Guild Wars 2

If you are reading this, chances are you are familiar with topics on various problem with WvW design. Fundamentally, the problem isn’t the WvW design itself. The source of the problem lies in the RATING SYSTEM.

We are seeing two phenomenons here. One, servers are constantly in stalemate. Maps and objectives do not change hands for long and nothing productive happens. Two, large gap in strength where the loser doesn’t even show and the winner holds all. Neither side sees any major action. Why is this happening? It’s not because exploits, it’s not because thieves are OP, it’s the RATING SYSTEM.

The Glicko-2 rating system is used to measure the competitiveness of individual players on a given task. It assumes the innate competitiveness of an individual is relatively consistent but only the measure of the competitiveness to become less volatile as time goes on.

The problems.

First. A server is not an individual player. Like in an economy, the ratings and rankings affect participation level. Rising and winning servers will have more participants. Stalemates will drive away players. Guilds transferring off will signal defections and affect participation. The Glicko-2 rating system does not account for this as a variable. It assumes equal play. In WvW, equal play doesn’t actually exist. People will play more or less. Only the score ticks constantly. Therefore, the innate competitiveness of a server is in constantly in flux and the rating system is constantly reset. This means that, while the rating system is meant to get better at providing better match ups as time goes on, it actually works as well on the first week of WvW as it is now.

Second. The reward for WvW does not incentivize toward the rating. In the simplest term, “why should I WvW this week?” You don’t need to participate in WvW to receive the server bonus. Participation toward increasing the ranking doesn’t benefit anyone. It’s not even “fun”. WvW is not a solitary activity, people during off-peak hours will have very little incentive to participate if they are just going to end up solo and be able to do anything.

Ultimately, WvW needs to be fun and rewarding. What this rating system does is turning it into a form of competition where fun takes a back seat and the reward is lacking.

What can be done? DROP THE RATING SYSTEM. Mix up the matches, people are tired of fighting the same people months on end where the results are pretty much set in stones before the week begins. WvW has become dull and predictable when it should not be.

I agree with you, and what the major flaw in WvW is, but I don’t think mixing the matches would fix anything. In fact it might make it worse. Tier 4 and below servers who got the unlucky draw to face a tier 1 server would get stomped far worse than they ever would in the current system.

In my opinion what needs to be done is some form of system that combines the lowest ranked servers in a team with the highest ranked, so that populations could be more easily balanced, and matchups would have an extra component of uniqueness each week.

DancingPenguins.9875:

What can be done? DROP THE RATING SYSTEM. Mix up the matches, people are tired of fighting the same people months on end where the results are pretty much set in stones before the week begins. WvW has become dull and predictable when it should not be.

I tend to agree on this point. The ranking system WvW uses is going to tend to settle into stagnation (as we’ve been seeing for over a month now). It is great in the case where there is some sort of “end” to a matchup system and a reset. I think people generally found WvW more fun when servers were “finding” their proper place in the standings because every week brought new opponents and challenges.

Ideally, there would be some sort of intra-week server-based tournament that eventually resulted in some kind of final reward and then a reset, but easy server transfers would make this moot since everyone would just stack on the winning side.

Right now the major incentive for WvW lies not in winning matches, but in moving up to a tier you can dominate and staying there to maximize rewards. This is an issue both with how WvW rewards work (purely based on how well you’re doing in your tier) and the ranking system.

Perhaps the flaw was in tying WvW to home servers in the first place. I wonder what WvW would look like if it periodically reset and simply let you pick from 20 untransferable “teams” you could join for the duration of the WvW set (say, 2 months). By making WvW team choice active (by picking a team when you first join WvW for that round) instead of passive (just based on whatever server you’re on at at the time) WvW rewards could also be tied to participation. The more you participate for your team in a given round of WvW matches, the more benefit you get from the bonuses.

Biggest flaws are the rating system is cumulative so puts too must emphasis on weeks old performance when transfers and ebb and flow of population rapidly changes server strength vs the past. It should drop off counting results over a month old.

Other one is still off peak capping. Points needs to scale at least in some proportion to close the gap for large number imbalances.

I think they would have been better off with a shorter matches and a seasonal schedule, once they disabled free transfers of course.

It’s interesting that everyone I ran into in WvW and the majority on the forum seems to prefer shorter matchups.

Personally, I don’t think Glicko-2 is a good fit to really measure WvW. Instead their resident Economist could be tapped to create a system of measurement that more accurately reflects the constant flux that is WvW.

i think in every tier, the winner should move up 1 and the loser should move down one, i do not think cummulitive score should any role

just imagine if a new server is started, imagine the climb it will have to make just to get out of the basement. reminds me of devona’s rest, but worse.

yeah random matches such as SoS vs. fergs crossing … thats be so much fun … not.
Random matches would mean even more wipeouts.

Glicko system was never made to calculate matches that go on for a week and mass team pvp.

Yes, the rating system heavily favors inertion. Too much.

But in my opinion, there are bigger WWW problems, like the burst DPS of some, the culling (obviously), the out-of-line-of-sigh kills…

DancingPenguins.9875:

What can be done? DROP THE RATING SYSTEM. Mix up the matches, people are tired of fighting the same people months on end where the results are pretty much set in stones before the week begins. WvW has become dull and predictable when it should not be.

This is definitely an emerging issue and I’d like to see an arenanet comment on it. I’d rather see culling fixed first though.

morrolan.9608:

DancingPenguins.9875:

What can be done? DROP THE RATING SYSTEM. Mix up the matches, people are tired of fighting the same people months on end where the results are pretty much set in stones before the week begins. WvW has become dull and predictable when it should not be.

This is definitely an emerging issue and I’d like to see an arenanet comment on it. I’d rather see culling fixed first though.

Culling first, absolutely.

Heh, have to agree with culling.

Anyhow I had similar thoughts about removing whole scoreboard and ratings… in a way. But I think current system is better than anything at all.

Personally I think more pressing problem is that WvW quite apparently wasn’t designed such competiveness in mind even though people really would like to play WvW more seriously and get rewarded for it. I think, that it would be really awesome if WvW had different kind of scoring system which would allow servers to have teams to get them points etc. which again would give nice bonuses etc.

For me the only reason to try stay at top tiers in WvW is that you get a little bit better opponents and you don’t need to play whack a mole at enemy spawn. Sadly it doesn’t give actual WvW players much of anything as it is now, only winners are people who get kind of free bonuses for their farming, which I don’t mind but just saying.

Another thing completely is hilarious class balance in WvW since anet thinks WvW as PvE so trololo. Go wild and have op builds… or not maybe please? Not that classes seem very well balanced in sPvP either yet.

I wouldn’t say the ranking system itself is flawed, but rather, the way the scoreis taken which affects the ranking system.

Currently, the only thing that matters in WvW—and I mean the ONLY concern—is off hours coverage. That’s it. If your server has more people in the ‘off’ hours, then your server will win. Your teams will PvDoor against a population a quarter of what you can field, fully upgrade and siege everything, and just let the ‘prime time’ population not suck to the point where they only lose about half the map. But during all that time, the linear scores continue ticking away.

Not only does this create a very singular aspect of the format, but it also creates tremendous point holes that are near impossible to retake—especially as time during the week goes on.

So the biggest problem is the way the scores are tallied. Now, I don’t know whether the answer is the base scoring on the number of active opponents in WvW or whether to introduce a decaying points system (you get lesser points for objectives the longer they’re held), but something should be done.

I think the second biggest problem is that Anet hosed up the map design of the game. Specifically, Eternal Battleground. Green simply has too great a defensive advantage, and when you combine that with their typical higher numbers, means they can take all their EB lands and focus on SM—sure, they may lose the occasional supply camp, MAYBE a tower, but I guarantee that in 99% of the time, the green side of EB is held by the green side. At the very least, starting positions in stagnated matches should be randomized to at least keep things fresh.

I think the fundamental flaw of WVW is downed state – it allows zergs to rez their fallen indefinitely, leading to prolonged (and eventually boring) standoffs, heavily favours numbers over skill, and the rallying mechanic totally ruins small group PVP and 1vX. I really feel that downed state is what’s stopping small group PVP from taking off because why roam as a 2- or 3-man when you will lose vs 5+ solely because the extras can keeping rezzing the guys you kill?

My other major issue with WVW is that as an Ele, I have only 1 decent spec I can run if I want to roam: D/D, when I would rather actually play a ranged caster.

MarMaster.6241:

morrolan.9608:

DancingPenguins.9875:

What can be done? DROP THE RATING SYSTEM. Mix up the matches, people are tired of fighting the same people months on end where the results are pretty much set in stones before the week begins. WvW has become dull and predictable when it should not be.

This is definitely an emerging issue and I’d like to see an arenanet comment on it. I’d rather see culling fixed first though.

Culling first, absolutely.

Yeah, culling is definitely up there in the WvW priorities. Although at this rate it wouldn’t matter much once more and more people simply give up WvW.

I don’t quite agree with this. ‘Stalemate’ WvWvW just means that a lot of battles are happening and each realm is relatively competitive. No none wants one world to just steam roll all the others, where is the fun in that? If that did happen the good pvp guilds would transfer to balance the equation and fight the zerg, not join the steam roll.

thayes.4851:

I don’t quite agree with this. ‘Stalemate’ WvWvW just means that a lot of battles are happening and each realm is relatively competitive. No none wants one world to just steam roll all the others, where is the fun in that? If that did happen the good pvp guilds would transfer to balance the equation and fight the zerg, not join the steam roll.

The stalemate can probably be better worded as stagnation. It is characterized by very little action on the map. Few effective action on the map. Zergs simply take pot shots at each other hours on end doing nothing for weeks on end.

DancingPenguins.9875:

thayes.4851:

I don’t quite agree with this. ‘Stalemate’ WvWvW just means that a lot of battles are happening and each realm is relatively competitive. No none wants one world to just steam roll all the others, where is the fun in that? If that did happen the good pvp guilds would transfer to balance the equation and fight the zerg, not join the steam roll.

The stalemate can probably be better worded as stagnation. It is characterized by very little action on the map. Few effective action on the map. Zergs simply take pot shots at each other hours on end doing nothing for weeks on end.

That doesn’t sound like a problem with the matching system at all. No matching system can control the behavior of the actual players during the match. What the current system does is pit servers with relatively similar performance together into their own groups so there will not be massive discrepancy between their power, and it’s actually doing the job quite well and improving.

WvW stagnates or become inert because the actual game rules are not thought out very well and the mechanics are shallow. That has nothing to do with the matching system.

Heinel.6548:

DancingPenguins.9875:

thayes.4851:

I don’t quite agree with this. ‘Stalemate’ WvWvW just means that a lot of battles are happening and each realm is relatively competitive. No none wants one world to just steam roll all the others, where is the fun in that? If that did happen the good pvp guilds would transfer to balance the equation and fight the zerg, not join the steam roll.

The stalemate can probably be better worded as stagnation. It is characterized by very little action on the map. Few effective action on the map. Zergs simply take pot shots at each other hours on end doing nothing for weeks on end.

That doesn’t sound like a problem with the matching system at all. No matching system can control the behavior of the actual players during the match. What the current system does is pit servers with relatively similar performance together into their own groups so there will not be massive discrepancy between their power, and it’s actually doing the job quite well and improving.

WvW stagnates or become inert because the actual game rules are not thought out very well and the mechanics are shallow. That has nothing to do with the matching system.

It does. Matching system dictates your opponents. Your opponents have everything to do with how the matches turn out. Ultimately, the point is that Glicko-2 isn’t suitable for WvW match up.

That’s not a fundamental flaw of WvW. It’s barely a flaw of WvW. It’s a severe flaw with the rating system.

Glicko is meant to match players with other players of a similar skill, only. It’s not a system that can be used for tiered ranking.

It’s actually possible to for T1 to be worse than T6, but you’ll never know because both matchups are of similar skill. The only way for you to change you ranking is to lose significantly or win significantly, AND for the server in the tier below/above you to lose significantly or win signficantly.

Glicko does not create tiers, glicko creates matchups. It’s not tier 1, tier 2, tier 3, tier 4, it’s matchup 1, matchup 2, etc.

This is a system that stagnates any form of ranking progression for servers, because it’s meant to make similarly skilled matchups, not catagorize the skill of each server into brackets.

I agree the rating system is an issue but argue rather that it’s a contributing factor.

Folding effects, getting double teamed and other aspects you mentioned could be explained by a Prisoner’s Dilemma.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Prisoner-s-dilemma/first#post989558

Alarox.4590:

That’s not a fundamental flaw of WvW. It’s barely a flaw of WvW. It’s a severe flaw with the rating system.

Glicko is meant to match players with other players of a similar skill, only. It’s not a system that can be used for tiered ranking.

It’s actually possible to for T1 to be worse than T6, but you’ll never know because both matchups are of similar skill. The only way for you to change you ranking is to lose significantly or win significantly, AND for the server in the tier below/above you to lose significantly or win signficantly.

Glicko does not create tiers, glicko creates matchups. It’s not tier 1, tier 2, tier 3, tier 4, it’s matchup 1, matchup 2, etc.

This is a system that stagnates any form of ranking progression for servers, because it’s meant to make similarly skilled matchups, not catagorize the skill of each server into brackets.

The question then becomes why is ranking progression even being discussed. It should not exist in an MMORPG. What do you do at rank 1 besides a “Congratulations, you beat the game?” Do you quit? WvW is supposed to be a perpetual war where you cannot win or lose. All the rest of the system is set up that way, except this “tiers” that people come up with. It is out of place.

mjharrison.3209:

My other major issue with WVW is that as an Ele, I have only 1 decent spec I can run if I want to roam: D/D, when I would rather actually play a ranged caster.

Seriously? It’s the fault of WvW that you chose a class that doesn’t do what you want it to do?

Cactus.2710:

mjharrison.3209:

My other major issue with WVW is that as an Ele, I have only 1 decent spec I can run if I want to roam: D/D, when I would rather actually play a ranged caster.

Seriously? It’s the fault of WvW that you chose a class that doesn’t do what you want it to do?

dude, is a problem of game balance, all classes need more than one or 2 viable specs, and now you have 1 or 2 ….

The Glicko system itself was designed for competitions like chess or tennis, where everyone eventually has the opportunity to play everyone else. It totally falls apart when you try to apply it to a tiered system because teams from one tier don’t have the near-term opportunity to compete against teams in other tiers. ANet says they use a “modified Glicko” system so I suspect that they incorporate some other factor that tries to rank tiers, but whatever they use it is not very responsive to shifts in server demographics, and if they use the Glicko system itself for comparing tiers it is simply invalid.

The Glicko system also treats shifts in scores as an undesirable variability and assigns a ranking penalty when that happens. I don’t know what the time constant for that is (15 minutes, one hour, one day, one week??), but if it is anything less than a day it will penalize a server with less than 24 hour coverage.

Check out WikiPedia for a complete explanation for how the Glicko system works. There’s a lot of math there, but if you ignore that and just read the text it’s not hard to see that it is not appropriate for ranking multiple competitors isolated into tiers of three each. Somebody at ANet didn’t think things through very well when they decided to use it for WvW.

urdriel.8496:

Cactus.2710:

mjharrison.3209:

My other major issue with WVW is that as an Ele, I have only 1 decent spec I can run if I want to roam: D/D, when I would rather actually play a ranged caster.

Seriously? It’s the fault of WvW that you chose a class that doesn’t do what you want it to do?

dude, is a problem of game balance, all classes need more than one or 2 viable specs, and now you have 1 or 2 ….

It seems pretty straightforward to me. You adjust your role to the playstyle you prefer to use. There is no way on earth that this or any other game can be “balanced” to allow every class to be fully competitive in all situations (zerg, siege, defense, roamer, etc) against every other class (1v1) or combination of classes (1vN). If you think otherwise you haven’t really thought it through very well.

Cactus.2710:

urdriel.8496:

Cactus.2710:

mjharrison.3209:

My other major issue with WVW is that as an Ele, I have only 1 decent spec I can run if I want to roam: D/D, when I would rather actually play a ranged caster.

Seriously? It’s the fault of WvW that you chose a class that doesn’t do what you want it to do?

dude, is a problem of game balance, all classes need more than one or 2 viable specs, and now you have 1 or 2 ….

It seems pretty straightforward to me. You adjust your role to the playstyle you prefer to use. There is no way on earth that this or any other game can be “balanced” to allow every class to be fully competitive in all situations (zerg, siege, defense, roamer, etc) against every other class (1v1) or combination of classes (1vN). If you think otherwise you haven’t really thought it through very well.

you can do that with, mesmer,warrior,thief and guardian, oh wait¡¡¡¡¡¡

I think the Glicko system would be more “reliable” if we go to a poule system like this:

Tier 1: Containing the top 3 Servers, Winner Stays, no 2 and 3 go down to Tier 2.
Tier 2: Containing Servers 4 to 9, Both Winners goto Tier 1, no 2 and 3 go down to Tier 3
Tier 3: Containing Servers 10 to 21, Winners goto Tier2, no 2 Stays, no 3 goes down to Tier 4.
Tier 4: Containing Servers 21 to 27 ( current number of servers ), no 1 and 2 goto Tier 3, the no 3 stays.

Other set ups are of course also possible but this way you can mix up more. and getting to and staying in Tier1 is more fair this way in my opinion. Plus you playing versus more servers as a server wil make the Glicko points somewhat more reliable.

Have Fun.

I agree with this. Match-ups should be fairly random, with a guarantee in the system that:
1: You will never face the same team twice within the same monthly period.
2. You will be each color at least once per five week period.
3. After each team has faced each other team at least once (every two months or so? Maybe the last week of each third month?), the win/loss points are tallied, and a “finals” round is started, in which teams are matched based on the scores so that the best fight against the best and the worst against the worst.
4. Whichever teams wins on each server in those weeks, all their players who meet a certain participation level that week (based on kills, events won, etc.) will receive a small prize of some sort, with slightly better prizes for the better servers (nothing crazy, but maybe some bonus HoMs, or rare mats, or a boss chest, that sort of thing).
5. Only players that stayed on that one server for the entire “season” run would be eligible for the bonus prize (or perhaps for at least half the weeks or something if that is too harsh). This would be necessary to prevent people “hopping” to the highest rated servers at the last minute, if you don’t play the season you can’t get the ring.

The score is just a hamster wheel for pvers and new rvr players.

As with all other world pvp games as it matures the players will realize its about rolling around with a group taking on other skill teams, and rolling zergs.

The question is if the devs get core design flaws fixed in time.

Give 2 points for killing people. If its possible to code, put a limit at 25 deaths per day to prevent griefing.

How about this:

1st: Go up
2nd: Stay
3rd: Go down

Sometimes the best soltuion is the most simple one.

Ultimately the game needs to change the rewards into something that reflects the effort people put into it. The points system should reflect the amount of attendance relative to kills more, and less on flipping camps and other structures. That’s the only way to gain an understanding of even match-ups instead of a point system that rewards high population at all hours.

Just my 2 cents.

Phule.1968:

Ultimately the game needs to change the rewards into something that reflects the effort people put into it. The points system should reflect the amount of attendance relative to kills more, and less on flipping camps and other structures. That’s the only way to gain an understanding of even match-ups instead of a point system that rewards high population at all hours.

SoS is #1 on a huge winstreak when we have an equally huge coverage gap that JQ and SBI exploit.

I must agree that the rating system might be flawed a bit

My example will be gates of madness VS. henge of denravi [one that I am in] VS. sorrow’s furnace

Gates of madness is a larger server than the other two so for the other two worlds it is a battle for second place so gates of madness wins and the next match up happens.

It is the same match up and you guessed it gates of madness basically wins [still going on] with 100,000 more points than the other worlds.

My suggestion that after each match it takes a survey of each world’s population and it’s growing/shrinking trend and pits each world with other worlds with similar populations then goes onto other factors due to the fact that a larger server can have more and bigger zergs.

Oh and another thing, the free server jumps every 7 days isn’t exactly something that makes things more balanced. I’d say it’s what letting many servers/players down.

Why not make it a month or pay for transfers instead?

I could care less about reward in WvW. I prefer the 13ish sets of exotic armor and 7ish sets of exotic jewelry you can currently get. I’d rather their not be something greater to gain from WvW that lessens your options overall. There are many paths to achieve a full set of exotics and in my opinion thats the way it should be. Stuff is stuff whether it is orange or pink or magenta who cares. I’d rather spend more time enjoying WvW than chasing down stuff. With that said the mist vault jumping puzzle time sink should be rid of and a player should recieve two random sets of blueprints in the mail upon entering WvW. And something should be done about theifs. Their kill time is less than my reaction time and I’m not entering some hyper-conscious zen state traveling between objectives because they exist. My toon isn’t a glass cannon either. He was built using a gradient curve and an iterative method to put a 2:1 ratio between damage and survivability and max out the damage component. If I die to a theif before I can react either I’m kitten or your game isn’t balanced or that’s the way its meant to be(not even enough time to hit the invulnerability button). If it is then it is. Otherwise had a fantastic 3 way battle last night until we got outnumbered on multiple fronts.

Saweth You Him.9047:

I could care less about reward in WvW.

Thanks for fighting to keep WvW broken ^

Part of the problem with the game now is that there really isn’t any point to trying for 1st place, so basically 3rd place just pushes against 2nd place because it’s an easier fight.

If there was incentive to take 1st place, the 2nd and 3rd place servers would both have a reason to push aganst 1st. This would make matchups more balanced across the board.

Instead, both 1st and 3rd just beat up on 2nd, which insures the winner won’t change.

Saweth You Him.9047:

I could care less about reward in WvW. I prefer the 13ish sets of exotic armor and 7ish sets of exotic jewelry you can currently get

1. Under the assumption that the only way to reward WvW is better-than-exotic gear.
2. Not realizing that exotics are already second-best in three slots, with more ascended gear planned for the future.

If there were ascended quality gear as WvW rewards it might actually help balance the fact that the highest tier gear is currently only attainable via fractals.

Saweth You Him.9047:

I could care less about reward in WvW. I prefer the 13ish sets of exotic armor and 7ish sets of exotic jewelry you can currently get. I’d rather their not be something greater to gain from WvW that lessens your options overall. There are many paths to achieve a full set of exotics and in my opinion thats the way it should be. Stuff is stuff whether it is orange or pink or magenta who cares. I’d rather spend more time enjoying WvW than chasing down stuff. With that said the mist vault jumping puzzle time sink should be rid of and a player should recieve two random sets of blueprints in the mail upon entering WvW. And something should be done about theifs. Their kill time is less than my reaction time and I’m not entering some hyper-conscious zen state traveling between objectives because they exist. My toon isn’t a glass cannon either. He was built using a gradient curve and an iterative method to put a 2:1 ratio between damage and survivability and max out the damage component. If I die to a theif before I can react either I’m kitten or your game isn’t balanced or that’s the way its meant to be(not even enough time to hit the invulnerability button). If it is then it is. Otherwise had a fantastic 3 way battle last night until we got outnumbered on multiple fronts.

or its balanced around a 1:2 instead of a 2:1 ratio for your chosen class

Psychatog.8246:

or its balanced around a 1:2 instead of a 2:1 ratio for your chosen class

It is a bit of this but it is mostly the thief’s ability to frontload offense. When you get hit by a thief you’re getting hit by 3/4 damage sources simultaneously because the thief started their attack seconds before you actually took damage. You’re not getting hit by an attack, you’re getting hit by several simultaneous attacks. The mechanical counter to this is to use simultaneous defensive measures, but of course those can’t or won’t be queued because you aren’t going to see the thief coming. You end up with 3/4/5 attacks absolutely dominating 1/2 defensive counters, which is completely balanced in a purely mechanical sense, the thief put more into their attack than you did into your defense because the thief started the fight long before you knew you were in a fight.

In short: The problem isn’t that the attacker’s skills are more powerful than the defender, the problem is that the defender cannot actually use as many resources as the attacker since the attacker has already expended a bunch of them by the time damage starts. This is apparent with thieves in particular, but really true of any build from any profession which pops a cooldown before attacking an unsuspecting opponent.

Nerfing skills doesn’t really “fix” this, it isn’t a result of skill power, it is the result of one player starting a fight before the other.

This is not rocket surgery. Keep it concise for the profoundly uninformed.

• Incentives encourage behavior.
• Disincentives discourage behavior.

We reward those things that we want to see more of and punish those things that we want to see less of…

It is important to understand:

• each and every player has a different “feel” for what is meaningful play (to them),
• each and every player projects his/her beliefs of meaningful play on others,
• factions form when “like minded” groups of similarly “feeling” players connect.

Therefore, threads like this that attempt to establish a “silver bullet” premise are simply obtuse and myopic. That said, while I disagree with the title and premise of the OP, I honestly believe there is good intention behind the thoughts. The OP almost begins to hint at achieving a pedestrian argument (socio-economics).

But, it all goes to hell in the end. I would not throw out the baby with the bath water.

For more information:

• Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (“The Ivory Tower”)
• Meaningful Play Conference (“Keeping it Real”)

How about this:

1st: Go up
2nd: Stay
3rd: Go down

Sometimes the best soltuion is the most simple one.

the problem with that is that in most cases that would mean that the 2nd, 5th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th, 20th, and 23rd teams would almost always stay exactly where they were (in the blue slot), while the 3rd and 4th teams would just alternate in and out every other week. “upsie/downsie” really only works well in one-on-one match-ups.

mjharrison.3209:

I think the fundamental flaw of WVW is downed state – it allows zergs to rez their fallen indefinitely, leading to prolonged (and eventually boring) standoffs, heavily favours numbers over skill, and the rallying mechanic totally ruins small group PVP and 1vX. I really feel that downed state is what’s stopping small group PVP from taking off because why roam as a 2- or 3-man when you will lose vs 5+ solely because the extras can keeping rezzing the guys you kill?

The downed state? Really? If you don’t bother to finish your opponents, I don’t have much sympathy for you.

If its the defeated state you’re talking about, then I would say its a non-issue since rezzing a player from the defeated state takes a long time, and removes one or more players from the fight AND MAKES THEM HELPLESS while they do that.

And if you can’t beat helpless players, well…

As for numbers vs skill, when you’re talking about 3:1 ratio or higher then sure, that holds. But I’d rather take 10 geared level 80s on voice comms over 20 random zergs any day.

zortek.9607:

Therefore, threads like this that attempt to establish a “silver bullet” premise are simply obtuse and myopic.

The point of thread is that Glicko-2 Rating system doesn’t work for WvW.

What you put here would make an interesting discussion as a whole different thread. I’m not surprised that this carried over to GW2 from WoW. Although the WoW versions of this are a lot more self-righteous and “cites” a few more papers. Of course, this is all irrelevant to our topic here.

Our topic is a discussion over whether Glicko-2 Rating system is a good fit for WvW, why or why not.

Glicko-2 could be a good algorithm, but I don’t like how it is applied: it rewards servers with coverage around the clock instead of fun.

As I understand, right now the algorithm gets applied on the ending score, so on a corner case you can take 3 servers, having their respective “prime time” at 0:00, 8:00 and 16:00 with them crushing far weaker opponents in turn and the game would consider that match “balanced”, but we do know that participating in that kind of match would be pitiful and boring.

I think (mind you: I’m throwing ideas at you here, didn’t think it through) it could be interesting to have Glicko applied to events instead, maybe tuned to take account of number of participants (and maybe level/gear too): more points are gained or lost for a successful keep conquest or defense against a worthy opponent than against a weaker one.

It would feel awesome to be rewarded for beating the odds and defending a keep against superior forces and the score would reflect the in game fight balance instead of the server capability to cap points round the clock. At the same time, servers being “night capped” would be less penalized.

From my understanding the only gear that provides a 1:2 ratio is soldiers which means you have 0% crit and no condition damage which means if you get hit by weakness half your attacks will be glancing blows and you will do crap for damage. My toon has an invulnerability button which I presume counters everything( it actually doesn’t, I have died while invulnerable). But I died before I could hit the invulnerability button so the theif is o/p.

Ascended gear from fractals is unfortunate and shouldn’t be used as a pretext to expand on it and introduce it to other parts of the game. ( I do realize there is ascended gear in the game. To assume that I am oblivious to this is to be the paragon of ignorance to the superlative degree of a woodwose creating words as an incentive for self satisfaction.)

I have never made the assumption that the only way to reward WvW is better than exotic gear. If you go to the gear merchant you will find that you can trade your tokens for exotic gear if you choose to do so.

To simplify this for the sake of not being libeled by the prejudice. You can attain exotic gear by:

1. dungeons
2. crafting
3. WvW
4. Karma

You can only obtain ascended gear via fractals which is unfortunate. Fractals have nothing to do with WvW. Putting fractals level jewelry with fractals level jewels in WvW to spend tokens on is a great incentive for those who need one. It would be even better than fractals jewelery since you could custimize it with a jewel. But then all people would do is tap or kill other people and dominate the jumping puzzle to maximize their badge intake instead of focusing on objectives.

Classical conditioning is a great way to solve the problem of the individual mind wanting more of something, anything, so that they pursue what comes next in the hierarchy of events. Habituating the masses so the game plays the way you want it to works but habituating yourself to enjoy the game as is you may find works as well. The tragic theif spike happens. But what is a story without a fall and what is a more tragic fall than a random out of place theif spike.

I agree that the rating system is flawed. After watching my server (Eredon Terrace) not get above 100k points every week in the last 3 months, I have to wonder if anyone even cares.

Saweth You Him.9047:

Ascended gear from fractals is unfortunate and shouldn’t be used as a pretext to expand on it and introduce it to other parts of the game.

The cat is out of the bag and Ascended gear exists, it offers advantage in WvW, and will continue to expand in importance as more Ascended slots are added. Unless one of these three things ceases to be the case, there’s definite “pretext to expand on it and introduce it to other parts of the game”, as you put it. It either needs to become attainable outside of running Fractals for it (even by simply removing the soulbound tag), or it needs to cease to offer advantage in WvW.