Guild Wars 2

There is a phenomenon happening as a result of GW2’s usage of the Glicko 2 Rating system. The ratings of the servers in each tier stay relatively close to each other, but are growing futher and further from the ratings in the adjacent tiers. Look at the ratings overall. Each tier has a substantial gap in the rating. This is making it increasingly difficult to move up or down a tier. In summary, the best way to vastly improve your rating is to have a HUGE point gap between you and the other two servers. However, this component in the calculation has a transform to make it non-linear — it flattens out at the extremes, giving diminishing returns for large point differences. So, it just flattens the ratings of the 3 servers back towards each other. If anything, it should do the reverse and amplify the score so that rankings move.

In general, Anet, I don’t think the math is doing what you wanted it to do. Glicko works when you play against many different opponents. However, we play against the same 2 servers again and again and again. Of course the math is going stratify. There aren’t opponents with very different ratings to stir the pot. The system was designed for chess. WvW is not chess.

That gap is pretty indicative of tier strength, at least in the upper tiers. Any currently tier 3 server will be blown out in tier 2, which is why it’s so hard for them to move up. Pretty sure it’s the same way for t2 and t1.

ykyk.2740:

That gap is pretty indicative of tier strength, at least in the upper tiers. Any currently tier 3 server will be blown out in tier 2, which is why it’s so hard for them to move up. Pretty sure it’s the same way for t2 and t1.

I’ve heard this before but it doesn’t always seem to actually work that way. The new matchups don’t often seem to “blowout” more than the previous matchups. They at times seem to work better.

I wonder if maybe the server strength difference is just as great within tiers as it is between tiers. wouldn’t that make sense?

For the lower half this is absolutely true. Imo take fixed points from t1 every week and inject it into t8. That will eventually get things into a fixed range.

how did anet miss that ofc points will be transferred to upper tiers everytime a server moves up?
therefore the tier-advantages spread making future tier changes bit by bit less possible (not taking into account vast changes in population).
as Omne said the ony way to balance the upward movement of ranking poins is an automated POINT :P infusion from to to bottom (circle of life )

another way (I still don’t get why anet didn’t use this way from the beginning) to improve thi mess would be an active wvw-player weighted scoring system as brought up in this forum waaaay backactive for any of the servers.

Rake.7169:

how did anet miss that ofc points will be transferred to upper tiers everytime a server moves up?
therefore the tier-advantages spread making future tier changes bit by bit less possible (not taking into account vast changes in population).
as Omne said the ony way to balance the upward movement of ranking poins is an automated infusion from to to bottom (circle of life )

The issue with top to bottom is that T1 servers often mention queueing times. At T7, the ONLY time I’ve ever seen queueing times is right after reset, in EB only.

So you’re going to take a very highly populated server, put it up against servers who have been stranded at the bottom for weeks (if not months) and expect this “circle of life” to be fair? T1 and T2 servers would absolutely obliterate the bottom tiers, keeping the bottom tiers at the bottom (and further distancing the gap that would enable the bottom tiers to rise), as well as demoralizing the bottom servers and ensuring that fewer and fewer will turn out. The servers stuck at the bottom will remain so while the top tier servers will rise quickly through the tiers once again.

I loathe, despite, and outright hate the use of the Glicko system, but as long as it stands, unless we have a complete reset every couple of weeks, the gap is just going to grow and there’s yet to be a solution that will address it.

transfer points from top to bottom not a server…

The last time TC moved down a Tier was for a week and we wrecked tier 3.

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/24#NA

There are huge discrepancies between tiers and their coverage. A Tier 1/2 server has almost 24 hour coverage. More so in T1 with small gaps in T2. Last Time we had a T1 server move down we got wrecked. Glicko is a terrible system but changing the volatility would just make it worse. You end up with T1/2 servers playing T<3 servers and those Tiers would never leave spawn. How would this be fun???

The put a bandaid on T8 for now. Lets just leave it alone and let them figure it out. With free transfers gone there will be very little volatility now and we will be playing the same servers for quite some time now.

SilencedScream.2167:

Rake.7169:

how did anet miss that ofc points will be transferred to upper tiers everytime a server moves up?
therefore the tier-advantages spread making future tier changes bit by bit less possible (not taking into account vast changes in population).
as Omne said the ony way to balance the upward movement of ranking poins is an automated infusion from to to bottom (circle of life )

The issue with top to bottom is that T1 servers often mention queueing times. At T7, the ONLY time I’ve ever seen queueing times is right after reset, in EB only.

So you’re going to take a very highly populated server, put it up against servers who have been stranded at the bottom for weeks (if not months) and expect this “circle of life” to be fair? T1 and T2 servers would absolutely obliterate the bottom tiers, keeping the bottom tiers at the bottom (and further distancing the gap that would enable the bottom tiers to rise), as well as demoralizing the bottom servers and ensuring that fewer and fewer will turn out. The servers stuck at the bottom will remain so while the top tier servers will rise quickly through the tiers once again.

I loathe, despite, and outright hate the use of the Glicko system, but as long as it stands, unless we have a complete reset every couple of weeks, the gap is just going to grow and there’s yet to be a solution that will address it.

I don’t think the argument is at all to move a T1 server through the loop back into T8… that would just be silly and actually cause T1 servers to fight for 2nd…
The argument is to pump points from T1 back into T8 to keep the overall pool of points balanced but not let all the ranking points end up in T1. If a T2 server moves to T1 with 2200 points and looses that same week, it comes back with 2000 points. Where did that 200 points go to? It stays in T1… where did T2 (for argument’s sake: Kaineng) get their points? All the way from T8/T9.
In chess this is not an issue because you don’t only have 24 chess players in the world. There are constantly new players coming in and old players moving out. Thus new points are introduced and old points are done away with.

The problem with this system is that people are moving around the tiers, not the servers.

Oh, /doh.
Completely misread. Ignore my post. XD

The manual adjustment to T8 seems to have solved their issue (although T6 and T7 are likely still inverted, but that should sort itself out shortly since Darkhaven is where they belong). Looking at the scores for this week and last week, it seems pretty clear that while mobility between tiers is limited, the top 5 tiers have the “right” servers in them. Once T6/T7 sort themselves out (probably 2-3 weeks) all the tiers should have the “right” servers in them. The only concern then is that if there are major movements (sudden increase/decrease in skill/involvement, server transfers, etc) that mobility between tiers is gone.