Matchmaking is inexcusably bad

[Morwath.9817]

Question is, if "much better player" loses to "bronze player playing Scrapper" doesn't mean that "much better player" should be in bronze?

[Kuma.1503]

The only time a noob stomper build should be nerfed is when it also starts working well in higher ranks. 

Noob stomper builds are fine so long as the counterplay is just simple and easy to execute as the build is to play. 

This is true for Burn Guard (teaches you how to time cleanses then you won't die to it) and FT Scrapper (has a lot of easily exploitable weaknesses and loses to other noob killers).

This is not currently true for MM Necro who is winning tournaments against the best players, and it wasn't true for condi thief in its prime. 

 

[Morwath.9817]

Personaly I'd argue if Minionmancer isn't harder to play than Terrormancer, due to lack of Flesh Wurm and/or Spectral Walk 😉

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

On 8/25/2021 at 5:50 PM, Endorphin.9147 said:

I constantly kept getting this necro on my team and he would just afk in spawn whenever he was on my team but played whenever he was vs me, eventually i just tilt queued my way down to gold. once in gold I went against 3 top 10 players and a plat 2 player. My team was all golds and plat 1s. Yeah this matchmaking Isnt really working lol.

This is why I keep telling people to just stop playing ranked. Start playing ATs.

It's the only way to get good match making.

Arenanet REALLY needs to accept this and redesign the scene around solid 5 man play.

[Shao.7236]

MM needs to be tightened on gameplay choices before considering anything else. Ranked might be taken as a joke currently but it's still where players need to be serious and a lot aren't.

 

Balance is the number one issue that keeps a lot of the playerbase from wanting to play before anything else.

 

The learning curve is steep, combine that with having meta builds that are freely available and you have something to easily discourage anyone because most new players will prefer coming up with their own builds and begin to learn from there, it's a lot more encouraging to learn against various situations than being beaten again and again by the same broken things that people can just easily swap to, typically you are gonna be encouraged to learn more and better about the game too if you can see that under several situations without success you have to improve, change and know.

 

Start by creating commitment in Ranked PvP first, players professions should be locked the moment they accept the queues, we have build templates now, there's no excuse. Re-rolling is not a gameplay choice in any game I know, I can think of little game that allows you to do so while also seeing people's choice in the following to be competitive, it's not and getting to stack the best upon the best is a terrible thing to allow players with.

[Kayberz.5346]

Theres just too many factors working in tandem that makes matchmaking terrible 

 

skill level of players on your team

Skill level of players on enemy team

Team composition 

Enemy team composition 

People swapping/ stacking builds before match

Maps with vastly different objectives/mechanics that favor certain playstyles 

Bots with no game sense sprinkled into both teams randomly 

Afk/dcs

Game throwing alt accounts

Ect....

 

All this while not being able to play in premade groups which means you are always at the mercy of these RNG factors.

Solo queueing is a diceroll almost every time on NA regardless of the time of day

 

You can go on 10+ game winning streaks one day and then the next day get a 10+ game losing streak and then climb right back the following day with no real difference in your level of play.

 

I've literally had a time where i had a string of terrible luck in matchmaking where i dropped from gold 3 to silver but then climbed back up to plat over the course of  a few days during the same season,  it wasn't because i was playing any better or worse during those games, it was just pure matchmaking RNG shenanigans creating a perfect storm of kitten one game after the next 

 

 

Edited November 2, 2021 by Kayberz.5346

[lightDestroyer.1265]

3 hours ago, Kayberz.5346 said:

You're completely missing the entire point 

 

This topic is about how bad the quality of matches is for the majority of players (on NA) 

 

Sure a high plat player has no problem dealing with these noob stomper builds, but a high plat player isn't experiencing this bad matchmaking much in the first place that those builds are contributing to.

Like i said, some of these noob stomper builds can be played BY noobs and be used to beat players that are better players than them purely by the nature of how powerful these builds are against other builds while requiring a fraction of the mechanical skill or game knowledge to play effectively, they might not be top tier players they are beating,  but they are better.

 

This creates a situation where until you can break out of the ELO hell of silver and gold you will constantly experience matches with extremely varied levels of skill between the players which makes for common one sided matches with no rhyme or reason.

 

In NA legend rank is like 1 or 2 people despite it being an entire bracket as large as the previous tiers while bronze rank is pretty much exclusively people with rank decay and people that play very few games.

This condensing of the brackets is not how it should be,  people are not accurately being spread into their respective brackets, they are instead all being crammed together.

 

Having builds that can be piloted by a player of bronze skill level that can consistently win against players much higher skilled then them, but maybe aren't quite top tier players is unhealthy for the competitive integrity of the game and is why matchmaking is so trash

 

It doesn't matter if these builds aren't problematic at the highest level of play, its a problem for every other level of play which is inhibiting players from even getting to the point where they can play at the highest level because the experience of getting there is incredibly frustrating and often times not worth the time/effort in most players eyes

More often than not an inexperienced player isn't going to  "git gud" by playing against these builds, rather they will likely play one of these builds themselves and facetank everything on a flamethrower scrapper or MM necro with their dodge roll unbound and throw games from time to time because they dont understand things like rotations or playing the map objectives but their build will keep them comfortably in gold just zerging mid every game just by the random nature of the matchmaking, or they stop playing pvp altogether. 

Well,  the reason they are able to beat players more mechanically skilled than them is because at the end of the day,  they too are noobs.  If you want to talk abt "mechanically skilled" should always be better,  well sometimes they are.  But,  if you truly want that,  than Ele and Engi should be the meta and should be able to beat any build,  since they require the highest mechanical skills.  All the other classes will have to lose to them. That is what Anet says is wrong. 

There will always be easy to play classes amd tougher classes to play.  If you want easy to play classes to lose simply vecuz their mechanics are not as tough as others. That is where the problem lies. 

[Vancho.8750]

On 11/2/2021 at 7:19 PM, Shao.7236 said:

MM needs to be tightened on gameplay choices before considering anything else. Ranked might be taken as a joke currently but it's still where players need to be serious and a lot aren't.

 

Balance is the number one issue that keeps a lot of the playerbase from wanting to play before anything else.

 

The learning curve is steep, combine that with having meta builds that are freely available and you have something to easily discourage anyone because most new players will prefer coming up with their own builds and begin to learn from there, it's a lot more encouraging to learn against various situations than being beaten again and again by the same broken things that people can just easily swap to, typically you are gonna be encouraged to learn more and better about the game too if you can see that under several situations without success you have to improve, change and know.

 

Start by creating commitment in Ranked PvP first, players professions should be locked the moment they accept the queues, we have build templates now, there's no excuse. Re-rolling is not a gameplay choice in any game I know, I can think of little game that allows you to do so while also seeing people's choice in the following to be competitive, it's not and getting to stack the best upon the best is a terrible thing to allow players with.

Even if the balance is dog kitten the game would still be fine if you have 5 op builds, but only if the matchmaker and the ranking system so atrocious. Here is an example, got the placement matches 8 to 2 got pretty kitten high, most games I feel like I got carried but most of the games felt quite equal 500 400 deal  with the occasional implosion match 50 500, but since I was rolling on win streak I was waiting for the kittenuning with the switch and it came like brick, duo of royalty barons and some ruthless legends on the other team on my team there might have been skill clickers or it feels like it, first team fight wipe some people go afk -40 points, so the game considers my casual kitten better than leaderboard people and it considers that I'm supposed to carry the game solo vs better people than me somehow, it is like the matchmaker and the ranking system do not work in tandem.

So pressing that ranked button is not really good idea and playing more is kind of punished, while playing less garners better results. If your desire is to play for rating one game sets you back 4 for no other reason other than the MM decided you have to lose this on, cause it stacks teams for some reason. If you want to climb you will have to have some ridiculous win rate, and here comes all the cheese from people, since it is easier to meta game the ranks than playing the game as intended.    

The game is punishing you for playing it, and that is probably the bigger reason that people leave or game the system which makes more people leave cause ranked is turned meaningless. The whole thing works on negative reinforcement and bleeds players so low population and the lower the population gets the problems of the system shine. People start at G2 on new accounts and the game decides to chuck platinum duo in their game, they lose , learn nothing since they got rolled, the plat duo gets 5 points the new guy gets -20, says kitten it this game sucks unbalanced (even though currently it is probably really balanced which is quite stale since the patches come in snail pace and there isn't new builds), this OP and leaves. Neither the plat duo or the new player had fun from the whole interaction and the game not being fun is quite the problem with retention.              

[Bazsi.2734]

It doesn't matter what kind of matchmaking you're trying to implement, once your playerbase shrinks to the degree the spvp playerbase shrunk, it's over. I have 90+ matches played this season and... this is the worst season ever in terms of match quality. Onesided stomps are more common than ever. Back in 2018, these terrible matchups sometimes happened(like 20%), but this season it's something like 90% for me. I can recall like 2 close matches where I had fun.

I said multiple times I'm waiting for EoD, but sPvP wasn't mentioned in any reveal streams yet, the new e-specs seem bad (yes some of them work because they are overtuned, still bad), and the intergrity of the current PvP season is ruined by beta chars memeing all over it so.... the trend of totally neglecting this gamemode seemingly continues. A-net why should we stick around?

[Tescao.3042]

My mind was a little upset guys yesterday, so I decided to write some lyrical digressions. I got 15 losing games in a row from game spam experimenting with glicko2, which was probably my new record. I went up from silver 3 to platinum 1 in the middle, on the condi herald without monkey staff style, then I went down to gold 2.15 losses in a row played a role.  Now I understand one kind of mess that is going on here, there are simply no defensive tools in the core, so people are locked out for monkey staff style ... For example, the Ranger in medium armor has tankiness initially has in the core.

P. S. Want a nicer macro game and less meta-slaves? Conquest simply needs more max members. It will even be a new discovery for ancient veterans.  Or gw2 need a very hard balance. 36 specializations is a new twist, it's cool, how multifaceted the macro game can be.

Edited November 5, 2021 by DomHemingway.8436

[Undertaker.4368]

During weekend number of playeres should be biger but as i see isn't. Same  palyers with over 800 matches are mostly.

Pvp itself is good, plenty of maps. Big problem now is low population and quality

 

[Dragon.7682]

Matchmaking just put me, barely gold 3, into a match with Naru (Currently rank 1) and CJay (Rank 5) Duo. Pretty well a 400 point difference. How is that reasonable?

[pukish.5784]

2 hours ago, Dragon.7682 said:

Matchmaking just put me, barely gold 3, into a match with Naru (Currently rank 1) and CJay (Rank 5) Duo. Pretty well a 400 point difference. How is that reasonable?

If you could learn from top rankers, It will be great pvp experience.

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

4 hours ago, Dragon.7682 said:

Matchmaking just put me, barely gold 3, into a match with Naru (Currently rank 1) and CJay (Rank 5) Duo. Pretty well a 400 point difference. How is that reasonable?

I know, right??? Happened to me too. It's ridiculous that matches like that get made.

 

People repeatedly cite the low population as the reason for bad matches, and there is probably truth to that. But there should be limits. Gold 3 vs legendary is NOT a fair fight. If those are the only people on right now, just tell me (and them), "sorry, could not find a suitable match for you. Please try again later." Then I can go do WvW or fractals or something and come back in an hour.  Clicking "play ranked" should not mean "I volunteer to get rolled by high plat (or legendary!) players just so they can get a game." 

[Morwath.9817]

6 hours ago, CalmTheStorm.2364 said:

I know, right??? Happened to me too. It's ridiculous that matches like that get made.

 

People repeatedly cite the low population as the reason for bad matches, and there is probably truth to that. But there should be limits. Gold 3 vs legendary is NOT a fair fight. If those are the only people on right now, just tell me (and them), "sorry, could not find a suitable match for you. Please try again later." Then I can go do WvW or fractals or something and come back in an hour.  Clicking "play ranked" should not mean "I volunteer to get rolled by high plat (or legendary!) players just so they can get a game." 

 

Its happening, because back in the day people at the top of ladder had 30 minute wait times without any matches. So matchmaking got changed to allow bigger deviation the longer you wait in que.

[Parthenos Polias.5683]

40 minutes ago, Morwath.9817 said:

 

Its happening, because back in the day people at the top of ladder had 30 minute wait times without any matches. So matchmaking got changed to allow bigger deviation the longer you wait in que.

That's the reason why you shouldn't afk while in the queue.
You should always quit the queue before 2 min and start again.
You may wait more time this way, but you will get better quality game.

[Morwath.9817]

3 minutes ago, Parthenos Polias.5683 said:

That's the reason why you shouldn't afk while in the queue.
You should always quit the queue before 2 min and start again.
You may wait more time this way, but you will get better quality game.

It's about people at the top waiting time in que, not people in gold.

I mean, it doesn't matter how long people in gold were waiting, if high plat person waited in que long enough, matchmaking will look for gold players for him to play.

[Parthenos Polias.5683]

4 minutes ago, Morwath.9817 said:

It's about people at the top waiting time in que, not people in gold.

I mean, it doesn't matter how long people in gold were waiting, if high plat person waited in que long enough, matchmaking will look for gold players for him to play.

Not exactly,
Matchmaking will look for gold players to play with (and against) the high plat one inside the gold players who are waiting the longest in queue and have been put at the end of the queue.
(Yes, more you wait, more you are place back in the queue).

 

[Tescao.3042]

• Guys besides what you are discussing, you do not understand one important point. Why should there be meta-slaves in the game, as well as people who have played meta builds for 9 years, 6 years, 4 years, and also against these meta builds. In a game that positions itself as teorycraft. I'm telling you, in all seriousness, the meta will start weaken after a certain number of people against each other, for example RBG WoW, only the counters between classes / specializations will be important there. Of course, with additional adjustments for the quantity and quality of the game.

Edited November 6, 2021 by DomHemingway.8436

[anjo.6143]

Is excusable, they dont care about pvp and are poor on design and balance classes, so there is no player, so there is no good mm

[Parthenos Polias.5683]

Another horrible, frustrating and easy thing to fix is :
2 premade from the same guild VS Pug.

Just happened to me right now, very boring.

Just add in the algorithm a line to check the guild before putting together2 premade.
 

[Morwath.9817]

9 minutes ago, Parthenos Polias.5683 said:

Another horrible, frustrating and easy thing to fix is :
2 premade from the same guild VS Pug.

Just happened to me right now, very boring.

Just add in the algorithm a line to check the guild before putting together2 premade.
 

Represented guilds, or all guilds? Would be super easy to manipulate matchmaking with it in both cases anyway.

[Gorem.8104]

On 11/3/2021 at 2:36 AM, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

This is why I keep telling people to just stop playing ranked. Start playing ATs.

It's the only way to get good match making.

Arenanet REALLY needs to accept this and redesign the scene around solid 5 man play.

Only issue I see there is Ranked is where the pvp rewards are, they pigeonhole the player base into a bad match making system in order to get their rewards. No wonder its so easy to get your dailies done there, only need to do one match a day and its so much faster to get your daily chest done even if you lose, they want to try and get people playing it for sure instead of idk, fixing the dying game mode. 

 

20 hours ago, Dragon.7682 said:

Matchmaking just put me, barely gold 3, into a match with Naru (Currently rank 1) and CJay (Rank 5) Duo. Pretty well a 400 point difference. How is that reasonable?

Honestly it must be interesting to be at the top of GW2's 50/50 ratio matchmaking system, cause the game tries to place you into matches you will lose on purpose unless you can win a 1/2v5 against better and better players. To be at the top must mean the game gets confused and has to put you against worse players for a change meaning you get a lot more wins without even trying. They exist so that you keep your 50% win ratio. You have to beat the top players in the entire game to be able to break out of it. 
But that's how I've seen MM be done since game's launch, it wants to place you into matches you will lose badly. You have no control over this, just sit back and take your 500-<100 point loss. 

[lvis.3824]

just remove matchmaking at all - so many twink players around that disrupt the matchmaker, it's basicly useless.
You can just instant pop queues and put 10random ppl vs each other, and it would have the same outcome.

[Trepidation Lost.3469]

Yeah it’s been a joke since day one.

I just farmed my legendary pvp amulet.

absolute joke of a system.

i ask players ( or look ) what ranks they are, and it’s often plat 1-3 stacked on one team and gold 2-3 on the other.

 

I got to plat 2 myself, and back down to gold 3 multiple times due to this. 
 

it’s rediculous.