Matchmaking is inexcusably bad

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

Bump.

 

Dear ANet @Josh Davis.7865@Cal Cohen.2358:

 

 Please take a look at the matchmaking in PvP. The quality of matches is often atrocious.  Getting a truly competitive match is rare. Much more often, matches are landslides one way or the other and often put players of vastly different skill levels in the same match (I've had a match where at least one other player was over 400 rank points higher than me).  This is not a new problem, either.

 

A case in point:

A few days ago I was in a ranked match that my team won 500-31. I gained 8 rank points (indicating that the opposing team was far below the rating of my own team), and I was far from the best player on my team. There were NO duo queues in that match, meaning the matchmaker had the liberty of mixing all the players on both teams as it saw fit and it STILL decided to put all the best players on one team. Needless to say, we thrashed the other team until we had a 250-31 lead and then spent the next 4 minutes waiting for our score to slowly tick to 500 while the other team sat in spawn.

 

What a complete waste of time...for both sides.

 

Matches like these have nearly driven me to give up on the game mode, and I'm about as dedicated as they come. Imagine how much of a barrier this poses for new players trying to get into the game mode...it's no wonder we are having such a hard time growing the PvP population.

[Downstate.4697]

I really dont get why people complain about match making. If you consider all the variables in terms of comp, build, map, player skill and low population the match making isnt even that bad. Having a bad match and blaming it on skill difference alone is the real issue.

[Khalisto.5780]

37 minutes ago, FrownyClown.8402 said:

I really dont get why people complain about match making. If you consider all the variables in terms of comp, build, map, player skill and low population the match making isnt even that bad. Having a bad match and blaming it on skill difference alone is the real issue.

hhmm, i don't think is any fun being the best player on my team (1480 rating) and have to carry against 2 1700+ players, is this "blaming it on skill difference", let's be real, that match was over before the start

[anjo.6143]

On 8/17/2021 at 3:03 PM, Sunshine.5014 said:

It's bad because of the beta.

 

Players play Beta specs, but are not familiar yet, and lead to either "omg, I killed and I don't know how" and "omg, I died, and I don't know why". Basically, give them some time to get used to the new specs.

 

On the other hand, FOCUS the BETA specs hard haha. They are new, and they are not familiar with the build yet. Free breakfast.

Is it ur first season? Nothing to do with beta at all

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

I know it's hard to believe, but it's just a lot of match manipulation.

[Kozumi.5816]

On 4/21/2022 at 2:14 PM, CalmTheStorm.2364 said:

Please take a look at the matchmaking in PvP. The quality of matches is often atrocious.  Getting a truly competitive match is rare

They can't fix it. There aren't enough people playing.

[Gorem.8104]

On 4/23/2022 at 8:39 PM, Kozumi.5816 said:

They can't fix it. There aren't enough people playing.

Which is the unfortunate hard truth. Wish I could go back in time to gw2 launch day, man the spvp was so fun, and so active 🙂

[Nymthalas.4019]

I don't think there is that much match manipulation as some people says (I've been accused of match manipulation because I've stopped playing in a match that was already something like 30-250), but the inequality of pvp matches on top of playing with random people who can be disgusting(here I will say one I say often because it illustrates very well, someone insulting a tempest support for refusing to go to side node and fight enemy catalyst sidenoder)... I can understand people just say I come to play I don't have any responsability towards a guy that has insulted me and just go afk and do another thing.

In the end even for someone that almost doesnt play pve, and really likes the combat in pvp in gw2 made me leave PvP.

But there is 2 huge flaws.

 

1. Conquest mode: It makes the balancing literally impossible, because you have 3 different gamemodes to balance, and although mobolity in WvW and PvE is important its WAY less important than in conquest mode, so either you make a rework to the classes in PvP that makes them something completelly different than in the other gamemodes or you won't be able to balance. PvP should be Arena mode in which you make fighting comps. And if you want to fight for objectives wvw is your mode, i mean it is the idea of that gamemode.

 

2. Matchmaking: matchmaking is awfully bad as the playerbase shrinks. And not only that, being the only pvp game that doesnt let you play with a party of your friends sucks really hard (in the end this is the reason I left PvP, if I'm in an MMO is to play with people for playing alone there is a lot of options), and on top of that you have the problem of not having the holy trinity so the algorithm that makes the teams prioritices to not have repeated classes on the same team?...

3. I've read recently much people talking about tank accounts, and queue dodge and such. And tbf that explains a lot, and wouldnt be surprised it is the common way of match manipulation.

How to solve it? First not priotitice avoiding 2 same class in the team as you can already reroll, then there is 2 ways and I'm not sure which one I would prefer.

1. close the solo Q and only let 5 ppl parties join, that way the party comp is taken out of the algorithm, and if you are gonna be stomped at least you are stomped playing with friends than just another kitten match playing alone, not only that it would help to make community around PvP, and would give some live to the pvp guild concept, as you could use mapchat or guildchat to find teams either you go static or just randomly.*

2. As some other people has stated close duoQ for plat+, don't allow tank accs.

 

Edited October 21, 2022 by Nymthalas.4019

[Catchyfx.5768]

From my perspective

matchmaking is good. population is low, if there is only 50ppl playing you will get lot of times same ppl. on friday I played 5 games in a row and there were like same 8 ppl in every game... just low population

[jdawgie.1835]

On 4/25/2022 at 4:31 AM, Nymthalas.4019 said:

I don't think there is that much match manipulation as people says

Theres a ton. You have to play often enough to have it become obvious. Once that happens, you cant un see it. 

[Nymthalas.4019]

On 4/25/2022 at 3:00 PM, Catchyfx.5768 said:

From my perspective

matchmaking is good. population is low, if there is only 50ppl playing you will get lot of times same ppl. on friday I played 5 games in a row and there were like same 8 ppl in every game... just low population

 

I think part of the problem is that they have made changes thinking on casual people, whom I think doesnt play that much PvP they just get there rewards for this or that and forget about it (btw it happens in more game modes*1) . I still think it would have been better that only full parties could join, or just close it and implement some kind of fair pvp system inside wvw xD.

 

*1 pve it could be solved with and easy mode, and wvw/pvp has tiers and leagues, so anet should stop patronizing people and let people play as they like, not forcing chill player servers with hardcore player server to play together because when that link is high tier chill players are stomped, and when is low tier hardcore gets bored.

[SlayerXX.7138]

On 4/21/2022 at 8:14 PM, CalmTheStorm.2364 said:

A few days ago I was in a ranked match that my team won 500-31. I gained 8 rank points (indicating that the opposing team was far below the rating of my own team), and I was far from the best player on my team. There were NO duo queues in that match, meaning the matchmaker had the liberty of mixing all the players on both teams as it saw fit and it STILL decided to put all the best players on one team. Needless to say, we thrashed the other team until we had a 250-31 lead and then spent the next 4 minutes waiting for our score to slowly tick to 500 while the other team sat in spawn.

Leave the poor matchmaker alone it did nothing wrong. The average PvP player folds the second he has to punch up a little to high and uneven scores are a  result of players giving up to easy. If there were a surrender options every second game would get to the surrender vote after 1 minute.

 

What people not realize is that your skill can vary greatly between matches. You maybe have an mmr of 1500. Your Guardian has an theoretical mmr from 1600 and your rangers has theoretical mmr of 1400. You focused and calm on guard can give you a skill level of 1700 mmr. Frustrated and on a losing streak your rangers has a skill level of 1200. And the same is true for most other players. And as enough people get a defeated attitude games go in one direction hard.

 

I personally play only one profession and try to stay calm. And I never have losing streaks. Even as I was ranking up into plat and scraped top 250 were the matchmaker goes out of whaack<through no fault of its own> the worst I got was 4 or 5 in a row at most. I never shot out of my division or did fall out of it. As a Side note to that: As I did the backpack achievement I probably kittened up the matchmaking for a lot of people, as I was falling through the ranks as necro, ranger etc. and rising back up again as I got back to playing thief. Same is true if other player doing the backpack or change Profession for another reason and top 100 veteran playing on alt accounts doesn't help either.

 

Defeatist attitude, low player count and Profession skill variations cause lopsided matches not the poor matchmaker. I'm honestly surprised how good it is still working considering the state of sPvP.

 

The only fix is to get more people in PvP. Besides some more neat rewards and a report function there isn´t much Anet can do. What is played on the monthly tournament or is meta in Plat has no affect on new players.  One class being 10% better then another means nothing if you have to face player who are having a 5 year head start in pvp and flame you to bits for not playing "correctly". If you want more people in the game,  Players need to calm down in ranked. And stop blaming everyone else for everything, every single game!

 

P.S. If we would IP ban the top 20 players matchmaker would improve greatly on the higher end.

[Rose.2593]

Seems really hard to find a decent match, and the matches are very unfair alot of the time, always towards one side or the other. 

Edited April 27, 2022 by John.8507

[Nymthalas.4019]

3 hours ago, Albi.7250 said:

The only fix is to get more people in PvP. Besides some more neat rewards and a report function there isn´t much Anet can do. What is played on the monthly tournament or is meta in Plat has no affect on new players.  One class being 10% better then another means nothing if you have to face player who are having a 5 year head start in pvp and flame you to bits for not playing "correctly". If you want more people in the game,  Players need to calm down in ranked. And stop blaming everyone else for everything, every single game!

 

 

I'm not even plat but seeing the same mistake again and again is exhausting, and even people blaming the support core guardian because he was not focusing  I don't even remember which class...  An you can take that and keep going, but then you find the insulting player, and at least for me after enduring that dealing with that is too much.

In the end this would be solved allowing parties of 5, I don't mind loosing if I learned something on the way. But when you dont have teammates, just people randomly placed, you can learn as much, but the you will see the same mistakes then next match and the next... and thats what killed pvp for me, the challenge is fun and a drive to improve, having to solo q kills that.

The genuine good moment for pvp for me was a mini season 2 v 2 in which I joined with a friend, so sometimes we lost somtimes we win, but in each match we had a plan, tested if it worked, thought of a conclusion afterwards and adapted builds if needed... After that mini sesason it stopped being that fun friend left, i kept playing, but in the end pvp has died for me, not fun anymore because of what I said.

[Rose.2593]

How are you supposed to go up and get better when matches are so unfair, every match is unbalanced. Players should be locked to the same skill level. 

[Rose.2593]

On 4/28/2022 at 1:17 AM, Nymthalas.4019 said:

 

I'm not even plat but seeing the same mistake again and again is exhausting, and even people blaming the support core guardian because he was not focusing  I don't even remember which class...  An you can take that and keep going, but then you find the insulting player, and at least for me after enduring that dealing with that is too much.

In the end this would be solved allowing parties of 5, I don't mind loosing if I learned something on the way. But when you dont have teammates, just people randomly placed, you can learn as much, but the you will see the same mistakes then next match and the next... and thats what killed pvp for me, the challenge is fun and a drive to improve, having to solo q kills that.

The genuine good moment for pvp for me was a mini season 2 v 2 in which I joined with a friend, so sometimes we lost somtimes we win, but in each match we had a plan, tested if it worked, thought of a conclusion afterwards and adapted builds if needed... After that mini sesason it stopped being that fun friend left, i kept playing, but in the end pvp has died for me, not fun anymore because of what I said.

Solo queue is better though, it was way worse when you had to play vs pre-made teams. Not everyone has people they can play with so for most duo/solo is much better. 

[Bazooka.3590]

MM never been worse. Game balance also catastrophic.

Anet: If the pop too f low then work the f around and nerf op f metas. 

This game sadly is piece of kitten right now...

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

3 hours ago, Bazooka.3590 said:

MM never been worse. Game balance also catastrophic.

Anet: If the pop too f low then work the f around and nerf op f metas. 

This game sadly is piece of kitten right now...

I hear you, friend. It's no wonder the population continues to shrink with the game mode in this state. I've had to take a break from the game because I've kept getting disgusted and tilted by crap matches.

 

Here's hoping that the coming months bring some meaningful changes.

[Luthan.5236]

The infamous soft reset hit us again - and I'd recommend: Do not take PvP ranked serious for the next 1-2 weeks until most people have gotten their placements.

I do:

-not try tooo hard to win

- "surrender" earlier than usual (just moving around randomly to not seem afk if the enemy team seems a lot stronger)

- not caring at winning/ranked at all

Leads to less trouble and stress - while taking it easier. Real season starts in 2 weeks and a lot of early losses might in fact be much better than a lot of early wins. (Leading to lower placement and a win streak - feels more motivating - to slowly climb up. Better than the other way round.)

I hope they can decide to get rid of the soft resets at some point. Never understood why they actually are needed.

Edited May 5, 2022 by Luthan.5236

[Odin.6487]

a team game with no team que. 

low player count

bots

no rewards.

id say from anets perspective its working as intended!

[Lysico.4906]

I played 15 games today. They were all unranked messing around. In six of those I faced double teams against 500 players. And then another four I face duo. No I guess it’s the weekend some more people are grouping up but there is zero excuse with the system to have five ungrouped players face a double team. Not surprising you lost every one of the team matches except one. And I was just because we overwhelm them with a comp set

[tacoclaw.8251]

I wish there were a way to scale up the training opponents in the mists. 

 

If I could play all bots and choose a challenging (for me) level for all the bots I would never que ranked again and ruin your matches. I know all you die hards hate and get frustrated with we try hards, but it's really  not much fun for us either. It's like walking into a chess club full of grandmasters and looking for a casual game. 

[Reira.5734]

Gonna post this here as well;

 

Rough Estimate of NA PvP population is about 1667.

 

Assumptions;
1) Players playing 2+ games per day are considered "Active."
2) The account statistics on gw2efficiency provide a good sample size on the total GW2 population.

Method;
1) On NA, the top 250th player is currently rated at 1,430.
Evidence

2) On gw2efficiency, it states currently that;
Top 10% of players; 1,464
Top 20% of players; 1,397
Evidence

As such, one can infer that about top 15% of players would be about 1430, as its right about the halfway point between 1464, and 1397.

3) As 250 is roughly 15% of the total active PvP population, we can calculate that there are roughly 1666.67 active accounts on NA PvP.
With the inclusion of things like alt accounts, the number of actual active players would probably be less than that. 

Conclusion;
NA PvP Population is at around 1667 players.  

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

@Cal Cohen.2358 @Josh Davis.7865

 

 Matchmaking needs an overhaul. The majority of games, in both ranked and unranked, are absolute blowouts. There are often vast discrepancies in skill between teams, and the matchmaker is programmed such that it allows bad matches in the name of expediency and shorter queue times.

 

This needs to stop. If you want people to stick around the PvP scene, you need to ensure that 8 out of 10 matches aren't absolute curb stomping sessions.

 

People routinely cite "low population" as the reason that the matchmaker can't make good matches, and to a degree, they're probably right. But any system that depends on unrealistic circumstances in which to operate is poorly designed. We're never going to have a massive PvP population, so it makes a absolutely no sense for the matchmaker to depend on a massive population in order to reliably make competitive matches.

 

There need to tighter parameters regarding MMR differences between teams. A plat 5-man team should never end up pitted against 5 random gold players just because the 5-man team "waited long enough." Same for high-rated duo-queues in ranked.

 

The algorithm also needs to stop prioritizing balancing professions over balancing MMR between teams. Putting all the good players on one team just so you can avoid putting 3 Necros on a side is not the way to go about things. Players are still free to re-roll to a different profession, and until that stops being a thing, trying to balance based on # of professions per side is meaningless.

 

I love this game. I want to play this game. But it's getting harder and harder to justify logging in when the PvP experience is so utterly and so consistently bad, and there's nothing I can do about it.

 

Matchmaking is the foundation for PvP. If you want PvP to thrive, improving this needs to be a top priority.