Guild Wars 2

By far the biggest complaint players have in wvw is the large number of lopsided matchups. While paid transfers might provide some stability, it doesn’t really address the underlying problem directly.

Also, we have no rules beyond what is coded into the game. This is entirely inadequate for a competitive game. Every game should have player enforced rules that can adapt to new situations, and enforce sportsmanlike conduct. This can never be accomplished purely through code and game mechanics.

My proposal would be something along the following. I’m sure others will have more/better ideas also. My hope is that maybe this idea picks up steam and something comes out of it.

#1. A game wide guild association.
This association would create the game rules. Guilds would get to vote on the rules, and all guilds would agree to abide by them. Although it is strictly voluntary, if enough guilds joined there would be a lot of pressure on other guilds to join also.

#2. An NFL like draft system to control guild transfers.
While guild transfers are not the only transfers that happen, they are the only ones we can reasonably control with a system like this. I think it’s also true that it’s the guild transfers that have the largest impact.

The draft system would prevent transfers to servers that are winning by a large margin, or the transferring of large guilds to a tier where even if it was a losing server, would obviously unbalance the tier.

#3. Rules enforcing sportsmanlike conduct.
These could be basic, but would help to enforce the idea that what we want is fun matches for everyone. There should be rules to disallow things that benefit one server/guild at the expense of several others.

#4. Tools for server to server and guild to guild communication. This is primarily a place for recruitment and discussing things related to the guild association. I think people from opposing servers/guilds having a way to communicate would be a good thing. It bridges gaps and helps to create friendly competition.

Thoughts? Does anyone think this could actually get off the ground? I have my doubts, but I’m hopeful.

Sorry, but this is totally delusional … and there is lots of evidence to support my contention. All you have to do is read a few forums to see that players have a really difficult time agreeing on much of anything that isn’t flat out broken. Secondly, when have you even seen something as simple as an alliance of servers hold up longer than a day or two? Do you realize how difficult it is to keep even the players within the same guild on the same page?

But even worse, you’re asking for things that require an infrastructure of sorts to manage … and that doesn’t exist anywhere. There are tons of guilds and without such an infrastructure there is not a chance in hell that any of that could happen even if everyone had a similar view of the situation … which they don’t.

The only thing broken is actually the rating system as I’ve pointed out a long time ago. Glicko-2 doesn’t work for WvW. Hopefully they are changing it with an updated rating system.

DancingPenguins.9875:

The only thing broken is actually the rating system as I’ve pointed out a long time ago. Glicko-2 doesn’t work for WvW. Hopefully they are changing it with an updated rating system.

That would not solve the problem of having teams that have drastically different numbers they can field. Would you play Spvp if the number of people on a team were random, and where a 4 man team might get matched up against a 10 man team? I don’t think that would go over too well with most people. But in wvw that’s pretty close to what’s happening in a lot of matches.

DancingPenguins.9875:

The only thing broken is actually the rating system as I’ve pointed out a long time ago. Glicko-2 doesn’t work for WvW. Hopefully they are changing it with an updated rating system.

I completely agree that the Glicko-2 system is inappropriate for WvW, and I’ve pointed out the several reasons why in previous posts … not the least of which is the fact that treating Green vs Blue, Green versus Red, and Blue versus Red as independent contests is insanely invalid. My impression, though, is that ANet intends to retain the Glicko-2 system after the February PvP patch, and that the only things they plan to change are maybe some of the factors in the formula … such as how many previous scores are included, the weighting of previous scores as a function of their age, the degree of penalty for variation in scores from week to week, etc.

It would be great if there were some way to do some of what you suggest. But we can’t even get people to do the easiest and obvious thing to have competitive matches – the two losing servers cooperate with each other against the dominant server.