Guild Wars 2

With the start of WvW Season 2, Anet once more divided each region into 3 separate leagues. While I can understand the appeal to give multiple servers a chance to go after a “win”, in practice, it always turns out for the worse.

To give some “old” examples: in Guild Wars tournaments with a league system (Guru cup, RAWR cup), there was always the problem of guilds tanking rating to get into a lower league for an easy win. Even though the prizes were a lot less in the lower leagues, a prize is better than no prize.

Now take this to our current WvW competition, where prizes are equal in both gold, silver and bronze. Therefore, a player on a server winning in gold league, gets the exact same as somebody winning silver. It’s not hard to see how this might end badly in the lower leagues. Not surprisingly, a lot of players/guilds have flocked to a few servers for their “easy win”. And since the format is heavily biased towards coverage, they’ll most likely get that win (or at least a top 3 place).

The result for opposing servers is fairly obvious: crushing match-ups against larger numbers and better coverage, resulting in a big point gap (and some blows to motivation). However, the “winning” server is also at a loss, because the large influx of new players result in large queues, taking away (part of) the fun to be had in one play session.

The solution is simple: one ladder, one league, one season. The swiss-style system will make sure after 2 or 3 weeks, everyone is fighting servers with “equal” power/coverage. Early season server transfers should then focus on strengthening the bottom of the ladder, but the actual outcome of said transfers rarely matter as the swiss format will put servers with equal power together soon enough.

Reward-wise the end-of-season tickets can be grouped:
1st place: 600 tickets, 2nd and 3rd place: 500 tickets, 4th to 6th place: 450 tickets and so on. That way the goal is clear: end as high as possible, and hopefully have a lot of fun doing so.

If you want to give low-ranked servers something to fight for, hand out a weekly match-up reward during the season: a small number of tickets awarded to the server ending first, and a smaller number for 2nd place. Everyone who gained at least X world ranks during that week, gets the prize in the mail (X should not even be that high of a number, 2 or 3 ranks should be enough to “prove” you contributed). That way the low ranked servers still have something to play for, especially since they won’t win as many tickets at the end of the season.

I agree with you, don’t think anet cares as much about WvW compared to PvE tho =\, i enjoy the game but feel like the WvW aspect of the game isnt catered to much…

I’ve got a solution, don’t have leagues. Its not built for it. Implement some of the stuff they are doing in sPvP in WvW. Seriously its almost unbelievable that we have 7.5 weeks more of this kitten.

No. Then everyone who wants the max tickets tries to cram into that 1 server that wins. Instead of the 3 that win the leagues.

Crunk n monkey.3749:

No. Then everyone who wants the max tickets tries to cram into that 1 server that wins. Instead of the 3 that win the leagues.

I understand your concern, but I don’t think it’ll be a mass influx of players to the favourite server. You’ll always have bandwagon players, but guilds will not flock to an already overloaded server, since they won’t get enough playtime in with the extreme queues. Besides, the favourite servers will most likely be the highest seeds, making it extremely expensive to migrate towards, even pre-season.

IMO leagues are a terrible idea, unless something is done to even up the matchups. Knowing who you are going to fight and who is going to win takes some of the fun out of the game.

Of course, most of the time, once you know who you are going to fight, you know who is going to win. This is also a problem.

I don’t know the solution, but I do know that it doesn’t involve giving better rewards to the stacked servers winners in an uneven matchup.

The League structure is definitely a problem, it’s pretty obvious who is going to win really, not the better players but the ones with 24hour coverage. Appears as if the devs don’t really care about it, they have often said WvWvW is not supposed to be fair and I guess when your whole server zerg = 20-30 players to cover all maps and your opponents can field 60+ zergs per map, then yes I guess their stated intent of it not being fair holds true…and yes this is happening to us this week. The server got hit by the lower/free tier transfers and what was a stable tier 2 environment is now completely skewed. Wonder what will happen to these lower tier servers once the league is over though…

Myth Shaia.4856:

The League structure is definitely a problem, it’s pretty obvious who is going to win really, not the better players but the ones with 24hour coverage. Appears as if the devs don’t really care about it, they have often said WvWvW is not supposed to be fair and I guess when your whole server zerg = 20-30 players to cover all maps and your opponents can field 60+ zergs per map, then yes I guess their stated intent of it not being fair holds true…and yes this is happening to us this week. The server got hit by the lower/free tier transfers and what was a stable tier 2 environment is now completely skewed. Wonder what will happen to these lower tier servers once the league is over though…

This is what I don’t get, the devs have openly stated that WvW is not fair and that all servers are not on an even playing field but still they introduce tournaments as if every server has a chance. I would say a large portion of the complaints are that skill doesn’t win leagues its down to numbers and coverage. I don’t even really care if Anet fixes it so that WvW is fair, but at the very least stop making the unbalance worse with the leagues.

As for your question at the end, I am sure those servers will recover just in time for season 3 to roll around and mess everything up again.

WvW will never be “fair”, since one server is bound to have more players/better coverage. However, league play as it is now unbalances the competition even further, which is something that could be avoided.

I hope the devs do care about WvW. I know the format doesn’t receive a lot of love, but not doing something (not organizing seasons in separate leagues) shouldn’t be that hard

The multiple league system is poor, crude and ineffective. It results in;

• transfers/stacking,
• queues,
• boring gameplay,
• blobs and
• unjust rewards for
• coverage wars.

A non league system is going to have the exact same problem, just with fewer servers being stacked. Sure that sounds great for you guys that play at the top, but those of us who have clung to the lower ranked servers would get screwed in the rewards no matter what. A bronze tier server can’t take on a gold server, not because gold is more skilled, but because of the massive amount of players top tier servers have. If you were to only have one league then people would stack JQ/BG etc more and more, and the servers down at the bottom really have nothing to fight for since they won’t get the top rewards no matter how hard they try.

While this system isn’t great, it is far better than your proposed idea. Right now servers at least have a chance to fight for a 1st place spot even if they aren’t a top tier server.

I think they have to lock transferring down the day that they announce a new season so that people don’t try to manipulate their server rank (tanking) in order to get more transfers. Personally I think Anet is trying. You can tell by the fact that they gave out free transfers to the lowest ranked servers in each league. I think that was a great move, they just shouldn’t have announced it before actually implementing it.

The problem is that the current scoring mechanic weights the wrong thing. PPT and the way score works right now is only good for matching servers with even coverage. It is not a quality metric of the players on the server and should not be used as the score format for a competitive league. PPT works in sPVP because its a balanced format where skill can shine. WvW is not balanced enough for PPT to work. If you want to see why you can model the coverage game in Microsoft Excel. To do that follow the instructions below:

New excel sheet.
Rows 1 through 3 are estimated coverage for each hour in a day where the first one is midnight. Mark for 3 servers (3 rows) when each server has coverage.

In the 3 rows below that we’ll calculate each server’s score for a day assuming that servers PPT will balance when they have coverage and shift to the ones that don’t have coverage. Each server’s hourly PPT is calculated by the following
EDIT 2: a model that works is posted
EDIT:
If you want to figure the model: The model assumes a pool of 695 points available. A server with coverage gains an equal share with other servers that have coverage. When a b and c have coverage they all get 231.3. If B and C have coverage they have 695/2 points between them. When C only has coverage it gets all 695.
For server A:
A1 * 4 * 695 / SUM A1:A3
Server B:
A2 * 4 * 695 / SUM A1:A3
Server C
A3 * 4 * 695 / SUM A1:A3

edit 3: forum code ate the parentheses on the range. bottom could be (a1 +a2 +a3)

Those formulas calculate the PPT for a server assuming that when a server is marked as having coverage that it has dominating coverage over the other servers. You can make a weighted formula by assuming servers have a percentage coverage from 0 to 1 with 1 being full queued on every map. If your server queues only 2 maps you have 50% coverage.

Once those 3 formulas are entered highlight them and drag to the right to fill the full 24 hour day.

Daily score for a server is the sum of the score rows for that server. Weekly score is 7* that.

Play around with models for different coverage and you’ll see how much it plays into the score outcome.

lioka qiao.8734:

The problem is that the current scoring mechanic weights the wrong thing. PPT and the way score works right now is only good for matching servers with even coverage. It is not a quality metric of the players on the server and should not be used as the score format for a competitive league. PPT works in sPVP because its a balanced format where skill can shine. WvW is not balanced enough for PPT to work. If you want to see why you can model the coverage game in Microsoft Excel. To do that follow the instructions below:

New excel sheet.
Rows 1 through 3 are estimated coverage for each hour in a day where the first one is midnight. Mark for 3 servers (3 rows) when each server has coverage.

In the 3 rows below that we’ll calculate each server’s score for a day assuming that servers PPT will balance when they have coverage and shift to the ones that don’t have coverage. Each server’s hourly PPT is calculated by the following
EDIT 2: a model that works is posted
EDIT:
If you want to figure the model: The model assumes a pool of 695 points available. A server with coverage gains an equal share with other servers that have coverage. When a b and c have coverage they all get 231.3. If B and C have coverage they have 695/2 points between them. When C only has coverage it gets all 695.
For server A:
A1 * 4 * 695 / SUM A1:A3
Server B:
A2 * 4 * 695 / SUM A1:A3
Server C
A3 * 4 * 695 / SUM A1:A3

edit 3: forum code ate the parentheses on the range. bottom could be (a1 +a2 +a3)

Those formulas calculate the PPT for a server assuming that when a server is marked as having coverage that it has dominating coverage over the other servers. You can make a weighted formula by assuming servers have a percentage coverage from 0 to 1 with 1 being full queued on every map. If your server queues only 2 maps you have 50% coverage.

Once those 3 formulas are entered highlight them and drag to the right to fill the full 24 hour day.

Daily score for a server is the sum of the score rows for that server. Weekly score is 7* that.

Play around with models for different coverage and you’ll see how much it plays into the score outcome.

I like this, I hope Arenanet are working on it.

You can’t really compare the leagues to anything else, much less a competitive league. Using the guildwars 1 analogy … each team was limited to 8 players and each team was to field 8 players. That fasciliated a battle in which the higher skilled players won.

In guildwars 2 each team has a maximum number of people that can be battling at any time. Generally this is never reached except by the most populated servers on prime times.

Are you really complaining about people outside of Gold getting the same rewards as the people in Gold? This game isn’t set-up in a sense where higher tiered = better player. Higher tier pretty much = more population with vary few viarances between. If Gold was given better rewards than the others it just further compounds the issue of sever stacking.

I have played in on many severs all the way from 1st to 24th. I can tell you that nothing makes you work harder than being on the bottom where every fight is truly a battle. I find it Ironic how you want higher rewards in gold when in reality each player there (with some exceptions) does not have to work as hard as players in lower tiers. You can disagree with this but it is my perception from playing up and down the tiers.

KittyRiv.5291:

You can’t really compare the leagues to anything else, much less a competitive league. Using the guildwars 1 analogy … each team was limited to 8 players and each team was to field 8 players. That fasciliated a battle in which the higher skilled players won.

In guildwars 2 each team has a maximum number of people that can be battling at any time. Generally this is never reached except by the most populated servers on prime times.

Are you really complaining about people outside of Gold getting the same rewards as the people in Gold? This game isn’t set-up in a sense where higher tiered = better player. Higher tier pretty much = more population with vary few viarances between. If Gold was given better rewards than the others it just further compounds the issue of sever stacking.

I have played in on many severs all the way from 1st to 24th. I can tell you that nothing makes you work harder than being on the bottom where every fight is truly a battle. I find it Ironic how you want higher rewards in gold when in reality each player there (with some exceptions) does not have to work as hard as players in lower tiers. You can disagree with this but it is my perception from playing up and down the tiers.

I couldn’t agree more with this. Lower tiered servers work very hard, and contain very skilled guild groups. True there are people that are new/not good at wvw on lower tiered servers like anywhere else. But I stay in a lower tier specifically because it is more about the fights, and less about the PvDooring. We don’t always have a large zerg at our disposal, but the most memorable fights and best moments in WvW are when it is just a few of us fighting an equal few, or slightly larger group. Zerg v zerg isn’t as much fun as a good old fashioned 10 v 10. Or oftentimes that good 10 v 30. Trust me it feels so much better than karma training. I take admire people that stay lower tier far more than the people that flock to blackgate just to get their pretty shinnies for zerging.

It’s not even that there’s population disparity between servers. It’s ok that some servers are bigger than others. But when even servers that are adjacent in rank have huge population differences, then we have problems. Unfortunately, that’s the situation we’re in now.

Well, honestly, should Anet really devote a lot of resources to WvW when just a fraction of the actual population plays WvW?

I’m pretty happy that we get what we get. EoTM was a big undertaking (even though I find it pointless, it is a good test map for future additions to WvW, without affecting WvW).

The tourney is what it is, and it actually has brought up another stacked server (HoD), which could possibly make it to t2 and get spanked like DB did. Sucks to be us on SBI, who will know have to get rolled by another stacked server when the league ends.

Andrew Clear.1750:

Well, honestly, should Anet really devote a lot of resources to WvW when just a fraction of the actual population plays WvW?

Doing nothing would be preferable to leagues. Concentrating on QOL changes is what they should be doing.

Leagues are just making it easier for me to play TESO.

Myth Shaia.4856:

The League structure is definitely a problem, it’s pretty obvious who is going to win really, not the better players but the ones with 24hour coverage. Appears as if the devs don’t really care about it, they have often said WvWvW is not supposed to be fair and I guess when your whole server zerg = 20-30 players to cover all maps and your opponents can field 60+ zergs per map, then yes I guess their stated intent of it not being fair holds true…and yes this is happening to us this week. The server got hit by the lower/free tier transfers and what was a stable tier 2 environment is now completely skewed. Wonder what will happen to these lower tier servers once the league is over though…

It’s not all about coverage. In a certain match this week “up there”, all three servers were full at reset and yet within 2-3 hours one server was behind by 1k+.

morrolan.9608:

Andrew Clear.1750:

Well, honestly, should Anet really devote a lot of resources to WvW when just a fraction of the actual population plays WvW?

Doing nothing would be preferable to leagues. Concentrating on QOL changes is what they should be doing.

Leagues are just making it easier for me to play TESO.

Well, honestly, I have TESO, and I like the PvE better than GW2. As far as the RvR, it isn’t impressing me. To me it is just…. Run to the battle, dodge siege…dodge siege….dodge siege….die….run back…dodge siege….dodge siege……die….rinse and repeat for 30 mintues to an hour, and maybe get the keep. Or, if you are defending….run to the keep…dodge siege…dodge siege….die…run to the keep…dodge siege…dodge siege…die…rinse and repeat until you can drive them off, or the keep is lost.

And, that is if you don’t get stuck on the loading screen and have to restart the game til you get in. Also, the random crashes.

Maybe once people get organized and figure out some strategy, it might be more fun.

Also…what is the competitive reason for doing RvR? WvW it is to beat other serves, gain rankings, etc. Like a sport. RvR, I haven’t figured out (except to have an emperor).

eleshazar.6902:

Sure that sounds great for you guys that play at the top, but those of us who have clung to the lower ranked servers would get screwed in the rewards no matter what.

I actually play on a server with a 2-digit rank, so it’s false to assume only top server population would complain about this.

eleshazar.6902:

While this system isn’t great, it is far better than your proposed idea. Right now servers at least have a chance to fight for a 1st place spot even if they aren’t a top tier server.

I’m sorry, but right now, servers don’t have a chance either. The server who will probably win silver/bronze, is a server that took advantage of free transfers for a massive influx of players. In doing so, they “robbed” the opposing servers of part of their (relatively small) active WvW population.

Maybe we should indeed just do away with seasons to eliminate all the downsides they bring. Any time saved by the devs in this way could be used to fix WvW bugs instead.

Yea don’t mind us folk concerned about the future of a game we love.

@ ANET: I described this on my server’s forums and I’ll put it here cause i think this is the best description of the problem.

The PPT score system combined with Glicko does not work for use as a competitive scoring mechanism. It only works to match servers of even coverage with each other. Tournaments in the future need a new score system designed such that the skill of players on a server during evenly balanced times in a match is what determines the outcome of the match.

Attaching rewards to the current PPT system is about the stupidest thing you could have ever done. Need proof? look no further than the average daily tick mode of the graph on this page:
http://www.gw2score.com/server/Dragonbrand

EDIT – PS: the proof is in the pudding. Pick any server, set that graph to average daily tick. One server will be higher than the others. Then set to hourly average tick. You’ll see why. Big gaps in the graph where one server dominates another is due to coverage… especially between 530 gmt and 1600 gmt

It’s as fruitful and fair as most any organized competition. Misapprehensions. Misapprehensions, everywhere.

:D

The best option is for anet to determine who fights who, 1 day before resets during the league.

Best option is for no player suggested alternatives to ever be implemented.

Thanks, ANet!

I think it’s ridiculous that people still complain about imbalanced matchups…
There’s a 0% chance that any match ever will be balanced.
The best they could ever do would be 1v2v3… 4v5v6… 7v8v9… etc…
We already have that almost every week outside of seasons. Regardless of who you are, it’s nice to play some different servers once in a while, regardless if you win or lose by a lot since there’s really no substantial reward for winning or losing except for some sense of server pride.
If you want balance, transfer to tier 1, the top 3 are all fairly equal most of the time. if not, understand that once in a while you’ll go up against a server that will dominate you.
Determining skill of a server could never be properly measured under any metric.
Every server has their good/bad players, good/bad commanders, good/bad guilds, good/bad time zones.
No server ever has lost or won every week. No player or guild has ever not lost a fight.

For those complaining about the matchups for the season (especially silver league)… what would be better? ANet knew beforehand that everyone and their dog would go to HoD? Assuming they did… and they could handpick the matchups… and if they knew who the best 3 servers were… say HoD, FA, SBI… should Anet make HoD, FA, SBI fight each other 9 weeks in a row? That’s even more kittened.
Just accept that weeks sometimes will involve matchups where you’ll get rolled by servers with higher populations. HoD looks like maybe they’ll have a decent 9 weeks in league… then eventually once leagues end, they’ll get their butts handed to them on some massive epic scale once they fight T2 or T1, although with the way they’re handling FA, they may do ok in tier 2 as long as the population keeps showing up.
Long story short… it is impossible to make all the matchups balanced.
Seriously, who could Eredon Terrace even go up against where it would be fair?
For people playing on lower servers, they obviously like it there and don’t have a problem with it, or they would have transferred.
If you’re near the bottom of your league… take it as an opportunity to enjoy fighting some different servers for once and maybe learn a few things… who really cares if you lose by a lot.
Awesome thing about WvW… two thirds of the servers don’t win every week, so there are always way more losers than winners.

Shonie.5297:

I think it’s ridiculous that people still complain about imbalanced matchups…

There are ways to makes matches more balanced, just that they aren’t match-making improvements, but general balance improvements, just ANet does not follow them:
- make coverage/amount of player less important (by making matches shorter, e.g. weekend only and/or by changing the scoring functions, and/or ….)
- replace Server by anything that has a maximal amount of registered players per side (e.g. Guild Alliances), but an unlimited (dividable by 3) amount of sides you can join.
- make the map-capacity much smaller, such that low-pop server are able to fill them and high-pop server cannot play but have to distribute to play.

Dayra.7405:

Shonie.5297:

I think it’s ridiculous that people still complain about imbalanced matchups…

There are ways to makes matches more balanced, just that they aren’t match-making improvements, but general balance improvements, just ANet does not follow them:
- make coverage/amount of player less important (by making matches shorter, e.g. weekend only and/or by changing the scoring functions, and/or ….)
- replace Server by anything that has a maximal amount of registered players per side (e.g. Guild Alliances), but an unlimited (dividable by 3) amount of sides you can join.

No.

This: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Devs-Please-Merge-NA-Tier-3-8-into-Tier-1-2/

Only and #1 solution.

Merge everything into 6 server, yes. (is btw. the same as making map capacity smaller, just that making the capacity smaller, also reduces zerg-size and by that skilllaags)

All servers need to have queue 24/7 to make matches balanced.

Dayra.7405:

Merge everything into 6 server, yes. (is btw. the same as making map capacity smaller)

24 hours of 80 v 80 v 80 v 80

=/=

24 hours of 40 v 40 v 40 v 40

Next winky face, please!

Virtute.8251:

24 hours of 80 v 80 v 80 v 80

=/=

24 hours of 40 v 40 v 40 v 40

Next winky face, please!

4 sided matches? (and it’s not equal, but equally balanced)

if you have 10000 wvw-player you can make
- 3 servers 24/7 400 per side
or
- 6 server 24/7 200 per side
or
- 6 server 12/7 400 per side
or
…

I think bigger problems are the slow rate at which glicko scores change, free transfers, and a lack of rewards. I think leagues demonstrates that people will WvW if they got something for it, which from my experience in bronze last year, seemed to have helped those servers quite a bit with population.

Always better achievements are fine, rewards just based on achievements (not on rank) would not increase imbalance as the WTJ-movement for victory we have currently, but would increase motivation to be in WvW. Ok, it result in achievement farmer, but we are in PvP, any achievement-farmer is an objective for any kill-farmer

(Hehe I see a lot of funny threads appearing, don’t farm the farmer, code of conduct in the WvW-JPS, … )

And if you make the achievement unreachable for people on a server with much queue, even better …

Dayra.7405:

Virtute.8251:

24 hours of 80 v 80 v 80 v 80

=/=

24 hours of 40 v 40 v 40 v 40

Next winky face, please!

4 sided matches? (and it’s not equal, but equally balanced)

if you have 10000 wvw-player you can make
- 3 servers 24/7 400 per side
or
- 6 server 24/7 200 per side
or
- 6 server 12/7 400 per side
or
…

Four maps.

I would rather that you are forced to set your alarm to 3 AM to hope to get through queue by 5 AM for a few hours of gaming… or just a few minutes, since you hit disconnect and got requeued.

To avoid alarm-clocks, here is my favored:

When you form an alliance you choose which time-slice(s) your alliance want to play.
- 1:00-7:00 UTC
- 7:00-13:00 UTC
- 13:00-19:00 UTC
- 19:00-1:00 UTC
Each time-slice has it’s own set of (7 day) matches and it’s own ranking.
For all time-slices your alliance choose you can play WvW, for all others only EotM.

An Alliance is any set of guilds that choose to build a team for the next week.
There will always be a few Random-Alliances, that are needed to pad matches to 3 for people not in an alliance.

24 hour persistence and the thrill of uncertainty of (then checking up on) how your other-hours teammates are scoring is a superior aspect of WvW as-is.

Forum warriors: Learn to 24-hour game, please! For your own sake!

For those that wana have the thrill of loosing gaining everything while they are sleeping of course a choice of 24/7 should be possible.

But all others that don’t want that should be able to play what they want.

They should have divided the system into two tournaments, one for servers 1-12 and the other for 13-24. Let the swiss-style of tournament roll with that would let some of the lower tier servers fight the blobs.

A swiss-style tournament of 6 servers is pointless.

Any league is pointless with the current server-balance.

EU Gold with Gandara instead of SFR would probably be a quite interesting one, but as SFR wins everything without doubt, it’s as pointless as all other leagues.

Dayra.7405:

Any league is pointless with the current server-balance.

EU Gold with Gandara instead of SFR would probably be a quite interesting one, but as SFR wins everything without doubt, it’s as pointless as all other leagues.

Self-fulfilling prophecy condition is OP. Eat more lemongrass, IRL.

You have the power!

Virtute.8251:

Dayra.7405:

Any league is pointless with the current server-balance.

EU Gold with Gandara instead of SFR would probably be a quite interesting one, but as SFR wins everything without doubt, it’s as pointless as all other leagues.

Self-fulfilling prophecy …

Unfortunately it’s not a prophecy, but a current fact that:
- there is only 1 match with 1st and 3rd less than 10k apart
- there are only 2 other matches with 1st and 2nd less than 20k away
But
- there are 12 matches where 1st and 2nd are over 50k apart
- There 6 matches where 1st and 2nd are over 100k apart and
- 8 matches where 1st and 3nd are over 100k apart

13 out of 17 (14 non-EU-gold) matches are currently very imbalanced, such that the leagues are non-sense (and not will be non-sense due to my prophecy).

Dayra.7405:

Virtute.8251:

Dayra.7405:

Any league is pointless with the current server-balance.

EU Gold with Gandara instead of SFR would probably be a quite interesting one, but as SFR wins everything without doubt, it’s as pointless as all other leagues.

Self-fulfilling prophecy …

Unfortunately it’s not a prophecy, but a current fact that:
- there is only 1 match with 1st and 3rd less than 10k apart
- there are only 2 other matches with 1st and 2nd less than 20k away
But
- there are 12 matches where 1st and 2nd are over 50k apart
- There 6 matches where 1st and 2nd are over 100k apart and
- 8 matches where 1st and 3nd are over 100k apart

13 out of 17 (14 non-EU-gold) matches are currently very imbalanced, such that the leagues are non-sense (and not will be non-sense due to my prophecy).

Observer bias, again.

The fact you have illustrated is that Week 2 of Swiss Style is working as intended, as it has to, and as basic arithmetic would have revealed in any case.

Virtute.8251:

Observer bias, again.

The fact you have illustrated is that Week 2 of Swiss Style is working as intended, as it has to, and as basic arithmetic would have revealed in any case.

My bias or your unwillingness to see the facts?

Last week “The most balance week possible” (http://mos.millenium.org/eu/matchups/history/160 and http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/history/160) had only 3 close matches as well and every other week will be less balanced than last.

This tournament is non-sense.

Dayra.7405:

Virtute.8251:

Observer bias, again.

The fact you have illustrated is that Week 2 of Swiss Style is working as intended, as it has to, and as basic arithmetic would have revealed in any case.

My bias or your unwillingness to see the facts?

Your bias and unwillingness to correctly interpret facts, I’m arguing.

Dayra.7405:

Last week “The most balance week possible” (http://mos.millenium.org/eu/matchups/history/160 and http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/history/160) had only 3 close matches as well and every other week will be less balanced than last.

This tournament is non-sense.

I’m sorry for your not understanding the facts. I can only help, I can’t inject the understanding into you.

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.

Apparently, typing the word “kitten” (in all forms) is considered rude.

[edited to remove the kittens]

Every minute spent in the WvW forums is a minute not spent fighting.

Put your complaints back in your pants and go fight. Otherwise, vote with your feet instead of complaining about that which you don’t have any control.

<#insert screaming onomatopoeia>

The problem is that rankings are based on a server’s history, and their matchup for the season is ranked accordingly. However, because of the huge movement of guilds prior to the season start the reality no longer matches the history for servers.

So what we have is a handful of matches that are no longer balanced as intended. The result is a few blowout matches which are discouraging for players who end up playing wvw less as a result, making the problem even worse.

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.

This is just stupid and narrow minded. There’s a lot of ways to make WvW more fair and balanced. Players have been pointed ways to do that since forever.

yanniell.1236:

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.

This is just stupid and narrow minded. There’s a lot of ways to make WvW more fair and balanced. Players have been pointed ways to do that since forever.

Yeah. Inappropriate, untenable, nonprofitable, irrelevant ways… since forever, or at least since Beta.

That quote is one of the truest and most insightful things that Devon has ever said about WvW, and he deserves a bonus check for having the nerve to click “Reply” on it.

But we can all stay at home if the winners are known after round 1.

9 round swiss-tournament with 6-9 server is non-sense in itself.

You need 5 round swiss-tournament to accurately order 50 players in pairwise matches

And last but not least, a competition based on who attracted most WTJ’s is not really better than the rest.

Design decisions (like actions) have consequences. There is virtue in letting a disaster play out. I am opposed to fixing the broken system — such would be knee-jerk or reactionary.

Rolling fixes are all too often the result of poor planning, inadequate frontloading, or immature simulation — any of which is a direct reflection of poor leadership, or more likely, bad management. I can’t stand it when simple-minded decision-makers lurch about after a decision.

• We take to the field of opportunity — not the field of dreams.
• We fight with the army we have — not the army we want.

Rather than lock in failure, I think it is much healthier and productive to accept the real circumstances into which we have been thrust than to obsess over ideals.

Whether I take to field with 1, 10, or 100, I want those around me to trust that I will deliver my best possible performance. And regardless of the standings or metrics, I want the amazing talent that I fight with and against will deliver their best possible performance. Win or lose, I want to take to field with friends and make the kind of legendary memories that will survive well after this venue has gone to the bit bucket.

Choices were made… those choices will lead to specific outcomes.

I can not blame ANet or a server or another individual for my poor performance. In the end, I accept personal responsibility for my fun. I own it and if it is unsatisfying… I understand that I chose to accept the challenge.

If you don’t like or can’t handle the challenge, find your fun elsewhere.

Years from now, your friends won’t care if you won or lost on a particular server in a particular event… THE STORY will be that you were there — and how great (or miserable) it was!

And tomorrow, there will be a new story to commiserate…