Guild Wars 2

WvW Matchup Changes!
World vs. World matches are about to get an injection of variety! With these changes you can look forward to facing new opponents in new matchups and testing your world’s skill against more foes!

ANet: Please explain what this means. It’s terribly vague, and frankly worries the heck out of me.

I acknowledge that things are probably too static in the tiers (especially at lower ranked tiers), but I don’t think it’s unfair to ask for a better explanation than this.

Thanks!

DevonCarver.5370:

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’ll have a blog post going out before the release that walks you through every detail of how it works with examples. The goal is to get you more variety in match ups, while avoiding match ups against worlds way outside of your current tier so it’s not too crazy.

What Colin said. This is a complicated enough change that we can’t explain it in a little blurb like that. So hopefully the blog post will make it all clear.

Complicated. Guys sporting events have been around for thousands of years. Winner advances loser doesn’t. Why mess with what works?

Oh well, hopefully the complicated part only applies to tie breakers.

Hopefully its better than one up one down. And since they’re saying its complicated, I’m guessing it is better.

Cool. Thanks much for the response! I look forward to that blog post.

+1. “winner up loser down” sounds good in theory, but in practice it has real problems.

WvW isn’t the playoffs. the losers don’t go home for the season, they have to play again the very next week and the ratings algorithm has to be able to find reasonably good matches for them too. This isn’t as easy as it sounds.

-ken

Yshyr.8709:

Complicated. Guys sporting events have been around for thousands of years. Winner advances loser doesn’t. Why mess with what works?

Oh well, hopefully the complicated part only applies to tie breakers.

Maybe they are thinking about doing some more crazy than that, like an EPL style League with Regulation system (something Colin had mentioned in the past).

That would definitely warrant its own blog :P

I’m super excited about this. Maybe now we can find out if any tier 2 servers can compete with any of the tier 1 servers.

Snowreap.5174:

+1. “winner up loser down” sounds good in theory, but in practice it has real problems.

WvW isn’t the playoffs. the losers don’t go home for the season, they have to play again the very next week and the ratings algorithm has to be able to find reasonably good matches for them too. This isn’t as easy as it sounds.

-ken

Not really. Winner of the Tier moves up, the loser moves down, and the middle stays. This happens every week. Worst case is you play the same teams every other week if the previous week’s loser always wins and the previous week’s winner always loses. Best case is servers make a big push for a couple weeks and climb the ladder. Slack for a couple weeks and you may wake up in Tier 8.

No complex math involved. Not sure why this wouldn’t be the solution selected………

Naffy.1493:

Snowreap.5174:

+1. “winner up loser down” sounds good in theory, but in practice it has real problems.

WvW isn’t the playoffs. the losers don’t go home for the season, they have to play again the very next week and the ratings algorithm has to be able to find reasonably good matches for them too. This isn’t as easy as it sounds.

-ken

Not really. Winner of the Tier moves up, the loser moves down, and the middle stays. This happens every week. Worst case is you play the same teams every other week if the previous week’s loser always wins and the previous week’s winner always loses. Best case is servers make a big push for a couple weeks and climb the ladder. Slack for a couple weeks and you may wake up in Tier 8.

No complex math involved. Not sure why this wouldn’t be the solution selected………

Then the T1 servers could take “a few weeks off”, end up in T4/5 then steamroll all the way back to T1 with ease.

LilMcGinley.3890:

Naffy.1493:

Snowreap.5174:

+1. “winner up loser down” sounds good in theory, but in practice it has real problems.

WvW isn’t the playoffs. the losers don’t go home for the season, they have to play again the very next week and the ratings algorithm has to be able to find reasonably good matches for them too. This isn’t as easy as it sounds.

-ken

Not really. Winner of the Tier moves up, the loser moves down, and the middle stays. This happens every week. Worst case is you play the same teams every other week if the previous week’s loser always wins and the previous week’s winner always loses. Best case is servers make a big push for a couple weeks and climb the ladder. Slack for a couple weeks and you may wake up in Tier 8.

No complex math involved. Not sure why this wouldn’t be the solution selected………

Then the T1 servers could take “a few weeks off”, end up in T4/5 then steamroll all the way back to T1 with ease.

Yep, but they would have to win many consecutive weeks. And any time a server steamrolls, they are gone the next week.

The reason it wouldn’t be selected is is because the worst case in WULD is worse than what we have now. The “worst case” isn’t playing the same teams every other week — those will be the “good” weeks. The “worst case” is going to be the alternate weeks when a higher tier server demolishes a server from the tier below, and another server from two tiers below.

WULD works fine when applied to only one match (and everyone else stays the same). but when everyone moves at once you end up with cases where servers still can’t advance because, for example, every time the T6 winner advances to T5, they have to play the T4 loser, and the T4 loser easily beats the T6 winner every time, sending them back down to T6 again. the T6 winner will be crying on the forums that Arenanet is preventing them from advancing by putting a T4 server up against them every time they move up, when what they really need to “prove themselves” is to play against 2 T5 servers.

-ken

PS> my choice of “T6 winner” is purely hypothetical, and any resemblance to actual servers is purely coincidental. I am not trying to imply that T6 winners would be any more or less inclined to cry about their matchups on the forums.

Snowreap.5174:

The reason it wouldn’t be selectis is because the worst case in WULD is worse than what we have now. The “worst case” isn’t playing the same teams every other week — those will be the “good” weeks. The “worst case” is going to be the alternate weeks when a higher tier server demolishes a server from the tier below, and another server from two tiers below.

WULD works fine when applied to only one match (and everyone else stays the same). but when everyone moves at once you end up with cases where servers still can’t advance because, for example, every time the T6 winner advances to T5, they have to play the T4 loser, and the T4 loser easily beats the T6 winner every time, sending them back down to T6 again. the T6 winner will be crying on the forums that Arenanet is preventing them from advancing by putting a T4 server up against them every time they move up.

-ken

Do you really think it would be that much of a demolishing? By your logic, a server would get demolished, move down and then pwn. Are the tiers really that different +-1? Honest question.

Naffy.1493:

Do you really think it would be that much of a demolishing? By your logic, a server would get demolished, move down and then pwn. Are the tiers really that different +-1? Honest question.

Yes.
Handily so.

Servers are locked in the same matchups right now because those are frankly the closest matches to “fair” that can be achieved with how different server coverage’s are.

If DB were to fall to tier 3 next week, and the tier 4 winner were to move up to tier 3.
I can tell you we would almost certainly win by a margin of 100,000 points or more.

With these changes probably looking at WvW, will greatly increase, are planning an improvement in server performance?

Naffy.1493:

Do you really think it would be that much of a demolishing? By your logic, a server would get demolished, move down and then pwn. Are the tiers really that different +-1? Honest question.

In some cases yes absolutely – Both TC and FA took “one week vacations” to T3 and neither Mags nor (pre-transfers) DB ever wanted to see us again.

Also WULD would prevent situations like TC/KN/BG or TC/FA/DB from occurring – 2-3 week matchups where everybody is having a good time and things are fairly balanced.

A system that allows “some” movement and “more” movement is good. WULD is too much volatility.

EnRohbi.2187:

Naffy.1493:

Do you really think it would be that much of a demolishing? By your logic, a server would get demolished, move down and then pwn. Are the tiers really that different +-1? Honest question.

Yes.
Handily so.

Servers are locked in the same matchups right now because those are frankly the closest matches to “fair” that can be achieved with how different server coverage’s are.

If DB were to fall to tier 3 next week, and the tier 4 winner were to move up to tier 3.
I can tell you we would almost certainly win by a margin of 100,000 points or more.

I think it depends on the Tier and the server though. For example T4, CD and SbI may not be much better (or heck any better) than T5 EB, BP and AR. We just don’t know because we’ve never gotten to play them.

Hopefully, the way they form matchups will give people incentive to start to play WvW the way it was intended. If people do find themselves in a match where one server is clearly dominant, the two weaker servers will join forces against that stronger server. Because hopefully they way they do it the loser doesn’t have to worry about getting kicked out of their tier and going to a lower tier necessarily and being stuck there for who knows how long.

Johje Holan.4607:

EnRohbi.2187:

Naffy.1493:

Do you really think it would be that much of a demolishing? By your logic, a server would get demolished, move down and then pwn. Are the tiers really that different +-1? Honest question.

Yes.
Handily so.

Servers are locked in the same matchups right now because those are frankly the closest matches to “fair” that can be achieved with how different server coverage’s are.

If DB were to fall to tier 3 next week, and the tier 4 winner were to move up to tier 3.
I can tell you we would almost certainly win by a margin of 100,000 points or more.

I think it depends on the Tier and the server though. For example T4, CD and SbI may not be much better than T5 EB, BP and AR. We just don’t know because we’ve never gotten to play them.

Hopefully, the way they form matchups will give people incentive to start to play WvW the way it was intended. If people do find themselves in a match where one server is clearly dominant, the two weaker servers will join forces against that stronger server. Because hopefully they way they do it the loser doesn’t have to worry about getting kicked out of their tier and going to a lower tier necessarily and being stuck there for who knows how long.

Yeah,
There are tiers that are closer than others,
And DB hasn’t been matched against any of the current tier4/5 servers in too long for me to say anything definitively.

But in my experience with DB having fallen from tier 3 to tier 6, then climbed back from tier 6 to tier 2 (I’m only trying to illustrate I’ve changed tiers a lot), moving to a new tier is usually quite a shift.

I really do think so. I’m on Ehmry Bay and we’re in T5 right now. We played against Kaineng on their way up through the ranks and they absolutely obliterated us. Kaineng is in T3 right now.

If Kaineng loses a match the same week we win ours, we could end up facing each other in T4 and it wouldn’t be pretty. Now, it’s possible that Kaineng is no longer as good as they were last time we met, and it’s very likely that Ehmry Bay is better than we were before, and it might actually be a great match if it happens.

But I don’t think that just because it might be a great match for us, that most servers will also have great matches. I think most servers will end up with terrible un-fun matches every other week under WULD.

We do need some change to combat the stagnation, but like Rakhir said, WULD adds too much volatility.

-ken

It’s hard to tell because of the ratings system. On the one hand the rating is all we have to compare servers, but it’s flawed -
You can only draw points from your bracket, which limits your potential if you are already #1 and lead 2 and 3 by a decent margin in points, but the gap to the next tier is a few tens or a hundred points. If you can only gain 5 points a week, it’ll take ages to move up.
Case in point: T8 from a few weeks ago, Sorrow’s Furnace. They routinely won by a large margin, but because they were already in spot 1, and 2 and 3 had fewer ranking points to draw from, their gains were negligible, or they even lost points, because they didn’t win big enough. It took a manual intervention to get them out of T8 and now they are in T6.

There should be a way to siphon points off of or lose points to the next tier up/down if you are in the adjacent spot. That would slowly increase mobility between the tiers without the rigid WULD. The amount of extra points moved to the next tier could depend on the point spreads. If lower tier first place wins big they gain a good amount of extra points from the loser of the higher tier. The loser of the higher tier could stem the loss by making it a close call, or lose even more by suffering a collapse.

Naffy.1493:

LilMcGinley.3890:

Naffy.1493:

Snowreap.5174:

+1. “winner up loser down” sounds good in theory, but in practice it has real problems.

WvW isn’t the playoffs. the losers don’t go home for the season, they have to play again the very next week and the ratings algorithm has to be able to find reasonably good matches for them too. This isn’t as easy as it sounds.

-ken

Not really. Winner of the Tier moves up, the loser moves down, and the middle stays. This happens every week. Worst case is you play the same teams every other week if the previous week’s loser always wins and the previous week’s winner always loses. Best case is servers make a big push for a couple weeks and climb the ladder. Slack for a couple weeks and you may wake up in Tier 8.

No complex math involved. Not sure why this wouldn’t be the solution selected………

Then the T1 servers could take “a few weeks off”, end up in T4/5 then steamroll all the way back to T1 with ease.

Yep, but they would have to win many consecutive weeks. And any time a server steamrolls, they are gone the next week.

If you are a T1 server going up against T4 servers, you are going to win. I don’t see SoR/JQ or BG losing to any server lower than them as it stands now. Winning weeks in a row isn’t an issue when you have a Top 3 WvW population going up against what I can assume is the Houston Astros or Detroit Lions of WvW.

I mentioned this a while back but I think that it will be like this
Tiers will be matched with the servers in it(I know you don’t know what that means, keep reading)
Basically T1 and T2 servers will face off
T3 and T4 and so on
This would be relatively balanced and even if a T1 server wrecks a T2 one, it’ll change next week
Going up in rankings still happens but it’ll be a bit more mixed up

I don’t really see how it could be any other way without screwing everything up but maybe Anet will pull something else out of their sleeves

Naffy.1493:

Not really. Winner of the Tier moves up, the loser moves down, and the middle stays. This happens every week. Worst case is you play the same teams every other week if the previous week’s loser always wins and the previous week’s winner always loses. Best case is servers make a big push for a couple weeks and climb the ladder. Slack for a couple weeks and you may wake up in Tier 8.

No complex math involved. Not sure why this wouldn’t be the solution selected………

There’s a few reasons: firstly the constant kerbstomp-being kerbstomped that would result is hardly an improvement. The problem isn’t with the rating system, it’s with the tier-based matchups. Secondly it’s pretty likely, given the design of EB, that the matchups are still going to put the highest-ranked team in green and the lowest-ranked team in red, and part of the goal would be, I imagine, to have most servers go through red, green and blue so WvW stops being a blocker for world completion. Thirdly, your plan breaks down with the lowest and highest ranked servers. If you keep the tiers and junk the rating system, the highest and lowest matches are going to involve the same two servers basically every week.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’ll have a blog post going out before the release that walks you through every detail of how it works with examples. The goal is to get you more variety in match ups, while avoiding match ups against worlds way outside of your current tier so it’s not too crazy.

The problem is right now their is 0 variety in the match ups at least for t5. We been fighting the same servers for weeks and its gotten so stale and is why i am not playing guildwars2 right now. Ever week I check to see if things have been changed up but they haven’t.

Is their any chance of a rank rest to make wvw exciting again?

Naffy.1493:

LilMcGinley.3890:

Naffy.1493:

Snowreap.5174:

+1. “winner up loser down” sounds good in theory, but in practice it has real problems.

WvW isn’t the playoffs. the losers don’t go home for the season, they have to play again the very next week and the ratings algorithm has to be able to find reasonably good matches for them too. This isn’t as easy as it sounds.

-ken

Not really. Winner of the Tier moves up, the loser moves down, and the middle stays. This happens every week. Worst case is you play the same teams every other week if the previous week’s loser always wins and the previous week’s winner always loses. Best case is servers make a big push for a couple weeks and climb the ladder. Slack for a couple weeks and you may wake up in Tier 8.

No complex math involved. Not sure why this wouldn’t be the solution selected………

Then the T1 servers could take “a few weeks off”, end up in T4/5 then steamroll all the way back to T1 with ease.

Yep, but they would have to win many consecutive weeks. And any time a server steamrolls, they are gone the next week.

Make sure you are on the under populated server that is getting steam rolled by the server from T1.

Make sure you are on the under populated server that is getting steam rolled by the other T1 server.

Make sure you are on the under populated server that is getting steam rolled by the third T1 server.

Then, we have T2 servers. Pretty much make sure you are on a server with a population that is in NA T8, then come back after you’ve been steam rolled for several weeks because you had to play all the T1, T2, and T3 servers before you finally got a match that was more equal to population.

It won’t be fun for those players.

It isn’t as easy as you think. Things need to have adjustments so that low WvW population servers don’t just stop playing.