Guild Wars 2

Why not ditch gliko and tiers as we know them right now? Forget trying to fix it. Just remove it from the game. To be honest, the current match ups are not fair and balanced. Worse yet they are STALE. Let’s change server match ups every week at reset in such a way as to ensure that every server will be matched up against every other server multiple times throughout the year. Some weeks it will be lopsided. Some weeks David will appear and kick Goliath in the kitten. You can still track scores every month and at the end of the year you will know who the best server “really” was without all these paper tigers.

It’s about creating more fun in play for everyone. No more more funny math based tier traps. New challenges and new tricks to be learned from worthy foes every week and crazy reset nights with changing fights. You could even add trophies and rewards at the end of months and years for those that EARNED them rather than mathmatically rated high in a screwy system that cheats.

I would actually do it the other way. Ditch glicko and just lock the tiers. That’s how DAOC worked. That’s how Planetside works. If you don’t like your current matchup, either because you are always winning or always losing, then you fix it yourself by switching teams.

The glicko system effectively encourages people to stick with lop-sided situations by suggesting that if they stick with it, even though it sucks, eventually it will get balanced out without them needing to take any action of their own.

It seems that the higher you get in the tiers, the more balanced and “good” the matchups get.

When I see stuff like T8…I just have to shake my head.

You obviously didn’t see the tier 7 matches than before HOD got transfers or tier 6 a few months back before kaineng train came through

I don’t see why we don’t just have “Guild Wars” instead of server matchups anyways. Make a weekly matchup roster, have guild leaders assign their guilds to a matchup for the week and see how it plays out. Rank the guilds based on performance and points gained during their matchup – much like influence is gained – and then only allow them to sign up for matches against like-ranked guilds as time goes on.

That is an absolutely terrible idea. You want fresh new matches every week, facing any server? I recently transferred from T1 to T7 and let me tell you, any server in T7 would be mercilessly farmed by a T1 server to the point where almost everyone would stop WvW’ing. It would not be fun for anyone.

Azaruil.3406:

any server in T7 would be mercilessly farmed by a T1 server to the point where almost everyone would stop WvW’ing. It would not be fun for anyone.

And that used to happen all the time, before tiers balanced out.

People see scores like 400,000 to 200,000 and think “oh that’s just awful” but no, awful is when you can’t set foot into any WvW map because every single exit point on literally all 4 maps is camped 24/7 by a large enemy force. And if you do manage to overwhelm them enough to take a tower, words gets out that “there’s action over here” and you get roflstomped out of that tower and out of the map within 10 minutes.

That happened 2 out of 3 beta weekends and often enough at the start of release, until things settled down some.

It was possibly even worse being on the “winning” team because you’d log in, own absolutely everything in every map and either you joined the camping force somewhere or you logged out and did something else.

We definitely don’t need weekly randomized matches. There is no point in pitting a T6 server against a T1, or a T8 against a T4.

Azaruil.3406:

That is an absolutely terrible idea. You want fresh new matches every week, facing any server? I recently transferred from T1 to T7 and let me tell you, any server in T7 would be mercilessly farmed by a T1 server to the point where almost everyone would stop WvW’ing. It would not be fun for anyone.

This^^^

No one would even be able to leave spawn. How would that be fun for anyone?

What about 3 tiers of 6 servers each where the opponents are randomized each week? That gives each server 5 opponents, for 10 combinations. And you still rank them by win-loss to see who is best.

Ruprect.7260:

Azaruil.3406:

That is an absolutely terrible idea. You want fresh new matches every week, facing any server? I recently transferred from T1 to T7 and let me tell you, any server in T7 would be mercilessly farmed by a T1 server to the point where almost everyone would stop WvW’ing. It would not be fun for anyone.

This^^^

No one would even be able to leave spawn. How would that be fun for anyone?

The Browns are never going to win a superbowl either, but they and the fans still show up.

I think there need to be tiers, but I dont see why the scoring system has to be so… complicated. Its a wide range with no lower or upper limit with completely nonsensical scoring system that doesnt reflect the “winner” in many cases.

Seems to me it would be easier to just just have a fixed point system and tier ranges – looser get -1, winner get +1, runner up gets 0. At least then you’d know things like if you loose this week, you’re gonna go up or down a tier, etc.

The very idea that ALL THREE servers can be loosers (like the EU T9 black hole situation) is absolutely ridiculus!

Winner up, loser down every week.

At worst servers will be 1 tier out of whack. It’ll keep matchups a bit varied and give winning and losing some real meaning.

Slamz.5376:

I would actually do it the other way. Ditch glicko and just lock the tiers. That’s how DAOC worked. That’s how Planetside works. If you don’t like your current matchup, either because you are always winning or always losing, then you fix it yourself by switching teams.

The glicko system effectively encourages people to stick with lop-sided situations by suggesting that if they stick with it, even though it sucks, eventually it will get balanced out without them needing to take any action of their own.

This would work if they’d lock transfers to the winning servers so that only transfers possible would be to the server with the lowest score in each division.

The reason it worked so well in DAoC (then subsequently broke ¹) was that you COULD NOT play on the opposing realm, if your realm was taking a beating, tough kitten, you couldn’t just go to the winning side.

¹They later added in the ability to play on multiple realms on the same server and we saw the same pendulum swing issue that we have now in GW2.

Anet can even out number advantages between servers by opening up free transfers. If it’s a skill issue with the lower tiers making people fearful of putting them against the best for a single week because they’d be farmed then you’ve already lost. They need a kitten kicking from more skillful players in order to learn how to play rather than falling into the complacency of bad just because you can get by being bad as things stand. These things really do have a chance of evening out over time between servers with a little help when you open things up and provide incentive to fight. With gliko and the current tiers you are stuck in a funny math trap rather than something you really can play your way out of. It’s not fun for anyone the way it is currently. It’s fine to think I am dumb for wanting to open it up and fight everyone, supposedly fair or not. But I am not reading one person support the current gliko system as of yet as a thing to keep. If you’ve an idea you think would be better than the current system then by all means please share. Anything to shake play up some and add to the fun.

ADFX.6179:

Anet can even out number advantages between servers by opening up free transfers.

Had free transfers for months. Numbers don’t even out…people just bandwagon to winning servers.

Ya randomized opponents based on a set of variables(server pop, WvW activity, win/loss)should really be put into effect. Making it harder to be matched with servers that are higher or lower than yours but still possible. This needs to happen due to servers constantly facing the same opponents over and over and over. WvW is casual as hell so it needs to be recognized as such.

But in order for this to work their needs to be WvW mechanics introduced so that servers don’t get locked out of WvW.

White flag mechanic- server can surrender to the winning server giving that server the win of the week if 2 out of the 3 surrender then it resets and we start WvW all over again while not recording anything that is going on besides point tick to increase your server benefits.

Commander Cross Server Chat- their needs to be special place or special chat commanders can use to speak to other servers. This way 1v1v1 can turn into 2v1 more dynamically and not just randomly. It will happen by choice instead of chance more often and server rivalry/hate/love/respect will grow because of it. So the white flag mechanic wont be needed unless that server truly outmatches the 2 they are facing.

Nothing about the above mechanic will cause anymore grieving than the EBG jumping puzzle has. That useless area does nothing but cause servers to hate each other or their own servermates due to all the stupid set backs other players can cause each other. Their is also no strategic value for holding the EBG JP besides WE GETS MORE SIEGE which isn’t in reality an advantage due to siege cap and the fact that their are multiple ways to get siege.

Ranked WvW matchups- Not everyone likes random casual jump in whenever you want matches so we need to make a system were guilds can create their own WvW battle invited anyone to their team or other teams that they choose from other servers or their own. Making it server based as well would be cool allowing people to join in and out as they please on the ones that allow it. Also making them extremely customizable you only want to fight on EBg well make that your only map. Want to get rid of certain parts(certain towers/keeps/supply camps) of WvW so be it your the one in charge of this WvW server atm. The only thing that should have a set amount or a series of set amounts is max server pop per team and seige cap(which shouldn’t even be in the game but their engine is kinda bad so w/e).

Probably a few more mechanics that would need to be added so the randomized tier system wouldn’t go totally crazy but the thing is if you don’t like WvW one week you might like it the next due to who your facing and that is why randomized WvW will allow more people to play and feel more organic.

ADFX.6179:

Anet can even out number advantages between servers by opening up free transfers.

As has been seen, free transfers simply mess things up. Free transfers have once again screwed the most even match up (T7) and sealed the fate of T8 in NA (I wont get into the free transfers to T1 in Eu). Server Pop != WvW pop. Anet’s medium population designation reflects overall server size (PvE + WvW) as opposed to recognizing the reality that people who transfer actually play WvW. So when free transfers happen it completely skews the WvW numbers and create even more problems. No PvEer is every going to leave a high pop server for a medium pop server and play in ghost towns.

Free Transfers will never be a solution until they are based upon WvW populations independent of server pop.