Guild Wars 2

Dranul.2094:

They should have the decency to at least admit that this league system is to simply make money from gem sales, that they don’t care/understand about the health of w v w.

People can see right through you, customers know when they getting a bum deal.

You should have the decency not to talk out of your kitten .

Zzzzz.

The league itself isn’t a terrible idea, though the implementation thereof can be debated pretty heavily. Especially the implementation while most avid WvWers will likely still be working on getting to the new BiS plateau.

What really irks me is after Devon finished with the announcement, the moderator or whoever said some to the effect of "What do you world v worlders think of that! " Like, “Aha! you’ve been complaining all this time, when we’ve had this up our sleeves!”

Just like WXP, it’s not a terrible idea, but it’s got shaky implementation, and it’s not really what anyone was looking for.

DevonCarver.5370:

I’ve consistently said we are doing 2 leagues in NA and 3 in EU. The leagues will be broken up strictly by world rating at the conclusion of the matchup prior to the league start.

The WvW Community has consistently said your ideas are bad.

You’re gonna get Jay Wilson’d if you keep it up.

Let’s face it, you’re going to have to consolidate servers here pretty soon. The lower tiers are dead, and I mean dead. I recently transferred off of one because we roamed for 2 hours and didn’t see a single player.

4 Leagues, possibly 3 when you decide it’s time to merge Anvil Rock, Devona’s, and Fergs.

Vena.8436:

Dranul.2094:

They should have the decency to at least admit that this league system is to simply make money from gem sales, that they don’t care/understand about the health of w v w.

People can see right through you, customers know when they getting a bum deal.

You should have the decency not to talk out of your kitten .

Zzzzz.

Blind ANET fanboi?

What do you think will happen when they “reward” these “skilful” *cough 24/7 coverage servers…. mass exodus from servers: for example in NA, rank 7-12 to 13-15 so they get “rewarded”. It will happen, ANET is banking on it. In the hope that a lot pay for gems to xfer. Its a cash cow – and they will milk it.

But go back to putting your blinkers on, I love this game and potential don’t get me wrong, but get your nose out of their kitten and take a whiff – it’s not roses you smell.

Perphection.8209:

DevonCarver.5370:

I’ve consistently said we are doing 2 leagues in NA and 3 in EU. The leagues will be broken up strictly by world rating at the conclusion of the matchup prior to the league start.

The WvW Community has consistently said your ideas are bad.

You’re gonna get Jay Wilson’d if you keep it up.

Let’s face it, you’re going to have to consolidate servers here pretty soon. The lower tiers are dead, and I mean dead. I recently transferred off of one because we roamed for 2 hours and didn’t see a single player.

4 Leagues, possibly 3 when you decide it’s time to merge Anvil Rock, Devona’s, and Fergs.

More like stupid, idiotic and unwanted.

The wvw maps already have numerous problems here are some although by all means not any where to a complete list.

1) anet
2) Small population caps
3) Small size
4) Population on winning servers just zerg
5) anet
6) Skill Lag
7) anet

The league idea is moronic at this point unless they found some talent and an investor so that the wvw servers can now handle every one on a server it is simply a poorly though idea. As no one will want to be forced to queue up for a chance at this because anet lacks the talent to make the map a large enough size to handle the population.

Dranul.2094:

Vena.8436:

Dranul.2094:

They should have the decency to at least admit that this league system is to simply make money from gem sales, that they don’t care/understand about the health of w v w.

People can see right through you, customers know when they getting a bum deal.

You should have the decency not to talk out of your kitten .

Zzzzz.

Blind ANET fanboi?

What do you think will happen when they “reward” these “skilful” *cough 24/7 coverage servers…. mass exodus from servers: for example in NA, rank 7-12 to 13-15 so they get “rewarded”. It will happen, ANET is banking on it. In the hope that a lot pay for gems to xfer. Its a cash cow – and they will milk it.

But go back to putting your blinkers on, I love this game and potential don’t get me wrong, but get your nose out of their kitten and take a whiff – it’s not roses you smell.

The few people I have heard talk about transferring are willing to get the gems although anet wont see their cash. A guild was talking about this on south shore the other day when I was farming.

I’m not opposed to the league idea. But there are some pretty big problems with WvW that will only be amplified by introducing a league. Why not fix those problems before starting down a more serious format?

sostronk.8167:

I’m not opposed to the league idea. But there are some pretty big problems with WvW that will only be amplified by introducing a league. Why not fix those problems before starting down a more serious format?

My guess is lack of talent would be why so many bugs are still in game from beta and launch.

don’t you people see the ingenuity of A-Net?? players from all the servers not in the top three will buy gems to transfer to where there are prizes. This generates revenue. this will make all the other servers obsolete and a-net can deactivate these servers and save costs. Killing two birds with one stone!!

will worlds move up and down in this leagues system? Will the winner of Bronze league move up to silver and the last place in silver move down to bronze?

NornBearPig.9814:

I’m worried more about the rank 13-15 servers.

Exactly. And I’m SBI, rank 13/14. This is the worst position to be in. We have recently gotten a lot of transfers in and we will completely kick the ever living kitten out of any and all servers below us. That would be the most boring 7 weeks of WvW ever.

Archon.7516:

I should mention that you have also just created a system where everyone will THROW for the next 2 weeks, AND this has now become a contest to see who can throw hardest to have a chance at rewards/a fun matchup. Assuming they can make it to the 1,2,3 OR 13,14,15

Please do it! To the people from Yaks, BP that were talking about throwing their matches above – do it! Let SBI come up to 12! We won’t shy away from the fights. I personally would love to go up against DragonBrand again. And heck bring on JQ, SoR and BG. Sure we’ll get demolished in points. But I’d be willing to bet we’d give them some good fights. And anything will be better than the borefest of rolofstomping every single week.

All you people whining about being 10, 11, 12 are out of your minds. 13 is the worst position to be in. Because 13 is going to win the 13-24 league hands down – by more points than the winner of the 1-12 league! 13 is going to demolish every server lower than them.

Please Devon, make it 3 leagues. 8 teams per league. And two will have a bye every week – where they get to fight mano y mano. 1v1. Now that would be cool.

Devon I think your doing a good job but seriously your out of touch with WvW. You and your team need to take the time before this league starts and transfer to every server and play at times your normally wouldn’t i.e. not reset day or NA prime. Your numbers tell you these servers crush people but it’s not until you actually see it in action that it sinks in and you realize skill has nothing to do with it. Do it in the name of research.

Watch as your group while in a T3/4/5 server won’t be able to take anything but camps and maybe a unguarded tower during European/Oceanic/SEA against T1/2 servers that you probably won’t hold for the point tick. Watch the karma train while sitting in a T1 or T2 server against T3/4/5. Watch in the lower tiers the literal ghost town at these times. Then you’ll understand the true gaps between the servers and maybe then it will lead you guys to a solution. As many have stated it’s not skill and never will be skill it’s all coverage and population

The only way “skill” will matter is if you get points based on kills. Like if it is a relatively equal engagement, you get x amount of points. If you go like 20v50 and win you get 3x points, etc. Keeps, towers, and camps will still reward points. If I recall, a system like this is sort of in place already with dolyak kills. (But that is reversed as a group of 10 killing a dolyak rewards more than 1 guy killing a dolyak)

Skapocalypse.5236:

Devon I think your doing a good job

And yet

Skapocalypse.5236:

but seriously your out of touch with WvW.

In the same breath…doesn’t add up. I will agree with the statement about being out of touch with wvw, sadly as a result theirs no way the good job statement is fitting.

Skapocalypse.5236:

Devon I think your doing a good job but seriously your out of touch with WvW. You and your team need to take the time before this league starts and transfer to every server and play at times your normally wouldn’t i.e. not reset day or NA prime. Your numbers tell you these servers crush people but it’s not until you actually see it in action that it sinks in and you realize skill has nothing to do with it. Do it in the name of research.

Watch as your group while in a T3/4/5 server won’t be able to take anything but camps and maybe a unguarded tower during European/Oceanic/SEA against T1/2 servers that you probably won’t hold for the point tick. Watch the karma train while sitting in a T1 or T2 server against T3/4/5. Watch in the lower tiers the literal ghost town at these times. Then you’ll understand the true gaps between the servers and maybe then it will lead you guys to a solution. As many have stated it’s not skill and never will be skill it’s all coverage and population

qft

So again I’m going to ask.

Why is 4 NA leagues not doable?

Skapocalypse.5236:

Devon I think your doing a good job but seriously your out of touch with WvW. You and your team need to take the time before this league starts and transfer to every server and play at times your normally wouldn’t i.e. not reset day or NA prime. Your numbers tell you these servers crush people but it’s not until you actually see it in action that it sinks in and you realize skill has nothing to do with it. Do it in the name of research.

Watch as your group while in a T3/4/5 server won’t be able to take anything but camps and maybe a unguarded tower during European/Oceanic/SEA against T1/2 servers that you probably won’t hold for the point tick. Watch the karma train while sitting in a T1 or T2 server against T3/4/5. Watch in the lower tiers the literal ghost town at these times. Then you’ll understand the true gaps between the servers and maybe then it will lead you guys to a solution. As many have stated it’s not skill and never will be skill it’s all coverage and population

qft

I see this helping WvW populations across the board, but man I can see so much bandwagon hopping to winning servers towards the end of the season.

Devon, are there any plans in place to prevent this from happening towards the end of each “season?” Something that basically keeps players from trying to GLOMP on the spoils of victory simply by transferring at the end?

That, or just simply make an oceanic league. Which is probably a lot less simple than I’m making it sound, but those coveted oceanics are just waving happily from the other end of the world knowing everyone on every server wants them there to ensure overal point victory in a league. This is coming from a guy who transferred to an oceanic server after having all his server’s stuff “night” capped all the time, too

Just doesn’t make sense when a few teams win a season simply because they can “show up” to the most overall games, right?

skeet.1390:

So again I’m going to ask.

Why is 4 NA leagues not doable?

Likely due to lack of variation

So is this a one time event. Like the Fall Classic? Or is this every seven weeks?

Please say one time event.

But guys/gals your forgetting one key factor … the PuGs/PvE folks, surely they will all Que up now for this super awesome system and help us defeat the Server Giants of each League. They PvE ALOT I think they know a thing or two about killing Giants.

So you see all your worries are misplaced, now thakittens been cleared up why not just make 1 League so rank 24 can show Rank 1 how fierce PvE truly is.

Nuzt.7894:

But guys/gals your forgetting one key factor … the PuGs/PvE folks, surely they will all Que up now for this super awesome system and help us defeat the Server Giants of each League. They PvE ALOT I think they know a thing or two about killing Giants.

So you see all your worries are misplaced, now thakittens been cleared up why not just make 1 League so rank 24 can show Rank 1 how fierce PvE truly is.

The PvE folks might do it if it means that the rewards are greater than their dungeon/fractals runs. Now what is the likelihood of that happening?

DevonCarver.5370:

skeet.1390:

So do 4 leagues in NA. This eliminates the enormous population difference from server 1 to server 12 and 13 to 24.

If you really think the server that is ranked 12th at the start of this stands any chance against the top servers you are delusional.

I never said they did. However, I’d argue that they do in fact stand a chance against the 6th ranked server and the 5th ranked server. We are not trying to only ever match you up against your closest comparable server. That was what was happening with the system before and it was bad. If you are saying you don’t ever even want the chance to try and show your skill against a higher ranked server, then I don’t know what to say.

You make it sound like we are all sissies that can’t handle a challenge, but YOU are the ones that decided to make it about more than that. You had to go and hand out UNIQUE rewards to servers that win. This is not about challenge at all, but a completely unfair reward system that purely rewards population and not individual skill or strategy. At least make the rewards non-unique so we don’t permanently miss out on rewards just because we chose the wrong server a year ago (so much skill involved in that choice right? Serves me right for liking the name “Crystal Desert” better than other names /s).

I am going to guess that the achievements for the WvWvW league are things Devon feels reward skill, and that the meta-achievement will be a nice reward. However, the fact that certain rewards are hidden behind your server’s placing in the league is something that rewards rewards coverage/population.

Generally, from what we know, the league will encourage two things: throwing matches and bandwaggoning.

Also, as has always been the problem, a server getting blown out discourages participation and interest, and things snowball from there. You will have people look at a match-up, see that the outcome is already decided, and skip out on participating and wait for a match-up in which they can more easily get their achievements done. Any sense of skill or pride in skill will lose out to the path of least resistance towards rewards.

The issue with the “skill based” achievements will be, how many yaks do you think you will kill or camps will you take when all maps are covered with high coverage population ? 3/4 of the servers are going to be crushed and demoralized. I play on AR, we lost probably 75% of our WvW pop, I don’t begrudge the people that left, I hold nothing against them and wish them all the best, but, currently we have issues competing with the second lowest rank server, thats putting it nicely.

I’ve fought the other servers that would be considered high population in the lower League when we had numbers, there will be no point in logging in tbh.

I also think Anet doesn’t understand how crappy these Matches will be every 2 weeks of new Living World Content.

right now, SBI has more score the BP and DH, You wait till tomorrow when the new content patch hits, By the end of the week, SBI will be in 3rd place by the incredible loss of population as everyone runs to do PVE.

Countless idea’s from the community on how to improve WvW.. But they choose to brainstorm around a table at the office and come up with a league system idea that never ever was mentioned by the community. Anet start listening to your WvW testers.

DevonCarver.5370:

skeet.1390:

So do 4 leagues in NA. This eliminates the enormous population difference from server 1 to server 12 and 13 to 24.

If you really think the server that is ranked 12th at the start of this stands any chance against the top servers you are delusional.

I never said they did. However, I’d argue that they do in fact stand a chance against the 6th ranked server and the 5th ranked server. We are not trying to only ever match you up against your closest comparable server. That was what was happening with the system before and it was bad. If you are saying you don’t ever even want the chance to try and show your skill against a higher ranked server, then I don’t know what to say.

We will continue to look into ways to change scoring to try and even out some of the population based imbalances, but that is not an easy task and it won’t happen during the season.

Number 12 stands a chance against number 5?

Mr. Carver, you are either being intentionally disingenuous or are frighteningly unobservant. This week SoS-Ebay-DB matchup shows exactly how that would play out.

Johje Holan.4607:

So is this a one time event. Like the Fall Classic? Or is this every seven weeks?

Please say one time event.

qft

guys guys guys. obviously rank 24 can beat rank 13. gee willickers! They get to test their skill vs higher ranked people!

i remember just last week i jumped into 20 people and tested all their skillz! it was so much fun!

Fun!

here it comes

fun!

WATCH OUT!

OH GOD ITS EVERYWHERE

Perphection.8209:

DevonCarver.5370:

I’ve consistently said we are doing 2 leagues in NA and 3 in EU. The leagues will be broken up strictly by world rating at the conclusion of the matchup prior to the league start.

The WvW Community has consistently said your ideas are bad.

You’re gonna get Jay Wilson’d if you keep it up.

Let’s face it, you’re going to have to consolidate servers here pretty soon. The lower tiers are dead, and I mean dead. I recently transferred off of one because we roamed for 2 hours and didn’t see a single player.

4 Leagues, possibly 3 when you decide it’s time to merge Anvil Rock, Devona’s, and Fergs.

Ferg can beat ET and has Proven it a number of times, ET is just good at leaching points off of larger server to the point they might beat them in a larger match up giving them just enough rating to stay ahead of us, so you might want to rethink that.

Everyone will win in the end:

The #1, #13 servers get the League rewards, while the #12 and #24 servers get all that PvE loot from doing that instead of WvW. This is just a wonderful idea!

Number 12 stands a chance against number 5?

i wish people would stop saying things like this, because that’s not how the matchups work.

it would be 2v9v12 or some such configuration. WvW is 1v1v1 for a reason. theoretically advantages the stronger server achieves should be limited by the weaker servers ganging up on it. For some reason this rarely happens. shrug

^ This might actually change ’cause of the league system.

Shoe.5821:

Number 12 stands a chance against number 5?

i wish people would stop saying things like this, because that’s not how the matchups work.

it would be 2v9v12 or some such configuration. WvW is 1v1v1 for a reason. theoretically advantages the stronger server achieves should be limited by the weaker servers ganging up on it. For some reason this rarely happens. shrug

In your specific example, I think #2 would beat #9 and #12 even if they cooperated and double-teamed #2. That’s how unbalanced the populations are. More generally, double-teaming never lasts very long, the two weaker servers will always end up fighting each other at some point. That’s where the strong server takes over. From there the two weaker servers begin to fight each other even more in order to get 2nd place. There’s probably a better explanation in terms of Game Theory.

That’s because in a three-way bout between Ali, a semi-pro boxer, and a 90lb asthmatic weakling you just decapitate the kitten with one swing before turning your attention to each other.

Shoe.5821:

Number 12 stands a chance against number 5?

i wish people would stop saying things like this, because that’s not how the matchups work.

it would be 2v9v12 or some such configuration. WvW is 1v1v1 for a reason. theoretically advantages the stronger server achieves should be limited by the weaker servers ganging up on it. For some reason this rarely happens. shrug

Do you have inside information ? Your presumption is no more legitimate than others, actually yours is less legitimate because we have all seen Anet at work. I’m willing to bet it will look more like #1v#2v#12 followed by #1v#2v#11 and so on, why do I think this ? Anet is driving this beast, and the very notion that they believe 2 leagues will work best shows how blind they are. Oh and ganging up ? really … 12 and 9 still have less than 2 so it wouldn’t matter.

Kaamau.5341:

Perphection.8209:

DevonCarver.5370:

I’ve consistently said we are doing 2 leagues in NA and 3 in EU. The leagues will be broken up strictly by world rating at the conclusion of the matchup prior to the league start.

The WvW Community has consistently said your ideas are bad.

You’re gonna get Jay Wilson’d if you keep it up.

Let’s face it, you’re going to have to consolidate servers here pretty soon. The lower tiers are dead, and I mean dead. I recently transferred off of one because we roamed for 2 hours and didn’t see a single player.

4 Leagues, possibly 3 when you decide it’s time to merge Anvil Rock, Devona’s, and Fergs.

Ferg can beat ET and has Proven it a number of times, ET is just good at leaching points off of larger server to the point they might beat them in a larger match up giving them just enough rating to stay ahead of us, so you might want to rethink that.

And if ET and FC are in the same matchup we can more than compete with GoM or SF.

They really are trying to kill their game off. There’s no other explanation for this. You’re going to pair servers that haven’t ever faced off in over a year of this game for good reason. Your player base will get tired of fighting 2/3/4/5:1 odds and simply not log on for the remainder of that week.

Jinks.2057:

Sarrs.4831:

Jinks.2057:

How is this done…..I hope Anet does it based solely on WvW populations

It’s no secret that coverage = wins in WvW

There’s no magic quotient for “skill” in the leaderboards. If wins are determined by coverage as you say, then the leaderboards are absolutely an analysis of coverage, so they can just set up the leagues by the leaderboards.

I don’t think enough time has passed for the random glicko to work out the correct order of servers. The middle is still a jumble.

I’m pretty sure anet has better stats than what we have access to as well.

According to my analysis we need another 12 more weeks before we can see stability in the glicko(+rng) system. At the moment , the average of all servers to win max points is around an average of 40%

I am wondering if they are trying to get everyone OUT of WvW and funnel us into the PVE farm fest called the Living Story so they can then say “Look at how many people LOVE our content updates!” and claim success!

Luiz Swordbreaker.6547:

DevonCarver.5370:

bradderzh.2378:

We, the people of lower tiers, don’t mind testing our metal against tough odds. We do however mind it when the servers with the most players and best coverage gets the best rewards purely for the numbers reason only.

But as you said in another topic, wvw isn’t fair. All rank 12 has to do is throw enough matches to drop to rank 13 and get the best rewards.

So, as I’ve said before, we are still looking into ways to try and alleviate those problems, but that is also what WvW is like right now, so while this season will create new rewards and new incentives to play, it isn’t as though this is a brand new problem. We want to make it so that skill is more important than sheer numbers and we have some ideas. None of them are so easy/safe to implement that they are going to happen in the near-term.

Could I make a suggestion?
When the Sept 17th patch comes out:
1) Reduce map caps
2) Lock transfers to the top 4 servers
3) Allow free transfers for a week or 2
4) During that time, have shorter matches like we had on launch to rebalance stuff a bit.
5) Revert back to paid transfer system when season 1 starts

I am sad to see your suggestions have not yet generated a bit more discussion Use Your Illusion since they are exactly what needs to happen for this League idea to be anything other than a lot of facerolling through matches by the top tier worlds and will have no chance in kitten of happening if the community does stand up and say we want these things because we’ve had so many vocal screamers against these sort of solutions in the past.

Come on guys, if ANET is going to do this (and I don’t expect them to change their mind) then we as a community need to be solidly behind the things have a chance of improving the situation. I would say making the outmanned buff provide a player kill = points system as suggested previously would also be of great benefit once the League starts but there is a lot of problems that should be addressed before the thing gets going.

Vena.8436:

Dranul.2094:

They should have the decency to at least admit that this league system is to simply make money from gem sales, that they don’t care/understand about the health of w v w.

People can see right through you, customers know when they getting a bum deal.

You should have the decency not to talk out of your kitten .

Zzzzz.

lol Anet fanboys and redditers still have the balls to post on these forums after being embarrassed repeatedly by the performance of their gods?

This is to make money off of their failed matching system before switching to a new one, plain and simple. They figure..hey..if people are stupid enough to stay around after all the failed match ups and boring wvw..I’m sure they will pay us money for being bad at our job, too.

And what do you know..

DevonCarver.5370:

We are not trying to only ever match you up against your closest comparable server. That was what was happening with the system before and it was bad. If you are saying you don’t ever even want the chance to try and show your skill against a higher ranked server, then I don’t know what to say.

We will continue to look into ways to change scoring to try and even out some of the population based imbalances, but that is not an easy task and it won’t happen during the season.

First, you should only ever match a server up against it’s closest competition, otherwise you’re sending lambs to the slaughter. WvW is not skill based it’s numbers and coverage based, maybe if you spent some time learning what the metagame has become you’d know that. Winning and Losing this said contest of coverage is subject to a snowball effect. The pick up groups who actually care about winning, once they realize they’re up against superior numbers, coverage, and adherence to the seige/zerg metagame, will get sick of constantly waypointing and the repair costs that’re never offset by the already meager rewards of the mode, much less the slim pickings of constantly losing in lopsided engagements. The contrary is also true, when the fair-weathers learn they’re up against an inferior server they show up in force, queue every map, and farm the opposition.

The players on a lower tier server in a match up with higher tiers just stop fighting to win, and just play for fun. This fun only really occurs in open field fights where siege is not a factor, with near equal numbers, which ultimately makes GvG’s more attractive than playing the Points-Per-Tick meta. The rewards aren’t anything great even when you zerg up to Karma-Train across the map, and if rewards are your goal, you’re not playing WvW for them. Put simply you pit lower tiers against higher tiers you discourage fair competition resulting in hallow victories against weaker servers, and excusable defeats against stronger ones. Not providing these balanced matches is a development failure on your part, not on our part for wanting the match-up to be fair. Skill is only a factor when all other variables are equal, it’s a really basic principle to understand. You throw a tier 3 server up against tier 1 server blobs and they could be the best gamers on the planet, and it wont result in anything but another tier 1 victory.

Secondly, there’s no need to “look into” the “population based imbalances”. The answer to that problem is the problem itself. Gee, populations are imbalanced, why not match populations up against equal or near equal populations? Here’s what you do man:

Step 1: pull the login data off the login server and chart it in an excel spreadsheet for WvW populations. Look at the peek hours for each server, and add that to the match making calculation.

Numbers and Coverage mater more than skill despite your unfounded reference to the contrary. If you want that to change you’ve got ALOT of work to do, and I sincerely doubt you have the budget, time, or the comprehension of the mode to pull it off.

Step 2: alter the point system that contributes to the world score so that they scale up or scale down based on population. Lower populations can score higher for captures and higher populations score less for captures.

It’s the exact same logic used when scaling PvE content for larger groups. Just look at the features in the game that already exist and see how they work, why they work, and where they work and use them in WvW. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel.

Step 3: TEST IT BEFORE IMPLEMENTATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! use the lowest NA tier server match-ups as the guinea pigs for all new features like this. Once they’re polished it bring it to the rest of us. Get the user feedback, listen to the user feedback, make your adjustments based on the user feedback, and then move into full implementation.

You know, Game Development 101; Useability Test, Alpha Test, Beta Test, then implement. Never go straight to implementation and then be forced into damage control with all your subsequent development time…that’s just stupid and costly. Though it would seem you’d rather never do damage control with your development time as basic and glaringly obvious problems have persisted since before you were in charge of the mode and don’t look to be resolved anytime under your watch. Way to avoid stupid and costly development re-work by just not doing the required re-work…clever strategy.

Obscure One.4357:

You know, Game Development 101; Useability Test, Alpha Test, Beta Test, then implement.

I thought it was implement, revert, apologize, bring back when no one is looking, fix?

It seems the more the community(ies) cry out for balance, the more they go out of the way to punish lower ranked servers for not transferring to higher ranked ones.

Obscure One.4357:

DevonCarver.5370:

We are not trying to only ever match you up against your closest comparable server. That was what was happening with the system before and it was bad. If you are saying you don’t ever even want the chance to try and show your skill against a higher ranked server, then I don’t know what to say.

We will continue to look into ways to change scoring to try and even out some of the population based imbalances, but that is not an easy task and it won’t happen during the season.

First, you should only ever match a server up against it’s closest competition, otherwise you’re sending lambs to the slaughter. WvW is not skill based it’s numbers and coverage based, maybe if you spent some time learning what the metagame has become you’d know that. Winning and Losing this said contest of coverage is subject to a snowball effect. The pick up groups who actually care about winning, once they realize they’re up against superior numbers, coverage, and adherence to the seige/zerg metagame, will get sick of constantly waypointing and the repair costs that’re never offset by the already meager rewards of the mode, much less the slim pickings of constantly losing in lopsided engagements. The contrary is also true, when the fair-weathers learn they’re up against an inferior server they show up in force, queue every map, and farm the opposition.

The players on a lower tier server in a match up with higher tiers just stop fighting to win, and just play for fun. This fun only really occurs in open field fights where siege is not a factor, with near equal numbers, which ultimately makes GvG’s more attractive than playing the Points-Per-Tick meta. The rewards aren’t anything great even when you zerg up to Karma-Train across the map, and if rewards are your goal, you’re not playing WvW for them. Put simply you pit lower tiers against higher tiers you discourage fair competition resulting in hallow victories against weaker servers, and excusable defeats against stronger ones. Not providing these balanced matches is a development failure on your part, not on our part for wanting the match-up to be fair. Skill is only a factor when all other variables are equal, it’s a really basic principle to understand. You throw a tier 3 server up against tier 1 server blobs and they could be the best gamers on the planet, and it wont result in anything but another tier 1 victory.

Secondly, there’s no need to “look into” the “population based imbalances”. The answer to that problem is the problem itself. Gee, populations are imbalanced, why not match populations up against equal or near equal populations? Here’s what you do man:

Step 1: pull the login data off the login server and chart it in an excel spreadsheet for WvW populations. Look at the peek hours for each server, and add that to the match making calculation.

Numbers and Coverage mater more than skill despite your unfounded reference to the contrary. If you want that to change you’ve got ALOT of work to do, and I sincerely doubt you have the budget, time, or the comprehension of the mode to pull it off.

Step 2: alter the point system that contributes to the world score so that they scale up or scale down based on population. Lower populations can score higher for captures and higher populations score less for captures.

It’s the exact same logic used when scaling PvE content for larger groups. Just look at the features in the game that already exist and see how they work, why they work, and where they work and use them in WvW. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel.

Step 3: TEST IT BEFORE IMPLEMENTATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! use the lowest NA tier server match-ups as the guinea pigs for all new features like this. Once they’re polished it bring it to the rest of us. Get the user feedback, listen to the user feedback, make your adjustments based on the user feedback, and then move into full implementation.

You know, Game Development 101; Useability Test, Alpha Test, Beta Test, then implement. Never go straight to implementation and then be forced into damage control with all your subsequent development time…that’s just stupid and costly. Though it would seem you’d rather never do damage control with your development time as basic and glaringly obvious problems have persisted since before you were in charge of the mode and don’t look to be resolved anytime under your watch. Way to avoid stupid and costly development re-work by just not doing the required re-work…clever strategy.

QFT, snarky at the end though he is.. this guy gets it. Why can’t Devon?!

Skapocalypse.5236:

Watch as your group while in a T3/4/5 server won’t be able to take anything but camps and maybe a unguarded tower during European/Oceanic/SEA against T1/2 servers that you probably won’t hold for the point tick. Watch the karma train while sitting in a T1 or T2 server against T3/4/5. Watch in the lower tiers the literal ghost town at these times. Then you’ll understand the true gaps between the servers and maybe then it will lead you guys to a solution. As many have stated it’s not skill and never will be skill it’s all coverage and population

This maybe true in NA, where the rating gap is really big between rank 4 server (TC) and rank 5 server (FA): currently 169 rating points. Here in EU we have 27 servers (vs 24 in NA) and the rating differences are smaller. I play for Desolation, which is currently rank 3 (but going to drop down). We are now matched up against rank #11 (Abaddon’s Mouth) and #14 (Gandara). So this is a tier #1 server against a tier #4 and a tier #5 server. Exactly what you were writing about. See:
http://mos.millenium.org/eu

We are going to win this match up, but only because we got a bit better night time coverage. During prime time we are constantly at the brink of being outnumbered. Our enemies, Gandara and AM, are high population and Deso is very high population. I would claim that the actual number of WvWvW players at prime time doesn’t show any indication of this. Our enemies can summon a zerg + several roaming teams on the same map. Last night I saw us ticking as low as +150 at prime time. Surely we felt like both enemy servers concentrated on us.

The things to take into consideration: Despite Desolation is so called EU tier 1 (rank 3) server, we currently don’t have any major queues to speak of. Except for prime time I can get to any map without any waiting. 20-25 man guild group is big for us. Even in prime time usually just one BL map has a queue, if 3 big guilds are having a raid or gvg there at same time. After 2 hours, when the raid / gvg is over, queue is gone and we get outnumbered buff on that same BL. Desolation really is unlike any other server in EU. We are hosting the best tpvp/spvp players and also the unofficial pve capital of EU, but our WvWvW attendance is relatively low and we are still lacking big WvWvW guilds. In our previous match up against SFR and VS (EU rank 1 and rank 2 vs rank 3) we had the outnumbered “buff” on us almost all the time. Despite having clearly less than half the numbers of our enemies we were able to tick pretty well due good coordination using server wide TeamSpeak.

What I understood is that the top 4 servers of NA (JQ, BG, SoR and TC) are all very stacked servers. Here in EU we have just 2 stacked servers: SFR and VS. The league is going to be won by either SFR or VS. There is no other choice, unless some major population shifts occur e.g. a lot of people band wagon to SFR and its main guilds will /ragequit due having too long queues (happened before) or Piken Square getting bandwagoned, because it is only a medium population server and has the lowest transfer costs of any top server.

Yes, I fully agree that the winner is mainly decided by the WvWvW population and coverage. And EU is much much more volatile than NA in this respect. If 1-2 big NA guilds would move to any top 6 server in EU, that server could easily be winning the league, because of better night and morning time coverage.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Skapocalypse.5236:

Watch as your group while in a T3/4/5 server won’t be able to take anything but camps and maybe a unguarded tower during European/Oceanic/SEA against T1/2 servers that you probably won’t hold for the point tick. Watch the karma train while sitting in a T1 or T2 server against T3/4/5. Watch in the lower tiers the literal ghost town at these times. Then you’ll understand the true gaps between the servers and maybe then it will lead you guys to a solution. As many have stated it’s not skill and never will be skill it’s all coverage and population

This maybe true in NA, where the rating gap is really big between rank 4 server (TC) and rank 5 server (FA): currently 169 rating points. Here in EU we have 27 servers (vs 24 in NA) and the rating differences are smaller. I play for Desolation, which is currently rank 3 (but going to drop down). We are now matched up against rank #11 (Abaddon’s Mouth) and #14 (Gandara). So this is a tier #1 server against a tier #4 and a tier #5 server. Exactly what you were writing about. See:
http://mos.millenium.org/eu

We are going to win this match up, but only because we got a bit better night time coverage. During prime time we are constantly at the brink of being outnumbered. Our enemies, Gandara and AM, are high population and Deso is very high population. I would claim that the actual number of WvWvW players at prime time doesn’t show any indication of this. Our enemies can summon a zerg + several roaming teams on the same map. Last night I saw us ticking as low as +150 at prime time. Surely we felt like both enemy servers concentrated on us.

The things to take into consideration: Despite Desolation is so called EU tier 1 (rank 3) server, we currently don’t have any major queues to speak of. Except for prime time I can get to any map without any waiting. 20-25 man guild group is big for us. Even in prime time usually just one BL map has a queue, if 3 big guilds are having a raid or gvg there at same time. After 2 hours, when the raid / gvg is over, queue is gone and we get outnumbered buff on that same BL. Desolation really is unlike any other server in EU. We are hosting the best tpvp/spvp players and also the unofficial pve capital of EU, but our WvWvW attendance is relatively low and we are still lacking big WvWvW guilds. In our previous match up against SFR and VS (EU rank 1 and rank 2 vs rank 3) we had the outnumbered “buff” on us almost all the time. Despite having clearly less than half the numbers of our enemies we were able to tick pretty well due good coordination using server wide TeamSpeak.

What I understood is that the top 4 servers of NA (JQ, BG, SoR and TC) are all very stacked servers. Here in EU we have just 2 stacked servers: SFR and VS. The league is going to be won by either SFR or VS. There is no other choice, unless some major population shifts occur e.g. a lot of people band wagon to SFR and its main guilds will /ragequit due having too long queues (happened before) or Piken Square getting bandwagoned, because it is only a medium population server and has the lowest transfer costs of any top server.

Yes, I fully agree that the winner is mainly decided by the WvWvW population and coverage. And EU is much much more volatile than NA in this respect. If 1-2 big NA guilds would move to any top 6 server in EU, that server could easily be winning the league, because of better night and morning time coverage.

Current score of your match

11. Abaddon’s Mouth 101 913
14. Gandara 93 502
3. Desolation 135 673

Current glicko rating change of your match

11. Abaddon’s Mouth 14.777
14. Gandara 30.052
3. Desolation -43.434

What if the winner was decided by glicko instead of score?

bradderzh.2378:

DevonCarver.5370:

If you are saying you don’t ever even want the chance to try and show your skill against a higher ranked server, then I don’t know what to say..

Please be sure to transfer your game account to server rank 12 (who ever that may be) ready for their first battle with Jade quarry, Blackgate or Sanctum of Rall so you can experience the fun of fighting these servers with us lol

I’m sure we will even let you command and show us the strategies we need to win

If one person could muster enough enthusiasm and numbers in our server (dev or not) to beat a server event like E-Bay, I would donate to them to open a school to train players in WvW.

Skill might be a factor on a small scale for a short time, but overall massive zergs and facerolling wins the match. Sadly.