Announcing Improvements to PvP and the Ladder Test Season

[Karizee]

Announcing Improvements to PvP and the Ladder Test Season

by John Corpening on November 19, 2014



Hello, Tyrians!

We’re very pleased to announce that on December 2 we will be releasing some major updates to PvP that will enhance and improve a number of areas of the PvP experience.


Matchmaking Improvements

First off is an overhaul to matchmaking in PvP. Previously, matchmaking only accounted for players’ ratings. Justin O’Dell has been busy talking to players about the information they’d like to see our matchmaking algorithm take into account, and he’s developed a system that can factor in a number of parameters. In addition to ratings, matchmaking will now consider factors such as the largest group size on a team, team composition, players’ accumulated dishonor, and more.

Justin has put together a blog post that we’ll be releasing tomorrow about all of the matchmaking changes. Make sure to check it out for all the details.



Map Selection and Match Flow

The update will include a host of other improvements to PvP. We’ve overhauled the entire flow of how a player enters PvP. Rosters are a thing of the past; now you can simply join with your party. Players now have to confirm before entering a match, so 4v5 situations can no longer occur from people going AFK. For players who do drop out, the Dishonor system has also been improved to better handle bad behavior.

One of my favorite new additions in this update is the ability to have a say in the map that you’ll play on! Evan Lesh’s upcoming blog post will give you all the information you need to know on match flow, map selection, and more. Check back for Evan’s post on November 21.



Restructuring PvP

With the overhaul to matchmaking complete, we’re now ready to begin restructuring PvP for the future. PvP is now grouped into three areas: “Practice” in hot-join, “Play” in unranked arenas, and “Compete” in ranked arenas. This change will help guide players through the stages of development toward high-level competition.

With this change, all competitive play (both solo and team) is consolidated into Ranked Arena. You can join ranked play with any party size from 1 to 5, and our new matchmaking algorithm will match players to help create games that are as balanced as possible. If you play team arena by joining with a team of 5, you’ll generally be matched against other teams of 5. You can play solo by joining alone, or join in groups of 2, 3, or 4 and have your party filled out to create balanced games. The new matchmaking algorithm will take party composition into account when determining how much a game impacts your ladder position. So, on the off chance there aren’t enough solo or small groups of players in the queue to fill two teams and you find yourself up against a fully organized team of equally skilled players, the match will have very little impact on your ladder ranking if you lose and may give you a bigger boost if you win. Justin’s upcoming blog post on matchmaking has all the details on how the quality and outcome of your matches will affect your ladder points.

Unranked Arena will give players a safe place to play solo or with their friends in any sized group without having to worry about affecting their ladder standing. If you’re ready to move on from hot-join, or if you want to test out new builds, warm up a new profession, try out new teammates, or just chill out and have fun in a structured PvP environment, Unranked Arena is for you. Unranked Arena also takes advantage of all the new matchmaking changes, so you will tend to be grouped together with players of your skill level and group size.



Ladder Formula Test Season

To test all the exciting improvements to the leaderboards and reinforce the competitive aspect of Ranked Arena, we’ll hold a test season starting on Tuesday, December 16, that will be running until Tuesday, January 13. The top 250 players on the ladder at the end of the season will receive a mini llama. The top 20 players on the ladder will also receive a piece of Glorious Hero’s armor, and the top 5 will receive two pieces of Glorious Hero’s armor. Glorious Hero’s armor is only available through skill-based play in PvP, so this is a great opportunity to acquire a look that lets everyone know you’re the best of the best.

Another feature we’ll try during our test season is map rotation for Ranked Arena. During the test season, and during future league seasons, Ranked Arena will have a limited set of maps available for more serious competition. During the periods between seasons, the ladder will be reset and all maps will be available for an unofficial and more casual ranked experience.

Because we’re transitioning how leaderboards are handled, we want to reward all the players who have fought their way to the top of the leaderboards in the old system. For your efforts, we’ll be awarding a piece of Glorious Hero’s armor to the top 20 players on both the solo and team arena leaderboards. The top 100 players on each leaderboard will also receive a mini llama. The cutoff time for the current leaderboards is December 2. At that point, the new build goes live and we transition to the new system.

While this is another step toward leagues, please understand that this test season is not the league system. Leagues are still one of our top priorities, but we’re not yet ready to reveal what we have in store for league play. However, the new features in this build are part of a much bigger overhaul to the PvP infrastructure that was undertaken to lay the foundation for leagues.



MMO PvP Is Stronger than Ever in GW2

We’re very excited to bring you all of these PvP updates because they further enhance the experience and commitment to competitive gaming that makes Guild Wars 2 stand out among MMOs.

This year, we worked with our community to bring you the Tournament of Legends as a path to legendary weapons; the Tournament of Glory to earn unique skins through skill-based play in PvP; the ESL Go4GuildWars2 tournaments, where players can earn weekly cash prizes and an even bigger monthly cash prizes; and the World Tournament Series, where the very best players of each region can become legends on the international stage.

These tournaments together with the changes coming in December are another big step in Guild Wars 2‘s dedication to supporting competitive gaming in MMOs. They follow other major steps since launch, such as Reward Tracks, Custom Arenas, Spectator Mode, new maps, and much more, on our path to grow Guild Wars 2‘s PvP for players of all types and skill levels.

Additional details on all of these changes are coming soon in Evan’s and Justin’s blog posts, as well as the next episode of Ready Up on November 26. We are really excited about this update and look forward to sharing it with you in December!

Have fun, and we’ll see you in Tyria!

John


https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a...r-test-season/

[Exroyal]

Even though i dont PvP, i kinda expected more from them. The community has been dying for new maps and new game modes, but ANet doesn't want to deliver those. Dont get me wrong, these improvements are great and all, but i kinda expected more.

[Lazuli]

Even though i dont PvP, i kinda expected more from them. The community has been dying for new maps and new game modes, but ANet doesn't want to deliver those. Dont get me wrong, these improvements are great and all, but i kinda expected more.

ANet does not want to admit that in attempting to prevent players from being split among game modes by adding only 1 (failquest) that the community had split anyway because obviously playing 1 mode forever is boring as fuck especially when you are forced on points.

Conquest could work for e-sports if their balance team was more than 1 or 2 people but regardless it does not make conquest a fun mode at all. New modes will not be added or taken seriously because no one wants to play conquest anymore. If they added GvG it would instantly make failquest die the lonely pathetic death it deserves and queue times would be an hour long if not more.

If ANet weren't idiots and could see blatantly obvious outcomes for anyone who can apply logic to simple thought they would have added all or most of the modes that were in GW1. Sure the pvp community was split, people played what the fuck they wanted to. Didn't make any pvp mode more or less dead in the games prime. I hope they aren't taking the 'split community' from when GW1 was abandoned (by them) and game was dead so certain modes couldn't be played... but who knows these guys are seriously fucking dumb a lot of the time.

and our new matchmaking algorithm will match players to help create games that are as balanced as possible

Bullshit, GW2 uses a shitty glicko system and this will still match you with players far below your rank or not ranked at all. GW2 matchmaking is completely and utterly broken, why won't they change this? Because if they used a proper ranking and matchmaking system, queue's would take hours because pvp is dead. There ya go, MMR and rank doesn't mean shit in pvp.

[zito]

/yawn

same old same old

[Meledelion]

Matchmaking Improvements
First off is an overhaul to matchmaking in PvP. Previously, matchmaking only accounted for players’ ratings.In addition to ratings, matchmaking will now consider factors such as the largest group size on a team, team composition, players’ accumulated dishonor, and more.

No shit, there's a reason why people are toxic as hell. It took 2.5 years to acknowledge that MMR doesn't exist in GW2, but whenever people talk about it they get infracted/banned.

Map Selection and Match Flow
Players now have to confirm before entering a match, so 4v5 situations can no longer occur from people going AFK. For players who do drop out, the Dishonor system has also been improved to better handle bad behavior.

Another thing that clearly requires 2.5 years of development time right? A pop-up box with a confirmation literally took 2.5 years to develop.

Restructuring PvP
PvP is now grouped into three areas: “Practice” in hot-join, “Play” in unranked arenas, and “Compete” in ranked arenas. This change will help guide players through the stages of development toward high-level competition.

With this change, all competitive play (both solo and team) is consolidated into Ranked Arena. You can join ranked play with any party size from 1 to 5, and our new matchmaking algorithm will match players to help create games that are as balanced as possible. If you play team arena by joining with a team of 5, you’ll generally be matched against other teams of 5. You can play solo by joining alone, or join in groups of 2, 3, or 4 and have your party filled out to create balanced games. The new matchmaking algorithm will take party composition into account when determining how much a game impacts your ladder position. So, on the off chance there aren’t enough solo or small groups of players in the queue to fill two teams and you find yourself up against a fully organized team of equally skilled players, the match will have very little impact on your ladder ranking if you lose and may give you a bigger boost if you win.

So there's a "new" third option in the "play" system, great now people will practice in play and play in sQ just like before. The only way to remedy this is to put up rank limits for each type.

Great so tQ still will be meaningless since the player base is so small that you'll always get put up against teams when Qing solo. If you want to change this so tPvP is meaningful you have to put up a strict boundary, join as 5 or don't join at all.

If you don't do this there's little to no reason to play sQ since the rewards are better in tQ. The off-chance my ass, this isn't the first time a-net goes with "on the off chance" and is proven completely wrong.

Ladder Formula Test Season
During the test season, and during future league seasons, Ranked Arena will have a limited set of maps available for more serious competition. During the periods between seasons, the ladder will be reset and all maps will be available for an unofficial and more casual ranked experience.

Because we’re transitioning how leaderboards are handled, we want to reward all the players who have fought their way to the top of the leaderboards in the old system. For your efforts, we’ll be awarding a piece of Glorious Hero’s armor to the top 20 players on both the solo and team arena leaderboards.

While this is another step toward leagues, please understand that this test season is not the league system. Leagues are still one of our top priorities, but we’re not yet ready to reveal what we have in store for league play.

Another change that requires 2.5 years to implement. A better change at this point would be to remove all the shit maps and just stick to the well known 3.

Yup because leaderboards are such a good metric and they clearly show skill right? They're absolutely not volatile as fuck and can't be manipulated at all right?
Here's one of my recent ranking "jumps".
[18. Nov - 12:00 PM] - New rank 678
[18. Nov - 03:00 AM] - New rank 954
Guess how many games I played yup the wopping 3, lost 2 btw

I feel sorry for the people who are waiting for things that aren't "top priority" seeing as "top priority" = at least 2.5years of waiting I can't imagine how long normal stuff will take.

And let's not forget that they announced a huge PvP patch 1.5 years ago that turned out to be a huge joke. This should've been implemented THEN, it's too late now.

[Lazuli]

At this point it is actually funny to watch this games 'development', it is literally one huge fuckin joke.

Pvp is dhuumed, feel so terrible for the people still taking it seriously when they are just going to repeatedly get shafted.

New pvp modes in the works, guys! Cya in 5 years lel

Thx 4 the laffs ANet

[Deleted]

Sad truth.

Even being optimistic, if this stuff did work, there's still so much more that needs to be done in pvp. How many years can people wait for better class balance? People are tired now.

The entire development of GW2 has been a joke, to me they had one of the best premises for a game ever; an action-based mmo based on the GW lore, professions that I loved, gorgeous aesthetics and just generally everything was awe-inspiring. But the post-release has been almost non-existent, they totally dropped the ball for some reason. Maybe they just assumed that having a strong selling point would be enough and people would stick through having terrible class balance and stagnant game modes.

[Deleted]

These are features I've expected from the game at launch. Needless to say I am not playing anymore