Guild Wars 2

Anet,

I really appreciate that you took the effort to be more transparent with us about what is going to be happening. I think transparency is a great thing, and makes players feel valued and included. That is a huge step for you guys bridging the gap between players and developers since sometimes things may get a bit tense.

I do want to offer some constructive feedback on a slight issue that the blog post raised. Just for future’s sake. When you announced that lower rated servers in each league will receive free transfers, servers began to try to win this by “tanking” their matches leading up to the season. I’m not going to accuse anyone of anything, but it did give the opportunity for servers to try to get into the low spots so that they can get those free transfers.

I really, really, really like the idea of having no cost/reduced cost to transfer to low wvw rank servers. I think this should have always been a thing, and I appreciate so much that you are doing this now. I do think that, however, you should have locked in the ranks at the time of announcing this, or allow it to fluctuate throughout the entire season. Doing it with the 3 week lead time and then locking it gives people the ability to try to “adjust” their server to get into a low rank in their league. My own server has vehemently argued against doing this (even though it will hurt us), but I just think it is a bad situation that we even have to consider trying to fix the match to gain an advantage.

TLDR I love the fact that you are tiering the pricing based on wvw rank, but in the future please don’t announce it before locking it in place because people have the ability to “tank” their rating to receive the benefit.

Thanks again for trying really kitten this! I think that it was a great idea that can be refined in the future!

I’m not sure which servers your saying are “trying to tank” ? Ranking looks about what they have been looking like for the last couple months with the exception of Ebay whom I would say is suffering what many of us have already expierenced which is a mass exodus.

Nuzt.7894:

I’m not sure which servers your saying are “trying to tank” ? Ranking looks about what they have been looking like for the last couple months with the exception of Ebay whom I would say is suffering what many of us have already expierenced which is a mass exodus.

There was some pretty notable (and vocal) tanking in season 1.

I think what he’s saying is that having the pricing structure announced before the server positions are locked in allows the potential for further abuse.

That I agree with, he seemed to be suggesting some servers were tanking currently. Missunderstood.

Nuzt.7894:

I’m not sure which servers your saying are “trying to tank” ? Ranking looks about what they have been looking like for the last couple months with the exception of Ebay whom I would say is suffering what many of us have already expierenced which is a mass exodus.

Nah, the rankings are different than what they have been the last couple of months. Ebay lost guilds, SBI, SoR, BP, etc, etc. The top has changed, with TC becoming a permanent staple now that they are Tarnished Coast of Rall, and SoS jumped up with some added transfers. Mag, who dropped, got transfers and bought a guild in order to make sure they stay in t2, and FA has recieved some love, but not as much as TC, SoS, and Mag. Then there is DB, who got some NA guilds and moved up to 7th due to YB and SBI losing guilds. Hell, even DB is trying to buy some of the remaining guilds on SBI, and FA is trying to recruit some of those guilds as well.

FA, SoS, Mag, and TC were all talking smack about band wagon servers before t1, and now they have become the newest band wagons. The sad reality is that a lot of the population has moved onto 7 servers, and unless Anet actually does something, the other 17 servers will continue to bleed people. When the people in the top 7 transfer, they usually go farther up, so the situation will only get worse.

On SBI, we lost almost all of our WvW guilds, and we still are in t3, around the same spot we were after season 1. If that isn’t an indication on how bad WvW has become in terms of population then I don’t know what is. Free transfers are not going to make a difference.

@Andrew,

This should tell you one thing…. people like to zerg. It’s actually funny how so many forum users like to complain about the zerg, but the reality is that is why you go to an high tier server. The blobs are insane. Since TC has moved to t1, it is lag central.

What should have happened is have server transfers open two months before the season even starts. A month before season starts the season prices are implemented. This way those that wish to move can move and servers don’t have time to tank their ratings. This also allows for ratings to normalize before the start of seasons so we don’t have one super stacked server that should be in the next league but isn’t.

This is all a band-aid of course for what actually needs to happen. No more seasons until they can find a way to make the playing field competitive. Whether it’s server merges, new scoring system, new maps, etc it needs to happen before these type of events because it’s not fun knowing who will win and that you don’t have a chance. At this point it just makes seasons look like a cash grab for gem transfers and ignores the huge negative repercussions on the WvW post season.