(Suggestion) Anet, Please Add Back Tier 5

(Suggestion) Anet, Please Add Back Tier 5

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Posted by: Mysteriax.6049

Mysteriax.6049

Why Should We Add Back Tier 5?

With the upcoming release of Path of Fire, WvW populations are expected to skyrocket. Although queues are positive in that they represent an active WvW population, they are negative in that they can lead to burnout and an eventual decrease in active WvW population. An extra WvW tier will spread out population, reduce queues and improve matchup balance.

Plus, EU already has a fifth WvW tier. The concept has already been implemented for two years in another region, and proven successful.

How can Tier 5 be implemented?

In another thread, I read a great suggestion as to how to implement Tier 5:

Remove all server links from T1 and T2 servers (6 servers no longer have links)
Add in a fifth tier (This will help to alleviate the bandwagoning individuals and queues)
Everyone from T3 on down would have 1 matched server.

This process would be done during the upcoming server re-linking at the end of August.

Using Tier 5 to Balance Server Populations:

The servers in Tier 5 may be High or Very High rather than Full, offering a place for guilds from overstacked servers to relocate. Once those Very High or High Tier 5 servers enter Tier 4 or Tier 3 and are competitive, they would be placed in Full to prevent bandwagoning unless population disparities are still a problem for that server.

Also, if a Full server enters T5, it would not be unlocked unless its population was Very High or High. This prevents servers from gaming the system to be open for transfers.

This would allow population to be slowly relocated from the most powerful servers to the less powerful ones, improving matchup balance.

EDIT: Using Tier 5 to Reduce Lag

A Tier 5 match-up can also be manually affected to reduce map capacity on different WvW maps, thus decreasing the size of map blobs and improving the lag issue for players. And, it offers a competitive scene where smaller guild groups, havoc groups and roamers play a larger role.

Benefits:

  • Reduces queues
  • Helps balance matchups
  • Works hand in hand with the 1Up 1Down system.
  • EDIT: Can be altered by reducing map capacity to reduce lag for players and offer a less blobby WvW environment.

What are your thoughts?

Bad Axxe
Blissful Epidemic [Blis]
Gate of Madness

(edited by Mysteriax.6049)

(Suggestion) Anet, Please Add Back Tier 5

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Posted by: SkyShroud.2865

SkyShroud.2865

It will not help matchups balance. The returning players are subjective to the base populations and not existing wvw populations. That is to say, a server with low wvw populations now has the possibility to become huge if the server has huge returning base populations. This is something that is unpredictable though the unbalance can be prevented but prevention is not available in the current system.

Linking depends on concept of stable activity to predict the future activity. Such unpredictable burst of population is outside the scope of the predictability.

Founder & Leader of Equinox Solstice [TIME], a Singapore-Based International Guild
Henge of Denravi Server
www.gw2time.com

(Suggestion) Anet, Please Add Back Tier 5

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Posted by: Namer.9750

Namer.9750

NA shouldn’t have a Tier 5 just because “EU also does”, and frankly, most T3/T4 servers queue 1-2 maps or so during NA primetime. These servers can sustain a spike in population. The servers that will feel overcrowded are the ones who already are, in T1 and T2, with dead links and most of the strength on the Host server. If there are queues for long enough, then population will slide down. You can have up to 5000+ players playing WvW simultaneously across all servers and tiers. We don’t hit near that capacity currently and we won’t except for maybe a couple weeks into the xpack.

Population spikes are irrelevant to the long term health of WvW, and 5 Tiers for NA is detrimental to the long term. Having 4 tiers with up to 3 servers linked together, does help provide OCX/SEA populations for all these servers (even if as small as 20 peeps on a good day, still better than fully dead).

Consider the current situation, where Fort Aspenwood has Devona’s Rest linked to it. By your proposal, you’d unlink DR from FA and link DR to a smaller server, say, Crystal Desert or Northern Shiverpeaks or something.

However, neither DR nor CD has a native OCX population. FA does, EBay does. An OCX player on DR or CD right now can get action and other people to play with without getting ktrained all day by servers like SoS or HoD, but under your proposal they would have a far greater chance of ending up with a server and timezone that’s completely dead.

You can’t think of just NA primetime when you consider linking and tiering NA servers. NA is not EU with one timezone. As of now, even with 4 tiers you see OCX or SEA action mainly in 2-3 tiers, and the people on the tiers without action come here and complain about “too many tiers, we need 3 tiers” etc. etc.

(Suggestion) Anet, Please Add Back Tier 5

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Posted by: Mysteriax.6049

Mysteriax.6049

NA shouldn’t have a Tier 5 just because “EU also does”, and frankly, most T3/T4 servers queue 1-2 maps or so during NA primetime. These servers can sustain a spike in population. The servers that will feel overcrowded are the ones who already are, in T1 and T2, with dead links and most of the strength on the Host server. If there are queues for long enough, then population will slide down. You can have up to 5000+ players playing WvW simultaneously across all servers and tiers. We don’t hit near that capacity currently and we won’t except for maybe a couple weeks into the xpack.

Population spikes are irrelevant to the long term health of WvW, and 5 Tiers for NA is detrimental to the long term. Having 4 tiers with up to 3 servers linked together, does help provide OCX/SEA populations for all these servers (even if as small as 20 peeps on a good day, still better than fully dead).

Consider the current situation, where Fort Aspenwood has Devona’s Rest linked to it. By your proposal, you’d unlink DR from FA and link DR to a smaller server, say, Crystal Desert or Northern Shiverpeaks or something.

However, neither DR nor CD has a native OCX population. FA does, EBay does. An OCX player on DR or CD right now can get action and other people to play with without getting ktrained all day by servers like SoS or HoD, but under your proposal they would have a far greater chance of ending up with a server and timezone that’s completely dead.

You can’t think of just NA primetime when you consider linking and tiering NA servers. NA is not EU with one timezone. As of now, even with 4 tiers you see OCX or SEA action mainly in 2-3 tiers, and the people on the tiers without action come here and complain about “too many tiers, we need 3 tiers” etc. etc.

If necessary, Tier 5 can be implemented during a linking and taken out at the next linking. I’m not advocating for Tier 5 “because EU has it”. I’m explaining that in another context, Tier 5 has worked. Add back Tier 5 and judge its effectiveness through queues, matchup disparity and population disparity… if there’s an improvement to these areas, keep 5 tiers. If not, remove Tier 5 at the next server linking by linking servers into 4 tiers. Easy.

Bad Axxe
Blissful Epidemic [Blis]
Gate of Madness

(edited by Mysteriax.6049)

(Suggestion) Anet, Please Add Back Tier 5

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Posted by: Mysteriax.6049

Mysteriax.6049

Linking depends on concept of stable activity to predict the future activity. Such unpredictable burst of population is outside the scope of the predictability.

Bursts in population are in the scope of predictability, as certain spikes have been recorded and their effect on populations also recorded. Remember when the new WvW rewards came out? All maps were queued for weeks, until populations slowly died down. You can argue it was due to the nature of the rewards, but I believe queues and inability to play frustrated people and lead to decline.

This upcoming beta weekend will also show you another example of a population spike.

As a system based on server linking, Tier 5 can be phased in and phased out every two months. If it’s as horrible as you make it out to be, it can be tried, tested and phased out as many other changes to WvW have and will be.

Might I add: It’s obvious ArenaNet’s infastructure is not designed to handle 3 map blobs going at it. We’re getting extreme lag in Tier 4 during peak hours in a matchup with your server, HoD. Spreading out populations further will also improve the lag issue currently affecting players.

Bad Axxe
Blissful Epidemic [Blis]
Gate of Madness

(edited by Mysteriax.6049)

(Suggestion) Anet, Please Add Back Tier 5

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Posted by: Tongku.5326

Tongku.5326

Why Should We Add Back Tier 5?

With the upcoming release of Path of Fire, WvW populations are expected to skyrocket. Although queues are positive in that they represent an active WvW population, they are negative in that they can lead to burnout and an eventual decrease in active WvW population. An extra WvW tier will spread out population, reduce queues and improve matchup balance.

Plus, EU already has a fifth WvW tier. The concept has already been implemented for two years in another region, and proven successful.

How can Tier 5 be implemented?

In another thread, I read a great suggestion as to how to implement Tier 5:

Remove all server links from T1 and T2 servers (6 servers no longer have links)
Add in a fifth tier (This will help to alleviate the bandwagoning individuals and queues)
Everyone from T3 on down would have 1 matched server.

This process would be done during the upcoming server re-linking at the end of August.

Using Tier 5 to Balance Server Populations:

The servers in Tier 5 may be High or Very High rather than Full, offering a place for guilds from overstacked servers to relocate. Once those Very High or High Tier 5 servers enter Tier 4 or Tier 3 and are competitive, they would be placed in Full to prevent bandwagoning unless population disparities are still a problem for that server.

Also, if a Full server enters T5, it would not be unlocked unless its population was Very High or High. This prevents servers from gaming the system to be open for transfers.

This would allow population to be slowly relocated from the most powerful servers to the less powerful ones, improving matchup balance.

EDIT: Using Tier 5 to Reduce Lag

A Tier 5 match-up can also be manually affected to reduce map capacity on different WvW maps, thus decreasing the size of map blobs and improving the lag issue for players. And, it offers a competitive scene where smaller guild groups, havoc groups and roamers play a larger role.

Benefits:

  • Reduces queues
  • Helps balance matchups
  • Works hand in hand with the 1Up 1Down system.
  • EDIT: Can be altered by reducing map capacity to reduce lag for players and offer a less blobby WvW environment.

What are your thoughts?

Based on HoT and how it went my thoughts are exactly opposite of yours.

After HoT launch WvWvW lost a huge amount of players. Main factors were:
HP grinds for elite specs which at that time you had to PVE for, thus preventing people from playing WvW. General P2W style powercreep.
Even more players leaving due to HoT elite specs imbalances and them getting fed up with it.
DBL map, and how horrible it was.

So based on history, while there might be a very short upsurge in WVW player populations, I expect WVW to have even less, not more players pass the initial novelty stages.

Making an extra tier of servers and screwing up links etc. even more just to accomodate short term influx for 2-3 weeks, while in the longer run they will most likely need to remove the bottom tiers altogether, is a very bad decision.

I hope that this time around a-net pays some attention to WVW balance and not drive even more people away. They seem to be doing much better in this area in general now, but I’m not holding my breath for it.

keep in mind that a lot of WvWvW players are actually PvX players and will go check out the new PvE stuff on top of all the above, just like they did in HoT.

Heavy Deedz – COSA – SF

(edited by Tongku.5326)

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Posted by: Strider Pj.2193

Strider Pj.2193

This idea has merit if there is truly a population spike with the addiction of PoF. Initially WvW pop might drop because of new content on the PvE side though.

Waiting to see where things are after the first month or two would likely be the best bet.

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Posted by: SkyShroud.2865

SkyShroud.2865

Linking depends on concept of stable activity to predict the future activity. Such unpredictable burst of population is outside the scope of the predictability.

Bursts in population are in the scope of predictability, as certain spikes have been recorded and their effect on populations also recorded. Remember when the new WvW rewards came out? All maps were queued for weeks, until populations slowly died down. You can argue it was due to the nature of the rewards, but I believe queues and inability to play frustrated people and lead to decline.

This upcoming beta weekend will also show you another example of a population spike.

As a system based on server linking, Tier 5 can be phased in and phased out every two months. If it’s as horrible as you make it out to be, it can be tried, tested and phased out as many other changes to WvW have and will be.

Might I add: It’s obvious ArenaNet’s infastructure is not designed to handle 3 map blobs going at it. We’re getting extreme lag in Tier 4 during peak hours in a matchup with your server, HoD. Spreading out populations further will also improve the lag issue currently affecting players.

That is so wrong. To predict something is to setup a countermeasure for it. What’s the countermeasure for the reward patch? There is no countermeasure, it is not within the scope of predictability. This isn’t as simple as saying you can predict means it is predictable, there must be concrete logics or scientific reasons behind predictions, not just guts feelings, it is all about the details.

Let just say to put tier 5, what servers to go tier 5, how sure you are that the servers will have boost in populations and maintain balance? There is no basis for this kind of prediction. Anet devs are not the 6 gods, they cannot predict what is unpredictable. Linking that depends heavily on stable track records will be helpless against this kind of situation, that is the limit of the design

Founder & Leader of Equinox Solstice [TIME], a Singapore-Based International Guild
Henge of Denravi Server
www.gw2time.com

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Posted by: DeceiverX.8361

DeceiverX.8361

Sorry OP, but you can’t be serious if you think the population will increase after the initial hump of people trying out the mode.

Most people buying PoF will be PvE players. Most serious WvW players have zero reason to come back and purchase the next expansion given how obvious the power creep is.

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Posted by: SkyShroud.2865

SkyShroud.2865

Well, actually I think WvW will shrink when Pof comes since most will go do Pof contents. Then, a month later, the WvW will go back to its usual numbers.

Anyway, OP has no basis for his prediction that populations will be boosted for WvW.

Founder & Leader of Equinox Solstice [TIME], a Singapore-Based International Guild
Henge of Denravi Server
www.gw2time.com