test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
PvP Matchmaking
sidewaze
Member, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild Users Posts: 31 Arc User
Absolutely ruining this game's Domination pvp system.
Matching Premades with 14K+ gear against 9k pugs? What on EARTH did they do?
The whole 'resetting ranks' and 'it will even out soon' is a load of cr@p too. Has anyone heard if this issue is on the radar at all or is everyone just pretending like it's working as intended?
Matching Premades with 14K+ gear against 9k pugs? What on EARTH did they do?
The whole 'resetting ranks' and 'it will even out soon' is a load of cr@p too. Has anyone heard if this issue is on the radar at all or is everyone just pretending like it's working as intended?
Post edited by sidewaze on
0
Comments
When this Mod came out when I ran with a premade all I got was pug groups to stomp, melting in 1 or 2 spells. I kept saying something was seriously wrong..but you know, people want to have all those kills on that leaderboard......So I stopped doing premades.
Because I am sick in the head, and want to see how messed up the system really is, I have been trying to get my 100 wins strictly thru pugging, maybe a couple matches with a friend or two because you cant really ignore them too long:).
At the start I went 15 matches in a row, with people with 5-10 K GS--I have 16 K GS. And for 15 matches, all I got were premades, players with 15-18K GS. ( At this time, I had just won 10 matches in a row, so I thought maybe my ELO was super high and doing a combined score for the whole group, and it would drop with losses and adjust itself after these 15 losses)
I took a break for a day, and came back yesterday and did 20 matches, and it is the same thing, only some of the pugs on my team now have 11 K GS...
To me, it is like the Devs want to get rid of the pvp community...Besides the unequal GS, the OP classes must make any new player to PVP wonder why they even bother, and quit pvp. Us veteran PvP people, always come and go for other games, and many leave for good. Without new players coming in and getting excited about PvP, new blood, the community will die out. New pvp maps problem fixed.
Personally, after I get these 100 wins, I too will stop Domination pvp. It is not fun, even when you do run with a group of friends, people will take an hour to get the perfect group together for just plain pug queing....and go to some extremes to make sure that you do not get an equally geared preamade--not all but many people. Just not fun.
P.S. The people I usually pvp with are all still in the first 5 pages of the Leaderboard, I am on 28 after all this pugging, for those who measure things that way. And I am a CW so definately have a Death Wish.
My guess is the system takes the first 10 people in the list and balances the game between those 10 people. Realistically matches are just as balanced.
Although like I've mentioned for other games. SC2's system works really well with regards to balanced matches and allows for quick queue times. Because again, it just takes the players at the top of a queue.
I dont think that this is what it is doing right now, or I wouldnt get such a disadvantaged team going against premades and 2 ro 3 times the GS teams every time that I que solo since Mod 3 came out, there would be some diversity. And again, when I do a full premade, except for once, we have always gotten severely undergeared pugs. I think that there is a glitch with how it is matching.
I believe that this is what it did before Mod 3 came out, as I could solo que and mostly get equal groups, with some really low GS pugs on my team now and then.
CRAZY MIKE - 14.6k PvE CW
Backbone - 16.7k PvP HR
[SIGPIC]http://i59.tinypic.com/s3hts7.png[/SIGPIC]
I agree that I like fast queues too. It was pretty painful as a Domination-lover (that doesn't sound right) when they first implemented the matchmaking and it took a really long time in between matches.
That said I think it can be fine-tuned. If nothing else have a larger separation between premades and pugs, and only put them together if there REALLY is no other possible way and they've been in queue for like 30 minutes.
Also, 4-5 man premades are not the same as 2 man "Hey buddy want to PVP?" premades.
I really think it's a premade vs. pug difference more than gear score difference. Premades just happen to usually have higher-than-average gs, and it is accentuated when playing against pugs.
Separating only by gearscore has problems- for example, there are some builds that are top-notch but don't give lots of GS. Plus you know ******bags that love to pub-stomp will queue without gear and then put it on once inside.
Or you get the 17K GS GWF who quits 3 mins into a match saying that the GF on the other team is too OP!
This happened right before I started my experiment and went in Q with 3 friends. We were so happy when the pug lotto gave us a GWF instead of 6K CW!
Taken in part from Panderus' post.
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
I gotta call bs on this. The logic there... "well if u got better gearz you will do better, if you got worse gearz u will do worse and the elo will take that into account"...it is that kind total color-blindness to the actual player experience that is killing this. Ok so don't do gs based matchmaking, instead use the contrived elo and you end up with horrible players at 6k gs matched in a party with a 16k gs verse an entire team of people at 12-18 gs. That is the reality. IN THEORY gs will affect elo and "thus" matchmaking, but in practice we are getting what I said above, and total blowouts. Considering adjusting things to me means nothing more than maybe fixing another "bug" like eliminating 1v1's after the match. Something that only negatively affects the experience of most pvpers.
Jugger Conq GF
....
Either wait 40 minutes, or get those lopsided teams
I disagree. Matchmaking needs to be based on a combination of wins/losses, gear score, and what a player actually does to make his team win. And no thats not just capping a node when there are no enemies on it and the one 16k gs person on the team is on 2 getting gang banged by the entire other team. You contest a node vs more than a 1v1 and you should get more points. Those points should be based on how many of the other team are there and how long you contested that node for. Pug matchmaking should also take party comp into consideration. It is broke for many reasons, not the least of which is the elo its self.
Jugger Conq GF
....
That said, the most important section of panderus post is that they don't want queue times to increase. Bottom line: We are not going to see a proper matchmaking any time soon. Premades are more likely to face other premades / skilled players, yes, but until they find each other, they stomp five pugs along the way. That's the reality of matchmaking today.
Sometimes it's so bad that you don't even get your min points. So you leave and take the 30 minutes or switch chars and hope for better dices next time. Good players shouldn't have a better chance of meeting other good players, they should exclusively play with and against other good players. Low ELO players should only be teamed up with and against equal competition as well. Everyone loses if the matchmaking works too casual. Top players will effectively lose ranks while winning against lowby opponents and the unfortunate 9k GS CW that is used as a filler in a 16k heavyweight fight will probably get a decent ELO boost out of the match and get frustrated with too geared opponents for the next few days.
At this point, PVP as a competitive environment is not working in the slightest. Not GG, not Domination, not Open World. All you do with PVP is complete the campaign, get glory for gear or use it as stopover to DK.
+1
And how about crediting kills to the player that has done the most damage to the target over the last X seconds?
Other games solved this issue with strict(er) brackets. That means the players are not all in a SINGLE pool for the matchmaking to extract them. Players are all in their brackets.
In this way, it would be impossible to get pugs at 9K GS while you're on the first page of the leaderboard (just as an example of high ELO), because those pugs would be on the lowest bracket with other such beginners.
There is a significant inconvenience however to this mode. Queueing will take a bit longer (shouldn't take more than 10 minutes IMO with the Neverwinter player-base), but more importantly, most games will be close and very long. 30 minutes games will be considered short in the higher ELO brackets where everybody knows what to do.
So if you have 1 hour or 2 to play/evening, because of family or other RL constraints, you can expect 2-3 games at most once rated high.
But for low ELO brackets, things would improve significantly.
My experience thus far in over 200+ games, 50% of which were full 5/5 premades with other 16-18k gs pvpers, the other 50% were either queuing with 1 friend or going solo:
If our premade faces random PUGs, after the first 60 seconds they stop playing and sit at the graveyard. We win 1000 vs (somewhere between 50 and 0). Our team loses ranking on the leaderboard for a win versus a group we had no control over getting matched up against.
If our premade faces another premade, some of them don't even leave the graveyard at the start. Concede loss without fighting. Depending on the team (17k+ GS people known in the pvp community) we can gain 2-10 pages on the leaderboard, or (unknowns / 10-14k gs toons) we can again lose rating.
You can lose rating by going 1,000 - 0, premade vs premade, when the other team gives up before the match starts.
Even if they do fight it out, you can go 1,000 - 500 or so and still lose rating for beating them.
How this has effected PVP: Most PVP players that are in anyway concerned with the scoreboard either queue with 1 or two friends, or queue solo. We tear through the other teams when they are less geared/newer players (think they are having fun??) BUT we have a 50/50 shot at gaining rating through the win.
I am not asking to WIN rating with every victory. But it is absurd to LOSE rating for a victory, when we have no control over who we face.
We have taken the time to experiment with the system. If we allow teams to get 5k-7k points each, and their team to score 600-700 points to our 1,000 team points (win) and 9-11k personal points, we still lose rating. So it isn't that we are getting 2k personal points on shutout wins and losing rating, it is independent of points scored. Allowing teams to do this can be difficult and completely takes away from pvp itself. It usually involves capturing our home point at the start, riding over the top to their point and capping that as they cap mid, then moving to mid while they cap our homepoint, then killing them all and capturing our homepoint, then riding over to their homepoint which they just recaptured, over and over until the match ends.
It is boring. No one gets anything out of it.
Out of 100+ 5/5 premade matches, maybe, MAYBE 3 have been actual back and forth fighting without anyone quitting or giving up early. Before Mod3 it would be 2/3 were like this, sometimes 3/4. Now the teams we use to face, namely from the 3-4 other PVP guilds that can put up a fight and beat us, aren't seen. They learned that queuing with 2 people yields better results so that's all anyone does.
For instance, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of players gaming the system to artificially pad their leaderboard score. And another side effect is more AFKing at the campfire. Jumping down to fight against overwhelming force now carries an actual penalty - your K/D ratio gets hammered. There are people who care about that kind of thing and they are abandoning losing games earlier than ever to minimise the impact on their leaderboard stats.
Honestly it's a mess right now.
Aelar Hawkwind - Archer
Karrin Feywinter - Mistress of Flame
Errin Duskwalker - Executioner
Darquess - Soulbinder
Well done. You just described the Elo System.
Let's get this straight: Elo Ratings are not your Win/Loss Ratios.
Elo Ratings is a number determined by how you do against players based on their Elo Ratings. If you win against players with lower raitngs you do not gain very many points towards your Elo Rating. If you win against players with far higher Elo you gain a lot of points towards your Elo Rating.
Players with better gear will naturally perform better thus sending them farther up the ladder. The thing is 50K GS doesn't make you competitive with the best players if you can't aim or dodge.
A player's skill is augmented by their gear. It is not defined by it.
An Elo Rating is supposed to be an estimate of players skill level. Thus gear score is included as players with higher gear score have the potential to perform better.
The cold hard, sad truth is that there is a balance to be had with queue times. If you don't want 10+ minute queues all the time there will be some mismatched battles particularly during non-peak hours. Despite the complaints you guys keep saying though this is still far better than what it was.
I don't get to play during peak hours but I still have far more balanced matches than I used to but yes there is often at least one person one my team and their team far above me and often somebody on my team and their team far below me.
First of all, if we gain points even against pugs 1000-0, how come we still go backwards in the ranking? Something is not working as it should right there. I shouldn't move backwards 1-5 pages every time i win against pugs. The very least I should stay on the same place.
Also, our queue times are often under 3-5 min and we mostly get bad pugs with low GS. The time needs to be extended and especially during peaking hours. Maybe extend the time for players with a higher score or something so we get more time to get matched against better players?
I rather wait 5 min extra then go against pugs over and over again. And for the love of god, the same two pvp maps since BETA? How hard can it really be?... You released 3 full modules with a lot of content. A few more PVP maps cant be that much work compared to that.
And a autokick should be in place for players not leaving the spawn (even if they are moving). The AFK kicker is not doing the job good enough.
Understood. More should come into it than simply the Win/Loss ratio. However, the system needs to be more heavily weighted, than currently, on wins.
Here in is part of the problem, and probably what is wrong with the ELO system currently. You can get into a match where no matter the outcome, win or lose, 0 personal points or 10,000, you will lose ELO -- again, no. matter. what. The skill gap is not currently represented properly in the ELO system because of this. Players that should be advancing ahead of the 'normal' pack of players are not because you can enter matches where the other players are so far below you, even if you beat them you lose ELO. So those 'good' players that stomp them lose ELO, are faced against more players with mid-lower tier ELO, stomp them, and stay where they are at or go lower. Even though they can win the match 1,000-50. Even though it is a premade vs PUGs, and the premade has 0 combined deaths, ZERO, the premade can lose ELO for stomping the PUG team.
No one enjoys those matches. The PUGs are furious. The PVP premade is bored. Both teams lose ELO. The premade goes on to fight more PUGs, and the circle continues. This is through no fault of the premade team, and yet they are punished.
The ELO system needs to be more heavily weighted on WINS than it is currently, and losing ELO for a victory needs to be removed.
I go back to the above. Players with better gear can perform better, but it doesn't send them up the ladder.
To a point. A perfectly played 12k GS GWF vs an 18k GS GWF with many mistakes will still see the 18k GWF win 99.9% of the time. PVP in NW is heavily gear dependent. It isn't just the gear, or the abilities used, it is the choice of gear (which stats to go for at what levels) more than the GS number itself.
Currently it is not. The best way to gain ELO currently is to get one other friend that is 17-18k GS and go 2/5 queue PVP and just dominate PUGs. Chances are you will win, and chances are you might actually face other people doing the same and gain ELO. It is less likely than queuing with 5/5 to enter a match where you will LOSE ELO even if you are victorious.
PVP is not better than it was pre-Mod3. Many of the top tier PVPers are going to be leaving in the coming weeks (many are already talking about it) because of how bad the state of PVP currently is. Not that some class is unfair and stacking it leads to wins, but that getting matches that are balanced in any aspect of the word is nearly impossible. I've said elsewhere, but before Mod3 I would get 5/5 premade queues that were even matchups 3/4's of the time. In 100's of games since Mod3 I have had maybe 3. Maybe.
I have 17.5k GS. I usually (now that the system completely favors it) queue with one other person at the same level of gearing. If we get 3 people on our team that are 10k+ gs we will win 90% of the time. If we get 1-2 that are below 10k we might lose, and we will lose if the other team has people all above 14k. I can tell if we are going to win or lose, with good accuracy, by inspecting my teammates before the match starts. I have yet to get into a group with 3 other PUGs near my gear level. The system is not balancing back to what it was with people ranked according to skill. Especially since even if my team loses I will have 8k-12k personal points on the scoreboard.
The system as it is right now, just isn't working properly.
As I have said elsewhere, there needs to be two different Domination Queues.
One as it currently is, and one that requires a full 5 people to queue for, but gives BONUS ELO and Glory for win. Yes, the queues will be a bit longer, but it would incentivize people to queue this way. It would allow people to wait longer for good, balanced matches if they want to, AND it would free up regular queues for up-and-coming PVP players to face more groups at their level.
Which goes back to the fact matches will be balanced as quickly as they can in a reasonable time.
I'd love an option to wait longer myself but not everybody wants to wait 10 minutes. There are plenty of people on the forums who complain they have to wait 5 minutes instead of .5 seconds now.
Also if you get matched up with lower ranked players it doesn't mean you got knocked back. You will be matched up with as balanced of a team as the system can provide in a reasonable time.
And if you are winning against pugs and falling further behind in the rankings it is because somebody else one and ended up ahead of you. There can be hundreds of players all within a single Elo point of each other particularly if you are at the center of the curve. Large jumps are not uncommon.
Well then I guess this game isn't for hardcore PVP players. I'm getting tired of waiting 3 min, fight pugs for 5 min and then repeat 20 times a day and move backwards in the leaderboard after ALL pugmatches.
Read #21, he is correct about everything he wrote.
Either Elo is activated, then only the Elo is taken into account, or Elo is not activated and it is random. Elo measures your performance. A 9k player with the good class, or good ping, can have the same Elo than a 20k gs guy with a poor ping or a class despised by the devs.
Given the respective Elo of the two teams, an expected result is calculated before the match begins. If you do better then you gain Elo points. If not, you lose Elo points. In theory it is possible to lose Elo points even after a 1000-0 victory, if the red team had a much lower Elo than yours. But precisely this can never happen because the queueing system will pair teams with similar Elos.
Tired of Dailies/Tyranny of Dailies/Timers of Doom/Tricked Or Duped/Tremendously Obnoxious Dailies/Try Otherwise, Devs
No. The grand total of Elo is a contant. Take any chess tournament, the Elo points gained by the ones who gain Elo match the Elo points lost by the guys who lose Elo. With a few situational rules here or there, for instance the winner of a tournament cannot lose Elo points, and also the Elo of newer players fluctuates more than the Elo of seasoned competitors.
Tired of Dailies/Tyranny of Dailies/Timers of Doom/Tricked Or Duped/Tremendously Obnoxious Dailies/Try Otherwise, Devs
I think he meant in this game both teams lose ELO.
Thank you for the anecdote that does not directly relate to what we are talking about here.
It is possible in this game to 5 man queue, get matched up with a team (which you have no control over) and lose ELO for winning the match.
I am not talking about I am 5th place on the scoreboard for the round, last on my team, and lose ELO. I am usually #1 or #2 on the scoreboard, and the entire team loses ELO.
And when I say lose ELO, I don't mean we fall back a few places on the leaderboard. I've lost 20+ pages from a single match, in which we won, and in which I was 1st place.
This has been tested, by me, on multiple occasions, and it is independent of how many points we score, personally, in the match. It can be a game that is 1,000-0 (team) in which I get 10,000 personal points on the scoreboard because the other team actually kept fighting (or we decided to chase them but let them get caps) or one in which I only get 2,000 personal points on the scoreboard because the other team got killed twice each, never capped anything and stayed at the campfire until the match ended. Both situations net a loss of ELO. A significant loss.
This has been tested and observed by many others at my level, and they have all come back with the same findings.
Example:
*queue pops for high ELO team*
"The matchup selected for you is significantly lower ELO than yours. Do you wish to re-enter the queue in search of a more equal matchup?"
Yes /// No
So the team selects 'No,' they are put back in the matchmaking system, the next team gets placed against the lower ELO team the system tried to put against this higher ELO team, and the system tries to find the high ELO team a better, more fair matchup.
That's because everybody with a clear mind runs premades in Mod3 to advance in the campaign and the leaderboard. The system can't handle this with its casual mechanism, so it matches up pugs vs premade regularly.
I think the lone improvement you see is the minor factor of the leaver penalty, otherwise the system caters to premades more than ever and pug life is on an all-time low.
Yes, balancing queue times is a delicate issue and that's why we need more player control. Let us choose between longer queue times and a strict matchmaking. This way you can also gather information about what players want in this game. If this lengthens queue times generally because everybody chooses balanced matches, well, playerbase has spoken. Nobody can complain.
The second change, and I'm not getting tired of reiterating, is to make the normal queue a true random solo one.
When I checked the leaderboard he was somewhere between page 15-25. So with ELO the 6k players are part of the top 1-2% of the community. What kind of ppl would I meet at the end of the leaderbboard. 3k RP toons in cosmetic gear, getting crushed while they write in the zone chat 'I dare you to throw the first punch villain'?
I dont buy it.