Guild Wars 2

It has been my observation that T1 has become somewhat of a revolving door for servers who do not have links. New links are established and the servers who are unlinked for the most part lose their places to the newly linked T2 servers. Once the links change again said servers who moved up drop back down and a new batch of linked servers come up.

I don’t know how practical it would be but would it not make more sense to swap links between the server going up and coming down? I know there are some pretty severe implications for that but it feels strange that servers who stay in T1 and almost punished in having to deal with the T2 servers that come up the week after getting a new link.

Just some thoughts, feel free to shoot holes in them

They are linking base on the activities but the problem with that is that activities can change very easily, depending on the guilds on the server and their previous link like availability of commanders. Also, if guilds decided to switch server on the very last week , whatever records anet had will immediately become outdated. Anet does not has anyone reliable on the ground to provide such information to them when they decide the linking.

Anet is not omnipotent and they should not think they are. They need to be realistic and not rely on unrealiable data, they should instead validate the data by actually checking the servers. However, this is a lot of work and therefore not consider practical.

I would suggest to make a new poll about linking frequency, I believe one month is a good deterrence and short enough time to fix any bad linking. At the same time, I also suggest to implement a transfer cost plenty for people who transfer too frequently. For example, if a person transfer to another server, that person’s personal transfer cost to future server will be doubled for 2 months.

#rotatethedrem
Jajaja

Would you rather have no tier motion at all? The revolving door is better than the immediate alternative, which is basically a wall.

All those transfers, all the overtime they did only to see their dreams and hopes gone on this reset.
Jajaja

Cecilia.5179:

Would you rather have no tier motion at all? The revolving door is better than the immediate alternative, which is basically a wall.

Revolving is good the issue is why it happens and if there is an issue that arises with a server that it can be 2 months before anything happens

Cecilia.5179:

Would you rather have no tier motion at all? The revolving door is better than the immediate alternative, which is basically a wall.

The wall was better. Consider what this does to Worlds as communities.
The constant transferring and stacking every 2 months isn’t healthy. That matches themselves aren’t that good because it takes a lot of time and effort to balance coverage to coverage between the worlds in a Tier.

WvW has become far more EotM the past 5 months.

All this shows is that there is one true T1 server, and then everyone else who gets to play in BGs backyard from time to time.

YB with a link does well; loses the link, drops like a rock. DB with a link does well; loses the link, drops like a rock. TC and JQ are the ones left over with a high enough population to reside in T1, but not really compete.

We are at a point now where I’m not sure servers will push to go to T1, but rather be stuck in T1 until they get the chance to leave again. The wall is good, long live the wall.

DeWolfe.2174:

Cecilia.5179:

Would you rather have no tier motion at all? The revolving door is better than the immediate alternative, which is basically a wall.

The wall was better. Consider what this does to Worlds as communities.
The constant transferring and stacking every 2 months isn’t healthy. That matches themselves aren’t that good because it takes a lot of time and effort to balance coverage to coverage between the worlds in a Tier.

WvW has become far more EotM the past 5 months.

You could say that the problem there is that people want to pay Anet to win at WvW by bandwagoning a server with a higher winning potential, and they immediately decide to leave that server as soon as it gets split apart, which nets Anet tons of gem sales.
I think no movement was better for the wallets of bandwagoners. Personally, I think bandwagoning would have a much harder time being a thing if they changed the pairings more frequently, but that would make Anet lose the money they net from people who pay to go where they will win.

Cecilia.5179:

Personally, I think bandwagoning would have a much harder time being a thing if they changed the pairings more frequently, but that would make Anet lose the money they net from people who pay to go where they will win.

Honestly I think they’d just transfer more, and give ANet more money. At the end of the day, the $6.25 to transfer to linkbait is for practically everyone quite trivial.

Cecilia.5179:

DeWolfe.2174:

Cecilia.5179:

Would you rather have no tier motion at all? The revolving door is better than the immediate alternative, which is basically a wall.

The wall was better. Consider what this does to Worlds as communities.
The constant transferring and stacking every 2 months isn’t healthy. That matches themselves aren’t that good because it takes a lot of time and effort to balance coverage to coverage between the worlds in a Tier.

WvW has become far more EotM the past 5 months.

You could say that the problem there is that people want to pay Anet to win at WvW by bandwagoning a server with a higher winning potential, and they immediately decide to leave that server as soon as it gets split apart, which nets Anet tons of gem sales.
I think no movement was better for the wallets of bandwagoners. Personally, I think bandwagoning would have a much harder time being a thing if they changed the pairings more frequently, but that would make Anet lose the money they net from people who pay to go where they will win.

Or, Anet should leave WvW populations alone and remove the server locks. Which would be going back to having Map Queues as the controlling mechanism for WvW populations. Then remove transfer fee’s so we can balance the Tiers ourselves. As we had done with more success than this frequent pairing.

A lot of T1 servers manipulate their numbers to open up linkings and transfers and get even more bloated. Ideas like “taking a vacation from wvw” when they are really just playing on another account on another server. Honestly it would benefit if anet put a semi permanent transfer lock on some of these bloated servers as well as be very careful when linking any T1 server with another. Another idea is to offer free transfers off of these bloated servers to t4 or lower servers. Bottom line anet needs to stop falling for these manipulation tactics used by a small percentage of players/guilds that feel the need to manipulate servers and ruin wvw for others. We would all be much better if we all found a server and stuck to it trying to restore server loyalty instead of trying to be “Default Winners”.

Trust me, every server except Blackgate can use a link.

Only problem is, when the fairweather population of a server comes out, it drastically impacts population balance.

Linking is required because ANET has done a horrible job at balancing the worlds.

Their scoring systems (new and old) actively encourages stacking to create the biggest blob possible. Which has the simultaneous effect of demoralizing the remaining players on the destacked servers. Forcing the players to live with being farmed by overwhelming odds, give up and transfer also, or just leave the game all together. Linking helped a bit, but the way ANET has implemented it actually causes more issues than it fixed. Typical.

It’s a vicious cycle and it’s long term consequences are the huge amount of players that have given up on WvW, in spite of the fact that it’s the only RvR game around atm. ANET had a chance to own that market, they blew it and continue to do so.

One reason a lot of folks cite for anet allowing the manipulation is they make money and lots of it. While this is true, its like the US goverment making money taxing the sales of cocaine from drug dealers Would it make money sure lots of it but its not sustainable and not good for any community.

Reverence.6915:

Trust me, every server except Blackgate can use a link.

Only problem is, when the fairweather population of a server comes out, it drastically impacts population balance.

^^ this

I was pretty sad to see DB and JQ lose their links. I don’t really understand this linking system, it’s very ANet but just silly. Every 2 months you smash two communities together and then if they do well they’re torn apart. Just seems silly. I could understand if they were dominating t1, but JQ was barely breaking in, and DB hit top ranked, but they were hardly dominating.

I’d like a 3 way fight, but right now that’s not happening.

Balance is a crazy thing in this game. It’s not achievable or fixable without physically moving players to strike balance. While population determines your position and rank through coverage and competitiveness , it can work as a direct counter to overall balance when mechanics like transfers and tiers allow the community to make the decision within an competitive environment.

Arena Net designed the game to allow the players to balance themselves out and they just simply provide the tools, fees, and regulations to do so. They recently changed the mechanics to allow for greater flexibility and more accuracy.

Yet, it’s still largely left up to the communities within the game to balance themselves. Our community is huge and our opinions and play styles are very different. What one person might think is balanced, another might consider it to be imbalanced. Things like simple differences make it hard for formulas, equations, and statistics to dictate balance aggressively.

Arena Net has introduced a very aggressive system while still following their own community balance structure. Instead of simply force merging servers together and or changing the entire system, they decided to keep the new system as dynamic as the old tier system itself. Instead we know have a 2 month dead line in which we will all be shuffled around, depending on how much we’ve moved around during the prior month.

How ever aggressive the system is that imposes balance, the community will aggressively push back to play where they want just as hard. Having the system do it in cycles will just set us in a faster pattern based from the same old systems flaws. This fast pattern will expedite our attrition rates.

I do not believe the 2 month reevaluations and repairing should be a permanent solution to WvW balancing. I believe what this system does is just speed up the the already existing pattern of WvW tier balance, thus giving the community a chance to balance themselves every 2 months. While is is more of a chance to take action, I believe a video game community as large as guild wars 2 will have a very hard time balancing itself out. In fact there is a greater chance that the community can use the very same mechanics to create an imbalance just simply due to player relations and general player movement while playing self-consciously the way they see fit.

Maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Through systematically locking servers in such a pattern, one might gather Arena Net is slyly forcing player base where they want and limiting what servers have in terms of population through the pairing system.

Just look at the pattern of how servers open up and close again based off population. The system is being used to control the bandwagon. It’s forcing people up in tiers while closing down the bottom tiers to grouped servers. If during this system, your server manages to climb to the top through your link, you risk the chances of being locked for a long period of time and you will be unlinked during the 2 month cycle.

Every time this happens, there is a wave of players that’s going to transfer and a collapsed tier 1 server that’s probably going to get a pair again. Once that server reaches a peak in population and coverage, it will be unpaired and locked longer. This will enable the bottom tier servers another link the next 2 month cycle. The players who move up again, all try to find a competitive server that fits their mentality and tier they came from. Thus, stacking another server till it’s locked. This cycle happens as we move down the Tier ladder. As one server gets flooded we move to the next.

Guilds become split and options change. Players move in every direction. Then after the dust is settled they find themselves back in the same scenario but on another server until they find a healthy community in which they all reside on the host and not the guest server.

So while, the system doesn’t appear to be helping short term, it could in fact be the balancing nudge the community needs overtime to allow everyone varying amounts of balancing choices and times until we are all settled and equally competitive. Even if the number of playing fields is dynamically shortened over time for better or worse.

Can the community handle such change?
Is the community willing to play along to finish this series of beta test we are only in the middle of?
Will Arena Net merge servers eventually once everyone is collapsed and competitive within a rotation or partial rotation?
What will the end of all this testing bring us?

Who knows. However, linking shouldn’t be a long term solution. I am still in favor of the overhaul that was promised. To bring the change that we need.

5000 character cap on post. RIP.lol

I believe the system detailed Arena Net created before the introduction of the polling voting system was way better than linking and it enabled the community to decide who they wanted to play with in a more clear fashion. This system earned the name “Overhaul” or “Alliances” and only sections were leaked to the public.

It’s sad that the system I refer to was never officially talked about to be reviewed by the WvW community. Instead segments of it were leaked across reddit which left authenticity concerns and questions. Certain aspects actually made it live but the actual core of the change were simply dismissed by voting in favor of links. Yet no public knowledge was known about the system it nullified. In my opinion this makes Arena Nets polls scary. It adds too much uncertainty in voting. Let alone the principle that the average WvW player does not know the details and mechanics that drive the system as it stands. So to have that system be changed by a poll in which the large majority does not properly understand the effects does not help but instead it leads us down a path that’s dangerous.

I just know that if the GW2 community had known then the community as a whole could have voted on it after the proper explanation and discussion. If I had been presented with the details of this “Overhaul” system I refer to, and the poll would have read: Alliances|Battlegroups or Server Links. I would have voted against server links as our long term solution.

Yeah! BG keeps dropping to T2 every other week! We need to fix this!

Dang and here I thought, T1 had rock solid communities. Just sounds like a bunch of insecure little kids now that you gotto work for your title to be a t1 server. Instead of stacking and destroying the lower communities.

Kaiser.9873:

All this shows is that there is one true T1 server, and then everyone else who gets to play in BGs backyard from time to time.

YB with a link does well; loses the link, drops like a rock. DB with a link does well; loses the link, drops like a rock. TC and JQ are the ones left over with a high enough population to reside in T1, but not really compete.

We are at a point now where I’m not sure servers will push to go to T1, but rather be stuck in T1 until they get the chance to leave again. The wall is good, long live the wall.

Doesn’t this just mean that the problem lies with BG and it’s bloated population? If BG didn’t exist (players distributed across the board), you’d have a continuous pool of new servers/links going into and out of T1 (and T2) and far more WvW matchup variety.

I’m not sure that’s a good thing to do since WvW players are fickle, especially bandwagon server players, but the whole pro-wall T1 thread argument is flawed because it is based on the premise that one-two bloated servers (BG being the prime one) should not be catered to for the health of WvW long-term.

Artaz.3819:

Kaiser.9873:

All this shows is that there is one true T1 server, and then everyone else who gets to play in BGs backyard from time to time.

YB with a link does well; loses the link, drops like a rock. DB with a link does well; loses the link, drops like a rock. TC and JQ are the ones left over with a high enough population to reside in T1, but not really compete.

We are at a point now where I’m not sure servers will push to go to T1, but rather be stuck in T1 until they get the chance to leave again. The wall is good, long live the wall.

Doesn’t this just mean that the problem lies with BG and it’s bloated population? If BG didn’t exist (players distributed across the board), you’d have a continuous pool of new servers/links going into and out of T1 (and T2) and far more WvW matchup variety.

I’m not sure that’s a good thing to do since WvW players are fickle, especially bandwagon server players, but the whole pro-wall T1 thread argument is flawed because it is based on the premise that one-two bloated servers (BG being the prime one) should not be catered to for the health of WvW long-term.

Yes and no, yes in the sense that the odd man could be said to be the issue, but BG isn’t any more active than it was before I took a long break before HoT, maybe even less active. It’s just that BG is the last true t1 server.

Variety is no good?

Jerus.4350:

Reverence.6915:

Trust me, every server except Blackgate can use a link.

Only problem is, when the fairweather population of a server comes out, it drastically impacts population balance.

^^ this

I was pretty sad to see DB and JQ lose their links. I don’t really understand this linking system, it’s very ANet but just silly. Every 2 months you smash two communities together and then if they do well they’re torn apart. Just seems silly. I could understand if they were dominating t1, but JQ was barely breaking in, and DB hit top ranked, but they were hardly dominating.

I’d like a 3 way fight, but right now that’s not happening.

Probably because anet wants the lower tier players to transfer up to those big servers so they can officially kill the smaller servers without doing any work.

Collect underpants———-?————-Profit

Get it?

Honestly, who knows with their logic but it sure does seem similar to the gnomes.

RodOfDeath.5247:

Jerus.4350:

Reverence.6915:

Trust me, every server except Blackgate can use a link.

Only problem is, when the fairweather population of a server comes out, it drastically impacts population balance.

^^ this

I was pretty sad to see DB and JQ lose their links. I don’t really understand this linking system, it’s very ANet but just silly. Every 2 months you smash two communities together and then if they do well they’re torn apart. Just seems silly. I could understand if they were dominating t1, but JQ was barely breaking in, and DB hit top ranked, but they were hardly dominating.

I’d like a 3 way fight, but right now that’s not happening.

Probably because anet wants the lower tier players to transfer up to those big servers so they can officially kill the smaller servers without doing any work.

Collect underpants———-?————-Profit

Get it?

Honestly, who knows with their logic but it sure does seem similar to the gnomes.

Yeah… though to be fair, with TC linked, if DB and JQ were still linked we’d probably have 4 t1 servers with one rotating out to dominate t2 instead of now having 4 t2 servers with one being sacrificed to TC/BG every week.

kitten gnomes.

Jerus.4350:

I was pretty sad to see DB and JQ lose their links. I don’t really understand this linking system, it’s very ANet but just silly. Every 2 months you smash two communities together and then if they do well they’re torn apart. Just seems silly. I could understand if they were dominating t1, but JQ was barely breaking in, and DB hit top ranked, but they were hardly dominating.

I’d like a 3 way fight, but right now that’s not happening.

Yep those decisions were ridiculous, and the 2 month link time just exacerbates the initial poor decisions. They definitely need to develop some better guidelines around when to completely unlink servers, because their decisions ATM seem to be ad hoc with far reaching consequences for the servers concerned.

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

I believe the system detailed Arena Net created before the introduction of the polling voting system was way better than linking and it enabled the community to decide who they wanted to play with in a more clear fashion. This system earned the name “Overhaul” or “Alliances” and only sections were leaked to the public.

Tyler stated before he was removed from WvW that they had decided not to proceed with that system at all. Given he is no longer working on WvW and given that no-one with any authority at anet seems to take any notice of WvW at all (Stephen Clarke-Willson where are you) I doubt they’re going to backtrack on that any time soon.

shiri.4257:

Dang and here I thought, T1 had rock solid communities. Just sounds like a bunch of insecure little kids now that you gotto work for your title to be a t1 server. Instead of stacking and destroying the lower communities.

This was not the original purpose of the post in any way and I have to imagine you have either not read the previous responses or possibly misread them.

The concern being echoed here is that the servers without a population capable of maintaining their T1 status (basically any server that is not BG) must bounce back and forth between tiers completely dependent on if they have a link or not. I cannot imagine its fun to put up a fight for 2 months and then get smashed into oblivion for however many weeks it takes to drop back to tier 2.

morrolan.9608:

Jerus.4350:

I was pretty sad to see DB and JQ lose their links. I don’t really understand this linking system, it’s very ANet but just silly. Every 2 months you smash two communities together and then if they do well they’re torn apart. Just seems silly. I could understand if they were dominating t1, but JQ was barely breaking in, and DB hit top ranked, but they were hardly dominating.

I’d like a 3 way fight, but right now that’s not happening.

Yep those decisions were ridiculous, and the 2 month link time just exacerbates the initial poor decisions. They definitely need to develop some better guidelines around when to completely unlink servers, because their decisions ATM seem to be ad hoc with far reaching consequences for the servers concerned.

The only hard rule I’d say is unless a server linking is dominating T1 I wouldn’t change anything. Dominating should be winning the tier in a landslide for a few weeks in a row throughout the week, that doesn’t mean rallying late in the week after losing the weekend, but overall winning. With victory points if you say win 80% of the skirmishes, that kind of thing.

As for the rest, communication would go a long way. I’ve had the pleasure of talking to some devs every now and then in TS (all great people), and having a bit more of that would be great. Popping in for a 15 minute ’how’s it going, how do you like it?’ over the 2 month period doesn’t seem too much to ask. It may not be perfect they may get a salty guild/group, but again talking about my experience, people usually perk up and are excited to talk to a dev and treat them with a lot of respect when they open up discussions. Who doesn’t like a dev asking opinions and actively working on things?

Someone might call me crazy, but I want to see a Mag/JQ link, I think that’d be a dominant force. Mag with it’s heavy NA and JQ with it’s solid offprime. If it’s too good, it’s just 2 months fighting an uphill battle in t1 I’m on BG and I miss being a solid 2nd place, always having a force to fight. Can’t say I like the play style of either of those servers, but it’s better than nothing right? I mean if we’re going to arbitrarily make moves, why not go full on crazy and try to put a force together that can make BG go home crying!