Guild Wars 2

Open letter to Anet WvW team.

Tournament Schedule
I guess it is pretty much clear that Swiss tournament wasn’t the best idea for schedule. If there are more Tournaments (I guess so) revert to fixed schedule. Seeing server tanking on purpose to get a better match-up for last week it’s not funny and it’s against any possible “fairness principle”.
What’s the point on winning against easy enemy and get 3rd with harder, when I can get 2nd on purpose and then get a victory with those easy again? It’s 6 points against 8 points, all matches are equal!

Tournament Prizes
I get that WvW is not and will never be about balance. But having tournament prizes based on server performance encouraged server stacking.
I don’t know who had the brilliant idea on making silver tier servers with free transfers, but thanks to this and thanks to the fact that there were only 1 international server in silver league with free transfer, Gandara ended up sweeping the League.
I don’t play for rewards. Most of people play for fights and another good chunk play for rewards. Many were appealed by leaving lower tiers free of charge to get their rewards and bigger population in game.
Plus, I can’t even get how a T3 server player will get less reward than mine (T8/9). Or how a total casual player from a winning side will get far more than me or other commanders from our server who put a lots of effort even knowing they were not going to make better than 6th.
For upcoming tournaments (because you will keep tournaments a thing), make the reward based solely on personal contribution to the server. Not sure this will prevent any kind of stacking, but surely will not encourage it actively as this tournament did.

Europe Ranking
Now, this hurt me a lot.

Here is the current outlook of EU rating
1) Desolation 1887
[…]
12) Piken Square 1652
[…]
18) Fort Ranik 1450
[…]
22) Blacktide 1229
23) Ruins of Surmia 1184
24) Whiteside Ridge 1028
25) Vabbi 945
26) Fissure of Woe 897
27) Underworld 719

Considering that we (WSR) are losing points this week and RoS are gaining, the difference between 23rd and 24th is roughly as the same between 1st and 12th.

The last 4 server are struggling a lot and are bleeding players (I’m sure on WSR, on others I can estimate based on what I see on the battlefield). The difference between T8 and T9 is huge, and a butterfly flapping its wings actually causes an hurricane in T9 matches. The 4th server that ends up in T8 (it was us before the season, it should be us again next week) plays the role of cannon fodder, as we can’t match enemy coverage.

Plus with current match-up mechanics, it’s hard to improve points for those 4, causing a tremendous staleness on match-ups, which leads people to be bored, which leads them to leave.

If you plan to keep 27 worlds up in Europe, maybe (just maybe) you might want to consider to help those server with free transfer after season will be over. Otherwise you’ll have 23 worlds that kind of get things going and 3 or 4 that will be deserts. (If this actually matters to you)

I’m not asking to rework WvW. I’m not asking to do dramatic changes. I’m asking you to help us a bit by discouraging server stacking on higher tiers (which is the opposite of what you have done up to now).

My 2 cents
I do actually think that Anet is thinking on reducing the number of Worlds (at least in EU) to better redistribute the population among those (side effects of Megaserver). If so, the 3rd point is just a cry for my World, but the 2 upper points should remain valid.

Thank for your attention

Mostly agree. Not sure if free transfers would save bottom tier servers tho. Incentive to join is low.

Server merge could be problematic due to these servers have been fighting each other for several months. Removing the 3 bottom servers and giving everyone there a free transfer might be a sollution as well. But that still leaves the 4th server at the bottom (total of servers must be divideable by 3 due to WvW). I however do not see any of this happening before guilds are also megaserver based and the later it happens the worse it will be by than. Imagine an other tournament happening.

But lets face the real issue with server merging and removing. Most players left on these servers are there for a reason. They are loyal to their server or are dumb/blind stubborn. Maybe a combination of these. They might even enjoy the lag free low population.

I don’t know how to go about giving critique, feedback, and suggestions.

On one hand, they introduce leagues to promote competition and rivalries between servers. On the other hand, they remove the matchup forums and refuse to address GvG properly.

This game is full of inconsistent and paradoxical design all the way through.

It seems like a waste of time to give our vision when the dev team has no vision.

I loved this season. Hell, I’m in the NA Silver League and it has been a battle for 2-5. It has come down to the last week, and no one knows where they will end up because the battles are fierce. YB, SBI, FA, and IoJ have no idea where they will place because 2-5 depend on the outcome of 2 matches.

I was even impressed by BP, improving (maybe getting a transfer or two) during the season, when it looked like they were a lock for 8th. Now, CD is the lock for 8th, since they decided not to show up the last two weeks of the season. Hell, we even helped them beat IoJ one week cause we focused all our attention on IoJ, then CD’s NA tanks… very disappointing.

HoD’s bandwagon got their free rewards, but I feel for what will happen to their community due to that influx of transfers.

I did watch Gold League, and watched how JQ and TC went out of their way to crush BG. SoS was a lock for 4th, and could’ve snuck into 3rd, but the dominos didn’t fall that way.

Bronze was pretty competitive too.

I think this season was the best, and for me it was exciting. It was pretty long though, but I would rather have 9 weeks of competitive matches that differed every week (although a few weren’t that competitive), instead of the same stale match every week for a month or more.

Can’t wait til season 3 hits.

Excuse my bluntness but stop whining about Gandara as if it won by default simply by free transfers, AFAIK Piken had free server transfers too.. and I’m sure people like me coming from servers scraping the bottom of the WvW ladder (Underworld) were given an opportunity to integrate fast & work our kitten off to help the server out seeing that for the first time in over a year we had a chance & darn if we worked hard, I stayed up at the oddest hours, established as much bridges as I could with the people “native” to the server seeing me and many others like myself as newcomers with no idea of our potential….

Let me tell you straight, don’t make a mockery of our sacrifices by underestimating our contributions as if and I repeat our free transfer gave the server a default win, far from it, it gave us an opportunity on which we had to work very hard to make the most of it.

I respect rivals server for their contributions but so I expect that nobody bears such low sour grapes.

Yendorion.2381:

Excuse my bluntness but stop whining about Gandara as if it won by default simply by free transfers

Of course Gandara won by default, They shouldn’t even have been in the Silver League in the first place. It was known right from the offset that Gandara would top the Silver league by the sheer amount of people that flooded to that server.

Colly.4073:

Yendorion.2381:

Excuse my bluntness but stop whining about Gandara as if it won by default simply by free transfers

Of course Gandara won by default, They shouldn’t even have been in the Silver League in the first place. It was known right from the offset that Gandara would top the Silver league by the sheer amount of people that flooded to that server.

Same with HoD on NA

1. I agree, need a different system. One not unlike my Modified Swiss System.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Modified-Swiss-system-to-fix-WvW-tournaments/first#post4022476

2. I agree. Rewards need to be dolled out differently.

As far as reducing the number of worlds. I don’t think Anet is ready to do that. Seems like the situation is worse in EU.

End of the tournament thoughts: “thank, god!”

If you exclude the “reward” system they put in, this season had a lot of competition, yes some servers won by default, yes some servers were doomed. but the rest of the servers had equal chance to fight for their place in the leaderboards. We at silver league saw great fights against many servers and most of them we fought hard for our place.
Think of the fights you’ve had this season and tell me if it compares to the first season

Only thing I am annoyed by is how your personal rewards are based upon your server performance.

It makes no sense that someone who spent dozens more hours in a ’’losing’’ server is getting less rewards than some sheep following along to complete the meta in a winning server getting full out rewards.

Yendorion.2381:

Excuse my bluntness but stop whining about Gandara as if it won by default simply by free transfers,

I am not whining about Gandara victories (it’s not even my league). The critique was on the decision to give them the 0 gems transfers, making them an escape route from lower tiers. Which are bleeding to death, like a downed player.

And Piken didn’t get free transfer. There were a few silver league who had that, but Gandara was the only one international, that’s why I’ve said it was a bad decision, because it led people stacking on that server as it was an easy choice.

EVERYONE knew who would win Silver League. When you allow and seem to promote something that has a NEGATIVE impact on the actual game (server stacking) and allow it for FREE you should really expect this sort of thing to happen.

Until Anet find a way of making it so servers just cant swamp a map take everything in 20-30minutes and lave and stop servers from just blobbing the whole entire time, which has happened with more than just 1 server. Seasons will be pointless.

Then we get into the “rewards”. Rather disappointed (but not shocked) that the reward for the forged weapon, is just a skin and not a very good one at that,. i was personally hoping for another way of getting an Ascended weapon seeing as i don’t have the time or the funds to farm and craft one myself and the RNGods in this game seem to hate me.

andreclear wrote: The last match up you guys made most of your PPT off of CDs BL, and now that CD is actually showing up, you guys are having a harder time getting PPT.In terms of you guys beating SBI, well, it is a numbers game, and we have the coverage.

andrewclear wrote:I have to give CD some massive credit today.  IoJ got the lead down to under 1k overnight, and CD came out during SEA and just dominated, and moved that lead up to 6k.

Andrew Clear.1750:

 Hell, we even helped them beat IoJ one week cause we focused all our attention on IoJ, then CD’s NA tanks… very disappointing.

.

There is wayto many ways to start on your ramping bs lets see

First on the gw2wvw forums you never said you helped CD but rather gave CD huge credits for them showing up and taking 2nd while admitting you guys didnt help pushingonly ioj .

Second by winning second and burning ourselves it seemed that we secured ur 1st upon ioj , since they got 1st from you

3rd you never got backed up on your ramping bs plus I lurked on your website to see if ur still ramping that bs and yes you are while getting others posts saying theydidnt help cd at all and thats all them

idk wuts up withyou seems kitten from that ioj taking first , ofc you will reply "im not kitten bla bla " but like I said stay classy , dont go againsturown words to pvf

Fun season , we dont care if another came , we come hard <<< mmmm, but fun stuff hope to see most of you soonz

Necro.6432:

andreclear wrote: The last match up you guys made most of your PPT off of CDs BL, and now that CD is actually showing up, you guys are having a harder time getting PPT.In terms of you guys beating SBI, well, it is a numbers game, and we have the coverage.

andrewclear wrote:I have to give CD some massive credit today.  IoJ got the lead down to under 1k overnight, and CD came out during SEA and just dominated, and moved that lead up to 6k.

Andrew Clear.1750:

 Hell, we even helped them beat IoJ one week cause we focused all our attention on IoJ, then CD’s NA tanks… very disappointing.

.

There is wayto many ways to start on your ramping bs lets see

First on the gw2wvw forums you never said you helped CD but rather gave CD huge credits for them showing up and taking 2nd while admitting you guys didnt help pushingonly ioj .

Second by winning second and burning ourselves it seemed that we secured ur 1st upon ioj , since they got 1st from you

3rd you never got backed up on your ramping bs plus I lurked on your website to see if ur still ramping that bs and yes you are while getting others posts saying theydidnt help cd at all and thats all them

idk wuts up withyou seems kitten from that ioj taking first , ofc you will reply "im not kitten bla bla " but like I said stay classy , dont go againsturown words to pvf

Fun season , we dont care if another came , we come hard <<< mmmm, but fun stuff hope to see most of you soonz

be nice Daeronz. we dont need to point out his squirreling to know it’s happening. =P

My final thought was “So, S2 was 2x worse than S1, which was already quite bad. I wonder if S3 will be 3x(arithmetic progression), or 4x(geometric).”

>>EVERYONE knew who would win Silver League. When you allow and seem to promote something that has a NEGATIVE impact on the actual game (server stacking) and allow it for FREE you should really expect this sort of thing to happen.

This is simply not true. Everyone did not know who would win silver league at leas for NA league.

If you look at predicted order of finish the vast majority picked HOD at 4th. I think one or two people suggested HOD would win and they were ridiculed. The majority picked FA at the top.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/NA-Silver-League-Predicted-Rankings/first

The vast majority of the predictions were wrong. EU was a lot closer to predicted order of finish.

babazhook.6805:

>>EVERYONE knew who would win Silver League. When you allow and seem to promote something that has a NEGATIVE impact on the actual game (server stacking) and allow it for FREE you should really expect this sort of thing to happen.

This is simply not true. Everyone did not know who would win silver league at leas for NA league.

If you look at predicted order of finish the vast majority picked HOD at 4th. I think one or two people suggested HOD would win and they were ridiculed. The majority picked FA at the top.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/NA-Silver-League-Predicted-Rankings/first

The vast majority of the predictions were wrong. EU was a lot closer to predicted order of finish.

I think the person making this quote was talking about the Eu Silver League.
This has been a good fight and if not for Gandra being in the silever league would have been fatastic and much close than it is now. Maybe Anet can sort the issues our before next season starts. Oh and please dont give free transfers away just before a seaon starts.

In NA silver, it was obvious during week 1 when we saw screen shots of the ques….