Guild Wars 2

Dear ArenaNet,

You have mixed two essential principles when you designed the WvW rankings: ranking and pairing. These two things are intrinsically different, yet the pairings should be loosely linked to the rankings, not strongly as it is now.

In short, Glicko 2 is a ranking system, but not a pairing one. So please, don’t use Glicko 2 to make your pairings and allow unbalanded pairings (and get rid of that classification in tiers).

It’s a fact not really well known over here, but Glicko 2 works better when the same opponents don’t fight every week. It is sane to have the lower ranked guys sometimes play against middle-ranked guys as a kind of “poll”, just to check that the lower guy has not improved his skills.

Therefore please use Glicko 2 for ranking, but find another system for pairing. For instance a fixed rotation with the calendar known in advance, or a dynamic match-making where you put half random so that a server competes with other servers in a 6-8 servers sliding window.

Glicko 2 would still work properly. It would even work better! That system ensures that you get/lose points according to your rank, so you might still move up or down while respectively losing or winning.

But what about the fun caused by such an imbalance?
Well, I don’t know for you, but zerging is fun. One hour. Top. So why zerg if you stomp? This system would ensure that zerging is really useful two or three servers have the same ranking. If we take a planned calendar, it wouldn’t happen often. If we take a sliding window approach, it happens more. On the other hand, what about the server being steamrolled? Well it has been seen before, so I’ll write it, that server will gain some tactical skills that zergs don’t have. They will adapt and they will become more commando-like and still get steamrolled, but they may get more points.

Also, for this to work correctly, add points for defense ArenaNet. Really, do it.

You seem to have some misconception that skill has anything to do with WvW rankings. It boils down to raw man power, every time. Whoever has the most people in WvW with the most coverage of hours throughout the day wins the match. Pairing, say a T8 server with a couple of T5 servers would simply end in an absolute roflstomping (not because the players/commanders in T8 are any worse than the ones in T5, but simply because of the difference in WvW population).

No, I don’t think anything about the skills have anything to do in the WvW rankings, since I know for a fact that only the numbers matter.

Any comment on the actual topic?

quite honestly, the Points tick and rankings should be relooked at

Right now, the firest server in its tier is too strong for its tier and too weak for the above tier, for example – the Tier 2 top server is usually very strong for tier 2 and too weak for tier 1. the point tick should be redesigned to make it so, that this is not the case.

Its the only reason that most people go up and stack on the same servers over and over again and the the same servers fighting each other for the 100th time.

the other problem is, the same issue provides a different problem in lower tiers where, a much stronger server cannot escape its tier simply cos its not too dominant( usually its required the overall points of the the other 2 servers combined and much more)

make it more that at least 5 tiers are within each other skill wise, the point tick should be redesigned this way, so we have competition all the time and lot of servers fighting different servers

something where the game is not decided over the weekend itself and the rest 5 days are just a drag.

Fror.2163:

It’s a fact not really well known over here, but Glicko 2 works better when the same opponents don’t fight every week. It is sane to have the lower ranked guys sometimes play against middle-ranked guys as a kind of “poll”, just to check that the lower guy has not improved his skills.

While that makes sense in theory, it would result in matches that are total blowouts and where most of the player base drops out early in the match.

Which would not be fun and not really give you valid information. Also, every blown match results in a few players quitting WvW altogether.

DevonCarver.5370:

Fror.2163:

It’s a fact not really well known over here, but Glicko 2 works better when the same opponents don’t fight every week. It is sane to have the lower ranked guys sometimes play against middle-ranked guys as a kind of “poll”, just to check that the lower guy has not improved his skills.

We are aware of this fact and we are trying to decide what we actually want to do about it. It’s more complicated than just that though as there are aspects of scoring that are not reflective of the quality of individual servers as well. Until we address the underlying scoring issues, it’s just a temporary solution though. To that end we are actively designing things that we hope will, if not solve, at least ameliorate the scoring issues.

What we would really like is a rough ETA. We’ve been told you were looking in to it before, and yet some of us have been in the same match-up for months. If it’s going to be a while for the solution fine, but do something temporary soon please

EDIT: Holy quaggan, I just read in the other thread about this that you ARE doing something temporary, and the word “today” was even used! You sir, are a rockstar!

DevonCarver.5370:

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Fror.2163:

It’s a fact not really well known over here, but Glicko 2 works better when the same opponents don’t fight every week. It is sane to have the lower ranked guys sometimes play against middle-ranked guys as a kind of “poll”, just to check that the lower guy has not improved his skills.

While that makes sense in theory, it would result in matches that are total blowouts and where most of the player base drops out early in the match.

Which would not be fun and not really give you valid information. Also, every blown match results in a few players quitting WvW altogether.

That’s our current assessment as well, which is why it’s going to take more work to decide what we really want to do here. Speaking for myself, I think we need to change some of the mechanics of scoring to more accurately reflect what we want people doing in the game, which would hopefully get us tighter matches. There are any number of possible ways to deal with this however, which makes it a paradox of choice to a certain degree. Rest assured we have top men working on it! And me. :P

This is the main issue, not the ranking in itself
The point tick for 15mins needs to be relooked at. if we even hope to have competitive matches and at least with different servers every week, doing anything to the ratings will not help at all.

however, redesigning the point ticks to have it more competitive can sort the rating by itself
right now, a stronger server usually wins the the week within the first 2 days and there’s isn’t much to do for the rest of the week, its even worse for tier 8/9 where they get slaughtered each week over and over again.

why not have something that can make servers fight back even on the very last day and have a chance of winning the tier. this is way more competitive and also adds a lot of unpredictability in the week.

so server has chances of surprising new opponents rather than getting totally demolished like it is right now.

this is very true and most interesting part of the MOBA games for example, one team can dominate the whole match, but one well played last fight can tilt the whole game in the opponents favor and thats why they are so addicting, a bit frustrating , but way more interesting.

DevonCarver.5370:

I’d love to give you an ETA, but there isn’t one. It’s one of those things where we have to get some solutions, design through the problems, scrap all those, start again, get better solutions, then implement them. Depending on the nature of those solutions, they could be quickly implemented or they could require some time. The promise I will make is that as we get a clearer understanding of the time frame I’ll make sure everyone knows. Specifics are always going to be hard to come by, but I can at least give you all that much.

:D you had me at

we are going to bump the ratings of the tier 8 teams to attempt to partially address this today

DevonCarver.5370:

That’s our current assessment as well, which is why it’s going to take more work to decide what we really want to do here. Speaking for myself, I think we need to change some of the mechanics of scoring to more accurately reflect what we want people doing in the game, which would hopefully get us tighter matches. There are any number of possible ways to deal with this however, which makes it a paradox of choice to a certain degree. Rest assured we have top men working on it! And me. :P

Any chance you could start by telling us where all the points are actually coming from? We’ve seen the math on how the modified Glicko-2 system works, but we still don’t know where all the points in our end-of-week score are coming from, or how they are calculated; not officially, anyway. It could greatly improve the game if we actually knew how all of the non-PPT points worked and where they come from exactly, and if there is a cap of any kind on non-ppt points and what that is.

Hopefully engineering a way to give less points for PvDoor is being bandied about.

Why not give points depending on the population of your opponents across all BLs.

If you are fighting a server during a certain time zone with 400 players max across all 4 BLs and your opponent only has 200 across all 4 BLs, you only receive 50% of your tick(this is per server). Just to make the math easy if as a green server(at 100% strength) you have 100 points from blue across all 4 maps(who is 50% strength across all 4 maps) and 200 points from red(who is 100% across all 4 maps) your modified ppt is 250. And to clarify each corner is “home base” to the server that starts there, assign that up to each color so you know who you are “taking points” from and how to modify ppt.

If all 4 BLs are full for all 3 servers, each server receives 100% of their tick.

Honestly, there needs to be a system where all the servers are competitive, not just the top 3(and even right now, even the top 3 aren’t all that competitive). Creating it so you can’t tick hard against underpopulated servers would help a lot with that.

The better golfer can be beaten by a worse golfer even if that better golfer has less strokes. How? it’s called ‘Handicap’. Likewise, servers should have handicaps that allow any server to play any other server with the winner determined by both performance that week and handicap.

DevonCarver.5370:

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Fror.2163:

It’s a fact not really well known over here, but Glicko 2 works better when the same opponents don’t fight every week. It is sane to have the lower ranked guys sometimes play against middle-ranked guys as a kind of “poll”, just to check that the lower guy has not improved his skills.

While that makes sense in theory, it would result in matches that are total blowouts and where most of the player base drops out early in the match.

Which would not be fun and not really give you valid information. Also, every blown match results in a few players quitting WvW altogether.

That’s our current assessment as well, which is why it’s going to take more work to decide what we really want to do here. Speaking for myself, I think we need to change some of the mechanics of scoring to more accurately reflect what we want people doing in the game, which would hopefully get us tighter matches. There are any number of possible ways to deal with this however, which makes it a paradox of choice to a certain degree. Rest assured we have top men working on it! And me. :P

One thing I think that would be cool is to incorporate player kills/deaths into the scoring in some fashion. When a group of 20 wipes a 60 man zerg, they should get something for that. Perhaps for every 10 deaths your server receives in WvW, you lose 1 point from your score or something along those lines.

Burl.9567:

DevonCarver.5370:

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Fror.2163:

It’s a fact not really well known over here, but Glicko 2 works better when the same opponents don’t fight every week. It is sane to have the lower ranked guys sometimes play against middle-ranked guys as a kind of “poll”, just to check that the lower guy has not improved his skills.

While that makes sense in theory, it would result in matches that are total blowouts and where most of the player base drops out early in the match.

Which would not be fun and not really give you valid information. Also, every blown match results in a few players quitting WvW altogether.

That’s our current assessment as well, which is why it’s going to take more work to decide what we really want to do here. Speaking for myself, I think we need to change some of the mechanics of scoring to more accurately reflect what we want people doing in the game, which would hopefully get us tighter matches. There are any number of possible ways to deal with this however, which makes it a paradox of choice to a certain degree. Rest assured we have top men working on it! And me. :P

One thing I think that would be cool is to incorporate player kills/deaths into the scoring in some fashion. When a group of 20 wipes a 60 man zerg, they should get something for that. Perhaps for every 10 deaths your server receives in WvW, you lose 1 point from your score or something along those lines.

If it requires that an outmanned group wipes a larger force for points, that’s one thing, but otherwise this system HEAVILY favors that 60-man czerg you have listed above; for every time that group of 20 wipes a 60-man zerg, the 60-man czerg will likely wipe dozens of groups of 20 or so, giving them an even larger lead in the score. We have enough things built into the points system to give bonus points for zerging already:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Clarification-needed-please-Dolyak-points/first

Burl.9567:

One thing I think that would be cool is to incorporate player kills/deaths into the scoring in some fashion.

The problem with that is there’s already players that make cross-server deals to farm badges off each other. Points for kills would be way too easy to game/cheat.

Otokomae.9356:

Burl.9567:

DevonCarver.5370:

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Fror.2163:

It’s a fact not really well known over here, but Glicko 2 works better when the same opponents don’t fight every week. It is sane to have the lower ranked guys sometimes play against middle-ranked guys as a kind of “poll”, just to check that the lower guy has not improved his skills.

While that makes sense in theory, it would result in matches that are total blowouts and where most of the player base drops out early in the match.

Which would not be fun and not really give you valid information. Also, every blown match results in a few players quitting WvW altogether.

That’s our current assessment as well, which is why it’s going to take more work to decide what we really want to do here. Speaking for myself, I think we need to change some of the mechanics of scoring to more accurately reflect what we want people doing in the game, which would hopefully get us tighter matches. There are any number of possible ways to deal with this however, which makes it a paradox of choice to a certain degree. Rest assured we have top men working on it! And me. :P

One thing I think that would be cool is to incorporate player kills/deaths into the scoring in some fashion. When a group of 20 wipes a 60 man zerg, they should get something for that. Perhaps for every 10 deaths your server receives in WvW, you lose 1 point from your score or something along those lines.

If it requires that an outmanned group wipes a larger force for points, that’s one thing, but otherwise this system HEAVILY favors that 60-man czerg you have listed above; for every time that group of 20 wipes a 60-man zerg, the 60-man czerg will likely wipe dozens of groups of 20 or so, giving them an even larger lead in the score. We have enough things built into the points system to give bonus points for zerging already:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Clarification-needed-please-Dolyak-points/first

I think it actually discourages the zerg in my opinion. You ever gone to vale or lowlands to attempt to take a camp only to have the zerg flow out before you can cap it? It doesn’t matter how many people you kill, they just keep coming back. We farm that group….A LOT. It’s better than CoF…I swear. That type of zerg mentality will be punished under this as you will be losing points for your server.

Sure you can cheat the system, but the cheating (if any) will be minimal at best and likely won’t affect the score in the grand scheme of things. Who would take that much time to run a character out of a PK to get ganked over and over again.

In the end, I think this type of scoring mechanic favors the more organized and better playing server as opposed to the zerg. Isn’t that what we are looking for in the end? The better server with the better players wins?

Jahn.7019:

Why not give points depending on the population of your opponents across all BLs.

If you are fighting a server during a certain time zone with 400 players max across all 4 BLs and your opponent only has 200 across all 4 BLs, you only receive 50% of your tick(this is per server). Just to make the math easy if as a green server(at 100% strength) you have 100 points from blue across all 4 maps(who is 50% strength across all 4 maps) and 200 points from red(who is 100% across all 4 maps) your modified ppt is 250. And to clarify each corner is “home base” to the server that starts there, assign that up to each color so you know who you are “taking points” from and how to modify ppt.

If all 4 BLs are full for all 3 servers, each server receives 100% of their tick.

Honestly, there needs to be a system where all the servers are competitive, not just the top 3(and even right now, even the top 3 aren’t all that competitive). Creating it so you can’t tick hard against underpopulated servers would help a lot with that.

That’s actually a cool idea but I don’t think it would work because it can be gamed. It would be too easy for a server to manipulate their player populations to their advantage, such as pulling players off the map when they are ahead or when the opposing team has a numerical advantage anyway.

How do you keep it fun for ALL servers.. the top servers are getting bored of seeing eachother day in day out, bottom servers have nothing to look forward to because they get stomped all the time…

I recently posted that we should have a round robin system where you face every server for 3 weeks, but quickly deleted the post because it really only solves one problem which is seeing fresh blood.

Maybe, a round robin system within tiers, right now you face the same two servers which seems like forever… to keep the game interesting and fair possbily increase the tier size… (top 6, next 6, and bottom 6)

First 3 weeks of round robin and from the score over those 3 weeks, 1 week of playoffs with the top 3 servers facing off and the bottom 3 servers playing within their respective tiers.

This inturn will give new life to wvwvw every month even weekly depending on the match-up. Anet wants us to take pride in our server and fight for our server… me personally looking at the glinko ratings doesnt give me that sense of feeling… you want us to take pride in our server? Then reward us as a server… With this new layout this allows for rewards on a montly basis and motivates people each month to do better… ideas as a reward? During playoff week 5, 3, 1(just an example) laurels for each server depending on how they do against their opposing servers.

Xavi.6591:

The better golfer can be beaten by a worse golfer even if that better golfer has less strokes. How? it’s called ‘Handicap’. Likewise, servers should have handicaps that allow any server to play any other server with the winner determined by both performance that week and handicap.

That’s actually the best idea I’ve seen so far, and it might actually be capable of making viable server vs server vs server matchups. A total points handicap could be assigned at the beginning of the week for each server. If the handicaps were accurate, each server would have a more or less equal chance to win the match as long as they put in a more or less consistent effort each week. And here’s the really cool part … there would also be more movement from tier to tier (more variety of opponents) without the jeopardy of blowouts. A points handicap actually facilitates both fairness and freshness. The truly interesting thing is that it probably would be the easiest change to implement as well. At the very least it seems like it deserves a try.

The only problem now is that since I didn’t think of it I may have to conclude that you are smarter than I am.

Cactus.2710:

Xavi.6591:

The better golfer can be beaten by a worse golfer even if that better golfer has less strokes. How? it’s called ‘Handicap’. Likewise, servers should have handicaps that allow any server to play any other server with the winner determined by both performance that week and handicap.

That’s actually the best idea I’ve seen so far, and it might actually be capable of making viable server vs server vs server matchups. A total points handicap could be assigned at the beginning of the week for each server. If the handicaps were accurate, each server would have a more or less equal chance to win the match as long as they put in a more or less consistent effort each week. And here’s the really cool part … there would also be more movement from tier to tier (more variety of opponents) without the jeopardy of blowouts. A points handicap actually facilitates both fairness and freshness. The truly interesting thing is that it probably would be the easiest change to implement as well. At the very least it seems like it deserves a try.

The only problem now is that since I didn’t think of it I may have to conclude that you are smarter than I am.

Winning in points only sets you up to get matched up against an even tougher server which stomps you even more than the last.

devon you are quickly becoming my new favourite dev….please don’t lose your touch in regards to not being afraid to step away from the safe PR coated answers….reading your plethora of posts in the wvw forums recently i sincerely appreciate your answers and communication….dont ever lose that touch if you can help it. and encourage the balance team and spvp team to do that same =P

What I think needs to happen is that there should be a bottom cap of ranking points and a top cap.

Bottom cap at around 700-650, top cap at 2000 (or 2100)
That way the server at lowest tier that’s winning by enough will have enough chance to tier up and the excess of points that gets pumped into this will slowly work its way to the top and get cut off there.

This “bubbling” of points would also allow more servers to be able to switch tiers more.

If they bottom two servers in a tier didn’t have to worry about getting second to avoid dropping down a tier, then maybe they would realize that they can gang up on the top server and make a good match of it.

Point ticks should not be based solely on who controls what when the timer ticks to 0. Please account for kills\deaths as well. This could work to slow down the point gains during times when only one server has any presence as well as to encourage actual fighting rather than the avoidance and turtling we see now.

It baffles me that Anet starts to think about a fair WvW rating system half a year after release instead of creating a fair system during the years of development.

/shrug

Dafomen.7892:

It baffles me that Anet starts to think about a fair WvW rating system half a year after release instead of creating a fair system during the years of development.

/shrug

It baffles me that you still think life is fair.

Ilesyt.7084:

Dafomen.7892:

It baffles me that Anet starts to think about a fair WvW rating system half a year after release instead of creating a fair system during the years of development.

/shrug

It baffles me that you still think life is fair.

Certainly you are not contributing for a change….apart from that, I was talking about WvW and if thats “life” for you then its a totally different problem here but completely off topic. I’m sorry.

DevonCarver.5370:

Speaking for myself, I think we need to change some of the mechanics of scoring to more accurately reflect what we want people doing in the game, which would hopefully get us tighter matches……

Rest assured we have top men working on it!

For the love of God, if you change the scoring system or anything that relates directly to the points that are going on the board for each server, PLEASE tell us what the rules are this time, and exactly where all the points are coming from, how many points we can actually get, and how those points are tallied. We STILL haven’t been told how the CURRENT system works!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Clarification-needed-please-Dolyak-points/page/2#post1774757

It’s the fact that you think that ANet didn’t think about us having a “fair system” ahead of time, which they did but a few things didn’t work out and there was no way to know that before hand. And that my friend is life.

Ilesyt.7084:

It’s the fact that you think that ANet didn’t think about us having a “fair system” ahead of time, which they did but a few things didn’t work out and there was no way to know that before hand. And that my friend is life.

Thats a rather thin attempt to straighten up your initial response which is a chewed up response with no other purpose but to start an unfair polemic.

Apart from that there are countless other rating systems already out there with a whole science behind the subject to keep competitive ratings, you know, fair as otherwise no one would participate.

Anet just didnt bother to deal with the obvious problem of server population as a key factor (not “few things”) in the whole WvW system other than offering free transfers for a while and now to the lower pop servers every now and then.

With this in mind the statement “there was no way to know that before hand” is somewhat naive.

But i thank you too…because now i killed enought time to dwelve myself into WvW again after the reset, so please don’t expect another response to your thought out reactions….my friend.

DoggyPaddler.3586:

Cactus.2710:

Xavi.6591:

The better golfer can be beaten by a worse golfer even if that better golfer has less strokes. How? it’s called ‘Handicap’. Likewise, servers should have handicaps that allow any server to play any other server with the winner determined by both performance that week and handicap.

That’s actually the best idea I’ve seen so far, and it might actually be capable of making viable server vs server vs server matchups. A total points handicap could be assigned at the beginning of the week for each server. If the handicaps were accurate, each server would have a more or less equal chance to win the match as long as they put in a more or less consistent effort each week. And here’s the really cool part … there would also be more movement from tier to tier (more variety of opponents) without the jeopardy of blowouts. A points handicap actually facilitates both fairness and freshness. The truly interesting thing is that it probably would be the easiest change to implement as well. At the very least it seems like it deserves a try.

The only problem now is that since I didn’t think of it I may have to conclude that you are smarter than I am.

Winning in points only sets you up to get matched up against an even tougher server which stomps you even more than the last.

That’s just nonsense. Handicaps can be variable as a function of which server you are up against. If you get bumped up to a higher tier your handicap can be a function of the relative performance history of your server compared to the top server in that higher tier. It all works fine as long as each server gets a chance to compete against enough other servers for the handicaps to be appropriately calculated. Each server gets handicapped against the highest ranked server in that tier. If the sum of your handicap and your weekly score is higher than the score of the top server in the tier, you win and your handicap factor gets adjusted for the following week. However, depending upon who you go against that following week, your actual handicap points may be larger or smaller than it was the previous week … it all depends upon who you face and what their history was.

In theory, FC could reasonably compete against JQ if the handicap was proper and if FC was smart enough to be able to intelligently defend their head start by being selective in their objectives. But that’s pretty hard to do and we don’t need a handicap system capable of spanning several tiers anyway … we really only need a handicap system that is capable of spanning two or three tiers, and that should be feasible.