Guild Wars 2

We should probably all transfer there, especially if they are adding rewards for winning each skirmish.

Xillllix.3485:

We are interested beyond belief, but your proposition is not even a half measure, it’s a cheap fix that would lead to terrible results. It’s only good on paper and not in practice, which is what about 66% of the people in this thread have been saying. Why do you need us to tell you that? It has nothing to do with our interest.

What’s most bizarre is that they asked us the same thing back in May and people didn’t like the idea then either.

I have to suspect somebody inside ANet really thinks this proposal is just the ultimate solution to every WvW problem and brings it up regularly.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

Seeing that BG and JQ have opened up again, balance is not something that Anet actually cares about. This entire topic is nothing more than a ruse.

Everyone bandwagon on over and let the population dwindle further.

How can you say that? It’s not like ANet is encouraging people to bandwagon by adding rewards for winning skirmishes!

Creating new worlds is a solution in search of a problem.

Please stop asking us to give our opinions on solutions. Get feedback on problems instead and then consider ways to solve those problems.

Different people will perceive different problems or needs, of course, and ANet probably can’t address all of them at once, definitely not with a single solution.

But if you show you understand problems players actualy experience, we can communicate more effectively.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

It currently is not possible for us to establish an “equal” number of players on each link/world with the current world sizes.

You can’t make people play in any case. Imposing equal population/coverage is a fool’s errand.

Work on better moment-to-moment gameplay that remains fun even when outnumbered.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Having outlined some of the thinking behind this proposal, we’d like your feedback on these three topics.
1. How do you feel about this proposal?
2. What, if anything, would you change about this current proposal?
3. Would you be interested in transferring to a new free world?

1. It’s wasted effort.
2. Scrap it and work on better gameplay among imbalanced teams.
3. No, and I don’t think my guildies would either.

It seems to me that people mostly transfer to get interesting play or to get easy wins. Transferring to a group that’s intentionally kept small and used to augment a larger force isn’t desirable.

The Battlegroup plan could be interesting, but it’s in an awkward spot vs. existing WvW.

It’s different enough that it should be a separate or new mode. Most notably it’s a huge change for roamers/casual players/occasional participants to have to enroll into a battlegroup before playing.

It’s similar enough for the hardcore and big guild players that it would compete for attention and time with current WvW.

I suppose I don’t have a lot of faith in ANet’s ability to deliver on a concept like that given the attention and resources they’ve been willing to focus on WvW so far.

Grim West.3194:

The only fix for mismatches and scoring issues is population balance. Without it then WvW will continue to die.

Population balance is an illusion. ANet can’t force people to play.

Even limiting transfers won’t help much because many players have multiple accounts on different servers.

The only reasonable solution is to balance the game for interesting gameplay (though not necessarily even scores) despite population imbalance rather than trying to impose population balance.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Hey everyone,

I wanted to address the idea of moving world linking to monthly instead of every 2 months, since it is being brought up more and more frequently.

The team isn’t opposed to this idea; we actually think it would be beneficial to move to monthly because it would allow us to iterate faster on how we are calculating which worlds should be linked. However, the main reason for not doing this right now is the matchmaking algorithm, Glicko. Each time we shuffle worlds via world linking it takes about 4 weeks’ worth of matches before Glicko begins to reliably match make those new worlds into balanced matches. If we did world linking monthly, Glicko would not be able to create balanced matchups.

Our next priority poll is going to be asking if players would rather have us work on adding rewards to skirmishes (and possibly other feedback items being collected from this thread) or replace Glicko matchmaking with a 1-up 1-down system (wherein the winner moves up a tier and the loser moves down a tier.) The 1-up 1-down system should work better with monthly linkings than Glicko, so we are most likely going to hold off on 1 month linkings until that system is in.

Another possibility we could pursue is 1 month linkings, but use the Glicko offset system to guarantee the matches. Alternatively, we could manually change Glicko ratings to what we believe they should be for each world. Either option would force worlds to start out closer to being in the correct tier and thus give better matches faster. These options are contentious, so even if everyone on the forums seemed to like this idea it would be something we would poll on.

I can hardly imagine a worse change you could make than to add rewards based on skirmish outcome with the currently rotten matchmaking and server-linking system.

Please tell me that suggestion is a joke on ANet’s part.

First place skirmish victories are nothing like evenly distributed among servers right now. If you add a reward for servers/players getting higher ranks in a skirmish you will encourage even more bandwagon transfers.

Putting this horrible idea to a player vote does not make it any better or more acceptable. It does not reflect well on the WvW team.

Fernshade.9016:

While I agree that at best glicko is imperfect and at worst broken and absolutely stupid, bad matches happen. They have happened since the very beginning, manually adjusting the matches should only happen if the T4 situation happens again. YB will move eventually and until then find the good times where you can.

Patching over bad matches (by adjusting Glicko) ignores the fact that there are a lot of bad matches that can never be good because WvW scoring (and fun gameplay) only works when servers have roughly even populations and coverage.

Adjust systems so that a matchup between Blackgate, Dragonbrand, and SBI could exist and have interesting gameplay and suddenly match-making becomes a whole lot more free because there could be multiple interesting matches.

WvW breaks down into total garbage when population/coverage is imbalanced — that’s the root problem.

I don’t see how more manual tinkering with Glicko rankings (despite changing server composition & turnout) is supposed to fix the prior round of tinkering with Glicko rankings.

What this highlights is that Glicko is a bad tool for making matches for WvW. It’s not about the values themselves but the entire system is unfit for its use.

Xenesis.6389:

Heimlich.3065:

With that principle in mind, I’d propose dynamic handicapping of combat capabilities. When a server is on the back foot, make their players more effective fighters and territory-capturers.

The simplest incarnation of this would be to grant bonus combat stats when in the northern zone of your home borderland (e.g. north of the line between NE and NW camps).

Alternatively, strengthen the NPCs at Garrison/Earth Keep when it is held by the home server and weaken them when it is held by another server.

Interesting ideas.

There have been some suggestions on the stat boost on players instead for when they’re under the outnumbered effect, but not many seem interested in that either, the limitation you propose also seems fair to keep it to the north of the map.

Not sure if it would make a difference buffing the npcs, it would delay the larger side from capping sure, but there’s no point to that if the defenders cannot muster enough players to counter them, unless of course you double it up with the stat boost for players. You could also buff the walls and gates instead so that you delay the larger force from entering in the first place. If they bring a large force, make them work harder for the capture.

The problem with applying combat bonuses to the Outnumbered buff is that players cannot directly control whether they receive the buff or not or whether they will fight opponents under its effects. It also creates incentives for players to tell others to leave the map and treat each other kittenty in order to get the buff.

Making it place-based or something that applies during a score deficit avoids those complications. I came to the idea from self-balancing mechanics in other games. E.g. in TF2’s payload mode, spawn distance gives the attacking team an advantage at the beginning of each stage which shifts to defending team advantage nearer the end of most stages and in KOTH mode, respawn timers are longer for the team that controls the point.

It would even be possible to implement it by introducing 3 new borderland instances (one per side) where the home field team gets big combat bonuses only on those maps.

During a balanced matchup, those homelands would be mostly unused and 100% under home-team control. In a blowout matchup, overflow people from the dominating server could choose to push into the enemy’s homeland maps which creates gameplay opportunities and removes nothing from the existing game.

These concepts won’t go anywhere while the WvW team continues to believe it can create balanced matchups despite player freedom to move around or abstain from playing.

Chaba.5410:

“YB needs to move up and FA should move down – just to see what happens. Or maybe DB needs to move down and FA and YB need to fight each other. "

See this is exactly one of the problems with Glicko. It is designed to measure server performance 1-to-1. A more accurate rating would be produced by YB and FA being in a match against each other rather than just switching places. But because both servers are ranked on a tier edge with rather wide differences in glicko to servers above and below, the chances of that happening are extremely low.

The first problem is that Glicko is a rating system, not a matchmaking system. The complementary problem is that WvW adapts really badly to servers with different coverage and strength.

If WvW was fun/interesting/challenging/worthwhile to play even when servers were of very different strength or had mismatched coverage then ANet could tinker more with how it makes matches and still deliver fun gameplay to players.

Xenesis.6389:

Heimlich.3065:

I disagree. ANet could address population imbalance if they weren’t hell-bent on keeping gameplay and rewards that give advantages to over-stacked servers.

What plan or strategy exactly would you suggest they worked on to fix the population imbalance, if you don’t mind me asking.

I’ve made several versions of the same suggestion here and on reddit to, of course, no effect.

My proposal is to forget about balancing population entirely. It’s a pointless exercise to perform. As long as players have the option to move servers or simply to sit out of WvW (or sit out of GW2 entirely) population imbalance is inevitable.

ANet could make the game interesting and fun to play when one side is badly outnumbered (e.g. 10v50 or 5v50). Since those badly-outnumbered situations are bound to occur and are not very fun for either side, then adjusting gameplay to be interesting and fun in those situations is well within ANet’s ability to control.

With that principle in mind, I’d propose dynamic handicapping of combat capabilities. When a server is on the back foot, make their players more effective fighters and territory-capturers.

The simplest incarnation of this would be to grant bonus combat stats when in the northern zone of your home borderland (e.g. north of the line between NE and NW camps).

Alternatively, strengthen the NPCs at Garrison/Earth Keep when it is held by the home server and weaken them when it is held by another server.

More sophisticated versions of the idea would add more variation and gameplay, but NGAF.

Xenesis.6389:

Heimlich.3065:

Additionally (former) WvW Developer Tyler Bearce noted the option of improving rewards as one of the 4 motivators for changing scoring:

That’s news to me that I guess I missed, care to share where you saw the news of that?

Sure thing: He mentioned it recently on reddit here.

Xenesis.6389:

Heimlich.3065:

I’d note that skirmishes have not changed that situation very much. The distribution of first, second, and third place finishes in a skirmish is largely decided before the skirmish begins, and so is ranking at the end of the week.

Skirmishes were never suppose to fully fix scoring, it was suppose to fix one of the big problems with it. They have other mechanics planned that could help with scoring, the end of week catchup mechanics and high activity times earning more points. These all need to be done one step at a time, as painful as it is to wait on changes.

Coverage is always going to be the factor that decides wins, that’s never going to change with a points system that runs a week long, they need to place mechanics in the game that can counter it. If you can’t get population to be balanced(which they can’t) then you can get the sides to play off/with each other in order to counter the side with the greatest numbers. You either start giving out bonus points to the 2nd 3rd place teams, or promote 2nd and 3rd to go after 1st constantly.

The jury is still out on skirmishes. They don’t seem to have made much difference so far. At best they limit the scoring impact when one server has pathetic coverage during one time period.

Regardless of that, scoring cannot make gameplay itself interesting or fun.

RyuDragnier.9476:

There are rewards for winning WvW? This is news to me.

Are you familiar with reward tracks, rank-up loot, bonus chests for the winning team, or wvw season rewards (when those were a thing)? You may not consider these large rewards, but they all exist and are much easier to gain when you’re on the winning side.

Additionally (former) WvW Developer Tyler Bearce noted the option of improving rewards as one of the 4 motivators for changing scoring:

Currently we can’t give out worthwhile rewards for winning, as most match-ups are already decided before they begin

I’d note that skirmishes have not changed that situation very much. The distribution of first, second, and third place finishes in a skirmish is largely decided before the skirmish begins, and so is ranking at the end of the week.

Rotteny.8743:

Svarty.8019:

Offair.2563:

Population imbalance mainly driven by players, not anet.

Yes, Babs, but it’s important to recognise that Anet has the power to do something about it. Whether what they do is the right thing is another discussion.

The only way for them to stop population imbalance would be if they ended the transfers. And we all know this ain’t happening… However, we can see the majority of the players aren’t interested in balance, since they always decide to stack in a single server to “win”. Then why would them do that?

I disagree. ANet could address population imbalance if they weren’t hell-bent on keeping gameplay and rewards that give advantages to over-stacked servers. Every piece of WvW gameplay currently reduces to “bring more people, play more person-hours”. They have indicated that they want to give valuable rewards to players who win a matchup or win skirmishes, and that will only encourage more stacking.

Hexinx.1872:

Kind of and kind of not… in the new system your max potential is 50% of the total available. In the current system … you can literally paint the entire EBG and all 3 BL’s your colour if night capping, and you get 100% of total war score (points) … the new system caps your maximum potential income to 50% of total points handed out to all parties.

A score comeback is still just as difficult to accomplish. The overpopulated/bandwagon server will not be able to run up the same large number that they can now, but nor can the underdog retake a score deficit as easily.

Coverage and WvW-active population will still determine the winner in each week.

Korgov.7645:

First fix the population balance

Players determine population balance. As long as players can move and have motive to move, population balance is a lie.

Furthermore, who cares about the Glicko system for WvW? It’s a failure that makes boring yet stale matches.

LetoII.3782:

Svarty.8019:

Dawdler.8521:

Svarty.8019:

• Arenanet develop the ability to measure who is first, who is second and who is third (at the moment) in the match.

Requires too much complicated math, sorry.

You know what? You’re probably right!

LetoII.3782:

Supply isn’t really the problem when doing 50v5 keep defense

Supply isn’t the only option, but it is a logical start point. It’s possible that other bonuses could be added to the third place side.

… and to be frank 50 should really win vs 5 anyway.

You say that like they don’t.
More supply won’t help population imbalance

I agree.

In a 5v50 situation, the side with only 5 players need significant combat bonuses to compete and have any gameplay at all.

In the current model, if you have 5 defenders vs 50 attackers, the outnumbered side can do nothing entertaining or interesting beyond deplolying a few supply traps. If the outnumbered group is caught, it will die to no effect.

Straegen.2938:

This is an old game so sweeping changes to the game mode are unlikely. They (nor anyone else) has cracked the “fair and balanced” population issue. Linked servers is about as close as they are going to get without a complete redesign but as noted their player base is aging out. Even if they created a WvW utopia it wouldn’t unwind the clock.

I’m less interested in fairness/balance than maybe the game mode being fun.

It isn’t fun to either lose or win in a blowout. I play (most) games for fun and entertainment. The current system doesn’t create fun matches.

RodOfDeath.5247:

morrolan.9608:

apharma.3741:

I think you need to do some serious revisions to your glicko system if we are getting re-linked every 2 months. It’s taken us 3-4 weeks to get a match up that wasn’t a complete blow out for Whiteside Ridge which was last weeks. This week we’re against GH and Dzagonur, 2 servers we cannot hope to compete against in coverage so we will have a complete blow out match up where people don’t even bother playing as outnumbered will never leave our bar.

Yep I keep saying this, the system clearly does not work.

I find it interesting anet rewards CD for have multiple servers on their team and blobbing up. Now you can see YB and SOS pulling way already. Clearly, the system isn’t working at all.

T4 has gotten worse and I hear T2 is a joke.

The Glicko system can’t produce good outcomes when there are only 1 or 2 match setups that are even close to satisfying for the majority of servers.

Most possible matches would be blowout, un-fun slaughters. Using Glicko to find the least-bad matchups doesn’t fix the underlying problem at all.

Yuffi.2430:

@Heimlich: I fully agree that the fun and interest are the most important elements we need. The question is how to achieve this.

If you accept that there will be times when a server is outnumbered, even in its own home borderland, by 50 to 10, then the obvious answer would be to (under some circumstances) allow the team of 10 defenders to fight off 50 attackers.

Personally, I’d add 3 new borderlands to matchups where each side gets an additional new home and home team players on that borderland get a sizeable combat strength buff.

In any balanced matchup, those 3 new borderlands would be essentially unoccupied. Attackers would have no reason to venture into a map where they suffer a disadvantage.

In inbalanced matchups, the overstacked side will run out of other things to do, and if they want to fight other players, would have to go to the homeland maps.

I think ANet believes they can create balanced matchups and ignores the inevitability of 10v50 periods.

Using Glicko for matchmaking has been a joke and has created mostly stale matchups.

A change like this is nothing but a band-aid.

In order to make WvW viable as a mode, you need to make matches between servers with radically different population and coverage fun to play and interesting.

No amount of server linking, glicko tinkering, scoring changes, or new siege will create that.

I’d humbly suggest that stockpiling Potions of WvW Rewards (obtained from WvW dailies) is a time-efficient way of obtaining the Gift of Battle.

Consuming 80 reward potions will finish a track, which allows you to obtain a gift of battle and some other loot. You can get 80 potions through daily achievements in WvW over 20-40 days, and that small amount of WvW activity will get you extra reward track progress too (so it is achievable in less calendar time).

I think deciding this via forum thread is the wrong approach for the game, the company, and the player base.

The dispute over Charr secondary sex characteristics should have been the basis for Living Story 3 and also replaced the existing server/faction system for WvW. We should have settled this like the Kiel/Gnashblade election and/or with a WvW Tournament.

Vova.2640:

Heimlich.3065:

Fay.2357:

I haven’t been following the polls, someone mind explaining to me why op feels this way/what they’re talking about?

The results from the poll were

(Factoring out “Ignore my vote” selections)

38.1% Re-evaluate every 1 month
15.9% Re-evaluate every 2 months
28.9% Re-evaluate every 3 months (this is the current default)
5.5% Re-evaluate every 4 months
11.6% Re-evaluate every 6 months

In response to this, ANet’s interpretation was to split the difference between the two most popular options and to re-evaluate every 2 months.

Personally, I think that is a sensible and defensible interpretation (though it is not the option I chose).

A majority did want a shorter matchup, and they delivered to that. A sizeable minority also wanted the default/current length of matchup and they paid respect to that preference as well by splitting the difference between the 1 and 3 month preferences.

Should’ve just went with the majority… but then again, I voted for 1 month too so…

Well, there was no majority (no option > 50%), so I think they did ok.

Any choice would have been not chosen by most people. Splitting the difference between the most popular 3 is fair enough.

I also chose 1 month.

Fay.2357:

I haven’t been following the polls, someone mind explaining to me why op feels this way/what they’re talking about?

The results from the poll were

(Factoring out “Ignore my vote” selections)

38.1% Re-evaluate every 1 month
15.9% Re-evaluate every 2 months
28.9% Re-evaluate every 3 months (this is the current default)
5.5% Re-evaluate every 4 months
11.6% Re-evaluate every 6 months

In response to this, ANet’s interpretation was to split the difference between the two most popular options and to re-evaluate every 2 months.

Personally, I think that is a sensible and defensible interpretation (though it is not the option I chose).

A majority did want a shorter matchup, and they delivered to that. A sizeable minority also wanted the default/current length of matchup and they paid respect to that preference as well by splitting the difference between the 1 and 3 month preferences.

Thanks for the feedback. Two months is a reasonable compromise. It isn’t the value I voted for (I chose 1 month), but it allows the bulk of participants feel like they had influence while leaving the largest factions similarly unhappy with the result

Swedemon.4670:

Heimlich.3065:

Nah, lets weight it by number of link changes in a year (i.e. 12/link duration)

(35.8%=12, 26.9%=4, 14.9%=6, 10.6%=2, 6.9%=ignore, 4.9%=3)

That averages to a preference for 7.1 link changes per year or a change every 1.7
months, or approximately every 7 weeks.

Not sure they’d look it that way, but you may be close… I’m thinking they’ll take the weighted average which is ~2.46 and based on the poll options choose 2 months (the closest match).

My point is that I used a weighted average as well, based on the exact same data, but with a slightly different interpretation and came up with a different value. Choice in how to calculate a weighted average matters a lot (iow, a weighted average tends to give disproportionate weight to larger numerical values). Consider if they had an option to re-link once per 10 years and 1% of people chose that

Swedemon.4670:

Dawdler.8521:

Hypothetically that’s impossible. 4 months currently have 4.8% (less than undecided votes at 7%) and 6 months have 10.9%.

That’s why it is hypothetical. If you want real numbers at this point in time (35.8%=1, 26.9%=3, 14.9%=2, 10.6%=6, 6.9%=ignore, 4.9%=4).

Does 1 month win or do you take the weighted average which is about 2.5 months?

We take the weighted average of all voters which is 2.5 months or 10 weeks.

Nah, lets weight it by number of link changes in a year (i.e. 12/link duration)

(35.8%=12, 26.9%=4, 14.9%=6, 10.6%=2, 6.9%=ignore, 4.9%=3)

That averages to a preference for 7.1 link changes per year or a change every 1.7
months, or approximately every 7 weeks.

Naithe.4271:

Something as simple as “These comments do not represent the X server community.” would be sufficient. And no, standing up for what’s right, isn’t silly. Just rare.

Most of us don’t care about scoring internet points by arguing with purported server-mates for an audience that does not care.

Naithe.4271:

Sarika.3756:

Three or four players don’t define a server.

They do if they are the only one speaking. Guess what, they were the only one speaking.

Silence is acceptance.

People that sacrifice the game for the betterment of only themselves or their guild, are selfish players. There’s always a way to make both thrive without destroying the other.

That’s silly. Most players don’t use the forums at all. Of the people who do, most don’t post at all. Of the people who do post, there’s almost no point to participating in a chest-thumping or bragging thread.

That’s even more true when gameplay is working smoothly and enjoyable.

Ven Zehn.6573:

There are many things Anet can try, and they have, as well as every other company that deals with similar things, but as others have mentioned, players will always find a way to abuse the system, or work around it.

I don’t see that they have put much effort into it. The first and most effective thing they could do is regular enforcement. They don’t do that with regularity. It does not happen.

If it is against the rules (and it should be), then ANet should act like it’s against the rules. If they don’t enforce that prohibition, then the rule hardly exists.

Griefers act for months at a time without a word or an intervention from ANet. Occasionally a report gets enough attention through Reddit to trigger an actual investigation and ban, but that isn’t adequate to promote fair gameplay.

Hands-off spies are a different matter. If somebody’s joined an opposing server’s TS or map then there’s no way to prevent them from reporting on movements and activity. It would be nice to mark or otherwise discourage partying with players on other teams or to make guild chat (& guild map markers) less useful for spying. However spying isn’t my main concern.

Melanion.4892:

Physics doesn’t need to apply in a game where I can conjure fireballs from my hands and call meteors from the sky.

You can’t take real-world logic into a game that doesn’t accept real-world logic.

Agreed, but game-world fortification designers should design their structures with the knowledge of how game-world fireballs and game-world meteor shower spells operate.

GW2 fortification design doesn’t make any sense at all. We use curtain walls with no ditch and despite the existence of cannons (in the real world, the curtain wall was obsolete by the 16th century, replaced by star forts).

In the game world, the walls provide no advantage for the defender, as they provide no extra range and, in fact, allow the attacker to free-fire upwards without penalty.

If I was designing a structure for defense in GW2 game mechanics, I’d surround my castle with a deep pit (to force attackers to fall and take a considerable low-ground) with a few narrow bridges to make the approach. The outer fortifications on DBL’s air keep are probably the closest in-game examples of a sane defensive structure.

Tiny Doom.4380:

Nothing much changes on YB, ever.

The Permanent Portable Provisioner and ability to get Superior AC blueprints & Superior Treb blueprints for Proofs of Heroics have definitely improved the YakLife.

But other than that, you’re right. It’s the same people now as when we were bumping along as the 9th or 10th ranked server and will be for the forseeable future. When ANet turns off the servers we’ll probably all be there too, building one last Superior AC, chewing out somebody for deploying wal-mart siege, escorting a supply yak, or sieging up north camp.

Diku.2546:

The above mechanic as it is defined can be gamed if enough people actively do it.

I’m looking for a solution that will balance the needs of an individual player…with the needs of the entire WvW Community.

What parts of it would you suggest changing, or are you suggesting it shouldn’t even be considered because it presents too high of a risk for extreme abuse by players?

I’ll update it with feedback from you and others to reduce the risk of abuse.

Then I can take this to update my notes to save the work we’ve gone through.

I feel this topic thread has merit on improving things to the WvW universe.

It’s ANet’s job to enforce their rules on the game mode. If siege/supply/tactivator griefing are against the rules (and they are — on paper), then ANet needs to enforce those rules reliably. That enforcement needs to apply to all of the violator’s accounts.

ANet should add reporting options that cover griefing and hacking in WvW. Create provide internal tools to record and review player’s behavior, filter reports for accuracy, and detect suspicious behavior for review (i.e. deplolying rams in a friendly keep, activating the EWP tactivator when the normal waypoint is available, activating Chilling Fog when no enemies are present, etc…).

Johje Holan.4607:

morrolan.9608:

Johje Holan.4607:

This is probably the best post that illustrates why the coverage problem is the players fault and not Anet.

If you make a game based on players making good unselfish decisions then you will fail. You have to develop game mechanics based on the fact that players will largely make selfish decisions that will get them wins or rewards in the easiest manner possible.

True. Human nature is why we can’t have nice things. Although the EU servers seemed to be able to use their higher brain and create good population spread for awhile.

Actually I do think this is why RvR simply cannot work. I think all the upcoming games people always talk about that are going to “kill GW2 RvR” or “do RvR right” – aren’t. Because RvR is impossible to design such that populations are relatively even without some sort of forcing mechanic. But a forcing mechanic will turn people off. Plus too many things need to go right for RvR to work and keep players interested. Its very hard to do.

Another thing that RvR games have going against them is a game’s need to make a sizeable profit. In today’s world a gaming company simply making a decent profit is no longer enough. You’ve got to show ever increasing and sizeable profits and please the shareholders. And RvR is not a good return on investment.

To my mind, the workable solution is to create self-balancing gameplay.

That’s not the same as score balance. If one side is consistently winning fights and territory, it deserves to have a higher (potentially much higher) score.

I’m talking about moment-to-moment enjoyable gameplay where it’s worth the bother of showing up, even if you’re showing up to a 10v30 or 20v50 battle.

The simplest variant of that would be to give the outnumbered/outscored team a massive boost to combat stats (e.g. +1000 to Power/Toughness/Vitality/CondiDamage/Precision/Healing). That would be very blunt and has a bunch of problems around the edges. So it’s simple but flawed.

A more viable option, that respects player agency and is not subject to abuse, is to add borderlands, 1 per server in the matchup, that are sort of Super-Homelands. On those maps the home team would receive an enormous combat boost that does not transfer to any other maps. In a normal, balanced matchup those maps would be empty. In a disproportionate matchup, the attacker will take much/most of the underdog’s territory and be forced to either log off (the only option now) or to push into the Super-Homeland map. On that Super-Homeland map, the defenders would have access to enough advantage that they could succeed in a 10v30 or 20v50 battle.

Miko.4158:

Yes , I said yes on the grounds it was beta and was going to be looked at properly.
Switching from 1/4’s to 3 months wasn’t what I had in mind. Server tiers, identity and play style need looking at. If that’s not going to happen I’d vote no to it all….
I also don’t recall a vote on mergers, just linking? given the number of questions in this, I think they could have got a better spread of questions.

I don’t know what you mean by “Switching from 1/4’s to 3 months wasn’t what I had in mind.”

The WvW team has communicated, on several occasions, that their original plan was to re-evaluate world links approximately every 3 months (i.e. 4x per year)

The question was on keeping/rejecting world linking was not perfect, but it was very clear.

The week of April 19th we released World Linking and Reward changes in WvW. Since the release we’ve seen an increase in WvW population and participation and we believe we’re moving in the right direction. We’re here today to ask if you think that World Linking is a positive improvement to the game. As before, we’re looking for 75% of the population voting “Yes” or “No” to agree that World Linking should remain a feature.

Do you believe that the WvW World Linking should be a Guild Wars 2 feature?

It’s sort of a textbook example of positive biasing “Since the release we’ve seen an increase in WvW population and participation and we believe we’re moving in the right direction” plus asking a yes/no question (which is weighted towards yes, as I mentioned above).

Regardless of that, I can’t see how you could have any doubts about what you were voting for or against in that.

Miko.4158:

I find it odd because it assumes and doesn’t ask if people want server linking or not.

They asked that in a prior poll and the Yes-to-linking vote won with 80% or more.

I still think linking is flawed and I think the poll wording was flawed (polling on a yes/no question is biased towards yes), but ANet has asked this question and people responded.

Orpheal.8263:

I’m here right now just to say, that everyone who votes for a ridiculousy monthly checking of the match matching basically votes for “I want to kill WvW”…

Seriously, give the devs a break, they have way much more important things to do with WvW, than to check every 30 days new match makings and balance them out…

I think the intrepid developers can largely automate this process. At the very worst, they should automate a report that shows world activity levels and suggests a few linkings/configurations with information on what would happen. There’s no reason the act of creating re-links should take more than a handful of person-hours.

The other interpretation is that a vote of re-linking every month means “the negative aspects of Server Linking are already bad for WvW”. That would seem to conflict with the overwhelmingly positive response in the linking poll from a few weeks back, but imprecise poll phrasing can mean your poll measures something different than what you wanted.

Server linking was bundled in with some very positive and/or popular changes (return of ABL and reward tracks for examples). DBL was bundled with some pretty unpopular and negative changes (T3 gates, auto-upgrades that didn’t need yaks, 50 supply Guild Catas, etc…).

msalakka.4653:

I bet the people advocating a long schedule are the ones who transferred to the low-tier servers, thus bypassing T1 being locked down. Maybe you developers should have thought this through and seen it coming by locking down the linked server too from accepting transfers. The “full” status is a joke when they can just go to the linked one.

That may be so, but they’re free to advocate for what they see as their interests. I personally voted for a shorter option but that is a case of me voting for my own interests as well.

Johje Holan.4607:

Uh oh maybe I spoke too soon about this being the way to do it. Looks like people who think 3 months is too long are splitting their votes between 1 and 2 months. That could give the win to the unwanted choice.

Maybe they should’ve said:
1. Less than quarterly.
2. Quarterly.
3. More than quarterly.

I hope that in the case no one option gets > 50%, the developers will interpret data in a fashion least likely to alienate the majority.

At the time I write this, the shorter options add up to being the most popular.

Monthly at 32.7%, per 2 months at 19.2%, per 3 months at 27.7%, per 4 months at 4%, and per 6 months at 9.1%, and No Vote at 7.4%.

There are (at this moment) a lot of people who want a relink duration shorter than the current plan, a fair number who want the duration to stay the same, and relatively few who want a longer linking period.

Based on this data, a relinking period of 6-8 weeks would probably work as a reasonable compromise. A period of 12+ weeks would not be justified by these results.

CrimeMaker.8612:

Okay great servers are open! But question still remains why not just merge servers…..?

The motive behind server linking is that it allows ANet to create similar-population matchups by creating linked groups of similar servers.

That would allow numerically-competitive matches despite player movement and without forcibly moving players from one server to another.

I think that idea has some flaws, but the motives are ones I agree with.

Aeolus.3615:

Is it possible to tranfer to the “secondary” servers?

You can join any non-full server and then you’ll participate in the current linked matchup. There are only 4 current Full servers: Blackgate, Tarnished Coast, Seafarer’s Rest, and Riverside.

You can join any other server directly. In order to play alongside Blackgate, Tarnished Coast you would need to join their linked server (Eredon Terrace or Kaineng, repsectively). This does not apply to Riverside or Seafarer’s Rest — as they have no link partner.

Get your transfers to ET while they’re still just $6.25! That’s 6 or 7 weeks of 0-effort top-place finishes! Don’t miss your spot on the bandwagon!

Ven Zehn.6573:

Heimlich.3065:

Ven Zehn.6573:

Like, in a real life situation, people could basically ignore the spy, or make it so that it’s more difficult for them to do.

In real life, nations hang or imprison spies and saboteurs.

A game without comparable options can’t include spying or sabotage as legitimate gameplay.

In board games or parlour games that feature spying or sabotage, there always exists some option to sideline or eliminate spies or saboteurs. Often that’s a major element of the game itself (spies and saboteurs conceal their identity, misdirect, and try to get other players to lynch innocent players as spies; investigators have spy-detecting powers; etc).

That was basically my point. Maybe I just needed to make it more clear:)

Yes, I was expanding on what you’d said, I think you have the right idea

Ben K.6238:

We haven’t had a single rotation yet, which is a bit of a problem because we can’t tell how the long-term effects of world linking will play out until we do.

In theory players might not be so inclined to bandwagon to linked servers when they’ll have to shift every three months, but when the transfer fee is that low they might just do it anyway.

Moving NA T8 server links to the T4+5 group (or establishing a separate T5) might be the way to go.

T1 servers should not have gotten link partners. They were adequately populated.

Links should not have proceeded unchanged after players transferred using the information in leaked (accurate) pre-patch info.

ANet surely has internal data that would allow them to accurately gauge and create links based on population and participation rather than on current-Glicko-rating. That was a major mistake in several ways.

• It was well known that unpopular changes had suppressed WvW participation.
• It was reasonable to expect that players would return to WvW in light of improvements to rewards and gameplay.
• There was a set of high-profile and well known (among WvW players) guild moves immediately before server links were established.

It would have been possible to determine likely participation/population numbers using data on ANet’s systems. My first cut would have been:

• Select the sum of WvW rank-up events across all players who have actively played WvW in the last 6 months, for rank-ups in the last 12 months, grouped by that account’s current server.

You could refine that by futzing with the date thresholds and weighting more-recent activity more heavily, but I think that would determine an approximate coverage/activity metric for each server, it would account for players taking a moderate-length break (who may return) and would account for accounts that have moved servers.

I have doubts that world-linking is a viable solution to WvW problems, but I also believe it can be done much better, if ANet chooses to learn from the shortcomings of this attempt.

Ven Zehn.6573:

Like, in a real life situation, people could basically ignore the spy, or make it so that it’s more difficult for them to do.

In real life, nations hang or imprison spies and saboteurs.

A game without comparable options can’t include spying or sabotage as legitimate gameplay.

In board games or parlour games that feature spying or sabotage, there always exists some option to sideline or eliminate spies or saboteurs. Often that’s a major element of the game itself (spies and saboteurs conceal their identity, misdirect, and try to get other players to lynch innocent players as spies; investigators have spy-detecting powers; etc).

X T D.6458:

TorquedSoul.8097:

Scamp.5296:

I like the fact that you guys send us an in-game mail when you have a new poll up. I agree inactive players should not be pursued for voting.

So you like that anet customers that don’t like the changes should be forced to run around the maps daily and level to get access to the poll which decide which way the game will go?

In other words, engage in time consuming activity that isn’t entertaining just for the hope that eventually a poll will get posted that will allow them an opportunity to show that they don’t like it.

Two words.

Echo Chamber.

I would rather they message and alert active players that actually participate in the gamemode they are trying to get player feedback on. If you quit or find wvw such a time consuming activity, why should anyone care what you think? Furthermore why should anyone bend over backwards for you, if you want to participate its up to you, if you quit and have little interest in the game, why should they go after you?

The players who boycotted the DBL certainly got a say in having that tabled, and potential and alienated players are worthy of consideration.

Player retention and regaining former players should interest the game developers.

Swamurabi.7890:

Johje Holan.4607:

But the point is that 2 of 4 tiers are messed up. Half. Just because my match is good doesn’t mean I can’t be aware that the other half of the matches are suffering.

The current linkings are only giving half of the servers good matches. One reason I think they should be changed more often.

When there were eight matches in NA you were lucky if you found two matches that were good.
Most of the stagnant pre-link matches were also decided before Monday.

Few were decided the instant they were created.