Guild Wars 2

Here is a sad story:

After being stuck to EU tier #1 for 4 months and utterly hopelessly imbalanced matches together with a game breaking lag, Desolation lost almost all of its major WvWvW guilds. Iron Triangle moved to Sanctum of Rall (after that SoR has been dominating NA). VotF, GH, FG, Bull etc. just to mention a few other major ex-Desolation guilds moved to lower EU tiers.

Except for that week when Seafarer’s Rest (SFR) wanted to drop to tier #2, Desolation always been third in its tier. In other words Desolation has lost every single match up in year 2013, when enemy hasn’t intentionally been tanking. We also finally tanked to tier #2, but then comes Arenanet and their new “improved” random ranking system. Many players, including me, raised the consider that the random number added to the rankings was too large.

We are desperately trying to rebuild our WvWvW community. We can only do it within our own server. Trying to recruit new pve players for WvWvW, since no major WvWvW isn’t going to transfer to us. Now what are those new WvWvW players experiencing? We are outmanned on every borderland, including our own, even during primetime. Anybody knows the outmanned buff actually doesn’t help you, but always leads to 2 vs 1 situation, both enemy servers picking on the weaker outmanned one. I have often seen enemy guild teams of 30 to 40 players sometimes even combining their forces into a 50-70 man blob or running around the map and capping everything using 4-6 guild golems. I do a lot of solo roaming besides commanding and sometimes the huge enemy teams chase me across the map, despite I roam with an engineer without any stealth. 1 vs 5-30 enemies must be a fair game and happens all the time.

We usually get 5-15 guys following our PuG commanders (not counting EB where the “PuG commander” actually has his guild mates following him as well). Surely when we play really smart we can capture a keep or tower fast, but we can rarely hold anything against enemy with superior coverage and numbers. We don’t have any night capping team during the week. When the weekday morning comes enemy control 95-100% of the four maps. It doesn’t make any sense to upgrade any structures as they are lost anycase. And we need to try to claim back tier #3 structures, which are so full of siege, it is no longer fun.

The numbers before the Friday reset would have played Desolation as #7, but now the random roll (or evil glitch by Arenanet devs?) upranked us #5. We got placed against Visunah Square and Jade Sea. Two French servers with much larger numbers. Even SFR, who have been our enemies, feels our pain. I have gotten personal chat messages in the game from SFR players telling how screwed up this system is. They are not playing for Desolation, but even they can understand how badly our server is getting matched month after month.

Losing every single week is no fun. We cannot rebuild our WvWvW community in such dire situation.

I can imagine the situation is worse for Vabbi and Fissure of Woe, who are permanently stuck to EU tier 9 and always facerolled by their enemy. I give my warm hug to those few brave Vabbi and FoW players who are still doing WvWvW!

Arenanet needs to start to listen to its player base:
Implement a new match making system: Winner goes up, Loser goes down one tier.
For the 1st few weeks the reset needs to happen every single day as forcing a server into unfair match up for weeks and months, breaks a server as this sad story tells you.

WvWvW coverage should be taken into account when calculating server points. Now the side with superior coverage always wins. Night or morning capping is by far the easiest way to win. If EU servers like Desolation would have some major guilds from a different time zone e.g. NA, that would of course change things, but I just don’t see that happening. We tried to recruit NA guilds for 4 months without any success. Currently we are only strong in primetime, which is evening time in EU. Then any enemy admits, Deso is strong.

The outmanned “buff” should actually be made into a buff, which helps the side with smaller amount of players to survive better. Give the weaker side NPCs, structures and players increased defenses, but limit the player defenses to a small amount, so they wouldn’t become overpowered or impervious to damage. If you have just random PuGs, which is the typical scenario for Desolation after our WvWvW oriented guilds left, pushing our 20 player PuG team against enemy guild team of 30-40 in the open field is gonna be a suicide. As a PuG commander I have become very skilled in avoiding enemy fights and anticipating enemy movements. But doing that hit and run with smaller force months upon months, would be nice to have something different for a change.

Please hear our prayer. Thank you!

Ayna Micro
Desolation PuG commander

What the hell is this???

“Implement a new match making system: Winner goes up, Loser goes down one tier”

I’m still trying to figure out why they did not implement this system.

What WOULD be fair i we could have a say in the matchup. Maybe voting who you want to fight against the 24 hours before reset, then the votes get added and compared and calculated and stuff the last half hour, then the result will turn out good.
For example, CD YB & Kain were 2 awesome matchups, Im sure if they got a say, they could fight each other for as long as they want untill it starts getting uneven.
SoS would have prefered to go up ONE place I am sure, (tier 3) instead of having to fight tarnished coast for ages….

This new matchup is good, but the maximun radius of the moving around is far too much, like CD beat YB and Kain by about a couple thousand, so for a super close win they have to move up SIX spaces, and get pulverised by hardcore tier 2 servers….

Thaia.5146:

What the hell is this???

That’s the sad reality of the new system:
- single strong server gets the chance to steamroll two weaker servers.
- players on strong server lose interest in WvW because it’s too easy
- players on weaker serveres lose interest in WvW because they don’t stand a chance
- glicko systems says: Hey, strong server didn’t steamroll the others enough, so let’s decrease their ranking and increase the ranking of the weak ones

Guess what matchups you’re going to see next week

Thaia.5146:

What the hell is this???

Yes, I’m in that matchup. It is ridiculous. We own 4 waypoints on EB. That’s crazy.

I feel bad for Underworld and Fort Ranik.

Daze.6914:

“Implement a new match making system: Winner goes up, Loser goes down one tier”

I’m still trying to figure out why they did not implement this system.

I’m going to stop actually typing out replies to this and just quote out others at this point.

Khayoss.2019:

That is the worst possible system. It guarantees that every other week a T1 server is fighting a T3 server (#3 vs #7, best case scenario, #1 vs #9 in a perfect storm), and the like repeated in every tier – which is exactly what you are complaining about happening here randomly and only for one week at a time.

Did you even give 1 minutes thought to this before you complained?

Those saying one up one down is the “obvious” solution don’t speak for me! I agree with others it wouldn’t solve anything.

Personally, I say well done to Devon to ‘fessing up to his uncertainty in the current rankings and being prepare to test them. The stick he is getting from some is IMO very unfair. Many here and on Reddit felt people were locked in tiers and it was unclear if the ranking differences were genuine; on the other hand I think we are learning things weren’t as broken as maybe we thought. Variety is good, but playing teams too far from your league is not fun for anyone. I vote for tightening the RNG soonish so opponents are within around 250pts of you, at least in EU.

Of course that means there would be no suitable opponents for Vabbi and FoW. Unfortunately, this just seems to be true!

I’m still in favour for the current system (despite our impossible current matchup), but I think they could decrease the range of the random rolls a little bit.

This system is great and is what it should have been from the beginning. I am almost dying of laughter at the response of the " stronger" servers. t2,t3,t4,t5 all in tears at getting decimated for 1-2 weeks LMFAO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! x 1000000000000000

Welcome to the party bros and sisters, you were prolly too busy transferring to w/e server was winning in the highest tier at the time but there are servers that have been expriencing blow outs for months regardless who the 3rd server is.

1 up 1 down does nothing to solve the problem of stacked servers and will only continue to add more transfers to those servers.

contrarily to your tinfoil hats, this new system will not destroy wvw, it will destroy this prenotion that being in a higher tier automactially makes you and your server “stronger” because you can field max players consistantly at hours of the day vs the other 2 your against.

Yes the larger server players will get bored and less competitive, which is to be expected since theres only few other servers able to compete numberwise.

Your incorrect about the losing servers though. This is where im in a uncontrollable laughing fit at the mid high tiers that are suffering their first few beat downs. Yes youll lose moral and the weak souled players ( mainly the ones crying here at the forums telling their server not to play) becuase your gonna lose several times by landslides. However in time the high populated servers will get bored faster ( face it what are 80 people gonna do when a map is fully their color for days).

Thats the true beauty of this system, since anet wouldn’t dare move players into other servers ( imagine all the rage if people from JQ woke up one morning in ET LMAO!!!)

TL;DR
If you truely want to fix wvw matches you should be asking anet to reopen free transfers to lower populated, you prolly could even maybe convince them to give guild owners an item that will give them guild respect in relation to their current upgrades to get them a headstart.

If not then continue the high chance of either being roflstomped or twiddling your thumbs with a full map for days with a slight chance of getting an equal numbered match.

Dear ANET,
I conplain aswell about the calculation.
How Augury rock (7st) is against Fort Ranik(19st) and Underworld (20st) ?
Since the reset , we have 35k point differences (in 15h) and we are loosing point in general classement.
We tick at 500 all hours and at 7am at maximum available.
!http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/7629/l1y2.jpg!
You should thing about the calculation again.
Why dont you do division like that ?
- Winner is going to upper division.
-Looser is going to down division.
I think i ll be easier for everyone and more funny.
Please think about it !
Best regards,
From Augury Rock who have no match-up and are really bored !

If the 375 rating difference matchup between Augury Rock and Fort Ranik sounds bad, remember that SBI (NA) was in a match against SoS with a larger rating difference for months, but the old system hid how big the difference actually was. You can handle a week.

All the casuals mewling about the match up and getting blown out once in a while I say just leave already the less casuals the better

I still think NA and EU servers should be trialled to play against each other, see if the server lag does really make any difference to overall result

I will just join the complain. Most of the match ups are ridiculous. Game is about fun, there is no fun being heavily outmanned or outmanning others. I don’t mind to fight the same servers for weeks as long as its balanced and fun. Old system was maybe stereotyped but at least was fun, this one is just horrible. Thumb down anet!!!

Change this random crap,you’re officially Killing wvwvw now.The servers matches are unbalanced as hell,keep this up and more people will drop.

This is the third week, and we’ve been dealing with higher tiers than our server, we can barely even keep our own now this week. They should fix this kitten up really, cause it’s getting annoying and alot of people moving from our server to others because of this. So ye, fix it.

This system is so crappy. And when I see Elona fighting rank 10 and 11, I guess that must be more crappy.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Arenanet needs to start to listen to its player base:
*Implement a new match making system: Winner goes up, Loser goes down one tier.

I am agree with this.

And if a Deso player and a Vizu player are together agree this is that something really wrong with your game Anet !

Lmao oh this is goood goood stuff. server loses 3 times, people jump ship mostly likely to a winning server <—— this is the true strength and colors of the “superior tiers”

Keep on keeping on Anet, I enjoy seeing new faces every week. The more people drop or switch, the more servers come into play with us on reasonable ground.

Match ups with servers from 2 different tiers make sense to break the monotony, but when there are match ups with servers from 3 different tiers, it’s not fun for anyone. The results are already predetermined.

We’re not talking about tiers anymore, only ranking points? Fine, it’s ridiculous how two servers with an over 300 point difference can be matched together.

Caedmon.6798:

Change this random crap,you’re officially Killing wvwvw now.The servers matches are unbalanced as hell,keep this up and more people will drop.

Football teams don’t play the same 2 or 3 opponents every week! Just because you are number 1 doesn’t mean you only play number 2 or 3. Frequently the top team plays someone facing relegation and, surprise surprise, they mostly stomp on them.

Devon has said the current extreme matchups are just, like in the very beginning, to get an understanding of real capabilities against different opponents. The ossified leaderboard at the moment was not helpful. The alternative was a complete reset of the ranking (which some did call for). Then Vizunah, might have played Vabbi! How would that have gone!

They have said in a few weeks the system will be adjusted so everyone meets teams closer to their ranking. As i said earlier I think about 250 glicko points feels right, at least for Europe, and should probably happen sooner rather than later. Then we should have a bit of variability, a good thing, but maybe without some of the extremes.

But some teams will still get wiped. That happens in all sport. Trying to rig a system so every battle is always even is pointless and probably impossible.

Jong.5937:

Football teams don’t play the same 2 or 3 opponents every week! Just because you are number 1 doesn’t mean you only play number 2 or 3.

This isnt football. And the football competitions are made up of sub-division that are clumped together based on their performance. And they do not play outside of this division.
You dont see the nr1 of the premier play against some unknown amateur club.

The difference between the nr1 and the nr7 in GW2 however is huge, much bigger then the difference between the nr1 and nr7 in football.
And even the runt of the division occaisionally beats someone in the top5. Thats something that will never EVER happen in GW2.

Terrahero.9358:

Jong.5937:

Football teams don’t play the same 2 or 3 opponents every week! Just because you are number 1 doesn’t mean you only play number 2 or 3.

This isnt football. And the football competitions are made up of sub-division that are clumped together based on their performance. And they do not play outside of this division.
You dont see the nr1 of the premier play against some unknown amateur club.

The difference between the nr1 and the nr7 in GW2 however is huge, much bigger then the difference between the nr1 and nr7 in football.
And even the runt of the division occaisionally beats someone in the top5. Thats something that will never EVER happen in GW2.

Yeah, we all agree that the top servers should not play the bottom, cannot even now, and it will be even more limited when the formula is adjusted, as has already been said is in the works.

But no mixing it up? – just playing the teams closest in ranking is boring as hell and one up, one down wouldn’t help. And the new system has given us some surprise results, just as you say happens in other sports.

I do think this system can be the best option, once the formula is adjusted to limit potential opponents.

Jaxon.5392:

I still think NA and EU servers should be trialled to play against each other, see if the server lag does really make any difference to overall result

I agree. Would be interesting to fight people from the US. But the main problem probably is the different time zones. While Europe is sleeping the US have late afternoon/evening and can be online at full force the whole time we are sleeping without problems. It would require that a lot of players transfer between the servers and in the end there were no NA/US and only mixed servers that have people from all the timezones. (Meaning free transfers are needed and some way to get the people to use them and transfer).

I don’ think lag is a problem in MMORPGs. In shooters lag might be a problem because you have to aim. In MMORPGs it is not that important… at least if it’s not that big like if you are playing on Australian server while being in the EU.

Main problems causing the annoying lags are old computer(fps lag) or the server side skill lags if there is so much stuff to calculate the server can’t handle it… not network lag. Network lag is not a big issue.

lower player number per WvW map, and introduce one time free transfer to the low rank servers….. problem solve…..

I would prefer if there was a medium of players in every map except their own BL. This would encourage more defensive play by bunkering up their border land while allowing larger enemy guilds to invade an enemy’s BL with equal numbers. Right now, it seems there is only a MAX amount of players that can enter a BL instead of a minimum base. When you are in the minimum base at the moment, you receive an outmanned buff(visible by other players which queues them to be offense, which seems to be more harming than helpful).

At the moment, on CD, within an hour of reset, we lost most of our BL to TC because of sheer numbers. It had nothing to do with tactics or being out played—it was a game of numbers. They had such a sizable force on EB, their BL, SoS BL, and our BL that we just could not compete. I understand that players should be able to play WvW when they want, but balancing the number game by adding a queue when numbers are uneven wouldn’t be a terrible thing- who knows, it may even promote more sPvP(which is currently desolate).

To everyone complaining about population imbalance, you are aware that WE control that right? Not ANet. WE created this problem by stacking servers…

Control =/= create.

Shinoobi.1259:

Control =/= create.

We stacked 4-5 servers which resulted in what everyone is complaining about.

It cost very little to transfer to freshly opened Medium and High servers yet people still dish out 1800 gems (60G) to continue to stack these same servers.

Control AND Create.

LilMcGinley.3890:

Shinoobi.1259:

Control =/= create.

We stacked 4-5 servers which resulted in what everyone is complaining about.

It cost very little to transfer to freshly opened Medium and High servers yet people still dish out 1800 gems (60G) to continue to stack these same servers.

Control AND Create.

Except for the people who have stayed on their server? We didn’t create anything

Problem with 1up-1down is that, even if the rankings are accurate, the best match would actually pit the two servers who are moving against each other. Because we’re locked into tiers of 3, you could have a scenario where two servers flip repeatedly each week, taking turns stomping and getting stomped, and you would never know which was better because they would never get a chance to play against each other even though they’re right next to each other in the rankings.

Thaia.5146:

What the hell is this???

Holy kitten, that is seriously messed up. My condolences.

I don’t see how this random match-up is any better than one up one down.

whelp newest update from Tarnished Coast, we pretty much have everything except for EBG right now. And there’s an hour queue to get in there.

I just got owned by a CD thief in the CD borderlands in a 1v2, and that probably got them some good points. Unfortunately the reason I got owned is because, due to boredom I’ve taken to solo roaming on a lvl 8 naked necro…also the other guy that got owned was a random lvl 40 ranger, also solo roaming.

I’m just pointing this out because one of the things that ANet said was a stated goal of these matchups is for the lower tiered servers to get a sense of how the higher tier servers play, and learn from their amazing strategy.

Unfortunately what winds up happening is the higher tier server brings their A-game for the first few hours, then they just start tooling around because there are not enough opponents to fight. So not only do the higher ranked servers get a boring matchup. The lower ranked servers wind up losing to a bunch of people’s alts that they don’t even have all the skills unlocked on, simply because of numbers. They will win an even match, because of course I’m an underleveled noob, but they don’t get even matches for the most part….and either way it’s not really fun for anyone.

I would take stale match-ups over a week of being on TC right now. The game is basically unplayable for a week.

I just don’t understand why the deviation was allowed to stay this large for this week’s match-up. It’s been a clear problem for the past few weeks. It should have been fixed by now.

I don’t know how the current TC-CD-SOS match-up is remotely acceptable to any developer. I know for a fact Blizzard would immediately hotfix an issue this big for such a major feature.

Number or players > any magical ANet math. As simple as that.

Guys, guys, guys… Why are you all so upset??? There’s no need to complain about stuff like this when we have Dragon Pinatas and a Fireworks show!!! If you guys would stop complaining for TWO SECONDS and just open a few Dragon Coffers, you’d see how awesome WvW really is.

(Thank you Anet for allowing Dragon Coffers to drop in WvW. I honestly couldn’t ask for more from you guys <33)

Jong.5937:

Football teams don’t play the same 2 or 3 opponents every week! Just because you are number 1 doesn’t mean you only play number 2 or 3. Frequently the top team plays someone facing relegation and, surprise surprise, they mostly stomp on them.

Football games are 11v11. WvW score in GW2 is VERY strongly linked to population coverage.

I think the current system doesn’t value high enough the score difference. Last week, the Deso/Elona/BB match ended up with 241k Elona, 227k BB and 142k Desolation.

Yet, after the matchup, Desolation only lost 30 points and Elona lost a lot. The resulting ratings are 1980 for Elona and 1780 for Desolation.

Does the system consider that 200 rating points difference is worth matching servers for? 100 rating points difference means like 100k score difference and already a very unfun matchup.

So, why is Desolation matched up with a server 300 points above them this week?

Worse is, the current score means we’ll actually win points if it continues like that :/ That’s not how it should work!

The system values far too much the miserable points a completely outclassed server manages to grasp in a week.

Jong.5937:

Those saying one up one down is the “obvious” solution don’t speak for me! I agree with others it wouldn’t solve anything.

Personally, I say well done to Devon to ‘fessing up to his uncertainty in the current rankings and being prepare to test them. The stick he is getting from some is IMO very unfair. Many here and on Reddit felt people were locked in tiers and it was unclear if the ranking differences were genuine; on the other hand I think we are learning things weren’t as broken as maybe we thought. Variety is good, but playing teams too far from your league is not fun for anyone. I vote for tightening the RNG soonish so opponents are within around 250pts of you, at least in EU.

Of course that means there would be no suitable opponents for Vabbi and FoW. Unfortunately, this just seems to be true!

I get tired of reading responses like this. No one who had any sort of clue thought this was a good solution any more than the win up, lose down system. They are both solutions to a made up problem: stagnation.

Should I recommend to my son’s teachers that each year I want him to be able to randomly go up or down a couple grades so he doesn’t stagnate on classrooms full of people his own age? Ofcourse not, but idiot parents probably cry for dumb crap like that all the time because they are idiots.

We count on people in charge to filter out the idiots, even when they are vocal, because not doing so makes them idiots too. “Stagnation”. Is another word for saying “balanced,” and in a game where the only contributing factors for success are population and covarage, servers must be balanced by those factors.

The real problem here is not that they are so stupid that they don’t realize it, because at this point 4 year olds should understand it…the problem is that the reason they don’t care is because balance and fairness in wvw is not important. They aren’t reinventin NASCAR here, they are selling gems. Period. And believe it or not I can respect that if its honest,

You pay for the wvw experience you want in guildwars 2 , and if your somehow adverse to the concept of 40 to 80 gold per transfer, be preapared to have a crappy wvw experience every other week.

LilMcGinley.3890:

To everyone complaining about population imbalance, you are aware that WE control that right? Not ANet. WE created this problem by stacking servers…

Anet created the problem by having free transfers for so long and by not taking account of human nature.

And I do note that your guild is one of those responsible.

The matchups themselves aren’t as big a problem as the underlying Scoring and Rating System itself.

This is a recreational game activity not a competitive tournament where the chances are very high that matches will be imbalanced. The scoring system needs to have in-game mechanics that reward the weaker 2 Servers teaming up on the strongest and that funnel people into fights rather than away from them.

The current Rating System forces dominant Servers to squash opponents to maintain Rating (not good), encourages 2nd Place Servers to target the weakest Server to farm/maintain points/rating rather than fight the top Server, and rewards wXP Trains/Flipping way too much.

I’m not sure of the best ways to solve all these issues, but I have two suggestions to help balance scoring:

1) The 3rd Place Server in a match (by current score) receives Double Points for Objectives held in their own BL and EB
2) If the 1st Place Server’s Current Score exceeds a percentage threshold of the other two Servers – for example if Server 1 Score > 1.5 x (Server 2 Score + Server 3 Score) both other Servers receive Double Points for all holdings.

I’m sure many more ideas are out there but something really needs to be done.

Its not football, or FC would get the second overall pick of guilds each week.

Only strategy I’ve learned from higher tiered servers is to bring a diaper-load of peeps to WvW. It’s about the only strategy we cannot mimic…

Rackhir Tanelorn.9123:

The matchups themselves aren’t as big a problem as the underlying Scoring and Rating System itself.

This is a recreational game activity not a competitive tournament where the chances are very high that matches will be imbalanced. The scoring system needs to have in-game mechanics that reward the weaker 2 Servers teaming up on the strongest and that funnel people into fights rather than away from them.

The current Rating System forces dominant Servers to squash opponents to maintain Rating (not good), encourages 2nd Place Servers to target the weakest Server to farm/maintain points/rating rather than fight the top Server, and rewards wXP Trains/Flipping way too much.

I’m not sure of the best ways to solve all these issues, but I have two suggestions to help balance scoring:

1) The 3rd Place Server in a match (by current score) receives Double Points for Objectives held in their own BL and EB
2) If the 1st Place Server’s Current Score exceeds a percentage threshold of the other two Servers – for example if Server 1 Score > 1.5 x (Server 2 Score + Server 3 Score) both other Servers receive Double Points for all holdings.

I’m sure many more ideas are out there but something really needs to be done.

Well, an “easy” fix to push the two losing servers to focus on the top one is a “winner takes all” approach : Change the scoring system so that the top server gets 1 point per interval and the other two servers get nothing.

Also, as was said, we aren’t in some kind of progamer competition here, we are for fun. There should be NO bad effect from giving the currently losing at score/map control servers some kind of bonuses to make it more fun for them to play. Stuff like bonus stats, reduced supply siege costs etc…

Sunspots.9861:

I get tired of reading responses like this. No one who had any sort of clue thought this was a good solution any more than the win up, lose down system. They are both solutions to a made up problem: stagnation.

We count on people in charge to filter out the idiots, even when they are vocal, because not doing so makes them idiots too. “Stagnation”. Is another word for saying “balanced,” and in a game where the only contributing factors for success are population and covarage, servers must be balanced by those factors.

Stagnation does not equal balance. Posts like this generally come from people in the top 2 NA tiers… I’m assuming that’s where you are from. If I’m wrong I apologize. Just because you had consistent and reasonably balanced matchups does not mean that everyone else was matched up in similar situations. People complaining about stagnation were not complaining about simply having to face the same servers every week, they were complaining because people were stuck in unbalanced matches – very much like the unbalanced ones from the last 2 weeks – against the same opponents, for months on end. It wasn’t fun for the winners, as many now know from being the ones blowing out underpowered servers, and it wasn’t fun for the losers, because losing for one week in this fashion is bearable but losing in this fashion for 10+ weeks in a row is not. The system artificially created rating gaps where there should have been none and stagnated improperly matched opponents.

And yet, in all the time that these matches were stuck, the people affected complained less than the upper tiers do now about their short stints in similar matchups have over the past couple of weeks. You upper tier servers even now seem not to care that there was a problem. You would be perfectly happy to go back to that as long as it doesn’t affect you. Why don’t you suck it up and live through a few crappy matches so that the rest of us can get some good fights?

There are simply too few evenly matched servers to maintain set power brackets all the way down the board. Until the population issues can be solved, someone has to suffer a bad match every week because there is just not enough servers of equal power to have it any other way. Why not accept the system that allows that pain to be distributed among many for shorter periods of time rather than push for the system that forces the same ones to suffer continuously? Are you really not willing to put up with a bad match here or there to help your fellow gamer enjoy the game they want to enjoy too?

They complained less because there were less of them playing …Think about that. If you want an argument about stagnation, we can have it. This system solves stagnation like a blender solves brain tumors.

Lopez.7369:

I would take stale match-ups over a week of being on TC right now. The game is basically unplayable for a week.

I just don’t understand why the deviation was allowed to stay this large for this week’s match-up. It’s been a clear problem for the past few weeks. It should have been fixed by now.

I don’t know how the current TC-CD-SOS match-up is remotely acceptable to any developer. I know for a fact Blizzard would immediately hotfix an issue this big for such a major feature.

CD-SOS-SBI were matched for months and TC is closer in rating to SOS than SBI is. Your example is the system actually working. The problem is SOS got so used to easy wins that now they’re facing opposition more suited to them, they’ve all packed up and gone to PVE. CD is a different story, their matchup this week is rough.

Funny how you make assumptions about SoS without even having the slightest clue. We’re only losing 9 rating points at the moment according to MOS, this is our ‘expected performance’. Just because we’re ticking 90 ppt doesn’t mean we aren’t trying. Go take your trolling elsewhere.

fishball.7204:

Funny how you make assumptions about SoS without even having the slightest clue. We’re only losing 9 rating points at the moment according to MOS, this is our ‘expected performance’. Just because we’re ticking 90 ppt doesn’t mean we aren’t trying. Go take your trolling elsewhere.

That’s true, fair call. Nonetheless, the point that you’re in a closer matchup now than you have been for months stands.

BTW, you raise an interesting point, ratings volatility is greatly reduced this week. If things stay the way they are, I think you could expect to see the random range reduced within a few weeks. It could have something to do with JQ-BG-SoR being matched together though.

Why are you still doing WvW? Don’t you know you’re supposed to grind the latest achievements for this weeks event, and possibly get tempted to buy plenty of RNG boxes. I bet that’s what all those losing servers are doing, that have 1/2 or 1/3 of the population to the tier-leader, when they are bored of being stomped by the bigger blob.

Do you really think ANET does anything that they haven’t calculated inside and out to maximize the profit from the game?

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups
I have to admit, tier6 looks like an unfortunate bug on ANETs part, but I’m sure it’s corrected in the near future to resemble the rest.

Mammoth.1975:

CD-SOS-SBI were matched for months and TC is closer in rating to SOS than SBI is. Your example is the system actually working. The problem is SOS got so used to easy wins that now they’re facing opposition more suited to them, they’ve all packed up and gone to PVE. CD is a different story, their matchup this week is rough.

As a TC player, I’m seeing this whole thing from the other side, and I see SoS trying, and even doing very well during their active hours. The problem is numbers – same as in the matchups you described. This is also why CD is doing so poorly in this matchup. The thing is it’s not fun to play when you know that no amount of skill will make a difference considering the numbers of players (as I felt last week vs SoR). Now on the winning side, I’m feeling that it’s no fun to win when you know that numbers are the only reason you won…

This is not to mention that during off hours when TC is dominating all the borderlands, the only competitive map is EBG, and the queues are ridiculous. Meanwhile the borderlands are nearly empty and completely blue. The only action to be had in the borderlands for the winning team is killing NPCs and escorting yaks. Maybe defending camps occasionally from solo players trying to flip them. If there is a group of 20 opponents on one of those maps, it’s a race to get to them to try to get a hit in. Someone mentioned getting dragon coffers as drops in wvw…the problem is the only kills I’m getting these days are centaurs. So I may as well be doing pve.

Another thing about higher ranked servers is that part of coverage is defending what we’ve already got. Being a good citizen on these servers includes boring stuff like sentry duty. Sentry duty is usually broken up by the occasional roamer or spotting a zerg. So it’s not completely boring and you get to feel important occasionally…yet that sort of thing so rarely happens in these matchups, but to maintain a decent ranking we’ve still got to play those roles, or we’ll lose stuff to ninja rushes. But since there aren’t enough people on the opposing teams to challenge various areas on various maps consistently, sentry duty just gets even more boring. And so then the game becomes – wait until the opponent is too bored to play, then score some points.

This all assumes that our goal is to have the most points, and it’s not. I don’t care how many points my server has, except that I want to have roughly even matchups. I want to be challenged when playing, not handed an easy victory or inevitable defeat. SoS gained ranking points last week, so one might assume that they are happy that they got paired up with TC and SoR then…similarly I’m sure CD will improve their ranking this week. I can’t imagine any of them are pleased by this, because they just want to have fun playing, not to win with no fun.