Guild Wars 2

I think it’s the game mechanics, not server stacking…

Discuss.

Ok, honestly I just want things to go back to the non-tournament WvW where it just kinda sucked, not this effin zerg fest… oh well, 2 more weeks I guess and we we can go back to the good ole’ crappy.

Tspatula.9086:

Ok, honestly I just want things to go back to the non-tournament WvW where it just kinda sucked, not this effin zerg fest… oh well, 2 more weeks I guess and we we can go back to the good ole’ crappy.

This is the last week.

So it seems in silver if NSP wins this week they come second overall for silver yet never faced CD and losing to DB in week 3. Why does a T4 server beat 2 T3 servers in overall ranking? Same with DR, they are a worst server than both DB and CD but if they win there matchup this week, they get better end of season rewards… This is a fail season indeed.

Tspatula.9086:

I think it’s the game mechanics, not server stacking…

Discuss.

You think the season is a fail because of game mechanics? Elaborate, please.

Considering that NSP has much lower pop than db and cd they deserve that 2nd spot. The system is working great.

The funny/sad thing is that if NSP had gotten 2nd in week 3 instead of 3rd, they’d have pretty much zero chance of getting 2nd overall.

Meet the new tournament design, same as the old tournament design. Both (actually all 3 tournaments) fails.

As if it was fair for T4-T5 servers to face T3 in the first place.
Why would they give you free and easy rewards if all you do
is blob harder than the lower population/coveragr servers.
If there’s 1 to blame it’s your servers for failing to beat YB,
miscalculating your points and overall poor strategy.

So CD or DB should’ve lost on purpose for easier matchups Spica? Miscalculating has nothing to do with it, NSP and DR are worst servers who are in T4 and one of them will win 2nd even though they both lost to DB and CD respectively. It’s a broken system and that proves it, T4 shouldn’t get better rewards if they cant beat the better servers. The 5-3-2 point system is a horrible idea and it seems Anet will never get seasons right with the way they keep changing it.

Maybe they should’ve place T3 like in EU to Gold instead and call it even and
you get no prizes. T7-T8 should be bronze. Just consider yourself luckier than
any T4-T5 servers you get 2 weeks of easy rofltomp match-ups and therefor
more free tickets. Honestly, the only reason you won because you’re T3. Why
dreprive other servers? The first prize is given to a T3 and you’re still crying.

Spica.9308:

If there’s 1 to blame it’s your servers for failing to beat YB,
miscalculating your points and overall poor strategy.

I kinda agree with you there.

Another thing is that they should just lock transfers during the season and probably 1-2 weeks prior to season but in that case Anet will lose real life $$$ they make from the gems, so its kinda tough situation for them.

NiloyBardhan.9170:

Spica.9308:

If there’s 1 to blame it’s your servers for failing to beat YB,
miscalculating your points and overall poor strategy.

I kinda agree with you there.

Another thing is that they should just lock transfers during the season and probably 1-2 weeks prior to season but in that case Anet will lose real life $$$ they make from the gems, so its kinda tough situation for them.

Well if there’s 1 to complain it should come from FA, Mag, HoD, BP, AR
and ET. Those poor poor servers were simply in the wrong spot at the
wrong time. That’s what you call unfair. Not because you cry that you
blob harder than lower rank server therefore they don’t deserve anything
even though they had substantially less popultion and less bandwagon
transfers than their T3 counterparts.

I’m just surprised that so many people are still taking seasons seriously after all this time. The prizes are negligible and the results are pretty much pre-determined by population and coverage.

Just go out there and fight each other. Stop worrying about a stupid scoreboard.

Cd does know they can take first (tie) right?

Tournaments could be something special, but it would require more effort than just changing the way the blow-out are rolled.

A tournament could be reset-evening only (the score after 4h decide for the tournament score, the rest is normal week for Glicko) or weekend only.

A tournament could experiment with different scoring than the normal possession-over-time one that is dominated by manpower and coverage.

A tournament could use only one map, a tournament could ….

But just changing how matchups are composed is boring. With the current manpower and coverage imbalances, there is no surprise, and no match making will ever be able to generate interesting matches.

Tspatula.9086:

I think it’s the game mechanics, not server stacking…

So you think the fact that a few servers have effectively 100% of the players makes for good matchups, and you agree that all players should be on basically a single server and not spread across multiple servers so we can actually fight against each other? Ok, it’s not server stacking.

Anyone who has transferred to T1 within the past year should be banned for being a horrible person. It’s like seeing people looting a store after a natural disaster and joining in because you probably won’t get caught.

PPT is an elaborate, flawless, superlative, unprecedented , pristine and absolutely holy mechanic. I can totally see why anet didn’t listen much to the GvG community because HOPE, Agg, Votf, pyro and many others are all talking scrap-kitten. No point listening to such scrubs huh? Pushing for pvp esports is so very wise because GvG is monotonous, dull and cliched! Bravo!

Dayra.7405:

Tournaments could be something special, but it would require more effort than just changing the way the blow-out are rolled.

A tournament could be reset-evening only (the score after 4h decide for the tournament score, the rest is normal week for Glicko) or weekend only.

A tournament could experiment with different scoring than the normal possession-over-time one that is dominated by manpower and coverage.

A tournament could use only one map, a tournament could ….

But just changing how matchups are composed is boring. With the current manpower and coverage imbalances, there is no surprise, and no match making will ever be able to generate interesting matches.

Every tournament has been a failure. Until Anet comes up with a fix where every server has a chance at winning a tournament regardless of their population or coverage, each tournament should be considered a failure.

Hang on people, let’s not just jump to rash conclusions!

It’s only the third season in 2 years and we’ve had a tonne of updates to help balance WvW.

Not only that, we’ve only just started week 3, you cant base your conclusions when the tournament isnt even over yet!

Give it time guys.

Pinkamena Diane Pie.8054:

Not only that, we’ve only just started week 3, you cant base your conclusions when the tournament isnt even over yet!

Give it time guys.

That it will be a failure was clear in the moment it was announced. It didn’t need to start, it doesn’t need to finish, already the text of the announcement made clear:

We know the Winner before start, no play needed to determine it.

The entire tournament idea has an inherent flaw, and that is population/coverage imbalance. There is no fix for this. Tournaments have always been flawed in this way. W3 itself has this flaw, and we caused it. We caused it by superstacking servers when free transfers were getting ready to end. The biggest problem is that the whole “full server” notice came far too late to do any good.

I’ll admit my guild moved to BG at the end of the free transfer period.(BG wasn’t quite the powerhouse then that they are now) We stayed there for almost a year before moving on to lower tiers. We were part of the problem. There is absolutely no incentive to play on a blue or red server, let alone to play in a lower tier blue or red server.

Also when you take into account the 24 hour aspect of W3 then you have to look at OCX/SEA/EU populations, and outside of T1(and OCX for SoS/SEA for DB) there is not a ton of options for a lower tier server to compete outside of NA prime. Merging servers may help a bit, but are you just merging NA players with other NA players? What about the “off hours coverage”?

Too many issues to handle all at once. A good solution might be to make better loot drop from players than from keep lords/tower lords. Perhaps then some of the overstacked players may take a good long look at where they can go to get more player bags. Hard to get bags from players when there are no players to kill. This could go a long way to make superstacking a particular server or timezone in order to PvD a less viable alternative. Let some players drop the occasional Dragonite. Not 20 at once just one or two at a time. Get 100 kills a night end up with 30-40 Dragonite. Let players drop more coin. Make lords give the dust and crystals as well as T6 mats, but let player’s loot scale better.

While I do think it was a failure in terms of matchups and overall attitudes (including Anet’s, don’t think I’m forgetting your “no WvW lockout” rules) the ‘Adopt a Dev’ program has been really nice.

We on HoD have gotten to hear many things from the dev side, and the dev themself has gotten to hear many things from our side. Some of them, from both sides, very unpleasant. However, I think they were things that we all needed to hear — their side and ours.

Hearing about other people involved in the Adopt a Dev program that experienced, at times, guilt, downtrodden, smashed by servers so far above theirs that their own fellow players on their servers just didn’t even want to come into WvW — amongst all this, I think we learned a lot. Some things were said about Anet while our dev was around that warranted a personal email and their reluctance to rejoin us in our fights and TS.

I think it helped to remind us that we’re all still people, regardless of where we work or what backgrounds we come from. People can be hurt. People will and try to hurt. It was on stark display in one of our most destructive and imbalanced matchups of the season, and despite the feelings on both sides, I can only hope for progress — because something needs to change. One mutual thing that both us and our dev agreed on was that something was wrong, and it should be fixed.

I hope all of the devs’ experiences have taught them something from this tournament, and I hope it carries to the rest of the company:

It’s broken. Fix it.

We got matched against THE SAME rofl-stomping server us twice in a row (week 2 and week 3). How in the hell did that happen?

The matching mechanic needs some work, we have SFR (EU) 3 weeks out of 4. No way can Anet call this a ‘Tournament’.

Turn out and interest is certainly lower than the previous Seasons. Heck, right now I believe there are less players in WvW than before Season 3 began. Though the feature pack appears to have soured the game for some players too. So, who’s to say if it’s seasons alone.

The overall problem is, few want a 24/7 tournament for weeks on end. This is a video game and people want to log in and enjoy themselves for entertainment. People would also like to play for however long or short they feel like playing. Seasons generally escalates WvW to unhealthy and not very amusing ways. Already during season one people asked to never have another season. After Season two I read on here people asking to never have another season. Hopefully after S3, we’ll not see one again like this for a very long time.

The fact that two post have already incorrectly called this as week 3, may show how much attention S3 is really getting

This tournament has sparked our guild’s interest in sPvP.

I actually quite enjoyed the seasons…then again, I’m from CD. >.> But I can relate to the T4-T5 servers getting unfair matchups to T3. CD was like that in past tournaments, and it sucked. Granted, what happened this season was a LOT better than season 1-2, where you’d get hopeless matchups against blobfests, and no real reason to play. At least now, lower tiers still got a fighting chance.

Where can I see predicted rankings? The ones I checked showed CD being 2nd overall in Silver. It took a lot of time and dedication for Crystal Desert to climb the ranks…would a lower tier server actually outrank CD due to population handicap? I’m all for giving some kind of advantage to unfair matchups, but not that much – not when our server poured time, gold, and effort to get where we are today.

Why are people still surprised at this game being bad? This is the real question.

Frankly I think they need to do away with server based WvW completely & base it of an alliance based system.

I say that because there is no way to balance the server based system.

Look at my server IOJ.
We have a pretty high server population but only about 1/4 of them even touch WvW.

TorSailr explained it pretty good in another thread. Here is a copy paste of his suggestion
“Completely abandon the concept of worlds and servers for WvW and replace it with Alliances.

To start with, let players create their own alliances. These alliances would probably start as guild alliances but there shouldn’t be any reason why an individual couldn’t join one. These alliances would then be registered as WvW participants. After alliances are registered, retire the world servers.

Alliances would have a tiered registration.
*Tier 1: less than 500 members.
*Tier 2: 501 – 1000 members.
*Tier 3: 1001 – 1500 members
*Tier 4: 1501 – 2000 members
Have a cap of 2000 members forcing people to create other alliances and stopping stacking/bloating of an alliance. Members will belong to 1 alliance at a time. Have no cap on the number of alliances possible in the game.

Match ups will be based on tier first, then either by leaderboard score or a round robin rotating selection. I believe there would be enough alliances to make a round robin selection possible and effective.

Current world bonuses from WvW would instead be alliance bonuses.

All existing players would have an option to join an alliance, either with a guild or individually.

New players would never get an option to select worlds, their data would just be stored on a random server. The server at this point would be irrelevant. New players would then get to pick an alliance via game play from recruiters just like guilds do. This would allow for a much more informed decision about it as compared to now and allow for better development of “identity” in an alliance as opposed to world servers.

Problems may occur with individuals belonging to different alliances than their guilds belong to. However, this was also true of people belonging to different worlds in the same guild. That issue seems to have had only minor problems and I wouldn’t anticipate alliances creating significantly more in that respect.

This may also make a use for the team chat channel and differentiate it from map chat.

In short, this would level populations, increase the number of “players/alliances” in WvW, create a better sense of identity post megaserver, and still allow people to keep playing as they have been"

This would
1: Get rid of allot of the imbalances
2: Make skill more of a factor because you would be facing similar sized populations
3: Create a tighter knit community
4: Even give the writers working at Arena.net something to work with. They could work some lore in & say we are fighting over lost treasures, important artifacts & magical items lost in the mists & that each alliance has its own reasons for doing so.

Number 4 would even make people feel like they are part of the game instead of just zerging back & forth for a point on the map.

Spica.9308:

As if it was fair for T4-T5 servers to face T3 in the first place.
Why would they give you free and easy rewards if all you do
is blob harder than the lower population/coveragr servers.
If there’s 1 to blame it’s your servers for failing to beat YB,
miscalculating your points and overall poor strategy.

So much QQ about blobs and coverage, yet you claim that servers with less timezone coverage than YB = Poor Strategists?…News flash buddy, YB has 24/7 coverage and we still haven’t figured out a way to subconsciously be at our computer desks to play WvW while we are @Work/College/Sleeping, does that make us bad strategists? No, it makes you an idiot for believing coverage = Superior Strategy. GG.

Brutal Augus.5917:

Spica.9308:

As if it was fair for T4-T5 servers to face T3 in the first place.
Why would they give you free and easy rewards if all you do
is blob harder than the lower population/coveragr servers.
If there’s 1 to blame it’s your servers for failing to beat YB,
miscalculating your points and overall poor strategy.

So much QQ about blobs and coverage, yet you claim that servers with less timezone coverage than YB = Poor Strategists?…News flash buddy, YB has 24/7 coverage and we still haven’t figured out a way to subconsciously be at our computer desks to play WvW while we are @Work/College/Sleeping, does that make us bad strategists? No, it makes you an idiot for believing coverage = Superior Strategy. GG.

He is from DR.

Aitadis.8269:

So CD or DB should’ve lost on purpose for easier matchups Spica? Miscalculating has nothing to do with it, NSP and DR are worst servers who are in T4 and one of them will win 2nd even though they both lost to DB and CD respectively. It’s a broken system and that proves it, T4 shouldn’t get better rewards if they cant beat the better servers. The 5-3-2 point system is a horrible idea and it seems Anet will never get seasons right with the way they keep changing it.

that logic of worst and better is really funny tho.

The only way the can keep the WvW tournament even close to fair, is only count the score during prime time hours only. The off hours would have no score, but yet still be playable. Thats my 2 cents. Balance, will never be fixable.

People tried to tell ANET that this tournament was going to be a fail. For some reason, they continue to disregard the opinion of people on the forums.

Brutal Augus.5917:

Spica.9308:

As if it was fair for T4-T5 servers to face T3 in the first place.
Why would they give you free and easy rewards if all you do
is blob harder than the lower population/coveragr servers.
If there’s 1 to blame it’s your servers for failing to beat YB,
miscalculating your points and overall poor strategy.

So much QQ about blobs and coverage, yet you claim that servers with less timezone coverage than YB = Poor Strategists?…News flash buddy, YB has 24/7 coverage and we still haven’t figured out a way to subconsciously be at our computer desks to play WvW while we are @Work/College/Sleeping, does that make us bad strategists? No, it makes you an idiot for believing coverage = Superior Strategy. GG.

Don’t worry, they’ll get to show off their superior strategy next week.

I hope this was the last tournament of Worlds and the next one will be an Alliance tournament (dreams are always free), but that said I had fun this tournament, and we could get to change tier after MONTHS of same matchup, so bigger fights and so on. All in all a nice tournament so far.

even if ArenaNet changes nothing, they should still do tournaments from time to time. if nothing else, they scramble up the matchups so that servers that need a big rating adjustment can get re-ranked a bit quicker.

the exception is when a server (like Mag) needs to cross a league boundary. tournaments can’t help much with that.

-ken

Aitadis.8269:

So it seems in silver if NSP wins this week they come second overall for silver yet never faced CD and losing to DB in week 3. Why does a T4 server beat 2 T3 servers in overall ranking? Same with DR, they are a worst server than both DB and CD but if they win there matchup this week, they get better end of season rewards… This is a fail season indeed.

Because NSP deservers 2nd place, they played way better than the opposition, even whey they lack the coverage that the other T3/T4 servers have.

P.S. I never thought there would be a day when I actually agree with Spica….

Swamurabi.7890:

Every tournament has been a failure. Until Anet comes up with a fix where every server has a chance at winning a tournament regardless of their population or coverage, each tournament should be considered a failure.

I tend to agree. PPT ought to be scaled by currently-playing population at time of tick to normalise server population and timezone coverage disparities.

Other incentives to server-stack, like reducing capture rewards and slightly increasing AOE caps should also be considered.

I think every server should get their own tier.

It should go like:

1st Tier – Diamond
2nd Tier – Ruby
3rd Tier – Sapphire
…
25th Tier – Wood
26th Tier – Plastic
27th Tier – Used Toilet Paper

If that’s implemented, everyone wins, cause that’s how it should be at a tournament, right?

But then again, I guess that’s just too much of a discrimination. Just call all tiers Diamond! Hurray for all!

After this is done, send everyone a letter saying: “You are special” – at the end of each week.

Bonus idea – Solution to PPT situation:

At the end of each matchup, the servers who are not winning should be given equal point to that they are missing from being first. eg.: Server A wins with 150 000 points, Server B has 100 000 and poor server C has 10. In this case give Server B 50 000 points and Server C 149 990 points. Everyone happy!

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

I’m just surprised that so many people are still taking seasons seriously after all this time. The prizes are negligible and the results are pretty much pre-determined by population and coverage.

Just go out there and fight each other. Stop worrying about a stupid scoreboard.

I think it is still an issue related to hope. We hoped this time would be different. From my relative experience I am only seeing people playing less WvW after this Season. Personally, already some guild-mates and in-game friends are quitting again the game.
Working as intended?

From what I’ve seen this season people showed up hard the first, played until the end, got to the second week, and went “what? Why are we playing a server 3 tiers ahead of us?”, didn’t feel like even venturing near a ruin because that server had 5-10 man groups sitting in them 24 hours a day, and then mostly just quit.

It was a silly idea to make this tourney Swiss-style when you already had glicko in place. While I enjoyed the adopt-a-dev program, yes, I think this tournament was a failure. I’m hoping all the devs got to see that as well, and perhaps the next one won’t be as bad.

Probably hoping a bit too much against hope there, though.

Snowreap.5174:

even if ArenaNet changes nothing, they should still do tournaments from time to time. if nothing else, they scramble up the matchups so that servers that need a big rating adjustment can get re-ranked a bit quicker.

the exception is when a server (like Mag) needs to cross a league boundary. tournaments can’t help much with that.

-ken

yay, someone who actually understand glicko >.>
such rare

You got to understand by now tourneys are meaningless and only cliffhangers inbetween living story updates. Just a way for Anet to make some money out of transfers.

Nothing more, nothing less.

insanemaniac.2456:

Snowreap.5174:

even if ArenaNet changes nothing, they should still do tournaments from time to time. if nothing else, they scramble up the matchups so that servers that need a big rating adjustment can get re-ranked a bit quicker.

the exception is when a server (like Mag) needs to cross a league boundary. tournaments can’t help much with that.

-ken

yay, someone who actually understand glicko >.>
such rare

A tournaments of all servers would help with that. There 4 rounds would make sense as well.
In EU (due to its 9 matches), 1st & 2nd round would be exactly as they were now,
In 3rd round gold, silver and bronze leader would be matched, gold, silver and bronze 2nd and so on. 4th round would probably back to matches in current leagues.

I can’t say for the whole picture. But this tourny is so boring! DB has to fight YB for 3 weeks! And you know what happened at 2nd week, it wasn’t even fun.

Some people in DB asked to tank at 3rd week so we have a fun 4th week. But imo that’s wrong. I can get behind not going to gold and get smashed, but not tank in the tourny.

And this 4th week is the same matchup as 1st week. So boring I’m going eotm to level my ranger apart from reset night.

By the coverage YB has during tournament, I think if they swapped with Mag, Silver would be so much better. And YB might have a better chance than Mag in Gold. but no one knows this before the tournament.

Afya.5842:

By the coverage YB has during tournament, I think if they swapped with Mag, Silver would be so much better. And YB might have a better chance than Mag in Gold. but no one knows this before the tournament.

I’m liking most of how S3 is being run. However, I’m really hoping that Anet removes the “league” system for future tournaments; Especially since we get our rewards weekly now. What I’d like is for servers to be free to rise and fall based on their score instead of the league lock.

The odd coincidence of server implosions, tournament timing and league locking is causing servers not being where they should be tier-wise. In turn, this massively imbalances the match.

Without the league lock, Mag could have fallen over the weeks to somewhere their current population could manage while Yak’s Bend would be fighting FA and SOS. I believe they have the population to support being in T2.

I’m surprised that BG, JQ and TC got matched up with each other again in Week 4, when we already faced each other in Week 1. I thought this tournament was supposed to have different match-ups every week?

no. “reduced” repeats, but not eliminated.

-ken