Guild Wars 2

Midgard/Gawaine here (I remember Nupraptor!) before switching to Hibernia/Palomides. Now on Ferguson’s Crossing because I apparently can’t stay away from lost causes.

It makes me feel old to think that when DAoC came out, several of the commanders on my server were toddlers, and that I was playing UO before they were even born.

For the screenshots above, I actually had more might in the ones where I was hitting in the 200s than in the 300s. In the bigger fights we had stacked might beforehand. As they expired the damage did go down (3 points per stack), but that doesn’t explain the 326 vs 241 and such.

Further complicating this is that all of my results from yesterday show hits in the 300s again. There’s a thread in the wvw forum that thinks the change was rolled back.

edit: one possibility is that the ones showing reduced damage had protection up and there never was a change in the first place. That would explain how we all arrived at that 33% reduction number.

Here are a few data points. Apologies for the screenshot quality; they’re screengrabs from videos.

#1: Ranger autoattack; retaliation hits for 241
#2: Guardian hammer (maybe mighty blow); retaliation hits for 326. So far so good.
#3: 3 hits on various enemies for 223 each.
#4: 3 hits on various enemies (same fight as #3) for 194 each.

I’m not sure how to explain #3 and #4 being for exactly the same amounts for multiple people if it’s based on the amount of incoming damage. Maybe there’s something more complicated going on, which would explain why the patch notes are so vague.

It varies against players, but I’m not sure how. I’ve noticed my retaliation hitting from the 190s to the 330s. My guess is that it now either scales to the incoming damage from an attack (which would mean uplevels and fast attackers would get hit for less per attack) or it’s mitigated by armor. I think it’s the former, but haven’t tested enough to be sure.

Yes, there’s something more subtle than a straight reduction going on. I’ve noticed retaliation hits between the 190s and 330ish on my guardian. It used to be a straight 326. Two theories: 1) it’s now scaled by the incoming damage, so uplevels and fast attackers won’t get hit disproportionately hard, or 2) it’s now mitigated by armor. I think it might be the first, but haven’t tested enough to know.

Lukian Darkblade.8012:

What Ferguson’s Crossing zergs do on their free time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR0OjSKI4D4

“Alright, but somebody has to kitten this dolyak” is going to be my new default response when someone wants me to do something.

It feels like this match has devolved into a weird 3-way peace where the following cycle plays out repeatedly:

1) SF takes everything, or close to it
2) They leave and go kill dragons or kittens (or whatever it is wicked people do) to let us take everything back so they have something to do again.
3) They come back. We maybe defend the southern towers for a bit but eventually get overwhelmed (hello, Commander Siegerazer)
4) Everyone goes their separate ways, our commanders leave or turn off their tags and we go back to step 1.

The cycle repeats so frequently that upgrades rarely have time to happen, which only makes it go faster. Everyone knows everyone else’s siege tricks at this point also, so it’s really just a matter of how much of a gold tax we’re going to put on each other before it’s over, and when we know we’ll just take everything back 10 minutes later that number’s being driven to zero. It’s a great environment for leveling alts, but not much else.

All of which means, at least from what I’ve seen lately, that there’s not a lot of actual fighting going on. That leaves those who want to keep fighting without a lot of ideas as to what to do.

…and one more for good measure.

I’ve taken a lot of dumb deaths trying to do this sort of thing, but when it works it’s all worth it.

The worst part of it is that the tier as a whole is losing 11 points. That’s another increase in the gap between tiers.

That said, our match is no worse than most of the others right now. With less transferring among the servers, there’s less reason to expect anything different in a match from day to day and week to week, so they all seem to be breaking in one side’s favor and staying that way. I’m starting to wonder if some limited amount of free transferring wouldn’t be such a bad thing. As-is, even given a better ratings system, things might get too stable to stay interesting.

It’s a complicated problem, but it’s important — matchmaking in general is probably the most important problem in multiplayer gaming. The ability to change matchups at all is a huge step in the right direction versus the err…Dark Age…when we’d fight the same hopeless odds until we decided to quit the game. Speaking of which, I should probably talk to a professional about my pattern of server choices over the years.

Omne.4603:

I don’t know how you guys stay on these servers. Not bashing just props and genuine curiosity.

If the upper tiers are Braveheart, the bottom of tier 8 is that depressing documentary about where hamburgers come from. It’s a lot less enjoyable in the moment, but the experience stays with you longer. Like any other competition, there’s a lot to be learned from watching yourself and others handle adversity, especially when you can’t directly overcome it.

Though I haven’t exchanged more than a few words with most of them, I genuinely appreciate the people that show up to try to make the game better for me and everyone else on our side, and want to keep doing my part to make things slightly less terrible for them. All of these people have every opportunity to be doing something else with their time, but there they are repairing that door that they know will be broken down again 5 minutes later, so there I’ll be making it go a little faster.

Ah, FC. Even our drama is currently in another tier.

Here’s an idea that’s unlikely to happen but would solve some of these problems and I think be fun: every so often, have four-sided matches instead of three. That lets one tier get exposed to the ratings in the ones above and below it, and adds some variety to both the matchups and the gameplay. It wouldn’t quite work for the EU servers though with their not-divisible-by-4 situation. I blame the metric system for that.

Nobody’s advocating that we play Jade Quarry. Henge of Denravi? Maybe interesting. Maybe not, but nobody knows because #22 hasn’t played #21 in a month.

Believe me, we know what happens when we’re matched against servers above our weight class. The problem is that, due to the math, once servers escape tier 8 they tend to be tier 5+ caliber. There are higher quality matches to be made among the lower-tier servers than those currently happening, and it’s in the best interest of new players — read: everyone interested in the future of the game — that they happen.

Anyone who buys the game today is going to be pointed at a tier 8 server. When they first poke their heads in WvW, what’s their experience going to be like? Forget about the frustrations of the people posting here — we’re masochists and will probably keep going regardless. But judging from the names that pop in one day and never again, this is going to cause retention problems. At least with free transfers they could try out a few different servers. As-is, sending your curious, fresh recruits against triple their numbers with a handful of jaded, frustrated people to lead them and a month of the same matchup on the horizon is…suboptimal.

Here’s an example post from our matchup thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/2-1-Sorrow-s-Ferg-s-Eredon-s/page/3#post1389446

A couple of ideas that might help:

1) Cap the minimum rating for a last-tier server to, say, 85% of the rating of the third server in the tier above. This should help keep the whole of the lowest tier from sinking to where a server can’t get out in a reasonable time frame.
2) Mix the tiers on occasion, either at random or by some rule (eg two wins in a row and you’re automatically bumped for a week, after which ratings decide again). Glicko2 doesn’t work unless those near each other on the ladder actually play each other. Occasionally swap the third server from one tier with the first on the next to make sure the tiers stay in the right order. There is a lot of information to be gained by putting Sorrow’s Furnace against tier 7 now. There’s none to be gained by keeping them in tier 8.
3) Increase the contribution of score to rating change. Servers in the wrong tier cause pain all around them. It’s criminal to have exposed pretty much every WvW player in the game to the new Kaineng (though Tier 8 has the distinction of having to deal with new Kaineng for 2-3 weeks), and keeping servers that suddenly weaken in over their heads all the way down doesn’t help anyone either. The ratings system isn’t about “earning your way up” — it’s about creating compelling matches. In computer science terms, right now we’ve got something like a bubble sort when we need a quicksort.

Whenever a matchup starts to get frustrating, something like this happens and makes it all better for a while:

Yeah, we should be careful with the K word. First, if you say it three times fast they’ll all transfer back, and second, it was really a unique case that messed things up for a lot of other servers.

I think everyone’s main concern is that no matter how unbalanced this matchup gets in whoever’s favor, it’s going to take forever to get someone out of this tier because there’s only so many ratings points to be had from winning against servers whose rankings skewed so low.

Rematching opponents like this is a huge step forward from other games where you were stuck with whatever the population split happened to be on your server forever. With a few adjustments things should work fine, but until then everyone’s on edge about being sentenced to another month of trying to hold Spiritholme.

I knew this would be about Kaineng just from the thread title. Must be Saturday.

We’re all in that montage of guys Rocky beats up on the way to Apollo Creed. Except in this case Rocky gets to bring 30 other people in the ring with him and he gets to start while the other guy’s asleep.

Like a lot of lower-tier servers, our history has left us with a bunch of players that are

1) Stubborn
2) Emotionally stable
3) So kitten good they get bored with balanced matchups

Well, most of us are two out of the three, anyway.

There really are two separate problems: 1) if the matchup doesn’t change much within a tier, the ratings system doesn’t reflect when all three servers are getting better/worse together, and 2) when a tier becomes unbalanced, it can take too long to get rid of the offender. Both are exaggerated in tier 8.

To address the first, one relatively easy idea would be to occasionally swap the 3rd server in a tier with the 1st in the one below. This would help make sure the tiers are in the right order and that the numbers reflect the differences a little more accurately. Had Devona’s Rest gotten an earlier crack at the Tier 7 servers it would have saved us a month of lopsided matches. And even if they had gotten sent right back down, their rating would reflect how good a match they were for Tier 7, thus improving the accuracy of the tier 8 ratings. The other tiers already kind of work this way because the numbers are more bunched up — it happens organically. Another possibility would be to put a floor on any server’s rating. This would stop tier 8 ratings from spiraling down when we trade wins.

For the second problem, one idea would be to exaggerate the contribution of score differences to the ratings system as they increase. I think it’d be better to send an upstart server into a tier too high than too low.

All that said, the current matchup in tier 8 is pretty much perfect. But if one server suddenly gets stronger it’s going to take a long time to get out.

Just to further underscore what a great matchup this has been, take a look at the score/income graphs over time:

http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/48/16

Notice how the lines keep crossing on the score graph. We’ve had several lead changes, which almost never happens. And the income graph is beautiful — it’s actually gotten tighter as the week has gone on.

Contrast that with last week’s mess with Kaineng:

http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/48/15

Or any week during Devona’s reign:

http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/50/11

We’re a server full of people that keep showing up despite almost always being on one side or another of a mismatch (though all downside for the past couple of months). That says various things about us as players, but it makes for a unique community at any rate. Being originally from Cleveland it reminds me a lot of Browns fans — there’s this weird unspoken bond that forms among those who share a source of disappointment.

A few things to consider for guilds thinking of moving here:

1) Since a lot of our big guilds have left at various points, a lot of those left are small-guild/unguilded types. It’s not uncommon to see 10 different guild tags if we’ve got 15 people doing something. To an extent that means we’re ripe for recruitment, but on the other hand most of these people haven’t joined anything so far so they’ll need some wooing, especially from a transfer guild. I will say that there are some very good, smart, team players running around underguilded for lack of the right fit.

2) One guild can make a huge difference in this tier. Raw numbers are one thing, but even small groups snowball into big ones when they have some success.

3) There’s no telling what happens after reset tomorrow. All three of the servers involved have been beaten up for weeks now, so it’s anybody’s guess whether the match will be remotely even once people stick their heads up again.

A few other things I’ve found useful:

- Jump from the high part of one platform towards the low part of the next.
- For the ones where you have to land on a small area, point the camera almost straight down. That helps you fine-tune things in mid-air.
- Swiftness helps with the long jumps.
- Keep trying, but on different days. This is one of those things where you wake up the next day better than you were the day before.

FC will be fine. Things in-game were surprisingly positive today, at least when I played — lots of people speaking up who’ve been around but quiet, and veterans taking the time to show some new people around. We’re in for a stomping on the scoreboard for a few weeks, but if we pick our fights well we’ll do ok. The most important thing we can do now is make everyone feel welcome and useful when they show up.

The one good thing about server transfers is that on a server like this one you know that everyone out there has signed up for the same beating you have. That requires a level of emotional stability (or at least stubbornness) not seen in the typical MMO player, and I think it’s creating an interesting culture on our server.

A bit more on how badly we needed leadership:

1) Here we are in September all jumping to our deaths because someone else did.
2) Same thing a month later, except the guy that jumped first had a commander icon. Only saw him once.

We’ve always had a lot of good followers, but until recently there wasn’t much leadership. Having a few commanders, especially ones that are inclusive and patient with people, has really focused everyone. It’s all about setting the right goals — holding our borderlands feels like winning regardless of the scoreboard, and if morale stays good the numbers to do more will follow.

Ferguson’s Crossing is like a virus. There’s not a lot of central planning, but if a few of us end up in the same place at the same time we start multiplying exponentially until we’ve run our course and start dying off. I feel bad for anyone trying to spy on us — if you get any good information, please let the rest of us know too.

Incidentally, we’re on track to have three different winners out of the last three times this matchup has happened. That’s like a pvp holy grail. Hope it stays this way.