Guild Wars 2

I am not too much into repeating a topic that people have been trying to get ArenaNet to change for a long time, but some more blantant evidence that it doesn’t work just showed up in the NA T4 and T5 matchups this week. The whole point of the Glicko rating system is to be accurate, because it is data after all. Everyone else and I expect data to be factual, truthful and unbiased. The current data spread has none of these crucial traits, which is why it is essential for something to be changed. I believe it is not the Glicko calculation itself that is the major issue but how ArenaNet determines matchups.

It is not factual, because a server that has a rating over 100 points below another should not be able to be ahead by any stretch (see T4 this week). This data is clearly not fit for comparison whatsoever.

It is not truthful, because many of the higher tier servers have their ratings nicely padded and it does not reflect their true strength.

It is biased, because it is incredibly hard for servers to move up and down rankings, putting higher tier servers in a nice comfy position.

So yeah, the current matchmaking system is garbage. ArenaNet’s method is way more complicated than it needs to be. Stop trying to create matchups using the +/- 100 variance in Glicko (or whatever it is, I don’t understand it) and put a winner up, loser down system in already like so many people have suggested. It’s simple, it makes for easy mobility up and down the rankings, keeps the matchup scene fresh for everyone and allows Glicko calculations to be more accurate. It also won’t produce terrible matchups like when the matchmaking system was allowing any servers with 200 rating over or below another to be matched up. This whole situation (among a multitude of other things WvW-related) reflects poorly on ArenaNet’s ability to design content, so listen to your fans and make it happen… being interactive is something the company is becoming known for so let’s see it for World vs. World too for once.

I was hoping for images.

A server can win, and still drop,
A server can win, and still lose rating
Thats glicko for you

At the same time remember its not a human being, its just a program that calculates numbers, if 3 servers have similar ratings and one of those servers has a sudden mass exodus, yea its going to be a lopsided matchup for awhile till said server loses enough rating because its not based on a real person deciding the matchups using ongoing situations.

I agree though that a better matchmaking system needs to be used, because glicko is honestly just stupid and ridiculed by most people. You win, and you can end up losing or dropping :/ seriously anet…

I agree OP.

It seems (from the non-developer outside) that there must be an easier solution that can calculate all the maths we, as players, don’t see. I understand the frustration, all too well.

Perhaps the server that is 100 glicko points below got an infusion of new F2P accounts .. or had returning players?

Careful, looks like SoR is crawling back up too, doing a Vizunah.

The only thing glicko is missing is high/low hardcaps within each tier. That will eliminate “stuck” servers and be a reasonable compromise between current glicko and up/down system. Even if the number 1 server win 20 matchups in a row, a few losses should cause a movement, instead of those matchups making it untouchable for a long, long time… And of course the same in reverse for the last server.

How wrong you are.

It is factual, because Glicko doesn’t determinate anything. It’s just a representation of what is happening.
Your first point is blatantly wrong. If a lower server should not be able to win an upper server, then what’s the point of the competition? In all sports or games, there’s always the possibility that a much weaker team can win a much stronger one.
And since WvW rating is determinated mostly by coverage, if a server loses it for any reason, it will drop.

It is truthful because, again, it’s a representation of the reality. The only one to blame for the servers having their rating padded is the playerbase, specially the NA playerbase who has always decided to stack massively into 3/4 servers.
Look at EU and how little differences there are between compared to NA. There’s more difference between 4th and 5th in NA than 1st and 9th in EU.
This is not a problem of Glicko or how WvW is designed, but NA players wanting very stacked server, so they’re the only ones to blame for such stagnation and differences.

And it is by no means biased, since it’s just maths representing what is happening. Again, the ones to blame for servers in NA to not be able to go up or down is NA playerbase, for wanting that for months.
In EU it’s much easier to do it because we spread more along all servers.

About the system win-up lose-down, in reality it is worse, because you’d end up having very unfair matchups. It happened when they made more freely the glicko, and quickly there were tons of people asking to a more locked system, since what was happening was not fun, one week you were stomped by a server and in the next you stomped another week.

Ansau.7326:

About the system win-up lose-down, in reality it is worse, because you’d end up having very unfair matchups. It happened when they made more freely the glicko, and quickly there were tons of people asking to a more locked system, since what was happening was not fun, one week you were stomped by a server and in the next you stomped another week.

That may have been true when it was possible for servers to be wildly imbalanced. That is not the case anymore stop living in the past.

displayname.8315:

Ansau.7326:

About the system win-up lose-down, in reality it is worse, because you’d end up having very unfair matchups. It happened when they made more freely the glicko, and quickly there were tons of people asking to a more locked system, since what was happening was not fun, one week you were stomped by a server and in the next you stomped another week.

That may have been true when it was possible for servers to be wildly imbalanced. That is not the case anymore stop living in the past.

No, you’re wrong. With that system:
- Maguuma next week should face Sea of Sorrow (+200 rating) and Jade Quarry (+530 rating).
- Fort Aspenwood would face Crystal Desert (-180) and (-385).

Now do you really think Maguuma has a chance against those servers? And do you think FA would have a hard time against those 2 others?
Glicko is just a representation of the reality. So big differences in rating means big differences in coverage.
The first 2-3 weeks would be interesting, but after that, all servers would be readjusted and you would still have the same problem, some servers stomping others, aka lack of good distribution of people.

In the end, all systems show the same problem, NA playerbase wanting stacked servers which lead into boring and unfair matchups.
NA playerbase is the only one to blame.

Ansau.7326:

No, you’re wrong. With that system:
- Maguuma next week should face Sea of Sorrow (200 rating) and Jade Quarry (530 rating).
- Fort Aspenwood would face Crystal Desert (-180) and (-385).

Now do you really think Maguuma has a chance against those servers? And do you think FA would have a hard time against those 2 others?
Glicko is just a representation of the reality. So big differences in rating means big differences in coverage.
The first 2-3 weeks would be interesting, but after that, all servers would be readjusted and you would still have the same problem, some servers stomping others, aka lack of good distribution of people.

In the end, all systems show the same problem, NA playerbase wanting stacked servers which lead into boring and unfair matchups.
NA playerbase is the only one to blame.

I absolutely think they would stand a chance. If you knew about their populations and not just their skewed glicko you would know that mag and cd could probably win those matchups if they cared to.

The only reason those servers are in T3 is because they work the glicko system to obtain a matchfixing balance where they all stay stagnated together. A glaring example of why glicko is Kinda Pathetic.

displayname.8315:

The only reason those servers are in T3 is because they work the glicko system to obtain a matchfixing balance where they all stay stagnated together. A glaring example of why glicko is Kinda Pathetic.

Glicko system is not pathetic, but people stacking in servers so glicko is not working well. The same way guns don’t kill people, but people using guns kill other people.
Problem is with the people, not the system.

Ansau.7326:

displayname.8315:

The only reason those servers are in T3 is because they work the glicko system to obtain a matchfixing balance where they all stay stagnated together. A glaring example of why glicko is Kinda Pathetic.

Glicko system is not pathetic, but people stacking in servers so glicko is not working well. The same way guns don’t kill people, but people using guns kill other people.
Problem is with the people, not the system.

Yeah stacking is/was the problem. Anet workin on that tho. But with the glicko system it is still pretty easy to manipulate. By teaming up with 1 or 2 other servers you can break the tier system. It happens in T1 and now has made its way to T3 also.

Winners can move up if they pull overtime and push for months to get big wins over and over again, its not a great system by far.

The only problem I see is that a complete tier can be walled off, if the difference to the adjacent tiers is big enough. This way the 3 servers in that tier don’t have to compete with servers from other tiers.

displayname.8315:

Ansau.7326:

About the system win-up lose-down, in reality it is worse, because you’d end up having very unfair matchups. It happened when they made more freely the glicko, and quickly there were tons of people asking to a more locked system, since what was happening was not fun, one week you were stomped by a server and in the next you stomped another week.

That may have been true when it was possible for servers to be wildly imbalanced. That is not the case anymore stop living in the past.

Except that there has been overwhelming feedback crying about stale matches. Demanding they loosen the restrictions so that servers would shift.

Now we have the server shift, that you are in the minority to be against. Stop living in the past. The majority of the feedback demanded a match up shift.

Michelangelo.1742:

put a winner up, loser down system in already like so many people have suggested. It’s simple,

… and also manipulable. That’s a “no” vote from me. I’m out!

displayname.8315:

I absolutely think they would stand a chance. If you knew about their populations and not just their skewed glicko you would know that mag and cd could probably win those matchups if they cared to.

I read “cared to” as a lot of overtiming. FA and SoS both have non-NA population that CD and Mag can’t really compete with.

It probably worked under normal and fair conditions.

And that is why it does not work with WvW.
WvW is not fair, players jumped into the top 4 servers leaving the bottoms ones pretty empty.

So it ends up like having a race where one driver have an F1 vehicle, another using one used for Nascar, a third in a Prius, a fourth in a go kart, and a fifth on a tricycle.

IMHO the reason it is not accurate is because the system is really slow to respond to players transferring servers.

We have no further to look than when SoR imploded, had a mass exodus of players, and got stuck in matches in T3 against Dragonbrand for over a whole month even though SoR should have been in the T5 matches for the amount of players that had left. The delay cost SoR even more population as they ended up in the bottom of Silver for Season 2 when they should have been in Bronze.

Buy Some Apples.6390:

So it ends up like having a race where one driver have an F1 vehicle, another using one used for Nascar, a third in a Prius, a fourth in a go kart, and a fifth on a tricycle.

And if you are Canadian

Fuzzion.2504:

Buy Some Apples.6390:

So it ends up like having a race where one driver have an F1 vehicle, another using one used for Nascar, a third in a Prius, a fourth in a go kart, and a fifth on a tricycle.

And if you are Canadian

Looks like an efficient use of resources to me.

The other issue that hasn’t been mentioned is that if a server wants to move up in NA, not only do they have to get the players to get the coverage, they also have to win each week by greater and greater margins in order to close the gap between the tiers.

This means your server has to be committed to spawn camping the other servers to move up a tier. Is that the style of gameplay you really want to promote?

Yes I would agree it is hard to move up and some of the differences in-between Tiers is a little high but look at the server rankings from a more general perspective. In general the higher tiers are ‘better’ (more coverage) then the lower tiers. I think that is the whole point of Glicko scores. The random +- 100 is because people wanted to have match-ups mixed up a bit, because Glicko ratings had settled down and all servers were ranked according to their ‘skill’. Take a look at yaks bend, they managed to climb to T1 and they seem to be on the low end of T1 ‘skill’ so even though it took a couple of months they managed to climb into T1 where their ‘skill’ (coverage) lines up with. I would agree for a server to move up it is promoting complete domination of other servers but that could be more of a problem with how large the ‘skill’ (population) imbalance is between servers in different Tiers.

Overall I would say Gliko is working.

Fuzzion.2504:

Buy Some Apples.6390:

So it ends up like having a race where one driver have an F1 vehicle, another using one used for Nascar, a third in a Prius, a fourth in a go kart, and a fifth on a tricycle.

And if you are Canadian

Don’t knock the moose.

/nod

I am having more of a problem with the server pop calculations and the fact that no server is considered low. The 2 bottom servers are pretty much completely daed in wvw yet they are still medium which is the same pop as tier 5 servers. I am pretty much now confident that they made it so low population isn’t even a possibility. So its 500 gems to transfer to the medium pop (Dead Population) 2 lowest pop servers. Meaning nobody will ever transfer there period.

Chuck Zitto.2367:

I am having more of a problem with the server pop calculations and the fact that no server is considered low. The 2 bottom servers are pretty much completely daed in wvw yet they are still medium which is the same pop as tier 5 servers. I am pretty much now confident that they made it so low population isn’t even a possibility. So its 500 gems to transfer to the medium pop (Dead Population) 2 lowest pop servers. Meaning nobody will ever transfer there period.

I wouldn’t be surprised if ArenaNet is waiting until HoT release. They can’t predict how many players are sleepers on those servers who will play the new WvW map.

Chuck Zitto.2367:

I am having more of a problem with the server pop calculations and the fact that no server is considered low. The 2 bottom servers are pretty much completely daed in wvw yet they are still medium which is the same pop as tier 5 servers. I am pretty much now confident that they made it so low population isn’t even a possibility. So its 500 gems to transfer to the medium pop (Dead Population) 2 lowest pop servers. Meaning nobody will ever transfer there period.

There is technically no “low” label for a server, the lowest is medium. It is vague and misleading though, but its probably intentional.

From Wiki:
Standard transfer fees
Medium: 500 Gem
High: 1000 Gem
Very High: 1800 Gem

the fault does not lie with the glicko system itself. it has been shown to be effective in calculating an accurate rating when all of its conditions are met.

the conditions that anet cannot meet is a large population to draw matches from. there are only 24(27) servers. and matchmaking is enforced. enforced matchmaking leads to bad matches on occasion. a small population of competitors leads to stagnation, and in combination with enforced matchmaking, leads to tier locking, especially in the top and bottom matches. snowbally scoring is bad too. and the fact that score dominantly measures coverage and or server population instead of “skill”.

it really isnt glicko. glicko is fine. its pretty much everything else. and one of those problems (small competitor population) can only be fixed by growing the active playerbase to the point that anet would need to add 2-4x as many servers.

insanemaniac.2456:

the fault does not lie with the glicko system itself..

the conditions that anet cannot meet is a large population…

a small population of competitors leads to stagnation…

it really isnt glicko. glicko is fine. its pretty much everything else.

It dosen’t really matter what the population is as glicko is concerned. It’s actually easier to get stagnation with larger populations.

What you need to look at is how to get different matchups with the glicko system. The way it is done is by getting blowout wins. And not just once or twice, weeks on end even months sometimes.

Thats what people don’t want to see and thats what causes people to move around so much and seek out a decent place to WvW.

Then you have the problem of people watching http://mos.millenium.org to make sure they aren’t winning too big or tanking too hard so they can keep their some opponents (think GvG guilds working together cross server)

Glicko breeds stagnation and manipulation.

I don’t have an issue with Glicko itself, I have a problem with the matchups system that is hurting its ability to function like useful data (which is what I said). If a winner-up, loser-down matchup system was in place, it would allow servers to constantly check their ratings with servers above them, leading to better accuracy in the Glicko rating. Also, I would hope with the unstagnated matchups, it would promote spreading out populations to ensure closer and thus more interesting matchups. Sure you can fudge it up and lose and ruin some matchups below you, but for an entire server to collectively want to lose (when they obviously can get 1st and 2nd place if they try) seems unlikely and would be met with a lot of resistance since you cannot control everyone. Me, my friends and server-mates are all pretty kitten competitive, we wouldn’t stoop so low as that. Well even if a strong server intentionally falls down a bit, at least with this system they will hop back to the top incredibly quickly.

If someone can convince me of a solution that is better than this one, I would love to hear it. At the moment, it seems like the most reasonable option to get what we want from match-ups. Every solution, especially when it comes to something as complicated as World vs. World, is going to have a few flaws. However, those flaws shouldn’t stop it from being implemented, because an improvement is an improvement, and ArenaNet can’t just sit on their butts waiting for the perfect one to strike them (look at how traits went through 3 transitions before they came to Specializations)…

Michelangelo.1742:

If a winner-up, loser-down matchup system was in place, it would allow servers to constantly check their ratings with servers above them, leading to better accuracy in the Glicko rating.

Oh so your saying use glicko to determine who the winner is? I was thinking more like 1st place is the winner 3rd place is the loser and there would be no need to have glicko at all. Your way would be even more balanced tho I like that. Just don’t want it to create more overtime pushes and trolling tho as glicko is doing right now.

Looks like Anet is going to do some kind of revenge mechanic as you have talked about that should be neat. Hope its not too OP.

As already noted a winner-up/loser-down system would create blow-out match-ups every single week.

It would make matches less stale, but at the price of massive one sided weeks.

What is needed is a Glicko reset, perhaps every year or six months to get rid of the inflated scores of the upper tiers. This would automatically create more varied match-ups and allow more rapid mobility as servers gain or lose population, because you’re not beating your head against the hoarded glicko points that each of the bandwagon servers dragged to T1 then deposited there when they fell.

People really need to get out of this mindset of blowout matches. I’m called T1 so roll over.

TC dropped a tier and low and behold look at that scores.

YB moved up a tier and look at that their still alive.

Wow DB just moved up a tier and they not dying they actually winning what??

Moving up or down one single tier is not a death sentance (anymore) thanks to the lovely people at anet curing the autoclicker “bug” lets call it.

Also anet not just working on population, they also working a comeback mechanic. All is not lost hooray!

Wiping the glicko wouldn’t do much. The stronger servers would rise, taking out smaller communities on the way up.

The full server capacity anet implemented is starting to work at spreading out NA. Give it time.

For the love of kitten, no "reset glicko". That is a sure fire way to kill off almost entire population of non-hardcore-WvWers. It could take weeks and months before the glicko adapted back to where it would give a semblance of balanced tier’s, and until then huge amount of players are likely just not going to bother going into WvW. Why bother ?

On the positive side, it would make me stop bothering about WvW entirely, and just go casual mode in EotM instead. I’d get a lot more free time for other hobbies and interests. (Looks at pile of books).

displayname.8315:

Oh so your saying use glicko to determine who the winner is? I was thinking more like 1st place is the winner 3rd place is the loser and there would be no need to have glicko at all. Your way would be even more balanced tho I like that. Just don’t want it to create more overtime pushes and trolling tho as glicko is doing right now.

Looks like Anet is going to do some kind of revenge mechanic as you have talked about that should be neat. Hope its not too OP.

No not really, I guess an example would help actually. Take this week’s matchups as an example. Since Isle of Janthir will win their matchup this week, they will move up to T6 to face Borlis Pass (who will come in 2nd in T6 so they remain in-tier) and Ehmry Bay (who came in 3rd in T5, so they move down to a T6 matchup). And something like this would happen every week, so IoJ would move back down to a T7 matchup the week after (assuming they come in 3rd).

Glicko has no role in choosing matchups at all, it will act as a just a calcuation to change the rankings of servers on the leaderboard. Those 3 servers have not squared off with eachother in a very long time, which shows the ability of the matchup system to adjust Glicko ratings much more quickly through all servers checking their ratings’ accuracy with a variety of servers. Glicko will obviously not be able to keep up with it, but I think that is alright given how differently a server could perform week-to-week (more stability in the physical rankings on the leaderboard).

Also, did you actually hear that they would use an idea like my Revenge mechanic? That would be pretty sweet if they were not gonna lie lol. This matchup system is much more suited to be in place with that catch-up mechanic so there are no massive blow-outs (or significantly reduced) with the greater variation of matchups that this would bring…

Michelangelo.1742:

Glicko has no role in choosing matchups at all, it will act as a just a calcuation to change the rankings of servers on the leaderboard. Those 3 servers have not squared off with eachother in a very long time, which shows the ability of the matchup system to adjust Glicko ratings much more quickly through all servers checking their ratings’ accuracy with a variety of servers. Glicko will obviously not be able to keep up with it, but I think that is alright given how differently a server could perform week-to-week (more stability in the physical rankings on the leaderboard).

Also, did you actually hear that they would use an idea like my Revenge mechanic? That would be pretty sweet if they were not gonna lie lol. This matchup system is much more suited to be in place with that catch-up mechanic so there are no massive blow-outs (or significantly reduced) with the greater variation of matchups that this would bring…

Ah so your saying just use glicko as a kind of bragging rights leaderboard? That would be cool I guess Anet kinda does that on their leaderboard thing now. I never check that WvW leaderboard but yeah guess they would need to keep it for that.

I’ll try to find the link about the comeback. Someone quoted it not long ago. Basically the dev said they don’t want to see runaway scores and don’t want people to feel the need to take extra time away from RL stuff for overtime pushes.

Glicko implemented properly works just fine. Before tiers were added and match-ups were random, it worked great. Creating tiers and arranging match-ups by glicko rating is where it all went terribly wrong. In order for it to work, all servers need to play regularly against all other servers. But people kittened about loosing to stacked servers when they should not have been concerned with winning or loosing, just doing better that match-up than glicko expected them to in order to gain points, or worse to loose points.

Michelangelo.1742:

Also, did you actually hear that they would use an idea like my Revenge mechanic?

This snippet I read was this

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

The current scoring structure allows scores to run away, a problem that is compounded with night capping where it is possible for a team who has recruited players from different time zones to conquer everything in off-hours leading to one side getting ahead while most players are asleep or at work. Comebacks are difficult and it is hard to make up for that lost time that you spend on your real life needs.

We’re continuing to work now on developing and building our solutions to the core issues I outlined above, and once we reach a point in development where we are far enough along with them, we look forward to sharing those plans with you.

So they haven’t said it will be mechanic per se but they seem to be working on something.

Drakh.3128:

Glicko implemented properly works just fine. Before tiers were added and match-ups were random, it worked great. Creating tiers and arranging match-ups by glicko rating is where it all went terribly wrong. In order for it to work, all servers need to play regularly against all other servers. But people kittened about loosing to stacked servers when they should not have been concerned with winning or loosing, just doing better that match-up than glicko expected them to in order to gain points, or worse to loose points.

Having every server play against all others would result in a lot of very boring matchups and is not needed at all. Server strength is roughly transitive, meaning if server A is better than server B and B is better than server C you can conclude that A is also better than C without the two servers having to play against each other. The thing that should be worked on is to prevent servers becoming isolated (like NA T1 for some months). For every two servers there should be a way to compare them based on recent matches (no older than a few weeks).

displayname.8315:

So they haven’t said it will be mechanic per se but they seem to be working on something.

It would be a dream come true if they did something like that mechanic, because it is not only a method to earn points back but also makes earning points a little more interesting since there are a bunch of conditions on earning points from Revenge that promote defense and wariness of overextension.

Going back to the original topic, I wonder if this is something they seriously have on the table since they did say a lot of things would be looked at once HoT comes in a month. Heck, they could even be making the changes beforehand considering all the tweaking other portions of the game are getting…

We had winner up, loser down in one of the tournament seasons (2, I think). It caused blowout matches every week of the tournament. Put that in WvW and you will kill off what’s left of it.

Drakh.3128:

Glicko implemented properly works just fine. Before tiers were added and match-ups were random, it worked great. Creating tiers and arranging match-ups by glicko rating is where it all went terribly wrong. In order for it to work, all servers need to play regularly against all other servers. But people kittened about loosing to stacked servers when they should not have been concerned with winning or loosing, just doing better that match-up than glicko expected them to in order to gain points, or worse to loose points.

Yeah it does work fine if it is implemented properly, but I think all servers having a chance to play against eachother is not such a great idea, because losing heavily is not fun at all. The match-making system I am talking about here is sorta middle ground between random matchups and current Glicko-determined matchups, which makes it nice. You get match-ups determined on your performance each week, allowing you to check Glicko with a lot of servers. Those servers you played with last week go against others and check Glicko with them, so there is a nice trickle effect going that is probably even more efficient than actual random matchups, since a lot of players do not play WvW when their server is being crushed due to a bad random roll. You get more freedom while maintaining a good structured way of matching servers together, so the best of both worlds basically ^^

Ben K.6238:

We had winner up, loser down in one of the tournament seasons (2, I think). It caused blowout matches every week of the tournament. Put that in WvW and you will kill off what’s left of it.

With the current population modifications ArenaNet is making and actually looking at the Season 2 scores right now (match-making is indeed similar), I disagree. Not all those matches were blowouts not to mention the servers were segregated into 3 tiers. Movement between all tiers is necessary for it winner-up/loser-down to function properly (who knows how strong the 7th place server at the top of the silver league was compared to the 6th place server in the gold league by the time transfers did their thing). I think right now it will be a lot better than it was back then because of those very reasons.

Because of those reasons, it’d be worse. The madness was constrained by the three leagues then; it wouldn’t be if that extended between all eight tiers. And the population imbalance is a lot worse now, which is why the tiers have become locked in the first place.

Here’s what would have happened had such a system been in place this reset:

Tier 1: JQ, BG, TC. Nothing unusual here, and should be a reasonably even match.
Tier 2: YB, SoS, Mag. Blowout. SoS has difficulty competing with T1 coverage; Maguuma isn’t even close.
Tier 3: FA, SBI, DB. Possibly close; FA is weaker than it once was and DB is looking stronger.
Tier 4: CD, NSP, DH. Blowout. CD is going to have everything on the map waypointed overnight, every night.
Tier 5: HoD, SoR, SF. Probably another blowout. Not sure how much HoD’s population has changed since I last saw them but the other two are minnows for sure.
Tier 6: EB, BP, IoJ. Can’t say for sure, but because you have the 13th and 21st ranked servers, 225 points apart in the same match, likely another blowout.
Tier 7: AR, GoM, FC. FC may not fare too well but this looks like one of the closer ones.
Tier 8: Kaineng, DR, ET. T8 is always a blowout regardless.

And then the next week, the matches are likely to be identical to those two weeks before. Personally, I’d rather keep the existing stagnation unless the populations level out, because particularly at the top, population differences between tiers are too vast to make any inter-tier match worth playing.

Michelangelo.1742:

Sure you can fudge it up and lose and ruin some matchups below you, but for an entire server to collectively want to lose (when they obviously can get 1st and 2nd place if they try) seems unlikely and would be met with a lot of resistance since you cannot control everyone.

You must not have been around for seasons….like at all. Tanking happened, it was pretty blatant too.

I’m also going to ignore the rest of your logical fallacy about no one being able to provide a better solution than an relegation system. Just because you value it, doesn’t mean we as a community must settle for a poorly thought out solution.

Ben K.6238:

Here’s what would have happened had such a system been in place this reset:

Tier 1: JQ, BG, TC. Nothing unusual here, and should be a reasonably even match.
Tier 2: YB, SoS, Mag. Blowout……..
..
..

Here’s what would have happened had such a system been in place this reset:

Tier 1: JQ, BG, TC. There would be a fight to stay out of third place if you desire T1. Yeah a real fight and probably be fun to be in too. But TC wouldn’t care if take 3rd they don’t mind T2, having fun there also.

Tier 2: YB, SoS, Mag. hmm interesting one… SoS doing better on a timezone balance. They don’t have as big as blobs but Mag would probably target YB more often. I’d say YB will be very aggressive and go back T1. could be a fun one

Tier 3: FA, SBI, DB. Possibly close; FA is weaker than it once was and DB is looking stronger.

Tier 4: CD, NSP, DH. This is the matchup I would personally want to be in that week. Darkhavens coverage is actually pretty good, it’s hard to notice since they were matched up against DB so long.

Tier 5: HoD, SoR, SF. -HoD would probably win hmm.. but fighting them atm and they mostly NA timezone

Tier 6: EB, BP, IoJ. Can’t say for sure, but because you have the 13th and 21st ranked servers, 225 points apart in the same match

Tier 7: AR, GoM, FC. -FC may not fare too well but this looks like one of the closer ones.

Tier 8: Kaineng, DR, ET. T8 is always a blowout regardless.

Folks should stop blaming the glicko and instead blame themselves. The reason it’s so obscene is because of how players themselves stacked upward. Anet has taken steps to force everyone to spread out (why we could not do that ourselves, I dunno), and that will take time and will actually reflect in the glicko and resultant varied changed matches each week.

If you want the varied matches sooner, spread out. It will absolutely take several months to even out, but if you do that, it will work as intended.

Jayne.9251:

If you want the varied matches sooner, spread out. It will absolutely take several months to even out, but if you do that, it will work as intended.

Yes anet forcing a spread out is doing it. Glicko and the whole RNG roll matchup variance still seems a little off.

Don’t know how its done exactly people say servers get a random glicko boost of 0 – 100 then theres a roll. this can result in a “troll roll”

for an example blackgate wanted to stay in T1 so they win their matchup like 3 weeks in a row.. then you know who gets put in T2? blackgate….

I’d rather see placement and winning mean something. Maybe instead of random glicko boosts 1st place gets a +100 roll boost
2nd gets a +50 to their roll
3rd gets a +20 to their roll

Glicko has never worked for WvW as a matchmaking system. Sure it does what it is supposed to do over a long period of time. But it does not respond fast enough to rapid changes in server population. This has caused many serious issues.

Glicko was designed for chess, not a 3-way battle between thousands of people. In chess a player’s skill is not going to suddenly change very much. They may improve over time but its not going to rapid change like a mass exodus or a bandwagoning in WvW.

That’s one reason I’ve always advocated some sort of manual intervention by Anet when Glicko clearly fails in its matchmaking. Stale matches could be broken up occasionally. This way a server could be given a chance to see if they can play against a higher opponent without worrying about being stuck in Glicko hell for weeks or months.

I don’t think 1U1D would be an improvement though. It would just create alternating mismatched stagnation instead of single match stagnation.

Jayne.9251:

Folks should stop blaming the glicko and instead blame themselves. The reason it’s so obscene is because of how players themselves stacked upward.

You need to ask why players did that and stop blaming folks for the design of something that is completely outside of their control. Do you not understand why DB continues to have bandwagons and implosions for their non-SEA population or why SoS has such difficulty getting EU? Do you still not get why non-NA populations are most numerous in the higher tiers? EU servers don’t see this because there’s no such thing as an official SEA or official OCX server amongst EU.