New Automated Tournaments HvH: Are high ranked players being disadvantaged?

Hey everyone!

I was really excited about the new ATS and I tried it out. Now one of the things I noticed was that high ranked players (rank 200-700) tend to end up losing a lot more than N/A or ranked 10000+. Now, for example, what happened is this: I am rank 450 and I came into a group with 3 ranked top 100 guys. My first round was vs a rank 40, I lost it (ok, fair deal, he was better ). My second round I ended up vs a rank 7! Ok I lost it too... My three last rounds, i ended up against players of 300-1500 and I won all three. Now the thing that is hitting me atm is that fairly decent ppl, end up losing their first (and/or second) match cause they come accross high ranked ppl. So basically when I looked at the top 8 of every group, there were 2 top 100 players, and about 3 top 1000, and there were even N/A in top 8. Now is this representative? In the elimination rounds, all the N/A guys will just end up bein wacked by top 100, and will finish 6th-8th. The better players (top 500) who didnt finish at the first 8th, could easily beat some of the N/A guys, but are still places behind them...

Ok this must be part of the swiss system. But what is really worrying me now is this: I'm starting to see lots of high ranked players taking their rating down, just to get down into the ladder. As a consequence they end up vs lower ranked players (let say rank 3000), but they are actually rank 400 for example. With this being said, players who ACTUALLY get their RATING DOWN , but know they are better, are ending up higher in a tournament than players who play for the ladder!!!

Now, why am I (and I am not the only one) feel so disadvantaged by the system? I should be stupid to even get my rank higher cause of my 5 matches, almost 3 matches will be top 500 (if Im rank 450), and the chance that I lose (and thus not ending up in top 8) is goin to be high...

Does anyone else feel the same way about this?

Let me know what ya'll think about this...

Greetz,

Lyra

I think I'll give the reason very few people even looked at the thread. HEro battles as it stands is really a joke. From the 1 vs. 1 AI gankefest to supe rdefensive holding shrines, strategies that win make it impossible to really build a team. As such you have to build 3-4 seperate ganker builds. Most people DOn't want to lose games because an AI they can't control got into a 1 vs. 1 all the way across the map. Losing because the ai can't (won't) kite touch rangers, can't change its playstyle against differant oppponants means that gimmick builds flourish. All of this leads to a general disregard for HB.

I myself stopped playing after touch rangers became standerd. THe gimick builds narrow down what you can play extremely. SUre you can counter one build, but not all the gimmick builds, and there are alot. SO it ends up haveing a VERY rock paper scissors fealing. The real main flaw is the shrines forcing 1 vs. 1 play.

SO yea, in short, no one really cares. =(

Well I understand your point of view here. But as you must be aware, a lot of ppl were asking ANet, plz let us play 1vs1 games! On top of that, you know it is quite impossible to really do a 1vs1 (imagine a mesmer vs assa...). So they made it 4vs4 with heroes.

You do point out where the big flaw is (the shrines) and like that the forced split builds all the time. But do you see anything better than the shrines? Imagine playing hvh builds like Team Arenas. Would that be better then? Spike builds will come, and defensive builds will go away then?

Thirdly, what would happen if the AI got better? Do you think HB will be played more?


But to stay on topic, I would really appreciate it if more ppl would reply, and even if someone from ANet has seen my problem from my first post.

Hero battles rule. Sorry if it isn't as Uberleet as Spikefest Arena... I mean HA, my bad.

The only problem is that holding builds get quite annoying on some maps (rits and necro rits spamming spirits at the center shrine). Beatable, but could benefit from a change in mechanics or something.

Edit: (post directed to that other guy, not Lyra)

In terms of sorry-ass garbage gameplay, Hero battles are now the 4v4 equivalent of HA. Your head must be burried up somewhere far beyond recovery if you think otherwise.

Lyra, every GW ladder has been exploited/farmed or whatever you want to call it. You can "play fair" and lose with honor (actually just lose, there is no honor) or you can employ the same tactics to even your chances (you can also do absolutely nothing like ANet). People usually look to play the ladder in any system so that shouldn't be surprising - maybe only that it's so easy and effective in GW. I've seen only a few proposals that looked as if they could make for a better system but the 'tournament coordinator's' pride, arrogance or exceptional ignorance prevents those from even being seriously considered.

The annoucement of ATs managed to keep a fair share of players from giving up on GW I'm sure but once again the implementation has been a severe dissapointment. Those still interested in HvH can only hope the whole team supposedly maintaining GW will someday take the mode seriously and step up to try to distinguish it from effluent. I honestly wish you all the best.

(Yes I'm bitter. **** you in advance)

High ranked players are at a disadvantage because they are matched against other high ranked players in the initial round. Whereas players with low ratings are matched against each other.

This is *not* a normal feature of swiss tournaments, I've been told (don't know for sure, but that's what others have said).

Yes, the meta for HvH is terrible right now. But so is the meta for GvG. Skill balance ftw.

I Think that taking hero battles in a direction where splitting 3 ways isn't the easiest way to win would be nice. WHere its POSSIBLE. to keep 3 players together and use them as a team and still have and even playing field would be nice. I dont suggest Team arenas style of 4vs.4 anihliation. Right now AOE would absoulutly WTF PWN every other type of team if that was the case.

Although HB is hardly a satisfactory 1 vs 1 BEcause your not doing the 1vs1 most of the time, its 2 AI touch rangers. THat hardly counts.

As for the AI i think it can improve hugely but that there will always be problems. ANET definantly isn't willing to put inthe time and teach the AI of warriros how to play differantly against differant types of attackers, for instance healsig spamming vs. touch rangers and kiting around a shrine to stay alive. However i do think better skill usage is possible, and DEFINANTLY better reactions to AOE.

All in all it fundamentaly fails to be a blanced form of compition like a RTS or FPS is.

The whole new focus on HB is laughable, and the actual giving of cash prizes for winners infuriates me.

wow Cash for using Touch rangers IMO and the nerfed but wont die BoA sins,now its boring, hard to focus on controling crappy AI, and annoying. I kinda enjoyed it before they added all this rank crap and started glorifying it.

Also if they Feel like give a cash prize to someone, Give it to a guild that uses a Balanced build to win A GvG since its now Filled with Spike builds making it boring and skilless and no fun at all.

cash prizes for hb?Where have i been lol. Well im sure i will eventually get to like the hero battles,hopefully, they seem fun.

That is exactly where I'd like to go with this topic. This, as far as I am concerned is the major reason I would just resign and work myself DOWN in the ladder in stead of up . Now, things would be more fair if the first round would be random (ok sorry for those who are N/A, but hey, why join a tournament if you have no experience in it...?). For second round, it would be fair to put a 1/0/0 person (1 win-0 loses-0 draws) vs a 1/0/0 person, and so on. And to give you the final standings, only THEN use the rank as a breaker to see if you are first or second with equal winnings-losses-draws.

I am not sure at all, if this would be possible to implement. But as I know from past HA events who only lasted in the weekends, we could try to implement another 'tournament' system for one weekend (I am talking about matching opponents vs each other), to see if ladder play is actually encouraged.

The higher the rank you have on the ladder, the better opponents you fight, thereby you get more points via strength of opponent, so there is therefore a higher likelihood that if two players have the same win/loss that the higher ranking player will have more points overall.

If you're good enough to beat everyone, then the higher your ladder rank the better.

The win/loss ratio that adjusts match points in a tourney is *only* the win/loss ratio of the current tournament. Ladder rating doesn't affect your match points at all. It's used to match people in the first round, it *might* be used to match players with exactly equal match points but I'm not sure. Either way it's dumb.

First of all, is this true for GVG ATs as well? My guild hasn't actually managed to get a tourney group together yet.. and even if they do I don't know when I'll have 3 or 4 hours.. >.>

Anyway, I actually emailed Anet about the problem, and the response was at least reassuring. They explained that since pairings are set up by current tournament standings (allowing for players with equal match points to be paired at each round). Because of this, and the fact that ladder rank is the final tie breaker, high ranked players are inherently paired together. However, they also said that they are working on this problem and will have the pairings running randomly very soon (hopefully by wedensday in time for the monthly season?).