Guild Wars 2

Dear ArenaNet,

I think everybody (including yourselves) is well aware that you cater to whomever whines the loudest. Normally these are players unskilled or unfamiliar with certain elements of the game whose egos demand that they be able to succeed any challenge within their first few efforts. They try, try, try again, never adjusting their tactics, and then cry and stomp their feet when the world does not conform to their expectations.

To be certain, as you are a commercial company interested in marketing a product to as broad a population base as possible, it makes sense for you to be inclusive and accommodating.

The reason I am writing this is because that desire to be inclusive is having quite a contrary effect at present on World vs World. Due to the excessive queue times and incredible lag, you are making the game exclusive to individuals who have the time (and/or patience) and computer quality to tolerate the obstacles to gameplay.

Unlike the PvE environments of Guild Wars 2, which have overflows and numerous zones, WvW has four maps and no overflows. With the introduction of a wealth of achievement points to be had in WvW, individuals who rarely (if ever) entered the Mists before have now flocked to it, choking the queues with people who have no concept of zerg mechanics, siege priorities, or any of the other metagame that servers rely on to succeed.

The purpose of this post is to encourage you to recognize that, by the very nature of WvW’s set-up, it is an exclusive game mode, and that its exclusivity should cater to those people who have shown their dedication to it before it became the bandwagon-du-jour.

I would recommend that the queue system be overhauled to give priority in the queue to those people who are entering WvW on characters with higher rank. Someone who is rank 50 should not be waiting for a dozen people rank 1-5 to get in, run around like headless chickens, and get into arguments with the commanders who are desperately trying to maintain the server’s rank. Nor should someone who is rank 100 be waiting on someone’s rank 25 alt, which does not have all of the appropriate masteries unlocked.

We are in the competitive WvW season now. This is not the time for people to suddenly take an interest in this game mode, or waste space with low ranks/up-levels.

The longer it takes you to realize this, ArenaNet, the more you are going to lose the support and good graces of your dedicated players — the ones who have played your game for 1000+ hrs, purchased gems, and are most likely to support your future products.

I realize that I will not receive the benefit of public support for this with the great number of PvE players flocking to this forum to complain about basic WvW mechanics obstructing their quick-and-easy acquisition of achievement points, therefore I ask that people who WvW regularly share how they feel about the oppressive queue times and posited solution.

Regards,
Provost

While I agree with the majority of your message your opening statement is untrue.

That isn’t the trend even if you poiint out a few instances of Anet complying to the loud minority because equally so they have done some things that contradict what the loud minorities have been whining about forever because they have their own system of seeing numbers.

IT IS NOT A QUEUE.

IT IS A POOL.

azizul.8469:

IT IS NOT A QUEUE.

IT IS A POOL.

Please elaborate, and provide quotes or links if you’re saying what I believe you are saying. It’s my experience that it’s first-in-first-out, I’d like to see if you can demonstrate that it’s not.

Provost.6210:

azizul.8469:

IT IS NOT A QUEUE.

IT IS A POOL.

Please elaborate, and provide quotes or links if you’re saying what I believe you are saying. It’s my experience that it’s first-in-first-out, I’d like to see if you can demonstrate that it’s not.

Ok, I queue for 15 minutes.
A quildy on teamspeak says, “Hello which borderland tonight?”.
We tell him and he joins queue.
Two minutes later he says, “I’m in, woot”
15 minutes further on, I am still queuing. —- Aliens!

Provost.6210:

I would recommend that the queue system be overhauled to give priority in the queue to those people who are entering WvW on characters with higher rank. Someone who is rank 50 should not be waiting for a dozen people rank 1-5 to get in, run around like headless chickens, and get into arguments with the commanders who are desperately trying to maintain the server’s rank. Nor should someone who is rank 100 be waiting on someone’s rank 25 alt, which does not have all of the appropriate masteries unlocked.

We are in the competitive WvW season now. This is not the time for people to suddenly take an interest in this game mode, or waste space with low ranks/up-levels.

I agree with the intent of why you wrote this but completely and utterly disagree with your priority system. Your $60 plus whatever you spend in microtransactions are equally as valid as a casual player’s money. Therefore, they should be given access to the content in the same way you are. Ultimately, we all agree there is a problem with the queue system, especially the randomness of it (ie: you wait 4 hours someone else gets in after 10 min, you get in and see no more than 40 of your allies on a map but the enemy has uber-zergs, etc.). The solution isn’t to discourage players, it is to find a solution more equitable through better game development. I think Anet will get there, just not sure when.

Provost.6210:

azizul.8469:

IT IS NOT A QUEUE.

IT IS A POOL.

Please elaborate, and provide quotes or links if you’re saying what I believe you are saying. It’s my experience that it’s first-in-first-out, I’d like to see if you can demonstrate that it’s not.

it is not behaving like the normal queue we think it is. it is more like a pool with random selection of who get to enter the EB/BL …..

First tier problems

Also, to be constructive, I’ll add that, any bias towards higher ranked players over lower ranked then creates the problem of preventing lower ranked players (potentially just new and wanting to try something new) from ever progressing at all, while higher ranked players continue to be able to play without waiting, increasing rank further, increasing the gap between themselves and new players, making new players wait even longer, etc etc.

I won’t deny that waiting in a queue for a significant portion of the game is painful. But biasing against new/low rank players is a terrible (and elitist) solution. If anything, the reverse would be better: bias towards low rank new players. It would allow new players to try it out, and since they wouldn’t likely be playing for 20 hours a day like some, the queue would cycle faster, more people would be waiting shorter amounts of time (i.e. Shortest Job First scheduling).

But in the end, they’ve announced the Edges of the Mists that’s in development, and that should hopefully solve this issue anyway. True PvE players will be satisfied with that temporary, non-scoring area, while new players actually interested in learning WvW, and WvW vets alike, will be able to remain in a much shorter queue for the real thing.

Provost.6210:

azizul.8469:

IT IS NOT A QUEUE.

IT IS A POOL.

Please elaborate, and provide quotes or links if you’re saying what I believe you are saying. It’s my experience that it’s first-in-first-out, I’d like to see if you can demonstrate that it’s not.

There has been a lot of anecdotal feedback on here that its not FIFO and Devon has admitted that the queues don’t work as we think they should and they are bugged. Someone has even provided a reddit post from Mike Ferguson from months ago admitting that the queues were bugged and needed fixing.

Provost.6210:

Please elaborate, and provide quotes or links if you’re saying what I believe you are saying. It’s my experience that it’s first-in-first-out, I’d like to see if you can demonstrate that it’s not.

Here is a dev statement on this topic:

Devon Carver

Queues will be fixed as part of the new map. They will continue to operate as they have since launch until then. The queue does not function as a typical queue and we are fixing it. It will just take some time. It has been a lower priority than the other things we have done and we’ve only now been able to devote the appropriate resources to it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Bugged-Queues-1/first#post3059071

While they will not admit what exactly is wrong with it, overwhelming anecdotal evidence tells us that it is not first-in, first-out. You regularly hear stories like:

• Two people queue at the same time. One gets in after 10 minutes, the other gets in after an hour.
• One person queues. Another person queues after. Second person gets in after 10 minutes. First person continues to wait two hours without getting in.

This kind of thing is not at all uncommon and happens to me pretty much on a daily basis. Here’s another example: two nights ago, I queued for an hour. Then I logged out, logged back in, requeued, and got in after 3 minutes. A friend was queued that entire time and and didn’t get the queue to pop for another hour after I got in.

I think this thread about FIFO vs. Rank Preference is really jumping the gun, considering the queue doesn’t follow any kind of socially acceptable logic. If the bugged queue bothers you, you can support a thread I made last week. I hope to generate more awareness so we can convince Anet that they need to implement intermediate fixes more quickly.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Discussion-Fixes-for-WvW-queues/first#post3107805

I completely agree with the OP. The season achievement is effecting negatively for last 2 weeks.

1- Too long queueueueueueueueeueueueus
2- Too much PvE players in the map that doesnt contribute the commander in the map causing the unbalance of players and leading the team lose.

Simple as that.

Provost.6210:

azizul.8469:

IT IS NOT A QUEUE.

IT IS A POOL.

Please elaborate, and provide quotes or links if you’re saying what I believe you are saying. It’s my experience that it’s first-in-first-out, I’d like to see if you can demonstrate that it’s not.

Let me tell you your experience is very atypical then. From day one, people have been complaining about guildies queuing later and getting in earlier. If anything i’d love a pure FIFO queue that would be immune to the exploiting that some guilds use to jump the queue at the expense of the rest of us. Also, a FIFO queue could tell you exactly where you stand in the queue, which would help to ease the frustration an awful lot.

So what about the fact that rank is not an indicator of skill, at all, and there is a chance that you on your high rank zergling 1 spamming toon will be taking the place of a more skilled player.

cafard.8953:

Provost.6210:

azizul.8469:

IT IS NOT A QUEUE.

IT IS A POOL.

Please elaborate, and provide quotes or links if you’re saying what I believe you are saying. It’s my experience that it’s first-in-first-out, I’d like to see if you can demonstrate that it’s not.

Let me tell you your experience is very atypical then. From day one, people have been complaining about guildies queuing later and getting in earlier. If anything i’d love a pure FIFO queue that would be immune to the exploiting that some guilds use to jump the queue at the expense of the rest of us. Also, a FIFO queue could tell you exactly where you stand in the queue, which would help to ease the frustration an awful lot.

Agreed, and yes there are many methods to “working” the current queue system.

I’d definitely prefer FIFO, with the single exception that if you get DC’ed from a map, and immediately log back in and queue for the same map again, you jump to the top of the queue.

kingcragus.6810:

So what about the fact that rank is not an indicator of skill, at all, and there is a chance that you on your high rank zergling 1 spamming toon will be taking the place of a more skilled player.

He’s already convinced he’s better than everybody else, so we need to move past that and discuss this horrible idea that the devs would never seriously consider implementing.

This is the second time ive read a post of his concerning, he should get in before anyone else cause his WvW rank and again I say lets take it a step further Mr Provost:

people that are on Anets Private testing group that was selected from people playing in the closed Beta should get in before you
People that bought the game before you should get in before you
People that were in an earloer open beta than you should get in before you
People born on the fourth of July should get in before anyone except those born on christmas

All of the above are as ridiculous as your desired methiod

So you super-stack and stand there, slack-jawed and wonderstruck, that there would be negative repercussions.

The elitism from the OP and those that agree is quite frankly sickening. A person playing WvW for the first time ever has just as much right as someone ranked a Gold Legend because they paid for the game just like the latter person did.

FIFO

Arreyanne.2683:

This is the second time ive read a post of his concerning, he should get in before anyone else cause his WvW rank and again I say lets take it a step further Mr Provost:

people that are on Anets Private testing group that was selected from people playing in the closed Beta should get in before you
People that bought the game before you should get in before you
People that were in an earloer open beta than you should get in before you
People born on the fourth of July should get in before anyone except those born on christmas

All of the above are as ridiculous as your desired methiod

You must be an avid reader of mine, as I’ve only mentioned it twice. Once was in a thread where suggestions regarding how to improve the WvW experience were being discussed. I felt this merited its own thread because, as everybody knows, the queue is something everyone complains about.

I’m entirely respectful of your opinion and that it differs from mine. However, I don’t feel that your tone is appropriate.

Perhaps I should tear a strip off you for not contributing anything constructive.
Perhaps I should call you ignorant for making an incorrect assumption that the appropriate title for me is “Mr”. (My username does, after all, imply a certain level of academic achievement.)
Perhaps I should call you to task on your tragic abuse of the English language.

Any of the above examples of argumentative nonsense would be a page out of your book. Good thing I don’t have to resort to such pageantry as I actually have something to say.

Come on people, Anets RIRO is good enough.

That’s Random In Random Out for those that dont know.

While the OP’s suggestion that high ranks should have priority is laughably short cited and self serving (all players should have equal access to wvw, suck it up) and a far better suggestion would be to remove carebear achievement points from the zone to keep out the pretenders..

azizul.8469:

IT IS NOT A QUEUE.

IT IS A POOL.

This, 100x’s over.

Give people a number, call them in by number, and FOR THE LOVE OF ALL YOUR PLAYERS TELL US WHERE WE ARE IN THE $%#@ing QUEUE.

Stop taking people at random, stop giving people preference just because their group mate is in the zone, stop not giving us any idea on how many people are ahead of us.

AND LET US PLAY OTHER CHARACTERS WHILE QUEUE’D ON OUR MAINS.

I capslock because im mad bro.

The ability to group with guild members and friends should be the #1 priority in WvW.

- Que system. If you are on a populated server that has ques and everyone ques at the same time, people should get pops around the same time. Fix this ASAP.

- Still can’t invite people who are in a non-WvW area. Some people have ASCII characters in their names and makes manually inviting with a /slash command difficult. Why can’t you simply invite people by right-clicking on the chat window… like you can in any other PvE area.

- Still no way to group in game if you have over 5 people for private events/forces. Unless you want an extra 40 people flocking to a commander pin we still don’t have an effective way for multiple groups to run using an in game system for GW2.

Gw2 is one of the most difficult games for coordinating with friends doing PvP. This needs to be a focus.

Provost.6210:

Dear ArenaNet,
I would recommend that the queue system be overhauled to give priority in the queue to those people who are entering WvW on characters with higher rank.

No, and no. Preferential treatments is and are utter BS and ultimately results in segmentation and resentment. I do not care what your level is in WvW, if I get into que before you, tough buddy, you wait like anyone else.