Guild Wars 2

Such un-interesting poll. Can’t you people there at Anet decide these things for yourself? Ask us for grand directions, not some server mixing micromanagement schedule.

Zenith.6403:

Such un-interesting poll. Can’t you people there at Anet decided these things for yourself? Ask us for grand directions, not some server mixing micromanagement schedule.

I very much appreciate the ability to help decide how ANet handles these sorts of lower-level items in addition to the higher-level items. There is no downside as far as the userbase is concerned with them asking for more feedback from us.

Great poll. So many options that you can’t possibly get any sort of definitive direction that the playerbase might want you to go.

Zenith.6403:

Such un-interesting poll. Can’t you people there at Anet decided these things for yourself? Ask us for grand directions, not some server mixing micromanagement schedule.

Nobody is twisting your arm to vote. I for one appreciate the communication, thanks Gaile.

Teon.5168:

Great poll. So many options that you can’t possibly get any sort of definitive direction that the playerbase might want you to go.

Yeah this is pretty much the only problem with it, hopefully they aren’t sticking with that 75% nonsense. If it’s more than 2 choices it needs to be majority wins.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Teon.5168:

Great poll. So many options that you can’t possibly get any sort of definitive direction that the playerbase might want you to go.

Yeah this is pretty much the only problem with it, hopefully they aren’t sticking with that 75% nonsense. If it’s more than 2 choices it needs to be majority wins.

Yup. Agreed.

So this is obviously (hopefully) not a poll where 75% is needed for the majority choice to be implemented. Which I think is good.

This is how a poll should be – give us some choices, see what the players preferences are; but then Anet make the choice of what to do based on our poll driven feedback. This is how the mixed BL vote should have been done.

I would say 3 months is too long. So I think the only two good choices are 1 month or 2 months. (I personally think even 2 months is too long, 4-6 weeks would be the best). Any longer and matchups just get stale. You can see the big drop-off of population after a month.

bit of an odd one, quarterly or every 4 months/? how about perm or not at all as an option. Tier matching and server identity I think could also do with a poll.
still thanks for asking! I voted ( am losing , I think its quite hard to get a decent cross server communication/respect- not looking forward to the swap)

Johje Holan.4607:

So this is obviously (hopefully) not a poll where 75% is needed for the majority choice to be implemented. Which I think is good.

This is how a poll should be – give us some choices, see what the players preferences are; but then Anet make the choice of what to do based on our poll driven feedback. This is how the mixed BL vote should have been done.

I would say 3 months is too long. So I think the only two good choices are 1 month or 2 months. (I personally think even 2 months is too long, 4-6 weeks would be the best). Any longer and matchups just get stale. You can see the big drop-off of population after a month.

I am hoping this is why they made the poll with so many options……just to get a general idea on what the playerbase thinks, but in the end, Anet making the final decision on it.

Reasons why this poll is poor:

1. It’s full of speculation. Might balance, might transfer, might cause additional work. Are we supposed to buy in to your speculations? If server stacking is problem surely there is a solution that directly addresses that and there’s no need for this roundabout way.

2. Server relinking schedule is in no way central to success of this game mode. This is one of those “think this problem for 15 minutes and decide for yourself” type of situation for competent game designers, which we the forum members are not.

3. Poll options are silly. What are you going to do when 35% wants 2 months, 22% wants 6 months, 18% want to keep as is and 5% want 1 month, and 20% don’t want their vote counted and just came to see the results? Then whatever you do 75% won’t like what you did anyway.

4. Team “Don’t count my vote, just let me see the results” is still counted for votes.

Zenith.6403:

4. Team “Don’t count my vote, just let me see the results” is still counted for votes.

I agree with most of your points, however, this is factually not correct, after the poll has ended the percentages will be adjusted by removing the votes that chose this option. They have done this for every previous poll with this option as far as I know, no reason to stop now.

Gaile Gray.6029:

A message from the WvW Team,

The next WvW Poll is up!

https://feedback.guildwars2.com

Please share your thoughts and feedback on the poll in this thread!

Poll is good, but as stated in previous communications, it will be very hard to reach 75% or even 50% with this many selections.

I do however have a question to A-Net about it. Just for example, if lets say the end results will be 35-40ish % for 1 month, 35-40ish % for 2 months, then all the rest combined into the other selections, will the outcome be 1 month or 2 months ? Or will it remain at 3 months (current) even though 3 months receives about half the votes of the other selections ?

Another words, if the vast majority of the votes is to lower the time servers are linked, regardless if its 2 or 3 months, but neither 2 or 3 month selections reach 75 or 50 %, will things change or remain the same ?

Currently a quarterly reevaluating is way too long. The spread in glicko does not shrink in EU. I do not know how it is in NA. This means that the linking is bad at the moment. Therefore we need a higher frequency in reevaluations.

It needs to be done montlhy or in every match lol… population is a to unstable value, for this system.

It’s good to see that the polls are still getting posted in the forum.

Anything that avoids server stacking will do better to balance population. So every month would be best in that regard although those that are willing spend money to stack cannot be stopped.

Unfortunately the linking will transform the types of cultures that exists on the guest servers. They will become like roadside motels or hostels. Shady and transient.

I feel bad for those that invested their time to build those communities. They should be compensated somehow.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

This poll does not require a 75% supermajority vote. If a poll requires 75% approval, the poll question will explicitly state that.

That would have been great on the last poll. Then I might be getting content back I paid for.

I think this poll is going to be biased. The servers that are winning are going to vote for less frequent world linking and the losing servers would vote for more frequent world linking.

Hey Gaile, has the though of multiple combinations per color been considered, such as three servers versus one, rather than a split 2 vs 2? This gives room for way more exploration and dynamism in the matchmaking while maintaining balance given the proper data.

My vote still sits on an AI to do it weekly and automatically with semi-randomness on the number of linked servers as to totally balance the tri-server matchup (so even the number of tiers is volatile to make for better matchups), so you don’t need to waste time trying to evaluate what heuristic data should be considered to make and map out the best matchups.

Or is that the grand scheme and the manually-performed matchups are just shaping the way it learns?

Faster rotations mean nothing if the matches aren’t balanced. A whole month is a really long time to go getting stomped or stomping. Without that kind of information aside from a general “loss of fairness” as a con (which is huge), I’m not sure if people can vote intelligently.

Uh oh maybe I spoke too soon about this being the way to do it. Looks like people who think 3 months is too long are splitting their votes between 1 and 2 months. That could give the win to the unwanted choice.

Maybe they should’ve said:
1. Less than quarterly.
2. Quarterly.
3. More than quarterly.

" A whole month is a really long time to go getting stomped or stomping. Without that kind of information aside from a general “loss of fairness” as a con (which is huge), I’m not sure if people can vote intelligently."

That is a lot better than 3 months of the same…. I voted monthly, but every other month isn’t too bad….

Keep in mind that a monthly reevaluation does not mean new links on monthly base. If the spread in glicko looks fine there is no need to change links.

thanks for the poll and….
add more colors to the pie chart.

I wish “Quarterly” said “three months” instead of quarterly.

The options for the poll should have been more simple.

Reevaluate match-ups every month.
Reevaluate match-ups every 2 months.
Reevaluate match-ups every 3 months, (current quarterly schedule).

4 or 6 months is not needed.

The german translation for the “Every other month” option is wrong. It basically says “Every few months” when it should mean “Every two months”.

Just FYI the right translation would be “Matchups alle zwei Monate überprüfen.” not “Matchups alle paar Monate überprüfen.”

I voted monthly to give the WvW devs some work to do.

Kylden Ar.3724:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

This poll does not require a 75% supermajority vote. If a poll requires 75% approval, the poll question will explicitly state that.

That would have been great on the last poll. Then I might be getting content back I paid for.

Again, there was nothing added in WvW that was taken away that you paid for in the X-Pac. The map was available whether you bought HoT or not!!!

voted monthly since there is no “no” option, monthly will make them not only evaluate the servers, but evaluate their way of doing things.

Johje Holan.4607:

Uh oh maybe I spoke too soon about this being the way to do it. Looks like people who think 3 months is too long are splitting their votes between 1 and 2 months. That could give the win to the unwanted choice.

Maybe they should’ve said:
1. Less than quarterly.
2. Quarterly.
3. More than quarterly.

I hope that in the case no one option gets > 50%, the developers will interpret data in a fashion least likely to alienate the majority.

At the time I write this, the shorter options add up to being the most popular.

Monthly at 32.7%, per 2 months at 19.2%, per 3 months at 27.7%, per 4 months at 4%, and per 6 months at 9.1%, and No Vote at 7.4%.

There are (at this moment) a lot of people who want a relink duration shorter than the current plan, a fair number who want the duration to stay the same, and relatively few who want a longer linking period.

Based on this data, a relinking period of 6-8 weeks would probably work as a reasonable compromise. A period of 12+ weeks would not be justified by these results.

Heimlich.3065:

Johje Holan.4607:

Uh oh maybe I spoke too soon about this being the way to do it. Looks like people who think 3 months is too long are splitting their votes between 1 and 2 months. That could give the win to the unwanted choice.

Maybe they should’ve said:
1. Less than quarterly.
2. Quarterly.
3. More than quarterly.

I hope that in the case no one option gets > 50%, the developers will interpret data in a fashion least likely to alienate the majority.

At the time I write this, the shorter options add up to being the most popular.

Monthly at 32.7%, per 2 months at 19.2%, per 3 months at 27.7%, per 4 months at 4%, and per 6 months at 9.1%, and No Vote at 7.4%.

There are (at this moment) a lot of people who want a relink duration shorter than the current plan, a fair number who want the duration to stay the same, and relatively few who want a longer linking period.

Based on this data, a relinking period of 6-8 weeks would probably work as a reasonable compromise. A period of 12+ weeks would not be justified by these results.

Every six weeks would be a good option, imo.

TorquedSoul.8097:

Unfortunately the linking will transform the types of cultures that exists on the guest servers. They will become like roadside motels or hostels. Shady and transient.

I feel bad for those that invested their time to build those communities. They should be compensated somehow.

I’m with ya Torque. We’re trying to be optimistic about what our communities can do with this situation we are stuck with, so…..

For those of us who are permanent guests with no home to call our own, the only option I see going forward is to embrace it and make it part of our culture – on Kaineng, our guild is leaning towards rebranding us as the Party Bus since we’re already known as a great place for non-serious fight-lovin’ roamers; I guess we will just be the best traveling circus we can be! As far as ‘shady and transient’ goes, that resonates because well, we were already a little shady.

Here’s to whatever we can make of it! And to our T8 kin, best of luck and hoot hoot from Owls.

Nanesh

Are the needs of the EU and NA servers similar enough to warrant either community have their outcome decided by the other? What if NA and EU players end up wanting different things?

Wouldn’t it be a lot easier if you guys at Arena Net actually took the time to read posts that are constructive, that has suggestions on how to improve stuff in general and such instead of making polls that totally miss the mark by, well, a mile perhaps? It’s been out for a while now and the forums have been filled with tons of posts with suggestions on improvements and what not, but to little avail it seems. We as players can only wish for things on the forum.

once a month sounds fine. thanks anet for the communication.

I don’t know if it’s possible but I feel this poll should have been restricted to the linked servers voting on their fate, not the host worlds. Just a thought.

sionnach.5391:

TorquedSoul.8097:

Unfortunately the linking will transform the types of cultures that exists on the guest servers. They will become like roadside motels or hostels. Shady and transient.

I feel bad for those that invested their time to build those communities. They should be compensated somehow.

I’m with ya Torque. We’re trying to be optimistic about what our communities can do with this situation we are stuck with, so…..

For those of us who are permanent guests with no home to call our own, the only option I see going forward is to embrace it and make it part of our culture – on Kaineng, our guild is leaning towards rebranding us as the Party Bus since we’re already known as a great place for non-serious fight-lovin’ roamers; I guess we will just be the best traveling circus we can be! As far as ‘shady and transient’ goes, that resonates because well, we were already a little shady.

Here’s to whatever we can make of it! And to our T8 kin, best of luck and hoot hoot from Owls.

Nanesh

I sure hear ya, Nanesh. Good to read that you’re going to try to make the best of it.

Pretty sure, since they opened most of the servers for transfers again…..that I am going to move my 2nd account back to Kaineng(to help my wife and guild when they might be doing some wvw)…..but think I am going to find a solid T2-T3 host server for my main account. I am not relishing getting tossed around as the guest server……time to get my main on a good host…..some place that is not treated as an asterisk, and some place that is not near constant blob wars.

Sad times. (Although will still see you out there on my 2nd account from time to time)

I bet the people advocating a long schedule are the ones who transferred to the low-tier servers, thus bypassing T1 being locked down. Maybe you developers should have thought this through and seen it coming by locking down the linked server too from accepting transfers. The “full” status is a joke when they can just go to the linked one.

msalakka.4653:

I bet the people advocating a long schedule are the ones who transferred to the low-tier servers, thus bypassing T1 being locked down. Maybe you developers should have thought this through and seen it coming by locking down the linked server too from accepting transfers. The “full” status is a joke when they can just go to the linked one.

That may be so, but they’re free to advocate for what they see as their interests. I personally voted for a shorter option but that is a case of me voting for my own interests as well.

Loosmaster.8263:

I don’t know if it’s possible but I feel this poll should have been restricted to the linked servers voting on their fate, not the host worlds. Just a thought.

+1 For the hamburger patties!

Re-evaluating links every 8 weeks looks good for now, I think this interval can be increased after a few rounds as the details of the linking system are solidly worked out. What’s IMO more important for NA is looking more at population levels + time zones when linking servers, not all servers need to be linked especially T1/T2.

In the longer run, a post from the dev team giving more details about server linking plans would be great. Things like how does a guest server move up to being a host server, what steps are planned to give guest servers more of an identity on the map/showing their name on claims ect.

Loosmaster.8263:

I don’t know if it’s possible but I feel this poll should have been restricted to the linked servers voting on their fate, not the host worlds. Just a thought.

they have the tech to look at the responses like that while also tallying it for everyone anyways

I’m here right now just to say, that everyone who votes for a ridiculousy monthly checking of the match matching basically votes for “I want to kill WvW”…

Seriously, give the devs a break, they have way much more important things to do with WvW, than to check every 30 days new match makings and balance them out…

This gets seriously out of control here…

I absolutely dont want to see way more important things like Game Balance for WvW massively getting slowed down or adding of important and good feature improvements because of ""oh we need to make nowcour monthly match of reasearch, sorry, have no time for this now … have to make match making research ,because you want us to waste time every month with such crap and voted for it …"

I find it just to say even more unbearable, that they even let us vote for this very terrible choice … what are you thinking????

But I don’t want all my new friends to leave us ;-(

Orpheal.8263:

I’m here right now just to say, that everyone who votes for a ridiculousy monthly checking of the match matching basically votes for “I want to kill WvW”…

Seriously, give the devs a break, they have way much more important things to do with WvW, than to check every 30 days new match makings and balance them out…

This gets seriously out of control here…

I absolutely dont want to see way more important things like Game Balance for WvW massively getting slowed down or adding of important and good feature improvements because of ""oh we need to make nowcour monthly match of reasearch, sorry, have no time for this now … have to make match making research ,because you want us to waste time every month with such crap and voted for it …"

I find it just to say even more unbearable, that they even let us vote for this very terrible choice … what are you thinking????

they will prolly find a way to automate it if it takes more than about 1-3 devs 1 day to do it.

Loosmaster.8263:

Again, there was nothing added in WvW that was taken away that you paid for in the X-Pac. The map was available whether you bought HoT or not!!!

While factually accurate, it is still relevant to consider the desert borderland map as part of Heart of Thorns… the new borderlands map was one of the major core features showcased during the expansion announcement. Whether people got it for free or not doesn’t change that.

Actually, it is is still advertised as a core addition to WvW on the HoT website. They allowed non-expansion players to access the map because it was the only reasonable option in terms of how WvW works, ie. they had no choice. Doesn’t change the fact that without HoT the map would not exist and the expansion pack was what allowed it to exist. This is a fact regardless of what anyone thinks of the map in the end.

The fact that “You got it for free anyways, so you wouldn’t have had to buy the expansion” makes up a convenient excuse, in the case of the maps potential removal, in order to dismiss concerns of people who like the map is just interpreting things in a way that is favorable for your opinion.

Orpheal.8263:

I’m here right now just to say, that everyone who votes for a ridiculousy monthly checking of the match matching basically votes for “I want to kill WvW”…

Seriously, give the devs a break, they have way much more important things to do with WvW, than to check every 30 days new match makings and balance them out…

I think the intrepid developers can largely automate this process. At the very worst, they should automate a report that shows world activity levels and suggests a few linkings/configurations with information on what would happen. There’s no reason the act of creating re-links should take more than a handful of person-hours.

The other interpretation is that a vote of re-linking every month means “the negative aspects of Server Linking are already bad for WvW”. That would seem to conflict with the overwhelmingly positive response in the linking poll from a few weeks back, but imprecise poll phrasing can mean your poll measures something different than what you wanted.

Server linking was bundled in with some very positive and/or popular changes (return of ABL and reward tracks for examples). DBL was bundled with some pretty unpopular and negative changes (T3 gates, auto-upgrades that didn’t need yaks, 50 supply Guild Catas, etc…).

This is a very hard poll to interpret. So what if the largest slice vote for a shorter period, but even more vote for the same or longer, as currently seems to be the case? You would really need a transferable vote, but I’m not really suggesting that – it would be way too complex!

I think you, Anet, need to make your own decision, based on the overall balance of feeling in this poll, but not a simple “biggest slice wins”.

Crise.9401:

Loosmaster.8263:

Again, there was nothing added in WvW that was taken away that you paid for in the X-Pac. The map was available whether you bought HoT or not!!!

While factually accurate, it is still relevant to consider the desert borderland map as part of Heart of Thorns… the new borderlands map was one of the major core features showcased during the expansion announcement. Whether people got it for free or not doesn’t change that.

Actually, it is is still advertised as a core addition to WvW on the HoT website. They allowed non-expansion players to access the map because it was the only reasonable option in terms of how WvW works, ie. they had no choice. Doesn’t change the fact that without HoT the map would not exist and the expansion pack was what allowed it to exist. This is a fact regardless of what anyone thinks of the map in the end.

The fact that “You got it for free anyways, so you wouldn’t have had to buy the expansion” makes up a convenient excuse, in the case of the maps potential removal, in order to dismiss concerns of people who like the map is just interpreting things in a way that is favorable for your opinion.

Then stop saying “You paid for it”.