Guild Wars 2

Aurust.8961:

Ulion.5476:

I can tell you now Kain lost over half of its guilds and is able to compete in t3. So if Kain gets matched up against any t2 server or above it would be a blow out. When Kain was at full strength (maybe 12 guilds) it was not able to compete with BG before it moved up to t1 and BG stomped everyone in t2 by 100k. As Kain was falling to t3 we still had around 9 active WvW guilds now we are down to maybe 4 WvW guilds. So the differences between t1, t2 and t3 are HUGE.

This is what people dont seem to understand. They havent been following wvw… but some of us have and are able to see the vast differences in strength between tiers.

Here is a some food for thought for those that think hmmm maybe a DB vs JQ vs TC matchup might be interesting or whatever.

Alot of servers were absolutely smashed by Kainengs rise through the ranks. Kaineng got to tier 2 and was getting beaten by BG there by 50k. A TIER 1 SERVER (SOS) fell apart and the vast majority of their wvw forces transferred to BG pushing them into tier 1. That last match in tier 2 for BG, A FULL STRENGTH KAINENG, lost by 150k.

After Kaineng collapsed, WM, RISE, MEOW, a huge portion of what made Kaineng massacre their way up to tier 2, moved to Blackgate. WITH ALL OF THAT ON BG, they are currently in third place in tier 1, losing by 80k +

I hope this somewhat paints a picture of how absolutely vast the differences between the tiers are. Granted there is a bit too much stagnation that developed, but all that it required was a simple adjustment to NUDGE a server out of a tier that it may not have belonged in.

Maybe this will change help. Why is Blackgate even askin for transfers when it is 2nd out of 24? Maybe if Blackgate gets to beat up on rank 8, it’ll feel better about itself rather than feeling it’s such a huge failure for losing to Sanctum Rall or whatever. The tier 1 servers won’t have to be in an endless arms race with each other.

If a lower tiered server does better than Glicko expects it to do against a vastly higher tiered server, that lower tiered server’s score should increase at a better pace than it would if that same server were facing a lesser opponent.

Not sure if that made sense, but basically it gives servers a chance to prove their worth against higher tiered servers. Even if they lose, if they do not lose by as big of a margin as Glicko expects them to they should gain points.

ganeshori.6309:

Im in agreement with the one up, one down system. You win, you go up one spot….theres is an ultimate winner in every tier…so they all go up one….the guys in second place of all tiers stay right there in the blue spot. And all those in last, all go down the next tier. and of course the top dawg in tier 1 stays right there till he gets knocked down.

It would be an easy implementation to do…and if it sucked…after a few tries…then go to whatever crazy idea is next.

There are several problems with WULD:
-Still little variety (It’s very easy for Servers to get “locked” into either Blue or cycling between 2 Tiers
-Is highly susceptible to manipulation
-Does nothing to address Map Completion Issues (see Reason #1)

This new System allows for much greater variety in both Server Matchups and Server Color while still clearly showing which Servers are strongest. If you read the article you would see that the #1 Ranked Server will still be clearly identified by Rating regardless of what Matchup they are in.

I’d say give it a chance before requesting something else.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

If a lower tiered server does better than Glicko expects it to do against a vastly higher tiered server, that lower tiered server’s score should increase at a better pace than it would if that same server were facing a lesser opponent.

Not sure if that made sense, but basically it gives servers a chance to prove their worth against higher tiered servers. Even if they lose, if they do not lose by as big of a margin as Glicko expects them to they should gain points.

Well thats the point of my previous post….they WILL lose THAT badly. The difference in coverage is that big.

Lets say even, a tier 1 server vs a tier 2 vs a tier 3 ( which can happen apparently). The scores will be 530k, 150k, 20k…. great the lower tiered servers gained some glicko…. I doubt they had alot of fun in that matchup however.

Aurust.8961:

Well thats the point of my previous post….they WILL lose THAT badly. The difference in coverage is that big.

Well they loose by score, I expect they win by rating.
And should they really loose by rating, such a matchup will less likely happen again.

Khayoss.2019:

Why would you complain about this?!?! This is great! Some matchups will be roflstomps, fine. That’s better than facing the same two servers for 3 months. Especially when that 3 month matchup has the exact same outcome every week! I’d love to get my kitten kicked by someone.

Locked tiers were terrible, we need the variation to get some true ratings. They can fine tune the variation as we go along, but this is an excellent way to start. Two HUGE thumbs up from myself, and judging by the reaction on our server forum that goes for all of EBay’s WvW community too. I’m fairly sure AR and BP share our sentiments as well.

Yup. Went thru one of those 3 month match ups over the holidays and new years time period. Completely killed any desire to do it anymore. Had suggested this wayyy back then. Pretty much to late for me. Tried to dip my toes back into WvW a few times since the March update. Just don’t care anymore. Maybe one day, but only went in 3 times since March, when I used to be in almost nightly. Even sadder since GoM been doing good. Just can’t get into it…

I don’t see how this is fair for the low population servers…Northern Shiverpeaks has lost a lot of guilds and people cause we are terrible in WvW. We always get dominated. We are also going against Sorrow’s Furnace which we have in the past and it was horrible. We had to give up playing WvW for 2 weeks because there were so many zergs overpowering and and EB was all theirs for 2 weeks. Beside that server, we are going to face a even higher up server who is prob even more people. This will surely make people want to leave the low population servers since 99% NSP will be spawned killed in our borderlands and EB.

Timewarp.3819:

Khayoss.2019:

Why would you complain about this?!?! This is great! Some matchups will be roflstomps, fine…

While I agree being locked into the same match-ups gets stale, at least there is some amount of give and take. A chance. “Roflstomp” matches are not fine however. In fact, they certainly will cause people to stop WvWing for the remainder of the week, or completely altogether.

A.Net wanting to shake things up, and collect better data is a great thing. I just hope they are able to strike an acceptable balance between variety and actual competition.

Gets stale? More like kills any glimmer of giving a kitten about playing WvW anymore.

Aurust.8961:

Mad Rasputin.7809:

If a lower tiered server does better than Glicko expects it to do against a vastly higher tiered server, that lower tiered server’s score should increase at a better pace than it would if that same server were facing a lesser opponent.

Not sure if that made sense, but basically it gives servers a chance to prove their worth against higher tiered servers. Even if they lose, if they do not lose by as big of a margin as Glicko expects them to they should gain points.

Well thats the point of my previous post….they WILL lose THAT badly. The difference in coverage is that big.

Lets say even, a tier 1 server vs a tier 2 vs a tier 3 ( which can happen apparently). The scores will be 530k, 150k, 20k…. great the lower tiered servers gained some glicko…. I doubt they had alot of fun in that matchup however.

This is kind of the point of the change.

The problem here is that the ratings aren’t an accurate measure of server strength, because you need to occasionally play a server outside your tier to keep the relative differences between ratings accurate.

Yes, if you get matched up against a higher rated server, you are expected to lose. but if you lose by less than expected based on your relative ratings, the winner’s rating will go down, and your rating will go up (despite the loss). This will help make the ratings more accurate, and it will help servers that deserve to move to actually move.

-ken

Sleel.8365:

Khayoss.2019:

Why would you complain about this?!?! This is great! Some matchups will be roflstomps, fine. That’s better than facing the same two servers for 3 months. Especially when that 3 month matchup has the exact same outcome every week! I’d love to get my kitten kicked by someone.

Locked tiers were terrible, we need the variation to get some true ratings. They can fine tune the variation as we go along, but this is an excellent way to start. Two HUGE thumbs up from myself, and judging by the reaction on our server forum that goes for all of EBay’s WvW community too. I’m fairly sure AR and BP share our sentiments as well.

Yup. Went thru one of those 3 month match ups over the holidays and new years time period. Completely killed any desire to do it anymore. Had suggested this wayyy back then. Pretty much to late for me. Tried to dip my toes back into WvW a few times since the March update. Just don’t care anymore. Maybe one day, but only went in 3 times since March, when I used to be in almost nightly. Even sadder since GoM been doing good. Just can’t get into it…

Do you play the same toon all the time? Have you tried starting a new toon and taking them right into WvW. That makes it much more interesting. I alternate toons all the time. When I get bored with one, I jump on another. The different playstyles make WvW seem like a different game.

LilMcGinley.3890:

Geoski.1407:

People spend hard earned gold to xfer for a reason, we don’t want random matchups, especially when servers differ in population to such degrees.

Come on A-net… read our comments, don’t make a drastic mistake after all your improvements. This will do way more damage to the player base then it is to see if its worth seeing “Is this T1 server better than this T8 server hmmmmmMMMmmmmMMMMMMMMmmm!!!??”

Did you even read our comments? Or ANet’s for that matter?

People want DIFFERENT match-ups.
ANet isn’t making DRASTIC changes.
T1 and T8 will NEVER be in the same match-up.

Read before you post the same stuff everyone posted on Page 1 and 2.

Because some ppl are brain damaged and think it’s all about the rng. They can’t seem to grasp the fact that it’s only within a range, not ever friggin server.

Johje Holan.4607:

Sleel.8365:

Khayoss.2019:

Why would you complain about this?!?! This is great! Some matchups will be roflstomps, fine. That’s better than facing the same two servers for 3 months. Especially when that 3 month matchup has the exact same outcome every week! I’d love to get my kitten kicked by someone.

Locked tiers were terrible, we need the variation to get some true ratings. They can fine tune the variation as we go along, but this is an excellent way to start. Two HUGE thumbs up from myself, and judging by the reaction on our server forum that goes for all of EBay’s WvW community too. I’m fairly sure AR and BP share our sentiments as well.

Yup. Went thru one of those 3 month match ups over the holidays and new years time period. Completely killed any desire to do it anymore. Had suggested this wayyy back then. Pretty much to late for me. Tried to dip my toes back into WvW a few times since the March update. Just don’t care anymore. Maybe one day, but only went in 3 times since March, when I used to be in almost nightly. Even sadder since GoM been doing good. Just can’t get into it…

Do you play the same toon all the time? Have you tried starting a new toon and taking them right into WvW. That makes it much more interesting. I alternate toons all the time. When I get bored with one, I jump on another. The different playstyles make WvW seem like a different game.

I have everything but mez and engi. Having the care beat out of you by the same old stale bread isn’t going to make the stale bread less stale by changing the “mouth” I put it into. Hopefully this will improve. Used to love this part of the game the most….

So Anet finally find a way to get out VS to the D1, woot !

Anyway, it’s a joke right ? Come on…
You screw your own ladder, nice…

Mad Rasputin.7809:

If a lower tiered server does better than Glicko expects it to do against a vastly higher tiered server, that lower tiered server’s score should increase at a better pace than it would if that same server were facing a lesser opponent.

Not sure if that made sense, but basically it gives servers a chance to prove their worth against higher tiered servers. Even if they lose, if they do not lose by as big of a margin as Glicko expects them to they should gain points.

The question is then too: by how much does the higher tier server have to dominate such that they don’t LOSE a lot of rating? This is a big issue. If a T1 server is matched against a T3 server, and they don’t win “by enough” (most likely because the players get so bored they stop…or theres nothing left to cap!), then the T1 server actually gets PUNISHED for playing WELL against a server that was RANDOMLY matched against them. So you see the issue? Servers getting punished, for playing well, because they got a bad draw. Is that fair? is it fair for a server to play perfectly well, but get punished in ratings because they randomly got a server they would have had to 100% dominate for the entire week (which would frankly be very VERY boring to play)? This is the biggest issue with glicko in this situation. It can reward a server for losing, but not by “as much” as glicko thought, and it can definitely punish a server for winning, but not winning “by enough”, whatever those may actually mean.

If you look in the past match up threads (especially in the lowest tier, and the highest), you see servers actually LOSE A RANK. Not because they lost a match, but because they won, but didn’t win by enough. You should never LOSE a rank, by winning.

Sleel.8365:

Johje Holan.4607:

Sleel.8365:

Khayoss.2019:

Why would you complain about this?!?! This is great! Some matchups will be roflstomps, fine. That’s better than facing the same two servers for 3 months. Especially when that 3 month matchup has the exact same outcome every week! I’d love to get my kitten kicked by someone.

Locked tiers were terrible, we need the variation to get some true ratings. They can fine tune the variation as we go along, but this is an excellent way to start. Two HUGE thumbs up from myself, and judging by the reaction on our server forum that goes for all of EBay’s WvW community too. I’m fairly sure AR and BP share our sentiments as well.

Yup. Went thru one of those 3 month match ups over the holidays and new years time period. Completely killed any desire to do it anymore. Had suggested this wayyy back then. Pretty much to late for me. Tried to dip my toes back into WvW a few times since the March update. Just don’t care anymore. Maybe one day, but only went in 3 times since March, when I used to be in almost nightly. Even sadder since GoM been doing good. Just can’t get into it…

Do you play the same toon all the time? Have you tried starting a new toon and taking them right into WvW. That makes it much more interesting. I alternate toons all the time. When I get bored with one, I jump on another. The different playstyles make WvW seem like a different game.

I have everything but mez and engi. Having the care beat out of you by the same old stale bread isn’t going to make the stale bread less stale by changing the “mouth” I put it into. Hopefully this will improve. Used to love this part of the game the most….

Have ya tried checkin out the Gates of Madness Teamspeak? That livens things up. The server’s more active as community now than three months ago.

ScrubieSouce.3724:

Officially worried this idea will destroy wvw worse then the recent arrow cart buff did. I can only imagine how the lower tier servers feel about this.

I for one do not like just outnumbering my opponent to the point they have no fight in them. Nor do i like being the one outnumbered so heavily.

I think this is going to backfire and cause more people to leave game then its going to make happy.

The server imbalance wouldnt have happened in the first place if people didnt pile into the “meta” wvw servers to win in the first place.
I am a t7 player and can see us getting decimated in the near future with the number differences between us and t6/5.

The only* way to fix wvw is to allow yet again free transfers ( for a limited time) so perhaps guilds in the higher tiers can transfer down without having to spend 60g/player which is alot in wvw terms

styx.7294:

Sleel.8365:

Johje Holan.4607:

Sleel.8365:

Khayoss.2019:

Why would you complain about this?!?! This is great! Some matchups will be roflstomps, fine. That’s better than facing the same two servers for 3 months. Especially when that 3 month matchup has the exact same outcome every week! I’d love to get my kitten kicked by someone.

Locked tiers were terrible, we need the variation to get some true ratings. They can fine tune the variation as we go along, but this is an excellent way to start. Two HUGE thumbs up from myself, and judging by the reaction on our server forum that goes for all of EBay’s WvW community too. I’m fairly sure AR and BP share our sentiments as well.

Yup. Went thru one of those 3 month match ups over the holidays and new years time period. Completely killed any desire to do it anymore. Had suggested this wayyy back then. Pretty much to late for me. Tried to dip my toes back into WvW a few times since the March update. Just don’t care anymore. Maybe one day, but only went in 3 times since March, when I used to be in almost nightly. Even sadder since GoM been doing good. Just can’t get into it…

Do you play the same toon all the time? Have you tried starting a new toon and taking them right into WvW. That makes it much more interesting. I alternate toons all the time. When I get bored with one, I jump on another. The different playstyles make WvW seem like a different game.

I have everything but mez and engi. Having the care beat out of you by the same old stale bread isn’t going to make the stale bread less stale by changing the “mouth” I put it into. Hopefully this will improve. Used to love this part of the game the most….

Have ya tried checkin out the Gates of Madness Teamspeak? That livens things up. The server’s more active as community now than three months ago.

Nope. Forgot all about it in the time I stopped going. Should prob try to remember that. Have noticed more ppl in WvW, inferred from our improved performance/score. Now to figure out how to do it. Haven’t at all used TS. Just skype with guildies when we want voice. (in teeny guild, so it good nuff for us)

LilMcGinley.3890:

Geoski.1407:

People spend hard earned gold to xfer for a reason, we don’t want random matchups, especially when servers differ in population to such degrees.

Come on A-net… read our comments, don’t make a drastic mistake after all your improvements. This will do way more damage to the player base then it is to see if its worth seeing “Is this T1 server better than this T8 server hmmmmmMMMmmmmMMMMMMMMmmm!!!??”

Did you even read our comments? Or ANet’s for that matter?

People want DIFFERENT match-ups.
ANet isn’t making DRASTIC changes.
T1 and T8 will NEVER be in the same match-up.

Read before you post the same stuff everyone posted on Page 1 and 2.

Who cares if they want to post that.

What gives you the right to tell someone not to speak their mind even if it is something similar to others?

You should stop posting instead if you are going to be like that. Think before you post.

styx.7294:

Aurust.8961:

Ulion.5476:

I can tell you now Kain lost over half of its guilds and is able to compete in t3. So if Kain gets matched up against any t2 server or above it would be a blow out. When Kain was at full strength (maybe 12 guilds) it was not able to compete with BG before it moved up to t1 and BG stomped everyone in t2 by 100k. As Kain was falling to t3 we still had around 9 active WvW guilds now we are down to maybe 4 WvW guilds. So the differences between t1, t2 and t3 are HUGE.

This is what people dont seem to understand. They havent been following wvw… but some of us have and are able to see the vast differences in strength between tiers.

Here is a some food for thought for those that think hmmm maybe a DB vs JQ vs TC matchup might be interesting or whatever.

Alot of servers were absolutely smashed by Kainengs rise through the ranks. Kaineng got to tier 2 and was getting beaten by BG there by 50k. A TIER 1 SERVER (SOS) fell apart and the vast majority of their wvw forces transferred to BG pushing them into tier 1. That last match in tier 2 for BG, A FULL STRENGTH KAINENG, lost by 150k.

After Kaineng collapsed, WM, RISE, MEOW, a huge portion of what made Kaineng massacre their way up to tier 2, moved to Blackgate. WITH ALL OF THAT ON BG, they are currently in third place in tier 1, losing by 80k +

I hope this somewhat paints a picture of how absolutely vast the differences between the tiers are. Granted there is a bit too much stagnation that developed, but all that it required was a simple adjustment to NUDGE a server out of a tier that it may not have belonged in.

Maybe this will change help. Why is Blackgate even askin for transfers when it is 2nd out of 24? Maybe if Blackgate gets to beat up on rank 8, it’ll feel better about itself rather than feeling it’s such a huge failure for losing to Sanctum Rall or whatever. The tier 1 servers won’t have to be in an endless arms race with each other.

Not all of the people in those guilds have transferred.

I don’t think even half of WM even came to blackgate.

Just because a guild transfers, doesn’t mean all the players went along.

Anet has addressed the wrong issue. The true issue is WvW coverage/population.
Coverage/population needs to be evened out among the servers.

Currently, each server only has a couple other servers that match up similarly coverage/populationwise. So currently, the ideal matchups would be between these evenly populated servers — which leads to the same match every week: more or less what we have now.

Different matchups, however, will only see huge population imbalances. And even if a matchup does happen to have servers with comparable populations during primetime,
we’d see terrible imbalances outside of primetime. Whatever you do during primetime will be meaningless — one hour after primetime, the whole map will be green; not due to superior skill, but simply due to one server having overwhelming numbers.

The real solution is to fix the root issue: even out coverage/population. The stale matchup problem then fixes itself: we could just have randomized match-ups (or round-robin). If you lose a match, at least it’s a fair loss — it’s because you suck, not because they have 10 times more population that you.

Anet needs to address the root of the problem but what we’re seeing is a band-aid fix.

For all those worried about blowouts, hopefully this will force the intended 2v1 where the weaker servers gang up on the powerhouse. No longer can you use the excuse of fighting for second to avoid going down a tier – because it doesn’t matter any more. That is not what will determine your next match.

If SoR is matched up with FA and DB, then FA and DB should gang up on SoR. If they fail to do that and get blown out, its their own fault. It would be bad strategy to not gang up on SoR.

Now if its two T1 servers vs. a T3 server, then hopefully, the T1 servers choose to fight each other rather than both stomping the T3 server. I mean people complain all the time about not being able to find a fight. Well find the fight instead of picking on the weaker server.

I am not really sure how I feel about this coming change. I do like the idea of facing different opponents but I also think matches are going to be even less balanced than they are now. My friends and I had been on SoR since the headstart until a few weeks ago when we paid and transfered down to T8. We had grown tired of the huge zergs and skill lag associated with them. I, for one, hope ANet DOES NOT offer free transfers to lower tiers. If they are going to open free transfers it needs to be open to all servers.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Anet has addressed the wrong issue. The true issue is WvW coverage/population.
Coverage/population needs to be evened out among the servers.

Currently, each server only has a couple other servers that match up similarly coverage/populationwise. So currently, the ideal matchups would be between these evenly populated servers — which leads to the same match every week: more or less what we have now.

Different matchups, however, will only see huge population imbalances. And even if a matchup does happen to have servers with comparable populations during primetime,
we’d see terrible imbalances outside of primetime. Whatever you do during primetime will be meaningless — one hour after primetime, the whole map will be green; not due to superior skill, but simply due to one server having overwhelming numbers.

The real solution is to fix the root issue: even out coverage/population. The stale matchup problem then fixes itself: we could just have randomized match-ups (or round-robin). If you lose a match, at least it’s a fair loss — it’s because you suck, not because they have 10 times more population that you.

Anet needs to address the root of the problem but what we’re seeing is a band-aid fix.

You can’t even out coverage. The server coverage is what the players made it. People don’t want even coverage. They want better coverage for their server. No one’s transferrin from Sanctum Rall to Blackgate or Jade Quarry so coverage evens out.

What you expect ArenaNet to do? Move people around to other servers and then make them play durin their timezone?

Sounds like an improvement. The current ratings have become too locked into place and stale. Even if the scoreboard says they are relatively close matches, or the closest we can get, the repetition of fighting the same guilds, the same high/low population periods, its like you get stuck in a bad recurring dream.

I.e. in T3 right now, its semi competitive overall, but very exhausting knowing that at the same time two times a day, every day, the zerguuma hordes are going to run over your BL with 3x the population. Rinse repeat every 24 hours for 3 straight weeks. A change up would be refreshing.

With random variation in the mix, sure you might win easier one week, or lose badly in another, but tactics will have to change at least. One week you might be doing more hit and running guerilla warfare just to get points, others you will be guarding more of a dominant lead across all maps. As long as every now and then it stabilizes back and gives you what would be the expected match as per current scores, it shouldn’t get too imbalanced.

As long as the changes sum up for FUN matches, I’m all for it, I hope fun is still tkittenential keyword for ArenaNet and GW2.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Anet has addressed the wrong issue. The true issue is WvW coverage/population.
Coverage/population needs to be evened out among the servers.

This is a valid argument.

I propose an easy fix: Arenanet needs to force you to move to a different server, and they need to lock your account so that you can only play during periods of the day when your new server has low coverage.

If Arenanet does this for enough players, the problem will be solved.

If you don’t think this is a good solution, I invite you to propose an alternative that doesn’t involve forcing players to switch servers or what time of day they want to play.

-ken

Snowreap.5174:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Anet has addressed the wrong issue. The true issue is WvW coverage/population.
Coverage/population needs to be evened out among the servers.

This is a valid argument.

I propose an easy fix: Arenanet needs to force you to move to a different server, and they need to lock your account so that you can only play during periods of the day when your new server has low coverage.

If Arenanet does this for enough players, the problem will be solved.

If you don’t think this is a good solution, I invite you to propose an alternative that doesn’t involve forcing players to switch servers or what time of day they want to play.

-ken

Countless solutions were already proposed in this forum. That’s not a new issue, it has been discussed a lot.

I can say without any hesitation that if SBI pulls a tier 1 or 2 server next week, there wont be a soul left in the borderlands. We haven’t had a decent matchup in months, and now after taking a beating from SoS for a couple of weeks you hold us over the tier 1 and 2 beasts? Holy cow is this a recipe for destruction or what.

Johje Holan.4607:

For all those worried about blowouts, hopefully this will force the intended 2v1 where the weaker servers gang up on the powerhouse. No longer can you use the excuse of fighting for second to avoid going down a tier – because it doesn’t matter any more. That is not what will determine your next match.

If SoR is matched up with FA and DB, then FA and DB should gang up on SoR. If they fail to do that and get blown out, its their own fault. It would be bad strategy to not gang up on SoR.

Now if its two T1 servers vs. a T3 server, then hopefully, the T1 servers choose to fight each other rather than both stomping the T3 server. I mean people complain all the time about not being able to find a fight. Well find the fight instead of picking on the weaker server.

Even if both FA and DB pushed SoR, they would still lose the match just from off hours coverage. Time zone WvW population inequity is the root of why matches have not been consistently competitive.

Come’on Bannok, you know you’re looking forward to facing our old friends JQ.

Even better: JQ vs. SoS vs. SBI

Snowreap.5174:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Anet has addressed the wrong issue. The true issue is WvW coverage/population.
Coverage/population needs to be evened out among the servers.

This is a valid argument.

I propose an easy fix: Arenanet needs to force you to move to a different server, and they need to lock your account so that you can only play during periods of the day when your new server has low coverage.

If Arenanet does this for enough players, the problem will be solved.

If you don’t think this is a good solution, I invite you to propose an alternative that doesn’t involve forcing players to switch servers or what time of day they want to play.

-ken

Forcing players apart could split friends, guilds, communities, and cause numerous other problems.

A better solution would be to give a scaling amount of extra points for capturing a location belonging to:

A) The server with the highest Points-Per-Tick, with a minimum difference of X PPT in order to get the extra points.

and/or

B) The server with the highest overall score, with a minimum difference of X points (10,000?) in order to get the extra points.

If the matchup was between SoR, DB, and Mag, it is quite obvious who would win. Neither DB or Mag would be able to compete on their own, or perhaps even together. However, giving them an incentive to attack the higher PPT server SoR would hopefully lessen the severity of the blowout while keeping all sides engaged in a more even 1st vs (2nd & 3rd). And DB and Mag could always just fight for second place if they don’t care about first, which is what currently happens in most matchups anyways.

Players themselves have to figure out the population issues, but changes to the match scoring system could help lessen the impact of coverage gaps.

Krakah.3582:

Johje Holan.4607:

For all those worried about blowouts, hopefully this will force the intended 2v1 where the weaker servers gang up on the powerhouse. No longer can you use the excuse of fighting for second to avoid going down a tier – because it doesn’t matter any more. That is not what will determine your next match.

If SoR is matched up with FA and DB, then FA and DB should gang up on SoR. If they fail to do that and get blown out, its their own fault. It would be bad strategy to not gang up on SoR.

Now if its two T1 servers vs. a T3 server, then hopefully, the T1 servers choose to fight each other rather than both stomping the T3 server. I mean people complain all the time about not being able to find a fight. Well find the fight instead of picking on the weaker server.

Even if both FA and DB pushed SoR, they would still lose the match just from off hours coverage. Time zone WvW population inequity is the root of why matches have not been consistently competitive.

I realize that. And that cannot be helped.

What is important is to maintain good competition while players are on the field. And if you can turn T3 keeps to T1 and help out your low coverage times even better. And teaming up will assist that endevor.

It was already said numerous times that the only way to fix this is a complete redesign of the current scoring system which rewards coverage and population. As long this scoring system stays in place the best rating system is the one allowing the servers to settle quick at their strength level.
There is alot of talk about not winning by enough or losing less than expected not sure if you guys realize that is a bad thing because it just prolongs the agony having the stronger servers keep moving up and down to face roll weaker servers multiple times.

Bannok.3152:

I can say without any hesitation that if SBI pulls a tier 1 or 2 server next week, there wont be a soul left in the borderlands. We haven’t had a decent matchup in months, and now after taking a beating from SoS for a couple of weeks you hold us over the tier 1 and 2 beasts? Holy cow is this a recipe for destruction or what.

This is extremely unlikely. It really is necessary to understand the math here.

Let’s look at the example again, for SBI. In the example, SBI ended up with a Matchmaking Rating of 1719.921705. This rating is a combination of your actual Rating, the Potential Variation, and the Random Roll of 0.720972111. The math is:
1562.257 + (218.6835)x(0.720972111) = 1719.921705

In the worst case (your Random Roll was 1.0) you’ll have a Matchmaking Rating of 1780.6835 (1562.257 + (218.6835)x(1.0)). In the best case (for you, with a Random Roll of -1.0) you’ll have a Matchmaking Rating of 1343.5735 (1562.257 + (218.6835)(x(-1.0)).

The #1 server is Blackgate, with a rating of 2200.649 and a Potential Variation of 215.9742. In the absolute worst case they will end up with a Matchmaking Rating of 1984.6748 (2200.649 + (215.9742)(-1.0)). 1984.6748 is so far beyond SBI’s worst-case rating of 1780.6835 that it’s mathematically impossible for this matchup to happen — the base Ratings are simply too far apart for the Potential Variations to make them meet. even if JQ and SoR roll -1.0 as well, they will both have higher Matchmaking Ratings than SBI, making it impossible for SBI at their current rating to ‘random’ their way into Tier 1.

Meanwhile, the #6 server (the one with the lowest rating in Tier 2) is Tarnished Coast. they have an actual Rating of 1949.458 and a Potential Variation of 216.1932. Even if they get a horrible Random Roll of -1.0, their Matchmaking Rating will be no lower than 1733.2648.

The only way SBI would get matched up with TC is if your server got a very high Random Roll and TC gets a very low Random Roll. For example, if you get higher than around 0.9, giving you a Matchmaking Rating of 1759.07215 or higher, and TC gets lower than around -0.9, giving them a Matchmaking Rating of 1754.88412 or lower, that would put your Matchmaking Ratings close enough together that you might be matched against them.

The chances of this happening are very small (on the order of about 0.25% — one quarter of one percent) because the likelihood of your server rolling higher than 0.9 is (0.1 / 2) = 0.05, and the likelihood of TC rolling lower than -0.9 is (0.1 / 2) = 0.05, and the likelihood of both of those happening at the same time is 0.05 × 0.05 = 0.0025 which is 0.25%.

(yes, I know I’m ignoring the additional incremental probabilities of other equivalent outcomes such as SBI rolls 0.95 or higher and TC rolls -0.84 or lower, but those probabilities are still tiny so I’m leaving that out to keep the math simple)

The end result is, it’s mathematically impossible for #12 SBI to get matched against any T1 server with the current ratings. There is a possibility you’ll find yourself in T2, but only if every server from #6 down to #11 gets horribly low random rolls, and your server gets an unbelievably high roll. But the chances of this happening are so small they’re not even worth considering.

-ken

Snowreap.5174:

Bannok.3152:

I can say without any hesitation that if SBI pulls a tier 1 or 2 server next week, there wont be a soul left in the borderlands. We haven’t had a decent matchup in months, and now after taking a beating from SoS for a couple of weeks you hold us over the tier 1 and 2 beasts? Holy cow is this a recipe for destruction or what.

This is extremely unlikely. It really is necessary to understand the math here.

Let’s look at the example again, for SBI. In the example, SBI ended up with a Matchmaking Rating of 1719.921705. This rating is a combination of your actual Rating, the Potential Variation, and the Random Roll of 0.720972111. The math is:
1562.257 + (218.6835)x(0.720972111) = 1719.921705

In the worst case (your Random Roll was 1.0) you’ll have a Matchmaking Rating of 1780.6835 (1562.257 + (218.6835)x(1.0)). In the best case (for you, with a Random Roll of -1.0) you’ll have a Matchmaking Rating of 1343.5735 (1562.257 + (218.6835)(x(-1.0)).

The #1 server is Blackgate, with a rating of 2200.649 and a Potential Variation of 215.9742. In the absolute worst case they will end up with a Matchmaking Rating of 1984.6748 (2200.649 + (215.9742)(-1.0)). 1984.6748 is so far beyond SBI’s worst-case rating of 1780.6835 that it’s mathematically impossible for this matchup to happen — the base Ratings are simply too far apart for the Potential Variations to make them meet. even if JQ and SoR roll -1.0 as well, they will both have higher Matchmaking Ratings than SBI, making it impossible for SBI at their current rating to ‘random’ their way into Tier 1.

Meanwhile, the #6 server (the one with the lowest rating in Tier 2) is Tarnished Coast. they have an actual Rating of 1949.458 and a Potential Variation of 216.1932. Even if they get a horrible Random Roll of -1.0, their Matchmaking Rating will be no lower than 1733.2648.

The only way SBI would get matched up with TC is if your server got a very high Random Roll and TC gets a very low Random Roll. For example, if you get higher than around 0.9, giving you a Matchmaking Rating of 1759.07215 or higher, and TC gets lower than around -0.9, giving them a Matchmaking Rating of 1754.88412 or lower, that would put your Matchmaking Ratings close enough together that you might be matched against them.

The chances of this happening are very small (on the order of about 0.25% — one quarter of one percent) because the likelihood of your server rolling higher than 0.9 is (0.1 / 2) = 0.05, and the likelihood of TC rolling lower than -0.9 is (0.1 / 2) = 0.05, and the likelihood of both of those happening at the same time is 0.05 × 0.05 = 0.0025 which is 0.25%.

(yes, I know I’m ignoring the additional incremental probabilities of other equivalent outcomes such as SBI rolls 0.95 or higher and TC rolls -0.84 or lower, but those probabilities are still tiny so I’m leaving that out to keep the math simple)

The end result is, it’s mathematically impossible for #12 SBI to get matched against any T1 server with the current ratings. There is a possibility you’ll find yourself in T2, but only if every server from #6 down to #11 gets horribly low random rolls, and your server gets an unbelievably high roll. But the chances of this happening are so small they’re not even worth considering.

-ken

That data is couple weeks old and is based on the current system. As the time goes with the new system the ratings are proned to get closer so those type of match-ups are more likely to happen.

they’ll become more likely if the ratings get dramatically closer, which would only happen if the higher-tier servers don’t do as well versus lower tiers, and the lower-tier servers do better than expected versus higher tiers.

but if the higher-tier servers consistently demonstrate that they deserver to be higher, the ratings spread will actually go up, making outlier matches less likely.

the thing about Glicko-2 is, the difference in rating creates an expectation — a higher-rated server is expected to beat a lower-rated server, and the difference in rating defines how much the higher-rated server is expected to win by. As long as the higher server wins by that margin or more, they will never lose rating points.

-ken

I find it amusing that so much of the support of this is coming from the lower tier servers. Oh well, you wanted it, you got it.

Snowreap.5174:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Anet has addressed the wrong issue. The true issue is WvW coverage/population.
Coverage/population needs to be evened out among the servers.

This is a valid argument.

I propose an easy fix: Arenanet needs to force you to move to a different server, and they need to lock your account so that you can only play during periods of the day when your new server has low coverage.

If Arenanet does this for enough players, the problem will be solved.

If you don’t think this is a good solution, I invite you to propose an alternative that doesn’t involve forcing players to switch servers or what time of day they want to play.

-ken

Whether you or I can or can’t think of a way to even out coverage is irrelevant. The fact is that Anet has addressed the wrong issue and they’re certainly not going to fix anything by addressing the wrong issue.

And in response to your purposely ridiculous suggestion: it’s easy to think of ideas to even out servers and are much more reasonable. Instead of forcing people to do things, give them incentive to do so. Every player has a “price” (anything between discounted/free transfers all the way to the totally ridiculous free precursor) for which he/she will be willing to switch servers. Most players have a price somewhere in between. If Anet pays that price for enough players then we will have server population parity.

To be honest, if Anet simply acknowledged the problem and carefully explained to players why we need server population/coverage parity, if Anet let us know which servers need population at which timezones (Anet definitely has the stats and knows this info), I’d bet lots of people would be willing to transfer without further incentive.

And yes, some people will sometimes play “off-schedule” .. but that’s fine. We don’t need exactly the same number of people to be on each server at all times; if populations are roughly even, it’ll still be fun.
Anyway, most people live pretty regimented lives and can reliably estimate when they will usually be on — small deviations will be irrelevant.

Snowreap.5174:

they’ll become more likely if the ratings get dramatically closer, which would only happen if the higher-tier servers don’t do as well versus lower tiers, and the lower-tier servers do better than expected versus higher tiers.

but if the higher-tier servers consistently demonstrate that they deserver to be higher, the ratings spread will actually go up, making outlier matches less likely.

the thing about Glicko-2 is, the difference in rating creates an expectation — a higher-rated server is expected to beat a lower-rated server, and the difference in rating defines how much the higher-rated server is expected to win by. As long as the higher server wins by that margin or more, they will never lose rating points.

-ken

The whole point for the new rating system is to allow more match-ups by bringing the ratings closer, not winning by enough for a higher rating server and losing by less for a lower rating server than system expects it is expected to happen. The higher servers if they gain more rating, the expected win margin gets higher to the point, they will lose rating points. Opposite for losing servers, hence the ratings get closer making the outlier matches more likely to happen.

I still want an old school GW1 matchup of JQ vs FA vs Kaineng. Siege turtles and Juggernauts running supply. Please, I really need.

Is it next week yet???

This is just fiddling while Rome burns. The entire problem of boring WvW match ups has nothing at all to do with matchups.

The problem with WvW is participation in all but the top teirs is so poor that there can be no serious competition going on outside of the top tier.

Low participation per world and extremely poor organization and lackadaisical effort is what typifies the mid to lowest tiers. You can jimmy the matches around all you want, but it’s not going to change the fact that half the worlds are simply barely participating and make very weak attempts at organization.

The months of free transfers resulted a long term imbalance with almost all of the serious PVP players getting concentrated in the top tiers, leaving the other worlds thinly populated with casual, let;s pvp for a lark type players who don’t even take the time to hook up to their world’s voice channel or only enter WvW when the mood strikes them.

This change will only result in more extreme mis-matches that permanently drive players away.

Zen.8497:

Snowreap.5174:

they’ll become more likely if the ratings get dramatically closer, which would only happen if the higher-tier servers don’t do as well versus lower tiers, and the lower-tier servers do better than expected versus higher tiers.

but if the higher-tier servers consistently demonstrate that they deserver to be higher, the ratings spread will actually go up, making outlier matches less likely.

the thing about Glicko-2 is, the difference in rating creates an expectation — a higher-rated server is expected to beat a lower-rated server, and the difference in rating defines how much the higher-rated server is expected to win by. As long as the higher server wins by that margin or more, they will never lose rating points.

-ken

The whole point for the new rating system is to allow more match-ups by bringing the ratings closer, not winning by enough for a higher rating server and losing by less for a lower rating server than system expects it is expected to happen. The higher servers if they gain more rating, the expected win margin gets higher to the point, they will lose rating points. Opposite for losing servers, hence the ratings get closer making the outlier matches more likely to happen.

no, the point of the new rating system is to make sure that the ratings are an accurate measure of the relative difference between tiers, because under the current system tier stagnation has made the ratings a useful measure of relative strength within that tier only.

with this change, sometimes servers will play outside of their tier, and this is what will allow the inter-tier rating gaps to be corrected. if the gaps are too small, the higher tier server should win by more than the predicted amount, causing their rating to go up. but if the gaps are too big, the higher tier server should win by less than the predicted amount, causing their rating to fall.

over time, this will improve the quality of the ratings so that they are both good measure of strength within a tier, as well as being good measures of strength across tiers.

what makes the outlier matches likely to happen is the random adjustment added to the base rating. this artificially spreads the ratings out making them more likely to overlap. but the random adjustments are applied only for the purpose of choosing matchups, they are not included or taken into account when your base rating is recalculated.

-ken

Let’s think of tiers in terms major and minor leagues in baseball. Baseball is organized in tiers. We have the major leagues (tier 1), and minor leagues: AAA (tier 2), AA (tier 3), etc. Anet seems to think the problem is that some AAA teams should be in the majors and perhaps some should be in AA and that the current ranking system takes to long to move teams between tiers. They want the new ranking system to put teams in the right tier more quickly.

But the real problem is that as you go down the tiers, teams have fewer and fewer players! If you’re a AA team with only 5 players on your whole team versus, say 10 in AAA and 25 in the majors, there’s no point in being matched up — ever.

If you want fun competition, you’re gonna need teams that field roughly the same number of players.

Many in this thread think that the underdog will have fun trying to beat the odds to score more than the rankings say they “should.” In other words: “Let’s try to lose by 190k instead of 200k!” or “Let’s try to hold two camps in our BL week!” Have you ever been on a sports team where you know you’re going to be completely owned? Did you say: “Let’s go team, let’s try to lose by only 50 points today!” It’s really morale breaking — especially if you’re just a casual player.

to put it another way: under the current system, rating points will always ‘flow up’ the rankings. suppose the bottom server in tier 2 ends up with a rating of 1850 at the end of a match, and the top server in tier 3 ends up with a rating of 1900. for the next match, they will switch places (and the lower server having a higher rating is the only way this can ever happen). 50 points from tier 3 will shift up to tier 2, and there is no way for those points to ever come back down again.

even if a higher tier server plays badly and falls through the rankings, the server that goes up to replace them can only do so by taking rating points up with it. for any server to come down from tier 2, there has to be another server in tier 3 to replace them, and that tier 3 server will have to bring more points up than are coming down (otherwise they wouldn’t switch places).

the endless flow of points up the ranks is what makes it harder and harder for lower ranked servers to advance. the supply of points available to carry you up gets smaller and smaller, making it harder and harder to get the kind of blowout wins you need to move up.

under the new system, there will be a mechanism for the higher tiers to bleed rating points into lower tiers by losing matches (or by failing to win by at least the expected margin). this mechanism will balance out the natural flow of points upward, and when equilibrium is reached the ratings will be “accurate”.

the randomness will allow servers to play outside their tiers, and cross-tier matches will allow rating points to flow back down (if they need to), and the end result will be less match stagnation (due to the randomness) and better quality pairing (due to the more accurate ratings).

-ken

thiagoperne.7340:

As much I hope this new system work out ok, I can’t see it happening. Unless they lower the spread matchups random math, even the chances are low, tier 1 servers can fight against tier 3 servers wich I don’t even need to say how bad that would be.

Why not a very basic ranking system(NO RATING)? Like this:

• FINISH MATCHUP 1ST PLACE = MOVE UP A TIER
• FINISH MATCHUP 2ND PLACE = REMAIN ON TIER
• FINISH MATCHUP 3RD PLACE = MOVE DOWN A TIER

This way a server will never ever face the same matchup in a row plus they will always be fighting against a server that you can compete as well as you are close each other(like an imaginary rating).

what you’ve described is usually called WULD (Winner Up Loser Down), and it turns out that WULD has even worse volatility.

WULD essentially guarantees that a T1 server will fight a T3 server every other week. Likewise, it will put a T2 server against a T4 server every other week, and so on.

To understand why, imagine three closely-matched servers in Tier 2. The winner will move up to tier 1, and the loser will go down to tier 3. meanwhile, the loser from tier 1 will come down to tier 2, and the winner from tier 3 will go up to tier 2.

The match will be a blowout. the T1 server will easily beat the T3 server (and probably the T2 as well), and the next week they’ll go back up and the T3 server will go back down, resulting in essentially the same matchups you started with. then a week later, the blowout will be repeated.

-ken

Sunspots.9861:

Anet: “Is Kaineng better than Jade Quarry? Before we never knew, but soon they might get a chance to prove it.”

That pretty much sums up the new system. I think we’re done here.

I think it is actually a great learning opportunity for us if we get put together with 2 tier 1 servers. We won’t have to worry about the score at all, since it is obviously pointless in that kind of match up. Worst case we can always stack everyone together into just one borderland. It will be a fair 70vs70 fight.

JonPeters.5630:

I think the kittenumptions that everyone is making are:

1) The current ratings of servers are valid. They are not because we are not getting enough varied match-ups to even generate valid data. Trying to judge the quality of a server based on their current rating is much like judging the quality of people’s Reddit posts by the average # of up-votes they get.
2) How big a spread will make a game a blowout? Is 400 rating points even a significant difference? Really its just a number with very little meaning right now. Once this system starts working (based on the math of the system the idea is that a rating +/- deviation is in fact an accurate measurement of the range of what their rating might be in a perfect world so this is technically the way this whole thing was supposed to work from the get go.

I don’t want to do all of the probability math right now, but with absurdly high certainty there will only be a small amount of randomization each week as in order for a situation like Kaineng moving up to T1 to occur, every server from Blackgate to Maguuma would have to roll a lower range number than Kaineng, and some of them would literally have to roll almost -100% while Kaineng rolls almost +100%. As the blog post stated, at the end of the day we are really just going to see a bit of nice slight subtle movement so that match-ups are less stale, and eventually ratings are more accurate.

Jon

Your high off your kitten if your questioning 400 points is a big difference.

So let me ask this. Is it actually most likely that you will be in the same matchup that you are currently?

Or is it equally as likely that you will be matched up with servers within a bubble around your current rating?

JonPeters.5630:

timidobserver.7925:

I have a couple of serious questions.
1. Did the person that came up with the math for this graduate from high school.
2. To prove it, please upload a copy of your high school diploma.

How about just a copy of their resume. I don’t see his high school experience on there. Hopefully the other stuff can count as relevant experience for your assessment.

http://www.glicko.net/cv.html

Well played, well played indeed.

Very much looking to a reduction in server stagnation. Thanks guys.

ArenaNet, if you want to kill off WvW; just do so. Don’t do something like this and blame lack of interest later.

Any system where you have the #1 server playing the #8 server; is not good…for anyone.

That’s clear to anyone who isn’t suffering from a near-fatal brain injury. I know that now that marijuana is legal in our state that some people might be tempted; but try running these ideas by people not in a smoke filled room and gauge their response.

Of course, it might be just because we are in WA state where there’s even odds in a Huskies vs. Mariners baseball game.