Guild Wars 2

I would like to add my voice to the discussion.

I play on Seafarer’s Rest [EU]. We were formerly a heavyweight in the WvW community, but due to numerous reasons, SFR is now a low population WvW server. We have a huge total population, and a strong EotM population, but neither of these should count when it comes to matchups or pairings, in my humble opinion. The current match-up system is simply not providing meaningful fights or fun, and I am mystified as to why we have not already been relegated to the pool of servers who get linked with “bigger” servers.

Right now we are matched with Ruins of Surmia, which is even smaller than we are, so whoever we fight, we will automatically lose (well, except Gunnar’s Hold, maybe — I have been following threads on them lately). They are another example of a server for whom the current matchups system is completely failing.

Frankly, I am surprised that I even need to post any of this. What population numbers are Arenanet using to determine pairings and matchups? I would ask you to be more transparent in this regard because the system just seems to be very bad for high and low population groupings right now. We have all seen the befuddlement over the pairings at the high end.

So I would ask the WvW team to assign numbers like this for calculating matchups and pairings …

<server name> <casual mist war population> <active mist war population> and ignore all other population numbers.

“Active Mist War population” should be the number of players who play a certain minimum number of hours per day in WvW (say, 6 or 4 or something). Alternatively, consider hours per week. This excludes time spent in Edge of the Mists and PvP and PvE.

Now I would do pairings on the basis of combined “active mist war population” only (multiple servers), or maybe a weighted calculation of 80% active + 20% casual. And then matchups should be about getting roughly equal populations to fight each other. Variance should be within +/- 5%. And here is the key, you reduce (or increase) the number of tiers to ensure you have equal populations in each tier. Let the server/player skill be the key to determining which tier the server plays in, rather than allowing the active population to determine whether a server goes up or down.

If you tell me this is exactly what you are doing already, I would be reluctant to believe it. However, maybe there is a time-of-day or time-of-week variable in the population. This makes calculations more complicated I guess and would require further thought.

I kinda like the 1up, 1 down purely from the perspective of matchups should change every week without fail.
Higher frequency of relinking is probably better too.

It is tricky with bandwagoning & merges is just a temporary fix if population bleeds out further.

I’d say matchups/links, then put rewards on skirmishes personally.

Heck, I think a placement reward at the end of a 4 week block would be reasonable then ( maybe track participation over the four weeks?)
I was toying with an idea along the lines of participation used as “shares” and the “treasure chest” is determined by placement.

As mentioned elsewhere, the effect of transfers from/to Vabbi is greatly overestimated — I’m checking quite regularly who in my squad is from Vabbi and I recognize most of them. That was the case when we were linked with Desolation, the same for FSP and now with Gunnar’s Hold as well.

It’s easy to overlook the effects of Living Story and the frustration of fine-weather players on the WvW population. People who come for the Gift of Heroes reward track are gone as soon as they have it, too – or they come back when the matchup is better. Noone wants to be cannon-fodder all day long.

Deli.1302:

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Hey everyone,

I wanted to address the idea of moving world linking to monthly instead of every 2 months, since it is being brought up more and more frequently.

The team isn’t opposed to this idea; we actually think it would be beneficial to move to monthly because it would allow us to iterate faster on how we are calculating which worlds should be linked. However, the main reason for not doing this right now is the matchmaking algorithm, Glicko. Each time we shuffle worlds via world linking it takes about 4 weeks’ worth of matches before Glicko begins to reliably match make those new worlds into balanced matches. If we did world linking monthly, Glicko would not be able to create balanced matchups.

Our next priority poll is going to be asking if players would rather have us work on adding rewards to skirmishes (and possibly other feedback items being collected from this thread) or replace Glicko matchmaking with a 1-up 1-down system (wherein the winner moves up a tier and the loser moves down a tier.) The 1-up 1-down system should work better with monthly linkings than Glicko, so we are most likely going to hold off on 1 month linkings until that system is in.

Another possibility we could pursue is 1 month linkings, but use the Glicko offset system to guarantee the matches. Alternatively, we could manually change Glicko ratings to what we believe they should be for each world. Either option would force worlds to start out closer to being in the correct tier and thus give better matches faster. These options are contentious, so even if everyone on the forums seemed to like this idea it would be something we would poll on.

How will you address the mass migration of players every time re-linking happens? Vabbi is a perfect example. It received a huge amount of transfers when it was linked with Deso and then FSP. Its increased population caused it to be linked with the lower ranked Gunnar’s Hold and then all those transfers cleared out and Gunnar’s Hold is basically not linked with any server right now.

Rink.6108:

But if Vabbi I is full, …

That’s the top quote of this thread for me – I’d really like to see what happens if we are full :-)

I would prefer to retire this linking system.

At least on EU it didn’t solve a single problem, but instead created an endless bandwagon form everywhere to nowhere, leaving both host and guest servers barren after unlink, as people move to the new top tier. Guest players because they are looking for ez matchups, hosts because sudden drop in population and rank doesn’t reflect well on morale. They end up fueling the bandwagon with their numbers, and their home server won’t recover until it gets bandwagoned again. This already happened to some ex top-tiers and will happen to all of them. With 500 gems as transfering fee even I, always being poor as kitten, can afford to move every single month for ez wins.

It’s also a problem for TS admin and community leaders, and with monthly relink it will turn into administrative hell.

EU doesn’t have enough servers to afford the variance of links. Anet would have to link the same servers again and again, or link servers with different languages, or create unequal links like they did with FSP and endure the drama and accusations of favoritism. The less Anet have to intervene the better.

Instead I would like to see a more direct approach. Permanently merge the lowest, say 5 or 10, servers into 1 or 2 and focus on getting new and old players back into the gamemode. Fix the kittening lag , address the balance, remove eotm, roll out the second scoring/skirmishing update that we were promised, add unique personal, skirmish and matchup rewards. Do the Call of the Mists buff for WvW like we have for PvP, add some more achievements, titles and maybe shiny badges. Guild upgrades, statues and plaques in LA. WvW-only legendaries, backpacks, wings, backpacks with wings and flags, whatever.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

or replace Glicko matchmaking with a 1-up 1-down system (wherein the winner moves up a tier and the loser moves down a tier.) The 1-up 1-down system should work better with monthly linkings than Glicko, so we are most likely going to hold off on 1 month linkings until that system is in.

How would you feel about a modified 1-up 1-down system that still uses glicko, but in a slightly different way?

I could see a system where the highest glicko at the end of the match moves up and the lowest down. For example in T3 right now DB is in 3rd but has the highest glicko, would it be fair to move them down to T4?

If the match ended with…

DB at 1779 rating, but come in 3rd place
SBI at 1729 rating, but come in 1st place
SoS at 1710 rating, but come in 2nd place (these are the numbers at the time of writing)

DB would move up and SoS would move down because that was their rating position after the match ended. It would also provide some incentive to fight for glicko points even if the final results of the match are already decided and one side has a lead that can’t be broken.

This would prevent servers moving up or down too fast, because theoretically a server could start on T4 week 1, win T3 and move to T2 week 2, and win T2 and move to T1 in week 3. That’s 3 weeks to move all the tiers and if server relinks happened more often there’s a real chance of getting royally slaughtered week 5 with the new links.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Hey everyone,

I wanted to address the idea of moving world linking to monthly instead of every 2 months, since it is being brought up more and more frequently.

The team isn’t opposed to this idea; we actually think it would be beneficial to move to monthly because it would allow us to iterate faster on how we are calculating which worlds should be linked. However, the main reason for not doing this right now is the matchmaking algorithm, Glicko. Each time we shuffle worlds via world linking it takes about 4 weeks’ worth of matches before Glicko begins to reliably match make those new worlds into balanced matches. If we did world linking monthly, Glicko would not be able to create balanced matchups.

Our next priority poll is going to be asking if players would rather have us work on adding rewards to skirmishes (and possibly other feedback items being collected from this thread) or replace Glicko matchmaking with a 1-up 1-down system (wherein the winner moves up a tier and the loser moves down a tier.) The 1-up 1-down system should work better with monthly linkings than Glicko, so we are most likely going to hold off on 1 month linkings until that system is in.

Another possibility we could pursue is 1 month linkings, but use the Glicko offset system to guarantee the matches. Alternatively, we could manually change Glicko ratings to what we believe they should be for each world. Either option would force worlds to start out closer to being in the correct tier and thus give better matches faster. These options are contentious, so even if everyone on the forums seemed to like this idea it would be something we would poll on.

Your polls are ruining this game. 1 up 1 down is a terrible idea. Yet, it will get voted in because of the general population not liking what we currently. have. Just like we voted for linking and that was a terrible decision. You are the game designer.

I think the polls are actually a good thing. But maybe the contents of the polls should only include suggestions that actually solve the problems the community has. So don’t give us 1 up/1 down systems as an option if you see that it creates even more inbalanced matchups. For NA the matches are more or less balanced if the three servers belonging to a tier are in there. If one of those moves up to be farmed and one moves down to farm, this inbalances every single matchup every second week to a huge degree.
So make a quality check beforehand, do the maths and give us systems to vote for that actually are able to solve the problems the majority of the WvW community is angry about (instead of making bad things even worse). I think inbalanced matchups are quite high on this list atm.

I think it’s ok to try stuff like linking to see, if it has a positive effect on the problems that should be solved.

But you have to be able to admit if it doesn’t and try to figure out other possible solution instead of sticking to that idea and make it even worse.

What does a linking that changes every 4 weeks solve?

Tbh: I don’t know

It doesn’t solve the problem of the insane bandwaggoningmovement that started with the linking in a quantity that provides a new dimension to the bandwaggoning that has been always there, but lately it seems to be stronger than ever.

What will be increasing are the problems, that come with linking, Every 4 weeks communities have to deal with a second or even third community, that stays for 4 weeks and is leaving then again, either followed by a new link or none at all. That scatters communities and is an organisational effort for the hosting server. Servercommunities need to have the chance to grow on their own and have a healthy enviorenment. Bandwaggoning is a permanent danger to destroy healthy communitycores and destroys the feeling to be part of something that is worth staying with instead of transfering around all the time.

So I would be interested in what Anet thinks does improve with a 4 week rhythm. And it better be another interest than having their transferincoming doubled.

I think EU should be merged into 12 servers (4 tiers). If population drops further, delete another tier in a year or so.

Malediktus.3740:

I think EU should be merged into 12 servers (4 tiers). If population drops further, delete another tier in a year or so.

Then we can delete the game mode in a few years as your “solution” is completely rediculous. It doesn’t address the issue that is people are leaving the game in general due to being fed up with the abysmal class balance. It also doesn’t address the issue of players stacking on servers or the population imbalances there in. All your “solution” will do is reduce the servers and keep rewarding the causes of what led WvW into its current state.

I’m not sure how I feel about 1U1D. It will allow servers to move rapidly if they are not in the proper place. But it has the potential to create disastrous matches – basically a T1 will be matched with a T3 every week. This might be ok but it might not.

It also might encourage fighting for second, which I consider lame. And you’ll be hearing a lot more cries of 2v1 if the top server decides to focus one over the other.

Having said that, I’d be willing to try 1U1D. If it could be reversed easily if it is terrible.

What about treating the monthly link up like a tournament as far as matchmaking goes? Do a Swiss system. Or round robin. Or just make the matches so every server plays every other server – you could automate that, just put in an if statement that says if two servers are too far apart in population then they can’t be matches together.

not a fan of 1 up 1 down.. the reason being is because the tiers are so out of wack population wise. if servers could actually compete in multiple tiers, 1 up 1 down may work but they can’t so i don’t see it working. all i see is the bigger server losing a match, dropping a tier and then dominating the tier below it. what would be the point in staying on the lowest server in t4 when a different bigger t3 server comes down every week..

also i’m starting to hate these polls. like someone else said 1 up 1 down will probably win and then we will be stuck with it because that’s what the wvw players wanted.. i voted no for linking because i never saw it working. to this day i still don’t like it but hey i’m stuck with it because the players voted on it. there were no other options to vote on.. linking or no linking was the choice yet you had other ideas you could have thrown at us..

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Your polls are ruining this game. 1 up 1 down is a terrible idea. Yet, it will get voted in because of the general population not liking what we currently. have. Just like we voted for linking and that was a terrible decision. You are the game designer.

I don’t agree with Mal very often but when he is right there is no denying it. I’d love to see some details about that “blow it up and start over” option at this point even though it was something I was fervently against before linking. There have got to be better solutions available and 1up 1down or monthly re-links are only going exacerbate the problems we already have. Your player base has no incentive to think about long term consequences. That is what game designers are suppose to do along with maybe a little social engineering to get us there.

apharma.3741:

Malediktus.3740:

I think EU should be merged into 12 servers (4 tiers). If population drops further, delete another tier in a year or so.

Then we can delete the game mode in a few years as your “solution” is completely rediculous. It doesn’t address the issue that is people are leaving the game in general due to being fed up with the abysmal class balance. It also doesn’t address the issue of players stacking on servers or the population imbalances there in. All your “solution” will do is reduce the servers and keep rewarding the causes of what led WvW into its current state.

No i actually agree with him. The world linking was the worst that has ever happened to WvW. Sure there are a lot more issues than that, but nothing created as much imbalance and randomness. I personally know people who left because of this. Communities struggle, since guilds and individuals transfer all over the place. Matchups have never been more unbalanced (i am speaking for EU servers now, i don’t know about NA). What are we even playing for anymore, when the whole situation gets turned upside down at the next linking?

Merge some of the lower populated servers and then leave it the way it is. People will still stack on the top tier, but when the overall population spreads across less servers, it means more fights and action for everyone, less “dead” matchups and in a couple months the situation will have somewhat stabilized.

Reducing the relinking period is a bad idea. Continuing this at all is a bad idea.

And maybe, just maybe, the guys at Arenanet have then time to adress some of the other issues of the current game, like class imbalance and all that.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Hey everyone,

I wanted to address the idea of moving world linking to monthly instead of every 2 months, since it is being brought up more and more frequently.

The team isn’t opposed to this idea; we actually think it would be beneficial to move to monthly because it would allow us to iterate faster on how we are calculating which worlds should be linked. However, the main reason for not doing this right now is the matchmaking algorithm, Glicko. Each time we shuffle worlds via world linking it takes about 4 weeks’ worth of matches before Glicko begins to reliably match make those new worlds into balanced matches. If we did world linking monthly, Glicko would not be able to create balanced matchups.

Our next priority poll is going to be asking if players would rather have us work on adding rewards to skirmishes (and possibly other feedback items being collected from this thread) or replace Glicko matchmaking with a 1-up 1-down system (wherein the winner moves up a tier and the loser moves down a tier.) The 1-up 1-down system should work better with monthly linkings than Glicko, so we are most likely going to hold off on 1 month linkings until that system is in.

Another possibility we could pursue is 1 month linkings, but use the Glicko offset system to guarantee the matches. Alternatively, we could manually change Glicko ratings to what we believe they should be for each world. Either option would force worlds to start out closer to being in the correct tier and thus give better matches faster. These options are contentious, so even if everyone on the forums seemed to like this idea it would be something we would poll on.

I can hardly imagine a worse change you could make than to add rewards based on skirmish outcome with the currently rotten matchmaking and server-linking system.

Please tell me that suggestion is a joke on ANet’s part.

First place skirmish victories are nothing like evenly distributed among servers right now. If you add a reward for servers/players getting higher ranks in a skirmish you will encourage even more bandwagon transfers.

Putting this horrible idea to a player vote does not make it any better or more acceptable. It does not reflect well on the WvW team.

bigFM.8642:

apharma.3741:

Malediktus.3740:

I think EU should be merged into 12 servers (4 tiers). If population drops further, delete another tier in a year or so.

Then we can delete the game mode in a few years as your “solution” is completely rediculous. It doesn’t address the issue that is people are leaving the game in general due to being fed up with the abysmal class balance. It also doesn’t address the issue of players stacking on servers or the population imbalances there in. All your “solution” will do is reduce the servers and keep rewarding the causes of what led WvW into its current state.

No i actually agree with him. The world linking was the worst that has ever happened to WvW. Sure there are a lot more issues than that, but nothing created as much imbalance and randomness. I personally know people who left because of this. Communities struggle, since guilds and individuals transfer all over the place. Matchups have never been more unbalanced (i am speaking for EU servers now, i don’t know about NA). What are we even playing for anymore, when the whole situation gets turned upside down at the next linking?

Merge some of the lower populated servers and then leave it the way it is. People will still stack on the top tier, but when the overall population spreads across less servers, it means more fights and action for everyone, less “dead” matchups and in a couple months the situation will have somewhat stabilized.

Reducing the relinking period is a bad idea. Continuing this at all is a bad idea.

And maybe, just maybe, the guys at Arenanet have then time to adress some of the other issues of the current game, like class imbalance and all that.

I’ve bolded the issue. There’s nothing to make the population spread out and that is what made WvW like it was before HoT. HoT reduced the overall WvW population drastically for several reasons, new content to play, lack of class balance, not liking/knowing the new borders on top of the old issues.

Without something countering the effectiveness of moving to a higher server, as in some kind of incentive to keep moving to lower populated servers, then we will just end up at the same situation that gave rise to linking/merge.

Malediktus.3740:

Server merges instead of linkings are the solution.
Server communities can never establish if people get rotated in and out every 1 or 2 months.

As long as you can so its ok for your server to be removed and added to another then you have a point but if you cant say that your asking a hard sell for others who must deal with this. I could not take it if FA was removed and added to another world i am not sure if any of the low pop worlds could deal with that too.
Links need to have an added chose to let ppl transfer at the end of the link. So more of a self merger. You may need to stop all other transfer that are not linked but this may be too harsh for ppl to deal with.

apharma.3741:

I’ve bolded the issue. There’s nothing to make the population spread out and that is what made WvW like it was before HoT.

Transfer costs to high population servers will be higher than costs for low population servers (like it was before linking), which will probably discourage some from transferring up. Now it is just too cheap to transfer to small guest servers which are linked to big servers.

Of course server merge wouldn’t solve many issues, but i think it would be better than the current linking system, which is just a big mess. Of course it sucks, if old server communities are destroyed, but at least merging gives a chance to build up new and halfways stable communities. More frequent relinkings and a 1-up-1-down matchmaking system would make it even worse in terms of (un)balanced matchups.

Worst possible “fix”…imho

Merging servers without implementing a game design that takes advantage of population in-balances to create Match-Ups.

In 1 year…WvW devs will run out of “fixes”.

Here’s why…

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2016 December

NA 24 Servers – Merged Down – NA 18 Server
Servers stack & Players Scream for fix
ANet implement Merge Server fix

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2017 April

NA 18 Servers – Merged Down – NA 12 Servers
Servers stack & Players Scream for fix
ANet implement Merge Server fix

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2017 August

NA 12 Servers – Merged Down – NA 6 Servers
Servers stack & Players Scream for fix
ANet implement Merge Server fix

---

2017 December

NA 6 Servers – Merged Down – NA 3 Servers
Servers stack & Players Scream for fix
ANet implement Merge Server fix

---

2018 April
NA 3 Servers – Can’t be Merged Down

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Fix does not consider different Language based communities, or Time Zones.

It’s a pure Server Merge fix that people are carelessly asking for, but don’t realize the overall impact to the whole WvW ecosystem.

---

I’d strongly advise ANet to instead replace World Linking with a New Game Mode that can support & encourage healthy competition between all Servers.

This seems like a very difficult problem to address administratively. I don’t see how I, or anyone else could have a valid opinion considering we have no idea what the rational is behind the linkings and server population. I assume the pairing is with the most populated with the least populated; that may be true. It’s also hard to tell since we don’t know whether players are from the host server or the linked server, unless we happen to know what guild belongs on what server.

However, considering population information is always lagging far behind reality, this seems to not reflect reality, and therefore, the pairings may be out of date even when they’re made. For example, BG seems to be dominated population wise by Mag/BP, but BG is the only closed server. Are most of those players on Mag? We don’t know.

The other issue is the ease of transfers and alt accounts. This is evident by the guilds we frequently see in T1 but on different servers. While many believe this is a conspiracy perpetuated by Anet to pump up gem store sales, I simply believe it mearly reflects the reality of people wanting to play in high populated matches. This frequency and easy of transferring further complicates your job of determining population and therefore balancing.

I see this as a nearly impossible problem to solve. As I see it, servers need to be merged so that people have less of a choice and so that is not cheaper to play in a high populated match-up by transferring to a low population server. If it takes a month for Glicko to get clearer results, this seems like the even more simple solution. There may be complications for people who have multiple accounts, or some internal programming issues, but it has been 4 years. It is not unreasonable that WvW population would have declined and 24 servers just aren’t needed.

@ Diku
The same could happen with the current linking system, if players continue to leave. In EU they already deleted another tier last month. Server merging wouldn’t “fix” WvW – but it would create a more stable system like we had before the linkings, just without “dead” servers". Doesn’t mean they can’t or haven’t continue to work on WvW.

I can picture it now. Certain servers tanking for a few weeks so they can plow their way back to the top from the very bottom. Cough BG cough.

I’m also betting that most players will vote for rewards to take priority over match-making. Knowing how important many players consider loot to be, they’ll greedily request better rewards then cry that matches are still broken.

Diku.2546:

I’d strongly advise ANet to instead replace World Linking with a New Game Mode that can support & encourage healthy competition between all Servers.

This can’t be said enough. I’m tired of ArenaNet laying these band-aids on a broken system. I’m tired of ArenaNet failing at game design and relying on these polls for the design direction of the game. We as a community do not know enough about game design nor do we have the proper data to analyze. Yet we are polled and the entire WvW structure depends on them. The polls are twisted in itself. The community almost never gets full disclosure or information regarding the systems we do not properly understand and is voting upon.

ArenaNet had it right before they decided to poll the community. Yet, they didn’t even tell the community their plans. They told these “sponsors”, fully detailed plans of a system called Battlegroups (Alliances). It was well thought out, and it would have allowed for the community to better balance itself. It would have allowed us to play where we want, and it would have led up to WvW tournaments. WvW, Needs a overall OVERHAUL. It needs a system flexible enough yet structured to allow the community to balance themselves happily. Instead of having Server loyalty, have loyalty for your alliance or Globe and the community you play with. Let that community be decided by the actual community and not outside forces.

1 up 1 down, will do nothing but add to the attrition rate and give us even more of a reason, to do things like Hibernate, tank on purpose or manipulate the tiers through 2v1s. With this 1 up 1 down system, Tier 2 will never be balanced. Instead it will be a consistent blow out when 3rd place Tier 1 meets first place Tier 3 in T2.

Stop with the band aids and polls. Change the system fully, then make maps based off the new systems design. This guy I quoted wrote up large walls of text explaining a well put together system that’s actually very similar to what Arena Net’s Battlegroup system explained.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Another possibility we could pursue is 1 month linkings, but use the Glicko offset system to guarantee the matches. Alternatively, we could manually change Glicko ratings to what we believe they should be for each world. Either option would force worlds to start out closer to being in the correct tier and thus give better matches faster. These options are contentious, so even if everyone on the forums seemed to like this idea it would be something we would poll on.

Why not do the simplest and quickest things first? It seems like manually changing the Glicko ratings to what you believe they should be is simple and quick. And you don’t need a poll to do that.

In fact I think it needs to be done for the next linking. There was a thread about it. If you are making linkings trying to match populations then you should be adjusting Glicko to what you think the matches should be for the first week of the linkings (FSP still hasn’t faced the French servers which you said was the goal of the link – this should have happened the first week! And its also clear that the French servers weren’t as strong as you thought they would be.).

I would say three things absolutely need to happen at the beginning of the next linking:

1. Manually adjust Glicko to create good initial matches based on your population predictions. Or you could normalize the ratings if you don’t want to do a full manual adjustment to create specific matches. But one of these two must be done.
2. Increase the volatility and deviation as you did the first linking.
3. Make linked servers take on the same Gem cost for transfers as the host server. You can’t leave it so that it is only 500 Gems to transfer to T1.

Haven’t played for some time, since the linkup on Piken we have q’s all prime time..Or at least when I come online. So haven’t played GW2 for some time now.. pretty much sick of all changes are going on. Nor wasn’t I aware Piken needed a link up.

Well back to another game. Have fun anet..

Get that d20 ready … if it rolls 19-20 leave glicko alone (gods have spoken)…. otherwise reset it.

And stop giving players the ability to break things about your game mode. Find alternate avenues for funding. Server transfers are a joke. It’s the only game mode where a server even matters, and that’s slowly being ripped away as well. Give alternates for us to provide income, while working towards a system that prevents things like bandwagoning. You can’t do anything about timezones players are in who play your game. So some night capping will always be present… but you can stop a server from … not participating for 2 weeks in order to open up and load more players in. Just stop allowing it.

You guys need to stop tempering with the matches and decide who get to meet who, you are totally ruin the EU matchmaking which was great and something that actually did work in EU. It did not work at all in NA so i get that you want to make changes there, but what you are doing in EU is totally wrecking it to a point were you ruin our fun. Stop poking in our matches. Stop putting servers in matches that can not fight. All servers facing Viznuah leave a 0.6 k/d.
That are numbers that are important, because those numbers tells you if a mu is fun or not. If there are so bad scores involved in matches you put together by hand then you are doing it wrong. Please stop destroying EU WvW. Do not compare them to NA, it is not the same WvW, but it will be in short if you keep on ruin what was actually working in EU.

Server Linking will not work ,people will always xfer to a more populated servers or there links ,the cost of gems to xfer to a less population is cheap ,the stacking of servers will keep going until people starts to lose interest in playing wvw will be the end of gw2.

Malediktus.3740:

Server merges instead of linkings are the solution.
Server communities can never establish if people get rotated in and out every 1 or 2 months.

No it doesn’t. All it does is re-instate the same problems of stacking there were before; in which case the losing merges will see mass transfers off and we’ll be back to square 1.

To bolster communities, I simply think the colors should get their own names to enemy servers (like EoTM), but simply in the WvW menu post to which servers belong to which colors, and add a corresponding new chat option for /server.

This way it becomes much more apparent to which communities players belong to while still keeping enemy nameplates easy to discern which color they belong to. Since the child servers already absorb the name of their parent, it does nothing except make allies more able to distinguish themselves while not belittling their smaller supporting servers.

I’m surprised they have not added in a /serverchat option. It would have been very useful if implemented long ago when servers meant something.

And why not let the enemy nameplates say the server they are on… like if Kaineng is linked to TC … and we are green… why not allow enemies to see TC invader, or Kaineng Invader. Couple that with buffs and claims on keeps and towers … add server name, provide the lil’ guy the chance to show there stuff.

#OppressionsNeverTheAnswer

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Hey everyone,

I wanted to address the idea of moving world linking to monthly instead of every 2 months, since it is being brought up more and more frequently.

The team isn’t opposed to this idea; we actually think it would be beneficial to move to monthly because it would allow us to iterate faster on how we are calculating which worlds should be linked. However, the main reason for not doing this right now is the matchmaking algorithm, Glicko. Each time we shuffle worlds via world linking it takes about 4 weeks’ worth of matches before Glicko begins to reliably match make those new worlds into balanced matches. If we did world linking monthly, Glicko would not be able to create balanced matchups.

Our next priority poll is going to be asking if players would rather have us work on adding rewards to skirmishes (and possibly other feedback items being collected from this thread) or replace Glicko matchmaking with a 1-up 1-down system (wherein the winner moves up a tier and the loser moves down a tier.) The 1-up 1-down system should work better with monthly linkings than Glicko, so we are most likely going to hold off on 1 month linkings until that system is in.

Another possibility we could pursue is 1 month linkings, but use the Glicko offset system to guarantee the matches. Alternatively, we could manually change Glicko ratings to what we believe they should be for each world. Either option would force worlds to start out closer to being in the correct tier and thus give better matches faster. These options are contentious, so even if everyone on the forums seemed to like this idea it would be something we would poll on.

This needs its own thread please. Not buried in the middle of a long one.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Hey everyone,

I wanted to address the idea of moving world linking to monthly instead of every 2 months, since it is being brought up more and more frequently.

Yea it has definitely been brought up a lot.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

The team isn’t opposed to this idea; we actually think it would be beneficial to move to monthly because it would allow us to iterate faster on how we are calculating which worlds should be linked. However, the main reason for not doing this right now is the matchmaking algorithm, Glicko. Each time we shuffle worlds via world linking it takes about 4 weeks’ worth of matches before Glicko begins to reliably match make those new worlds into balanced matches. If we did world linking monthly, Glicko would not be able to create balanced matchups.

I agree, that glicko is a terrible system when you rapidly change matchup since there is no easy way to combine server scores to create a new score, and in addition it does not account for rapid player movement between servers (which happens regardless of whether you link or not, but…)

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Our next priority poll is going to be asking if players would rather have us work on adding rewards to skirmishes (and possibly other feedback items being collected from this thread) or replace Glicko matchmaking with a 1-up 1-down system (wherein the winner moves up a tier and the loser moves down a tier.) The 1-up 1-down system should work better with monthly linkings than Glicko, so we are most likely going to hold off on 1 month linkings until that system is in.

I think that reworking how you make matchups is something that is definitely a good priority, since the glicko system essentially means that right now, we have 4 weeks of matchups don’t make sense. For servers who are on the bad end of this deal it means they can’t necessarily play wvw very well because they are continuously stomped until the winning server can finally balance out of that matchup.

This suggestion system sounds like it would move faster, and give obvious and visible changes to who is/will be ranked against who which I really think could work out well. The actual impact of such a change is really hard to determine though.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Another possibility we could pursue is 1 month linkings, but use the Glicko offset system to guarantee the matches. Alternatively, we could manually change Glicko ratings to what we believe they should be for each world. Either option would force worlds to start out closer to being in the correct tier and thus give better matches faster. These options are contentious, so even if everyone on the forums seemed to like this idea it would be something we would poll on.

These both seem like patch-work solutions to the problem of glicko rating. I don’t think that the glicko adjustments will work very well especially on a faster pace.

Match making is incredibly hard, but I think that currently it’s really problematic because so many matches can end up being really bad for a lot of players.

Thanks for clarifying your teams thoughts on this matter, and I really appreciate how much effort and thought has gone into a lot of these changes over the past month.

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

ArenaNet had it right before they decided to poll the community. Yet, they didn’t even tell the community their plans. They told these “sponsors”, fully detailed plans of a system called Battlegroups (Alliances). It was well thought out, and it would have allowed for the community to better balance itself. It would have allowed us to play where we want, and it would have led up to WvW tournaments.

Population balance is the only way to make the mode competitive and alliances is the only way to achieve population balance in any meaningful way.

I seriously doubt they will overhaul the game though. Ironically, like WvW there just isn’t enough reward for Anet to undertake it.

I would happily pay $5/month for a balanced WvW so that it wouldn’t need to rely on transfers for its funding. But even subscriptions probably wouldn’t be enough incentive at this point.

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

ArenaNet had it right before they decided to poll the community. Yet, they didn’t even tell the community their plans. They told these “sponsors”, fully detailed plans of a system called Battlegroups (Alliances). It was well thought out, and it would have allowed for the community to better balance itself. It would have allowed us to play where we want, and it would have led up to WvW tournaments. WvW, Needs a overall OVERHAUL. It needs a system flexible enough yet structured to allow the community to balance themselves happily. Instead of having Server loyalty, have loyalty for your alliance or Globe and the community you play with. Let that community be decided by the actual community and not outside forces.

I assume this is the system Tyler briefly referred to a while ago. It definitely seemed to resolve many of the issues that the game has even now. Shame to hear that it sounds like it was relatively advanced in terms of design. Were these ‘sponsors’ streamers? Did they decide not to proceed based on the reaction of the ‘sponsors’? It also adds weight to my perception that anet have moved the only devs with a clue about WvW off the mode and onto the xpac leaving other devs essentially in just maintenance mode on WvW making marginal changes but making the mode worse because they don’t understand the mode and the implications of what they are doing.

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

1 up 1 down, will do nothing but add to the attrition rate and give us even more of a reason, to do things like Hibernate, tank on purpose or manipulate the tiers through 2v1s. With this 1 up 1 down system, Tier 2 will never be balanced. Instead it will be a consistent blow out when 3rd place Tier 1 meets first place Tier 3 in T2.

Stop with the band aids and polls. Change the system fully, then make maps based off the new systems design. This guy I quoted wrote up large walls of text explaining a well put together system that’s actually very similar to what Arena Net’s Battlegroup system explained.

For once I fully agree with you on what anet need to do, and yes one up one down is probably not a solution any more and will just lead to further acrimony amongst the player base.

When we VOTE (EXID Up&Down System) ?

Next WvW Relink is 10/26, i thnk you(Anet) already know "

i dont know why “WvW rewards” need us vote…

It should be at wvw

Anet:

After all this time collecting data from WvW:

Shouldn’t you have enough data to accurately project scores based upon player-hours? Do you track player transfers and see how that affects scores?

If you had this data, could you also instantly adjust glicko scores based upon average player-hours, instead of waiting through four weeks of matches?

Even after the four weeks stabilize glicko, many matches remain unbalanced/unfun. 1U1D will not fix the unbalanced matches. It will go from unbalanced match one week to excessively unbalanced match the next.

Is it possible that instead of having server status based upon a running average that you could instead limit transfers, and transfers to linked servers, based upon time zone, tier and player-hours?

Since in NA, servers rise and fall based upon transfers and to move up a tier a server has to essentially “spawn camp” the other two servers. Do you at least recognize that recruiting players to move up a tier and the playstyle needed to move up a tier are both harmful to the long term sustainability of WvW?

morrolan.9608:

I assume this is the system Tyler briefly referred to a while ago. It definitely seemed to resolve many of the issues that the game has even now. Shame to hear that it sounds like it was relatively advanced in terms of design. Were these ‘sponsors’ streamers? Did they decide not to proceed based on the reaction of the ‘sponsors’? It also adds weight to my perception that anet have moved the only devs with a clue about WvW off the mode and onto the xpac leaving other devs essentially in just maintenance mode on WvW making marginal changes but making the mode worse because they don’t understand the mode and the implications of what they are doing.

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

1 up 1 down, will do nothing but add to the attrition rate and give us even more of a reason, to do things like Hibernate, tank on purpose or manipulate the tiers through 2v1s. With this 1 up 1 down system, Tier 2 will never be balanced. Instead it will be a consistent blow out when 3rd place Tier 1 meets first place Tier 3 in T2.

Stop with the band aids and polls. Change the system fully, then make maps based off the new systems design. This guy I quoted wrote up large walls of text explaining a well put together system that’s actually very similar to what Arena Net’s Battlegroup system explained.

For once I fully agree with you on what anet need to do, and yes one up one down is probably not a solution any more and will just lead to further acrimony amongst the player base.

Yes, It’s the system Arena Net hinted about for months. They fully designed most of the mechanics then they told their Sponsors. These are people who Arena Net chooses for their program. It’s mostly streamers and shoutcasters. When Arena Net tells these folk these secretive plans, 9 times out of 10 they are leaked to reddit.

morrolan.9608:

“Were these ‘sponsors’ streamers? Did they decide not to proceed based on the reaction of the ‘sponsors’?

So from my sources, the sponsors were worried about the destruction of server communities if and when they chose to overhaul the system. Arena Net didn’t cancel it for their opinion. They canceled their plans, when they decided to poll the community to see if we wanted to keep server links. The community voted “yes”, for keeping server links in, But then Arena Net said right afterwards, that since Server links are now in, they would be scrapping the overhaul for server links.

So because we voted on server links, it scrapped their original idea without us even hearing it for what it could be. We replaced a well rounded near perfect system for Server links and no one even knows besides the select few.

morrolan.9608:

It also adds weight to my perception that anet have moved the only devs with a clue about WvW off the mode and onto the xpac leaving other devs essentially in just maintenance mode on WvW making marginal changes but making the mode worse because they don’t understand the mode and the implications of what they are doing.

Your perception seems to be 100% accurate. I will explain why.

remember when I moved to TC and everyone kept screaming I had insider information? Well, the only insider information that fueled my move was the leaks given by reddit. However, right around the time we were preparing to move Arena Net invites guilds to what they call an alpha test. In this they took direct feedback from the guilds involved. then they produced the results live for feed back. Then while in the alpha test, which was nothing but a forum, they started the live beta in which they got the dumbest idea to start polling the community. When they decided on this idea, they closed down the alpha test because they said they’re just going to poll the entire community now.

During this alpha, I noticed they switch WvW directors with this poll and with the “Yes” vote we canceled out anything that was planned for before hand and left it up to the global GW2 community to vote on what they decide.

It’s very clear to me that Arena Net doesn’t understand the community, the reasons we transfer, the reasons we play where we play and how this live beta effects us all. I really wish they stop with these polls. It’s really killing the game and we aren’t even given enough information on what we are voting on or the stipulations it will bring us.

The idea of a “Live” Beta is disastrous as it is. Because whatever happens will have a permanent effect on us all just like it is.

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Instead of having Server loyalty, have loyalty for your alliance or Globe and the community you play with.

What is the difference between a server of guilds/players and an alliance of guilds/players other than the obvious exclusion/elitism that would be encouraged by players being able to pick their own teammates?

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

So from my sources, the sponsors were worried about the destruction of server communities if and when they chose to overhaul the system. Arena Net didn’t cancel it for their opinion. They canceled their plans, when they decided to poll the community to see if we wanted to keep server links. The community voted “yes”, for keeping server links in, But then Arena Net said right afterwards, that since Server links are now in, they would be scrapping the overhaul for server links.

So because we voted on server links, it scrapped their original idea without us even hearing it for what it could be. We replaced a well rounded near perfect system for Server links and no one even knows besides the select few.

That is mind boggling.

Frozen.1347:

@ Diku
The same could happen with the current linking system, if players continue to leave. In EU they already deleted another tier last month. Server merging wouldn’t “fix” WvW – but it would create a more stable system like we had before the linkings, just without “dead” servers". Doesn’t mean they can’t or haven’t continue to work on WvW.

Funny thing…you might be right. It could help…not 100% sure it would…create a more stable system, but it only buys us more time to do what?

If things continue to go “Not as Planned” & we end up merging all the Worlds down to 3 Servers…what do we do then?

Honestly, if it is decided to merge servers…to “stabilize” WvW…then we should do it once…then pull the plug on Server Linking & let things return to how it was before.

We need a better game design & World Linking is definitely Not a Long Term solution that will work to create a game mode that supports & encourages a healthy competition between all servers…imho

The way how things are going…our precious WvW ecosystem (communities) are under constant & consistent pressure to survive.

I say…let the Low Tier players go back to paying for their own transfers instead of giving them free World Links to join the Upper Tier Zergs.

However, I doubt players will vote to un-do World Linking. It’s like WvW crack…once you’ve experienced Zerg Fest Heaven…how can you give it up?

Instead, players will be asking ANet to give More Links & to give it Faster.

I agree with the ones that said merging server does not solve the problems. What problems do people think that would solve?
—> It just alienates small communities more than the linking did.
—> It doesn’t solve transfer: people will still transfer to the server they want to. And I think it is fine that they are able to.
—> Population differences aren’t solved, some servers will still have more players. I would be very interested in the numbers of transfers on population, because I think the transfers aren’t a big factor in creating population differences at all. I know only very few people that transfered (I don’t know any bandwagoner at all). People just see more players on a enemy server and think it is transfers, while those increases and decreases are in reality caused by players playing more when they are winning and playing less when they are losing (“hybernating” servers). But can you really tell me guilds with a lot of players that did transfer to a winning servers linkup? How many? How often did they transfer?
Sure some guilds transfer, but they always did and did it before linkups, but I have seen more guilds transfer AWAY from tier 1 (DB) to tier 2 and 3 than the other way around.

I still think linking is a great choice and did a lot to make matchups better. It’s the matchmaking-system and slow reacting Glicko (additionaly to refusing to link servers with different languages- something I don’t understand) that did create inbalanced matchups. It isn’t the linking.
Reducing linking-time to 1 month just makes it harder for communities to work together. 2 month is a good middle-ground.

About “testing” new systems on us: please don’t. Do the maths, you have all the statistics you need to think ideas through. Only give us a vote on system that will work on addressing the current problems the wvw community has. Like solving inbalanced matchups or slow reacting matchmaking system.

Links should be abandoned and a new solution found.

ANet is creating tiers(while linking was soppost to achive relative equalness between server), and not only tiers but winners also(FSP was created to fight french monster??? WHAT.

Glicko is not keeping up with the changes. Changing to 1-up, 1-down won’t achive anything without better balance and like i said multiple times links aren’t creating the balance required.

Some communities are strugling after relinking happens->it can destroy a server.(not mine, Gandara is pretty healthy).

I’m sorry but it might be time to bomb wvw system and realy rework it instead of these minor changes, which aren’t realy doing much. Maby remember the “elaborate” solution described here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Additional-World-Linking-Information/first#post6172091

or something else, but linking in it’s current form can not stay pernament solution.

Linking system is developed, now work on top of this, create something that will make sense and acctuly present it fully, insted of offering poll for 1 sollution or reverse to old system.

Deli.1302:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Instead of having Server loyalty, have loyalty for your alliance or Globe and the community you play with.

What is the difference between a server of guilds/players and an alliance of guilds/players other than the obvious exclusion/elitism that would be encouraged by players being able to pick their own teammates?

The difference is that you can not control your server, or it’s overall cap. An alliance would have a limit much like a guild. This limit of players/guilds would be defined and well known. Based off the limit and the mechanics, the community can pick their own team mates and be matched against another competitive teams and players. The sense of Loyalty to ones community would greatly increase, The structure of our communities would become independent of the server or globe we are on. Having loyalty for your community overall, is better and more optimal than loyalty for a server in which you have little control over. Organizing a community that wants to be organized is better than organizing a community like a server with varying degrees of opinions and goals. How do you organize which that doesn’t want to be organized.

Overall, having globes or alliances, would help things like culture shock and mass transfers. It would provide the tools necessary for the communities to depict overall balance better and actually equate it to a number. It would give birth to more strategy and tactics and allow for guilds and communities to not be separated by the constant shift in server powers and locks determined by an equation no one knows about beyond the devs.

Guild Wars 2 is unique in a way. This game’s population greatly determines how well you do. Our population effects if we win or not. Yet if we lose, or drop out of tier it literally kills servers. It kills communities. There are so many things that can kill a server community and so many things out of our control, yet Arena Net wants us to balance ourselves.. But with what tools?

If you continue with server linking and change the linking once every 2 months or more often, then there is ONLY one reasonable solution:

match making based on total active population

otherwise there will be many weeks of totally imbalanced match ups, because glicko and +/1 tier up and down system adjusts too slowly. If you remove links from rank #1 it is almost guaranteed to be in wrong tier. And forcing that server to spend next 2 months slowly dropping down isn’t a good solution. Similarly if you give some tier 2-4 server strong links it will stomp the opposition with ease and create lopsided match ups as it rises up.

And if you keep deciding the who are in tier 1, then players will be aggravated of Arenanet favoring some servers. (like now you did by giving FSP 2 linked servers, even though it was already EU rank #2 before any links and giving Gunnars Hold link with Vabbi = not strong enough).

Kaldo.7960:

I think it’s ok to try stuff like linking to see, if it has a positive effect on the problems that should be solved.

But you have to be able to admit if it doesn’t and try to figure out other possible solution instead of sticking to that idea and make it even worse.

What does a linking that changes every 4 weeks solve?

Tbh: I don’t know

It doesn’t solve the problem of the insane bandwaggoningmovement that started with the linking in a quantity that provides a new dimension to the bandwaggoning that has been always there, but lately it seems to be stronger than ever.

What will be increasing are the problems, that come with linking, Every 4 weeks communities have to deal with a second or even third community, that stays for 4 weeks and is leaving then again, either followed by a new link or none at all. That scatters communities and is an organisational effort for the hosting server. Servercommunities need to have the chance to grow on their own and have a healthy enviorenment. Bandwaggoning is a permanent danger to destroy healthy communitycores and destroys the feeling to be part of something that is worth staying with instead of transfering around all the time.

So I would be interested in what Anet thinks does improve with a 4 week rhythm. And it better be another interest than having their transferincoming doubled.

This right here. I am also on a small population server. We are already being passed around like unwanted foster children. 2 months is hardly enough time to really settle in to a community before being uprooted and shuffled off again. How will increasing that churn make this better? This proposed shift to a one month rotation is going to hit the smaller server communities a lot harder than the big ones that we are being fostered to.

morrolan.9608:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

So from my sources, the sponsors were worried about the destruction of server communities if and when they chose to overhaul the system. Arena Net didn’t cancel it for their opinion. They canceled their plans, when they decided to poll the community to see if we wanted to keep server links. The community voted “yes”, for keeping server links in, But then Arena Net said right afterwards, that since Server links are now in, they would be scrapping the overhaul for server links.

So because we voted on server links, it scrapped their original idea without us even hearing it for what it could be. We replaced a well rounded near perfect system for Server links and no one even knows besides the select few.

That is mind boggling.

Yeah it is. I was triggered by it and I still am. They literally reversed a ton of work and a great idea based off a poll that seemed more like a trick or a political move to make everyone feel as if they have a say. Arena Nets move with this made me really see the company in a different light, and GW2 is my all time favorite game.

And IF they simply moved back battlegroups for the expansion to make us pay another 50 dollars, I’m quitting this game.

Deli.1302:

How will you address the mass migration of players every time re-linking happens?

What’s there to address? Finally a great source of gem sales from WvW players.

why not get rid of the “flat” ranking and adopt a “tree” ranking? you know, like on sports tournaments but on a permanent basis…

say team is one world or linked world, linking will be automatic at the end of every week

• three teams will be matched up on tier1
• six team will be matched up on 2 matches on tier 2 (going on like that will need 12 more teams on t3, so let’s just stop at 2 tiers)
• one up one down: team going down from t1 will be splitted (if not a single world) and relinked with the teams remaining in t2, worlds from the teams going up from t2 will be merged in one team to face the remaining t1
• enjoy the next week

…dunno, maybe it’s my brain farting :p

edit: small clarification

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Hey everyone,

I wanted to address the idea of moving world linking to monthly instead of every 2 months, since it is being brought up more and more frequently.

The team isn’t opposed to this idea; we actually think it would be beneficial to move to monthly because it would allow us to iterate faster on how we are calculating which worlds should be linked. However, the main reason for not doing this right now is the matchmaking algorithm, Glicko. Each time we shuffle worlds via world linking it takes about 4 weeks’ worth of matches before Glicko begins to reliably match make those new worlds into balanced matches. If we did world linking monthly, Glicko would not be able to create balanced matchups.

Our next priority poll is going to be asking if players would rather have us work on adding rewards to skirmishes (and possibly other feedback items being collected from this thread) or replace Glicko matchmaking with a 1-up 1-down system (wherein the winner moves up a tier and the loser moves down a tier.) The 1-up 1-down system should work better with monthly linkings than Glicko, so we are most likely going to hold off on 1 month linkings until that system is in.

Another possibility we could pursue is 1 month linkings, but use the Glicko offset system to guarantee the matches. Alternatively, we could manually change Glicko ratings to what we believe they should be for each world. Either option would force worlds to start out closer to being in the correct tier and thus give better matches faster. These options are contentious, so even if everyone on the forums seemed to like this idea it would be something we would poll on.

Your polls are ruining this game. 1 up 1 down is a terrible idea. Yet, it will get voted in because of the general population not liking what we currently. have. Just like we voted for linking and that was a terrible decision. You are the game designer.

Glicko is garbage. Too easy to game by people like you and your crew. Glicko was never designed to deal with the fickle easy mode transfer crowd and their short sighted mangy cousins (who tank matches on purpose to open up servers that are already overstacked).

1up 1down isn’t going to be much of an improvement, but it will be better than what we have now. It might even put a damper on the transfer addicts, etc. It’s a temporary fix though, ANET will have to do better. People will eventually game the new system also.

However, until the ability to overstack servers on a whim is eliminated, balance in WvW will continue to be a sad joke. ANET has to create a system that promotes some semblance of balance and stability to get people to care about WvW again. But that is so far from anything they have built so far, that it just doesn’t seem possible for them anymore.

Possible fixes:

1. Do not allow players to transfer more than 1 or 2 times a year (even that might be too much).

2. Never allow transfers to the two highest pop servers, whether they are “full” or not.