Guild Wars 2

morrolan.9608:

Jayne.9251:

Wryscher.1432:

They could respond to population increase and decrease by simple opening a new campaign or closing them as they finished. They had campaigns of different legnths some 7 days some 30.

What happens when the maps filled up? They opened a new campaign right? People couldn’t get into the existing campaigns they had to join one of the open or new ones.

There are campaign queues. When a campaign reached a certain point it did close though and you could enter another campaign as part of your faction so you were still fighting for your faction. Plus they have a guesting system so if your home campaign is queued you could guest to another campaign.

Yes, but you couldn’t get in the same map as friends who’d started the other campaign.

That’s my point.

It’s random and will frustrate a ton of players if they don’t get their “spot” at first go.

And the leftovers will be a mish-mash of pugs and small guilds who will give up after a couple days in and leave empty maps.

Catalin.5341:

This will deter players from leaving and at some point they will adapt to the alliance system.

No sorry, I’ll just quit.

So will a lot of other vets.

Did you see that other thread? 98% of responses from people hate this idea.

post to get rid of page bug

Jayne.9251:

morrolan.9608:

Jayne.9251:

Wryscher.1432:

They could respond to population increase and decrease by simple opening a new campaign or closing them as they finished. They had campaigns of different legnths some 7 days some 30.

What happens when the maps filled up? They opened a new campaign right? People couldn’t get into the existing campaigns they had to join one of the open or new ones.

There are campaign queues. When a campaign reached a certain point it did close though and you could enter another campaign as part of your faction so you were still fighting for your faction. Plus they have a guesting system so if your home campaign is queued you could guest to another campaign.

Yes, but you couldn’t get in the same map as friends who’d started the other campaign.

That’s my point.

It’s random and will frustrate a ton of players if they don’t get their “spot” at first go.

And the leftovers will be a mish-mash of pugs and small guilds who will give up after a couple days in and leave empty maps.

You can guest to the same campaign as friends even if its full in terms of being the home campaign for players. Not like GW2 where you are locked out completely until the pop declines. Its fully flexible.

morrolan.9608:

Jayne.9251:

morrolan.9608:

Jayne.9251:

Wryscher.1432:

They could respond to population increase and decrease by simple opening a new campaign or closing them as they finished. They had campaigns of different legnths some 7 days some 30.

What happens when the maps filled up? They opened a new campaign right? People couldn’t get into the existing campaigns they had to join one of the open or new ones.

There are campaign queues. When a campaign reached a certain point it did close though and you could enter another campaign as part of your faction so you were still fighting for your faction. Plus they have a guesting system so if your home campaign is queued you could guest to another campaign.

Yes, but you couldn’t get in the same map as friends who’d started the other campaign.

That’s my point.

It’s random and will frustrate a ton of players if they don’t get their “spot” at first go.

And the leftovers will be a mish-mash of pugs and small guilds who will give up after a couple days in and leave empty maps.

You can guest to the same campaign as friends even if its full in terms of being the home campaign for players. Not like GW2 where you are locked out completely until the pop declines. Its fully flexible.

I don’t believe that’s right. Otherwise everyone would just guest where they wanted and maps do have graphical caps.

Jayne.9251:

morrolan.9608:

Jayne.9251:

Wryscher.1432:

They could respond to population increase and decrease by simple opening a new campaign or closing them as they finished. They had campaigns of different legnths some 7 days some 30.

What happens when the maps filled up? They opened a new campaign right? People couldn’t get into the existing campaigns they had to join one of the open or new ones.

There are campaign queues. When a campaign reached a certain point it did close though and you could enter another campaign as part of your faction so you were still fighting for your faction. Plus they have a guesting system so if your home campaign is queued you could guest to another campaign.

Yes, but you couldn’t get in the same map as friends who’d started the other campaign.

That’s my point.

It’s random and will frustrate a ton of players if they don’t get their “spot” at first go.

And the leftovers will be a mish-mash of pugs and small guilds who will give up after a couple days in and leave empty maps.

As random as picking a server when you create, even when you have no idea what it means?

Or as frustrating trying to join a full server to play with friends?

Wryscher.1432:

Jayne.9251:

morrolan.9608:

Jayne.9251:

Wryscher.1432:

They could respond to population increase and decrease by simple opening a new campaign or closing them as they finished. They had campaigns of different legnths some 7 days some 30.

What happens when the maps filled up? They opened a new campaign right? People couldn’t get into the existing campaigns they had to join one of the open or new ones.

There are campaign queues. When a campaign reached a certain point it did close though and you could enter another campaign as part of your faction so you were still fighting for your faction. Plus they have a guesting system so if your home campaign is queued you could guest to another campaign.

Yes, but you couldn’t get in the same map as friends who’d started the other campaign.

That’s my point.

It’s random and will frustrate a ton of players if they don’t get their “spot” at first go.

And the leftovers will be a mish-mash of pugs and small guilds who will give up after a couple days in and leave empty maps.

As random as picking a server when you create, even when you have no idea what it means?

Yes, but on a weekly basis.

There’s no way you can develop a team like that.

briggah.7910:

zinkz.7045:

Jayne.9251:

People may have left to try out other games, but they always came back to GW2.

Not really, people may try other games and not like them, but from what I’ve seen, most do not come back to GW2/WvW, they simply go play a different genre of game until Camelot Unchained, Crowfall, etc are released.

Since I’ve played gw2 I’ve bought gtav, mgsv, witcher 3 + the dlc for it, d3 + expansion. I’ve tried wildstar when it went free and countless free steam games..

You know how many hours I play on any of those games now? ZERO

I keep coming back for wvw and wvw only.

Then you are a minority, guilds with 500+ players who came to this game specifically to play WvW, left long ago and never came back, just go look at the activity in WvW, the reality is, the majority who started in WvW 3 years ago, no longer play this game.

Jayne.9251:

Wryscher.1432:

Jayne.9251:

morrolan.9608:

Jayne.9251:

Wryscher.1432:

They could respond to population increase and decrease by simple opening a new campaign or closing them as they finished. They had campaigns of different legnths some 7 days some 30.

What happens when the maps filled up? They opened a new campaign right? People couldn’t get into the existing campaigns they had to join one of the open or new ones.

There are campaign queues. When a campaign reached a certain point it did close though and you could enter another campaign as part of your faction so you were still fighting for your faction. Plus they have a guesting system so if your home campaign is queued you could guest to another campaign.

Yes, but you couldn’t get in the same map as friends who’d started the other campaign.

That’s my point.

It’s random and will frustrate a ton of players if they don’t get their “spot” at first go.

And the leftovers will be a mish-mash of pugs and small guilds who will give up after a couple days in and leave empty maps.

As random as picking a server when you create, even when you have no idea what it means?

Yes, but on a weekly basis.

There’s no way you can develop a team like that.

But you don’t actually get kicked out of a campaign each week. You have to make the choice to move. So you could build a team.

Wryscher.1432:

Jayne.9251:

Wryscher.1432:

Jayne.9251:

morrolan.9608:

Jayne.9251:

Wryscher.1432:

They could respond to population increase and decrease by simple opening a new campaign or closing them as they finished. They had campaigns of different legnths some 7 days some 30.

What happens when the maps filled up? They opened a new campaign right? People couldn’t get into the existing campaigns they had to join one of the open or new ones.

There are campaign queues. When a campaign reached a certain point it did close though and you could enter another campaign as part of your faction so you were still fighting for your faction. Plus they have a guesting system so if your home campaign is queued you could guest to another campaign.

Yes, but you couldn’t get in the same map as friends who’d started the other campaign.

That’s my point.

It’s random and will frustrate a ton of players if they don’t get their “spot” at first go.

And the leftovers will be a mish-mash of pugs and small guilds who will give up after a couple days in and leave empty maps.

As random as picking a server when you create, even when you have no idea what it means?

Yes, but on a weekly basis.

There’s no way you can develop a team like that.

But you don’t actually get kicked out of a campaign each week. You have to make the choice to move. So you could build a team.

lol, watch how it gets abused by guilds and players.

Jayne.9251:

Wryscher.1432:

Jayne.9251:

Wryscher.1432:

Jayne.9251:

morrolan.9608:

Jayne.9251:

Wryscher.1432:

They could respond to population increase and decrease by simple opening a new campaign or closing them as they finished. They had campaigns of different legnths some 7 days some 30.

What happens when the maps filled up? They opened a new campaign right? People couldn’t get into the existing campaigns they had to join one of the open or new ones.

There are campaign queues. When a campaign reached a certain point it did close though and you could enter another campaign as part of your faction so you were still fighting for your faction. Plus they have a guesting system so if your home campaign is queued you could guest to another campaign.

Yes, but you couldn’t get in the same map as friends who’d started the other campaign.

That’s my point.

It’s random and will frustrate a ton of players if they don’t get their “spot” at first go.

And the leftovers will be a mish-mash of pugs and small guilds who will give up after a couple days in and leave empty maps.

As random as picking a server when you create, even when you have no idea what it means?

Yes, but on a weekly basis.

There’s no way you can develop a team like that.

But you don’t actually get kicked out of a campaign each week. You have to make the choice to move. So you could build a team.

lol, watch how it gets abused by guilds and players.

Good point, glad that doesn’t happen to our servers….

Jayne.9251:

morrolan.9608:

Jayne.9251:

morrolan.9608:

Jayne.9251:

Wryscher.1432:

They could respond to population increase and decrease by simple opening a new campaign or closing them as they finished. They had campaigns of different legnths some 7 days some 30.

What happens when the maps filled up? They opened a new campaign right? People couldn’t get into the existing campaigns they had to join one of the open or new ones.

There are campaign queues. When a campaign reached a certain point it did close though and you could enter another campaign as part of your faction so you were still fighting for your faction. Plus they have a guesting system so if your home campaign is queued you could guest to another campaign.

Yes, but you couldn’t get in the same map as friends who’d started the other campaign.

That’s my point.

It’s random and will frustrate a ton of players if they don’t get their “spot” at first go.

And the leftovers will be a mish-mash of pugs and small guilds who will give up after a couple days in and leave empty maps.

You can guest to the same campaign as friends even if its full in terms of being the home campaign for players. Not like GW2 where you are locked out completely until the pop declines. Its fully flexible.

I don’t believe that’s right. Otherwise everyone would just guest where they wanted and maps do have graphical caps.

There are 2 caps, map cap for current players on the map and a cap on the number of players for whom the campaign is the home campaign. Similar to GW2. Except players can guest to any campaign so long as the map isn’t queued. Plus there are campaigns of differing lengths so campaigns of 7 days will be dissolved after 7 days and a new 1 created that is open to all players to be their home campaign.

Jayne.9251:

There’s no way you can develop a team like that.

Sure you could, you actually got to know players on different campaigns and good commanders got known throughout the faction regardless of campaign.

zinkz.7045:

briggah.7910:

zinkz.7045:

Jayne.9251:

People may have left to try out other games, but they always came back to GW2.

Not really, people may try other games and not like them, but from what I’ve seen, most do not come back to GW2/WvW, they simply go play a different genre of game until Camelot Unchained, Crowfall, etc are released.

Since I’ve played gw2 I’ve bought gtav, mgsv, witcher 3 + the dlc for it, d3 + expansion. I’ve tried wildstar when it went free and countless free steam games..

You know how many hours I play on any of those games now? ZERO

I keep coming back for wvw and wvw only.

Then you are a minority, guilds with 500+ players who came to this game specifically to play WvW, left long ago and never came back, just go look at the activity in WvW, the reality is, the majority who started in WvW 3 years ago, no longer play this game.

500+ pretty sure guilds cap at 500 players unless you are talking about multiple guilds. I’ve never seen a wvw guild with 500 people in it ever. PvX guilds yes.

Wvw died after last tournament… Some of you are clinging to a soulless husk trying to give it cpr. Time to bury it and make something new.

Swagger.1459:

Wvw died after last tournament… Some of you are clinging to a soulless husk trying to give it cpr. Time to bury it and make something new.

What server are you from?

briggah.7910:

Swagger.1459:

Wvw died after last tournament… Some of you are clinging to a soulless husk trying to give it cpr. Time to bury it and make something new.

What server are you from?

Last post he said he doesn’t wvw.

Ironvos.9014:

I can’t stand ESO pvp, it’s ridiculously unbalanced.
The cyrodiil map is great though, if only the whole game had maps like that.

Unfortunately the only other alternative (i know of) is Planetside 2, which has a lot of problems of it’s own and is an entirely different genre.

It’s really tragic how Anet messed up WvW, imo it was the only decent RvR game in existence at this time, but they didn’t want it.

Unbalanced? I’m curious how; I thought it was quite decent for RvR gameplay. Not to say that I didn’t still prefer GW2 WvW, but I still really liked some of the concepts better, like walls staying down after capture, as well as the crouching stealth, which was amazing for sneak attacks and scouting, and either side could easily implement it.

briggah.7910:

Swagger.1459:

Wvw died after last tournament… Some of you are clinging to a soulless husk trying to give it cpr. Time to bury it and make something new.

What server are you from?

On a tier one server.

Yes, wvw was effectively dead in this game after last tournament. It was and is a soulless and neglected husk. You cannot sit there and say that wvw as a whole was healthy and thriving on every server, and that match ups and ranking we’re not on the more predictable side…

You can’t look at things on your server and assume all is well. You have to look at the big picture…

Swagger.1459:

briggah.7910:

Swagger.1459:

Wvw died after last tournament… Some of you are clinging to a soulless husk trying to give it cpr. Time to bury it and make something new.

What server are you from?

On a tier one server.

Yes, wvw was effectively dead in this game after last tournament. It was and is a soulless and neglected husk. You cannot sit there and say that wvw as a whole was healthy and thriving on every server, and that match ups and ranking we’re not on the more predictable side…

You can’t look at things on your server and assume all is well. You have to look at the big picture…

You can’t even answer a simple question of what server you are from? I didn’t ask which tier you were in.

Also I suggest you go read some of the pvp and pve forums.. Lots of players that have been around for a long time are not happy with the direction anet is going with this game.

The server system really is horrible and has been since day 1. With the exception of good luck and some score fixing most matches are typically lopsided PvD fests with a small glimmer of good fights that most of us cling to like a crack addict looking for their next fix.

At this point in WvW most players are tired of the same meaningless system, redundant off hour PvD and unbalanced zerg fights. IMO an alliance system is worth a go if the devs are actually coding something like this. Without a significant change in the game mode, WvW will continue to die off and become a ghost town like so many games before it.

I don’t know when that tipping point will be reached but if nothing changes one day soon players will log in and there will be a dozen players during NA Prime on a T1 server and that will be considered a zerg.

Straegen.2938:

The server system really is horrible and has been since day 1. With the exception of good luck and some score fixing most matches are typically lopsided PvD fests with a small glimmer of good fights that most of us cling to like a crack addict looking for their next fix.

At this point in WvW most players are tired of the same meaningless system, redundant off hour PvD and unbalanced zerg fights. IMO an alliance system is worth a go if the devs are actually coding something like this. Without a significant change in the game mode, WvW will continue to die off and become a ghost town like so many games before it.

I don’t know when that tipping point will be reached but if nothing changes one day soon players will log in and there will be a dozen players during NA Prime on a T1 server and that will be considered a zerg.

Yup.

I kinda hoped that the devs would have megaservered wvw shortly after they dropped eotm. Oh well, guess it’s time to play catch up.

I also think that the devs really should go over professions with a fine tooth comb, but we will see how seriously they take those every 3 month balance updates being promised…

briggah.7910:

Swagger.1459:

briggah.7910:

Swagger.1459:

Wvw died after last tournament… Some of you are clinging to a soulless husk trying to give it cpr. Time to bury it and make something new.

What server are you from?

On a tier one server.

Yes, wvw was effectively dead in this game after last tournament. It was and is a soulless and neglected husk. You cannot sit there and say that wvw as a whole was healthy and thriving on every server, and that match ups and ranking we’re not on the more predictable side…

You can’t look at things on your server and assume all is well. You have to look at the big picture…

You can’t even answer a simple question of what server you are from? I didn’t ask which tier you were in.

Also I suggest you go read some of the pvp and pve forums.. Lots of players that have been around for a long time are not happy with the direction anet is going with this game.

My reply was sufficient. It doesn’t matter what server I’m on, what really matters is that I’m on a tier one server, experienced tier one wvw and can still see the major problems and flaws with all things wvw currently.

I understand some are not happy and that is their right, but there are also a lot of players who would welcome new systems like these. Let’s not forget there are also established guilds and guild affiliations that may find guild alliance wars attractive.

Regardless, segregated wvw/rvr servers are very much year 2000 thinking and design. . GW2 has to break out of the past and get with the present.

Jayne.9251:

Wryscher.1432:

Jayne.9251:

Wryscher.1432:

Jayne.9251:

morrolan.9608:

Jayne.9251:

Wryscher.1432:

They could respond to population increase and decrease by simple opening a new campaign or closing them as they finished. They had campaigns of different legnths some 7 days some 30.

What happens when the maps filled up? They opened a new campaign right? People couldn’t get into the existing campaigns they had to join one of the open or new ones.

There are campaign queues. When a campaign reached a certain point it did close though and you could enter another campaign as part of your faction so you were still fighting for your faction. Plus they have a guesting system so if your home campaign is queued you could guest to another campaign.

Yes, but you couldn’t get in the same map as friends who’d started the other campaign.

That’s my point.

It’s random and will frustrate a ton of players if they don’t get their “spot” at first go.

And the leftovers will be a mish-mash of pugs and small guilds who will give up after a couple days in and leave empty maps.

As random as picking a server when you create, even when you have no idea what it means?

Yes, but on a weekly basis.

There’s no way you can develop a team like that.

But you don’t actually get kicked out of a campaign each week. You have to make the choice to move. So you could build a team.

lol, watch how it gets abused by guilds and players.

Consistent and stagnant matchups up the current system are no better.

I think it goes without saying each server would need the capacity to have their own separate chat and commander tag visibility as well, distinct from their alliance.

A smarter system that tracks performance metrics of each individual server within an alliance structure and creates a logical combination of teams using this data reassigned weekly or bi-weekly based on weighted performance measures by a history of performance with some potential random seed as a root for allocating three distinct servers and a percentage of enforced mutation over time could make for some amazing matchups. The distribution doesn’t even need to be equal, either. Imagine all of T1 and T2 against the entire rest of the game one week with an even split of the tiers for the most part (still balanced by performance/play metrics) three ways the next. Spying would become an immense chore for those who do with the constant rotation of servers within alliances; it’s entirely likely spies would end up on allied teams, etc.

Considering the brunt of WvW leadership is done by guilds, anyways, I don’t see how it’d be much different than how it is now when a guild transfers or raids occur simultaneously. People just need to work that out, and higher populations would let that flourish a bit easier, and smaller/lower-tier guilds could rise to more prominent positions of leadership within WvW.

The consequence is some guilds might back down a little, but maintaining tag control over their own server would keep them relevant and if they do well, potentially bring some stragglers along for the ride.

Swagger.1459:

briggah.7910:

Swagger.1459:

briggah.7910:

Swagger.1459:

Wvw died after last tournament… Some of you are clinging to a soulless husk trying to give it cpr. Time to bury it and make something new.

What server are you from?

On a tier one server.

Yes, wvw was effectively dead in this game after last tournament. It was and is a soulless and neglected husk. You cannot sit there and say that wvw as a whole was healthy and thriving on every server, and that match ups and ranking we’re not on the more predictable side…

You can’t look at things on your server and assume all is well. You have to look at the big picture…

You can’t even answer a simple question of what server you are from? I didn’t ask which tier you were in.

Also I suggest you go read some of the pvp and pve forums.. Lots of players that have been around for a long time are not happy with the direction anet is going with this game.

My reply was sufficient. It doesn’t matter what server I’m on, what really matters is that I’m on a tier one server, experienced tier one wvw and can still see the major problems and flaws with all things wvw currently.

I understand some are not happy and that is their right, but there are also a lot of players who would welcome new systems like these. Let’s not forget there are also established guilds and guild affiliations that may find guild alliance wars attractive.

Regardless, segregated wvw/rvr servers are very much year 2000 thinking and design. . GW2 has to break out of the past and get with the present.

I was just curious but you are right it doesn’t really matter since you don’t seem to care about any of the communities players have built and feel everyone should just start over and build new ones..

Where you see a negative I see a positive.

If the company you worked for hired 50 new people for your department you have a few choices…

You could either complain there are too many people you don’t know now working with you, or you could embrace the new people and become a better team through team work.

You all take team work pretty seriously in wvw judging by posts, so you could either continue to be a team player or choose to alienate new people and new teams of players.

It will require more team work and open minds from veterans like you to save wvw, but that choice is yours…

Can anyone that played ESO pvp explain how do guilds organize when a new campaign starts? Do they always play the same campaign and alliance?
Also is there a TS server for a certain alliance/campaign?

DeceiverX.8361:

Consistent and stagnant matchups up the current system are no better.

This was more of an NA issue than EU. We didn’t have those problems in EU really. And the reason for that is because players took the initiative to spread out for the fights instead of stacking a few servers. I kept hoping NA would do this, and they started to, but then this stuff emerged.

DeceiverX.8361:

The consequence is some guilds might back down a little, but maintaining tag control over their own server would keep them relevant and if they do well, potentially bring some stragglers along for the ride.

No sadly it’s a bit more dire than that. Guesting is capped, and given the history of players stacking in NA, that means that it’s a crap shoot what map you get each week if you miss a reset. I don’t think people are understanding that.

There’s no bottomless guesting map. There’s no bottomless home map either. It will have a cap and once capped, it’s locked.

So either you join another campaign, or you sit out the week and try the next week to get a good “spot.”

morrolan.9608:

There are 2 caps, map cap for current players on the map and a cap on the number of players for whom the campaign is the home campaign. Similar to GW2. Except players can guest to any campaign so long as the map isn’t queued. Plus there are campaigns of differing lengths so campaigns of 7 days will be dissolved after 7 days and a new 1 created that is open to all players to be their home campaign.

As for guesting itself. Oh gee, can ya’ll see how that will be gamed?

Jayne.9251:

As for guesting itself. Oh gee, can ya’ll see how that will be gamed?

Free accounts already make us able to “guest” servers so meh.

Jayne.9251:

DeceiverX.8361:

Consistent and stagnant matchups up the current system are no better.

This was more of an NA issue than EU. We didn’t have those problems in EU really. And the reason for that is because players took the initiative to spread out for the fights instead of stacking a few servers. I kept hoping NA would do this, and they started to, but then this stuff emerged.

DeceiverX.8361:

The consequence is some guilds might back down a little, but maintaining tag control over their own server would keep them relevant and if they do well, potentially bring some stragglers along for the ride.

No sadly it’s a bit more dire than that. Guesting is capped, and given the history of players stacking in NA, that means that it’s a crap shoot what map you get each week if you miss a reset. I don’t think people are understanding that.

There’s no bottomless guesting map. There’s no bottomless home map either. It will have a cap and once capped, it’s locked.

So either you join another campaign, or you sit out the week and try the next week to get a good “spot.”

As for guesting itself. Oh gee, can ya’ll see how that will be gamed?

I don’t think you’re reading what I’m writing, here. I disagree entirely with the notion of “joining” any kind of system. I disagree with guesting or whatever you’re referring to in any such system as well.

What I am stating is that explicit server vs server match-ups as we have exactly right now at this moment are getting the format nowhere and are ultimately responsible for a lot of the problems that are currently plaguing the format, such as night-capping, transfers, and stagnant matches. These are the results of communities stacking knowing fully well the mechanics of the game eventually lead to stagnation by glicko’s PPT balance and the subsequent demoralization of players, leading to population imbalances. Since glicko is slow and does its best to balance everything game-wide, it can’t account for discrepancies within match-ups to create a more fun experience. Less fun means less interest to play which means less people playing which means less development focus and population imbalance problems, which leads back to less fun.

In EU it’s not as pronounced as NA, either, because the fear of night-capping is lessened due to the closer proximity to pacific players. When you’re against a server which is primarily lead by Oceanic/Asian players in NA, you’re looking at what is literally opposite time-cycles. The matches are boring because nothing happens, but glicko considers them balanced because each server ticks opposite the other.

Players should not be allowed to pick their server assignments except for when starting out or unless they pay gems to transfer permanently. The notion of “picking” a side would lead to stacking and is entirely contrary to what my post entails. Recall my post mentions smarter balancing systems paired with mutations and random seeding to create new match-ups very frequently, and since servers can be distributed to each alliance unevenly, this can create completely new and foreign scenarios. This fixes night-capping and outnumbered/transfer-out server problems for the entire format holistically; Asian players are feeling just as bad for the NA servers “night-capping” them or subsequently missing out on all the action. There’s therefore no way to resolve this properly and fairly for all players except to pool them together, and do so with smarter and more dynamic systems with a slight twist of randomness.

A lot of people in NA move not because they want to stack servers but because they want to fight, and I imagine a lot of EU are hesitant to move because of language barriers between servers. This is the truth when dealing with a bigger timezone variance and a unified language. Keeping server integrity is important to maintain sub-communities speaking a common tongue and having cultural relationships align. I recognize this. But claiming that no shared “alliance”-or-whatever terminology is an inferior solution or not a solution simply reeks of bias without looking at the greater system.

DeceiverX.8361:

Jayne.9251:

DeceiverX.8361:

Consistent and stagnant matchups up the current system are no better.

This was more of an NA issue than EU. We didn’t have those problems in EU really. And the reason for that is because players took the initiative to spread out for the fights instead of stacking a few servers. I kept hoping NA would do this, and they started to, but then this stuff emerged.

DeceiverX.8361:

The consequence is some guilds might back down a little, but maintaining tag control over their own server would keep them relevant and if they do well, potentially bring some stragglers along for the ride.

No sadly it’s a bit more dire than that. Guesting is capped, and given the history of players stacking in NA, that means that it’s a crap shoot what map you get each week if you miss a reset. I don’t think people are understanding that.

There’s no bottomless guesting map. There’s no bottomless home map either. It will have a cap and once capped, it’s locked.

So either you join another campaign, or you sit out the week and try the next week to get a good “spot.”

As for guesting itself. Oh gee, can ya’ll see how that will be gamed?

I don’t think you’re reading what I’m writing, here. I disagree entirely with the notion of “joining” any kind of system. I disagree with guesting or whatever you’re referring to in any such system as well.

What I am stating is that explicit server vs server match-ups as we have exactly right now at this moment are getting the format nowhere and are ultimately responsible for a lot of the problems that are currently plaguing the format, such as night-capping, transfers, and stagnant matches. These are the results of communities stacking knowing fully well the mechanics of the game eventually lead to stagnation by glicko’s PPT balance and the subsequent demoralization of players, leading to population imbalances. Since glicko is slow and does its best to balance everything game-wide, it can’t account for discrepancies within match-ups to create a more fun experience. Less fun means less interest to play which means less people playing which means less development focus and population imbalance problems, which leads back to less fun.

In EU it’s not as pronounced as NA, either, because the fear of night-capping is lessened due to the closer proximity to pacific players. When you’re against a server which is primarily lead by Oceanic/Asian players in NA, you’re looking at what is literally opposite time-cycles. The matches are boring because nothing happens, but glicko considers them balanced because each server ticks opposite the other.

Players should not be allowed to pick their server assignments except for when starting out or unless they pay gems to transfer permanently. The notion of “picking” a side would lead to stacking and is entirely contrary to what my post entails. Recall my post mentions smarter balancing systems paired with mutations and random seeding to create new match-ups very frequently, and since servers can be distributed to each alliance unevenly, this can create completely new and foreign scenarios. This fixes night-capping and outnumbered/transfer-out server problems for the entire format holistically; Asian players are feeling just as bad for the NA servers “night-capping” them or subsequently missing out on all the action. There’s therefore no way to resolve this properly and fairly for all players except to pool them together, and do so with smarter and more dynamic systems with a slight twist of randomness.

A lot of people in NA move not because they want to stack servers but because they want to fight, and I imagine a lot of EU are hesitant to move because of language barriers between servers. This is the truth when dealing with a bigger timezone variance and a unified language. Keeping server integrity is important to maintain sub-communities speaking a common tongue and having cultural relationships align. I recognize this. But claiming that no shared “alliance”-or-whatever terminology is an inferior solution or not a solution simply reeks of bias without looking at the greater system.

Thank you for having a voice of reason and open mind. We need more people like you leading the wvw initiative.

Catalin.5341:

Can anyone that played ESO pvp explain how do guilds organize when a new campaign starts? Do they always play the same campaign and alliance?
Also is there a TS server for a certain alliance/campaign?

Guilds will go buy how easy the campaign was, if there were good fights they will choose the same campaign the next round. Also guild leaders would try and find out where others were going so they can get into a populated campaign. It’s been a bit but I think they still have the monthly one and weekly one. Usually one side dominates the monthly one and it remains dead for the majority of the time.

DeceiverX.8361:

I don’t think you’re reading what I’m writing, here. I disagree entirely with the notion of “joining” any kind of system. I disagree with guesting or whatever you’re referring to in any such system as well.

To be fair, I’m not sure you had the chance to read that massive thread that was here yesterday in its entirety before it was deleted. I’m also not sure if you’ve read this one carefully either.

This thread outlines how GW2 WvW rumoured format change will be similar to ESOs. It requires “joining” .. much like GW2’s current system does. The guesting is part of the discussion in this thread about how ESO’s RvR functions. Believe that starts on the first page.

DeceiverX.8361:

The notion of “picking” a side would lead to stacking and is entirely contrary to what my post entails.

Perhaps we just have our wires crossed. You are talking about X and I’m talking about Y.

This new proposed alliance system won’t change the stacking. It’ll just be stacking under a different name, ie. alliance.

If players couldn’t get their act together and spread out prior, can you guess how they’ll behave when a new system is introduced?

DeceiverX.8361:

Recall my post mentions smarter balancing systems paired with mutations and random seeding to create new match-ups very frequently, and since servers can be distributed to each alliance unevenly, this can create completely new and foreign scenarios. This fixes night-capping and outnumbered/transfer-out server problems for the entire format holistically;

Ok this is where I think I’m having trouble understanding. You mention servers and alliances in the same sentence. I do believe the proposed system is an either/or. Servers will be eliminated entirely. And I’m not sure I understand what you mean by using “mutations” and “random seeding” to resolve nightcapping.

DeceiverX.8361:

A lot of people in NA move not because they want to stack servers but because they want to fight

You can believe that if you want, but if NA players truly wanted fights, they’d have spread out so that servers rotated up and down frequently instead of remaining stagnant.

DeceiverX.8361:

and I imagine a lot of EU are hesitant to move because of language barriers between servers.

And you’d be incorrect about that. EU players have jumped from english to german to spanish to french servers without even knowing the language. The key was to get the best fights, even if it meant working around language issues. They spread out.

DeceiverX.8361:

But claiming that no shared “alliance”-or-whatever terminology is an inferior solution or not a solution simply reeks of bias without looking at the greater system.

It’s not bias. It’s years of playing a game mode and having enough foresight to see how the destruction of servers will erode WvW until it becomes a giant ktrain pve map.

If you are thrown in with random people every week (if you don’t belong to a massive guild), and you have no guarantee of getting on the same map because it’s filled up quickly (because of the new stacking tactic), then you lose a sense of team and cooperation because you cannot reliably count on your scouting or defensive calls to be responded to. Nobody wants to scout for people they don’t know. That will lead to traditional scouts/defenders abandoning their jobs they’ve done for the past three years because lack of response = job is pointless. Once those people are gone, there’s nobody left to defend — so that leaves only attackers. Having a map with only attackers leads to guess what? Ktrain.

And how many guilds do you know that focus solely on defense? Guilds are not going to split their ranks to scout the maps.

Suggesting that the alliance system is the holy grail for WvW is far worse than bias. It’s inexperience, or a stubborn self-serving ideologue.

One extreme to the other does not usually help. Changing servers now after really messing up wvw map design would alienate even more that are barely hanging on because of friends.
SIMPLE map alterations (just to break up the monotony)
and ability to use elite specs in wvw without having to gate thru pve would’ve really helped slow down or reverse the wvw decline.
Instead, total different direction taken by ANET. It’ a real head slapper

Jayne.9251:

DeceiverX.8361:

I don’t think you’re reading what I’m writing, here. I disagree entirely with the notion of “joining” any kind of system. I disagree with guesting or whatever you’re referring to in any such system as well.

To be fair, I’m not sure you had the chance to read that massive thread that was here yesterday in its entirety before it was deleted. I’m also not sure if you’ve read this one carefully either.

This thread outlines how GW2 WvW rumoured format change will be similar to ESOs. It requires “joining” .. much like GW2’s current system does. The guesting is part of the discussion in this thread about how ESO’s RvR functions. Believe that starts on the first page.

DeceiverX.8361:

The notion of “picking” a side would lead to stacking and is entirely contrary to what my post entails.

Perhaps we just have our wires crossed. You are talking about X and I’m talking about Y.

This new proposed alliance system won’t change the stacking. It’ll just be stacking under a different name, ie. alliance.

If players couldn’t get their act together and spread out prior, can you guess how they’ll behave when a new system is introduced?

DeceiverX.8361:

Recall my post mentions smarter balancing systems paired with mutations and random seeding to create new match-ups very frequently, and since servers can be distributed to each alliance unevenly, this can create completely new and foreign scenarios. This fixes night-capping and outnumbered/transfer-out server problems for the entire format holistically;

Ok this is where I think I’m having trouble understanding. You mention servers and alliances in the same sentence. I do believe the proposed system is an either/or. Servers will be eliminated entirely. And I’m not sure I understand what you mean by using “mutations” and “random seeding” to resolve nightcapping.

DeceiverX.8361:

A lot of people in NA move not because they want to stack servers but because they want to fight

You can believe that if you want, but if NA players truly wanted fights, they’d have spread out so that servers rotated up and down frequently instead of remaining stagnant.

DeceiverX.8361:

and I imagine a lot of EU are hesitant to move because of language barriers between servers.

And you’d be incorrect about that. EU players have jumped from english to german to spanish to french servers without even knowing the language. The key was to get the best fights, even if it meant working around language issues. They spread out.

DeceiverX.8361:

But claiming that no shared “alliance”-or-whatever terminology is an inferior solution or not a solution simply reeks of bias without looking at the greater system.

It’s not bias. It’s years of playing a game mode and having enough foresight to see how the destruction of servers will erode WvW until it becomes a giant ktrain pve map.

If you are thrown in with random people every week (if you don’t belong to a massive guild), and you have no guarantee of getting on the same map because it’s filled up quickly (because of the new stacking tactic), then you lose a sense of team and cooperation because you cannot reliably count on your scouting or defensive calls to be responded to. Nobody wants to scout for people they don’t know. That will lead to traditional scouts/defenders abandoning their jobs they’ve done for the past three years because lack of response = job is pointless. Once those people are gone, there’s nobody left to defend — so that leaves only attackers. Having a map with only attackers leads to guess what? Ktrain.

And how many guilds do you know that focus solely on defense? Guilds are not going to split their ranks to scout the maps.

Suggesting that the alliance system is the holy grail for WvW is far worse than bias. It’s inexperience, or a stubborn self-serving ideologue.

I’ve been participating in a few threads regarding alliance-based system and the discussion of the server model. I’ve posted similar remarks in them as well.

A lot of NA moved to get fights. Problem is as soon as a fight tier server started to lose and lose repeatedly, they’d flee into another server when they lost pug morale for losing the week. This leads to a crash of one and ultimately an escalation of another. It ends up disrupted again, and people yet again move around to try and find a good place to WvW and fight. People leave with the cost of moving and general fragmentation, and a lot of the guilds just end up relocating to T1 because they’re sick of moving. It’s why there’s a lot of volatility in the top half of NA, but none in the bottom; people jump ship a lot to fight in the upper tiers, but never move downward because it’s just so unbelievably boring.

Perhaps I can’t speak for EU. I was operating on assumption that people would prefer to stay on the server they’re on for community rather than just for fights. If people only want fights, there’s no reason to care about server because the name is arbitrary, and such a proposed system (below) would end up yielding way more action while simultaneously preserving community.

People should be willing to scout to benefit their team, particularly if it benefits them. If you’re on the same side, there’s not much of a reason to actively avoid divulging information about the common enemy to others, even if you don’t know exactly who they are. Dunno, maybe the culture is hugely different, but transfers on all of the servers I’ve been on have always been welcomed and given information about TS and assisted pretty readily by the top dogs to help a win. Not really much of a difference here. Guilds can transfer out the next week just as being rotated can.

I posted what I posted because I believe my suggestion lies supporting neither the purely EoTM/ESO models nor the server model. Since clearly the idea isn’t jiving well with you or I’m failing to explain it properly (having done so multiple times I can’t really say my will for clarity is there :P). I’ll simplify it regardless.

- Basically, all servers stay as they are. Everyone has a home server, just as it is now.

- Glicko rating and tiers are removed altogether.

- “Alliances” are created for each color currently in WvW, and the matchmaking system selects servers based on a set of data to determine the most “balanced” match-up by allocating each server to a color. Multiple servers fight for one color for the week on the same team color as like in EoTM.

- A surveillance system records and tracks notable metrics for each individual server’s WvW data. This data measures metrics such as player participation, number of kills, number of deaths, heat-mapping group sizes, guild claims, timezone participation and flip times… lots of statistics per server. All of these metrics have weights associated to them and therefore count as a percentage of the factors that influence matchmaking. I can’t tell you the specifics of what is needed for this data or which data members should be selected or what their weights are based on the fact I couldn’t begin to tell you this since I lack those metrics and this would likely need to be done by some kind of genetic algorithm simulating matches before deciding a balance state. Note this is different from the alliance’s performance.

- At the end of the week or near the end of the week, data from the past 7 days is compiled and applied to a function to determine each server’s capabilities under various scopes; coverage, population, guilds, commanders, peak times, etc.

- The function using a certain amount of past data weighted against what occurred in the previous week updates performance measures of each individual server.

- Some servers are chosen at random to generate the next base match-up, and a matchmaking system using the performance metrics just calculated attempts to make an optimal decision of how to allocate the servers in the “fairest” distribution. Random base servers means that the distribution can change weekly, such as one week where all of the highest-scoring servers might be allied against a split of the rest of the game combined, or another where the split is relatively even by performance across all three.

- Maps need adjustments not to be fully instanced like EoTM to ensure players can move where they want to.

- Server chat and server-specific commander tags are created to prevent spying issues and maintain server integrity/identity within communities. Server Ally Joe will always be using his server tag to command your pugs or might work with some other servers and run a general pug tag on a particularly intense night. A havoc guild might interact with another on a different server which has a community that doesn’t promote havoc, say, or people meet across servers and end up friendly, causing people to now only move for community reasons instead of stacking servers for wins, because next process the system assigns a new random spread of base servers causing a constant change in alliances and therefore preventing stacking from being done. Server identity is much more about internal community than just winning, and now the lowest of “T8” have action-packed maps to enjoy while “T1” might get some hefty GvG or retaliation from a coalition of smaller guilds. You now also end up with fewer servers “on the fence” of two distinct tiers, where they dominate below but get dominated above, for they have additional support and vice versa.

- Additionally, if WvW booms beyond this point such that it causes population inflation, these can be factored into breaking the setup down into additional alliances running independently while balancing each out separately and sharing the same pool of servers.

The only concern is map instances, but I think these could be resolved by just again having the system scale expected player numbers at any given time to generate more maps if necessary before the week’s battle begins. There could be better alternatives, and this is definitely the primary concern design-wise. But I think it’s manageable considering population : map sizes is already a huge problem, particularly on the new BL’s, and BL’s and the map and its interfaces need to be changed as they’re not fully developed yet for the HoT maps.

Hope that helps explain things a bit better.

Thank you for the fair and reasonable commentary. It’s an indication I need to step away for a few days and detach.

I’ve been a staunch supporter of various changes anet has implemented recently. To the point of pollyanna-ism, glass is half full, it’s not so bad.

I just cannot stomache this particular proposal (not yours, I’ll have to go and think about yours), because I can see how it will further segregate instead of being inclusive.

Anyhow, thank you for taking the time to type that all out. I’ll go chew on it.

Jayne.9251:

Thank you for the fair and reasonable commentary. It’s an indication I need to step away for a few days and detach.

I’ve been a staunch supporter of various changes anet has implemented recently. To the point of pollyanna-ism, glass is half full, it’s not so bad.

I just cannot stomache this particular proposal (not yours, I’ll have to go and think about yours), because I can see how it will further segregate instead of being inclusive.

Anyhow, thank you for taking the time to type that all out. I’ll go chew on it.

And your solution to “ask” every single current and potential wvw player and guild to “spread out” is not any solution like you envision…

You basically talk about megaserver/alliance like it would destroy communities, YET you want to “spread out” players which COMPLETELY REMOVES them from THEIR home server communities where they have to “build up” again (which is a gripe of yours)… All in an effort to mathematically even out every server for competition…

Your other gripe has been the issue of “playing with strangers” essentially, but you want to resettle players to fight SOLELY for strangers on a “strange” server just so those competition numbers are equal… You talk about “server loyalty”, yet you want certain players/guilds to remove themselves from THEIR loyal server community family and move them into a completely different server community family…

In essence, YOUR suggestion would push established server communities apart as opposed to bringing them together even more. Your suggestion dissolves what’s left of “server loyalty” even more because you remove players from their original server to fighting for 1, and only 1, COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SERVER… ALL this headache, shuffling, reshuffling, identity loss… just so you can have even numbers.

Your suggestion is neither logical or logistically possibility, and only severs to destroy communities and relationships even more… That’s the fundamental flaw with your thinking and your idea…

The rational thing to do is to NOT destroy or touch servers at all, but to take all the people who are interested in wvw and pool them together in some way, like eotm does, for competition purposes. This megaserver wvw and/or alliances “thingy” works because it brings more like minded players TOGETHER for competition without destroying home server families…

Individual server vs individual server vs individual server here is not and does not work period. Neither does your resettlement program… The BEST idea for THIS game is to take megaserver “clumps” or guild “clumps”, like eotm does, and put them against all the other “clumps”… Doing so will not destroy individual server identity or pride or loyalty…, it will create a “NATO” effect instead… So the mentality of the mega/guild “clumps” becomes “you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us”…

Honestly, you taking a step back to think about what you are fighting against is best because what YOU (and a select few) want, WILL dissolve communities and servers even more… Your segregation and resettlement ideas creates more identity loss and a lot of needless headaches… Plus, it is NOT possible to ask players to move willingly or have the devs force a move. Your ideas are DOA. They are not plausible or possible in any way, shape or form.

Edit- And even IF the devs attempted to do a “spread out and resettle just for wvw and the spirit of competition” initiative, they better hand out full sets of legendary light, medium and heavy armor, a full compliment of legendary weapons, legendary back piece, amulet, trinkets, rings, runes, sigils, infusions and unlimited use consumables… in order to get any substantial numbers to budge…

Edit 2- I’m fully aware that there will be “growing pains” and “ego clashes” among potential commanders and guilds and players with mega/alliance stuff, but those issues are far far far smaller than what we have now. And even if players and guilds did move to make every server perfectly even, you would still have those pains and clashes on top of ALL the other negatives and drawbacks I mentioned…

Ok I finally had time to read through this all, and can comment.

DeceiverX.8361:

A lot of NA moved to get fights. Problem is as soon as a fight tier server started to lose and lose repeatedly, they’d flee into another server when they lost pug morale for losing the week. This leads to a crash of one and ultimately an escalation of another. It ends up disrupted again, and people yet again move around to try and find a good place to WvW and fight. People leave with the cost of moving and general fragmentation, and a lot of the guilds just end up relocating to T1 because they’re sick of moving. It’s why there’s a lot of volatility in the top half of NA, but none in the bottom; people jump ship a lot to fight in the upper tiers, but never move downward because it’s just so unbelievably boring.

The thing is, while I can appreciate that you enjoy having fights and have moved for such (and a lot of EU gvg guilds have done the same), there’s still folks who enjoy non-blobby fights and smallscale activity. One shoe doesn’t fit everyone.

NA T1 is an odd beast. I played there for a while, I know that the bulk of what happens is politics more than gameplay — and I guess in a sense that’s part of the gameplay too. The problem with that, and I do hear you on people getting tired of transferring, is how it affects everything below it.

I guess I just look at how things are in EU (and they’re not perfect either), and wish that variety for NA. I mean if EU players could collectively move around and “quasi balance” an entire system, surely it’s within the capabilities of all players?

DeceiverX.8361:

Perhaps I can’t speak for EU. I was operating on assumption that people would prefer to stay on the server they’re on for community rather than just for fights. If people only want fights, there’s no reason to care about server because the name is arbitrary, and such a proposed system (below) would end up yielding way more action while simultaneously preserving community.

I moved to EU about two years ago. Aside from a one-month stint on another server, I’ve stuck with Piken. Those moving servers are predominantly the gvg guilds, and they don’t care about what language is spoken. At core there’s a unique identity for each server and its subsequent community. I prefer to stay on a server for community, but I know I’m not alone in that regard either.

DeceiverX.8361:

People should be willing to scout to benefit their team, particularly if it benefits them. If you’re on the same side, there’s not much of a reason to actively avoid divulging information about the common enemy to others, even if you don’t know exactly who they are. Dunno, maybe the culture is hugely different, but transfers on all of the servers I’ve been on have always been welcomed and given information about TS and assisted pretty readily by the top dogs to help a win. Not really much of a difference here. Guilds can transfer out the next week just as being rotated can.

Here’s where you and I disagree. I spend the bulk of my time as a scout. Those of us who do it are pretty passionate about it. We cultivate relationships, work between guilds, and organize maps to benefit everyone. Often coordinating all four maps for the server.

But that takes time to develop and curate. And create trust.

Absolutely most maps want people calling out info. But if those call outs are ignored because “oh we don’t know that person, they could just be calling for five people attacking” — then eventually the good scouts are going to get frustrated and just stop doing that job. I mean why continue to do rewardless work if your work is being largely ignored?

If I spend the bulk of my time in WvW doing that rewardless scouting duty, you better kitten well come when I call out an attack incoming. I know what I’m doing that way, but you don’t know me — we just got shoved into a map together for the week. So do you trust the person yelling out the call, or do you trust your own judgement and just plow ahead fighting?

Nine times out of 10, you’ll plow ahead fighting and ignore the scout call out. Soon, the scouts just stop doing it.

DeceiverX.8361:

- Basically, all servers stay as they are. Everyone has a home server, just as it is now.

- Glicko rating and tiers are removed altogether.

- “Alliances” are created for each color currently in WvW, and the matchmaking system selects servers based on a set of data to determine the most “balanced” match-up by allocating each server to a color. Multiple servers fight for one color for the week on the same team color as like in EoTM.

Because of rotation, that means that you don’t know who you’re going to be grouped with, nor does it take into account overflow maps, making getting the regulars onto the same map is problematic.

Even if the matchmaking service calculated balance, this will be fine for variable matches in EU, but will return to the stagnant tiers in NA because of players stacking — one elephant in the room is that T1 servers are significantly bigger than the ones below. So no matter who they’re paired with, you’ll still get the same surplus bodies issue.

I love that you stick with your server, I’m just trying to suss out the potential problems. I also get that you’re trying to address population issues, particularly for the lower tiers.

If you could come up with a solution that would guarantee no overflow maps where your team is scattered, I wouldn’t be opposed to this idea.

DeceiverX.8361:

- At the end of the week or near the end of the week, data from the past 7 days is compiled and applied to a function to determine each server’s capabilities under various scopes; coverage, population, guilds, commanders, peak times, etc.

- The function using a certain amount of past data weighted against what occurred in the previous week updates performance measures of each individual server.

I guess you’re assuming that the data will be variable since different servers are grouped together? How do you crunch data to include the steady stat sink of T1? I guess I’m wondering how it will vary if this is essentially just having one tier, but mixing up the different servers. (If I’m misunderstanding, please clear it for me, I’m assuming this is just one gigantic tier?)

DeceiverX.8361:

- Some servers are chosen at random to generate the next base match-up, and a matchmaking system using the performance metrics just calculated attempts to make an optimal decision of how to allocate the servers in the “fairest” distribution. Random base servers means that the distribution can change weekly, such as one week where all of the highest-scoring servers might be allied against a split of the rest of the game combined, or another where the split is relatively even by performance across all three.

Again, if you could clarify how set teams could get on the same map every week and not be subject to overflow, then I could see the benefit of a system like this — it gets more bodies on the map. Also, how do we address those players who don’t like the big blobby maps? There’s a good chunk of that kind of player too.

DeceiverX.8361:

- Maps need adjustments not to be fully instanced like EoTM to ensure players can move where they want to.

Aha! I needed to scroll down ><

Ok but how do you prevent one map from being let’s say “more popular” than another? (ie, stacking in T1). Surely there will be map caps?

DeceiverX.8361:

- Server chat and server-specific commander tags are created to prevent spying issues and maintain server integrity/identity within communities. Server Ally Joe will always be using his server tag to command your pugs or might work with some other servers and run a general pug tag on a particularly intense night. A havoc guild might interact with another on a different server which has a community that doesn’t promote havoc, say, or people meet across servers and end up friendly, causing people to now only move for community reasons instead of stacking servers for wins, because next process the system assigns a new random spread of base servers causing a constant change in alliances and therefore preventing stacking from being done.

This is interesting. A good idea.

DeceiverX.8361:

Server identity is much more about internal community than just winning, and now the lowest of “T8” have action-packed maps to enjoy while “T1” might get some hefty GvG or retaliation from a coalition of smaller guilds. You now also end up with fewer servers “on the fence” of two distinct tiers, where they dominate below but get dominated above, for they have additional support and vice versa.

Ok now I’m confused again, lol. From what you described above, it would just be one big tier, but now above/below? You mean first second third spot in that mono-tier?

DeceiverX.8361:

- Additionally, if WvW booms beyond this point such that it causes population inflation, these can be factored into breaking the setup down into additional alliances running independently while balancing each out separately and sharing the same pool of servers.

No, I’d hate this. Anything that can be gamed will be gamed. It’s why servers are the better option to begin with — it’s inclusive and unbiased and not subject to “I’m going to take my ball and go home” behaviour. Y’know?

The only concern is map instances, but I think these could be resolved by just again having the system scale expected player numbers at any given time to generate more maps if necessary before the week’s battle begins.

Well the implications are more than just scaling. If instances are used and fill up, they aren’t any different from the existing server tiers that are stuck and stagnant (in NA). It also means that you can’t get onto the same map as people you’ve played with for three years — or worse for guilds, you cannot get all your guildies into the same map.

Most of the guild movement in EU to spread out was because of queues. EU’s I guess are less patient than NA players, and cannot stand queues. They will literally move to a silver server (sometimes bronze) just to get everyone onto the same map and fight. It’s why things spread out so much in EU.

Put up queues and you’ll lose a ton of EU players. They’ll just head out to their nice restaurants and pubs and have a life instead

DeceiverX.8361:

Hope that helps explain things a bit better.

It did, thank you!

Hope my comments are fodder for further dialogue.

ESO Cyrodiil is fun to play

Due to text size limitations, I’ll respond in sequence in a new post, Jayne.

Fair warning, this is a pretty huge wall. Sorry for big blocks of text in advance. You’ve been warned :P

As far as the capability of players to self-regulate the matches, clearly NA just doesn’t operate that way. If it did, we’d probably have seen such attempts in the past, but the pursuit of fights and stale matches with the glicko system responding too slowly has resulted in a lot of issues. I know on one of the servers I was on some months ago, we had a huge surge in WvW performance, constantly ticking almost 500 24/7. This effort lasted a while, too. We tripled or quadrupled our competitions’ scores. For almost two months, we stayed in the same match-ups/rank, though. In the end, there was no fighting back from our enemies; we demoralized them so heavily they didn’t even come to fight. This led to many of our own getting extremely bored and leaving towards the end; no reason to stomp so heavily. As such, a lot moved to T1/T2, and when the score finally updated, we had lost the majority of the WvW presence we had from boredom. Having been in many WvW guilds in the mid/lower servers with all the moving around I do, I can say that the big appeal to T1/T2 isn’t blob-fights so much as it is consistency in fights in general. Nobody likes a dead server, particularly for PvP formats. The culture’s pretty different in NA; WvW on pretty much anything but the high tiers is run by PvX players/guilds, so even in attempts to re-distribute, stomps are imminent unless the entirety of the high tiers would disband. And that would only bring some vitality to the lower tiers, and likely would make the incoming transfers going downwards even more bored. From what I gather historically, EU has had a larger WvW population than NA, and I suspect the culture difference is both a cause and result of the different approaches to WvW. EU’s distribution also likely worked in the past when overall there were more people playing and more people devoted to the format distributed beyond just a few stacked servers. NA’s so deep in the hole and player counts are dwindling so fast that I don’t think there’s actually a big enough population to cause such distribution to even work without just making everyone more bored. While it could be possible, doing so would be a massive risk to the format in general, and I’d rather see some solid, guaranteed systems handle making the match-ups good than a volatile player-base which may very well fail and completely destroy the remnants of what we currently have.

As far as scouting goes, I can relate to an extent. Usually I run alone or in a small group if the numbers aren’t needed for a siege, and I’m usually one of the few people tracking enemy movement and investigating swords. I haven’t seen a commander tag in over two months, though, and I’m on a middle-tier server. Scouting, roaming, havoc, whatever it may be has the limitations that it’s dependent on a blob to be functionally useful assuming the enemy has a “larger” group. A few groups of five or so players doing camp havoc and slowly flipping towers won’t do much without blob support, just as a lone player can’t do much scouting if there’s nobody to report to. You’re right in that judgment would be difficult when getting reports from randoms, but it was alright near launch. People can organize accordingly, and this is also why I suggest the server-specific chat option; your server-mates know your calls are good. At the very least they’ll listen, and you’ll have an impact on their movements. If the commanders are communicating or are worth their salt, they’ll realize calls you’re making are good, and a few days into the week you’ll be recognized as a valid caller. If the scout is really good, he may get attention for longer, and if server assignments vary, it’s also possible a given server will be fighting alongside an ally for the next week, which may remember said previous well-known scout.

Who knows, I could be horribly wrong. I know of few “reputable” scouts in general, but that’s typically because the attitude of said demographic is focused on server loyalty and a sense of duty and contribution, so random pairings and associated fame would never span beyond their current server, and I’ve never been a dedicated scout enough to gain reputation other than thanks from a few commanders and some prioritization/recognition of my information if not conflicting with another immediate concern.

As far as pushing large fights or not promoting alternative play styles than blobbing, more or fewer players isn’t really going to change player mentality in that regard. Out-numbering opponents will always increase the chances of winning a fight (assuming geared/remotely skilled players on both sides), and the rewards for blobbing are quite good whereas small group play is underwhelming and costly. It’s not really a map/population concern but a side effect of players not seeing the value of smaller group play. Smaller group play is also only really effective when said small group is extremely organized. It’d only end up overly-blobby if everyone got put in one smaller map (the player per unit of land ratio is too high). It doesn’t really matter how big the map is or how many people are fighting but rather the ratio of the two. If there’s one instance of the combined maps with hyper-blobs because the players largely want to blob fight in that instance, most likely the other will be smaller groups of similar sizes or maybe one smaller blob on each side due to some overflow on the main map. As long as small group/havoc players don’t try to take on the blob in the map which has blob action and instead move to the “quieter” maps, matches will end up pretty balanced for everyone and you won’t end up with the “blob vs roaming” scenarios we have now, or at least in theory if people don’t intend to screw themselves over. Yes, there would need to be map caps as currently, and that’s fair and good because the caps are more for performance purposes than actual design intentions from what I can gather.

As far as “tiers” go, they would also still exist from the leaderboards POV. Remember that each server’s data is tracked independently still in this system. Servers with low contribution scores would thus be “tiered” (as an informal use of the word, not a system) even if the concept of tiered fighting is no longer. I used T1 and T8 as descriptors which align with current WvW vocabularies meaning WvW population/contribution. In the revised system, even the low-population, low-contribution servers would get the equivalent of the highest-population/contribution ones as to keep the format exciting no matter which arbitrary server one selects at the beginning of the game, and can therefore stay on a server for community reasons rather than fights and fights alone, for the system will auto-balance this.

For “separate matches” I think there is again some misunderstanding. There would be no way to stack the servers. Just for an example consider if half of the servers filled to current T1-esque performance from a numbers and activity point of view. It might be wise in the phase of creating a match-up to break this down a bit to keep the number of needed map instances lower for such a booming population. Right now combining lots of servers doesn’t seem so bad since the population is low, but needing to create 20+ instances of the sets of maps because everything filled up would be kind of silly, so creating separate concurrent matches like what we have between the tiers now could rectify this issue of map-instance explosion while not throwing match balancing out of whack.

Definitely a different culture for the reasons of splitting up as stated above (again I think EU has higher population density in WvW so queues were longer as well); the wait on the queue is less boring than literally not having a fight in the entire week in NA. Like I said, it’s definitely a concern, but a system acknowledging such metrics for player entry and balancing around that (probably giving player participation some of the highest weighting, thinking for general balance and queue purposes) would likely help resolve this problem substantially, and the number of map instances could vary per week. The mathematics would need to be checked a lot, and perhaps random assignment isn’t best for this purpose but instead random assignment of servers at the beginning while maintaining some kind of constraint for population spread. The AI for this would be pretty complex for me to devise as a non-expert (and I couldn’t even fathom perfect implementation), but ANet has hired-out AI experts in the recent past, and might have some staff with some background knowledge who could work with this problem. Done right, it could have a massive impact in WvW for the positive and bring back a huge number of people to both the format and the game in general.

I would like to mention that megaservers, ultraoneworldsuperservers, mass alliance/faction wars… are not new design concepts. These are things that other games have implemented and are using already. This is not 1990 anymore. Some of you seem to think we live in the digital dark ages where things like these are out of the realm of possibility to do or figure out.

Colin just confirmed there has been work going on behind the scenes for wvw for a YEAR now, and that all the engineers are still slaving away on wvw stuff as we speak…

Holy Moly
cliffs notes?

Swagger.1459:

I would like to mention that megaservers, ultraoneworldsuperservers, mass alliance/faction wars… are not new design concepts. These are things that other games have implemented and are using already. This is not 1990 anymore. Some of you seem to think we live in the digital dark ages where things like these are out of the realm of possibility to do or figure out.

Colin just confirmed there has been work going on behind the scenes for wvw for a YEAR now, and that all the engineers are still slaving away on wvw stuff as we speak…

And I believe it highly unlikely the system will be implemented properly based on their current track record for WvW.

These aren’t new ideas. The problem is that ANet’s never communicated that they want to make changes, or interact with the community on how to properly – or at the very least – know what not to change or what not to do.

Time to restore my old signature.

Time to restore my old signature.

Couple reasons why WvW is failing. Lack of attention, money, priorities, balance, and the biggest reason, no competition. I should bold that but whatever.

World vs. World is a unique beast and several games tried to copy what DaOC did with R v R. In short, all games since have failed and will continue to do so. That is, unless they are only PvP oriented games. Simple fact of the matter is that you really can’t balance a PvP game when there is PvE content. Or, vise versa. DaOC failed when they tried to introduce PvE – Trials of Atlantis. No different here whereas you have PvE, WvW, and sPvP.

On the lack of competition, the developers get complacent. HoT is rather interesting and entertaining but the new WvW maps should have replaced EBG and let the original borderland maps stay. Force players to enter in borderlands and pass through gaining supplies and other things then enter the new “single” map Helps large and small guilds – also helps roamers, scouts, havoc. But no, we have 3 huge maps that most ignore.

Don’t get us all started with population balance across the server tiers. Truth be told, DaOC had the same thing with servers – population, and class population. Complex nut. What DaOC had that GW2 doesn’t is:

1. Incentive to RvR
2. Alliances
3. Risk
4. Reward
5. Camelot Herald (player, class, server, alliance, and guild statistics)

GW2 – well, has pretty much nothing of the sort. Yes, it is fun. But at the end of the day when you look at what they offer for PvE, and then sPvP, compare that to WvW, well, it comes up short. You know it is an issue when the exp pack releases and dailies still include tasks from the maps no longer available

Isn’t attention to detail a kitten?

Replacing WvWvW servers with alliances or megaservers is a bad idea.

Many players didn’t hop from server to another, but stick to their server through the bad times. The emotional ties are big, because you might have spent literally thousands hours and thousands of gold for your server. Nevertheless the we should discuss some server merges, because 27 servers is clearly too much for EU. Can any player on the lowest ranked servers comment how is the status now? Is the game dead outside few hours?

Four reason why we are not getting server merges…

1- you can’t screw over a sever selfishly just because wvw is failing.

2- server merges imply loss of players to everyone and shows signs of distress to stockholders.

3- nc/anet wants to fill up servers.

4- it’s not the right move sorry.

Swagger.1459:

2- server merges imply loss of players to everyone and shows signs of distress to stockholders.

Not so much stockholders but stakeholders in general. Merges imply a lower population which implies the success of the game is declining. Stockholders are going to be less willing to invest unless player data is there to support that the revenue stream across the game is still fine (with the format being unsuccessful). From the player community point of view, however, merges imply that the game’s got fundamental problems and poor management and/or a dated game are usually to blame. This reduces morale from prospective customers who do their research as well as the existing ones.

Merges are only a particularly good idea if the aspects of the game which caused a dwindling population are worked on and resolved (“resolved” implying community acceptance), and either new servers are created as a “refresh” point to isolate past problems, or if the game starts getting dated and the populations are knowingly decreasing as to save money for the business and potentially increase morale of existing “low population” problems where stakeholders are aware that there will not be many new players coming in for some time.

Replacing the player organization concept of Servers with one of Alliances would also displace the perception of a shrinking population. This perception is relevant only to customers, because NCSoft and ANet parties and partners are all variously privy to the real data. They make some of these decisions based upon that data, including what they choose to reveal, when, and how.

Auto-allocating current server association to a same-named alliance would displace the perception of lost group loyalty. This can work regardless of the number of WvW tiered matches they produce from the resulting set of alliances. It is entirely possible to create a smaller number of matches from the same number of server/alliance organizational units.

Virtute.8251:

Replacing the player organization concept of Servers with one of Alliances would also displace the perception of a shrinking population. This perception is relevant only to customers, because NCSoft and ANet parties and partners are all variously privy to the real data. They make some of these decisions based upon that data, including what they choose to reveal, when, and how.

Auto-allocating current server association to a same-named alliance would displace the perception of lost group loyalty. This can work regardless of the number of WvW tiered matches they produce from the resulting set of alliances. It is entirely possible to create a smaller number of matches from the same number of server/alliance organizational units.

Exactly. It is easy to assume that “server” and “matches” go hand-in-hand since this is what we’ve been playing with. There’s not much of a reason that the two need to be linked as one-to-one relationship, as we know well from the way EOTM works.