Guild Wars 2

Free server transfers are only one part of the problem we are experiencing.

Natural imbalance among the tiers is another problem.

For example:

Let’s pretend there are four servers that are by far better than every other server in the game.

Only three of those servers can be in tier one. That forth server will clean up in tier two every week. (For the entire week)

Multiple this scenario by eight tiers.

I am not asking Anet to magically balance each server, all I am asking is to reset the matches more often so we have multiple chances to win or lose.

I also know this is not a long term solution but it seems a lot better than what we have on the table now. For those servers this week that still have a competitive match-up, I envy you and wish you the best of luck!

we should do the 24 hour matches again when the paid xfers happen to peg where everyone should be, that way people aren’t stuck in the same tier for ages then go back to the old system

Roo Stercogburn.9671:

Free transfers went on far too long. ArenaNet are unlikely to ever admit this. My take is that they were gnashing their teeth waiting for guesting to be sorted and had to suck up free transfers as an aspect to this.

Paid transfers are long overdue (by about 5 months).

The funny thing is that the servers based on a solid community have very little to worry about, regardless of their position in the tiers/league table (in my opinion). Ultimately I believe these server communites will become the long term winners in WvW, although it may be up to a year or more after GW2 launch before this is readily apparent.

The servers that lose will be the ones that failed to build decent integrated social WvW structures to retain the playerbase needed to win over a long period of time.

This is what happened in LOTRO’s Monster Play (which was a two faction PvP system).

The two longterm PvP servers were Brandywine (the oldest server) and Landroval (the RP server). “Landy” became known as the place where you PvP’d if you didn’t want to deal with too many kitten.

Sound familiar?

What yaks are facing on every bl spawn gate. Cullings stopping you seeing the mass behind them. Sad, and theres a guy trebbing our spawn gate. thats a very bored kaineng team.

Talissa Chan.7208:

What yaks are facing on every bl spawn gate. Cullings stopping you seeing the mass behind them. Sad, and theres a guy trebbing our spawn gate. thats a very bored kaineng team.

The screen cap gave me a good laugh. Yep they’re a bored bunch of kaineng players. 2 ballistas and 1 treb outside a spawn, and at that range too!? That is just so wrong…

Musty.3148:

I DO hope that they bring back 24-48 hour matches for a couple of weeks after Monday’s patch. Just to make the new “balancing” of ranks and tiers quicker.

Too good to be true. I’m not holding my breath on that one despite it being the only logical thing to do at this point.

Waffler.1257:

Nope, you need to take some economics courses in game theory. There is no sense of dedication or greater good in human decision making, it is all based on maximizing personal utility. The people who most desperately want to be on a top server will make recruitment posts because they have the greatest incentive to ensure that their server succeeds. However, the desire to be on a top server will also make these people the first to jump ship as soon as they perceive a possibility that their server will fail. People who value server loyalty over rankings will be indifferent towards winning or losing and will make no effort to influence those results. It’s rather a matter of simple logic…

I know you want to try and sound smart, but game theory has nothing to do with psychology. I don’t even know how you’re not understanding this, but you seem to have some twisted kind of mentality that’s quite unhealthy. People who’re making recruitment threads want to MAKE their server a top server by recruiting more people. Obviously anyone would want their server to be on top but there’s a difference between jumping between servers and putting an effort in the server you happen to be on. You apparently don’t understand the human psyche (or just common sense in this case) that ANYONE would want their server to be better. Just because they value server loyalty doesn’t mean they’re not competitive, that they won’t care about scores or rankings, or god forbid about winning or losing. What you’re essentially saying is that doctors don’t care about getting paid because they’re doing it to save other people. You need to experience the real world more.

Toggles.1783:

Musty.3148:

I DO hope that they bring back 24-48 hour matches for a couple of weeks after Monday’s patch. Just to make the new “balancing” of ranks and tiers quicker.

Too good to be true. I’m not holding my breath on that one despite it being the only logical thing to do at this point.

Agreed

Pain.3756:

Anet: I know this is hard to hear… many talented developers have spent 4-5 years designing a game to be “fun”. In many ways GW2 is a AAA game and did some innovative things that MMORPGs for years to come will imitate.

Unfortunately this does not translate into a WvW environment that is fun for every server/match.

Current Tier 4 scores:

Kaineng: 50,856
Yak’s Bend: 15,131
Crystal Desert: 9,138

After 19 hours, Kaineng has proven they are superior to the other severs in this teir (congrats to them). We have to wait 149 hours (6 days) to attempt to be competitive once again.

Last week Tier 4 final score:

Maguuma: 497,675
Yak’s Bend: 83,648
Isle of Janthir: 33,157

I don’t have scores after 19 hours from the previous week but I know it was roughly the same deal. After 19 hours Maguuma had proven they were superior to the other severs in that match (again, congrats to them).

We had to wait for 6 days (149 hours) for our next chance to be competitive.

I urge Anet to get into emergency mode or at the very least, talk openly and often about this problem. Your player base will not wait around long.. anyone remember Warhammer online?

If I set the technical direction for WvW, which I obviously do not I would limit the WvW matchups to 24-48 hour periods until we can find a time to create an environment that offers a competitive matchup for the duration of the event.

-g

If you think that’s bad take a look at the score defecit of Ferguson’s and Eredon’s from being paired up against servers like Devona’s Rest and Kaineng for so many months. At this point either server could convert to tier 1 population out of nowhere, dominate with 695 ppt and still probably would need weeks if not a month+ to advance. While these servers just plow through most servers in as little as week until they reach the tiers they belong in, we’re stuck with them for weeks-months. How is that fair?

Ending free transfers simply isn’t enough. The damage is done, and for our tier and possibly others as well, it will take months to repair. I demand a points refund for tier 8 after SF leaves. And these people saying the “points system is fine and will fix itself” really should can it IMO. It seems they all come from higher tiers where this hasn’t damaged the point count badly. If such people were in tier 8 back in November and stayed until now, I doubt they’d be singing the same tune.

Bottom line is it makes for boring, stale encounters for all. Everyone starts thinking about next weeks match within 24 hours of the current match..

I dont think you really have a grasp of whats going on here so ill try to simply it: At certain points in the past, some servers had more players, or better players or both, which contributed to their standings in wvw. In some of these servers, a trend develops and many of these players leave in a mass exodus, which leaves a previously higher tier server with a lower tier capability. Due to the way the point system works in wvw, it takes a few weeks for the new wvw capabilities to settle and start providing even match ups.

Last week, Anet announced that paid servers would soon be introduced, and so many guilds left for servers they were more confident would be viable in wvw – one of those happened to be kaineng.
Its going to take some time for the new balance to emerge, and thats just a fact.
The harder Kaineng wins, the faster they will ascend the tiers

Beyondthelol.9504:

I dont think you really have a grasp of whats going on here so ill try to simply it: At certain points in the past, some servers had more players, or better players or both, which contributed to their standings in wvw. In some of these servers, a trend develops and many of these players leave in a mass exodus, which leaves a previously higher tier server with a lower tier capability. Due to the way the point system works in wvw, it takes a few weeks for the new wvw capabilities to settle and start providing even match ups.

Last week, Anet announced that paid servers would soon be introduced, and so many guilds left for servers they were more confident would be viable in wvw – one of those happened to be kaineng.
Its going to take some time for the new balance to emerge, and thats just a fact.
The harder Kaineng wins, the faster they will ascend the tiers

No we understand the situation perfectly fine thank you. I do not appreciate your Sheldon Cooperque condescension, especially as its unlikely your IQ is 180+.

Its great for Kaineng and the other rapidly improving servers they have had so many excellent new additions to their ranks.

I get that over time the rankings will adjust and that with the cessation of free server transfers the issues will reduce over time.

However due to those announcements about the upcoming changes there has been an unprecedented flux as people scramble as they quite rightly decide the server they are going to spend the rest of their GW2 time in.

This means rankings are particularly inaccurate at the moment and to resolve this in a few days rather than a few weeks it would be beneficial to reduce match times to 24 hours for a few rounds, perhaps until this coming Friday when we could have the weekly reset take us back to normality.

It suck but what can you do, its 100% Anets fault for being so ignorant that they didn’t see a scenario like this coming 100 miles away. E-Sport ? Ya not likely any time soon if this is how things are ran. I just hope they don’t completely kitten the system when they get to T1, wouldn’t that make for a great game … Your highest Tier with zero comp, not saying the T1 servers can’t handle them, in fact I’m hoping they can for the sake of the WvW community.

Allowing free transfers beyond the first month was a major kitten up on Anets part.

The idea that t1 can’t handle Kaineng is beyond laughable. You guys are blowing this way out of proportion. Unless all 4 “t1 servers” suddenly implode one day before transfers end…unlikely.

Time will tell.

I say stop the roflstomping. I am gonna post this again – bring back the 24 hr matches to readjust the tiers. It’s not fun for servers to be pvdooring nonstop and its not fun to be camped in your spawn (speaking from both perspectives).

After we’re all semi balanced we can go back to the weeklong stuff. Playing video games is supposed to be fun… when I was on a server moving up b/c of population wvw was boring, didn’t step foot in it, and that’s a huge aspect of this game for me.

Let’s take a look at this week after ~39 hours.

Tier 1: Fun
– difference between first and second: 7883

Tier 2: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 59002

Tier 3: Fun
– difference between first and second: 5677

Tier 4 : Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 84994

Tier 5: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 29782

Tier 6: Fun
– difference between first and second: 5712

Tier 7: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 18439

Tier 8: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 23890

Summary:

Fun = 3
Not fun = 5

Let’s congratulate the winners and losers for well fought matches, shuffle the teams and start again!

Anet: What say you?

Pain.3756:

Let’s take a look at this week after ~39 hours.

Tier 1: Fun
– difference between first and second: 7883

Tier 2: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 59002

Tier 3: Fun
– difference between first and second: 5677

Tier 4 : Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 84994

Tier 5: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 29782

Tier 6: Fun
– difference between first and second: 5712

Tier 7: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 18439

Tier 8: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 23890

Summary:

Fun = 3
Not fun = 5

Let’s congratulate the winners and losers for well fought matches, shuffle the teams and start again!

Anet: What say you?

have to agree there.

Pain.3756:

Let’s take a look at this week after ~39 hours.

Tier 1: Fun
– difference between first and second: 7883

Tier 2: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 59002

Tier 3: Fun
– difference between first and second: 5677

Tier 4 : Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 84994

Tier 5: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 29782

Tier 6: Fun
– difference between first and second: 5712

Tier 7: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 18439

Tier 8: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 23890

Summary:

Fun = 3
Not fun = 5

Let’s congratulate the winners and losers for well fought matches, shuffle the teams and start again!

Anet: What say you?

Scores like that should have huge DANGER DANGER WARNING WARNING red light and a blaring siren going off at ANet. But I seriously doubt they even care honestly. Not one peep out of them, which honestly at this point is near as bad as the steamrolling…..knowing they WONT comment on it.

What do you expect them to do about it? Even if they could somehow magically balance the populations of servers they can’t force people to go into wvwvw.

Yeah they are to blame for letting free transfers go on for about four months to long but beyond that..? What do you expect them to do?

I have to blame A-net for this poorly managed PR.

I think, in addition to increasing the caps for transfer, they should do server reset every 3 days or less, to make the game more fun, and unexpected.

At it is right now, I myself am sitting out, not playing GW until another 2 weeks or so, until everything settles down, because of this server transfer crap.

ExZee.8109:

Waffler.1257:

Well, at least I learned something from this little transfer debacle. Seems the people most actively recruiting for their server on the forums are the ones most likely to transfer off as soon as things don’t go their way. An interesting little glimpse into the human psyche. I think that thread on the Crystal Desert “Community Experience” by LaZy takes the cake, it’s a shame the OP deleted it.

Nope, you need to take Psych101. The majority of those recruiting on the forums are either the oldest or the most dedicated of their server. The purpose of recruiting is to benefit the server, not their personal guild. Those who transfer off easily don’t care about their server enough to actively recruit; they’re the ones looking at recruitment threads to see where they can get easy karma. It’s rather a matter of common sense…

Really? I would be curious to know if guilds like RE or WM ever recruited before abandoning their respective servers. Seems to me the best servers are the ones not actively recruiting. Or with the least amount of recruitment threads. Just IMO

But i do think it will settle down fairly soon. Hopefully the game see many new players to bolster low pop servers after the cut off.

fellyn.5083:

What do you expect them to do about it? Even if they could somehow magically balance the populations of servers they can’t force people to go into wvwvw.

Yeah they are to blame for letting free transfers go on for about four months to long but beyond that..? What do you expect them to do?

There are all sorts of things they COULD do.

Manually reset the matches on affected servers every 24 hours, so at least you had to refight over things….

Give manual buffs to the losing servers to help a bit

At least say “We know this is happening, and we are sorry…we will figure something out to stop it in the future”

All of thats just off top of my head. I expect something. They caused this by letting it get out of hand with free transfers. Fix it.

We need to start having the off-peak player conversation again, because waking up to this every morning is completely freaking stupid. Green is currently ahead 63000 points, and the reason for this is because no matter how good you do when you have people around, the minute your peak players go to bed and the enemy off peaks log in they don’t even have to fight – they just roll through and take everything. It’s a cake walk for them.

why all the winning about the matchups as the paid transfer is comming tomorrow and we dont know what else it brings with it so why not wait to tomorrow and see what happens and then complain if there where something to complain about?

I’ll agree that it SUCKS facing a server that just steamrolls every BL and just conquers EB in a few hours. Last week, on Emhry, I remember facing Kaing. It sucked, but a lot of us from FTF and a few from Soul were still in WvW.

The Karma was GREAT capping supply camps constantly. Then the commanders were zerging forts by us (To no real aveil, but we were trying even outmatched!) which created a lot of distractions for our 5-10 man groups capping supply camps.

I remember getting spawned camped by Kaing. What did we do? Picked them off, one by one. I was on my main (a thief) and there was 2 eles, about 3 or 5 warriors, 2 guardains, and a ranger going at them. The eles and warriors would burst one of them and a C&D/Backstabbed the guy on seige and bursted him to death while everyone else was focusing on the others. Then I’d slowly take the seige out, stealth and retreat to the safe spot and the others would follow. We’d let our CDs finish, heal, and plan who is next and do it again.

Yeah it sucked and we died a few times outside our own safe spot, but hey, we got way more kills then they did sitting there.

When we didn’t get spawn camped, we roamed/got supply camps and got stragglers. Even did the JPs a few times while some of the Kaing were nice enough to let us do it.

This whole thing may not be fun to you, I understand, but hey, why not make the best out of a bad situation? I know I sure did and felt proud that even though we were not competitive, I was still taking names and doing something to help my server.

Hopefully soon we see an improvement in tiers, but hey, till then, lets just try to enjoy what we can? Or atleast move on till everything sorted itself.

Being steamrolled sucks. I’m just leveling my alts in the mean time, since it’s not really worthwhile to do anything in WvW.

Well for those of us on the servers that are getting rick rolled all the time now, it is impossible to complete mapping in the game because you can never get to the points that are locked in keeps and always in enemy hands no matter what you do.

Requiring WvW areas for 100% mapping was a stupid idea that punishes people just because they are on a losing server.

This is soo boring. Please fix this as its horribly unfun

The OP is right. That isn’t fun. And as a Maguuman, I can state that it isn’t fun being on the winning side either in a blowout.

When the matches are closer then it is much more fun.

Dockin.1745:

The OP is right. That isn’t fun. And as a Maguuman, I can state that it isn’t fun being on the winning side either in a blowout.

When the matches are closer then it is much more fun.

Well said. This isnt about winning or losing. It is about having competitive play. No one wants to be part of Rollerstomps as it gets very boring very quickly and every server involved loses out

Let’s take a look at this week after ~48 hours.

Tier 1: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 15432

Tier 2: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 76792

Tier 3: Fun
– difference between first and second: 8800

Tier 4: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 109532

Tier 5: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 30089

Tier 6: Fun
– difference between first and second: 8503

Tier 7: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 29548

Tier 8: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 35890

Summary:

Fun = 2
Not fun = 6

We lost another tier to the “not fun” category. We have two tiers inching closer to a difference of 10,000 points.

Anet?

-g

From FC here… I’m glad that Kaineng (Finally) moved on. I was always wondering just how strong T7 and up must be if Kaineng was steam rolling us like that. But when they actually started moving up the ranks, they are flying through the tiers now! Not fun for us at FC and ET for a long, long, long time. But it made us as a server a better, cohesive unit. Even though I was discouraged from WvW because of the Spawn camping, I’ve gained a huge amount of respect for the WvW players and commanders on our server that stuck it out and never gave up the fight.
I totally get the concept of the topic when looking at the 2=fun 6=Not fun ratings, but I’m still hoping that servers would settle down after the introduction of paid transfers. Best case scenario is that they reset the server points (to a logical extent) going forward. 2nd best would be if you win, you get promoted, you loose you get demoted. With FC and ET on such low points, we’re basically going to fight each other for the whole of 2013 with one T7 moving up and down.
FC had SF beat that first week when Kaineng mercifully got promoted but they suddenly found the numbers and although it’s not such a massacre, it’s still a little disheartening looking at the points.

What goes around comes around. I recall getting rolled by said servers complaining. I think some guilds from our server transferred to said servers while we were on our way down the list.

-DH

Server ranking has other problems, Im from Desolation EU, only 3 can be in Tier 1, and we dont have the coverage to compete at 100% there, but in tier 2 we are currently roflestomping the other 2 servers.. hell yesterday we were running around trolling, and leaving keeps open so that they would attack us. we also tries to break every door in their garrison then wait for them to come in and fight us(sadly pugs ruined it by capping )

Another day. All 4 maps are completely the same colour. Seems deep, engaging, meaningful combat will be had by all.

Feeling so sad for YB and CD… Even their full forced friendship power has no chance for mags or kains Zergtivity Zergness of Zergs…
For those getting zerged to their death, its like a giant stepping on an ant.
The scoring system on this game is TERRIBLE, if someone finishes at 500k they should go up 6-9 spots or something, so they don’t have to drain all the rating out of every server on their way up. If someone wins at 250k, they should go up a spot or 2. if someone loses by 50k they should go down a place. How hard is that? Why can’t Anet use simple ways instead of, “Oh no, he has to win by 300k to go up one spot, and grind the rating out of the others for 5 weeks straight”. See BG, SoR, IoJ or BG SoR TC, or even TC, CD/YB FA. If this system worked, maybe it could have been FA or lost their people instead of Yak’s Bend, and maybe while kitten stomped 5 times in a row they could have finally gone down, but what is worse about the rating system is T8. It is just getting more and more and more harder for someone to go up, because when someone goes up, the others servers lose rating, and the server goes up, and kicks someone with less rating down.
In simple terms, the rating/ranking system is TERRIBLE.

Great idea! I like the idea of 48 hour matches. Currently, the most fun of the week is on Friday night reset when everyone is fighting for position.

I also suggest randomizing the colors. Instead of 1st being green, 2nd blue, and 3rd red, randomly assign servers to the colors each week. That would add a new dynamic as well.

Let’s take a look at this week after ~72 hours.

Tier 1: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 28648
Tier 2: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 136591
Tier 3: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 17020
Tier 4: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 166908
Tier 5: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 52873
Tier 6: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 11251
Tier 7: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 33679
Tier 8: Not Fun
– difference between first and second: 49981

Summary:
Fun = 0
Not fun = 8

Using my “pulled out of thin air” metric of a 10,000 point difference as “not fun”, all of our matches are now “not fun”. For those of you wondering, I choose 10,000 as the 2nd place team would have to beat the 1st place team by an average of 100 points every tick for a full day to just “break even”. That seems very unlikely.

What am I asking for again? We reset the matches every 24/48 hours opposed to once every seven days. If / when it is proven a vast majority of the matches are competitive after 24/48 hours.. then we can move to longer matches.

Anet? humor me.. reset the matches right now

-g