Guild Wars 2

Walabone.6713:

(…) YET, you have proposed introducing a competitive league, which would imply some sort level playing field where everyone has a shot of participating and winning.

Obviously, a league does not imply a level playing field. Just look at your favorite sport’s league and compare first to last ranked. There will likely be MASSIVE imbalance between the teams/players. Typically it boils down to money in the professional leagues.

Mattargul.9235:

Walabone.6713:

(…) YET, you have proposed introducing a competitive league, which would imply some sort level playing field where everyone has a shot of participating and winning.

Obviously, a league does not imply a level playing field. Just look at your favorite sport’s league and compare first to last ranked. There will likely be MASSIVE imbalance between the teams/players. Typically it boils down to money in the professional leagues.

What is your point?

And I would disagree with you wholeheartedly. Every team plays 11v11 in football – each team matched equally in number. If one team is better coached and has more skilled athletes, so be it. That’s doesn’t make it an uneven playing field. That’s a classic case of “get better if you want to win”. I’d welcome the WvW league if this were only the case.

WvW population disparities right now are like playing 15v11. No matter how good those 11 are, they don’t have those extra 4 blockers – how are they going to be able to pick up a blitz? If you actually thought about what you were saying, you’d realize that every sport has an inherently level playing field so that skill is surely tested.

A level playing field doesn’t mean every team is exactly the same. Just like balancing professions doesn’t mean they all have to have the same skills.

The idea of a level playing field is that there are multiple variables which can affect the outcome of a match, and those variables offset / counter each other. Each team is different, but plays within the same set of rules so that they are competitive. You don’t have X? That’s okay, you can build up Y and use that. The opposing team is doing A? You can react and do B which will counter them.

Are some teams going to be better and some worse in a system like that? Yes…but it’s a system where the outcome is reasonably in the control of the players…skill and strategy and tactics matter. More than one way to win.

ArenaNet designed a system (intentionally or not, I don’t know) with multiple variables which are all completely overridden by a single variable – population size / coverage. The system is set up in such a way where that one single variable completely controls the match. There is no counter, no offset…no chance.

Not only that, but the bulk of the rewards and incentives are also tied to that single variable. Get to the big server, get the good stuff. Roll over towers and keeps in a huge zerg? Get all the karma / Exp / items.

Then, ArenaNet allowed that single variable to become massively unbalanced. They allow players to easily move, and continue to reward and provide benefits to the highest-pop servers. They created a vicious cycle where improving meant more transfers, leading to more wins, and failure meant people jumping ship leading to more failure.

It’s like they gave an insta-kill button to one profession, and then systematically removed any chance for other professions to counter it… then created a mandatory new PvP mode where everyone fights that one profession whether they like it or not. When you complain that you don’t like facing an insta-kill button, it isn’t fun…they just respond with “deal with it, we never said things would be balanced”. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad.

None of this happened by accident, and it’s not inherent to the game type (the game type is whatever Devon makes it). It’s a result of the design. It could be fixed.

I think all this talk of points and rewards is kind of missing the point.

The point is that this will be incredibly not fun. I’m talking about NA here. The differences are way too big for a two league system in NA.

1. Its not going to be fun for the top ranked teams in a league.

- logging on and seeing the entire map their color is not fun
- having no good fights is not fun
- having no place to capture because you own anything is not fun

2. Its not going to be fun for the lower ranked teams in a league

- being spawn camped is not fun
- being unable to take more than a camp and the ocasional tower is not fun
- going out into the battlefield and seeing a mass of red everywhere you go is not fun
- logging on and seeing a sea of “the wrong color” is not fun

3. Its not going to be fun for the middle ranked servers

- not being able to fight people of your approximate level because they’re in the other league is not fun
- not being able to fight people you’ve had rivalries with because they’re in the other league is not fun
- never being able to move to the other league even if your server population changes because once you get stuck in a league it will be all but impossible to leave because of the way Glicko works is not fun

TDLR; This is going to be incredibly, massively, undeniably NOT FUN

Something as simple as a point modifier would fix most of the complaints. For example Stonemist gives a server 35 points per tick. (to keep it simple I will use a 10:1 multiplier)

Capture SM when you are outnumbered 10:1 you gain 350 points.
Capture SM when you outnumber the opponent 10:1 you get 3.5 points
Capture SM when you and your opponent are evenly matched you get the original 35 points.

Do the same while you are defending SM. With a modifier based on the current online population of a given server the score would be closer and not based solely on the size of the zerg that can be fielded. They already know the populations that are on each map at any given moment. If 10 defenders can fight off a 40 man zerg complete with 4 or 5 golems then those defenders should be rewarded accordingly. That 40 man zerg BETTER succeed or they just hand the defenders a pile of points.

Taking 40 people to a sparsely defended BL to zerg everything just before the next point tick is not what I would call sporting.

DevonCarver.5370:

..they will function like the Living World achievements. They will be WvW specific and much like the achievements you see already, except actually reachable in 7 weeks..

Actually reachable in 7 weeks? Judging from this it’ll be capping smc 1000 times or kitten like that? Because that is what I feel about Living kitten.

DevonCarver.5370:

At no point did I, or would I have, said “Fair competition” WvW is not intended to be “fair”. There are servers with more people, there are servers with better organizations and that will always be the case. This competition will be about showing how your world can do over a defined period of time, against a variety of opponents. SPvP is the part of our game that aims for a completely level playing field. WvW would never be able to match that goal.

I don’t come to the the forums complain, but I respectfully disagree with the logic behind the above statement and behind the formation of a 2-league NA system.

A quick check shows me that the “Server Match up is terrible” thread is approaching 1200 replies. Personally, when the random match-ups began I was slightly on board since something was necessary to address the artificially growing rating gaps between tiers, but I assumed once it stabilized, a more consistent system would be put in place.

The random system has taken a toll on a number of servers in the lower tiers and has led to even greater population disparity between adjacent servers. I know of two servers in the last two weeks who have had their major wvw guilds leave, and I believe it is significantly a result of the persistence of the current matching system. As nice as it is when you get a boost to your own server’s playerbase, I like a competitive environment and would prefer to see a more even playing field.

Every server has a variety of players, from casual to serious. Lopsided match-ups have a ripple effect in that they can make for a rough week for at least one server, but beyond that they impact the fairweather player base of most servers, sometimes leading to drop-off for the following weeks. The previous tier system may have been frustrating for some due to the slow progressions, but this current arrangement is simply too unstable. The introduction of the two-league system tells me that not only will the current problem continue to persist, but that it will likely get worse (especially if we are looking at a round-robin format tournament).

At least in the radomized system there was a chance for most servers in the mid-tiers to face a challenge or gain a victory. Mid-tier servers now face the possiblity of not being challenged the majority of the time, or never being able to have a winning week for the duration of a league. Both of these situations are bad for wvw on servers in the long run. Even though the guy in the Joystiq article got it wrong at first, the four league system would have probably been a healthier alternative to the two league.

Now, with respect to your comment that wvw is not intended to be fair: just because a system can not achieve a perfect balance doesn’t mean that efforts shouldn’t be in place to strive to do so. If a game is not intended to be fair then it is also not intended to provide a competitive environment. People choose wvw over pve because they are looking for competition, without it we become complacent, bored, and look for something else. Recent match-ups that I’ve been in often start with some statement similar to “let’s all agree the scores mean nothing anymore and try to have some fun fights”. Server pride means less and less as the current system forces people to leave their servers in search of balance, and enforces the understanding that tiers are becoming less competitive.

Allowing wvw to become a contest where the best coverage/numbers wins makes the game a political one rather than one based on combat.

I’ve always thought they should turn on friendly fire in WvW. That ought to thin the zergs out a bit

DevonCarver.5370:

At no point did I, or would I have, said “Fair competition” WvW is not intended to be “fair”. There are servers with more people, there are servers with better organizations and that will always be the case. This competition will be about showing how your world can do over a defined period of time, against a variety of opponents. SPvP is the part of our game that aims for a completely level playing field. WvW would never be able to match that goal.

It amuses me that through sheer stubbornness you can so adamantly stick to such a terrible opinion. You are trying to hard to promote competition, you bring in PPT, you try and make the game about PPT, you make match ups that have winners, you add a glicko system, you divide the servers into leagues. But at no point whatsoever did you consider trying to make WvW, because for some odd reason you think it shouldnt be.

Why exactly is there competition in a format that isnt fair? If the objective is to “play for fun” then why is it you are trying to design wvw more about winning than about actually having fun? You make no attempts to dilute zerg (buffing an AC with a 50 man cap in order to promote people to run with more than 50 is not fixing zerg). You make no attempts at balancing any of the classes with respect to wvw (hi ranger). You make no attempt to make game mechanics enjoyable (most sieges are long drawn out battles of boredom and turtling).

Every patch you do, to try and fix match making, is simply a band aid to the core problem, that no match making in the world can make a fair match up out of servers with such a disparity in their wvw populations. Even now your currently designed system has the r13 server matched with the r1 server in EU. You said that match ups would stabalize over months and yet they never did. Basically you were wrong. We told you that you would be wrong when you launched the system, but you were stuborn, apparently Anet must know more magically, yet you know nothing. All the hidden data you collect could not help you, cause the data would show balanced match ups arent possible, but somehow you see this as fine.

Does it not worry you that such a large majority of WvW players stopped carying about who wins? Stopped caring about points? Isnt that a testament to how flawed your system is when there is a huge fracture in the WvW community, a portion of which has no care whatsoever to play the system you are forcing on us.

I might actually care to play to win, if winning was based on any merit of skill and execution. But why should I supply starve a server when I go sleep and they rack up 1700 supply + waypoints overnight etc.

The WvW structure of winning is flawed at the core, and your statements only reflect that you dont understand this at a fundamental level. Nobody can be bothered “proving” themselves against servers who win over population. Being the underdog once or twice is fun, but the objective of the game should never be to show how strong an underdog you are, it should be about realistically winning….

VoTF may be widely regarded as an open field or GvG guild, but I actually do want to play to win. It is simply that you provide me with a game format where winning means nothing and is based on no merits of my own, so over time I simply learned to ignore it. But there was a time we pulled 12h+ raids daily on NA servers the first 5 months to try and keep up ppt. I have experienced the side of the game that plays to win, its simply completely broken and you have done nothing to fix any of it in over a year.

So let’s rename this League Wars 2 since apparently Devon Carter hates GvG and everything that isn’t a cap map or a grind.

They better change something soon before everyone who loves GW1 quits this joke.

Jackie.1829:

DevonCarver.5370:

At no point did I, or would I have, said “Fair competition” WvW is not intended to be “fair”. There are servers with more people, there are servers with better organizations and that will always be the case. This competition will be about showing how your world can do over a defined period of time, against a variety of opponents. SPvP is the part of our game that aims for a completely level playing field. WvW would never be able to match that goal.

It amuses me that through sheer stubbornness you can so adamantly stick to such a terrible opinion. You are trying to hard to promote competition, you bring in PPT, you try and make the game about PPT, you make match ups that have winners, you add a glicko system, you divide the servers into leagues. But at no point whatsoever did you consider trying to make WvW, because for some odd reason you think it shouldnt be.

Why exactly is there competition in a format that isnt fair? If the objective is to “play for fun” then why is it you are trying to design wvw more about winning than about actually having fun? You make no attempts to dilute zerg (buffing an AC with a 50 man cap in order to promote people to run with more than 50 is not fixing zerg). You make no attempts at balancing any of the classes with respect to wvw (hi ranger). You make no attempt to make game mechanics enjoyable (most sieges are long drawn out battles of boredom and turtling).

Every patch you do, to try and fix match making, is simply a band aid to the core problem, that no match making in the world can make a fair match up out of servers with such a disparity in their wvw populations. Even now your currently designed system has the r13 server matched with the r1 server in EU. You said that match ups would stabalize over months and yet they never did. Basically you were wrong. We told you that you would be wrong when you launched the system, but you were stuborn, apparently Anet must know more magically, yet you know nothing. All the hidden data you collect could not help you, cause the data would show balanced match ups arent possible, but somehow you see this as fine.

Does it not worry you that such a large majority of WvW players stopped carying about who wins? Stopped caring about points? Isnt that a testament to how flawed your system is when there is a huge fracture in the WvW community, a portion of which has no care whatsoever to play the system you are forcing on us.

I might actually care to play to win, if winning was based on any merit of skill and execution. But why should I supply starve a server when I go sleep and they rack up 1700 supply + waypoints overnight etc.

The WvW structure of winning is flawed at the core, and your statements only reflect that you dont understand this at a fundamental level. Nobody can be bothered “proving” themselves against servers who win over population. Being the underdog once or twice is fun, but the objective of the game should never be to show how strong an underdog you are, it should be about realistically winning….

VoTF may be widely regarded as an open field or GvG guild, but I actually do want to play to win. It is simply that you provide me with a game format where winning means nothing and is based on no merits of my own, so over time I simply learned to ignore it. But there was a time we pulled 12h+ raids daily on NA servers the first 5 months to try and keep up ppt. I have experienced the side of the game that plays to win, its simply completely broken and you have done nothing to fix any of it in over a year.

Agree completely. I think Devon and upper anet management should do a review of wvw by playing it on low tier servers that are matched with higher tier servers. See how they like it and talk about making games that are fun.

This new scoring system for “league-play” is a joke. Hoping the devs come up with a new one in the next 3 weeks. Already losing players and maybe guilds from mid-tier servers.
You can be sure they are not transferring down league. Stacked get over-stacked, and the rest of the servers just say, why bother?
If the match point scoring had been based on the anet variant glicko in each match, perhaps the league had a chance. As it it now, no gems from me, anet.

If WvW was meant to be fair why’d they remove

• Golem Boxes
• Skale Venom
• Spirit Totems
• Anything else I might have missed?

That’s the real question!

I am sure they will add them back for the league. To make it more fun.

Viking Jorun.5413:

If WvW was meant to be fair why’d they remove

• Golem Boxes
• Skale Venom
• Spirit Totems
• Anything else I might have missed?

That’s the real question!

None of those were unfair, because anyone could use them.

Blix.8021:

Viking Jorun.5413:

If WvW was meant to be fair why’d they remove

• Golem Boxes
• Skale Venom
• Spirit Totems
• Anything else I might have missed?

That’s the real question!

None of those were unfair, because anyone could use them.

Don’t forget the gears, spike-fruits.

They were fair, but removed.

So how do the devs define fair? Let me guess, promoting gem sales to stack to higher tiers. Encouraging Omega golem PvD zergs. I’m sure they are the best aspect of wvw, yet.

You guys need to stop crying about every single thing in the game and just play the game to have fun seriously.

Ya things get out of whack but at least they talk to us, let us know what’s going on with the game on the forums and are making changes and adding content faster than any other game out there and you aren’t paying a $15 subscription fee to get it!

Devon is basically saying It doesn’t matter how many people are on one server or how bad you suck or the server sucks, or what tier it is, if you put a little time in WvW you will get some sort of reward at the end which is better than what we currently have atm which is nothing!

Give me a free ticket and I’ll transfer to the lowest Tier server right now!

I don’t know if this has been mentioned, may have been – but if the reward after league play session has ended each time is based on how your server does…can you say massive transfers from smaller servers? A small server will have no chance to earn a big reward. Remember, it was stated that the better your server does thebigger your reward will be. They will be “punished” by ANeT for not having a big WvW presence. Folks who want to have a chance at a decent league reward will try to transfer to a server that has a better chance of winning.

This could be an unintended consequence that ANeT will create. Servers like ET will become ghost towns in WvW and the total population will probably drop significantly.

Danielle.3152:

Unless other dramatic changes are coming to the WvW point system together with this, the best WvW servers will be those that PvDoor all objectives while others sleep and play Sim(Siege)Wars 2 upgrading all their objectives to t3 and siegeing them with dozens of arrowcarts and few trebs inside. This is how the wvw point system always worked. Only this time, the servers will get rewarded with epic lootz and achievements for their heroic PvP (not) effort. I guess they will deserve them for all those sleepless nights spent defeating doors and the boils on their bottoms from all the sitting on arrow carts and trebuchets.

I think I prefer the current system where the ‘reward’ for such activities on the EU ladder is a higher probability of facing Vizunah Square.

What he said!!

DevonCarver.5370:

The server for which you receive rewards will be the 1st server you log in on once the season starts. Any transfers after that will not change your rewards.

OP here
I like my proposed system better. Needing to explicitly register for which server you want to fight for is much less opaque than “first server you log in to since season start”. Also, losing your registration if you transfer makes more sense and is less prone to abuse than retaining rewards from your original server even after you transfer.

Finally, my final suggestion about having a prize pool that is divided amongst registered players (and publishing the number of registrations per server) will do far more to resolve the central problem of wvw, population imbalances.

By rewarding skilled players who carry smaller servers to unexpected success (even if they don’t win the entire league) this makes participation meaningful for everyone, since rewards ultimately matter only to individuals, not a server as a whole. And it incentivises transfers to smaller servers.

DevonCarver.5370:

Oroibahazopi.9074:

Oh it’s gets better, so this “league” is actually a glorified achievement. I can’t wait to see what lovely objectives there will be on the checklist. Kill the grub 100 times, kill the centaurs 100 times etc etc.

We’ve actually just recently added the tech to add an achievement for complaining on the forums.

LOL.

DEVON if you’re reading this, I just wanted to say something POSITIVE to you:

I know your job is difficult, and you guys are doing your best. Forget the complainers, can’t make everyone happy.

Suggestion though: And please let me know if this is even possible.

Is it possible to create a function where people can register to participate in this competition, and there are only a limited number of spots to be filled specifically for this competition? Like what if you made two different WvW servers? One for the competitors and the other for casual PvE’ers.

Make the competitive version of WvW cost an amount of gold to participate in, so only the people who truly care about WvW show up. And limit the number of spots available for people in the competitive server at one time. So release something in the gem store or something, and in limited number “Here is your ticket to participate in the WvW upcoming tournament, there are X amount of these left.”

The other server would house the casual players who just want to go into wvw and mess around, smack some dolyaks and be on their way. No cap on this server other than your already existing cap. No fee or anything just normal WvW shenanigans.

Same reward system as what you set in place, however the people who actually participated get something extra. Something worth while, something to where everyone would cheer their representing team on. I think this would really pull servers together, get the best they could muster and really drive competitive teamplay.

At the same time it would even the odds, even a server with 10,000 people would only have 200 slots. Same goes for servers with only 1000 people. It would make people choose the best of what they had, and the casual players would still be able to go into wvw like normal and have fun.

Not only would selling those tickets be good for your revenue there at ArenaNet, but it would also even the odds. Pull a community together, and bring out the best of what each server had to participate in a competitive environment.

TLDR: 1. Seperate WvW into 2 servers: Competitive and Casual
2. Release a gem store item in limited quantity to participate in this competitve server
3. Limit the amount of tickets available to be purchased
4. Rewards should be based on the competitive servers performance, not the casual, However everyone should be rewarded. Competitive players should also reap better rewards who participated.

Bllade,
I can sort of agree with this. But I tend to look at the unintended consequences. This might drive people who are casual WvW’ers to sign up quickly so they have a chance at the prize. Other hardcore players might get left out because they didn’t press the mouse button to sign up fast enough.

But I agree with you for the most part. Something needs to be done to reward more competitive players. Maybe just scale the reward to how many of the achievements a player can accomplish during league play. Then you won’t need the Competitive and Casual servers. And maybe base the server’s performance on player achievement completion as well as score(or maybe that’s already the plan).

Heibi.4251:

Bllade,
I can sort of agree with this. But I tend to look at the unintended consequences. This might drive people who are casual WvW’ers to sign up quickly so they have a chance at the prize. Other hardcore players might get left out because they didn’t press the mouse button to sign up fast enough.

But I agree with you for the most part. Something needs to be done to reward more competitive players. Maybe just scale the reward to how many of the achievements a player can accomplish during league play. Then you won’t need the Competitive and Casual servers. And maybe base the server’s performance on player achievement completion as well as score(or maybe that’s already the plan).

You dont think a 20 gold per ticket or gem cost would deter the casuals from the more competitive?

I dont see a casual WvW’er paying 20 gold for a ticket without knowing what kind of rewards would be in store for them. IF they won. Plus, if you think about it, servers would want to send their best, because rewards would only be based on the competitive performance, however EVERYONE would be rewarded. Just the competitive people would get extra. Would it be 20g worth extra? Maybe. maybe not.

Yeah, 20 gold might deter a truly causal player. But after the “Scarlet Wars” everyone should have 20 gold just lying around waiting to by more yak sauce.

And yes, I believe we would want to send our best. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I just hope the unintended consequences I fear don’t come to fruition.

This is nothing more then a Money grab attempt, knowing that WvW is dying as they insist on ruing it they want to make as much money as they can before they put the final nail in the coffin.

This is a TERRIBLE idea, simply because Anet is in control and they dont like to listen to players. This could work well IF they listened and ACTED on advice the players give:

1) Make it so that the MOMENT the season starts if they transfer to another server they lose ALL rewards no matter how the server they were on does and no matter how well the server they are now on does

or

1.1) Disable server transfers during the season, maybe have a week before the next season begins or something so people can move

2) Make WvW Daily HARDER and make it a requirement for the rewards, not based on how the server does but how the player does.

This could be done by – increasing kill requirements, dolyak kills, camp/tower captures and such and then making it so they need to complete a certain number of them to gain access to the rewards, say 5/7 every week for the duration.

3) Players get rewards for how the server does and how they personally do, with a Gold, Silver and bronze set up these could include laurel, Gear Chests and such on top of what they earn for how the server does.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

This is nothing more then a Money grab attempt, knowing that WvW is dying as they insist on ruing it they want to make as much money as they can before they put the final nail in the coffin.

This is a TERRIBLE idea, simply because Anet is in control and they dont like to listen to players. This could work well IF they listened and ACTED on advice the players give:

1) Make it so that the MOMENT the season starts if they transfer to another server they lose ALL rewards no matter how the server they were on does and no matter how well the server they are now on does

or

1.1) Disable server transfers during the season, maybe have a week before the next season begins or something so people can move

2) Make WvW Daily HARDER and make it a requirement for the rewards, not based on how the server does but how the player does.

This could be done by – increasing kill requirements, dolyak kills, camp/tower captures and such and then making it so they need to complete a certain number of them to gain access to the rewards, say 5/7 every week for the duration.

3) Players get rewards for how the server does and how they personally do, with a Gold, Silver and bronze set up these could include laurel, Gear Chests and such on top of what they earn for how the server does.

Disabling transfers during the season will not stop anything, Im sorry but everyone who already knows how awesome this new season league will be has already transferred for their super skilled reward.

let the horribly unbalanced and poorly planned and thought out zerglust begin

Heibi.4251:

Yeah, 20 gold might deter a truly causal player. But after the “Scarlet Wars” everyone should have 20 gold just lying around

Everyone but the wvw’ers who couldn’t care less about PvE farming and likely spend thier gold on upgrades.

DevonCarver.5370:

We’ve actually just recently added the tech to add an achievement for complaining on the forums.

Add one for ignoring all those complaints and forging ahead with the brain thrusts we’ve been exposed to lately and I know my bet will be on the winner.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

This is nothing more then a Money grab attempt, knowing that WvW is dying as they insist on ruing it they want to make as much money as they can before they put the final nail in the coffin.

This is a TERRIBLE idea, simply because Anet is in control and they dont like to listen to players. This could work well IF they listened and ACTED on advice the players give:

1) Make it so that the MOMENT the season starts if they transfer to another server they lose ALL rewards no matter how the server they were on does and no matter how well the server they are now on does

or

1.1) Disable server transfers during the season, maybe have a week before the next season begins or something so people can move

2) Make WvW Daily HARDER and make it a requirement for the rewards, not based on how the server does but how the player does.

This could be done by – increasing kill requirements, dolyak kills, camp/tower captures and such and then making it so they need to complete a certain number of them to gain access to the rewards, say 5/7 every week for the duration.

3) Players get rewards for how the server does and how they personally do, with a Gold, Silver and bronze set up these could include laurel, Gear Chests and such on top of what they earn for how the server does.

I don’t think anything done for WvW is a money grab. Anet has shown that they can’t react quickly to changes from the players.

That being said, I’d rather see tagging player accounts as WvW or non-WvW and then blocking all transfers of WvW tagged accounts to higher population WvW servers while also at the same time limiting the number of WvW tagged accounts transferring to a lower population WvW server so that we don’t get NA people transferring from the 5-12 ranked servers to the 13-15 servers like what happened to Kaineg earlier this year.

Another thing Anet needs to do is make the league so that the lowest servers actually have a chance to finish first through skill instead of coverage. This will completely remove the reason why players stacked the top servers and would see players and guilds spreading out to lower servers and not just the top 4.

This seems more like a scheme by Anet to get more gems via server transfers. Those in charge of decision making can’t possibly be this ignorant of how their game works, or be so completely out of touch with their player base.

I was lucky that I chose SOR when the game launched. But for me, this league will be a few weeks of competitive play, but mostly just a roflstomp against weaker servers. The supposed closest competition to NA superpowers, TC, is in the process of getting utterly destroyed. Those ranked below TC will have a terrible matchup pretty much every single week for 7 weeks.

Unfortunately, even transferring to a lower tier server will just ensure that I will just have a higher chance of being in a boring match.

The only solution to this is to force MASS transfers to lower tiers. Anet needs to completely remove a full borderland, and change wvw to 1v1, to create unbearable queues. Otherwise, the wvw community is doomed to boredom.

There is actually a very simple thing Anet can do that will make things so much better for the NA, and that is to make it 3 leagues instead of 2. Just look at this

Gold: BG/SoR/JQ/TC/DB/FA/Mag/SoS
Silver: Ebay/YB/CD/SBI/Kn/BP/IoJ/DH
Bronze: HoD/NS/SF/ET/GoM/FC/DR/AR

Certainly looks better than asking rank 12 to go up against rank 1. Making it into 3 leagues or maybe even 4, and you will have quite a blast, because most of the matches will be very tight. As it is now, out of 7 weeks, you will probably see only 1 or 2 weeks of tight scores, the rest will just be a walkover.

Aurust.8961:

This seems more like a scheme by Anet to get more gems via server transfers. Those in charge of decision making can’t possibly be this ignorant of how their game works, or be so completely out of touch with their player base.

I was lucky that I chose SOR when the game launched. But for me, this league will be a few weeks of competitive play, but mostly just a roflstomp against weaker servers. The supposed closest competition to NA superpowers, TC, is in the process of getting utterly destroyed. Those ranked below TC will have a terrible matchup pretty much every single week for 7 weeks.

Unfortunately, even transferring to a lower tier server will just ensure that I will just have a higher chance of being in a boring match.

The only solution to this is to force MASS transfers to lower tiers. Anet needs to completely remove a full borderland, and change wvw to 1v1, to create unbearable queues. Otherwise, the wvw community is doomed to boredom.

Depending on the league schedule, it’s possible that you won’t see a BG/JQ/SoR match. Even if you did face them one week it’s possible to never face them the other 6 weeks. You will face three servers twice in a 7 week season.

I’m sure that most servers in the NA gold division are going to have at least 6 matches that are one-sided. I doubt that there will be more than 5 matches of the 28 that are “competitive”, even if it’s just for second place.

DevonCarver.5370:

Oren.1736:

Community concern is that incentives will be high enough to draw players to transfer up the tiers, killing even more low tier servers, over filling silver tiers with players and so forth for gold. Can you comment on any plans to address community size issues?

I can’t comment at this time as we haven’t finalized anything. In addition, you should look at it this way, if people flee lower league servers to get into the top leagues, it opens the opportunity for people to move to those lower leagues and finish 1st or 2nd, rather than being in the top league and finishing 6th or 7th. The rewards for finishing 2nd in the Bronze League will be markedly better than the rewards for finishing 6th in the Gold league.

Great, now just open up free transfers so I can transfer down.

Why can’t you people not just wait a few weeks, see how it feels and then complain about everything?

I, for once am really sick of all these “Leagues will kill WvW”, “My guild is quitting WvW”, “Devon sucks” etc. posts because they do not lead to anything. Same goes for all the rant about bloodlust. Nothing like that is in play at the moment, and none has even tried it so far. Give it a shot and the devs time to implement their changes.

Since this post is lacking something constructive to the topic: After season 1 ends, you could open up free transfers (possibly also with guilds?) to servers in lower leages/at the bottom of the respective leagues and encourage players to go there by giving them a (personal) reward boost of some sort?

Marquiz.7625:

There is actually a very simple thing Anet can do that will make things so much better for the NA, and that is to make it 3 leagues instead of 2. Just look at this

Gold: BG/SoR/JQ/TC/DB/FA/Mag/SoS
Silver: Ebay/YB/CD/SBI/Kn/BP/IoJ/DH
Bronze: HoD/NS/SF/ET/GoM/FC/DR/AR

Certainly looks better than asking rank 12 to go up against rank 1. Making it into 3 leagues or maybe even 4, and you will have quite a blast, because most of the matches will be very tight. As it is now, out of 7 weeks, you will probably see only 1 or 2 weeks of tight scores, the rest will just be a walkover.

3 leagues doesn’t divide evenly into 3. It has to be either 2 or 4.

Terrible way of rewarding. Instead of throwing rewards at the winning server, we should be rewarded on the basis of how much time we invested and accomplished in wvw. This is just a reason for the faiweathers to transfer to the top of each league and contribute a minimal amount if not at all. With the new system of points for spiking, I don’t want them populating my server.

Why is everyone banging on about rewards all the time? Rewards can be got from PVE. All I would like to see in WvW is a numbers balancing mechanic +/-10-20% max differential between the 3 sides, by default this would cause a spreading out of WvW populations. Maybe also take the idea some guy said earlier and make the league WvW competition a different set of servers and leave the regular wvw servers as they are for the PVD farm trains.

Blix.8021:

Marquiz.7625:

There is actually a very simple thing Anet can do that will make things so much better for the NA, and that is to make it 3 leagues instead of 2. Just look at this

Gold: BG/SoR/JQ/TC/DB/FA/Mag/SoS
Silver: Ebay/YB/CD/SBI/Kn/BP/IoJ/DH
Bronze: HoD/NS/SF/ET/GoM/FC/DR/AR

Certainly looks better than asking rank 12 to go up against rank 1. Making it into 3 leagues or maybe even 4, and you will have quite a blast, because most of the matches will be very tight. As it is now, out of 7 weeks, you will probably see only 1 or 2 weeks of tight scores, the rest will just be a walkover.

3 leagues doesn’t divide evenly into 3. It has to be either 2 or 4.

It would work if there was one match per week of 1v1. They could just make Green be “neutral”, don’t assign any server to it. Not sure if that is techically possible but it would be fun.

I’d feel sorry for SoS though.

Or how about this. Four leagues. Divided as follows:

1: BG/SoR/JQ
2: TC/DB/FA
3: Mag/SoS/Ebay/YB/CD/SBI/BP/Kain/IoJ
4: DH/HoD/NSP/SF/ET/GoM/FC/DR/AR

Because honestly, BG, SoR and JQ there’s really no one else for them to fight. Same goes for TC, DB and FA – when they’re not in a match together, its a bad match.

DevonCarver.5370:

Oren.1736:

Community concern is that incentives will be high enough to draw players to transfer up the tiers, killing even more low tier servers, over filling silver tiers with players and so forth for gold. Can you comment on any plans to address community size issues?

I can’t comment at this time as we haven’t finalized anything. In addition, you should look at it this way, if people flee lower league servers to get into the top leagues, it opens the opportunity for people to move to those lower leagues and finish 1st or 2nd, rather than being in the top league and finishing 6th or 7th. The rewards for finishing 2nd in the Bronze League will be markedly better than the rewards for finishing 6th in the Gold league.

Other games are watching you and if you don’t learn from your mistakes, and FAST, other games WILL and you will be quickly replaced and forgotten. It’s dog-eat-dog and there are no second chances, and with the attitude that is displayed towards the player base you’d be foolish to count on any sort of “loyalty”

WvWvW is unique and as more PvE players reach end-game they will look towards WvW and sPvP as their source of continued enjoyment of the game. This is what can make GW2 sustainable and right now you’re seemingly doing everything you can do kill it.

With respect, the above response and if anything has only worsened the community’s view of these changes. “You should look at it this way”…. LOL this reeks of spoiled pseudo-intellect gone awry. Not trying to be insulting, just FYI in case you didn’t realize that is how it comes across to “us” players.

You realize you only made 2 NA leagues right? You also realize that both leagues will be a match between 1-2 servers, 3 at best, leaving more than 75% of the servers without a snowball’s chance in hell of even reaching the top 3, right?

As everyone has said, and you’d do well to listen, population balance needs to be addressed before you start rewarding winners. Stop PRETENDING this is competitive gameplay in its current state.

*Now I understand transfers are a big source of income and WvW is being leveraged to maintain those #s, HOWEVER there is no reason why everyone can’t win in this. *

If you create a system that motivates people to transfer to underpopulated servers you will see MORE transfers while at the same time fixing the fundamental problem with WvW and making it sustainable again.

Second option even better: give each server a 75% handicap at the start of each match based on their overall rating. If the Glicko2 projects they should win by 100,000 points, start them with -75,000. Even easier, just apply the ratio to their PPT value. If they perform to their expectations they will still comfortably win, but instead of 100k victory it will be 25k. Imagine how much LESS complaining you would see. (just need to factor this 75% back into the evolution scores to keep them where they would have been.)

We’ve given you a thousand suggestions and what we get back is something completely out of left field that nobody even wants. It WOULD be a good idea if only you first fixed the issues that make it such a BAD idea.

All the changes you are making are based on the MYTH that this is competitive and balanced. No, it will never be sPvP, but that’s no excuse to do nothing at all.

Jackie.1829:

DevonCarver.5370:

At no point did I, or would I have, said “Fair competition” WvW is not intended to be “fair”. There are servers with more people, there are servers with better organizations and that will always be the case. This competition will be about showing how your world can do over a defined period of time, against a variety of opponents. SPvP is the part of our game that aims for a completely level playing field. WvW would never be able to match that goal.

It amuses me that through sheer stubbornness you can so adamantly stick to such a terrible opinion. You are trying to hard to promote competition, you bring in PPT, you try and make the game about PPT, you make match ups that have winners, you add a glicko system, you divide the servers into leagues. But at no point whatsoever did you consider trying to make WvW, because for some odd reason you think it shouldnt be.

Why exactly is there competition in a format that isnt fair? If the objective is to “play for fun” then why is it you are trying to design wvw more about winning than about actually having fun? You make no attempts to dilute zerg (buffing an AC with a 50 man cap in order to promote people to run with more than 50 is not fixing zerg). You make no attempts at balancing any of the classes with respect to wvw (hi ranger). You make no attempt to make game mechanics enjoyable (most sieges are long drawn out battles of boredom and turtling).

Every patch you do, to try and fix match making, is simply a band aid to the core problem, that no match making in the world can make a fair match up out of servers with such a disparity in their wvw populations. Even now your currently designed system has the r13 server matched with the r1 server in EU. You said that match ups would stabalize over months and yet they never did. Basically you were wrong. We told you that you would be wrong when you launched the system, but you were stuborn, apparently Anet must know more magically, yet you know nothing. All the hidden data you collect could not help you, cause the data would show balanced match ups arent possible, but somehow you see this as fine.

Does it not worry you that such a large majority of WvW players stopped carying about who wins? Stopped caring about points? Isnt that a testament to how flawed your system is when there is a huge fracture in the WvW community, a portion of which has no care whatsoever to play the system you are forcing on us.

I might actually care to play to win, if winning was based on any merit of skill and execution. But why should I supply starve a server when I go sleep and they rack up 1700 supply + waypoints overnight etc.

The WvW structure of winning is flawed at the core, and your statements only reflect that you dont understand this at a fundamental level. Nobody can be bothered “proving” themselves against servers who win over population. Being the underdog once or twice is fun, but the objective of the game should never be to show how strong an underdog you are, it should be about realistically winning….

VoTF may be widely regarded as an open field or GvG guild, but I actually do want to play to win. It is simply that you provide me with a game format where winning means nothing and is based on no merits of my own, so over time I simply learned to ignore it. But there was a time we pulled 12h+ raids daily on NA servers the first 5 months to try and keep up ppt. I have experienced the side of the game that plays to win, its simply completely broken and you have done nothing to fix any of it in over a year.

This. WvW will be destroyed with this league thing in place. Anet needs to wake up, and fast.

DevonCarver.5370:

The rewards for finishing 2nd in the Bronze League will be markedly better than the rewards for finishing 6th in the Gold league.

I hope the differences in reward are not too big. I’m on Underworld atm and I’m having fun playing WvW. Achievements made me play a bit more than usual. Also I like defending and it is fun to defend during day. But we lost a lot of guilds because of the cheap transfer costs before season started. Also we have no players at night during weak because we have no Australian or US guilds.

It is only determinded by coverage if you win or lose. The difference in reward should not be too big. It would only discourage people that had fun and played and fought for their server. We still are doing our best during day to get points and defend our keep and tower. Why should we get less rewards only because OTHER people decided to play on OTHER SERVERS not ou OUR SERVER? I mean it is not our fault the transfer cost are high and the whole system is broken. It’s something we can’t influence directly. This is why it should not influence our rewards that much.

That finisher I heard about for 1st ranked server sounds good. But all others should get the same rewards… maybe 1gold difference but not something big like tons of more chests with special stuff(if its only some more badges it is okay).

DevonCarver.5370:

Oren.1736:

Community concern is that incentives will be high enough to draw players to transfer up the tiers, killing even more low tier servers, over filling silver tiers with players and so forth for gold. Can you comment on any plans to address community size issues?

I can’t comment at this time as we haven’t finalized anything. In addition, you should look at it this way, if people flee lower league servers to get into the top leagues, it opens the opportunity for people to move to those lower leagues and finish 1st or 2nd, rather than being in the top league and finishing 6th or 7th. The rewards for finishing 2nd in the Bronze League will be markedly better than the rewards for finishing 6th in the Gold league.

But no one does that. Every major WvW guild left Underworld (my server) and your great rewards are to blame. You told people (be on the better server to get better rewards) so people left Underworld and moved mostly to stronger silver league servers.

Now players cry that queues take hours but you just made the biggest disbalance that was possible. My server was in the middle of the tier and now we rarely (1-2h a day) aren’t outnumbered and we can’t hold any structure cause massive zergs conquer everything we take back.

This ruined my WvW experience and I don’t see any way you can repair it in near future.

People chase the rewards so the move on to the place they have a chance for better rewards. Thats just it.

You should focus on making it worth to make weak servers to be stronger yet I see you do nothing to back up or balance WvW. It’s unplayable for my server now and people are really frustrated in here. So I guess not only my experience was ruined.

At the end I will have to say I heard similar stories from at least one other server so that makes me even more sad. I wonder how many others have suffered…

they wont realy prevent the transfer. gem buying is good for the busines.

Chill folks.

League Season 1 is in Beta mode

They may very well take the bottom 2 in the gold league and chuck them into
the Silver league with the top 2 going into the gold league. And may very well take the bottom 3 servers in the silver league and chuck them into bronze league with the top 3 in the bronze league going to silver league.

Anet will not admit, may deny and even evidence t the contrary. But it was only in Q3 of 2013 when for once, Anet shifted their focus to PvE,GvG and WvWvW. PvP,sPVP,tPvP are no longer the interest of Anet so expect even bigger changes to WvW.

So, folks, chill and give Anet some time.

Fuzzion.2504:

Chill folks.

League Season 1 is in Beta mode

They may very well take the bottom 2 in the gold league and chuck them into
the Silver league with the top 2 going into the gold league. And may very well take the bottom 3 servers in the silver league and chuck them into bronze league with the top 3 in the bronze league going to silver league.

Anet will not admit, may deny and even evidence t the contrary. But it was only in Q3 of 2013 when for once, Anet shifted their focus to PvE,GvG and WvWvW. PvP,sPVP,tPvP are no longer the interest of Anet so expect even bigger changes to WvW.

So, folks, chill and give Anet some time.

The top 3 bronze do not stand a chance in silver, and the bottom 3 silver, well 2 belong in bronze and the other would absolutely crush bronze league. The population disparity outside of t1 is immense.

Maybe this was already mentioned in the thread, but the transfer/reward system for leagues seems heavily exploitable through sabotage transfers.

So… when the season starts and you enter WvW for the first time, you are locked to your current server, regarding rewards at the end of the season. If you transfer to another server, you will still only gain the rewards for your original server.

What is preventing a small sabotage group transferring from one server to another to help their original server win? For example, in the T1 matchup right now…a group of 10 or 20 people from BG could transfer to SOR and do nothing but siege-cap keeps and towers, call out false attacks, drive golems off cliffs, occupy all defensive siege during an assault without using it, etc.

In a matchup with relatively even server population and skill, this type of action could be crippling. And the saboteurs themselves will be rewarded for all this. Before, sabotage was mainly just for sh*ts-and-giggles if you were a griefer. But now, there is legitimate incentive for it.

Forget the transfer cost too. If they are in a guild of 100+, covering the cost for 10 people to transfer over and back is probably not an issue. In some cases, the transfer may be free if the server is in a lower tier. Just seems like a bad way to implement things…

Dopamine.7502:

Easiest solution for transfers is no more transfers to a higher ranked server. All you can do is transfer to a lower server which will help their population out.
Ow and of course closing the highest ranked servers for any new players.

And sending all the gold sellers to the lower servers. kthanksabunch

the jumping puzzle mess annoys me. why should we have to do three stupid jumping puzzles to prove our WvW ability?