Guild Wars 2

I was just looking at the leaderboard’s for WvW and felt like making a list that shows how difficult balancing is.

1. Jade Quarry 2155.6162
2 Blackgate 2125.4265
3 Tarnished Coast 2117.2351

4 Fort Aspenwood 1963.5494

5 Yak’s Bend 1902.7101
6 Dragonbrand 1887.1923
7 Sea of Sorrows 1881.8737

8 Darkhaven 1593.7134
9 Northern Shiverpeaks 1577.0876
10 Henge of Denravi 1572.5272

11 Stormbluff Isle 1548.8082
12 Maguuma 1502.514
13 Isle of Janthir 1485.2827

14 Crystal Desert 1436.9551
15 Ehmry Bay 1412.0829
16 Gate of Madness 1350.7877

17 Anvil Rock 1263.6903
18 Sanctum of Rall 1235.8882
19 Kaineng 1220.8582

20 Ferguson’s Crossing 1108.4314
21 Eredon Terrace 1105.3701
22 Devona’s Rest 1081.6188

23 Borlis Pass 1016.5162
24 Sorrow’s Furnace 996.9224

For the moment lets forget deviation and volatility and just look at the base scores. As you can see the major issue is in tier two, you essentially have four servers in that ranking level, the oddest one out this week being Fort Aspenwood. Now the issue becomes who goes where? If you look at the groupings I provided you can see how tight and nice the match ups are. All would be all within 100 or fewer points.

However that leaves a tier two team out in the cold as well as the bottom most two on any given week and I think we can all admit to the one sided stomping that would be 4th ranked versus 23rd and 24th.

So what we end up with are 8 matches that swing between wildly uneven and fairly level, for example; The 2nd tier left out in the cold should have no problem at all beating even the top two tier three teams but apart from that and the 6th and 7th tier flips the rest would be fairly close if you took the top off the tier and slipped it into the tier above. However if the bottom team in a given tier was lifted for a week, the results can be… unpleasant.

This means that in any given week we end up with between 4-8 servers facing incredibly up hill battles in their WvW matches.

there isn’t really a fix for this TBH in the current system. Any balancing of servers would simply kick the issue up or down the chain. Strengthen a tier two and tier one has an extra, weaken a tier two and a tier three has an extra.

The only real permanent solutions would seem to be mandated balanced server populations and banning transfers, a draconian method and quite unfair. The other one would be a new WvW map that was intermixed with the current one but with only two servers and/or 4 servers. 2-3 maps of that style to eat up the 2nd tier or which ever is over full. Balancing for that would be a nightmare though.

Just thought I’d put the visual in front of ya. Not trying to call anyone out or rage. Just showing what appears to be the problem and why it is so hard to fix.

As ive said numerous times. Why not introduce a handicap scoring system? For instance a historically lower rankes server with most likely lesser population might be awarded more points per tick for holding a keep than a higher tiered server? Or include bonus points for the cap? One could argue its far more difficult for a lesser ranked server to take SMC than a higher ranked one. The game play should be rewarded. Seems like a simple fix to me and could possibly give every server a fighting chance in any matchup.

Royale.5863:

As ive said numerous times. Why not introduce a handicap scoring system? For instance a historically lower rankes server with most likely lesser population might be awarded more points per tick for holding a keep than a higher tiered server? Or include bonus points for the cap? One could argue its far more difficult for a lesser ranked server to take SMC than a higher ranked one. The game play should be rewarded. Seems like a simple fix to me and could possibly give every server a fighting chance in any matchup.

What do you mean “historically lower rankes server”, or even lesser population? This would only fit in the lower tiers where it’s obvious that one server is the clear underdog in a single match-up. However, how would this apply in tier 2 where it’s usually two relatively even servers against a juggernaut? Would both earn the same, albeit both higher than FA? Or what of FA-SoS-YB match-ups? SoS is significantly lower in terms of population against YB, but both are dramatically lower than FA.

/sarcasm/ How about we just delete FA, BP, and SF, and offer a free transfer for all their populations to go elsewhere? /end sarcasm/

Obviously a server would score slightly less or slightly more depending on their ranking.

Maybe its not that obvious?

And how do anet now fix this problem which was created 3 years ago?

It’s been ignored for 2 years by anet and the players came up with their own “solution”, transfer up.

Anet even increased population caps as T1 was complaining about not being able to get enough people on?! I mean come on, why the kitten did they do that, the top servers should have been left as FULL, but even now you can transfer to any T1 server.
I think anet have forgotten why they have several servers in the first place, it’s if one gets full people can join another one, but no they let more join the full ones!

DevilishLyx.2340:

And how do anet now fix this problem which was created 3 years ago?

It’s been ignored for 2 years by anet and the players came up with their own “solution”, transfer up.

Anet even increased population caps as T1 was complaining about not being able to get enough people on?! I mean come on, why the kitten did they do that, the top servers should have been left as FULL, but even now you can transfer to any T1 server.
I think anet have forgotten why they have several servers in the first place, it’s if one gets full people can join another one, but no they let more join the full ones!

That doesn’t make any sense. They players did not even remotely create their own solution by transferring up. The players literally created the problem by transfering.

the provlem was created by the players. Those who quite over time as with all MMOs. Those who scaled down their playtime as the initial newness wore off. As players transfered just before a tournament to the server they assumed would win.

The entire situation is absolutely player driven. To believe anything less is absurd.

Is it me or did colin just disagree with me by agreeing with me……

Partially yes. I disagree with your implication that there was a solution to the provlem 3 years ago.

That’s why we call them inverted commas

Good job highlighting player attrition in wvw. If you took FA out of that picture, you’ll notice two huge glicko cliffs, one between t1 and t2, the other between t2 and t3. And the attrition becomes even more apparent when you 1) include server full status that is influencing where players transfer to and 2) comparison with historic glicko ratings of each tier. For example, FA’s rating there is close to its historic high 2 years ago that only made it rank 6 most of the time. Now that makes it comfortably rank 4. You’ll also notice how traditionally lower ranked servers such as NSP have risen in rank due to their population merely staying stable as other servers collapsed around them.

Sum up FA’s viewpoint:
Player attrition, player attrition, player attrition.

Everyone else’s viewpoint:
One server stacking causes a cascading effect for all.

rofl FA are as big as TC without the new 50 man chinese guild they just got

Dhemize.8649:

Sum up FA’s viewpoint:
Player attrition, player attrition, player attrition.

Everyone else’s viewpoint:
One server stacking causes a cascading effect for all.

Because one server stacking is responsible for players from lower tiers going to DB, YB, or SoS. I mean, that’s why the TC guild left YB for JQ, right?
/sarcasm

Even if you knocked out any servers and transferred them to new homes for an even matchup one week… the problem will still persist over the long period of time. People will continue to transfer to and fro, and some servers will be stacked while others not. The problem is with the ability to transfer and the server pop status not relating to the wvw population. This problem will always be with us. But hey … it’s a casual game mode, some weeks … will be jokes and others may have decent matchups.

aquabat.2986:

rofl FA are as big as TC without the new 50 man chinese guild they just got

150+ chinese

And another large PVX SEA/EU gaming group that wanted to go to SOS, but couldn’t because it was full.

None of them wanted to go to YB for reasons…

etrigan.4213:

None of them wanted to go to YB for reasons…

Indeed, YB should worry about themselves and why guilds are deciding to not to go there and stop worrying about FA.

People transfer because the server they’re on isn’t providing what they’re looking for. The above posters make it sound like players are out there being intentionally malicious just to sabotage other servers.

Players aren’t to blame. It’s ANets fault for not keeping the servers in a healthy, viable state. Every MMO in existance has server transfers. They also merge servers. For whatever reason, ANet doesn’t seem willing to do it.

Who’s more at fault? Tier2 because they have a 4th server pushing a server out every rotation? Or tier3 because they don’t have servers healthy enough to handle the rotated server? What’s a better solution? To disolve FA because it’s the odd man out or to merge the undervalued servers up the chain so Tier3 could close the gap?

If the tier3 servers weren’t roflstomped every week and their score was competetive with the rotated out tier2 server, eventually the rotation would stop and we’d have a healthy tier 1 environment, a healthy tier 2 environment, and a healthy tier 3 environment.

Fix wall clock coverage and the rest will work itself out. Therein lies our problem because it isn’t just the top tier servers having this issue. It actually happens in every tier whereas one or two servers destroy everybody below week after week, then get pushed up a rung, and then in turn get destroyed time and time again until they fall back down. Rinse and repeat.

Take Maguuma right now. Server was doing very well, had some drama, lost a lot of people, fell down in ranking. Same with Gate of Madness. Enter Ehmry Bay which is pretty consistent week after week. We’d get destroyed by both of these servers. They lose people, we maintain, and then we start beating them. GoM continues to falter, Maguuma gains a few large guilds in transfers, and guess what? They now beat us solidly. We are 15th, they are 12th.

I now ask you why all of a sudden did they gain the points and ranks? Skill? No. Population and wall clock coverage. Why is GoM going down? Skill? No. Wall clock coverage and population. 12th (Mag) 192K? 14th (Crystal Desert) at 80k? 15th (Ehmry Bay) 69K? Mag is so far ahead makes it so only the die hard play. CD and EB are at least close and could pull a win…

Data is there. I’m honestly not sure why Arena Net isn’t looking to fix the underlying problem which is wall clock coverage = winning server.

Atherakhia.4086:

The above posters make it sound like players are out there being intentionally malicious just to sabotage other servers.

If only you knew about the amount of toxicity which a lot of FA players have towards YB. There are the common rivals between other servers, but then FA takes the toxicity to a new level.

Atherakhia.4086:

Players aren’t to blame. It’s ANets fault for not keeping the servers in a healthy, viable state. Every MMO in existance has server transfers. They also merge servers. For whatever reason, ANet doesn’t seem willing to do it.

Players are to blame. They don’t magically move to a “winning” server for a free ride and they aren’t forced to move either. They move because they were bought by another server or fairweathered off because they prefer the easy road. ANet tried to fix this with free transfers before and guess what happened? HoD bandwagon. The game is set up just fine. It’s the players making poor decisions and pointing to ANet as the culprit. Maybe things wouldn’t be so dire if somebody took a second to think before jumping servers and compounding the problem.

Atherakhia.4086:

Who’s more at fault? Tier2 because they have a 4th server pushing a server out every rotation? Or tier3 because they don’t have servers healthy enough to handle the rotated server? What’s a better solution? To disolve FA because it’s the odd man out or to merge the undervalued servers up the chain so Tier3 could close the gap?

Initially it was DB that threw T3 off balance and pulled FA and SoS down multiple times (with the help of YB). Then the buying and recruiting of T3 servers began so FA/SoS could stay in T2 for [insert various “for-da-fites” reasons and justification]. Now the WvW popluation gap is so extreme. It’s the fault of server buying and those who accept and fairweather off.

Atherakhia.4086:

If the tier3 servers weren’t roflstomped every week and their score was competetive with the rotated out tier2 server, eventually the rotation would stop and we’d have a healthy tier 1 environment, a healthy tier 2 environment, and a healthy tier 3 environment.

I wouldn’t mind a rotation provided that the servers were competitive. There’s nothing healthy about T1’s match fixing so all three servers stay in one spot. There’s not going to be anything healthy about T2’s match fixing. It would be ideal to have all servers within a close RNG range for tons of diversity and different outcomes.

Not sure if it will ever go back though since multiple servers would need to implode. Those who were bought/fairweathered need to go back to their original server and help keep things balanced. At least a few guilds on YB knew this back when we roflstomped T2. Of course they went back to T1… T3/T4 could have used their help but whatevs.

Seamus.9645:

As you can see the major issue is in tier two… If you look at the groupings I provided you can see how tight and nice the match ups are

Wrong, the match ups aren’t tight and nor is it the major issue, the self absorbed obsession with NA tier 2 / 3 is well…

The “major issue” is WvWvW as a system is unbalance-able and for the most part produces dull, lopsided matchups that are over before they start.

Go to mos look at the scores for all matches NA + EU, it is wednesday morning (at least where I am) and most matches are blowouts, most were blowouts by monday morning.

Of the 9 EU tiers 5 matches have the first placed server approximately 50-70k in front of the second place server, of the 8 NA tiers 5 matchups with the first placed server 60k+ in front of the second, and to put it in perspective a 60k lead is about equal to one server ticking 600 for 25 hours straight.

And that is me being kind, in that I am only comparing to the second place server, it only gets worse if you compare to the third place.

So can we stop this delusion that the only thing wrong is 4 servers in tier 2 NA and the blowout it produces every week in tier 3 NA, the entire system needs changing it is broken.