Guild Wars 2

Hey,
There was a thread where I posted these ideas but that thread just vanished within minutes. So I decided to create this one.

The original topic was complaining about the same match up 5 weeks in a row. My server (TC) is kind of in that same boat, kind of (hence the kind of part, again look at kind of).

TC’s UNIQUE Match Up History for the last two months:

- TC vs YB vs CD
- TC vs YB vs FA
- TC vs FA vs CD

Same servers, same stories as last time.

My suggestion to keep WvW match ups spicey without unfair match ups occuring like a tier 1 vs a tier 5

Option 1: Randomized match ups between two tiers every month for one week. Example tier 1 and tier 2, randomized. That way it is still fair. A tier 2 server may be capable of demolishing that tier 1 server which would provide a massive point fluctuation, which would help rank movements without the help of transfers.

Option 2: A set of explicit rules such as:

If a server has been #1 for three weeks in a row.
AND
If a server in a higher tier has been #3 for three weeks in a row.
THAN
Swap both servers for the following next match.

This would cause a massive fluctuation in points again.

Thoughts? Other ideas?

I like the idea of them introducing something (other than manipulating populations) to disturb the equilibrium between the tiers, but I don’t know how you do it while still being “fair.” The biggest issue is that the competitive balance of WvW has an impact on the game’s economy (albeit a small one) via the world bonuses.

I think simply rearranging the tiers (like swapping a A3 and B1) is probably not enough; you’d probably just end up back where you started sooner or later unless the swap prompts population changes.

EDIT: I should also add that it’d be interesting to see some asymmetric aspects to the various borderlands (perhaps randomized rather than based on rank), although I don’t have specific ideas in mind at the moment. If you did it right you could nudge some servers one way or the other rankwise, but it would come across as either kicking the bottom ranked servers while they’re down or giving the winners more help than they need, which isn’t ideal.

What I think is really needed is a system that provides incentives for the servers in 2nd/3rd place to attack the 1st place team instead of each other. The current system seems to lead to one server racing to a lead and then the other two servers cannibalizing themselves in order to stay out of 3rd place and be moved down a tier. If a system can be devised that makes players want to attack the server in first place, we could then see dynamic swings and alliances in weekly match-ups that would be extremely fun. Any suggestion that requires group cooperation to accomplish goals is probably moot as getting individuals to act accordingly across different time zones is like herding cats. I propose the following:

1. The badge drop rate is lower when not attacking the 1st place team on the server. Probably would require some serious coding, but would then provide individual incentive to attack the first place server until they are no longer in first place.

@actrade
That doesn’t really solve the problem of constantly facing the same servers over and over again. Since if you just 2v1’d the top server than that would cause the top server to go 2nd rank. So 2nd and 3rd rank now attacks 1st place which will COMPLETELY destroy the 1st place server since the original 1st server was already beating the other two.

So basically you get stuck with servers just flipping ranks in the same tier. You are still fighting the same server though.

See, there are many reasons why I am purposing this but I think one big reason is in this example:

this example may or may NOT be true, it is an EXAMPLE
TC has been #1 in tier 3 for two months the entire time. Yet at this very moment, we are actually losing points according to the big picture, but yet in game we are capable of hitting it hard than taking a break since we have a 20k+ point lead. This results in our points going down in the big picture overall server rankings. This prevents us from moving up a tier. This break could be caused by many factors or it could be the fact we are just tired of playing these same servers, so some stop trying as hard since we know we will win. Get it? Having some randomization on server matches, as purposed above would give WvW that spice to keep players coming and keep the efforts high.
Option 2, I believe fixes the problem in my listed example where player efforts are declingso they only put in enough effort to beat the other two servers but not enough to keep raising our points overall in the grand rankings in order to move up a tier.

I think we need a dynamic population cap to even things out so we don’t have 1 server vastly outnumbering the others. Then we can get more variety in matchups. It may also encourage people to move to less populated servers.

This would be solved if they modified points distribution to be always positive if you win, always negative if you loose. The amount of points you gain would be effected by your current rating as similar to now.

Diashame.6328:

This would be solved if they modified points distribution to be always positive if you win, always negative if you loose. The amount of points you gain would be effected by your current rating as similar to now.

This makes a lot of sense. If you aren’t winning by the margin your rating predicts, then you should gain a tiny tiny amount of rating. But you should still gain. Winning and losing rating doesn’t make sense.

I agree the rating system also needs fixed. We would see more movement, but having a more even balance of players at one time on a map would allow a better matchup between more servers.

ykyk.2740:

Diashame.6328:

This would be solved if they modified points distribution to be always positive if you win, always negative if you loose. The amount of points you gain would be effected by your current rating as similar to now.

This makes a lot of sense. If you aren’t winning by the margin your rating predicts, then you should gain a tiny tiny amount of rating. But you should still gain. Winning and losing rating doesn’t make sense.

Rating attempts to predict performance so it does make sense that you can lose rating despite winning. It just means you didn’t win by the amount you were expected to win so your adjusted rating reflects the fact that you aren’t as strong as the system previously thought you were. What doesn’t make sense is when an overperformance by a server allows them to jump in ranking over a server that just beat them. I noticed this a couple of times although it’s very rare.

I agree with option 2 in the first post.

Thanks for keeping this discussion going DB.

I definitely think the current system should go, or at least not use the point ranking for tier placement. The only important thing at this point is what tier you play in, not what your relative rank vs any particular server is.

As long as the mechanism for moving up and down tiers is sensible that should suffice. As I said earlier, something as simple as two consecutive 1st place finishes will switch you with the 3rd place finisher of the tier above who has at least two 3rd place finishes. This would move consistent 3rd place finishers down and consistent 1st place finishers up.

actrade is also correct though, there should be more incentive to double team 1st. The point based system has trouble, especially in matchups like tier 3 where TC (1st palce) has a population advantage. DAoCs relic based win conditions helped (where you captured relics and placed them in keeps until they were reclaimed), but forced the current winner into a heavily defensive mode (usually against the other two). I don’t think there are any easy answers for tier 3 problems.

I am enjoying balanced match ups and building rivalries. We have many KOS guilds from SOR and BG.
Not wanting to sound rude but if you want to move up, win by more. We on IOJ are losing by much so I think we are where we belong. If we get smashed and you guys dominate we might swap till then have fun.
In the same way BG needs to push hard for a few weeks if they want to escape us.

Yes there is an easy answer. Make a dynamic population cap that covers all the maps. You take the server with the lowest wvw population in total add lets say 40, then divide that by 4, and that’s your population cap for each map. If it creates huge queues on the more populated server then they can just deal with it or move to a less populated server. The current system is only encouraging people to move to more populated servers.

uhohhotdog.3598:

Yes there is an easy answer. Make a dynamic population cap that covers all the maps. You take the server with the lowest wvw population in total add lets say 40, then divide that by 4, and that’s your population cap for each map. If it creates huge queues on the more populated server then they can just deal with it or move to a less populated server. The current system is only encouraging people to move to more populated servers.

This.

I’d also support the teaming of two servers as one WvW team, in order to try and keep the population as high as possible…. anything really, servers vastly outnumbering their opponent needs to be fixed.

You guy complaining about fighting the same people for 5 weeks, how about fighting the same people for over 2 months
thanks… kaineng/DR/Ferg

But i have to admit, fighting the same people does get tiring, and having new opponents on a daily basis would be pretty fun

You are fighting the same people because the system has decided it’s the most fair matchup you can get. If that’s the case then I don’t know why you’re complaining.

Getting crushed or crushing your opponents is no fun,

waeren.9743:

You are fighting the same people because the system has decided it’s the most fair matchup you can get. If that’s the case then I don’t know why you’re complaining.

Getting crushed or crushing your opponents is no fun,

Except we can’t tell for sure. Look at Borlis Pass for example – they were stuck in tier 7 for a long while never able to break out, and only managed to do so when the HoD/ET train reached the lower tiers and blew the tiers apart for awhile. Now they’re pushing tier 5. For all we know, they could have been tier 5 level all along but somehow the rating system had prevented them from moving up without outside help in the form of crashing servers.

As far as fair matchup goes, I still think we’re doing quite fine. Comparing the EU top tiers vs NA top tiers shows much much more balance on the NA side, even though each tier still has a clear favorite. It’s just that there’s always an issue of stagnation.

I think if we can see the actual names of the invaders it will be a little more fun. Developing a sense of rivalry towards someone can keep me from being jaded over the overall lack of incentives and fighting the same servers in wvw. It also makes me more determined to play better if only for a little more glory.

ykyk.2740:

waeren.9743:

You are fighting the same people because the system has decided it’s the most fair matchup you can get. If that’s the case then I don’t know why you’re complaining.

Getting crushed or crushing your opponents is no fun,

Except we can’t tell for sure. Look at Borlis Pass for example – they were stuck in tier 7 for a long while never able to break out, and only managed to do so when the HoD/ET train reached the lower tiers and blew the tiers apart for awhile. Now they’re pushing tier 5. For all we know, they could have been tier 5 level all along but somehow the rating system had prevented them from moving up without outside help in the form of crashing servers.

As far as fair matchup goes, I still think we’re doing quite fine. Comparing the EU top tiers vs NA top tiers shows much much more balance on the NA side, even though each tier still has a clear favorite. It’s just that there’s always an issue of stagnation.

The problem is figuring out how much that is due to the system or due to people.

I don’t play in the lower bracket but I’m guessing that even a small increase in WvW population can have quite the impact.

People that don’t tend to play WvW might move to or start playing when your server is doing ok. If you can keep those people playing when the server moves up a tier then you might gain the advantage again there. The real test will happen after the first loss.

Tired of fighting same servers? Come join Far Shiverpeaks, we fight different servers each week lately

I feel your pain DivineBeing I think we all feel the same way.

Since numbers matter so much in WvW the only long term solution to this I think is to find a way to better distribute people across the servers. Then we can randomize matchs all the live long day or rate/rank and it will still be fun for everyone and a decent fight.

I have suggested using NPC’s to help under populated servers (like the breakout events they are doing). You could give incentives to transfer down. Get more PvE people to join. I am sure there are a lot of ideas regarding this that I cannot come up with. But population balance would really be a great thing for WvW at this point in time.

I just dont see any other solution to constant rematches and staying in the same tiers forever, aside from transferring your own server.

Yea they need to implement dynamic caps. The current system is lame. The server I’m on is way better than the other two, but they gang up on us so they can stay in the current tier. If we had the same number of people on the map, even a 1v2, we would destroy them.

Dynamic caps are stupid and I hope ANet is smart enough to never listen to these suggestions.

Making some sort of unnecessary limitation to actively prevent people from playing the game? Madness.

“Higher pop servers should just suck it up or switch if they don’t like it.” Well, maybe the reverse is true – lower pop servers should suck it up and step up their game.

It’s the “metagame” – in GW1, part of your success is knowing what builds other teams were likely to run, and designing counters to those popular builds.

WvW Metagame is all about Strategy and Organisation. We see servers getting organised and trying to recruit european and oceanic players. More than the actions of any individual, these sorts of group efforts will contribute to the success of their server.

Hmm, here’s a thought. What about scaling point gain based on enemy population?

So let’s say your server has night-capped the entire map because your opponents have gone to sleep. However, the points you gain per cycle is scaled by the enemy population, so you only gain a small amount of points during this time.

The next day, when your opponents get back into WvW, you will start gaining points at the normal rate again. It’s still an advantage because now you have the whole map, but at least it’s not an insurmountable lead anymore. You actually have to fight to keep the map if you want to gain points from it.

SOS vs JQ vs SBI for 4 weeks
BG vs IOJ vs SOR for 4 weeks
DB vs DH vs NSP for 3 weeks
DR vs FA vs KN for 3 months.

but guys, relax ET and HOD coming to help ya

Sea of Sorrows has a glicko rating of 2149, Sanctum of Rall has a glicko rating of 1940
Sea of Sorrows is 209 rating better than Sanctum of Rall
Sea of Sorrows beat Sanctum of Rall by 20k, 84k, 82k in their three matches.
Sea of Sorrows beat Sanctum of Rall by an average of 62k.

Sanctum of Rall has a glicko rating of 1940, Tarnished Coast has a glicko rating of 1832
Sanctum of Rall is 108 rating better than Tarnished Coast.
Sanctum of Rall beat Tarnished Coast by 477k in their only match.

The system says SoS is 209 rating better than SoR despite only winning by an average of 62k in their matches compare that to SoR being 108 rating better than Tarnished Coast and having won their only match by 477k.

There is a definite problem with the system.

Well, Tarnished Coast has a perfect 100% record against Sea of Sorrows, so there

I kid, of course. But a dynamic pop cap isn’t the answer either. No server should be denied a playing spot because the other servers don’t match up.

Rieselle.5079:

Dynamic caps are stupid and I hope ANet is smart enough to never listen to these suggestions.

Making some sort of unnecessary limitation to actively prevent people from playing the game? Madness.

“Higher pop servers should just suck it up or switch if they don’t like it.” Well, maybe the reverse is true – lower pop servers should suck it up and step up their game.

It’s the “metagame” – in GW1, part of your success is knowing what builds other teams were likely to run, and designing counters to those popular builds.

WvW Metagame is all about Strategy and Organisation. We see servers getting organised and trying to recruit european and oceanic players. More than the actions of any individual, these sorts of group efforts will contribute to the success of their server.

---

Hmm, here’s a thought. What about scaling point gain based on enemy population?

So let’s say your server has night-capped the entire map because your opponents have gone to sleep. However, the points you gain per cycle is scaled by the enemy population, so you only gain a small amount of points during this time.

The next day, when your opponents get back into WvW, you will start gaining points at the normal rate again. It’s still an advantage because now you have the whole map, but at least it’s not an insurmountable lead anymore. You actually have to fight to keep the map if you want to gain points from it.

Telling the smaller servers to step up their game is ridiculous. WvW is a numbers game. Skill only takes over when there is relatively even numbers. Anything that doesn’t even out the numbers is simply a bandaid on the symptom rather than addressing the issue.

I kid, of course. But a dynamic pop cap isn’t the answer either. No server should be denied a playing spot because the other servers don’t match up.

No server would be denied. It would stop everyone from flocking to the higher pop servers and even out numbers. It may be a bit painful in the beginning but once things settle out it’ll be for the better.

WvW meta is fast-response time and giant zergs. Strategy is null when you reach 50 people with supply and blueprints since even fights are rare.

Personally I think they need to merge the NA and EU tiers. This will result in a larger pool with more servers, and thus higher chance of getting equally matched teams and a higher likelihood of differing matchups each week due to smaller score differences between tiers.

For example next weeks matches would be

Tier 1 SoS JQ SBI
Tier 2 VS BG BT
Tier 3 SR Rall AS
Tier 4 IoJ TC BB
Tier 5 Des ER CD
Tier 6 FA YB Kod
Tier 7 PK RS MS
Tier 8 Gan Mag EBay

Of course, one of the repercussions of doing this would be that you’d end up with NA PvDooring during their primetime, and EU PvDooring during their primetime to. While the effects on higher tier 24 / 7 servers wouldn’t be as severe, the constant sway on lower tier servers would be problematic.

Think old Sea of Sorrows before they got the transfers. Constant +500 sways all over the place if they went up against anything but Janthir. TC’s night crew should remember this all to well.

They should just massively buff the outmanned buff. Something like 10x event rewards, so if you take a tower at lvl 80 that’s 40s, take a keep and it’s 80s. That’s something I would go for.

It seems a lot of what people are suggesting wouldn’t fix the original problem of fighting the same few servers for the last few months, despite the fact that your server has consistently been 1st every weeek!

Suggestions such as: Balance the WvW population. Ok, so it makes the match more even. This may flip some server rankings around now, but when the rankings settle again down the road we will be stuck with the same exact problem! Why? A server such as TC could be stuck in this zone, where they don’t belong in tier 3 but yet their rating doesn’t increase enough to tier 2, so the winning server just continues to crush the other two servers, week after week. Btw, not saying this is TC’s situation, just an example.

Suggestion: Merge EU and NA servers together. Again, this would create a more balanced match since all three servers should have 24/7 coverage than. The server rankings willl initially get shuffled but it will settle down and once again back to where we are now.

I am liking the whole, you win = more points, you lose = lose points. The amount of points gained/lost are based on the performance of the match. This will allow servers such as TC move up to tier 2, and IoJ move down to tier 3. IoJ may demolished tier 3 and TC may get crushed in tier 2, but guess what that did? Boosted IoJ’s points high, which may surpass 2nd place tier 2, which could potentially boost IoJ’s morale causing the new 3rd place server to lose points and TC can eventually move back up to tier 2 and that 3rd place server goes down. Same thing can happen in reverse too.

Waffler.1257:

They should just massively buff the outmanned buff. Something like 10x event rewards, so if you take a tower at lvl 80 that’s 40s, take a keep and it’s 80s. That’s something I would go for.

I agree, and automatic upgrade to reinforced gates and walls for the losing team’s towers.

I am not get tried of always fighting sbi and jq they are very good Competitors I am enjoy the hard fights

If they merge the servers they will have to get the overflow acting as how hubs worked in GW1. You had an drop down menu in the top corner that told you which “overflow” server you were in and you could transfer to any of them that had room. It made for grouping up much easier. Otherwise everything will have overflow like at launch but without controlling which overflow you are in, grouping is a pain.

Well, this week makes 6 Tier 3 wins, in a row, for Tarnished Coast, and 3rd place 5 out of the last 6 weeks for Isle of Janthir (They managed to stay out of third by ~2600 points a couple weeks ago).

Also, TC winning this match by about 70,000 points at the moment, and projected to still lose ranking points. IoJ is 23,000 behind 2nd place, and nearly 50,000 behind first, and they’re projected to gain points.

This has to change.

At least you have some change in your brackets server wise, in Tier 2 its been BG vs. SoR vs. IoJ for 4 weeks going on 5.

DemonCow.5328:

Well, this week makes 6 Tier 3 wins, in a row, for Tarnished Coast, and 3rd place 5 out of the last 6 weeks for Isle of Janthir (They managed to stay out of third by ~2600 points a couple weeks ago).

Also, TC winning this match by about 70,000 points at the moment, and projected to still lose ranking points. IoJ is 23,000 behind 2nd place, and nearly 50,000 behind first, and they’re projected to gain points.

This has to change.

As a statistician, I guarantee you that Isle of Janthir would wreck Tier 3 if they dropped down and TC moved up (conversely, TC will be wrecked in Tier 2).

The Glicko measures performance; the fact that we have several tiers in perpetual match-ups is evidence of its accuracy.

Iohanna.4863:

DemonCow.5328:

Well, this week makes 6 Tier 3 wins, in a row, for Tarnished Coast, and 3rd place 5 out of the last 6 weeks for Isle of Janthir (They managed to stay out of third by ~2600 points a couple weeks ago).

Also, TC winning this match by about 70,000 points at the moment, and projected to still lose ranking points. IoJ is 23,000 behind 2nd place, and nearly 50,000 behind first, and they’re projected to gain points.

This has to change.

As a statistician, I guarantee you that Isle of Janthir would wreck Tier 3 if they dropped down and TC moved up (conversely, TC will be wrecked in Tier 2).

The Glicko measures performance; the fact that we have several tiers in perpetual match-ups is evidence of its accuracy.

Your argument is making one big assumption. The assumption that the entire playerbase of said #1 server in the tier is loving playing against the same two opponents week after week after week, when in fact a lot of players don’t. So what do said players do? They stop playing since it is boring OR they play just enough to beat the other two servers as if that really matters. Than what happens? That servers rating goes down because there performance wasn’t where it was.

That is a MAJOR flaw in the ratings. So you cannot make an accurate guess based on server ratings in this situation.

Iohanna.4863:

As a statistician, I guarantee you that Isle of Janthir would wreck Tier 3 if they dropped down and TC moved up (conversely, TC will be wrecked in Tier 2).

The Glicko measures performance; the fact that we have several tiers in perpetual match-ups is evidence of its accuracy.

Glicko is great at ranking players(servers) with the assumption that players actually play against various opponents. If they play against the same opponent over and over, their rating will only become useful in predicting their performance against the same opponent. Yak’s Bend is a good example for this. After four matches against TC and three against FA, their rating reflected their performance against those two servers. Thanks to CD jumping in rating which put it back in T3 and threw YB to T4, we got to see how useful YB’s rating was in comparison to Mag and EB. YB is currently losing about 40 points, the biggest change since the match that helped them enter T3.

It has been over a month since TC got smashed by SoR. It should be noted that in that match, orbs were still in place and there was no third server to stabilize the score. I don’t think we can definitely say that IoJ is that much stronger than TC although it may be the case.

Iohanna.4863:

DemonCow.5328:

Well, this week makes 6 Tier 3 wins, in a row, for Tarnished Coast, and 3rd place 5 out of the last 6 weeks for Isle of Janthir (They managed to stay out of third by ~2600 points a couple weeks ago).

Also, TC winning this match by about 70,000 points at the moment, and projected to still lose ranking points. IoJ is 23,000 behind 2nd place, and nearly 50,000 behind first, and they’re projected to gain points.

This has to change.

As a statistician, I guarantee you that Isle of Janthir would wreck Tier 3 if they dropped down and TC moved up (conversely, TC will be wrecked in Tier 2).

The Glicko measures performance; the fact that we have several tiers in perpetual match-ups is evidence of its accuracy.

Maybe IoJ needs a win after weeks without seeing first place, and TC could use a good beating and a chance to see what the differences are between them and the tier 2 servers. Obviously if they don’t belong there, and the match ups are as bad as you claim, they wouldn’t be there for long.

Part of the problem with the Glicko system is that we’re dealing with a very large number of humans in each group. Many people get discouraged by losing constantly, or having the same match up over and over again. Many people will stop playing or transfer servers.

Also, the ratings are inherently flawed if the same servers are always playing each other. If every single player transferred out of tier 2 (clearly not realistic), then they should rapidly lose points, but they wont, because no one else ever plays against them. The other 21 servers would all beat a 0 population server, but unless someone could lose badly enough in tier 1 or win by enough points in tier 3, this system would never adjust for the fact that tier 2 now contained the worst 3 servers.

You cannot isolate group of 3 servers and expect the rankings to be accurate when the players on each server are (for the most part) constantly getting better, learning new strategies, and the populations of the servers are all fluctuating.

This system would work perfectly to rank all of the servers if the populations were never changing, the players were never evolving, the effort for each server was always the same, and the players weren’t humans that desire some sort of diversity once in a while.

All I can say is:
I want a rematch with SoS.
I want to fight SBI (since I used to be on that server.)
I want to fight JQ again (For old times sake, from when I was on SBI.)

I think that if there’s a tier where one server wins 3 weeks in a row, and the server above them looses those same 3 weeks, then the wining server from below and the loosing server from above automatically switch, regardless of their rating.

I think the big question is how valuable it is to offer a change of opponents. As I see it the consistent 1st place servers need a chance to prove themselves at a higher tier and a consistent 3rd place servers need a potential morale booster as well as giving the lower tier opponents a chance to prove that they can take on a better server and a learning opportunity to learn from a better server.

The more I think about this and the current state of the matchups it seems like more movement through the tiers would be preferrable to “better” matchups.

The simple solution is in front of everyone.
Win = positive points
Loss = negative
>< = +/- to balance under Glicko System
You would get massive points if you caused an upset and less points if your expected to win but you wouldn’t lose points for winning which in my opinion is kitten

You still would get weeks of the same opponents building good rivalries and having balanced matches with those constantly winning eventually getting their chance in the upper tiers.

I’d just like A-net to randomize the team colors (and therefore the starting positions in EB) every week. I wish I could start out in the blue corner one week, the green corner the next week, and the red corner a different week, regardless of the relative score of my server to the other servers in the tier.

I think it would alleviate a lot of the feeling of stagnation in matchups that don’t change much for weeks on end. New towers and keeps to defend and capture. New supply routes. New strategies that would have to be employed.

I think it’d be a better solution than all of a sudden having wildly mismatched servers fighting each other for a week. That would just lead to one server quickly dominating and the other servers getting rolled and everyone losing interest in a day or two of the matchup. The dominating server would have nothing left to take, the losing servers would have no interest in automatically getting steamrolled whenever they tried anything.

Yes.

Balance populations, then randomize the matches every week.

Get rid of tiers just give the winning server some benefit, such as a giant trophy in EB or BL or LA, a couple hundred badges to all who participated in WvW, and a couple free siege. You can keep rankings for servers just for bragging rights.

This would remove repeat play fatigue, it would remove out of balance matches, it would give some incentive to win, might draw in some PvE’s, remove the we are losing because we are outmanned excuse. I would really love to play a different group of people every week would give us all something to look forward to on reset, especially if we had equally matched populations. That unknown was what made WvW fun at the start, you would get suprised with what your enemy did day to day. Now with repeat matches its like playing the same day over and over again for weeks.

Any relative ranking system will fall apart if you have insulated groups that only ever play people amongst their given group. The result is that each sever in a given tier is very accurately ranked is relation to the other servers of the same tier but tiers are not accurately ranked in relation to each other.

This means that there has to be a mechanic put in place to artificially increase movement amongst tiers to make sure the tier ranking remains accurate.

It is important to note that WvW is designed to give an advantage to a losing server, and makes it hard for a winning server to achieve complete dominance(winner has more land to cover, more likely to get 2v1ed, the new shielded catapult crap, etc), this too is a problem as it tends to keep scores closer, thus making it harder to win/lose by large margins thus reducing potential rating changes.

The best way to fix this in my opinion is simply to give a value to W/L, to only compare scores promotes stagnancy as WvW in itself is built to promote close win margins. You can easily see this when a server that just increased in tier suddenly win rating even if losing, because it “didn’t lose by enough”, which is not a by-product of their skill but of the way WvW is designed.

Edit: I don’t think rebalancing population would work, the obvious reason is that if for example all tier 8 servers suddenly became overpopulated at the same time, they still wouldn’t move up, because they would only be rated in relation to each other and not to the others, and adding population and than removing tiers would just result in wvw oriented servers destroying pve oriented servers who would never get to enjoy wvw, which is the situation we want to avoid with a ranking system.

Oreo.1503:

I don’t think rebalancing population would work, the obvious reason is that if for example all tier 8 servers suddenly became overpopulated at the same time, they still wouldn’t move up, because they would only be rated in relation to each other and not to the others, and adding population and than removing tiers would just result in wvw oriented servers destroying pve oriented servers who would never get to enjoy wvw, which is the situation we want to avoid with a ranking system.

I don’t think you understand what balancing the population means. It would mean at a given time you would have 50 on each server fighting each other (or whatever numbers). And the ranking system promotes stagnation and should be removed as a whole, except for bragging rights purposes. At least as far as match ups are concerned. If every server had similar populations at similar times the fights would be relatively equal across all severs.

Isn’t that what we all want, relatively equal and fun fights that vary from time to time to keep us from getting bored? If numbers = win, then if we all have the same numbers then what? Skill = win? Isn’t that what we want?

Imagine playing chess where one side starts with 5 pieces and the other starts with 50. Isn’t that kind of dumb?

WvW in its current incarnation suffers from player attrition due to the matches being too long. 7 days of night capping solidifies the lead for the winning server in most match ups. .

Most servers the 1st 3days they try really hard then the non hardcore players quit. You have a lot of random pug and casual player support at the start of the match and towards the end of the match its just the same old people everyday. Simple solution would be to make matches 72 hours. Then even Tier3 servers could be competitive to T1 servers if they pull all nighters, really pull together for just only 3 days and try. Then we would have a lot more different match ups.

There would be more interest in WvW then because of attrition and the same matches all the time its become stagnant making it even more challenging for servers to move up, only causing servers to move down.

There is also the possibility of dynamic population changes. What about this, if you are in a Q for WvW you get sent to some other server (not in your current match) to fight it out while you wait for the Q to pop. This would add some bodies to other servers, even if just for a short time, it might also promote transfers to smaller servers from big ones. Say your always in a Q on your server, and you try one out in this way and you actually like the community for the time your there, you may be interested in going there perm. Just an idea.