Grumbles about GvG matching system

OK, last night my guild fought a total of 6 battles. We won two, we lost four (not a good night for us). Over the course of the evening our rank oscillated wildly from 740 to over 2,000. The four matches we lost were ALL to top 500 guilds (two were top 200).

I suspect that, in a perfect world, my guild would belong somewhere low on the ladder, the 800s or 900s maybe. That's based just on a gut feeling on the matches we've faced, though, since almost every night we play we wind up facing far more top guilds than lower-ranked guilds, and they keep smacking us down.

I'm not whining about that: they're better players and deserved to win. What I AM whining about is why do we keep going up against them, far more often than we go against guilds of a similar rank to ours?

Rabble Rabble!

Lower ranked guilds play less frequently, while top ranked guilds play more? Thus when it tries to find a match it is most often a higher ranked guild? Just a theory.

lol i dont mind it too much. My only GvG so far, we played rank 67 guild. We were about 1004 And we did manage to make it last 15 mins!

I wouldn't always wanna end up like that though. Might be nice if you have the option when you arrange a GvG to either "quick battle" (i.e. battle anyone) or "optimum battle" (i.e. choose guilds within, say, 200 ranks of you either way). That way you'd still have a good chance of getting someone (399 other guilds to potentially be trying a gvg) but could still go against the better guilds when you wanted.

It already tries to locate a guild that's close in rating to your own first. If it can't find one within a certain time then it broadens the search.

True, but a slider marked at one end with "Take your time, I want a good match" and at the other end with "Hurry up, I want to PLAAAAYYYYYY!" would allow you to set the priority somewhat.

I think Epinephrine hit the mark. The system can't match you with a similarly ranked guild if none are playing. But hey... think of it as an opportunity to improve your play. I know, easy for me to say. I wouldn't like getting creamed by top guilds all the time either. :P

We faced BR (Black Rose Gaming, rank 9) before reset and made the match last 20 minutes vs their top 10 build, they were even dying at the start. But that was off-topic. Maybe it is because of the ladder reset. You can see that there aren't many guilds playing GVG at the moment (check ladder).

There simply aren't enough teams playing.

We generally go against about half top 100 teams and half just scrub stomps that last <10 minutes. I really don't like facing the bad teams because they lose too fast to effectively see why we are beating them so badly (who knows if they'd learn anything from that anyway) and getting pushed back to your guild lord in two minutes has got to be frusterating on morale. Unfortunately we don't have much we can do about it.

Last night we played about 85% upper tier teams and only smashed scrubs once. Other nights it has been the other way around. If we have more teams on both levels playing, this won't be happening. Sadly, that's not the case.

Competitive GvGing is difficult in a game like this, as common guilds (those "join now! we have hall and capes!" ones) get raped so quickly that no one wants to bother, and guilds that actually want to GvG usually are either very small and don't have the players for it all the time, or they just don't play often enough to be competitive.

Speaking as a scrub from the other side of the boot, it is indeed frustrating and troubling to guild morale. It helps matters when the stompers are polite and funny, and some of them even give us tips as they're creaming us. Others, who laugh and insult us, are...worse.

We're not morons, we do usually win against anyone off the ladder, and when we do we take the lessons we've learned from our own losses to be friendly and offer advice to the teams we're beating. It can only help in the long run, if it encourages them to keep playing and not give up in frustration.

But I know that we, for one, would dearly love the slider idea that would help ensure a closer match. I find I learn a lot more from drawn-out, evenly-matched battles than I do from stomps, no matter which side I'm on.

I really think it should take longer trying to find a team near your rank. I play in a top 100 guild and we spend over half of the night smashing guilds which is pointless for both sides. For the last couple weeks we have been trying new builds and fixing them up. It normally takes a good opponent to expose the problems with the build.

One tip for the lower ranked teams is try to play a more defensive build. Work on getting 3 monks that work well together and add in a 4th or even 5th character to help slow down the opponents damage. Therefore, the fight will be slower giving you a chance to see whats going on and what needs to be done to play better. Once you find yourself getting locked in stalemates you can try to slowly remove defense out.

Here's the solution to getting a match against a guild that is closer to your current rank, now it's going to cause you to wait longer for a match but it sounds like that's what you want to do. If you cancel the search for a worthy opponent before it gets to the time when it expands the search criteria(2:00 minute mark) and start over it will always only search for a guild within +/-100(200) of your guilds rank.

I was in a PUG that ended up matching against a top 200 guild in tombs this evening. We waited over 2 mins for GW to match us up with somebody. So yeah, I think it's more a matter of which groups are participating at the moment, more than anything else.

I agree with Epi.
It would seem to be that case. I've heard a lot of people grumbling and grrring about GvG match-ups. Maybe you should send a letter to Anet.

PS: Grats on Guild of the Week Epinephrine

Near as I can tell from what Anet has said about feature requests, that's exactly what I'm doing.

Amused, tombs doesnt group by rank/skill/type of group at all...

and as far as facing the better guilds, when you have no hope, as said, cancel restart at 2 minutes.

Tonight we lost all our matches because it was top teams every time! Its becoming no fun for guilds who know what they're doing and are decent players but are not hardcore pvpers. We're not the clueless first timers, we have quite a bit of practice, but its no fun getting stomped by top teams every battle!!

This new matching system is terrible. My guild is off the ladder, and for the past couple weeks, every guild battle we fight is against a ladder team, not just a ladder team, but under rank 100 teams. This is crazy, it doesnt give us a chance to improve, and doesnt give the high ranks a good challenge.

We never wait more than a minute, before we are thrown in with rank <100 guilds.

Wouldnt it be better with the old system, you may wait a few minutes and get paired with a guild your level, and have a fun match, or get thrown in to an un-winnable fight and WASTE MORE TIME than you would if you just waited in the old system.

and it was changed because people complained about waiting too long???? I'd rather wait 3 minutes and have a fair fight, than wait 30 seconds and then waste 10-15 minutes in a futile frustrating match, that will turn casual PvPers away from PvP altogether.

Something needs to be done ASAP

OK, this is getting ridiculous.

Tonight we played four matches. Four brutal losses. All four teams were ladder ranked, top 500 guilds. When we started our rank was 2,000-something. By the last match, it was 4,100, and we went up against a rank 69 team. We never waited longer than a minute for a match, most of them were instant.

Anet, if you're listening: you've really messed this one up. Our guild is pissed and disheartened, and fewer people are showing up to GvG nights - why should they spend their evening getting their asses whupped time and time again? It's getting more and more rare to fight a non-ladder guild the lower our ranking gets, and that seems outrageous.

It was better before they changed the matching system. Our guild was slowly improving, gradually working its way up the ladder, until we finally found ourselves in the top 1000 just before PvPx - then everything fell apart.

Anet, you're driving us away from PvP. And, since PvE in this game is relatively short until the next chapter, you're driving us away from the game - after you've ascended 3 characters, there's nothing to DO except PvP. You're losing us, and we can't be the only ones. Fix it.

Edit:
lol. I told my guildmates to bring their complaints to the forums - looks like they did!

In other words:

"OMG SOMEONE BESTED US! THIS SUCKS! WE WANT TO BE MATCHED WITH LOWER SKILLED PEOPLE BECAUSE IT'S FUN PWNING NOOBS"

The people on the ladder are there because they enjoy GvG and play regularly. The people not on the ladder usually don't play regularly and are less skilled. With the old system, the people higher on the ladder barely got regular matches, there was something like 1-2 battles happenning per session, if that. Great competition there.