. The system should only use current rating as a metric for match making. When an old account is 1500 and a new account is 1500, why does the old account get placed into a match where he can be carrying hard but still lose, but the new account gets placed into a match where he can make several mistakes and die often while still getting carried into a win by his PUGs? This means the veteran who can carry hard loses his bad match and goes down to 1480, but the new account plays poorly and due to his better PUGs carrying him he gets a win and goes to 1520? This is total bull**** and they need to remove how total games & glory rank effects the phase 2 of match making. It just needs to be eliminated. Someone had told me Vallun had also been discussing this in one of his recent streams. Apparently he had said: "I get noticeably worse match making on my old main than if I play on newer alts". And this total games played/glory rank phase 2 thing is why. It needs to be removed. It isn't fair.
2. For the love of common sense, tend to the ridiculous amount of hard and soft match manipulation. There is so much garbage going on in these queues anymore, both hard and soft manipulations, it really does drive off the player base who wants to queue fairly for a good game. Sometimes I really don't think Arenanet understands how many players they've lost due to this. This is a game that people really wanted to play, but they wanted to do it fairly. If they don't want to do direct bans or w/e, they need to just ENABLE 5 MAN QUEUES so people can't plant throw PUGs on teams. I know all the yap yap yolo advocates will come in here and shut down that suggestion, but those tend to be all the people who haven't logged into GW2 for 5 years. The only way around this garbage throw styled match making, is to intrinsically configure the queue so that they can't screw people over to begin with. The only way is 5 man premade teams. Sorry guys but it's true. Sure they can try to get into queue against their own throw teams to farm themselves up the leaderboards, but they can't force YOU to lose if you have a 5 man premade. If they want your team to lose rating, they have to actually beat you, not just synch throw PUG you.

If Arenanet would listen to these 2 suggestions, they might have a game on their hands again.

All the main accounts you mentioned probably quickly realized the things you just outlined (can't carry solo, and probably they'd get thrown off by other people's alts even as a strong Duo because of the teamfight nature of the mode) and decided to not queue up more than required so as to not lose their placement.

This is part of the reason why I think it was a bad idea to have a title during a beta test - it gives all the same wrong incentives people get in conquest, and now Anet will have skewed data with very few "veteran matches" and a lot of the stuff you're going through the past few days. If they wanted veterans and newbies alike to play so they'd get both types of match that might have backfired a little.

[Saiyan.1704]

9 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Yes, seems something does work differently here.  Every season I start the same way as solo q only on non FoTM build, but always place from 1350-1380 with same winrate.  Not 1200 level.

Clearly not, I'm going to need about 5 more alt accounts.  

Placements is a joke... 

I've gone as low as Gold1 after placements if I go 6W/4L, only to grind back up to Plat (which is apparently top 100 on NA)

They should just make everyone start from 1300 after placements, or 1500 if you win all 10 games, because placements just don't work lol.

A 1200 player could get lucky in placements and get higher rated on accident... that just shouldn't happen.