Guild Wars 2

eithinan.9841:

If I may also speculate as to your age. It is mid twenties or lower. The entitlement/trophy generations. If you get a participation trophy in little league it does not mean you excelled at little league. When there is real competition you only get a reward for winning not participating.

Oh please … not that incredibly lame entitlement sermon again. Sixty five years of age showed up in my rear view mirror some time ago and even I think that kind of stereotyping of younger people is pure bullkitten. Are younger people sometimes a bit naive? Of course they may be. Do less experienced people sometimes have unwarranted expectations? Of course they do. Lots of people have some sense of entitlement one way or another, but that certainly holds true across all age groups and I can give you dozens of examples to prove it. Besides, it wasn’t the kids who decided they should all get Little League trophies … it was adults in their 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s.

Go peddle your sanctimonious crap someplace else.

Cottage Pie.6215:

Why must the mystic forge process be so ridiculously click happy and time inefficient, unlike normal mass crafting. You need skillpoints to do these so endless spam can’t be the reason, and doing the process 50 times in a row is time not in WvW, time not spent playing and enjoying the game, which is bad design aye?

You mean that ANet didn’t think something through when they implemented it? Or that the devs responsible for some aspect of the game didn’t make it consistent with how other devs implemented something almost identical elsewhere? I’m shocked, I tell you … shocked.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Google how much AMD opteron/Intel Xeon cost (especially the faster models). Then realize this game doesn’t have subscription. Where do you think they find this amount of money for 50 servers? I’m afraid it won’t happen. The problem is just to small for Arenanet to pay this much money for. (with small i mean, for me i get this skill lag for about 5-10% on a global scale, although some days are really bad, like weekend).

You need to take a math course. ANet has sold 3 million copies of the game at an average price of at least $50. I don’t honestly know how many hardware servers ANet runs to handle all the various realms, but we’re probably talking something on the order of 1% of sales even to totally replace them with top end hardware. The ability lag may indeed be due to insufficient hardware, but I’d bet that the barrier to fixing it has far more to do with the software side … game engine or whatever software they use to merge server capacity for WvW (which they in fact do). Either that or the active WvW population is so low relative to the rest of GW2 that Anet has decided even 1% of sales isn’t worth it to keep us around.

ANet already said that they don’t intend to make WXP points reassignable. You’re stuck with what you choose.

Coldviper.6794:

Even if they simply made the current ones more interesting I’d be happy. Maybe balance changes based on terrain. Like make adjustments so bay isn’t such a weak keep. Bring in other interesting aspects like the old orb, and maybe other various things. Give JP it’s own instance.

There’s so much they could do, but in all honesty, they really need to focus on a solution for ability lag and this would easily be the best current game for large scale PvP.

Well, they have said a few times that they are looking into possibly draining most of the big lake in the BLs to generate some usable space, and possibly a few other similar actions as well. In addition to fixing ability lag, though, they really need to extensively revamp the match system in WvW before I would award them any laurels for large scale PvP design. In almost every tier every week we know who’s going to win before the reset even pops.

Unless ANet can figure out how to make a handicap system work (and I think the odds of that are pretty slim), they are going to have to abandon the server vs server vs server concept for something that allows them to balance the matches. While looking for a different quote from Mike Ferguson I came across an interview he did quite a while ago where he was asked why ANet chose to set up matches by server. He stated that the decision for that was made by other devs FOUR YEARS ago while he was still on the content team and that he really didn’t know for sure why it was done that way. Everyone (including Mike) assumes it was done to promote a sense of server community, but there isn’t much point in promoting community in an activity if it makes that activity so disappointing and frustrating in the first place.

Polismassa.6740:

Cactus.2710:

I fully agree with all of that, but remember that ANet’s outdated game engine is simply incapable of handling a map any larger than the ones we currently have. They have openly stated that several times.

Not disagreeing with you, but do you have a source that you could post?

I’d just like to not get my hopes up

Still, there are a lot of things that they could do with WvW maps of the same size, but greater complexity. In general, I’d be okay with them not making the maps that much bigger, as long as we get something NEW, because these current maps are, as I said in the OP, getting rather stale.

If I remember correctly, most of those quotes were done in 3rd party interviews. I archive some of those but not all. Here’s one from an interview with Mike Ferguson:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/196tgh/jeuxonlineinfo_made_an_interview_with_mike/

In that one he merely said that there were severe technical limitations to making WvW maps any larger, but in other comments I’ve seen (more than one of them … I just can’t find them) he flat out states that the game engine cannot handle any map larger than the ones we already have. Maybe somebody else here can post one of those if you still don’t believe me.

xTiMeBoMBx.2863:

scootshoot.6583:

Linked server queues like WOW are the only way to resolve numbers differential but it will ruin WvW by doing so.

There is a certain amount of server pride and enjoyment playing alongside the same peep’s day in and day out.

The next new MMO shouldn’t have this issue as everyone is going to be on one super server so it should resolve factions rolling with 5x the number of players at a given time slot.

Yeh I’m jumping ship as soon as that MMO is out if ANet doesn’t get this balance system sorted out.

At least we agree on one thing …

TallDan.6350:

I’m starting to get a little annoyed by the trash mobs in WvW. I’ve had quite a few fights ruined by them now. You fight an epic battle against some player and get them down, you head in for the spike only to have them rally off some random Moa that walked into the battle. Or a thief who backstabs random mobs for stealth. Also a lot of players use them to stack effects from runes or necro’s use them to build life force.

Also they slow down movement, we run slowly while in combat and the world has enough running around to make this an issue. So you either run around mobs making the distance further or you risk aggroing them making you slower.

They get in the way and add nothing positive to the game, why do we need herds of moa and packs of random wolves in the warzone. I would be a very happy camper if Anet would consider removing them, I’m not an expert but I think it may even improve game performance as it would free up server resources.

Let me know your thoughts on the issue.

The mobs are there to make things more difficult. That may be annoying to you, but I’ve seen lots of players use them to their advantage in a 1v1 fight. Just because you haven’t figured out how to do that doesn’t mean they don’t have a place.

Think of them as landmines. Feel better now?

jkctmc.8754:

It’s one thing to be unhappy with the development of something, and another thing to hate something. I’d be far more forgiving if they hadn’t already had another MMO title under their name. At this point in time I will not forgive companies for turning out a buggy game, when they should have already learned from their prior experiences. You can be apologetic all you want for Anet, but fact of the matter is they did not turn out the game they promised. It’s about time development teams deliver what they promise.

The four maps were a bad idea because only two, possibly three tiers can field people on all four maps, while the rest are lucky to fill up one map most of the time, therefore creating a population balance you’d expect having three servers against each other, would have fixed an age old problem.

This is why one very large map would have worked out much, much better, than having four seperate maps, where the most common form of play becomes PvDoor, rather than World vs World Player vs Player combat. This is a lesson learned greatly by Warhammer, when they had too many area/maps for people to fight in.

I hang around after leveling 6 toons to 80, and fully gearing them out in Exotics hoping things change, and they speed up the process to fix things. But my hope is diminishing.

I fully agree with all of that, but remember that ANet’s outdated game engine is simply incapable of handling a map any larger than the ones we currently have. They have openly stated that several times.

DeWolfe.2174:

It’s because you OP are a good person! Don’t listen to those miserable folks who love suffering because it’s good to be good! Yes, many of us actually FEEL BETTER by building a community than slaughtering another for no real reason. I have done the same.

If you can’t figure out why (in almost all cases) you should kill an enemy in WvW you don’t clearly don’t understand WvW. I’ll bet the huge majority of your server mates don’t think you are building any kind of better community with them by being a “good person” pacifist.

xTiMeBoMBx.2863:

Cactus.2710:

A player cap is an idiotic way to fix the problem of balance. Preventing people from playing WvW is most definitely not the way to save it. As I and others have repeatedly told you before, it’s also a great way to manipulate matches. Want to protect a big lead? Pull most of your players off a map so that your towers and keeps can be easily defended by the few people you leave there. And forcing teams to spread their players evenly across the maps doesn’t increase strategic content at all … it reduces it. We often attack an enemy’s BL in force in order to pull them out of ours.

Please don’t misunderstand me, though … I am not supporting the current situation. ANet’s system of tiers and matchmaking is most certainly messed up and will likely never give us proper matches. It needs to be changed, period, and I do agree with you that people will leave this game for one that does WvW-style play properly when the next one arrives. ANet has at best maybe six months to fix this thing … but player caps will kill it even sooner than that.

I think you’ve misunderstood the cap system that I’ve suggested, or you didn’t read the whole thing at all and began to rant as soon as you saw the word “cap.” If you actually re-read it, I didn’t suggest a dead cap because only a dead cap can prevent people from playing. Plus, whether it be a dead cap or the cap I suggested, they can never be manipulated because a cap means you can’t go pass X amount of players for each battlegrounds. Whatever players each servers have on one battleground is set to stay there and fight. My suggestion was a constantly growing cap just as long as each server can meet the cap. For example, again, the cap starts at 40 for each battlegrounds. The cap would continuously increase by 10 for each battleground when it is met by all 3 servers there, this is to get people in queue in. The only time the cap would stop increasing is when it can’t be met by all three servers. When it can’t be met that would mean all three server has a balance number of people fighting each other. The player difference between all 3 servers would be only 1-10. No more 20 people, with 30 others in queue, fighting 50 people on the left and helpless against the other 50 to the right of a battleground.

With my suggestion there is no manipulation so I don’t where you got that idea from because it’s non sense. The cap I suggest would only increase when it is met by all 3 servers so this notion of one server pulling more people to another map, while leaving a small ground behind, to defend a big lead would be impossible. For instance the cap grew to 50 on battleground A and all 3 servers have 49 players fighting it out. The cap would stop at 50. Let’s just say you’re in one of the 3 server and you happen to be winning on battleground A and with a huge lead in total point. You look at the map and you saw your server is in bad shape on battleground B and the cap there has only reached 30. This would mean that your server and the other 2 servers have only gotten up to 29 players (+/- 1-10) on battleground B. However you can’t take your people from battleground A to B because there is already 29 players there fighting. Sadly, they happen to be losing but it is fair because they’re fighting against almost the exact numbers of players that they have. Being on the losing end with my suggested system would only mean you got outplayed by the attackers/defenders, not outmanned like the current system.

If it’s not a dynamic cap it is worthless. Much of the disparity in WvW populations is caused by 24/7 coverage issues. Just because a map is balanced at one point of time does not at all mean it will be balanced even a couple of hours later, and in most cases it won’t be. I had assumed you realized that and therefore were proposing a more dynamic cap (which could then be manipulated), but I apparently gave you too much credit.

Keep your day job.

If you’re out in the open in WvW I’m going to try to kill you because I’m not going to waste the time trying to figure out your intent. You could only be trying to get a skill point or vista, but more likely you’re running supply or headed to a yak and simply picking up the skill point or vista along the way.

Nuoper.7503:

Food & Sharpening Stone boost attribute too high. It just makes WvWvW too hardcore and become only 80 level players battlefield.
For low level players, they are hard to survive. Anet should ban all buff from foods and sharpening stone in WvWvW and make the “Survival rate” of Level 80 and low level more balance.

The difference between a level 80 sharpening stone and a level 45 sharpening stone is 2%. The situation is similar with food buffs. If you think that 2% is going to significantly increase your survival rate compared with the overall gear disadvantage between those levels, you need to think again … and again … and again until it finally sinks in that it won’t. I’m a level 80 and I don’t even use the level 80 stones because the level 60 ones are so much cheaper and have only 1% less buff.

There are lots of valid things to complain about in WvW, but this isn’t one of them.

xTiMeBoMBx.2863:

eithinan.9841:

This is not the way to fix population problems. It is open to many forms of manipulation. Whining on the forums you are outnumbered will not solve your coverage problems, recruiting players to your server will.

A cap is exactly the way to balance out the 3 competing servers. You can imagine that the 3 servers in any matches are on equal skill level, hence they’re on the same tier. However, without a population cap the server that yields the most WvW players will always come out on top. That is a kitten system because the victor is determined by their population rather than tactics or skills. That is our current system. There are WvW guilds out there that would destroy other oppositions if the odds were even. Now, I’m not talking about a dead cap where X population is set for each server on each battlegrounds. I’m saying at reset night start the cap at about 30 or 40 for each of the three servers. Then the cap would increase by 5 or 10 only after the previous cap of 40 has been met by all 3 competing servers. The cap would only stop increasing when it is not met by all three servers. This method would keep a constant balance between the three servers. It will require each server to play more strategically by relocation of population for each battlegrounds. Induces more tactics rather than constant zerg ball.

A player cap is an idiotic way to fix the problem of balance. Preventing people from playing WvW is most definitely not the way to save it. As I and others have repeatedly told you before, it’s also a great way to manipulate matches. Want to protect a big lead? Pull most of your players off a map so that your towers and keeps can be easily defended by the few people you leave there. And forcing teams to spread their players evenly across the maps doesn’t increase strategic content at all … it reduces it. We often attack an enemy’s BL in force in order to pull them out of ours.

Please don’t misunderstand me, though … I am not supporting the current situation. ANet’s system of tiers and matchmaking is most certainly messed up and will likely never give us proper matches. It needs to be changed, period, and I do agree with you that people will leave this game for one that does WvW-style play properly when the next one arrives. ANet has at best maybe six months to fix this thing … but player caps will kill it even sooner than that.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

I find it amusing that the reset time is set by UTC, which is a European time zone, yet the European players are the ones complaining that it should be changed for them and left on UTC for American players.

Ignorance is even more amusing.

UTC is NOT a European time zone. UTC stands for Coordinated Universal Time (compromise abbreviation between French and English versions) and it is a purely arbitrary construct to give the world a common reference point for time. If you are able to read and comprehend the following link you will note that UTC is especially prevalent for internet applications.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time

Adaneshade.2409:

yiishing.9057:

Cactus.2710:

You do know that GW2 runs on totally different servers for EU and NA, right?? The two server groups don’t talk to each other at all … ANet has said they are totally independent.

So, they are totally independent, but yet it is still impossible to reset them at different times? Seems legit.

If they are so independent, why can you transfer or guest from one to the other?

When anyone transfers (they can’t guest) to a server in a different region, their account information transfers to the other set of servers. How on earth can anybody find that difficult to comprehend? Hopefully you aren’t allowed to vote.

Waffler.1257:

This issue makes playing a lot more difficult than it should be, especially if you are playing a class that needs to chain multiple abilities on the same target. There is a thread in the suggestions forum started 6 months ago that asks for an option to disable right-click targeting, and a red response in the thread from 5 months ago stating that they are busy with making content at the moment but will look at it when they get the chance.

I wonder if anyone has been keeping a list of the problems from 5 months (or more) ago that ANet promised to look into when they get the time.

Ubi.4136:

There are a lot of things I would like to see changed. (*cough, 1 hit door contesting)
But, even though I thought I read that they couldn’t do it somewhere (I am getting old after all), I would like to see the maps expanded. Not so much as in new content (which would be nice), but super sized.

The server borderlands, for example, they could expand the distance between the objectives by 2x the distance it is now. And, for EB, I would say somewhere between 2x and 5x the distance. Other than seeing a 70 man zerg, nothing about the current play feels massive.

ANet has explicitly stated several times that their paleolithic game engine is not capable of handling maps any larger than the current ones. There is zero chance that we will ever see larger maps in WvW.

Sansar.1302:

What i mostly do is take a camp solo or with a friend, then hang around flipp the closest sentrys and roam in the outskirts trying to find some other solo/duo and have a fun figth.
It is working ok in the early inn the morning when you can avoid the bigger grps.
After ppl starting to finish scool and work i have a hard time finding other solo/duo players and have time to finish figth before our or their zerg come.
ofc can still flipp camps and sentrys and get wxp but too me that is pure pve.

Going to try a full 5 man team and see how that works out.

Well that’s true. Once the zergs are in full play more players tend to join them instead of trying to avoid them.

Mister Mustard.7203:

Absolutely agree. I find the communication frank and refreshing.

Gab Superstar.4059:

[…] Some more transparency regarding what you intend to do, rather than what things you are going to change would be nice.

That’s why the vast majority of company representatives / developers don’t say anything in the first place. You can’t say anything about “what” is going to happen because you don’t know yet. If you leak even the smallest bit you’re suddenly pigeon holed, and if you change your mind or scrap the idea later it becomes a firestorm.

Saying things like, “we’re aware this situation and looking into it” are all I need to hear, and I understand that’s really all they can say.

The trouble has been that since launch much of the action from ANet in general on key issues has been totally limited to “we’re aware of this situation and looking into it” if indeed they ever acknowledged it at all. So yeah, I need to hear more than that even if you don’t, but at least Devon gives me some hope.

I’ve been relentlessly critical of ANet’s communication with their player base, particularly for WvW, but I have to admit that Devon has been a refreshing change for the better. I have to agree with Gab that there is still room for improvement on the specifics, but at least there’s somebody on the other side of the door that’s willing to answer the bell.

Sansar.1302:

Hi, got this game because spvp but after many 100 hours or so i am geting burnt out.
Have goten myself a 80 ranger with full exotic of diffrent types.
I play mainly a solo/smal grp style flipping camps and sentrys, and getting into a tower trying to defend it until our zerg gets there.
Been a bit with the zerg too but it is not any fun 4 me.
Having a hard time soloing, inn a 1v1 i can take on almost any one cept tanky d/d eles. (cant kill them but they dont kill me either)
But eaven thives seams to hunt in pairs or more now,
usualy i can down a player in a 1v2 too but almost never stomp.
Any advice?
I am on Piken Square

I’m not quite sure what you are asking here. You say you like small group play (so do I) and you sound like you do pretty well at it if you think you are competitive in most 1v1 situations. As a thief I sometimes run solo to kill yaks or run supply, and I can usually escape if I run into a larger group. Other than that, most small groups are going to actually be groups … maybe groups of three to five players, typically with some complementary classes and abilities. A ranger by itself can be a problem out in the open, but a ranger in a group has it’s place. What is it you want to do differently? I bet you could always get a couple of players to join you flipping camps and such, or chasing down small enemy groups trying to do the same.

drkn.3429:

I love how players talk about global stuff of the game, like weekly WvW resets or resetting the whole ladder, based solely on their database’s current situation. Somehow it happens much more often with the NA players.

LOL. You probably really mean USA players, and rightfully so. Keep in mind that we came dangerously close to electing someone to national office who couldn’t find Germany on a map.

Ruprect.7260:

Sororita.3465:

If they were ever dead set on reseting the tiers then reset them every couple of tiers:

Tier 1+2 jumble
tier 3+4 jumble
tier 5+6 jumble
tier 7+8 jumble

Or just bring down NSP and HoD to tier 8 so i can fight them again…they were fun. Had solo roamers, small group roaming, the zergs werent all that big, was nice.

This would be so boring. We would have blowouts for weeks. Why is it that people think magically that the tiers will be any different than they are now if they are reset. Top tier servers will still dominate a lower tier server.

^this^

It is simply idiotic to think that a full reset would fix anything. We’d simply have ridiculous blowouts in all tiers before ending up back where we are now anyway. WTF is with some people?

Quite a few of us have been saying more or less the same thing for a long time. Server vs server vs server is never going to give us the matchups we want. What you are describing is basically an instanced match with gated entry, whether it is Vigil vs Priory vs Order or simply Red vs Blue vs Green. You pick a faction and if it’s full you have the option of either joining a queue or picking a different faction. Parties could have the ability to join as a group, and guildmates could easily decide ahead of time which faction they wanted to join or queue for. I don’t even think that it would be necessary for a player to stick with the same faction for the duration of the match … the queue would mostly make sure that faction populations were balanced at any point in time.

I don’t expect anything like this to get implemented anytime in our Tyrian lifetime, though. I’m pretty sure there will be other games out that get it right before GW2 does.

VOLKON.1290:

Cactus.2710:

I can’t imagine how anyone would think it’s a bright idea to make siege ineffective in WvW. Blocks are one thing … reflects are quite another.

It wouldn’t make them ineffective. It would, however, make using certain siege more planned out. If you want to treb Bay from Garrison you need to make sure they’re not down there reflecting. If you’re going to fire ballistae into a crowd you may want to consider that ground targeted AoE and hold off on using “3” until you see what you’re up against. It wouldn’t affect arrowcarts. Cats would face minimal impact, but that one guy that sacrifices himself to jump off the wall for a quick reflect (unless the cats are hitting halfway up the wall…) could have a tale to tell after.

The only strong effects you’d see are with trebuchets firing from perfectly safe locations. They’d either have to be careful when shooting or have their own defenses in place to catch reflected shots. Cats and ballista would see nominal affects more in line with a reflect here and there. Cat firing would require better aim to get above the guardian, for example, to hit the wall… or your group keeps the wall clear in the target zone.

The “siege would be worthless” argument is grossly exaggerated.

It’s a dumb idea, and saying it isn’t three times doesn’t change the fact that it’s a dumb idea. A reflect back to a treb would take it out in a couple of minutes … same with catas or ballistas … and part of what you seem to think would be such a neat addition is already available to elementalists with Swirling Winds. Instead of players having to actually fight their way close enough to take out a treb or cata all they’d have to do is sit back and turtle. How does that in any way add cleverness or difficulty or balance to a match?

It’s a dumb idea.

Maladon.5760:

Cactus.2710:

Maladon.5760:

The servers are basically ranked by population right now due to the glicko system. At most I think Anet should consider some manual manipulation to fix the obvious failings of the system when they occur. And besides, who doesn’t enjoy a bit of manual manipulation from time to time?

Manual manipulation of matches without some compensating factor doesn’t fix any failing … it adds to them. A “fresh” match that is an obvious blowout right from reset is a match that in effect doesn’t even get played because most players … on all sides … won’t even bother.

Manual manipulation of the matchups should be made with the intent of avoiding blowouts. In all honesty though, I think most people realize glicko is basically a bandaid fix at best. WvW is too dynamic for a system like glicko to ever work properly. Anytime a player quits the game, transfers, or even decides to do pve for the week it weakens the validity of the score. The constants in the equation are now different from the constants that have thus far contributed to the rating. A rating which, by the way, has way too few data points in the first place.

For glicko to be effective the player/server has to put forth a consistent effort. That’s easily achieved in chess, while impossible to achieve in WvW.

If WvW is ever going to be competitive from top to bottom the system is going to have to be much more dynamic. The ability to predict population trends as they are happening, instead of allowing servers to freefall for months, is very important.

I’d agree with all of that. Please don’t take any of my comments to mean that I defend the Gicko-2 system … at least not the way ANet is using it. I’ve written several forum posts in the past pointing out the significant flaws, the most obvious two of which are using it in a tiered environment with three-way matches. I do think that a handicap system might be the only way to possibly salvage a server-vs-server-vs-server system, but I’d never guarantee that even that would do the job. The only sure fire way to get fair matches that aren’t stale is to migrate to some sort of instanced method.

Ruprect.7260:

Cactus.2710:

Ruprect.7260:

Cactus.2710:

Rogi.8720:

With the current glicko ratings, the current volatility of T2 and BG slowly losing their rating in T1 I don’t think you have to worry about being spawn trapped. After a few more weeks of fighting the same servers and guilds maybe you will change your mind. Guilds and even the fair weather WvWers get bored fighting the same servers every week. Slowly but surely people will lose interest if there is not some sort of variation week in and week out.

People here keep trying to tell you that players lose interest even faster when getting blown out. Maybe you don’t believe it or maybe you just can’t comprehend, but almost anybody in other tiers will tell you the same thing.

For sure ANet needs to come up with a different way to to set up matches in WvW, but simply brute forcing matchups is not it. My preference would be for ANet to assign handicap points to each server at the start of a match. Weaker servers would have to fight to preserve their lead and the stronger server would have to fight to overcome it by the end of the week. The advantage of such a system is that theoretically almost any server could be equitably matched with any other server if the handicaps were properly set. A server’s score for the week would be their handicap plus points earned that week, and their resultant ranking would be a function of whether they did better or worse than expected.

I didn’t originate this idea but it’s the best I’ve seen so far. Matches wouldn’t be set purely by tier. They could be a random threesome comprised of servers ranked within a certain range of each other … say a range that spanned the equivalent of maybe two or three current tiers. I think it would have a better ability to give us more equitable matches with greater variety, and breaking tier locks would allow the rating … and therefore handicap … systems to be more accurate.

The really interesting part of this approach is that it might actually be the easiest of all to implement from a coding standpoint. The handicap could be some simple function of the Glicko-2 rating, the actual matches could be set by a simple RNG formula that spans a few tiers, and it seems rather trivial to simply add the handicap to a server’s score at the reset.

A handicap system would not work either, well not the way you just described it.

A T1/T2 server vs a T7/T8 server = T7/T8 server never leaves spawn. T1/T2 server could camp them at all 3 exits for 18-24 hours/day.

If a server can’t leave spawn a handicap will not make a difference.

Now if you were to say do this with t1/t2 and t3/t4 and so on, this may be possible. You could maybe even do T1-T3 with a handicap and so on.

Please reread my post where I suggest handicapped matches that “spanned the equivalent of two or three current tiers”. Last time I did the math a span of two or three tiers would not pit a T1/T2 server against a T7T8 server, but maybe things are different in your world. All it would require is that the system randomly span the equivalent of two tiers (i.e., T1 to T2, T2 to T3, T3 to T4, etc) for it to break the tier locking problem. And if a T2 server is capable of continuously spawn camping a T3 server, then all hope for fresh, equitable server-based matches in WvW is lost anyway no matter how they are arranged and the only possibility for fair matches is to switch to some sort of instanced setup.

Either way I was agreeing with you. I apologize I missed the part where you said tier range. I was pretty much reiterating what you were saying then.

No problem … sorry if I sounded testy.

Maladon.5760:

The servers are basically ranked by population right now due to the glicko system. At most I think Anet should consider some manual manipulation to fix the obvious failings of the system when they occur. And besides, who doesn’t enjoy a bit of manual manipulation from time to time?

Manual manipulation of matches without some compensating factor doesn’t fix any failing … it adds to them. A “fresh” match that is an obvious blowout right from reset is a match that in effect doesn’t even get played because most players … on all sides … won’t even bother.

Ruprect.7260:

Cactus.2710:

Rogi.8720:

With the current glicko ratings, the current volatility of T2 and BG slowly losing their rating in T1 I don’t think you have to worry about being spawn trapped. After a few more weeks of fighting the same servers and guilds maybe you will change your mind. Guilds and even the fair weather WvWers get bored fighting the same servers every week. Slowly but surely people will lose interest if there is not some sort of variation week in and week out.

People here keep trying to tell you that players lose interest even faster when getting blown out. Maybe you don’t believe it or maybe you just can’t comprehend, but almost anybody in other tiers will tell you the same thing.

For sure ANet needs to come up with a different way to to set up matches in WvW, but simply brute forcing matchups is not it. My preference would be for ANet to assign handicap points to each server at the start of a match. Weaker servers would have to fight to preserve their lead and the stronger server would have to fight to overcome it by the end of the week. The advantage of such a system is that theoretically almost any server could be equitably matched with any other server if the handicaps were properly set. A server’s score for the week would be their handicap plus points earned that week, and their resultant ranking would be a function of whether they did better or worse than expected.

I didn’t originate this idea but it’s the best I’ve seen so far. Matches wouldn’t be set purely by tier. They could be a random threesome comprised of servers ranked within a certain range of each other … say a range that spanned the equivalent of maybe two or three current tiers. I think it would have a better ability to give us more equitable matches with greater variety, and breaking tier locks would allow the rating … and therefore handicap … systems to be more accurate.

The really interesting part of this approach is that it might actually be the easiest of all to implement from a coding standpoint. The handicap could be some simple function of the Glicko-2 rating, the actual matches could be set by a simple RNG formula that spans a few tiers, and it seems rather trivial to simply add the handicap to a server’s score at the reset.

A handicap system would not work either, well not the way you just described it.

A T1/T2 server vs a T7/T8 server = T7/T8 server never leaves spawn. T1/T2 server could camp them at all 3 exits for 18-24 hours/day.

If a server can’t leave spawn a handicap will not make a difference.

Now if you were to say do this with t1/t2 and t3/t4 and so on, this may be possible. You could maybe even do T1-T3 with a handicap and so on.

Please reread my post where I suggest handicapped matches that “spanned the equivalent of two or three current tiers”. Last time I did the math a span of two or three tiers would not pit a T1/T2 server against a T7T8 server, but maybe things are different in your world. All it would require is that the system randomly span the equivalent of two tiers (i.e., T1 to T2, T2 to T3, T3 to T4, etc) for it to break the tier locking problem. And if a T2 server is capable of continuously spawn camping a T3 server, then all hope for fresh, equitable server-based matches in WvW is lost anyway no matter how they are arranged and the only possibility for fair matches is to switch to some sort of instanced setup.

Rogi.8720:

With the current glicko ratings, the current volatility of T2 and BG slowly losing their rating in T1 I don’t think you have to worry about being spawn trapped. After a few more weeks of fighting the same servers and guilds maybe you will change your mind. Guilds and even the fair weather WvWers get bored fighting the same servers every week. Slowly but surely people will lose interest if there is not some sort of variation week in and week out.

People here keep trying to tell you that players lose interest even faster when getting blown out. Maybe you don’t believe it or maybe you just can’t comprehend, but almost anybody in other tiers will tell you the same thing.

For sure ANet needs to come up with a different way to to set up matches in WvW, but simply brute forcing matchups is not it. My preference would be for ANet to assign handicap points to each server at the start of a match. Weaker servers would have to fight to preserve their lead and the stronger server would have to fight to overcome it by the end of the week. The advantage of such a system is that theoretically almost any server could be equitably matched with any other server if the handicaps were properly set. A server’s score for the week would be their handicap plus points earned that week, and their resultant ranking would be a function of whether they did better or worse than expected.

I didn’t originate this idea but it’s the best I’ve seen so far. Matches wouldn’t be set purely by tier. They could be a random threesome comprised of servers ranked within a certain range of each other … say a range that spanned the equivalent of maybe two or three current tiers. I think it would have a better ability to give us more equitable matches with greater variety, and breaking tier locks would allow the rating … and therefore handicap … systems to be more accurate.

The really interesting part of this approach is that it might actually be the easiest of all to implement from a coding standpoint. The handicap could be some simple function of the Glicko-2 rating, the actual matches could be set by a simple RNG formula that spans a few tiers, and it seems rather trivial to simply add the handicap to a server’s score at the reset.

I can’t imagine how anyone would think it’s a bright idea to make siege ineffective in WvW. Blocks are one thing … reflects are quite another.

I’m glad you (the OP) find WvW dull. That means that you aren’t suited for it and won’t mess it up by joining it … and hopefully won’t find it necessary to post here again.

I wonder how many players who dislike dungeons are tools enough to post on the dungeon forums how dull they find it …

roamzero.9486:

I know the obvious response is to look at sPVP and the features being implemented for that, but have the devs ever considered implementing arenas and meshing them with WvW gameplay? Something like cap points, but for example an arena could only be held by one person, and only a single person can challenge the arena champ (extending out to larger arenas for things like 2v2 or 5v5).

If you know that the obvious scenario is to go look for something like this in sPvP why do you bring it up here anyway??? It doesn’t make a stupid suggestion smart just because you first admit it’s stupid.

You do know that even if ANet actually knew the numbers (which I’m not sure they do), posting them won’t result in even the slightest improvement in the fairness of the matches, right?? So what’s the point? If you honestly aren’t sure whether greater population and better 24/7 coverage is a huge advantage you need to find a game that you can understand better.

torridstoic.7492:

By the way, the amount of negative comments I’ve heard from IOJ people is far less than the amount I’ve heard from DR, and they’ve been playing with us for longer than you have. Something to think about.

Something else to think about. Count the number of people from DR here in this thread who fit your description and tell us if you had to use more than the fingers of one hand to do it.

Starwind.1069:

Wanted to ask if it’s really worth doing anymore. I have noticed drops in WvW are by far the crappiest in the game. 5 hours in WvW and you might be lucky to get one rare or exotic, while 5 hours in pve you can get 8 or more. Also noticed that it use to take an hour to get into WvW on any of the 4 maps, though now you are can get in instantly.

Want to improve WvW make it where you get a rare from taking towers and keeps atleast once per day(just like the world bosses). Bet alot more people will take part in WvW then.

If you’re playing WvW for the loot you’re playing for the wrong reason, and personally I hope you decide that it isn’t worth it.

Liquid.9672:

Thanks for the video link. I had never seen the presentation before, but it’s really opened my eyes as to the issue going on here. From what I can understand, there is a certain gameplay environment that at certain times goes over Anet’s allocated CPU budget. Like any business, Anet will allocate the smallest amount of resources to provide a fluid and enjoyable gameplay environment. The big question is, will they decide to address these spikes by increasing their CPU budget, or will they decide that it is not worth it from a cost/benefit standpoint.

A lot depends upon how they actually perform the dynamic allocation of capacity. Trust me, I’m not trying to defend ANet or some of the highly questionable decisions they’ve made, but it may be that their total system is so tightly integrated that they can’t really add server capacity (or improve the game engine or expand whatever link they have from the servers to the internet) without shutting everything down. If you watched the entire video you saw the part where they talked about how even their dev trials and QA data collection is done via scripts that run on the live system. It’s a cool sounding approach on paper but they clearly underestimated their ability to meet player demand for WvW (whether that may be due to more demand than they expected or simply less capability of their product than they thought they had) and they may have painted themselves into a corner as far as doing anything about it.

I’m just speculating, of course, but since ANet won’t actually tell us what’s going on that’s really all we can do.

misterdevious.6482:

I actually saw a commander say “if they attack ______, don’t offer any resistance, we’ll recap it before the tic.” – A commander actually telling people not to defend.

Something needs to be done to improve the experience of the people defending, escorting, repairing, building. Right now we are reaching the point where these selfless (and often boring) acts might be considered selfish because if you defend the tower the zerg can’t recap it and get lots of WxP.

You’re confusing apples with stones. If he was planning to recap before the tic he wasn’t necessarily trying to maximize the WXP … he was trying to optimize the match score. Lots of servers do that for both towers and camps because they can typically be capped quickly, and they have done so LONG before the recent patch that added WXP. You don’t get match points unless you’re holding the objective at the timer reset so you try to time things so that you do. I’m not saying that Anet couldn’t have been smarter about it, but currently that’s the way things are and taking them into account is part of the current strategy of the game.

Jeknar.6184:

Solution against skill lag: Get out of stacked top tier servers…

You need to educate yourself. Here’s some viewing material for a start.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/180776/Video_Guild_Wars_2s_programming_tricks_revealed.php#.UTPsClded4M

Check out the part where the presenter explains how WvW uses the merged capacity of all the servers for every tier.

Try to imagine what happens when a massive battle breaks out in Tier 1 and the system needs to scavenge capacity from elsewhere. Can you picture the result? Probably not, but the Cliff Notes version is that players everywhere else, including in PvE, can be affected as the system dynamically tries to respond to the extra heavy load in Tier 1. The lag will for sure be worse and occur more often sequentially (multiple lags one after another) in a high population tier, but that’s small comfort to anyone in a lower tier whose abilities suddenly fail him in a critical situation.

Skill lag is a game wide problem. I’m on a Tier 6 server and it would take a pretty dull witted person not to notice the prime time lags even here.

I’m confused … because Death Blossom is a dagger/dagger ability. I use Death Blossom all the time in WvW because it is an evade and because it stacks bleeds. I admit that I don’t see it used by others at all as often as I use it, but I suspect that most other thieves try to save their initiative for CnD. I try not to rely so much on burst and I trait for the three extra initiative points so that I can use Death Blossom more often, and also so that I can leap more often with Heartseeker when I’m pursuing someone. I’m not saying that’s better … only that I prefer to play that way.

Vash.3756:

I searched for it, but I did not find an explanation on how the actual queing mechanism works.

Right now on Kodash (DE) we encounter longer queue times during prime time. The only thing I know for sure is that it is not a “first come first serve” queue. Instead it seems completely random as there are players waiting for two hours or more and others are able to join after ten minutes.

The system seems unfair and causes some players not being able to play at all because. they cannot log on to another character to earn level and switching to their wvw character as soon as you are dispatched to a map. Despite causing frustration among players what could it be that this is not a first come first serve system?!

ANet has already specifically stated that queues for WvW are not first-in/first-out. They are random. Does that make sense? Of course not. I also suspect that ANet does not even know for sure how many people are in a map in order for the queue to be accurate at all … there were quite a few threads about this a couple of months ago.

Jacklo.4230:

It does appear to be a server problem, but I think there’s more to it than that.
I play in a small guild on T4 and have experienced skill lag. I’ve noticed it even when in a small group far away from any zergs.
However, the reason I say “there’s more to it” is because in Teamspeak, some of my friends are complaining of severe skill lag at times, when my game and others is playing perfectly well and we’re in the same location. In this case it can’t be JUST server lag or I would be affected too.

I would encourage everyone to send a ticket and do the tests as Anet suggested.

Not necessarily. There is nothing that says that the merged server capacity bogs down uniformly. There is nothing that says that the portion of the capacity you are talking to is exactly the same portion that your friends are talking to … server capacity is not like some physical space you both are trying to occupy. Besides, when you try to get into a crowded nightclub or restaurant you might have to wait a long time, but others (either before or after you) might have gotten in as quickly as if the place was deserted … it all depends upon the instantaneous demand versus capacity and I’ll bet that the merged server capacity dynamically readjusts itself pretty quickly.

yiishing.9057:

Cactus.2710:

You do know that GW2 runs on totally different servers for EU and NA, right?? The two server groups don’t talk to each other at all … ANet has said they are totally independent.

So, they are totally independent, but yet it is still impossible to reset them at different times? Seems legit.

I was simply answering the guy who said they were linked. Get a clue and read my other posts. I’m one of those who doesn’t understand at all why ANet cannot reset EU independently of NA.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Actually, all WvW servers are already located in NA.

(this is why they can’t reset them at different times)

I don’t believe that’s true.

naphack.9346:

Cactus.2710:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Cactus.2710:

DevonCarver.5370:

I talked to our server guys and we just don’t have the ability to reset these at different times. .

That may be true on some level, but I’ll bet not a purely technical one.

It’s probably true on the coding level, meaning it may be so deeply engraved in the system that it’s either near impossible to change, or changing it would cause so many problems across the board that it’d be better to not do it. At least that’s my thought on it as a programmer.

You mean you think the resest time might be hard coded into the system software? OK . . . . . . . . . . . . . but truthfully, as a programmer would you ever do such a thing in the first place?

He never said, changing reset time was impossible. He only stated, it was impossible to use seperate reset times for EU and NA… Which may simply be an issue with the way, the servers are set up.

You do know that GW2 runs on totally different servers for EU and NA, right?? The two server groups don’t talk to each other at all … ANet has said they are totally independent.

Talmor.9048:

I flip for Red Server, then Green flips it right back. Therefore, there is a zero point differential. The only way to score points on these guards is for another world to flip it. So it is kinda pointless from a WvWvW point of view.

Basically you are correct, although if red and green keep flipping it back and forth they each are slightly gaining on blue. In general, though, it’s pretty mindless.

Isaac.6041:

DevonCarver.5370:

I talked to our server guys and we just don’t have the ability to reset these at different times. As much as that is an unsatisfying answer for you in the EU, it is reality.

Good answer Devon. There shouldn’t be separate reset timers anyway much less separate NA and EU servers.

The only good reason why there are separate NA and EU servers is for latency issues. We don’t need to separate any other things and create more unnecessary work.

Having separate NA and EU servers is already a problem when grouping for dungeons. Ideally, we should have simple global servers if the latency issues could be eliminated.

No need to cater to the special interests of these EU guilds that don’t bother staying up for reset. There are plenty of EU server guilds that DO participate at reset and they should not have their times switched because of a few lazy guilds.

The current reset time is fine. Thank you.

Wow … just wow.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Cactus.2710:

DevonCarver.5370:

I talked to our server guys and we just don’t have the ability to reset these at different times. .

That may be true on some level, but I’ll bet not a purely technical one.

It’s probably true on the coding level, meaning it may be so deeply engraved in the system that it’s either near impossible to change, or changing it would cause so many problems across the board that it’d be better to not do it. At least that’s my thought on it as a programmer.

You mean you think the resest time might be hard coded into the system software? OK . . . . . . . . . . . . . but truthfully, as a programmer would you ever do such a thing in the first place?

We know that skill lag is a server-side limitation of some sort, which means it is some function of the game engine, server hardware, and server-side network bandwidth. ANet has also said that they merge server capacity for WvW. That means that there is is some software to handle that but since we don’t know whether that function that is separate or part of the game engine lets just lump it in with the game engine for the sake of this discussion.

So why hasn’t ANet been able to fix the problem of skill lag by now? Let’s look at some of the possibilities (all hypothetical):

-1. The game engine isn’t capable of handling enough data no matter how many servers it is running on. I’m not sure why this might be, but I’m just tossing it out as a possibility.

-2. The game engine (or whatever software handles the merging of server capacity) isn’t capable of effectively handling more servers than ANet already has in place. Let’s just imagine it’s due to the same kind of under-scoping that limited DOS to 640K.

-3. ANet simply doesn’t have enough servers and is reluctant to buy more.

-4. ANet’s servers are old or slow and it would be prohibitively expensive to replace all of them.

-5. The hardware/software that connects all of the servers to the internet (not necessarily the same software that merges the computational capacity of all the servers) is complex and prohibitively expensive to modify or increase.

-6. ANet can’t afford to purchase more network bandwidth.

-7. ANet’s system is so tightly integrated that they can’t make major modifications to anything without shutting down the entire system for a period of time.

Number 7 sounds the most plausible to me. If you watch this ANet video presentation (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/180776/Video_Guild_Wars_2s_programming_tricks_revealed.php#.UTPsClded4M) you’ll see some explanations of how their system works. If I understood things properly, pretty much any dev can drop a live patch and trials are performed via scripts that run on the live system. We all noticed weird things and ninja changes happening in the weeks before the March WvW patch … probably because they had to test things live in small increments to keep the whole thing from shutting down. Making smallish software changes is one thing, but adding chunks of server hardware and/or modifying the capacity sharing software may simply be impossible while keeping the system live. Keep in mind that if they had to shut down the game to make the changes, they’d have to shut down the entire game … not just WvW.

Just some speculation on my part …