give me a new mmo that focus’s on pvp, fed up with all these pve mmos. wvw is only world pvp content in this whole game since release… what the hell is that all about?
Isnt this game called guildwars, and yet a guild war is about the hardest thing to come by.
First developers to produce a purely pvp mmo wins.
Well. u will nedd wait few years more .. CU isnt gonna be released any soon
http://mos.millenium.org/eu/matchups/map/778
This match will come down to Friday!!!
Remove the random. Take population into consideration.
This rating business is completely useless. At the start of the new system, we were matched with a server 6 places above us, and have been facing them ever since. Causing their rating to drop and ours to rise.
They are a high pop server and could give two hoots about their rating as long as they are stomping all over us low ranked low pop servers.
Raising the ranking of low pop servers, and dropping the rating of high pop servers is leading to all kinds of stomping going on. Adding +random was so terrible I can’t even express it. How didn’t you guys know it would fail badly?
Looks like the matchups in NA are very close right now with the exception of tier 2 and tier 8. Looks like the match-ups are working for this week.
Looks like the matchups in NA are very close right now with the exception of tier 2 and tier 8. Looks like the match-ups are working for this week.
Even before this new random system the match ups in NA were generally more even than in EU.
I think the real reason is that most NA servers have coverage. You have players playing at all hours. Here in EU most servers have very little players outside peak hours. Even the EU #1 server Visunah has rather small night team, but they are able to win their opponents by night capping everything.
Until the coverage issues have been sorted, EU tiers are gonna be full of blow outs. Many people have been writing about this for ages, yet zero comment or action from Arenanet…
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
Until the coverage issues have been sorted, EU tiers are gonna be full of blow outs. Many people have been writing about this for ages, yet zero comment or action from Arenanet…
The only solution to do that is changing the whole scoring system… and they did say they are working on it. Remember Devon’s WvW blog post? There isn’t some magical solution to fix this, and the current change isn’t even meant to fix it. Its meant to prevent the terrible stagnation from glicko2 that trapped servers in pointless match-ups.
emmm ANET , can we start next week match up based on predicted ranking in http://mos.millenium.org/na/ (or the EU if you care) , and follow up the subsequent week with “winner up, loser down” rule…… ?
see how that goes…..
The 2 lowest servers by far are FC and ET. In someone’s infinite wisdom, they aren’t matched up against each other this week. I guess being thumped by 2 sides instead of one is a great plan in bizaaro world.
You may not be able to fathom this, but we actually prefer not being matched up. We are both too weak to take on any of the servers right now when paired up. When the other two servers are more evenly matched nobody is camping our spawns. Just look at the difference between the last two weeks and the first week of the new matchups. This really is better for us at the bottom.
Scoring is going to turn out the same. Having 2 bigger population servers fight over 4 maps is gonna look a lot like 1 bigger population server fighting over 4 maps. Reset night looks close because everyone is excited to see the new matchup. There wont be any difference by the end of the week.
Just look at FC’s week with IoJ and DR to know that what you said is not true. Now I know that IoJ and DR hate each other so we did better than we should have, but beating DR with a little help is sooooo much better than the week before it or the two after it. http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/48/75
Now I don’t know what server you play on but I can tell you everyone I talked to in that DR IoJ FC match had a lot of fun. We had more people on our teamspeak and people in the borderlands that were very active. The match was great! Did we win? No, of course not. The awesome thing was not being focused constantly. So yeah, this match up is way better for us.
Don’t try to speak for the lower tiers when clearly you have no idea what we feel.
Well aren’t you angry. I’ve spent 7 months of nightly WvW on FC. If you don’t think we beat DR solely because of IoJ’s payback hatred, you are insane. They were taking our towers from DR and then leaving them for us. This is all moot until they do something about the populations of the servers anyway. I’m glad you feel that getting your butt kicked a little less than last week is way better.
The 2 lowest servers by far are FC and ET. In someone’s infinite wisdom, they aren’t matched up against each other this week. I guess being thumped by 2 sides instead of one is a great plan in bizaaro world.
You may not be able to fathom this, but we actually prefer not being matched up. We are both too weak to take on any of the servers right now when paired up. When the other two servers are more evenly matched nobody is camping our spawns. Just look at the difference between the last two weeks and the first week of the new matchups. This really is better for us at the bottom.
Scoring is going to turn out the same. Having 2 bigger population servers fight over 4 maps is gonna look a lot like 1 bigger population server fighting over 4 maps. Reset night looks close because everyone is excited to see the new matchup. There wont be any difference by the end of the week.
Just look at FC’s week with IoJ and DR to know that what you said is not true. Now I know that IoJ and DR hate each other so we did better than we should have, but beating DR with a little help is sooooo much better than the week before it or the two after it. http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/48/75
Now I don’t know what server you play on but I can tell you everyone I talked to in that DR IoJ FC match had a lot of fun. We had more people on our teamspeak and people in the borderlands that were very active. The match was great! Did we win? No, of course not. The awesome thing was not being focused constantly. So yeah, this match up is way better for us.
Don’t try to speak for the lower tiers when clearly you have no idea what we feel.
Well aren’t you angry. I’ve spent 7 months of nightly WvW on FC. If you don’t think we beat DR solely because of IoJ’s payback hatred, you are insane. They were taking our towers from DR and then leaving them for us. This is all moot until they do something about the populations of the servers anyway. I’m glad you feel that getting your butt kicked a little less than last week is way better.
Clearly we are not on the same server because we didn’t get our butts handed to us on reset, at all. We went at it with DR and GoM. We even managed to hold SM castle for a while. We haven’t had this many waypoints on the map in ages. We are doing so much better this week. We had around 70 people in our TS for reset night. That population didn’t drop off for about 4 hours. Based off of just reset this week will be better than the last two.
Will add my 2 cents in here. WvW is just about all I do now having gone through the PVE zones. Im on JQ and our matchup has changed only once since the server “rematch-ups” Having seen how things have shaped up since launch, it’s obvious by now that having teams based on servers has itself made WvW woefully unbalanced. I suggest any ‘solutions’ to the imbalance problem should begin by removing that idea and replacing it with something else entirely. What? I don’t know. If and when an inspiration hits me I’ll be sure to leave it here somewhere. Until then there’ll be one less warrior on the JQ battlefield. Sorry mates, just don’t see the fun in fighting what will inevitably be a hopeless battle. Each and every week.
I have to agree with Anet on this one. This new WvWvW match up system is for the best in the long run. I also have to agree that turning up the variance for the purpose of data collection is the best move also. Cause having data of the same 3 servers going at each other every month is pretty useless for making match ups. all it tells you is how those 3 servers respond to each other and gives you no indicator of which is the actual best server of those 3 in terms of the big picture. which means that most of the previous data can be considered biased and corrupt.
I have to totally disagree with you. Data wont be valid if people dont show up on either side. And I’m sorry but i wont comply with a system that asks me to prove i can tick at maximum against much lower ranked servers.
We technically could take everything SoS has and just wait for them with 10+ arrowcarts manned (open field) at each exit of their spawn. Would it be fun for either side though…Clearly not. And if we dont do that, your data wont be accurate with the system’s expectancy.
server ratings do not measure how well a server could do if they tried really hard. the ratings measure how well a server actually does. why your server does that well, rather than doing worse or better, is immaterial.
if your server doesn’t have the fortitude to do more than win by “just enough” then your rating will reflect that. if you want the kind of high rating that says “we will stomp you into the ground”, then unfortunately you’re going to have to stomp people into the ground to get it.
it’s important to keep in mind that the purpose of the rating is to estimate what your average score will be if you play another server with a different rating. in most cases, score is a good indicator of “strength” but sometimes it measures other things like “pity”.
-ken
give me a new mmo that focus’s on pvp, fed up with all these pve mmos. wvw is only world pvp content in this whole game since release… what the hell is that all about?
Isnt this game called guildwars, and yet a guild war is about the hardest thing to come by.
First developers to produce a purely pvp mmo wins.
www.eveonline.com
www.darkfall.com
etc
they already exist why aren’t you playing them?
Until the coverage issues have been sorted, EU tiers are gonna be full of blow outs. Many people have been writing about this for ages, yet zero comment or action from Arenanet…
The only solution to do that is changing the whole scoring system… and they did say they are working on it. Remember Devon’s WvW blog post? There isn’t some magical solution to fix this, and the current change isn’t even meant to fix it. Its meant to prevent the terrible stagnation from glicko2 that trapped servers in pointless match-ups.
But they could put a serious dent into coverage issues… turn off the PPT during the night time hours when people would generally be sleeping in that particular time zone. Everything else can operate the same, with the exception of that pretty PPT number at the top of the screen can read 0 during those “off” hours.
server ratings do not measure how well a server could do if they tried really hard. the ratings measure how well a server actually does. why your server does that well, rather than doing worse or better, is immaterial.
if your server doesn’t have the fortitude to do more than win by “just enough” then your rating will reflect that. if you want the kind of high rating that says “we will stomp you into the ground”, then unfortunately you’re going to have to stomp people into the ground to get it.
it’s important to keep in mind that the purpose of the rating is to estimate what your average score will be if you play another server with a different rating. in most cases, score is a good indicator of “strength” but sometimes it measures other things like “pity”.
-ken
This post reeks of somebody who considers “Ratings Purity” more important than “Having Fun” in a Game.
The Ratings, the Scoring System, the complete lack of any kind of Balancing or Handicapping Mechanics – these are all serious flaws in WvW.
I love WvW and have never really experienced anything else like it in a game I’ve played but ANet really needs to get their priorities in-line. Ratings and Rankings are perfect for things like sPvP but are statistically meaningless in WvW. There is way too much variation and too many non-controllable factors to produce “meaningful” results.
The focus needs to be on getting people to participate and have fun in great fights – not “maximizing Rating” or “statistical accuracy” or any of that kitten.
Regarding ratings specifically, (and I namely address this to those who have been saying things like “Consider yourself winning if you are gaining +20-40 rating, even if you are losing in PPT and score”) I ask: What benefit is there to gaining ratings for a weaker server? How is that a win? (I ask this because some have been actually equating rating gains to winning now) What benefit does a server like Ferguson’s Crossing or Eredon Terrace gain from going up to an eventual 950-ish points peak (or higher if possible)? Doesn’t more rating actually increase the odds that they will enter a matchup with a server more than a tier above them like IoJ, Darkhaven etc, and in that case actually become detrimental? Fight for more rating so you have the greater probability of being matched with servers that can spawn camp you in multiple maps? That makes sense. >_>
And what motivation is there in rating points for those who spend most time in-game? What about the people who don’t hit mos millennium every 20 minutes? People in game don’t see rating points, they see score, PPT, objectives held. But even if they did see ratings, is there even a real reason for weak servers to push for higher ratings anyways?
(edited by Detharos.3157)
The 2 lowest servers by far are FC and ET. In someone’s infinite wisdom, they aren’t matched up against each other this week. I guess being thumped by 2 sides instead of one is a great plan in bizaaro world.
You may not be able to fathom this, but we actually prefer not being matched up. We are both too weak to take on any of the servers right now when paired up. When the other two servers are more evenly matched nobody is camping our spawns. Just look at the difference between the last two weeks and the first week of the new matchups. This really is better for us at the bottom.
Scoring is going to turn out the same. Having 2 bigger population servers fight over 4 maps is gonna look a lot like 1 bigger population server fighting over 4 maps. Reset night looks close because everyone is excited to see the new matchup. There wont be any difference by the end of the week.
Just look at FC’s week with IoJ and DR to know that what you said is not true. Now I know that IoJ and DR hate each other so we did better than we should have, but beating DR with a little help is sooooo much better than the week before it or the two after it. http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/48/75
Now I don’t know what server you play on but I can tell you everyone I talked to in that DR IoJ FC match had a lot of fun. We had more people on our teamspeak and people in the borderlands that were very active. The match was great! Did we win? No, of course not. The awesome thing was not being focused constantly. So yeah, this match up is way better for us.
Don’t try to speak for the lower tiers when clearly you have no idea what we feel.
Well aren’t you angry. I’ve spent 7 months of nightly WvW on FC. If you don’t think we beat DR solely because of IoJ’s payback hatred, you are insane. They were taking our towers from DR and then leaving them for us. This is all moot until they do something about the populations of the servers anyway. I’m glad you feel that getting your butt kicked a little less than last week is way better.
Clearly we are not on the same server because we didn’t get our butts handed to us on reset, at all. We went at it with DR and GoM. We even managed to hold SM castle for a while. We haven’t had this many waypoints on the map in ages. We are doing so much better this week. We had around 70 people in our TS for reset night. That population didn’t drop off for about 4 hours. Based off of just reset this week will be better than the last two.
I guess the difference comes from you thinking that 8k down after 24 hours isn’t a butt kicking. The overall score at the end of the week will be a shade closer and we will take third. I like ET because even though its for 2nd place, at least there is a close score battle all week long. None of these matchups is very fun. Losing by 160k and having a few waypoints and losing by 220k and being spawn camped both suck. Everyone shows up for restart and as the scores spread out, they disappear (or pile on) depending on what your server score is.
The 2 lowest servers by far are FC and ET. In someone’s infinite wisdom, they aren’t matched up against each other this week. I guess being thumped by 2 sides instead of one is a great plan in bizaaro world.
You may not be able to fathom this, but we actually prefer not being matched up. We are both too weak to take on any of the servers right now when paired up. When the other two servers are more evenly matched nobody is camping our spawns. Just look at the difference between the last two weeks and the first week of the new matchups. This really is better for us at the bottom.
Scoring is going to turn out the same. Having 2 bigger population servers fight over 4 maps is gonna look a lot like 1 bigger population server fighting over 4 maps. Reset night looks close because everyone is excited to see the new matchup. There wont be any difference by the end of the week.
Just look at FC’s week with IoJ and DR to know that what you said is not true. Now I know that IoJ and DR hate each other so we did better than we should have, but beating DR with a little help is sooooo much better than the week before it or the two after it. http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/48/75
Now I don’t know what server you play on but I can tell you everyone I talked to in that DR IoJ FC match had a lot of fun. We had more people on our teamspeak and people in the borderlands that were very active. The match was great! Did we win? No, of course not. The awesome thing was not being focused constantly. So yeah, this match up is way better for us.
Don’t try to speak for the lower tiers when clearly you have no idea what we feel.
Well aren’t you angry. I’ve spent 7 months of nightly WvW on FC. If you don’t think we beat DR solely because of IoJ’s payback hatred, you are insane. They were taking our towers from DR and then leaving them for us. This is all moot until they do something about the populations of the servers anyway. I’m glad you feel that getting your butt kicked a little less than last week is way better.
Clearly we are not on the same server because we didn’t get our butts handed to us on reset, at all. We went at it with DR and GoM. We even managed to hold SM castle for a while. We haven’t had this many waypoints on the map in ages. We are doing so much better this week. We had around 70 people in our TS for reset night. That population didn’t drop off for about 4 hours. Based off of just reset this week will be better than the last two.
I guess the difference comes from you thinking that 8k down after 24 hours isn’t a butt kicking. The overall score at the end of the week will be a shade closer and we will take third. I like ET because even though its for 2nd place, at least there is a close score battle all week long. None of these matchups is very fun. Losing by 160k and having a few waypoints and losing by 220k and being spawn camped both suck. Everyone shows up for restart and as the scores spread out, they disappear (or pile on) depending on what your server score is.
An 8k difference is nothing compared to the other weeks. I don’t care about the score battle with ET personally. If FC tried to crush ET we would, but most of the biggest guilds (and I’d say the majority of FC) agree that fighting is either not fun or not really worth it. What is the point of kicking down when we can try ourselves by punching up?
Differing opinions I guess.
This post reeks of somebody who considers “Ratings Purity” more important than “Having Fun” in a Game.
The Ratings, the Scoring System, the complete lack of any kind of Balancing or Handicapping Mechanics – these are all serious flaws in WvW.
I love WvW and have never really experienced anything else like it in a game I’ve played but ANet really needs to get their priorities in-line. Ratings and Rankings are perfect for things like sPvP but are statistically meaningless in WvW. There is way too much variation and too many non-controllable factors to produce “meaningful” results.
The focus needs to be on getting people to participate and have fun in great fights – not “maximizing Rating” or “statistical accuracy” or any of that kitten.
it’s not that I consider it important, it’s that I don’t see any reason for people to complain about it if it’s not important to them. if rating isn’t as important as having fun, and you don’t think it’s fun to camp enemy spawns, then don’t do it. but don’t expect the rating system to reward you for choosing fun over points.
this is the unfortunate part of the system. if you think an opponent is too far below you to be fun, and you don’t want to play them again, you need to ensure that your rating goes up. if you don’t spawn camp them and your rating ends up going down, you are going to get more of these mismatches.
likewise, if you think you are hopelessly outclassed, but you’ve been doing your best regardless and gaining rating as a result, then expect to see more of this kind of matchup. if you want to see less, you need to lose by more, so that you lose rating, so that the system will give you this matchup less often.
I think this is a fundamental problem of the rating system. the system as it exists does do one thing fairly well — it gives us reasonable matchups (but not perfect ones) and it gives us some variation in who we play (arguably too much variation sometimes). but the quality of the matchups depends on the quality of the ratings, because the ratings are what the system uses to determine which matchups are “good”.
if you ‘throw’ your ratings then you’re not going to end up getting the appropriate matchups. going easy on lower opponents (and scoring lower than expected) is going to give you lower opponents more often. fighting hard against higher opponents (and scoring better than expected) is going to give you higher opponents more often.
-ken
The 2 lowest servers by far are FC and ET. In someone’s infinite wisdom, they aren’t matched up against each other this week. I guess being thumped by 2 sides instead of one is a great plan in bizaaro world.
You may not be able to fathom this, but we actually prefer not being matched up. We are both too weak to take on any of the servers right now when paired up. When the other two servers are more evenly matched nobody is camping our spawns. Just look at the difference between the last two weeks and the first week of the new matchups. This really is better for us at the bottom.
Scoring is going to turn out the same. Having 2 bigger population servers fight over 4 maps is gonna look a lot like 1 bigger population server fighting over 4 maps. Reset night looks close because everyone is excited to see the new matchup. There wont be any difference by the end of the week.
Just look at FC’s week with IoJ and DR to know that what you said is not true. Now I know that IoJ and DR hate each other so we did better than we should have, but beating DR with a little help is sooooo much better than the week before it or the two after it. http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/48/75
Now I don’t know what server you play on but I can tell you everyone I talked to in that DR IoJ FC match had a lot of fun. We had more people on our teamspeak and people in the borderlands that were very active. The match was great! Did we win? No, of course not. The awesome thing was not being focused constantly. So yeah, this match up is way better for us.
Don’t try to speak for the lower tiers when clearly you have no idea what we feel.
Well aren’t you angry. I’ve spent 7 months of nightly WvW on FC. If you don’t think we beat DR solely because of IoJ’s payback hatred, you are insane. They were taking our towers from DR and then leaving them for us. This is all moot until they do something about the populations of the servers anyway. I’m glad you feel that getting your butt kicked a little less than last week is way better.
Clearly we are not on the same server because we didn’t get our butts handed to us on reset, at all. We went at it with DR and GoM. We even managed to hold SM castle for a while. We haven’t had this many waypoints on the map in ages. We are doing so much better this week. We had around 70 people in our TS for reset night. That population didn’t drop off for about 4 hours. Based off of just reset this week will be better than the last two.
I guess the difference comes from you thinking that 8k down after 24 hours isn’t a butt kicking. The overall score at the end of the week will be a shade closer and we will take third. I like ET because even though its for 2nd place, at least there is a close score battle all week long. None of these matchups is very fun. Losing by 160k and having a few waypoints and losing by 220k and being spawn camped both suck. Everyone shows up for restart and as the scores spread out, they disappear (or pile on) depending on what your server score is.
You must be from the KRAK guild
Remove cumulative ppt from being visible in game.
Would help address the morale issues when “losing”, and half the battle is participation.
Fix that and you have a base for more contested matchups for longer
it’s not that I consider it important, it’s that I don’t see any reason for people to complain about it if it’s not important to them. if rating isn’t as important as having fun, and you don’t think it’s fun to camp enemy spawns, then don’t do it. but don’t expect the rating system to reward you for choosing fun over points.
this is the unfortunate part of the system. if you think an opponent is too far below you to be fun, and you don’t want to play them again, you need to ensure that your rating goes up. if you don’t spawn camp them and your rating ends up going down, you are going to get more of these mismatches.
likewise, if you think you are hopelessly outclassed, but you’ve been doing your best regardless and gaining rating as a result, then expect to see more of this kind of matchup. if you want to see less, you need to lose by more, so that you lose rating, so that the system will give you this matchup less often.
I think this is a fundamental problem of the rating system. the system as it exists does do one thing fairly well — it gives us reasonable matchups (but not perfect ones) and it gives us some variation in who we play (arguably too much variation sometimes). but the quality of the matchups depends on the quality of the ratings, because the ratings are what the system uses to determine which matchups are “good”.
if you ‘throw’ your ratings then you’re not going to end up getting the appropriate matchups. going easy on lower opponents (and scoring lower than expected) is going to give you lower opponents more often. fighting hard against higher opponents (and scoring better than expected) is going to give you higher opponents more often.
-ken
Your analysis is well-intentioned but horribly flawed.
First the Ratings as they are calculated and used are statistically corrupt as drawing global inferences from localized data is fraught with the risk of completely invalid conclusions. The system assumes a true “1v1v1” when that situation is easily drowned out the moment any one of the 3 Servers in the match is inordinately stronger or weaker than the others. Here are two clear examples:
Another major flaw in your assumptions is that “if only the Ratings are accurate we would then see better matches” because Servers aren’t always going to be grouped in nice even multiples of 3 strength-wise. There are 3 “T1-Strength” Servers and 1 “T1.5-Strength” Server that unless they are matched up with each other will completely destabilize whatever match they are in. No matter how much Rating TC gains that situation will not change.
That means every week at least 2 lower-ranked Servers will be paired up in a non-competitive match with one of them and according to you that one Server then needs to stomp on those Servers for the week to gain as much rating as possible in order to try to avoid being the one selected for the imbalanced match.
Finally, any Ratings System that basically requires “systematic griefing” (especially in GW2) for a week or weeks at a time to attempt to create “fun” or “balanced” matches is horribly flawed. ANet really shouldn’t want a system that drives players away from playing for long periods of time.
You can spin it however you want but it is in ANet’s best interest to devise a system that promotes and encourages fun matches regardless of how balanced or imbalanced they are.
(edited by Rackhir Tanelorn.9123)
I have never argued that it is not in ArenaNet’s interest to improve the matchup system.
What I have argued is that the current system is in fact an improvement over the previous matchup system, and that we should not return to the old one. I have also argued that WULD would not be a better system than the current one.
And, I have offered what advice I can to help people manage their expectations regarding rating and how it affects matchups under the current system. If you are the type of person who cares deeply about your server’s rating, I will tell you what you must do to make it go up, and what you must avoid to prevent it from going down.
If you want to know how the current ratings affect the likelihoods of getting certain matchups, I can help with that.
If you want to know what to do in order to get a better chance of facing a particular opponent (or lower your chance of getting another) I can tell you what rating changes need to happen in order to change those probabilities.
I will tell you what the current system requires you to do in order to achieve your desired outcome, even if doing those things would not be fun, because it’s up to you to decide for yourself how much that outcome is worth to you. If that outcome is so important to you that you are willing to put fun aside to achieve it, that’s your business.
but I do not have the power to implement a system that promotes more fun. Complaining that my posts don’t do so is pointless. You could as easily complain that my posts don’t solve world hunger, or address income inequality.
If you don’t like the current system, you are welcome to suggest a better one. I do not see how complaining about people who are trying to make the best of the current system helps anyone.
-ken
You can check my posting history to see I’ve always argued against WULD.
You will also find that I favor variety over stagnation.
You can even find some posts where I initially supported the changes.
But what you won’t find me doing is defending a system that is showing its inherent flaws more and more.
I’ve read enough of your posts now across multiple threads to get the sense you like this system – you are enjoying all the statistical analysis you are getting to do. You are enjoying tracking expected vs actual performance. You enjoy seeing how pairings match up to their probabilistic chances of occurring.
What I don’t see you doing is using any of your ability at analysis to provide suggestions to ANet to improve their system.
I can’t speak for EU matchups because I haven’t been analyzing them as much but I do have issues when you tell Servers to blow out others (or to just not play and be blown out if weaker) to escape imbalanced matchups because it won’t solve anything.
There are 2 Servers in NA each week that have to go up against either 1 or 2 of the “Top 4” and that will remain true no matter how much Rating those Top 4 Servers gain nor how much Rating the other Servers shed.
And if you (or more importantly ANet) wants a Suggestion to at least try to make this kittened-up system more fun/enjoyable:
Why don’t they take their Ratings and “Expected Performance” and do what Golf or Chess does and calculate a “Handicap” score that is generated at the beginning of every Match.
It might not change much but I think people would have more fun if (for example with made-up numbers) Kaineng had started this week with 125,000 Points and Fort Aspenwood with 75,000 Points and TC had to spend the week trying to overcome that.
With that one change Lower Ranked Servers would be playing “Tower Defense/Zombies” against Higher Tier Servers in really imbalanced matches and both taking and holding objectives for Points would be important for all Servers even late into the week.
It would change the dynamics and the entire psychological feel of how matches play out because it would be easy for people to see at a glance (by opening the existing Scoring Panel) how their Server was doing compared to expectations.
Rack, they do already handicap the system like chess does. Glicko is a chess system, with built in handicapping. It handicaps the amount of score you can possibly gain off a weaker opponent. For example kaineng really doesn’t have to take much from TC or FA to go UP in rating.
The problems really all stem from the matchmaking system being about rating, and the in game scoring system all about PPT. Getting more points does not mean you go up in rating or down in rating.
Anet needs to quickly implement the rating system into the in game UI, show us how much were gaining and how much were going to lose at the end of the match, if people start playing for rating instead of overall score everything automatically becomes manageable. If kaineng only needs 85,000 points at the end of the match to gain rating, it will feel attainable.
Putting in a SCORE handicap means that the rating system will need an additional change to remove that added score, otherwise you will force low pop servers to gain huge amounts of rating, eventually pushing them up to be matched against t1 servers.
I do think after this week anet should lower the random multiplier just a little as servers are now overall closer together leaving it the same will lead to more and more wild matchups.
The system is fine, it seems to have adjusted fine, the variables need tweaking, and the players need to be pointed to the rating system as the goal instead of the worthless score system.
What I’m proposing is a lot more straightforward to understand than “Rating” and only a minor change to the calculation.
The entire method used for the Rating Calc lets you derive the “expected performance” of a Server before the match begins.
The score differential between the top Server and the other 2 Servers is what I’m proposing is used as the handicap, and the delta between expected and actual performance gives them the figures needed to calculate the new Ratings.
People like and are used to watching Scores and PPT. What I’m suggesting is easy for anybody to understand and track the results of and doesn’t require any modifications to the current formula outside of a few derived inputs and outputs.
But there is a psychological effect to seeing your server down a huge amount of score. Which is why I’m not in favor of handicapping score in that way. The ratings exist and can be incorporated into the game UI. The reason we care more about ‘score’ is because that’s what the UI shows us. Right now to most players ‘rating’ is a mythical concept that only the regular wvw player is aware of.
Rating system or WULD? None of it will matter until ANet addresses server population and the only way in my opinion to do this is split WvWvW of from PvE, creating true WvWvW servers, then and only then will assumptions made on population have any meaning and will these populations no longer be poluted by PvE fairweather players. Another requirement is, free server transfers combined with population cap. We WvWvW players are way better equiped to balance the matchups and keep things fun and challenging than any mathematically contrived rating system will ever be. Guesting will take care of those who also like their occasional dungeons/regular PvE or make every player pick both a WvWvW and a PvE server, the possibilities are endless and any of them are better than the one currently employed. And for the love of … merge NA and EU, this eternal distinction is becoming really stale and tiresome
(edited by Malismo.3287)
@Malismo This is what I always thought, too. There should have been dedicated WvW servers and normal PvE servers right from the beginning. The whole “your server against other servers” idea sounds nice on paper and is a nice marketing idea. But in practice it doesn’t work. And never will. Such a system will always become unstable in the long run because players tend to switch. And the more players switch the more the system becomes unstable which in turn motivates even more players to switch.
The same is currently happening in Planetside 2, too. There are some servers where the population imbalances are so huge that many players have stopped playing the game.
Losing against a team because you get outplayed is one thing. However, losing against a team which outnumbers your team by a huge amount is nothing but frustrating.
Imaging football games where one team had 2x or 3x the number of players. Makes no sense.
Then again … maybe ANet never intended WvWvW to be “balanced”. I don’t know. What actually is ANet’s position on the huge server population imbalances? Is this working as intended?
Ah, and regarding those algorithms and whatnot. I want to have fun by playing WvW and not by watching Excel spreadsheets to see my “progress”.
(edited by woeye.2753)
@Draygo
I don’t understand how seeing your Server down by 41.285 Rating is any different than seeing that you are trailing in Score.
At least with the Handicap (which could also be displayed on the Score Panel) the only Servers that would see themselves down by a huge amount would be the “stacked” or “dominant” Servers in an imbalanced Matchup.
The “hardcore” players will definitely understand the handicap system and if it drives more “casual” players away to see their high-ranked Server trailing (because they don’t understand how the System works) that would just balance matches more.
Trust me there were plenty of people on both CD and SoS who understood “Rating” perfectly and they didn’t care at all about it. The psychological impact of lower-population Servers being able to see themselves in the lead early on and the possibility of them ending the match with the “winning” Score to me far outweighs any dampening effect that has on those higher-population Servers (and I say that being on one of them).
People are used to Tower Defense and Last Man Standing type games and I think can adapt to a Scoring/Handicap System that reflects that. “Rating” just doesn’t mean much to most players – and it isn’t an “educational issue” either. “Gaining Rating” while getting swamped doesn’t feel like much of a victory, but trying to hold on with everything you have to see your Server with the “Highest Score” at the end of the match – people will fight for that.
This new match up just cant work. tier 6-7 is so much stronger than tier 8. Old system was very good.
The idea of starting with a handicap isn’t a bad one, and it has been suggested before. I’ve even commented in support of it. There’s an interesting thread on it and I suggest taking a look: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Weekly-Matchups-Changing-The-Mindset/
The handicap idea does have some disadvantages however (or if not exactly “disadvantages”, then “things it doesn’t fix as well as it could”). for example, if you start the week with a +100K handicap, how much ground can you afford to lose per day? if you are down to +60K by Monday, are you doing good or not? Is there a way to gain the benefits of a handicap system, while still giving people a good measure of their day-to-day progress?
I happen to think that cumulative rating change, as well as today’s rating change, would to a better job of telling someone whether they are on track, or if they need to push harder. But I won’t say that handicaps are a bad idea (especially if they are combined with ‘par’ scores), because both options would be an improvement over what we have now.
Personally, I don’t think the notions of “world vs. world” and “balanced” are compatible with each other, as long as players are freely able to choose what servers to play on. Fundamentally I think that if players can choose where to play, you can only achieve balance by imposing it — artificially constraining who can play (so that it won’t be world vs world but “a small part of your world” vs “a big part of theirs”, i.e. portions of one world must be excluded from participation).
Theoretically, you could get both by modifying the scoring system, but I have yet to think of a scoring system that is fun, not subject to “gaming” and not overly artificial. I think a scoring system that increases the “effort per additional point” as your PPT goes up could be workable, but I haven’t thought of an effective and practical way it could be done. In particular, I don’t know how much harder marginal point increases need to be in order to be both fun and effective — that might be the kind of thing you can only find out in a beta test.
The issue with “overly artificial” scoring, by the way, is that players will recognize it as a sham, and deliberately ignore it, which I think is a problem because all players need to be playing the same game by the same rules for any kind of scoring system to be effective (otherwise you might as well make it a sandbox and not keep score at all — let the players decide for themselves what they consider a “win”).
-ken
Point handicap doesnt change a thing. Smaller server gets stomped by larger.
I think that’s why people are suggesting a change — in tower defense games you are expected to get stomped eventually, the question is, can you hold out before time runs out?
Think plants vs zombies, and the big zerg servers are the zombies.
In GW2 the matches last a week. can we set up a system that feels like a tower defense game, where you start with a certain amount of territory and you “win” if you can avoid being completely pushed off the scoreboard by the end of the match?
The ideal here is for both sides to have fun. In some of the matchup threads you frequently see players from one server get on and boast that they are the best, because they eventually were able to take a fortified objective from their enemy. Obviously, they had fun doing this. But then you see posts from the other side saying “of course you did, you had us totally outnumbered and we expected it. but we farmed you for bags and badges for hours before you finally kicked us out of there”. Obviously they had fun too.
What we need is a game that’s always fun for both sides, no matter whether you’re gaining ground or losing it.
-ken
(edited by Snowreap.5174)
I very much agree with Ken’s post and that was my point/goal as well.
In the TC-SoR-SoS match SoS did a great job of holding their own especially in EBG but as the week wore on more players started posting how meaningless the match was with the scores so lopsided even though they were gaining Rating.
If those same players saw that SoS had the lead in the match, that their efforts to hold as much as they could in EBG and their own BL would allow them to “win” the Match I think they would’ve had a lot more fun and fought a lot harder (to be clear many SoS did fight hard the whole week, just saying they could have had even more out there).
The “meta” in this kind of match would also feel very different. “Zergs” and “Blobs” are pretty standard throughout the Tiers now but in this kind of fight “Take and Hold” will be much more important. That creates a lot more opportunities for the kind of fight Ken mentioned where both sides are putting a lot of effort into a Tower or Keep Defense because “points matter” to all sides.
Also, the more accurate the Ratings (and therefore the handicaps) are, the more Matches there are that will be decided in the final day or hours and I think everyone would like that a lot more than blowouts decided by the end of the weekend.
This new match up just cant work. tier 6-7 is so much stronger than tier 8. Old system was very good.
What? This week seems better for the NA bottom servers, FC and ET.
Last week, ET and FC came 200k+ points behind HoD. The week before that they came 200k+ points behind GoM.
This week ET and FC are split up and Monday evening ET and FC are 3rd but only 20k behind their respective match leader. If anything, the last three weeks showed having the 2 lowest ranked servers together in the same tier is a terrible idea.
The 2 lowest servers by far are FC and ET. In someone’s infinite wisdom, they aren’t matched up against each other this week. I guess being thumped by 2 sides instead of one is a great plan in bizaaro world.
You may not be able to fathom this, but we actually prefer not being matched up. We are both too weak to take on any of the servers right now when paired up. When the other two servers are more evenly matched nobody is camping our spawns. Just look at the difference between the last two weeks and the first week of the new matchups. This really is better for us at the bottom.
Im playing on ET atm and I much prefer this weeks matchup with HOD and SF over last weeks playing against FC and HOD.
That is because some WvW guilds left SF..the match up still sucks but I’m sure Devon is gonna quote your example for actually having done something right, lol.
SoS just needs to not WvW for a week and let their rating drop through the floor. Also no buying anything from their gem shop till they listen up and fix this.
The second problem with handicaps is that total combined server score isn’t flat week to week. It varies. Cap more sentries, kill more dolyaks and the higher your server score will go. PPT while its a chunk of the total score isn’t all of it. This makes it really hard to make a fair handicap because you don’t know how often these other factors play in.
This is why displaying rating, and rating progress is really the only way to go. There is no additional math involved, just simply displaying what is already there.
(edited by Draygo.9473)
@Draygo
If you consider Glicko2 and the ratings it generates valid then arguing that the total score being variable is completely invalid because it is those very same variable scores that are used every week right now to calculate Rating and Evolution.
My suggestion of a handicap doesn’t change how Glicko Rating is calculated at all.
Maybe an example will help you:
There are 168 hours in a 7 day week. 4 Ticks per Hour. 695 Potential Points per Tick from Objectives. That’s a total of 467,040 Potential Objective Points per Match assuming perfect Start/Stop Times and no Downtime for Maintenance.
But there can be downtime, and matches don’t always start on time, and on top of that Resets are often highly competitive even in unbalanced matches.
So let’s knock 6 hours off the total which leaves us with 450,360 PPT as the Handicap Pool.
Reverse-Engineer the expected scores based on Rating at the beginning of the week.
Subtract the Top Server’s Expected Score from the Middle Server’s Expected Score for the Middle Server’s Handicap.
Subtract the Top Server’s Expected Score from the Bottom Server’s Expected Score for the Bottom Server’s Handicap.
And then at any point during the Match you can calculate the Server Rating Progressions with the simple formula of (Current Score – Handicap) and now you have the indentical input as is used right now.
I don’t know why you are so against a Handicapping System but your current argument holds no merit.
(edited by Rackhir Tanelorn.9123)
Rackhir, you are suggesting that you are going to base your handicap system OFF of glicko2, while saying glicko2 is invalid and untrustworthy?
Why bother with the handicap system, its needlessly complex with too much room for error, just put rating into the UI and be done with it. The total amount of points gained per weeks is too variable to be predicted with any sort of accuracy, resulting in a biased system. While rating is based off of comparative points, the total number of points in the match is irrelevant. With the introduction of a handicap system the sum of the total points at the end of the match becomes relevant.
Its needlessly complex, just steer people into playing for rating as chess players play for rating.
All your handicap system is doing is integrating glicko2 rating into the scoreboard with a complex system of guessing what would be a fair amount of handicap. Its unnecessary when you can simply – display the rating and potential rating change.
No Draygo, I’m saying that if you feel Glicko is valid, then you have to agree that a handicap system as I described is valid.
I explained how the exact same figures used in the Current Glicko formulas would continue to be used, including only the points earned by each Server during the match.
Glicko itself wouldn’t change at all.
So which one of us is being disingenuous?
My goal is to create an environment where even in imbalanced matches all Servers would have something to fight for throughout the week. Where as we approach Reset on Wednesday, Thursday, even Friday the winner of a match can still be in doubt regardless of how imbalanced the match is because of Coverage. Where people can at a glance see how many points their Server needs to win, or how hard they have to fight to hold on.
If you think that Lower Tier Servers keep fighting throughout the week against stacked Servers as hard as they can you are delusional. If you think most players care about or are willing to fight for “a chess rating” while seeing both their overall score and PPT completely lopsided and no easily understood relationship between their actions on the battlefield and the Rating you are wrong.
I’ve been part of 4 consecutive matches in a row where the outcome was never in doubt. Other Servers have faced that for even longer. People like to play when they have a chance to win. A Handicap system will give that to all Servers.
Let me put it another way – I want to see people having fun and fighting in WvW every day of the week. There is a reason why Chess players concede matches without even bothering to finish the game. Let’s please get that mentality out of WvW.
the bottom line is, having handicaps would be an improvement over the system as it is now. it might not be the best possible improvement, but I would definitely take it.
handicaps and rating both give (mostly) the same information mathematically. arguably, rating is more “accurate” because it can more easily handle things like yak and sentry kills without a lot of extra bookkeeping, but handicap may be more “understandable” to the players, some of whom are, unfortunately, not the brightest bulbs.
that might actually be a key advantage for displaying “par” scores (or handicaps) instead of showing rating changes. by showing rating, inevitably there’s going to be at least one loser. but with “par” scores that don’t include dolyak and sentry kills, any points from those activities will be bonus points that could potentially allow all three servers to beat their “expected” scores. in our modern “ribbons for everyone, just for participating” society this may not be a bad thing.
the actual rating changes would still count everything of course, exactly as they do now. and the detail-minded among us can continue to track rating the way we do now. a lot of us are perfectly able to kitten our performance using the tools we already have.
the question is, is there something that can be done to help the people who currently are not able to effectively kitten their performance, and who are getting discouraged too easily because the one performance measure they see is telling them that they are bad and they should go home?
-ken
edit: by “kitten” I mean a completely different six-letter word that means “Evaluate or estimate the nature, ability, or quality of”, or “Calculate or estimate the price or value of”. puzzling out exactly what word that might be is left as an exercise for the reader.
(edited by Snowreap.5174)
No Draygo, I’m saying that if you feel Glicko is valid, then you have to agree that a handicap system as I described is valid.
I explained how the exact same figures used in the Current Glicko formulas would continue to be used, including only the points earned by each Server during the match.
Glicko itself wouldn’t change at all.
So which one of us is being disingenuous?
My goal is to create an environment where even in imbalanced matches all Servers would have something to fight for throughout the week. Where as we approach Reset on Wednesday, Thursday, even Friday the winner of a match can still be in doubt regardless of how imbalanced the match is because of Coverage. Where people can at a glance see how many points their Server needs to win, or how hard they have to fight to hold on.
If you think that Lower Tier Servers keep fighting throughout the week against stacked Servers as hard as they can you are delusional. If you think most players care about or are willing to fight for “a chess rating” while seeing both their overall score and PPT completely lopsided and no easily understood relationship between their actions on the battlefield and the Rating you are wrong.
I’ve been part of 4 consecutive matches in a row where the outcome was never in doubt. Other Servers have faced that for even longer. People like to play when they have a chance to win. A Handicap system will give that to all Servers.
Let me put it another way – I want to see people having fun and fighting in WvW every day of the week. There is a reason why Chess players concede matches without even bothering to finish the game. Let’s please get that mentality out of WvW.
Be concise, don’t make it about you, don’t make it about me.
I don’t want it because its unnecessary complication. It isn’t clear how well you are doing day to day.
So we take the situation where server A has a 200,000 point handicap. After 1 day goes by, how does Server B know how well it is doing compared to Server A? Is server B on track to beating Server A? Or is it hopelessly behind in points and will never catch up?
The handicap system you propose is unclear, its hard to tell who is in the lead, if you will make par or not. Using rating which already exists adjusts day by day, you know when your ahead and when you are behind your expected performance. And due to unknowns like yak and sentry kills its hard to be exact with the handicap amount. One server might as a server strategy target sentries way more often than another, making an uneven comparison.
I don’t see an easy method to put a handicap number down that will work properly, be clear to the users if they are on track to making the number they need to win. Rating is clear if your doing better or worse, and is the only number that matters as far as matchmaking is concerned (well almost, deviation, volatility figure in). The score system is a comparative system, not an absolute system.
I’m saying handicap is unneeded complication and users can understand the rating if it was implemented in the game interface instead of hidden behind a leaderboard or third party website.
To be clear:
A handicap system would be
*Complex
*Built on top of the rating system to provide something the rating system already provides
*Another point of failure (if anet screws up how handicap numbers are figured)
*Unclear if a server is on track to win or not.
*Muddled by uneven total score values
*Score is comparative not absolute
To be clear:
A handicap system would be
*Complex
*Built on top of the rating system to provide something the rating system already provides
*Another point of failure (if anet screws up how handicap numbers are figured)
*Unclear if a server is on track to win or not.
*Muddled by uneven total score values
*Score is comparative not absolute
Glicko is complex.
Trying to figure out how much PPT you need to shift your Rating Evolution is complex.
Trying to figure out if it is even possible for you to switch your Evolution from negative to positive at any point in a match is confusing.
The calculation of Handicaps is quite simple by comparision.
Your objections to scoring are still invalid. All Ratings under my Handicap proposal are calculated as they are now. Scoring is no more or less “uneven” than it is right now.
Because you always subtract the Handicap out before any Glicko calculation everything is at is now…
Except scores will be closer at the end of the week and players will see that their Server has a chance to “win” a Match even when facing a Server with much higher Coverage/Rating.
You cannot expect people to go up against servers that are severely stacked. The persistent losing will only kill morale and further diminish participation for servers that don’t even remotely have the numbers to go up against a much larger server. WvW is supposed to be about competition and not watching Lebron James dunk on middle school kids.
In the past few weeks I have stomached these matches but I am reaching the point where if I see that my opponents are against severely stacked servers I just say why bother?
I just wonder if this current system will force other guilds to transfer to servers with great representation on the field. We all know that would either force people to farm the gold to transfer or buy the gems from the shop further lining Anet’s pockets.
To be clear:
A handicap system would be
*Complex
*Built on top of the rating system to provide something the rating system already provides
*Another point of failure (if anet screws up how handicap numbers are figured)
*Unclear if a server is on track to win or not.
*Muddled by uneven total score values
*Score is comparative not absoluteGlicko is complex.
Trying to figure out how much PPT you need to shift your Rating Evolution is complex.
Trying to figure out if it is even possible for you to switch your Evolution from negative to positive at any point in a match is confusing.
The calculation of Handicaps is quite simple by comparision.
Your objections to scoring are still invalid. All Ratings under my Handicap proposal are calculated as they are now. Scoring is no more or less “uneven” than it is right now.
Because you always subtract the Handicap out before any Glicko calculation everything is at is now…
Except scores will be closer at the end of the week and players will see that their Server has a chance to “win” a Match even when facing a Server with much higher Coverage/Rating.
So, I like how you refuted my points, please try again.
“So we take the situation where server A has a 200,000 point handicap. After 1 day goes by, how does Server B know how well it is doing compared to Server A? Is server B on track to beating Server A? Or is it hopelessly behind in points and will never catch up?”
Answer the question. How do you tell at a glance?
And drop the “your argument is invalid” meme bullkitten. You are making assumptions about what I’m saying and refuting your own assumptions. Stop doing that.
Answer the question. How do you tell at a glance?
And drop the “your argument is invalid” meme bullkitten. You are making assumptions about what I’m saying and refuting your own assumptions. Stop doing that.
I’m doing the exact same thing you are doing. A team behind on points on Day 1 will know exactly how far behind they are and can even eyeball how much they are catching up by looking at current PPT. Others have also suggested using the Handicap as a PPT Modifier which would eliminate that concern altogether.
In the meantime, when exactly are you going to explain how someone can look at their Server’s Rating Evolution and know if they can turn it positive before the match ends, or how long it would take, or how it is affected by PPT?
Do you get my point yet? People can look at a Score and current PPT and at least figure out to some extent if they can catch up but the argument you keep using against me is exactly the same when using Rating Evolution only worse!
The other main difference is I don’t mind making the top stacked Servers push hard to see if they can catch up by the end of the week while you don’t seem to mind letting them just blow out weaker Servers before the weekend is over so nobody has to bother playing the rest of the week.
Snowreap (Ken), are you going to try the numbers again for tomorrow?
I never cease to be amazed by Anet’s ability to continually defy statistics in regard to SoS matchups and I’m curious to how much they’ll bend the space-time continuum this next week.
I personally think they are going find some amazing way to match us up with AR and SBI just to tank our score and get a laugh.
Snowreap (Ken), are you going to try the numbers again for tomorrow?
I never cease to be amazed by Anet’s ability to continually defy statistics in regard to SoS matchups and I’m curious to how much they’ll bend the space-time continuum this next week.I personally think they are going find some amazing way to match us up with AR and SBI just to tank our score and get a laugh.
If you don’t mind them being from 24 hours ago, he posted them yesterday in this thread.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/matchups/Who-would-you-like-to-face-next-week
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