Role Based Matchmaking

[Yakuzai.6593]

A lot of comments in this section are complaining about bunkers, supports and respective gear elements. And in the majority of aspects they are right and i agree that there exists a serious problem. Also ppl say, that a team that has a support often has a higher win chance (not guaranteed win chance, but higher) which does makes sense... xDBut in my opinion the superior problem is actually a discrepancy in team compositions. The recent trends and every AT (finals) shows, that for years, a proper pvp is (and maybe can only be) played by covering certain roles. As far as i noticed (pls correct me if iam wrong) these comps consist of:

• 2 kind of supps: Blood Scourge, supp guard / healbreaker/ tempest
• 1 bunker/duelist: spellbreaker, scrapper, druid, holosmith, etc
• 2 dmg sources for teamfights/roaming: rest

(Fun fact... this isnt even a secret. The PVP FAQs in this Forum are exactly describing these roles. But the issues is in covering these roles when you solo que.)Now with the current matchmaking, which completely ignores roles and just puts rng ppl together, which often results in an "only" duelists, bruiser comps against a more tank/supp based comp, i can understand why ppl feel overwhelmed. Supps can act as a boon battery spread their aegis, stability and other cool stuff to the whole team which makes it much much harder for the enemy to take on of them down, when they cant land a hit or cc them, while they self get boon stripped and tons of dmg from your own mates.The only way to cover a decent team comp is by manually switching off to another char at the start of the game. But the fact, that ppl obviously have to change characters, and often do so, is a hint that there is a need of a role based matchmaking.I am not sure, if this is the right word (no native english speaker) but i just wanna refer to basically every pvp game out there which first lets u choose a role (tank, dps, supp) and then lets you go in to que. And obviously GW2 is in a state which requires such kind of system... i mean this was always obvious that such roles are needed and can completely boost you performance in contrast to pure rng based team comps.The idea is to compensate the superiority of one team due to its team comp against the other team, and reduce the win conditions to pure individual skill. Ofc another skill based decision would be then the right choice of the class to fit in these roles. But at least those roles are somehow covered so that its not an one sided domination.

Dont get me wrong... I dont wanna say that team comp is all that matters, but iam convinced it has a incredibly huge impact to the performance of each game, so that you can even cover players that arent that experienced/good. Of course individual skill is in the end the major aspect. But just technically you can be good as much as u want as a damage dealing class, you wont get a supp/tank down that has experience, just because hes tough af and has lots of blocking, evading boons and stuff.Aaand of course all this also doesnt matter if the actual matchmaking doesnt work as it should be, and puts a gold into a bronze team against a platin team or so.All those suggestions are for the ideal case when matchmaking finds "equally ranked/experienced" players in terms of map awareness, targeting and rotations.

[ollbirtan.2915]

As you said yourself, you can switch before the match begins. No need to kitten over already broken matchmaking further.

[Yakuzai.6593]

@ollbirtan.2915 said:As you said yourself, you can switch before the match begins. No need to kitten over already broken matchmaking further.

but thats the point! not everyone does master all classes, not everyone even sees a difference in team comps. So to avoid playing vs giants lets at least make the roles equal, so that in the end skill is what matters and not playing as a full dps team vs 3 bunkers or so.

[Dawdler.8521]

I wonder why Anet hasnt made sPvP into basicly an Overwatch clone because that seems to be where everyone want it to go. Fixed classes and builds, no gear options, perfect balance.

[Yakuzai.6593]

@"Dawdler.8521" said:I wonder why Anet hasnt made sPvP into basicly an Overwatch clone because that seems to be where everyone want it to go. Fixed classes and builds, no gear options, perfect balance.

hahahaha truth is... at the ATs or at "higher elo games" this is the current state. If u ever played an AT or better monthly AT you will notice that this is the way to go, like the finalists basically play mirrored team comps. Of course this is not always the case, but in terms of team composition they mostly are able to cover these roles. Sometimes one team play Scourge/tempest as supp, while the other team is playing guard/scourge but the point is, these roles are covered.This (and of course a lot of other factos, like beeing an arrangened team, talking via discord, ts, etc.) is the reason why those finalists stomp pug teams, that barely have one supporter at the early rounds until they reach the semi finals/finals.

[voltaicbore.8012]

You haven't touched the single most important idea of role-based matchmaking, which is how the algorithm would even consistently identify what role a player is playing. Should ANet look at the godsofpvp or metabattle meta builds and tell the matchmaker "if X percentage of traits/runes/sigils/amulet loadout matches Y build, assign this player to Z role" ? It would be extremely easy for players to game such a system, or on the other hand it would punish players for trying variation.

So yeah, I think this is an awful idea.

[Yakuzai.6593]

@"voltaicbore.8012" said:You haven't touched the single most important idea of role-based matchmaking, which is how the algorithm would even consistently identify what role a player is playing. Should ANet look at the godsofpvp or metabattle meta builds and tell the matchmaker "if X percentage of traits/runes/sigils/amulet loadout matches Y build, assign this player to Z role" ? It would be extremely easy for players to game such a system, or on the other hand it would punish players for trying variation.

So yeah, I think this is an awful idea.

I appreciate your opinion. But my thread wasnt about constructing a matchmaker for guildwas 2 - it just adresses one core problem at its current stage from my point of view and was just a suggestion that the matchmaker should provide role-decision. How to implement this, is a topic for its own. I know that this idea is easier said than done, (apart from the fact that the current matchmaking is bad in general).I actually really thought about something like Overwatch or league of legends, where you choose your desired role, pick your desired gear/trinkets/traits and play the game - just to mention an idea for its implementation. Metabuilds/comps in the dimension of gw2 i think cant never be prevented. But it still would be better if you at least can provide both teams with each role.

[Captain Kuro.8937]

Extra button that assign you a "random" spec , for extra rewards and less team point that is needed to win . Reroll and loose the benefit and play normaly .Also allow to trade , and you team get bonus reward (even at loss ) if 2+ "random" specs are in your team

You can switch 65% of the talent trees , and 2/3 of the utilies - the rest are locked/random/beta stage spells that they dont normaly exist <<reshape the future stagnant meta ...and are easily disposable

[mrauls.6519]

@Dawdler.8521 said:I wonder why Anet hasnt made sPvP into basicly an Overwatch clone because that seems to be where everyone want it to go. Fixed classes and builds, no gear options, perfect balance.

Yeah, they've pretty much done this without doing it. Except not as good

[Chapell.1346]

Multi profession in 2021 is really not advisable, stick to one then maybe the odds will change. may be?

[voltaicbore.8012]

@Yakuzai.6593 said:

@"voltaicbore.8012" said:You haven't touched the single most important idea of role-based matchmaking, which is how the algorithm would even consistently identify what role a player is playing. Should ANet look at the godsofpvp or metabattle meta builds and tell the matchmaker "if X percentage of traits/runes/sigils/amulet loadout matches Y build, assign this player to Z role" ? It would be extremely easy for players to game such a system, or on the other hand it would punish players for trying variation.

So yeah, I think this is an awful idea.

I appreciate your opinion. But my thread wasnt about constructing a matchmaker for guildwas 2 - it just adresses one core problem at its current stage from my point of view and was just a suggestion that the matchmaker should provide role-decision. How to implement this, is a topic for its own. I know that this idea is easier said than done, (apart from the fact that the current matchmaking is bad in general).

Fair point. Arguably those two questions are actually inseparable, given how the game works, but I won't get into that.

I still think associating any role-sensitive function to the matchmaker is a terrible idea, for many of the reasons you and others have already mentioned. We'd require some form of build, gear, and class locking when joining the queue. I'm not sure I'd want to play spvp if I could only choose between a couple preset builds if I wanted to run a damage ranger or support necro. It would turn into a slightly more advanced form of some junk like the Dragon Ball event (which is fun in its own right, but would make for a very sad version of spvp).

You yourself noted that we are all aware that roles in spvp are important, given the need to swap builds and classes before the match starts. You think that task should be given to the matchmaker, and I think that (1) doing so is impractical, and (2) is best left to players.

That said, I agree that without enforced role-based matchmaking, it will be quite hard to have fair matches. I think that's the price we pay for playing a game that allows for player choice, and it's a steep price. Unfortunately it's a price we cannot avoid paying unless we fundamentally reduce player freedom just for spvp, and I think we can't do that without destroying one of the things this game does best.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

In Ranked only if it were. Would make queues take longer, and with the way Gw2 matchmaking works it would lead to way imbalanced matches.

Best to put it in the gamemode that's already broken and drained of any fun by things like bots and DuoQ

[Shaogin.2679]

Or, you know, let these mmo players play the game with their friends. Pretty simple, remove Solo Queue restriction, have players use the LFG like literally the rest of the game does, and problem solved. The population is there, you already get matched with teammates by Anet as it is. As for difference in Ranks, Anet already pits teams of wildly different ranks against each other. As for queue times, if you want to sacrifice match quality for queue time, go Unranked where that shit belongs.

But then again, what if Anet can't do this because the population is seriously way too low!? This would mean that all those bots in PvP actually belong to Anet and that is their last ditch effort to keep PvP alive and keep queue times down! O. M. G!!!