Guild Wars 2

Currently there is a difference of over 600 rating in the top 12 and 500 rating between the bottom 12, gold and silver league respectively for NA. For a match to be considered competitive, there needs to be a close variance of about 100 points in rating.

EU will have more balanced matches as their leagues have variance of of less than 300 rating for Gold and Silver. Bronze EU will not be quite so lucky. They share a variance disparity of over 700 points like NA.

The problem is in the way the matches are to be arranged. Before, there was a match stagnation where closely matched server where continuously matched against each other. Now you have match variance but the overall effect is still quite mismatched. Now you are going to make every server fight eachother at least once. The only chance for NA Gold to have a balance match is is rank 1-3 are split into 3 matches and never face each other at the same time. If they are matched in a single week, you will have 6 other weeks of Rank 1-3 servers delivering blowouts. Even if they are spread out, you will have 4-5 weeks of blowouts as Ranks 1-3 are put in matches with extreme rating disparity.

So I guess the question is, how do you plan to influence servers to spread themselves out in order to decrease rating variance and make matches more competitive?

For season 1 I think I’m going to play the way Anet wants me to. If season 1 “winners” are BG, SoR, YB and KN, then I’m going to show my displeasure in the league setup by doing PvE for season 2.

I’d love to see Anet’s reaction of a BG/FA/BP matchup where FA and BP just don’t play, and BG wins 300,000/0/0, but I don’t think they’re listening.

Swamurabi.7890:

For season 1 I think I’m going to play the way Anet wants me to. If season 1 “winners” are BG, SoR, YB and KN, then I’m going to show my displeasure in the league setup by doing PvE for season 2.

I’d love to see Anet’s reaction of a BG/FA/BP matchup where FA and BP just don’t play, and BG wins 300,000/0/0, but I don’t think they’re listening.

some pesky nub would flip a camp and make it 299,995/5/0 and ruin everything.

I would be the pesky noob.

Funny thing is, if BG/SOR/JQ face off in the first week, the league is basically over at that point and 1st, 2nd and 3rd are decided. According to Anet, each server will only be paired up once.

I honestly hope the Rank 1-3 servers face each other in the opening volley of matches so they can experience 6 weeks of boring kitten curb stomps in a league that was decided the first week. The first season will suck but as guilds on those servers realize how kittened stacking is and how meaningless their victory is.

May they die of eternal boredom and collapse under the weight of their own egos.

You sound mad, lol. It hasn’t even started yet, save some for later.

would be nice if we had a choice to opt out of the leagues. Not afraid of the competition as much as I’m concerned of all the rogue guilds we’d attract after kicking a lot of kittens.

UnrepentantProcrastinator.7420:

You sound mad, lol. It hasn’t even started yet, save some for later.

It isn’t the fault of the top 3 servers really, human nature causes people to stand around in large groups like cattle. Increases chances for survival. More of my anger would be at Anet for doing nothing to curb this behavior thusfar. Hand-holding and server stacking has been around for years in large open world PvP games.

Right now I am in a sweet spot for killing in WvW, just enough servers above me to provide plenty of targets and the servers directly below me are challenging enough to not just fold over at the presence of our fair-weather PvE militia.

In leagues, I fear many lopsided matches due to the fact that we only have 4 servers above us that can beat us and only 2 or 3 below that are challenging opponents. The difference between ranks 1-4 and ranks and 10-12 is like 300 rating points.

Top rank servers sustain themselves on the consistency of fights and the system kept Ranks 1-3 far away from the bottom 6. This system will not be so kind, the matches will get boring fast for anyone not in the middle. I mean just look at our current match, where you have SoR(nothing against them, I am sure their core is very coordinated) pretty much winning the match in 24 hours against rank 5 and 6 servers. Imagine if this was anyone rank 9 or lower.

If you think it is bad now consider things like this:
http://blackgatewvw.com/forum/index.php?/topic/1405-bg-arms-race-fundraiser/

They are basically shoring up numbers to try and guarantee victory despite the fact that they already stand an extremely strong chance of coming out in first place. The consequences of this are going to be extreme WvW boredom for about 5-6 out of 7 weeks. Goodluck Blackgate, I hope your Golden Dolyak was worth all the money and trouble!

junglizm.5843:

According to Anet, each server will only be paired up once.

This is impossible: with 12 servers and 7 matches, there must be at least one server that you meet twice. I believe what Anet said was that each server will, at some point during the season, meet every other server.

junglizm.5843:

I honestly hope the Rank 1-3 servers face each other in the opening volley of matches so they can experience 6 weeks of boring kitten curb stomps in a league that was decided the first week. The first season will suck but as guilds on those servers realize how kittened stacking is and how meaningless their victory is.

May they die of eternal boredom and collapse under the weight of their own egos.

This is probably their scheme to get players to move from T1 — they’re no longer fighting only amongst T1/T2 so there’s theoretically no reason to stack. Of course, with 12-server leagues and 7 week seasons, WvW will probably be dead before the end of season 1.