Guild Wars 2

(Not a Match-Up Thread)

Question for Arena Net? Why is Yaks Bend locked. Why has it been locked for this long. I’m not on Yaks Bend. But in all honesty there is a serious problem with the server status reevaluations done every Monday.

Answer: Anet’s server status is based upon an inaccurate algorithm.

Cause its what BG wants.

I think it’s a valid question that needs to be answered by Arena Net.

kefro.9312:

Probably because siege counts as population

^This guy wins the thread lol.

kefro.9312:

Probably because siege counts as population

What he said.

kefro.9312:

Probably because siege counts as population

this is 2017 not 2015…..

My guess is because the algorithm weights how long a player spends doing stuff on a WvW map as well as how many people there are doing it. That would be the “activity” measure.

YB has quite a lot of people who are on the maps 8, 10, 12 hours every single day. Always has had. Maybe that skews the “active” count.

Otherwise, no idea. Algorithm is broken?

Liston.9708:

kefro.9312:

Probably because siege counts as population

this is 2017 not 2015…..

Yeah, but disloyal, bandwagoning “fight” guilds ignorantly perpetuating an old and now highly inaccurate stereotype, whatcha gonna do?

Arcaedus.7290:

Liston.9708:

kefro.9312:

Probably because siege counts as population

this is 2017 not 2015…..

Yeah, but disloyal, bandwagoning “fight” guilds ignorantly perpetuating an old and now highly inaccurate stereotype, whatcha gonna do?

Lol are you trying to say YB doesn’t still hug siege? Because that’s not what I’ve been seeing this week.

Yaks Bend building siege isn’t why they’re locked of course. If that were the case they’d be locking a lot more server other than them.

you guys are funny but im being serious

kefro.9312:

Probably because siege counts as population

I lol’d.

~ Kovu

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Yaks Bend building siege isn’t why they’re locked of course. If that were the case they’d be locking a lot more server other than them.

you guys are funny but im being serious

Pfft no one takes you seriously after you started roleplaying as ultron.
:D

Jim Hunter.6821:

Arcaedus.7290:

Liston.9708:

kefro.9312:

Probably because siege counts as population

this is 2017 not 2015…..

Yeah, but disloyal, bandwagoning “fight” guilds ignorantly perpetuating an old and now highly inaccurate stereotype, whatcha gonna do?

Lol are you trying to say YB doesn’t still hug siege? Because that’s not what I’ve been seeing this week.

Every server has those players that like siege. I see it in the same match up as you. I will say this about YB, on the first day that I came to YB, ( 2 Years ago ) up to now, YB has changed for most of us. We don’t use the amounts of siege that most of you think we do.

Grim Reaper.3048:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Arcaedus.7290:

Liston.9708:

kefro.9312:

Probably because siege counts as population

this is 2017 not 2015…..

Yeah, but disloyal, bandwagoning “fight” guilds ignorantly perpetuating an old and now highly inaccurate stereotype, whatcha gonna do?

Lol are you trying to say YB doesn’t still hug siege? Because that’s not what I’ve been seeing this week.

Every server has those players that like siege. I see it in the same match up as you. I will say this about YB, on the first day that I came to YB, ( 2 Years ago ) up to now, YB has changed for most of us. We don’t use the amounts of siege that most of you think we do.

Everyone uses siege. It used to be that certain Commanders on YB turned it into an art form. That’s what’s stopped because those commanders mostly aren’t playing any more and neither are quite a few players who learned from them and spent hours every day tapping the vast quantities of siege to keep it alive.

A year ago, if certain commanders were taking charge, those structures would be sieged in what they considered the key positions, which would be a lot more than some servers (although not all) would use and often the same siege pieces would still be in place 24 hours later because there would be people watching a stopwatch to refresh them.

Those days are long gone. If you make a character on YB now and truck around the keeps and towers you’ll see very little siege. Mostly siege gets built as and when structures get attacked and when the attack stops no-one bothers to refresh it so it rots.

Personally, I liked the siege culture and I’m sorry to see it go, but gone it most certainly has. Not to say it won’t return. Just needs a few key individuals to come back…

Xenesis.6389:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Yaks Bend building siege isn’t why they’re locked of course. If that were the case they’d be locking a lot more server other than them.

you guys are funny but im being serious

Pfft no one takes you seriously after you started roleplaying as ultron.
:D

dont say ultron before I relapse

Obviously due to the lack of transparency in regards to how Anet calculates population metrics and server population status any answer we give here is speculative at best.

But we shouldn’t get overly concerned about any particular server. What we need to urge is that Anet promote greater transparency when its comes to population metrics. I think it is a thankless and silly job for a Dev(s) to manage WvW populations when they aren’t as knowledgeable as the player base on the subject.

If server linking is the best we can hope for population balance, give the players those population metrics, than formulate some sort of polling system where the players vote on and determine the linkings the week before servers get re-linked.

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Yaks Bend building siege isn’t why they’re locked of course. If that were the case they’d be locking a lot more server other than them.

you guys are funny but im being serious

Does it matter now, really? Most of us have given up on the mode as it’s evident the populations are “managed”.

Play, don’t play, whatever you find fun. Though expecting an answer on population after 4 years is just going to cause you frustration.

it because WvW relink is based on how many hours each player plays in WvW. means yak just has to many hardcore players XD

We don’t actually know that it is based on how many hours a player plays in wvw. Anet has never given specifics on how they measure population.

Does a player on NA servers playing for 2 hours during NA primetime count the same as a player on NA servers playing 2 hours during SEA time? They shouldn’t.

Does a player playing wvw for one hour a week, count the same as a player playing ten hours a week? We don’t know. Anet has never articulated those metrics.

kefro.9312:

Probably because siege counts as population

I love you.

kefro.9312:

Probably because siege counts as population

Someone’s been refreshing those ACs.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Yak’s Bend is among the highest worlds in terms of play hours and ranks gained, which is the primary metric we use to determine which worlds we lock each week.

Just for curiosity : do rank gains/ hours played in EotM count towards this metric (since the player from that server could have played in “main” wvw if there were no queues) ?

Wow such a quick answer.

Thank you very much

i generally dont feel bad if things happen to YB, but they were technically punished for playing WvW too much?? lol makes sense…

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Yak’s Bend is among the highest worlds in terms of play hours and ranks gained, which is the primary metric we use to determine which worlds we lock each week.

So because YB plays x amount of hours, regardless of what tier they are currently in or how long they’ve been there or guilds transferring on/off you’ll lock them if they have to many hours logged? That doesn’t seem like a good way let alone the primary thing you should be using to determine who to lock. Especially when servers like BG have their players stop playing in an attempt to open the server when they’re already doing fine in T1. Surely there is a better way to do this? like see how many individuals log in across each timezone, and how well the servers do keeping objectives/war score over different timezones? Why was something like this not what you use, why are you using wvw ranks gained and hours played agggh this was so frustrating to read as someone who basically only plays WvW, and i know im not the only one feeling this way. Really kind of shattering any hope i had left for WvW here. So disappointed and angry right now.
:(

Does this mean groups could coordinate their ktrain with guild buffs and boosters for maximum rank gain and lock a server?

new meta

Looks to me like Anet is taking the best approach. Hours logged and ranks gained shows participation rates. If BG reduces participation rates, it can’t have more than a short term impact and Anet may even be able to see the anomoly in the data.

Anet basing decisions on participation rates is the best way to smooth population disparity, which leaves skill/cohesiveness of servers/pairings as the primary determinates of success.

Great job, Anet wvw team.

Choppy.4183:

Looks to me like Anet is taking the best approach. Hours logged and ranks gained shows participation rates. If BG reduces participation rates, it can’t have more than a short term impact and Anet may even be able to see the anomoly in the data.

Anet basing decisions on participation rates is the best way to smooth population disparity, which leaves skill/cohesiveness of servers/pairings as the primary determinates of success.

Great job, Anet wvw team.

No, all this shows is that the server is ktraining hard. Im not even from YB and i know it shouldn’t be locked, everyone who plays wvw right now knows it shouldn’t be locked. In t1 where you can’t ktrain like you can in the lower tiers and get wvw levels as well should they be opened? No, this is a terrible way to just population and who they should and shouldn’t lock. To give another example, SBI is getting destroyed by JQ in t2 right now and SBI is locked but JQ isn’t, how does this make any sense.

Maybe because moar numbers ins’t always the solution and locking means that you have to git gud ?

If JQ destroy SBI with less participation that means that either are overall better ? (or coverage issue i don’t know NA enough to tell). Isn’t that good ?

So what if they ktrain? Why would that matter to whether or not a server should be locked?

ich.7086:

Maybe because moar numbers ins’t always the solution and locking means that you have to git gud ?

If JQ destroy SBI with less participation that means that either are overall better ? (or coverage issue i don’t know NA enough to tell). Isn’t that good ?

Coverage is the issue with the JQ/SBI/FA match-up though, JQ simply has more yet they remain open but anet locks the server in third place in the match-up???? SBI doesn’t have much outside of NA, and a bit of EU now with tork moving down from TC. There’s a massive coverage difference between JQ and SBI and it heavily favours JQ. SBI should not be locked.

Choppy.4183:

So what if they ktrain? Why would that matter to whether or not a server should be locked?

Because ktraining gets you wvw levels, which is what the dev said they were using as a metric to determine what worlds to lock?

Just because a server is locked but not winning doesn’t automatically mean they should be unlocked for that reason. There’s a lot of things a server could be doing that does not contribute to winning the week.

Maybe YB doesn’t have a lot of commanders running these days? or doing the right things to win skirmishes? But if they have 2000 active players and not winning, while the server with 1500 active players is winning, doesn’t mean you should open the 2000 player server if they’re over the active population threshold. Just means they need to look at winning their skirmishes, or maybe they don’t even care about that these days.

The only problem with this system is players afking in wvw zones and racking up the time spent, which I suppose why ranks gained also is a factor. But you hear servers like JQ that supposedly has a lot of afk players and you can see why they’ve been locked. Maybe the wvw afk boot timer should be lowered.

GrahamW.5397:

Because ktraining gets you wvw levels, which is what the dev said they were using as a metric to determine what worlds to lock?

They use levels and hours. And ktraining gives levels because it grants wvw score…. So what’s the problem?

So optimal play is to just turtle up on siege and defend only. This will minimize ranks gained (k-training being most ranks gained) and increase the likihood of gaining a linking.

YB siege-up and turtle meta revival incoming then?

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Yak’s Bend is among the highest worlds in terms of play hours and ranks gained, which is the primary metric we use to determine which worlds we lock each week.

By Ranks, you mean you monitor how many WvW ranks are gained and use that to determine population status? Isn’t that a bad idea.

What if a said community just simply uses boosters in WvW and they do nothing besides objective hunting just by nature. Because they enjoy the PPT work even when there are no enemies around. Thus, they could potentially get the most optimal gains from PPT thus increasing their ranks per hour?

So for instance, 1 server lets say this server is full of fighter guilds. This said server could be well populated. To the point where it has coverage 24/7. But the entire server culture revolves around fighting. They will ignore your structures. Because they don’t care or perhaps they are so stacked that they have the majority of structures Tier 3 and nothing flips within their tier. Because nothing flips and no one cares about structures wouldn’t their Rank gains per that said week be less.

What does rank gains have to do with active population?

I can sit in EoTM and Ktrain structures to get to diamond rank. I can take the same principle and apply it to an imbalanced tier.

Lets look at another scenario.
A server with not as much coverage, but they PPT the hardest. As a matter of fact, this server could be drastically outmanned to the point where all they can do is PPT capture what they can get thus being ranks per hour “optimal”. They are back cappers for lack of better terms or perhaps their population isn’t even as dedicated so they have people who would look towards the exp and WvW gains and rewards over the actual act of playing WvW. They would gain more ranks per hour than the stacked fighter server not caring about any objective because there is no need to.

As a matter of fact, the lesser servers cant even defend. So they have to capture objectives and keep moving for the majority of their play time.

In these instances you’re saying the lesser populated PPT server could be hindered by their constant flow of ranks while the fighter server wouldn’t, even though they are indeed bigger and don’t have to take objectives to win. Therefore while they could have a high KDR and very great coverage based off this metric alone it wouldn’t appear that way.

There have been countless times where server were locked for long periods or opened that shouldn’t have ever been locked or opened. This rank metric puts it in perspective for me. I think this is what’s wrong here.

2 weeks ago TC and JQ shouldn’t have been locked.
3 weeks ago till now Yaks Bend shouldn’t have been locked.
4 months ago BG shouldn’t have opened.

MAG was in Tier 1 for months while recruiting tons of players as a fighter community awhile being high and very high status in Tier 1 as big as BG who was locked and this shouldn’t have been the case.

these metrics and numbers don’t actually tell you the levels of activity or the population of our communities.

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

2 weeks ago TC and JQ shouldn’t have been locked.
3 weeks ago till now Yaks Bend shouldn’t have been locked.
4 months ago BG shouldn’t have opened.

BG should be open even now, but for EU players only

PPT has always been a reflection of at-the-moment population levels which can be inflated by players playing longer. Good that the “activity” measurement reflects long participation rates.

PPT = population + coverage

Choppy.4183:

GrahamW.5397:

Because ktraining gets you wvw levels, which is what the dev said they were using as a metric to determine what worlds to lock?

They use levels and hours. And ktraining gives levels because it grants wvw score…. So what’s the problem?

Total hours played and wvw levels aren’t a good indicator of actual coverage or strength of a server. If you played wvw you would see what is wrong with this. They are unlocking servers who shouldn’t be(BG,MAG) and locking servers who have no business being locked (TC recently, SBI,YB).

GrahamW.5397:

Total hours played and wvw levels aren’t a good indicator of actual coverage or strength of a server. If you played wvw you would see what is wrong with this. They are unlocking servers who shouldn’t be(BG,MAG) and locking servers who have no business being locked (TC recently, SBI,YB).

I’ve been playing wvw pretty much exclusively since year two of the game.

As I mentioned earlier, the purpose is to even out population, not strength (which factors in other things beyond activity levels).

Why don’t you demonstrate why hours and levels aren’t good metrics of activity, and how it is that the combination unfairly penalizes YB, SBI, and TC while benefiting BG and Mag?

Choppy.4183:

GrahamW.5397:

Total hours played and wvw levels aren’t a good indicator of actual coverage or strength of a server. If you played wvw you would see what is wrong with this. They are unlocking servers who shouldn’t be(BG,MAG) and locking servers who have no business being locked (TC recently, SBI,YB).

I’ve been playing wvw pretty much exclusively since year two of the game.

As I mentioned earlier, the purpose is to even out population, not strength (which factors in other things beyond activity levels).

Why don’t you demonstrate why hours and levels aren’t good metrics of activity, and how it is that the combination unfairly penalizes YB, SBI, and TC while benefiting BG and Mag?

Read Mals post it sums it up better then i can.

Thanks McKenna for answering the questions. It’s good to know that changes are being tried in wvw!

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

To clarify further this is the first week we are using this new algorithm. So some of the complaints that are being brought up were problems with the old algorithm.

We use play hours to determine the size. Rank gains is tracked for comparison purposes since they usually follow a similar curve, but isn’t actually used to determine the world size.

We have simulated other algorithms to measure world size and ultimately found that player hours gave us more accurate results because we are mostly comparing active WvW play. The past algorithms weighed more heavily on individual players, so we ended up with situations where JQ was ‘Full’ because they had a lot of players, just not necessarily ones that played as much as Blackgate.

Thanks for the explanation.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

To clarify further this is the first week we are using this new algorithm. So some of the complaints that are being brought up were problems with the old algorithm.

We use play hours to determine the size. Rank gains is tracked for comparison purposes since they usually follow a similar curve, but isn’t actually used to determine the world size.

We have simulated other algorithms to measure world size and ultimately found that player hours gave us more accurate results because we are mostly comparing active WvW play. The past algorithms weighed more heavily on individual players, so we ended up with situations where JQ was ‘Full’ because they had a lot of players, just not necessarily ones that played as much as Blackgate.

Thank you.

Love getting some information on how that works, it has been one of those topics we haven’t been able to discuss properly, and it has created a lot questions (like the ever returning question about EotM counting or not, which you clarified earlier, thanks you for that as well!)

This is a good start Mckenna. The metrics are not perfect but makes sense, a few other variables to tweak will be good. Also keeping us blind on the actual algorithm is good too, prevents manipulation as has been in the past.

Ask anet for a raise, would give you a 9/10 recommendation