Guild Wars 2

(Con’t)

An example seasons worth of matches using this system in a five week tournament:

Week1. TC/JQ/BG, SoS/Mag/DB, HoD/FA/YB, SBI/CD/IoJ, NSP/BP/GoM, DR/SF/FC, DH/AR/SoR, EB/ET/Kain.

Week 2. SoS/BG/HoD, JQ/Mag/TC, DB/SBI/FA, YB/NSP/CD, IoJ/BP/GoM, DR/DH/EB, SF/AR/ET, FC/SoR/Kain.

Week 3. JQ/BG/SoS, TC/Mag/DB, HoD/YB/SBI, FA/NSP/IoJ, CD/BP/GoM, DR/SF/DH, EB/FC/AR, Kain/ET/SoR.

Week 4. BG/HoD/JQ, TC/SoS/DB, Mag/FA/YB, SBI/CD/IoJ, NSP/DR/FC, BP/SF/DH, GoM/EB/AR, ET/Kain/SoR.

Week 5. JQ/BG/TC, SoS/HoD/Mag, DB/FA/SBI, YB/CD/NSP, IoJ/DR/BP, GoM/FC/SF, DH/AR/SoR, EB/ET/Kain.

For this example I used the current Glicko scores (or close) with a limitaion that the servers must be within a score of 300 in order to be matched together. The exact limitation would need to be determined by Anet but 250 – 300 seems good.

There is variety, close matches, servers don’t simply alternate matches back and forth like this season and most people are not going to know their upcoming opponents (because they’re not going to bother doing the calculations). I don’t think we’ll be able to come up with a better system. And it would be much simpler to code for a computer to do the picking than my long winded description.

TLDR; Change the tournament matchmaking system to this!

It’s too late for this season.
Any change of rule during the match is completely unfair and unacceptable.
It’s like changing the rule just because a server got in trouble and can’t get top, which shows that Anet could be potentially favor one server over another.

Anet most likely will not use the same Swiss season in Season 3 anyway.

An interesting proposal. How would you account for the glicko system not accounting for population changes fast enough pre-season?

Chaba.5410:

An interesting proposal. How would you account for the glicko system not accounting for population changes fast enough pre-season?

That’s a good point. First, I would suggest Anet not offer any kind of free/reduced price transfers before the season (actually this should be the case regardless of what method is used).

Also though, the season no longer contains Gold, Silver and Bronze leagues so that being able to “predict” which server will come out on top of each league is not possible (because there are no leagues). This will help to prevent stacking.

And the design of the tournament scheduling does not lend itself to easily being able to predict the outcome at the end.

Now I admit if a server suffers a mass exodus before the season then it won’t be pretty for them. But that is the case with any system (SoR in Silver league this season).

Well the obvious criticism is massive tanking before leagues start.

(1) Intentional tankers (Blackgate) (2) PvE servers who only show up in WvW for leagues (Yaks) (3) Low ranked servers that got a lot of transfers.

Then the second criticism is how do you determine who wins? The current system has different tiers based on placement, for example second place gets more stuff than fourth place. If you keep this, then it is possible for the #1 overall server to not finish in first place. Why not shift the rewards to tiers instead? (For example, gold tier is the too 3rd of servers, and bronze tier is the bottom tier)

We are currently fighting the same match-up for the 4th time this season. The Swiss tournament is dumb, but then so is the entire WvW scoring system.

There’s really no way to have an even matched tournament when you do it by world. The stacked server will always win unless they are 2v1’d. There’s also a high risk of match manipulation depending on the current tournament format (such as Swiss style).

Why not just abandon the current server setup and do mega servers for the tournament? After all, that’s what Anet seems to be moving towards anyhow. You can then either have players/guilds sign up for a particular mega server or assign servers to specific servers based on active player population. Tier 1 servers will likely be on separate mega servers with low population servers being distributed between them and any additional mega servers. I’m pretty sure you can get at least 12 evenly matched mega servers based on this.

Blackgate here, we got double teamed by JQ and TC this season xD

It’s really not cool they took away our Permanent Golden Dolyak Finishers when we won Season 1 .

This suggestion does not address the existing problems, and thus it is rather inconsequential.

In order to find a workable solution, it is essential to understand the problems first, and then create a system that takes them into account. For the leagues, there are several major issues in the current system:

Because of the low number of participants in each league (further exacerbated by the matches being triples instead of pairings) there are only a few possible matchup combinations, severely reducing match variety (in my opinion, even the whole NA/EU server leagues are too small for acceptable variety). Furthermore, forced compartmentalization causes thoroughly unsatisfactory results at either end of the scale when pre-league rankings are far from the league strength of a server (e.g., in the current NA silver league it is simply impossible for either HoD or SoR to have a reasonable matchup). This is the only part that your suggestion actually addresses.

For a Swiss system to stay “fresh” it cannot be applied for more rounds than a number related to participants, here roughly proportional to log_3(N) where N is the number of participants in the league. With the current numbers, any season that uses the Swiss system for more than two consecutive rounds misapplies the system. The end result of misapplication is, as has been seen, the spontaneous emergence of stable attractor loops. The increased variety in your suggestion is caused by larger N compared to number of rounds, but the modified ranking system does not provide any advantage over the 5-3-1 system currently applied.

Furthermore, the suggested system is redundant because the Glicko system already creates reasonable matchups, and with some random variation added does it much better than either the Swiss system or the suggested modification.

Then, there is yet another problem that is simply huge. Matchmaking is only one of the main functions of a system, and that is the easy part — a bogosort algorithm would create matchups no worse than what we are currently having! The more important function in competitive play is to sort the competitors so that at the end of the league the winners and losers can be announced. For the sorting algorithm to be effective, it must meet two requirements: that the relative final ranks reflect the performances of respective competitors, and that the ranking is fine-grained enough to make the relative ranks resistant to random noise. The current Swiss system (and your modified system) is egregiously bad in this regard. Right now in NA silver there is a rare (probably the only one in the league) match containing nearly equal competitors SBI and YB, but because of the ranking system the one that loses this match will most likely beat the other in final standings. Furthermore, other than the outliers (above mentioned HoD and SoR), all the other servers in the league have practically the same rank, meaning that the current system has worse resolution than bogosort! Again, your suggested system does nothing to address these flaws.

TL;DR version: The current system is abysmally bad, but this is not the suggestion to fix it.

too late now….

once the tournament is underway you can’t simply change pointing system just for the sake of helping certain server.

Thanks for the replies. To address a few points brought up so far:

Intentional tanking and/or players only coming out for the season and or transfers. Yes, these are issues but I think there would be less incentive to do these things with this system than Season 1 or 2’s system. The reason is that there are no longer “leagues”. (Can’t do anything about players who only come out for Seasons – they are going to affect any tournament structure.)

Fighting the same opponents. This modification to the Swiss System eliminates the “fighting the same matches every other week” phenomenon.

2v1. A 2v1 for a time or even a single match would still be viable. But a season long alliance would not because servers are not playing the same servers every other week. There is much more variety.

Who wins? Personally I think Anet should change how servers are awarded regardless of the system they use. Some have suggested awarding “Gold” Level awards to the top six finishers for example, which would work for the proposed system.

Also this is a system suggested for future tournaments not for the current tournament so I’m ot suggesting chaning it now.

Jeebus. The swiss system is built upon the premise that it sorts the unseeded participants throughout the duration of the tournament based on performance. The idea that there is already an established rating structure shows how bad the swiss system is for a short(9 rounds) 3 way competition between 6-9 servers. The swiss system would be perfect for seeding and placing all NA or EU servers and running the duration. but then there would be a huge outcry over horrible match-ups(JQ/MAGS/HOD) and everyone from rank 4 and lower would be outraged because WvW = coverage.

tmakinen.1048:

This suggestion does not address the existing problems, and thus it is rather inconsequential.

Of course it can’t solve all problems with WvW tournaments but I think it addresses the major flaws of the first and second season’s system – I believe these two major flaws were mismatched opponents and variety of matches.

tmakinen.1048:

For a Swiss system to stay “fresh” it cannot be applied for more rounds than a number related to participants, here roughly proportional to log_3(N) where N is the number of participants in the league. With the current numbers, any season that uses the Swiss system for more than two consecutive rounds misapplies the system. The end result of misapplication is, as has been seen, the spontaneous emergence of stable attractor loops. The increased variety in your suggestion is caused by larger N compared to number of rounds, but the modified ranking system does not provide any advantage over the 5-3-1 system currently applied.

I didn’t do the math but I think you are saying that the Swiss System suffers from lack of variety if it goes on too long compared to the number of participants. During the five week simulation I ran there was a good variety of matches.

It is possible that 5-3-1 would be no worse than the 5-3-2 I suggested but that is not the determining factor in the proposed system. I’d need to do more simulations to find out. I think what 5-3-2 does is make losing early in the tournament less harmful to a servers final ranking.

Also I do believe that 5-3-2 would encourage “fighting for first” more and I think that is a good thing.[/quote]

tmakinen.1048:

Furthermore, the suggested system is redundant because the Glicko system already creates reasonable matchups, and with some random variation added does it much better than either the Swiss system or the suggested modification.

This is true but the Glicko system doesn’t produce a set of matches for a tournament. It only gives an overall ranking.

tmakinen.1048:

The more important function in competitive play is to sort the competitors so that at the end of the league the winners and losers can be announced. For the sorting algorithm to be effective, it must meet two requirements: that the relative final ranks reflect the performances of respective competitors, and that the ranking is fine-grained enough to make the relative ranks resistant to random noise. The current Swiss system (and your modified system) is egregiously bad in this regard. Right now in NA silver there is a rare (probably the only one in the league) match containing nearly equal competitors SBI and YB, but because of the ranking system the one that loses this match will most likely beat the other in final standings. Furthermore, other than the outliers (above mentioned HoD and SoR), all the other servers in the league have practically the same rank, meaning that the current system has worse resolution than bogosort! Again, your suggested system does nothing to address these flaws.

I would agree – for competitive play. But I don’t believe that the WvW tournament is competitive play and I don’t think we should try to make it that. It meets very few of the requirements for competitive play such as even teams, balanced playing field, the ability to enforce rules, etc.

I would say that we should treat the WvW tournament more like an amateur tournament or better yet a “fun run”. Treat it like the Warrior Dash – sure there are some prizes for “winning” but most people just go out there to have fun in the misdst of a pseudo-competition.

As far as I’m concerned everyone who completes the meta can get the same “rewards”. Just reward Gold, Silver and Bronze stomp finishers and say top six servers get Gold, next 9 get Silver, next 9 get Bronze.

I think people participate in the tournaments for a variety of reasons, some for individual rewards and others simply for the “thrill of victory” over another server.

tmakinen.1048:

TL;DR version: The current system is abysmally bad, but this is not the suggestion to fix it.

What would your suggestion be? (Also @eithinan who I just saw posted while I was writing this).

Better yet, why not hire volunteers to judge each match up? Once a match ends, they give each server a certain score and they manually pick who should fight who. At least with this, there will be people monitoring the match ups. If there is a problem with the whole server trying to manipulate the scores, they automatically forfeit the match and get third place for the week or get disqualified for the season. If there are a few people that are cheating, they get banned from WvW for the season.

Tournaments should have real judges monitoring each match up. The only problem is who will volunteer? At first I thought about having people from different servers volunteer, but then I realized that most will be bias towards certain servers and they would end up arguing with each other. Then I thought about the Anet people who regularly play WvW. They know how WvW works and I’ve seen a few around. Maybe these people should be the ones monitoring the match up.

Any thoughts on this idea?

Welcome Jessica! New ArenaNet staff member?

Oh yes almost forgot! Welcome to the wonderful world of WvW forums Jessica! We hope you enjoy your stay We have cookies and soda/milk on the table to your left and on the right, we have delicious chocolate cake! c:

I kind of like the idea; however it doesn’t account for population disparity. There will still be blowout matches.. really bad ones.

Now if they say removed points all together and just determined placement via glicko rating. Then glicko rating takes into consideration population, where those servers whom have higher population receivers lower ratings when facing low population servers (unless they continually blow them out).

For example.. Take a Tier 2 server vs 2 Tier 1’s, if the T2 server manages to not only hold it’s own but do well in capturing objectives, both T1 server ratings would plummet. In fact, maybe PPT score meaningless.. it still ticks, but depending on the population, if a server who has overall lower coverage but still performs well, they will win.

What if they implemented handicaps on lower populated servers that compete with larger servers like a higher score at the beginning of every match? They have the same kind of handicap in bowling leagues and it works well. This should give the lower populated servers a chance to win a match against a bigger server. In an MMO, we can always test it for a few weeks and if it works, it should be added to the tournament.

Just have a swiss system but with all servers in one league. That will work perfectly.

Isaac.6041:

Welcome Jessica! New ArenaNet staff member?

Don’t think so she’s been appearing in ready up videos and others for a while now.

Jessica Boettiger.2563:

Thanks for this well thought out post!

It is our goal to ensure that WvW matchups are not only competitive, but also engaging and fun. Variety is essential.

Constructive criticism like this helps us to improve, and we look forward to bringing you the best possible version of WvW Tournaments in the future.

Variety is a good thing but the swiss style system used for S2 was never going to result in that at least not in the gold tier and even a cursory modelling of possible results would have shown that.

As for future tournaments its pretty clear that the majority of WvW players do not want them.

Please help voice your concerns in this poll

http://www.gw2wvw.net/content/anet-planning-having-season-3-your-thoughts

Fuzzion.2504:

Please help voice your concerns in this poll

http://www.gw2wvw.net/content/anet-planning-having-season-3-your-thoughts

No, thanks. This thread on an official forum with Dev is perfectly fine. Why do you keep promoting this site?

Kagusaki.3176:

What if they implemented handicaps

I think handicaps could work if it was just a slight adjustment to PPT based on point differential. ie lower ranked servers getting massacred give fewer points for objectives taken and earn more points if they take higher ranked server’s objectives.

It’s hardly fair that a server with an overhwelming strength advantage earns the same 10 points for taking a tower from a weak server that the weak server earns for taking theirs. If a weak server manages to do it they deserve a better reward.

I’m not sure how much this adjustment should be eg 5% or10%? But it would help.

Preferred the idea of megaservers for WvW. I’ll use examples and say 20 servers on EU and 20 on NA. Paired the most populated server with the lowest populated server in their respective regions (NA/EU) as a team. Then paired teams of EU and NA teams into a pool consisting of 4 servers. 2 awards can be given out. First award is for regional such as NA & EU gets a rewards for winning. Then team awards for your cross Atlantic partners.

Rank #10 EU with #11 EU Rank (team 1)
Rank #1 NA with #20 NA Rank (team 1)
Rank #9 EU with #12 EU Rank (team 2)
Rank #2 NA with #19 NA Rank (team 2)
Rank #8 EU with #13 EU Rank (team 3)
Rank #3 NA with #18 NA Rank (team 3)
Rank #7 EU with #14 EU Rank (team 4)
Rank #4 NA with #17 NA Rank (team 4)
Rank #6 EU with #15 EU Rank (team 5)
Rank #5 NA with #16 NA Rank (team 5)
Rank #5 EU with #16 EU Rank (team 6)
Rank #6 NA with #15 NA Rank (team 6)
Rank #4 EU with #17 EU Rank (team 7)
Rank #7 NA with #14 NA Rank (team 7)
Rank #3 EU with #18 EU Rank (team 8)
Rank #8 NA with #13 NA Rank (team 8)
Rank #2 EU with #19 EU Rank (team 9)
Rank #9 NA with #12 NA Rank (team 9)
Rank #1 EU with #20 EU Rank (team 10)
Rank #10 NA with #11 NA Rank (team 10)

Yes, the pairing would not benefit overstacked servers and may alter the balance of power to middle tiers. It would also make servers cheer for their cross Atlantic pairings. Any swiss pairing is purely bad as it guarantees a few particular server(s) almost always getting a victory and not because of skill.

I don’t think you need the Glicko-rating during the tournament, only for the beginning (the initial triairing – I like that word). But I agree that all servers should be in two leagues: one NA league and one European league (ideally one world league but as far as I know ArenaNet’s server structure does not allow it).

Then do the following modifications to the existing system:

• Limit the tournament to six weeks. Nine weeks burns out a lot of people. Even if you play only 6 rounds with the 24 European servers it is guaranteed by the virtue of the Swiss system that the three “best” servers will meet one another because the Swiss system is basically k.-o.-system with benefits. The further placings may be not exact but that is true for the existing system, too.

• No triaring (matchup with three parties) may occur more than once. For example: If there was a triaring SFR – Desolation – Baruch Bay in an earlier round, that may not occur again. SFR – Desolation – some other server is ok but not the exact same triaring.

• When you triair you start as usual with the highest scoring server (measured in tournament points). I call this server A. Then you add servers B to the triaring where the difference between the score of A and B is lowest. So far that is the usual Swiss system pairing algorithm. But before you compare the score differences you add for every time A and B have already encountered themselves in the tournament a certain “penalty score”. This penalty score is only added for the purpose of the triaring; it has nothing to do with the “real” tournament points. In a system with 5 points for win, 3 points for 2nd place, 1 for last place it seems that 3 points for each previous encounter is a reasonable value. Then you continue triairing in the same way for the rest, excluding the already triaired servers. That way you not only avoid the exact same triairing but you also built in a tendency to minimize the number of times two servers play against each other.

That proposal has the advantage to deviate not that much from the Swiss system. It does not solve all problems, of course, but it does solve two main problems: length of the tournament and stale pairings (Deso played against SFR and Baruch Bay 4 times and against SFR eight times, if I remember correctly – very unfun).

Kopter.8126:

Fuzzion.2504:

Please help voice your concerns in this poll

http://www.gw2wvw.net/content/anet-planning-having-season-3-your-thoughts

No, thanks. This thread on an official forum with Dev is perfectly fine. Why do you keep promoting this site?

Its a poll.

And about promotion? Its our officially sanctioned community site for WvW matchups with nearly 3000 hardcore WvW/GvG members

Claudius.5381:

(Deso played against SFR and Baruch Bay 4 times and against SFR eight times, if I remember correctly – very unfun).

I don’t understand this .

I mean , ok , maybe it was unfun for you as a person , but …..
speaking of YOUR SERVER : they pretend that they’re number one and they want 1st place . So …… the system gave them this opportunity to show this . In “8 weeks” THE SERVER showed that they are not no. 1 , because they lost , and the true number one is other server .

That is a very good example

Next , the system gave you 4 opportunities to show that you are better than OTHER SERVER (different one ) and you didn’t.

now , because THE SERVER lost, some people come here and say it’s unfun and that the system is broken ….

Tactu.4867:

Claudius.5381:

(Deso played against SFR and Baruch Bay 4 times and against SFR eight times, if I remember correctly – very unfun).

I don’t understand this .

I mean , ok , maybe it was unfun for you as a person , but …..
speaking of YOUR SERVER : they pretend that they’re number one and they want 1st place . So …… the system gave them this opportunity to show this . In “8 weeks” THE SERVER showed that they are not no. 1 , because they lost , and the true number one is other server .

That is a very good example

Next , the system gave you 4 opportunities to show that you are better than OTHER SERVER (different one ) and you didn’t.

now , because THE SERVER lost, some people come here and say it’s unfun and that the system is broken ….

Its not so much that you lose, its that you win a bit, but the server you knock down to tier2 then gets an easy matchup and manages to keep up in score. While you are constantly getting a hard matchup yourself.

And in the end, the servers that got easy matchups are taking a higher ranking. So it feels very unrewarding for the effort that had to be spend, when other servers that got to roflstomp in an easy matchup half the time get better prizes and recognition. Thats just sour.

Throw in that most of this season hasnt been about actually playing, but underhanded deals and hacking, and it tends to leave people very bitter.

true , i agree .
especially the part with the ranking .
like: lose versus highest rating server shouldn’t be punishing and winning versus low rating ones shouldn’t be so rewarding .
This way + something like the modified swiss system that op proposed (that accounts the rating) = season 3

Tactu.4867:

Claudius.5381:

(Deso played against SFR and Baruch Bay 4 times and against SFR eight times, if I remember correctly – very unfun).

I don’t understand this .

I mean , ok , maybe it was unfun for you as a person , but …..
speaking of YOUR SERVER : they pretend that they’re number one and they want 1st place . So …… the system gave them this opportunity to show this . In “8 weeks” THE SERVER showed that they are not no. 1 , because they lost , and the true number one is other server .

That is a very good example

Next , the system gave you 4 opportunities to show that you are better than OTHER SERVER (different one ) and you didn’t.

now , because THE SERVER lost, some people come here and say it’s unfun and that the system is broken ….

Yes, it is a very good example. After about 2 times when SFR met Desolation it was sufficiently clear that SFR was way ahead of any other server, including BB and Desolation. It is not a very attractive tournament system which repeats it six more times (in case of Deso-SFR). With my proposal Deso would meet SFR again (at least in a nine-round-tournament which I find too long), but not every time, as it is now, and especially only in very rare cases consecutively.

I only took Deso as an example because I know it best but I heard similar complaints from NA gold and silver and EU silver (do not remember about bronze leagues).

What they first need to address is the reward system to encourage more players back into wvw. At the moment it is way more rewarding to do almost anything other than wvw (unless you are in an organised guild fighting other guilds when piles of loot result), and especially better off doing EoTM.

Firstly, active defence of a structure needs it’s own reward (so it doesn’t reward players who afk in keep etc). Scouts who sit in a tower for ages should get some sort of reward, not sure how you do that to prevent abuse.

The rewards for killing players, capping points (why do bloodlust points reward nothing? If they gave something there would be real competition for them), capping towers, etc all need a revamp.
Rewards should be based on the number of players involved in the cap vs number defending, so taking an undefended tower with 80 people rewards are low whilst capping a well defended garrison after an epic 60v60v60 three way battle should grant much bigger rewards.

Secondly, they need to consider some server merges to even up the wvw populations a bit later in the year (after new reward system settles down). The problem in EU is that there are a limited number of same language servers that can be merged.

I wonder why it isn´t a true swiss system. No points, just the number of wins decides the new matchups.

SleepingDragon.1596:

Preferred the idea of megaservers for WvW. I’ll use examples and say 20 servers on EU and 20 on NA. Paired the most populated server with the lowest populated server in their respective regions (NA/EU) as a team. Then paired teams of EU and NA teams into a pool consisting of 4 servers. 2 awards can be given out. First award is for regional such as NA & EU gets a rewards for winning. Then team awards for your cross Atlantic partners.

Rank #10 EU with #11 EU Rank (team 1)
Rank #1 NA with #20 NA Rank (team 1)
Rank #9 EU with #12 EU Rank (team 2)
Rank #2 NA with #19 NA Rank (team 2)
Rank #8 EU with #13 EU Rank (team 3)
Rank #3 NA with #18 NA Rank (team 3)
Rank #7 EU with #14 EU Rank (team 4)
Rank #4 NA with #17 NA Rank (team 4)
Rank #6 EU with #15 EU Rank (team 5)
Rank #5 NA with #16 NA Rank (team 5)
Rank #5 EU with #16 EU Rank (team 6)
Rank #6 NA with #15 NA Rank (team 6)
Rank #4 EU with #17 EU Rank (team 7)
Rank #7 NA with #14 NA Rank (team 7)
Rank #3 EU with #18 EU Rank (team
Rank #8 NA with #13 NA Rank (team
Rank #2 EU with #19 EU Rank (team 9)
Rank #9 NA with #12 NA Rank (team 9)
Rank #1 EU with #20 EU Rank (team 10)
Rank #10 NA with #11 NA Rank (team 10)

Yes, the pairing would not benefit overstacked servers and may alter the balance of power to middle tiers. It would also make servers cheer for their cross Atlantic pairings. Any swiss pairing is purely bad as it guarantees a few particular server(s) almost always getting a victory and not because of skill.

I must admit I like the idea of this a bit, the populations need evening out a bit in wvw and this would result in 10\12 EU servers which had more chance of being even and therefore fun matches.

Let’s be honest here, there are very few things that can be done with the current “ppt-based” system that would make a “true” competitive tournament.

But with that said, I believe a system like this would be the best possible approach if the ppt metric is not ever going to be adjusted to account for population variances.

SleepingDragon.1596:

Preferred the idea of megaservers for WvW. I’ll use examples and say 20 servers on EU and 20 on NA. Paired the most populated server with the lowest populated server in their respective regions (NA/EU) as a team. Then paired teams of EU and NA teams into a pool consisting of 4 servers. 2 awards can be given out. First award is for regional such as NA & EU gets a rewards for winning. Then team awards for your cross Atlantic partners.

Rank #10 EU with #11 EU Rank (team 1)
Rank #1 NA with #20 NA Rank (team 1)
Rank #9 EU with #12 EU Rank (team 2)
Rank #2 NA with #19 NA Rank (team 2)
Rank #8 EU with #13 EU Rank (team 3)
Rank #3 NA with #18 NA Rank (team 3)
Rank #7 EU with #14 EU Rank (team 4)
Rank #4 NA with #17 NA Rank (team 4)
Rank #6 EU with #15 EU Rank (team 5)
Rank #5 NA with #16 NA Rank (team 5)
Rank #5 EU with #16 EU Rank (team 6)
Rank #6 NA with #15 NA Rank (team 6)
Rank #4 EU with #17 EU Rank (team 7)
Rank #7 NA with #14 NA Rank (team 7)
Rank #3 EU with #18 EU Rank (team
Rank #8 NA with #13 NA Rank (team
Rank #2 EU with #19 EU Rank (team 9)
Rank #9 NA with #12 NA Rank (team 9)
Rank #1 EU with #20 EU Rank (team 10)
Rank #10 NA with #11 NA Rank (team 10)

Yes, the pairing would not benefit overstacked servers and may alter the balance of power to middle tiers. It would also make servers cheer for their cross Atlantic pairings. Any swiss pairing is purely bad as it guarantees a few particular server(s) almost always getting a victory and not because of skill.

This type of format would be ideal to avoid Server Stacking/ Tanking / Severe 2 vs. 1. It would allow for Anet to go to its season 1 match up so every server fights every server in their league X times. Of course if transfers were opened they would have to be close and WvW participation would have to be watched for a couple weeks before determining teams. It would be easy to stack say Team 6 if you knew ahead of time which servers were going to be team 6 via ranking, so Anet would really have to pay attention in the weeks prior to assigning teams.

Honestly my opinion is that the best way to go about it is SERVER alliances.

Mandated by Anet though. Such as:
Rank 1 server is allied with the lowest server in the tier.
Rank 2 server is allied with the 2nd lowest server in the tier.
(this way you can have large tiers as population evens out)

You keep the scoring the same, however each server contributes to the “alliance” score.

When we think about WvW we know it’s “population and coverage”. This would balance them out as population per alliance is spread out fairly evenly.

Next thing that must be done is transfers must be cut of at LEAST 2 weeks prior to the season start. This is simply to provide more even match ups and not end up with another HoD fiasco.

Err Sleeping dragon beat me to it. But he did incorporate EU into his scoring. Which makes sense. Only problem is that we have an uneven number of servers.

as long as people are able to transfer servers no amount of tweaking is going to fix it.

Zepher.7803:

as long as people are able to transfer servers no amount of tweaking is going to fix it.

I’d say they should have a couple of weeks of things shaking out after transfers before setting up leagues. And if we can all play other servers outside of our leagues, then we can have leagues that aren’t confined to multiples of three.

I’d also have a one week “playoff” among the top 3 servers in each league with bonus rewards for winning and nothing for second place.

Terrible idea, lets reward coverage and stacking even more, so those servers that fought hard even though they never really stood a chance to begin with get an extra slap in the face. No just no.

Only problem with Swiss style is same servers meet over and over again,and 2d and 3d place fight each other and leave top server alone many times to…

I would suggest all server meet at least ones then in last two rounds we get some final were winners take all(2d,3d give same reward).

I like this system, but the only flaw I see is not all servers are created equal. Population differences are a major problem in WvW. Don’t ask me how to fix it, because there isn’t a good way. Players want to win, so they stack on the servers they think will win.

This is why I feel these seasons are moot, and rewards should either be for everyone or no one. /shrugs

Fuzzion.2504:

Kopter.8126:

Fuzzion.2504:

Please help voice your concerns in this poll

http://www.gw2wvw.net/content/anet-planning-having-season-3-your-thoughts

No, thanks. This thread on an official forum with Dev is perfectly fine. Why do you keep promoting this site?

Its a poll.

And about promotion? Its our officially sanctioned community site for WvW matchups with nearly 3000 hardcore WvW/GvG members

Yeah and about 2990 of them are trolls.

It’s an awful, awful forum. A perfect example of John Gabriel’s GIFT:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

Johje Holan.4607:

Week1. TC/JQ/BG, SoS/Mag/DB, HoD/FA/YB, SBI/CD/IoJ, NSP/BP/GoM, DR/SF/FC, DH/AR/SoR, EB/ET/Kain.

Week 2. SoS/BG/HoD, JQ/Mag/TC, DB/SBI/FA, YB/NSP/CD, IoJ/BP/GoM, DR/DH/EB, SF/AR/ET, FC/SoR/Kain.

Week 3. JQ/BG/SoS, TC/Mag/DB, HoD/YB/SBI, FA/NSP/IoJ, CD/BP/GoM, DR/SF/DH, EB/FC/AR, Kain/ET/SoR.

Week 4. BG/HoD/JQ, TC/SoS/DB, Mag/FA/YB, SBI/CD/IoJ, NSP/DR/FC, BP/SF/DH, GoM/EB/AR, ET/Kain/SoR.

Week 5. JQ/BG/TC, SoS/HoD/Mag, DB/FA/SBI, YB/CD/NSP, IoJ/DR/BP, GoM/FC/SF, DH/AR/SoR, EB/ET/Kain.

Your heart is in the right place, but any matchup where a Tier 1 server is paired against anyone other than another Tier 1 server is going to be a blow-out. This example will have 3/5 weeks of very bad games for Gold League.

At the end of the day it just won’t matter much which system is used for seasons. The population imbalances between servers pretty much guarantee that no reasonable compromise can be found. Some systems will work slightly better than others, but none can assure meaningful matchups for all (or even most) servers. That will only happen when populations are addressed. At that point, designing a workable system for tournaments becomes a relatively easy task.

SleepingDragon.1596:

Preferred the idea of megaservers for WvW. I’ll use examples and say 20 servers on EU and 20 on NA. Paired the most populated server with the lowest populated server in their respective regions (NA/EU) as a team. Then paired teams of EU and NA teams into a pool consisting of 4 servers. 2 awards can be given out. First award is for regional such as NA & EU gets a rewards for winning. Then team awards for your cross Atlantic partners.

Rank #10 EU with #11 EU Rank (team 1)
Rank #1 NA with #20 NA Rank (team 1)
Rank #9 EU with #12 EU Rank (team 2)
Rank #2 NA with #19 NA Rank (team 2)
Rank #8 EU with #13 EU Rank (team 3)
Rank #3 NA with #18 NA Rank (team 3)
Rank #7 EU with #14 EU Rank (team 4)
Rank #4 NA with #17 NA Rank (team 4)
Rank #6 EU with #15 EU Rank (team 5)
Rank #5 NA with #16 NA Rank (team 5)
Rank #5 EU with #16 EU Rank (team 6)
Rank #6 NA with #15 NA Rank (team 6)
Rank #4 EU with #17 EU Rank (team 7)
Rank #7 NA with #14 NA Rank (team 7)
Rank #3 EU with #18 EU Rank (team
Rank #8 NA with #13 NA Rank (team
Rank #2 EU with #19 EU Rank (team 9)
Rank #9 NA with #12 NA Rank (team 9)
Rank #1 EU with #20 EU Rank (team 10)
Rank #10 NA with #11 NA Rank (team 10)

Yes, the pairing would not benefit overstacked servers and may alter the balance of power to middle tiers. It would also make servers cheer for their cross Atlantic pairings. Any swiss pairing is purely bad as it guarantees a few particular server(s) almost always getting a victory and not because of skill.

I like this idea, but it doesn’t solve problem for servers with high PvE and low WvW population. Drakkar Lake is unofficial German RP server, think we are a high pop server, but in WvW we are only few people (no waiting in line except reset on Friday evening for ~3 hours).
Perhaps Anet is collecting data about “WvW only” population, so this could be considered. Pick out 4 weeks for a sample average (of course without telling us).

Gwenryth.9450:

I like this idea, but it doesn’t solve problem for servers with high PvE and low WvW population. Drakkar Lake is unofficial German RP server, think we are a high pop server, but in WvW we are only few people (no waiting in line except reset on Friday evening for ~3 hours).
Perhaps Anet is collecting data about “WvW only” population, so this could be considered. Pick out 4 weeks for a sample average (of course without telling us).

Actually… I should’ve been a bit more clear on it. What I meant by high population, I mean it in a way of which server can consistently field a large amount of players in WvW. I’m sure ANet has internal mechanism that can track it. They should use the previous season’s population/activity along with the activity leading into the season to figure out the team pairings.