Guild Wars 2

I say yes.

The announcement of reduced matchup variety is welcome in my eyes. The ‘tiers’ were too stale while the initial variance system was too random. This is a bit better of a balance, however with week-long matches and large population and coverage imbalances, no matchmaking system will please a clear majority of players…. at least not while matches remain a full week long.

Three 56-hour matches per week seems to be the solution, and here’s why:

1. Reduced impact of population imbalance – matches are always the most competitive at their beginning when all servers are on an equal playing field, e.g. no upgrades, supply or siege. Even in matches that end up one-sided, the initial competitive spirit on average lasts anywhere from 12 to 56 hours before it becomes pure karma-training.

2. More 3-way battles – usually by the 56-hour mark in a match, the 3rd place server is fighting for 2nd place, the 2nd place server is fighting for 1st, and the 1st place server is defending their lead against 2nd place. As the match progresses, it almost invariably leans towards a double-team against the 2nd place server. This is not the intent of WvW.

3. Varied reset times – different time zones would be able to experience the most exciting part of WvW; reset.

4. More match variety – obviously with more matches you will face more opponents.

5. More accurate glicko ratings – more matches and more 3-way battles allow the ratings to adjust more often and more accurately, resulting in better matchmaking which will be especially important going into another season (example bronze league NA schedule was based on Kaineng being the top seed due to the ratings had not yet adjusted to their reduced population).

6. Indirect benefits – now that WvW is 3-way battle with more matchup variety and varied resets and closer scores, average populations as well as average play time will increase. More players makes WvW more enjoyable, more exciting, and more epic. More servers will be queuing maps more often which means reduced impact of population imbalance.

I wouldn’t be opposed to this.

I would like it to go back to shorter matches

I am very strongly for reduced duration of WvW matches. Not necessarily reduced duration of all matches but maybe have a random number generator for the duration of the matches between 1-7 days. Anything that will make the average match ups closer is always good in my opinion (this is what I believe was the downfall of season 1). It would add to the excitement and suspense too. There’s nothing more boring than seeing a server already mathematically stuck in first place on late Wednesday/early Thursday.

Looks like a good idea but I’m not exactly sure about the idea of 56 hour match ups. I’ve been an extremely strong believer in having matchups of any duration of hours divisible by 24. It’s so that it’s fair to each server getting equal amount of participation in each of the time zones. Alternatively, this unfair advantage could cause some servers to beat servers they wouldn’t otherwise beat which might be good to see change of victories.

Maybe on occasion.

But I’ve played WvW MMOs where servers were permanently matched up until one got too demoralized to force a merger. This system, for all its faults, aint half bad.

With the coming edge of the mist, pve players who want to play wvw casually can do it there,thus the current wvw system should be revamp to a 6hr match format.

It would be better if in 24 hour period, the matches last for 6 hours each and the map gets reset for each match. So that the wins is recorded and we can know what are the main time a world usually wins or loses. This way, a better group of 3 worlds can be matched together so that its not about winning due to different time coverage.

This would effect gold and karma used for sieges and upgrades so I would also suggest that upgrades should be free and siege recipe as well. But the siege recipe would be limited in number and everyone will have 1 of each siege for each match.

Supply will reset on each account so whenever u enter a map,u have 0 supply,this would help non stacked servers in a way since supply would be equal to all.

Each borderland and EBG would have a max of 50 players(arbitary number,can be other value) If all 3 worlds have 50 players,the match will start. Those who are late will queue up and be reserved, if someone dc or log out for more than 2 minute,his slot in the world is lost and reserved player goes in. The amount of player in the world will be indicated.

If more than 50 ppl are queued for a map per each different world, and overflow of the map will occur. Wins in overflow will be counted as well.

If multiple overflows are created but the amount of players start to reduce due to log out, EG Overflow 1, 50pax world A vs 50 Pax world B vs 40 Pax World C, Overflow 2, 50 Pax world A vs 50 Pax world B vs 20 Pax world C. Then all in world C for overflow will be queud in overflow 1,quickest 10 to accept transfer will enter overflow 1,remaining 10 goes to reserve. Overflow 2 will then have a match conclusion by forfeit and the score is recorded even if it does not complete 6 hours. Exception is to main world,even if players are not equal,the match will continue for 6 hours, this is to avoid mass log out and compromising the game.

at the end of 6hrs, the score and the statistic of the match is recorded for all worlds, including how many ppl was playing for each world on overflow. That way we can see if a world win due to 50 vs 3 0 vs 10. Take note that overflow will only be created if all 3 worlds have 50 player each,so having more players does not mean you can have more overflow just for your own world.

How to determine the winner can be discussed further, we can take average score across all overflow to determine winner for the map. then we can add up the sum of average score per 4 maps to determine winner for the whole 6 hour match.

When 1st match is being tabulated after 6hours. Those who are reserved will immediately start the 2nd match that will last for 6 hours.Those who have played match 1 wil be directed out of wvw, they can then choose to join back wvw if they want. This is to ensure fresh rotation and opportunity to play.

Kindly discuss, thanks.

Shorter matches is not the answer. Server population balance is.

Simply NO.
Some people have real life, you know.
Some people cannot play for 2-3 days in a week because of work/family.
I know several people that play only during week but do not play during weekend as they spend time with kids.

Grav.3568:

Shorter matches is not the answer. Server population balance is.

But the only way of server population balance would be to enforce who is on which world, e.g. order all people by their WEXP, and then assign them to a world, best to last server 2nd to 2nd last, …. A thing most (including me) would not enjoy

As there is no way to balance WvW population, there is only the way to make population imbalance and it’s induced coverage less decisive. Which I think is a value in itself.

Matches that are not exclusively decided by coverage, but which outcome is at least influenced a bit by skill, would not be that bad, right?

I still like time-sliced matches most. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Night-protection-1/3281118
4 matches a 6h a day or 3 matches a 8h. The number of days such matches are running is secondary, be it 1 or 7 or …

Solstice.1097:

2. More 3-way battles – usually by the 56-hour mark in a match, the 3rd place server is fighting for 2nd place, the 2nd place server is fighting for 1st, and the 1st place server is defending their lead against 2nd place. As the match progresses, it almost invariably leans towards a double-team against the 2nd place server. This is not the intent of WvW.

Speaking from GoM, we have been in enough match ups where the 1st place kept changing, or when suddenly, on the last day, the 1st place would get snatched away by another server.

I agree, shorter matches would help mitigate the population imbalance.

It is clear that Anet either cannot or will not do anything about WvW population imbalance. We have not heard anything about the CDI from weeks ago.

Therefore the only thing left is to mitigate the imbalance. Shorter matchups seems like it would be a very simple thing to implement. And I agree the 56 hour timeframe would be great.

Dayra.7405:

I still like time-sliced matches most. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Night-protection-1/3281118
4 matches a 6h a day or 3 matches a 8h. The number of days such matches are running is secondary, be it 1 or 7 or …

I agree that this would be the absolute best solution – but again, I don’t think Anet can or will do this.

I could do shorter matches, but there needs to be at least 3 days in each match, anything shorter than that and it risks seeming inconsequential with no purpose to me.

Grav.3568:

Shorter matches is not the answer. Server population balance is.

I agree that shorter matches aren’t really the answer and server population balance ‘could’ be the answer, but I would suggest talking more about WvW balance instead. Here’s my idea for structured matchups, as well as unstructured (casual) matchups, and WvW skirmishes.

Structured Matchups:
1. Each week starts a registration period for the following week’s matchup.
2. During registration, players register to play in the matchup and select one of their guilds as the guild they wish to represent for that matchup.
3. Guild leaders then register their guilds for the matchup.
4. After the registration period is over, a tally is made of all the registered players/guilds, and then each guild is assessed for their WvW ‘strength’ based on some calculable factors: a) guild size calculated by the number of members that registered to play for that matchup b) the combined WvW achievement history/ranks for those members c) the average playing times for all guild members so as to determine when the guild is most likely to be active within WvW d) any other recordable information or stat that might be used to calculate the overall WvW strength of a guild such as GvG tournament finishes should those ever be added to the game, PvP tournament finishes for players, as well as any other pertinent stat that I can’t think of at the moment.
5. Once each registered guild’s strength is determined, along with their average playing timeframe, then each guild is evenly as possible assigned to teams such as to match them up with competitors that are as close both in strength and playing hours as possible.
6. No team/guild transfers would be allow for registered players and no new players or previously unregistered players would be allowed to join in the matchup.

Unstructured (casual) Matchups
1. For those new or unregistered players, they could still get into a more ‘casual’ WvW matchup based on the current system, but this would be separate from the structured WvW matchups/tournaments.

WvW Skirmishes
1. Shorter matchups much like the current PvP system just on a larger scale with several matchup time limits. i.e. 2, 4, 8, 16, 24 and 48 hour matchup, or even just selectable match times (up to a limit of course) chosen by the skirmish creator.
2. Skirmishes could also be designed to use many more maps and playing objectives such as capture the flag, king of the hill, deathmatch (last team standing), total annihilation (destroy all enemy structures), last man standing (everyone is an enemy), outnumbered (one team is smaller than the other by design and plays to defend an objective until time is up or they wipe the enemy) and so on, such as you see in many other games.
3. Teams don’t even have to be limited to 2 team, 3 team limits. i.e. what if a team of 50 must defend their flag in the center of Divinity from 3 opposing teams of 20 players that must both work with and against the other teams in order to capture the flag and return it to their own district?
4. So many more options to list them all here.

I think this would lead to closer matchups, more controllable balance, much more variety in the structured matchups, gives the casual WvW players and PvE achievement hunters alternative means to get started in WvW with little to no effect on a structured matchup, much more fun options with skirmishes and would make server populations for PvE a moot point as now players don’t have to be tied down to any one world to be part of a winning or competitive WvW team.

I think a weekend match and a during the week match would be a nice idea. It certainly would make poor matchups less draining and more chances for great matchups. Seems most matches are mediocre to poor so rotating them more frequently makes sense. If they can ever balance out the fights, longer matches make a lot more sense.

Yes. I would love shorter match ups, 7 days is just too much imo…

RedStar.4218:

Solstice.1097:

2. More 3-way battles – usually by the 56-hour mark in a match, the 3rd place server is fighting for 2nd place, the 2nd place server is fighting for 1st, and the 1st place server is defending their lead against 2nd place. As the match progresses, it almost invariably leans towards a double-team against the 2nd place server. This is not the intent of WvW.

Speaking from GoM, we have been in enough match ups where the 1st place kept changing, or when suddenly, on the last day, the 1st place would get snatched away by another server.

Those are the best matches, but very scarce under the current system. How much more often would this happen in shorter matches? A lot.

I really don’t want to have to deal with match resets more than once a week. How long do you think your servers WvW population will last if they have to pull reset night tactics, hours, and dedication more than once a week? I hate playing or commanding reset nights because its so stressful and serious and time consuming. I pretty much avoid reset nights anymore.

AkiSakura.1657:

I really don’t want to have to deal with match resets more than once a week. How long do you think your servers WvW population will last if they have to pull reset night tactics, hours, and dedication more than once a week? I hate playing or commanding reset nights because its so stressful and serious and time consuming. I pretty much avoid reset nights anymore.

Having more resets I think would take some of the pressure off of them. Reset would still be a big deal, but less massive, especially when 2 of the resets occur during the week and outside of NA prime time.

And if 3 matches ends up seeming too many/too short, we could possibly run two matches of 84 hours each.

Or another idea I really like the sound of:

Make the rated portion of the matchup last 3-4 days, then the winner is decided, and the remainder of the match becomes un-rated and guesting is allowed across WvW servers until the next reset. The second half of the week would have limitless PvP and GvG possibilities and allow people to make new friends across servers and integrate communities a bit. The most competitive part of WvW, the weekend, is typically when there are (longer) queues in higher tiers so it would make even less sense to stack servers.

Solstice.1097:

AkiSakura.1657:

I really don’t want to have to deal with match resets more than once a week. How long do you think your servers WvW population will last if they have to pull reset night tactics, hours, and dedication more than once a week? I hate playing or commanding reset nights because its so stressful and serious and time consuming. I pretty much avoid reset nights anymore.

Having more resets I think would take some of the pressure off of them. Reset would still be a big deal, but less massive, especially when 2 of the resets occur during the week and outside of NA prime time.

And if 3 matches ends up seeming too many/too short, we could possibly run two matches of 84 hours each.

Or another idea I really like the sound of:

Make the rated portion of the matchup last 3-4 days, then the winner is decided, and the remainder of the match becomes un-rated and guesting is allowed across WvW servers until the next reset. The second half of the week would have limitless PvP and GvG possibilities and allow people to make new friends across servers and integrate communities a bit. The most competitive part of WvW, the weekend, is typically when there are (longer) queues in higher tiers so it would make even less sense to stack servers.

I really love all your ideas lol. You should work for anet xD

This wouldn’t make the ratings any more accurate for the simple fact that some servers are much stronger at certain times during the week.

Valik Shin.9027:

This wouldn’t make the ratings any more accurate for the simple fact that some servers are much stronger at certain times during the week.

This is true if we apply my suggested system to the current behavior, however I am convinced the current behavior, primarily including average peak population and coverage times, would change drastically under this system.

Valik Shin.9027:

This wouldn’t make the ratings any more accurate for the simple fact that some servers are much stronger at certain times during the week.

And if you look at my proposal, I proposed to have different rankings (or leagues) and matches for the different time-slices as I expect that a servers strength in NA-prime is quite unrelated to it’s strength in EU-prime.

It was about a week after the 1 week matches started that people wanted 2-3 day matches back. Seriously 1 week is worse in virtually every regard. Hell, remove upgrade costs and make it 1-day.

Dayra.7405:

Valik Shin.9027:

This wouldn’t make the ratings any more accurate for the simple fact that some servers are much stronger at certain times during the week.

And if you look at my proposal, I proposed to have different rankings (or leagues) and matches for the different time-slices as I expect that a servers strength in NA-prime is quite unrelated to it’s strength in EU-prime.

I’m not taking about different times of the day I’m talking about different times of the week. Some servers are really strong during the weekend and not during the week some are the inverse and some are just consistent in strength all week

Some servers seem to ‘suck’ during the week because they are PPT players and once the match has a clear victor they lose interest.

This would change that behavior.

Valik Shin.9027:

I’m not taking about different times of the day I’m talking about different times of the week. Some servers are really strong during the weekend and not during the week some are the inverse and some are just consistent in strength all week

A weekend match in the weekend ranking/league followed by weekday match for the weekday ranking/league would be a nice thing as well.

This game will never be balanced as long as people are split up into servers. If the game instead had factions that every server could join (but each faction still battled one another), it would be far more balanced. I have never, in all of my years, seen a single game that could solve server populations whatsoever. The only real fix is to not use servers as a determination of “ally” or “enemy” in combat.

That said, shorter matches would help, especially with variation. But ultimately its going to come back to the same problem that servers need to be merged.

IMO we need night time protection (NTP) first (implied more-so for T1/T2 match-up). During NA primetime, T2 can compete with T1 quite easily. During off-peak hours, this is where T1 is separated from the rest.

Night-time protection removes this issue. We’ll see more diversity in rankings because you don’t need to rely on SEA/EU/OC players to help you win. Now – all tiers are competitive during PST→EST time zones. You could easily see T2-T3 servers move to T1 because they have the same skilled players/guilds as current T1 primetime but don’t have off-peak guilds that create the current issue we have.

Short matches with no ntp means only weekends will show a difference in final score (compared to the average player who works/schools during off-peak, having weekdays free to play isn’t available).

So every weekend with a reset on Friday night will have higher scores across all servers because players can play during the weekend days. All other short matches will have different scores because said players cannot play during weekdays. This just skews the results / ratings.

I would like 2 matches per week. Yes, one of the matches would be a day longer than the other, but that is fine. Have a reset on Friday and Monday at the same time as now.

Solstice.1097:

Make the rated portion of the matchup last 3-4 days, then the winner is decided, and the remainder of the match becomes un-rated and guesting is allowed across WvW servers until the next reset. The second half of the week would have limitless PvP and GvG possibilities and allow people to make new friends across servers and integrate communities a bit. The most competitive part of WvW, the weekend, is typically when there are (longer) queues in higher tiers so it would make even less sense to stack servers.

No no no. This part would just make everything a karma train. 2 resets per week is way better.

style.6173:

Solstice.1097:

Make the rated portion of the matchup last 3-4 days, then the winner is decided, and the remainder of the match becomes un-rated and guesting is allowed across WvW servers until the next reset. The second half of the week would have limitless PvP and GvG possibilities and allow people to make new friends across servers and integrate communities a bit. The most competitive part of WvW, the weekend, is typically when there are (longer) queues in higher tiers so it would make even less sense to stack servers.

No no no. This part would just make everything a karma train. 2 resets per week is way better.

are you sure? i see lots of GvG’s and duels happening, and I see with guesting allowed during this portion, some matches would become karma trains while the players who don’t want karma trains would join the competitive matches. You could ideally have your choice of playstyle for 1/2 the week, regardless of how the competitive part went down. This would also be an ideal time for training new players without pressure and trying new tactics/experimenting.

oh, and currently in the majority of matches the 2nd half of the week is already a karma train.

Hannelore.8153:

This game will never be balanced as long as people are split up into servers. If the game instead had factions that every server could join (but each faction still battled one another), it would be far more balanced. I have never, in all of my years, seen a single game that could solve server populations whatsoever. The only real fix is to not use servers as a determination of “ally” or “enemy” in combat.

That said, shorter matches would help, especially with variation. But ultimately its going to come back to the same problem that servers need to be merged.

So long as players have sole control over who is and is not part of their team, there will never be any balance. My post above, I think, would lend itself to a more balanced matchup at least for structured matchups. To summarize, players choose their WvW guild during a registration period, that guild then registers for a matchup, guild and player stats, achievements, playing hours, etc. are then plugged into a formula to determine each guild’s WvW ‘strength’, then all registered guilds are placed across teams such that those teams match up as evenly as possible with guild strengths and time zone coverage. Some randomization and/or anti-affinity rules can also be used between matchups so that the same guilds aren’t always placed on the same teams as other guilds or always face the same guilds each week. i.e. if guild XYZ faced guild ABC this matchup, then the next matchup every effort would be made, where possible, to have XYZ and ABC in different matchups. Only registered guilds and players for that matchup will be allowed into the matchup while new players or unregistered players/guilds simply go into an unrelated matchup based on the current WvW system.

Since the guilds of structured matchups cannot guarantee or control which team they are placed in or what opponents they will face, it will be much more difficult for alliances to be created or at least to persist for any length of time. Nothing will truly guarantee that players won’t figure out some way to unbalance any matchup, but something like this would make it much more difficult to do.

More in-depth solutions may be more ideal, but extremely unlikely to be implemented within any sense of the “near future”

Shorter matches would be a much more immediate fix requiring very little resources to implement.

Solstice.1097:

More in-depth solutions may be more ideal, but extremely unlikely to be implemented within any sense of the “near future”

Shorter matches would be a much more immediate fix requiring very little resources to implement.

Maybe more immediate to implement, but I don’t really agree it is a fix for balance issues. It just gives the heavily weighted servers a shorter timeframe to stomp the lesser populated worlds. So even if you have 6 hour matchups, a world like BG has more than enough coverage to still dominate most other worlds so rather than losing once a week your world loses 28 times each week (4 matchups x 7 days). Even if your world has one really dominating timeslot each day over BG, for instance, that would only yield the potential of 7 wins out of 28 matchups per week. Wins sound good, but even then a really dedicated server like BG would simply improve their coverages across all timeslots, so it would still be unbalanced, and unlikely to change any end results. Same thing applies for 56 hour matchups; nothing really changes because dedicated servers will just compensate to ensure victory which is the whole reason why players all flocked to specific servers early on in the game; to overload their coverage and practically always guarantee a win. The problem is, there are no real controls to prevent or inhibit a world from doing that. It’s like having an NFL team that is allowed to play all 44 players at the same time against your 11 players. Even if you treat each quarter like a separate game, you’re still going to lose them all.

I would rather the developers spend the time and resources to actually design a more balanced and structured WvW matchup system which can mathematically improve the probability that matchups will be much closer, and which further inhibits the players’ abilities to overload the teams or dramatically control the outcome. Players will still try to do that with this system, but it would be much harder to accomplish and much harder to maintain over the course of subsequent matchups since the teams would inevitably vary between matchups. i.e. Your guild won’t always be paired with your friend’s guild, nor would your guild always oppose the same enemy guilds, etc.

Sure, it might not be really easy to implement, but what else does the WvW developer team have to do? It’s been well over a year and WvW hasn’t really changed so much to even proclaim it to be night and day different from beta.

Shorter matches would come up against the “weekend warrior” problem: Some servers are much MUCH stronger at weekends (I’m looking at you, German servers) than during the working week. This will result in bad matchups every odd game because the system can’t compensate for it.

I also believe that shorter matchups will result in people losing interest, as the names of opponents and the times they get matched up against certain servers become less memorable.