Guild Wars 2

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.

Basedgod.7328:

Just a guess:

They wont reveal the exact player limits because I actually believe the limits fluctuate. Since the BLs seem to be tied to a shared server cluster with other servers; hence why you’ll see yourself or a friend in a contact list or guild roster appearing on a server that is not their/your own.

According to this video presentation ANet did prior to launch, all of WvW (not just the BLs) is hosted on a shared server cluster comprised of all of the servers, and capacity is dynamically allocated and adjusted to meet demand in any particular tier. In my opinion, that’s why ALL of us can at one point or other experience skill lag no matter which tier we are in. If the system decides to pull more capacity into a Tier 1 fight, that capacity is temporarily unavailable to anyone. It takes a bit of time to get reallocated, it takes a bit of time to actually get used, and it probably takes a bit of time for all tiers to adjust to the new allocation … possibly even again when the capacity is given back.

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

Mirage.2597:

How come everyone says this is server side , but I have Never had any lag what so ever even in 150+ man fights

Educate yourself. Even Anet has repeatedly admitted that skill lag is a server side problem.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Tuluum.9638:

I have frequently been “locked out” of towers/keeps that my server has, and various other issues. Ill tend to be teleported back after I have been running away from said tower/keep for half a minute and sometimes even more.

I’ve been getting this lately too, even when other players aren’t around.

I’ve even had that happen in open world PvE while doing my daily, and of course I’ve had it happen in WvW.

The client application on your computer can do some things independently of the server, which is why you can sometimes find yourself running around for a short bit while the rest of the game is frozen, both in PvE and in WvW. I’m pretty sure that the frozen part is caused by the merged server capacity of WvW dynamically readjusting itself to a sudden shift in demand from a large fight somewhere, possibly even in a different tier. If the game manages to keep sync with your client you jump. If not, you get kicked back to the character select screen … something I call a soft disconnect.

Tobias Steele.2071:

Sounds like a hardware issue. I have experienced significant wvw lag only once since the update where my frame rate dropped to like 10-12 fps. That was a three way fight in eb with the full maps worth of players from all three servers. They have given everyone the option of removing lag, but if your pc can’t handle it…. I do agree about the particle effects though.

You don’t have a clue what you are talking about. Everyone else here in this thread so far seems to know that skill lag and rendering fps are two different things, and everyone else seems to understand that skill lag is caused by server-side horsepower issues … some combination of a weak game engine, not enough server capacity, not enough network bandwidth. Don’t believe us? Read ANet’s own posts on the subject.

Calvin.5380:

Aeonblade.8709:

Caliburn.1845:

Does SoS still believe YB and DB are allied? I thought we put this silly rumor to rest weeks ago.

But I can say it again, as someone who attends the Dragonbrand Command meetings, and talks to many of our commanders at various times, there is no truce and no alliance of any sort with YB.

But as an aside, if we wanted to form an alliance with another server that would be perfectly legal and fair. ANet has designed WvW with inter-server cooperation in-mind. That is why we have a three server paradigm.

If Dragonbrand ever does do an alliance with another server we will announce it. We would have no reason to hide it. It would be to our advantage to announce it to demoralize the enemy.

Well said, +1

+2

+3

Besides, if you check out some of the OP’s previous posts you’ll have a better perspective on this one.

kazi.6438:

I am in T7 and the lag is insane. Definitely ANET’s fault here. T7 is not known for the lag.

Roll back whatever the last patch was. Please.

The patch per se is not the problem, at least not directly. The last patch made enough players come back to WvW that it’s the greater numbers (i.e, greater demand on the servers) that is causing the problem. It’s not limited to WvW, either. I can be doing my daily in the open world and notice random ability delays as the servers (capacity is merged for WvW) attempt to dynamically redistribute capacity to handle a sudden large fight in some tier or other. Typically the open world lag is just a fraction of a second, but sometimes it is much more than that.

This is what we get from a generations-old game engine, too little server capacity, and not enough server-side network bandwidth. If ANet was willing to fix any of that they could have by now, but since they haven’t I suspect that they’ve decided it’s more prudent to let player dissatisfaction solve the problem for them as players bail and reduce the numbers again.

DoggyPaddler.3586:

Cactus.2710:

Xavi.6591:

The better golfer can be beaten by a worse golfer even if that better golfer has less strokes. How? it’s called ‘Handicap’. Likewise, servers should have handicaps that allow any server to play any other server with the winner determined by both performance that week and handicap.

That’s actually the best idea I’ve seen so far, and it might actually be capable of making viable server vs server vs server matchups. A total points handicap could be assigned at the beginning of the week for each server. If the handicaps were accurate, each server would have a more or less equal chance to win the match as long as they put in a more or less consistent effort each week. And here’s the really cool part … there would also be more movement from tier to tier (more variety of opponents) without the jeopardy of blowouts. A points handicap actually facilitates both fairness and freshness. The truly interesting thing is that it probably would be the easiest change to implement as well. At the very least it seems like it deserves a try.

The only problem now is that since I didn’t think of it I may have to conclude that you are smarter than I am.

Winning in points only sets you up to get matched up against an even tougher server which stomps you even more than the last.

That’s just nonsense. Handicaps can be variable as a function of which server you are up against. If you get bumped up to a higher tier your handicap can be a function of the relative performance history of your server compared to the top server in that higher tier. It all works fine as long as each server gets a chance to compete against enough other servers for the handicaps to be appropriately calculated. Each server gets handicapped against the highest ranked server in that tier. If the sum of your handicap and your weekly score is higher than the score of the top server in the tier, you win and your handicap factor gets adjusted for the following week. However, depending upon who you go against that following week, your actual handicap points may be larger or smaller than it was the previous week … it all depends upon who you face and what their history was.

In theory, FC could reasonably compete against JQ if the handicap was proper and if FC was smart enough to be able to intelligently defend their head start by being selective in their objectives. But that’s pretty hard to do and we don’t need a handicap system capable of spanning several tiers anyway … we really only need a handicap system that is capable of spanning two or three tiers, and that should be feasible.

Xavi.6591:

The better golfer can be beaten by a worse golfer even if that better golfer has less strokes. How? it’s called ‘Handicap’. Likewise, servers should have handicaps that allow any server to play any other server with the winner determined by both performance that week and handicap.

That’s actually the best idea I’ve seen so far, and it might actually be capable of making viable server vs server vs server matchups. A total points handicap could be assigned at the beginning of the week for each server. If the handicaps were accurate, each server would have a more or less equal chance to win the match as long as they put in a more or less consistent effort each week. And here’s the really cool part … there would also be more movement from tier to tier (more variety of opponents) without the jeopardy of blowouts. A points handicap actually facilitates both fairness and freshness. The truly interesting thing is that it probably would be the easiest change to implement as well. At the very least it seems like it deserves a try.

The only problem now is that since I didn’t think of it I may have to conclude that you are smarter than I am.

Jahn.7019:

Why not give points depending on the population of your opponents across all BLs.

If you are fighting a server during a certain time zone with 400 players max across all 4 BLs and your opponent only has 200 across all 4 BLs, you only receive 50% of your tick(this is per server). Just to make the math easy if as a green server(at 100% strength) you have 100 points from blue across all 4 maps(who is 50% strength across all 4 maps) and 200 points from red(who is 100% across all 4 maps) your modified ppt is 250. And to clarify each corner is “home base” to the server that starts there, assign that up to each color so you know who you are “taking points” from and how to modify ppt.

If all 4 BLs are full for all 3 servers, each server receives 100% of their tick.

Honestly, there needs to be a system where all the servers are competitive, not just the top 3(and even right now, even the top 3 aren’t all that competitive). Creating it so you can’t tick hard against underpopulated servers would help a lot with that.

That’s actually a cool idea but I don’t think it would work because it can be gamed. It would be too easy for a server to manipulate their player populations to their advantage, such as pulling players off the map when they are ahead or when the opposing team has a numerical advantage anyway.

DevonCarver.5370:

UTC is the time we use, so as daylight saving time comes on and off in certain locales it will affect when the reset hits you. Further reason to ditch daylight saving time altogether.

What sense does it make to use UTC for the European servers?? You guys have stated many times that the EU and NA servers are totally separate, so they only thing I can think of is that it’s actually people in ANet HQ that are flipping the reset switch and they don’t want to have to come in at some other odd time to do it. If that’s the case, it makes you look awfully indifferent to your European customer base.

azizul.8469:

well, what can we say.. that’s the mechanics ANET designed for thief. hit hard and run if fail, cowardly i should say, but that’s the way thief is played, because you never see a thief that does not stealth…..

my opinion is leave the stealth, but nerf the single target burst damage OPness, because stealth itself is already OP….

I could easily live with that. I’m a thief but don’t rely on burst or CnD, and the main reason I rolled it is because I was just tired of moving like I had lead feet on my other toons. I prefer to use mobility but I use stealth because I can trait it for heals and condition removal. A thief without stealth is a really stupid idea, but a thief without burst is … in my opinion … still perfectly viable.

Furiousbeard.7602:

Cactus.2710:

Now go away and play with yourself.

haha, oh man. Where to start with this pile of crap you spew.

Alright, lets go back to my original post to which you had a very excited explosion of anger. Directed at me, but based on your own frustration of the Glicko system and Anet itself. You make wild assumptions and provide your version of a doomsday where “we’ll all be playing a different game before they actually fix anything”

“All” is a very broad range, and you seem to speak for everybody. A little conceded don’t you think?

I respond by linking you a thread where Habib says they are having meetings about it and kindly provided you a link, which i notice someone else on this same thread has done as well. Obviously I’m not the only person here that knows it’s something on their radar. In the real world, when people have meetings about things, they try to determine solutions to the problem. This would then imply that work has started since they are using man hours to find solutions. You can’t solve a problem if you don’t make a game plan, or brainstorm.

You mention that Mr Ferguson pointed out their limited coding resources, which also means that they have an informed manager that is aware of a problem. Its a very simple process to add more people to a team to enforce their lack of resources. Come on Mr Fortune 500, this is basic!

You then proceed to request a public display of my clairvoyance by predicting the future of Anet and their patches. Well I’m sorry to tell you there will be no such prediction because nobody except for staff of Anet will have a good understanding of when that will be. Venturing a guess is a waste of time. It’s very amusing that you ask for a specific time from me, and yet you use a very broad time frame of over 6 months.

Suddenly you have now created a topic all on your own to argue about. The prediction. Like its going to validate anything you have said previously, and somehow void my comment of “they’re working on it” with actual evidence of Habib stating it. Quite the troll you are Cactus

Let’s move on to personal attacks where you become a complete hypocrite. You start with a long sentence bragging about your personal life, which may or may not have any truth in the real world, along with how other people perceive you, because again, you speak for everybody. It all finishes with the fact that you will have more meaning in your life than I ever will. Very easy to turn on a dime when you’re out there trolling.

At last we reach your actual honest sounding want from Anet, which I have to admit, is probably the closest you’ve come to being real with yourself this whole thread… but then immediately after that, you speak for 95% of other players. So, so, very pompous.

Your last line is probably the icing on the cake. “Now go away and play with yourself”

Hahaha, truly the maturity level of a man who has 3 kids, who has had a very successful career in a Fortune 500 Company, and who’s been responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars with literally thousands of people depending on their decisions.

Please, let’s not carry this on any longer Mr. Troll. How can anybody with real experience in the business world take any portion of what you say seriously. You aren’t fooling anybody.

You attacked my personal life, you dolt … that’s why I responded. You don’t need to believe a word I said … it is what it is and I certainly don’t need you for validation. I’d bet that anybody masochistic enough to read this thread can draw their own conclusions about who is real and who isn’t. I’m done with you.

iiMulch.2138:

What is the problem of doing zergs? It is called world vs world for a reason. If you want small group pvp go and play spvp it is as simple as that. It is a massive multiplayer battle for a reason. There is no problem with zerging, the problem is that they made wvw to encourage zerging but they forgot to add stable servers which can handle a lot of players. As soon as its 50v50 fight or more you get skill lagg which makes you completely useless.

Either get a good wvw guild and play with them or go to spvp, because anet isn’t going to design keeps to be taken by 3 players.

I don’t have a fundamental problem with zergs … I agree they can be fun at times. But zergs that used to pursue map objectives now mostly just look for other zergs to fight, and that really isn’t WvW anymore. Lots of people who were pretty serious about WvW have lost a lot of interest in it since the latest patch even though the removal of culling should have reinforced it. I blame the stupid points-for-kills system for changing the emphasis of the game … just like it did in Rift (Conquest).

Generally speaking, it’s probably easier (i.e, cheaper) to add things than it is to fix things.

Tuluum.9638:

DevonCarver.5370:

Agreed. It’s a complicated problem to solve as it touches a lot of broad systems, so I can’t guarantee it will happen soon, but I would very much like for us to alleviate this some way or another.

I just wanted to say that I appreciate this sort of communication GREATLY!

There are tons of great ideas that are thrown out by your customer base too, so its good to see you are at least reading through some of it.

Makes me have a whole lot more hope and faith in the future of the game. I know it gets harder to continue to do this over time, but please keep it up.

I find it amusing when people get so giddy about being told no in a reassuring manner.

Avenge.1478:

It’s rather unappealing reading all of these posts stating that either:

1) ANet created WvW to appeal to zergs
2) ANet needs to do something about zergs

I do not believe that ANet created WvW with zerging in mind, nor do I think they encourage it. People need to realize that the zerging of today is not developer created, but rather played created.

Put it in perspective. If you were back in high school, and you were approached by a group of 5 people that were being aggressive and hankering to fight, but you only had 1 friend with you, what would your next move be? More than likely if you are forced to fight, you’d look to even up the numbers so that you dont get slaughtered. Now apply this concept to WvW, because it is awfully similar. If you are being rushed by a group larger than yours, instinct is to either run, or gather enough forces to be able to combat the other groups numbers. This in itself develops zerging. Eventually each side will get more and more people on their side so that the odds of being run over by a potentially larger group will diminish.

Humans, as well as other animals in nature realize that there is safety in numbers, so next time you ask ANet to get rid of zerging, or blame them for the mindless zerg mentality that is WvW these days, maybe you should consider human instincts for once.

That might be true if zerging existed because it was a more effective (and safer) way to win the match, but that isn’t what’s happening. Zerging has turned into a mindless chase for points because ANet has made it more rewarding to do that than actually trying to win the match. It’s that simple, and it’s that stupid. People used to zerg to take a tower or keep, but now they zerg to get kills and typically now die more than they did before the latest patch. WvW has turned into mass zerg battles that generate more carnage, not less. In fact, the best way to stay alive now is to travel with a small group that avoids the zergs … even your own because your own zerg is mostly just looking for an enemy zerg.

So yeah, you’re wrong and so was ANet.

Furiousbeard.7602:

Cactus.2710:

Furiousbeard.7602:

SoPP.7034:

Furiousbeard.7602:

whine whine whine, cry cry cry, blah blah blah.

Does your emotive response mean that Cactus won the argument?

obviously yes, he won hands down.

He already knows the inner workings of Anet and how they prioritize fixes, so anything anybody else says is either a lie or wrong.

I’m waiting for your prediction. Put up or shut up.

lol, and a prediction will prove what exactly?

I’m not here to bash Anet day in and day out like you seem to be. The biggest problem in the equation is YOU.

Is this how you get things done in life? you just whine, complain and beg until someone else does it for you? And then if they don’t do what you ask, you act superior and pretend that you won because they wouldn’t do what you said?

I think you need to find some more meaning in your life man. That’s an honest statement. I think you need to take this advice and really figure out what you want in life.

Your family will thank you for it

Wow … evasive much? You said that we should just sit back and hang in there because ANet was “working on the problem” of WVW matches. I claim they aren’t going to fix it within six months and challenged you to give us your prediction on when it was going to be fixed since you had so much faith in them. You don’t seem willing at all to back up your comment with a prediction of any sort, so you just try every redirect you can think of … including personal attacks. That’s just plain boorish and snicker worthy. It’s probably the lowest debate tactic there is.

For the record, I’ve had a long and very successful career in a Fortune 500 manufacturing business that has spanned more than 20 countries in Europe and Asia. I’ve been responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales with literally thousands of people depending upon me to make the right decisions. I worked long and hard for everything I ever achieved and never expected anybody to do anything for me. I have a successful family with three kids and if I died today everyone who knows me would consider that I lived a happy and productive life who helped far more people than helped me. I can practically guarantee that I have had “more meaning in my life” than you ever will.

So what do I want from ANet? I want a game that lives up to it’s promises. I want a viable WvW style of game play that provides equitable matches requiring a balanced complement of strategy, tactics, and skill. I want interesting content that makes the game enjoyable for its own sake and I want a playing mechanism that isn’t crippled by unconscionable lag. I paid for those things but haven’t gotten them. I and 95% of the other players in WvW keep complaining about those things in the hope that ANet would actually do something about them, but they haven’t. I haven’t totally tossed in the towel … if I did I wouldn’t still be hanging around here putting up with the likes of you as I try to make my points. I tend to get invested in any MMO I’ve ever played and hate to leave one, but it’s looking pretty grim.

Now go away and play with yourself.

Lots of us predicted that adding awards/recognition/points/ranks/etc based upon individual contribution to kills would encourage zergs, and now that’s pretty much all I see every time I log into WvW. Nobody even bothers to build defenses anymore and we used to do it all the time on my server. It doesn’t matter that the “rewards” are mostly pretty meaningless … they detract from objective-based play and they don’t even represent individual skill since zergs have pretty much zero relationship to player skill.

The laughable thing is that ANet recently stated they were looking for ways to “reduce the zerginess of WvW”, which just shows how poorly they understand their own game.

Furiousbeard.7602:

SoPP.7034:

Furiousbeard.7602:

whine whine whine, cry cry cry, blah blah blah.

Does your emotive response mean that Cactus won the argument?

obviously yes, he won hands down.

He already knows the inner workings of Anet and how they prioritize fixes, so anything anybody else says is either a lie or wrong.

I’m waiting for your prediction. Put up or shut up.

Furiousbeard.7602:

Cactus.2710:

Furiousbeard.7602:

Anet is working on it. Please search this thread for other tier 8 topics.

Now THAT was extremely amusing.

First of all, ANet is not working on it. They’ve indicated no plans at all to change WvW matchups and without doing so there will ALWAYS be problems like we have in Tier 8. If you understood how the ANet’s kittenization of the Glicko-2 system actually works you’d realize that the same exact thing could happen in Tier 1, except in reverse. The ONLY way to avoid what’s going on in Tier 8 is to switch to some kind of instanced system for matchups … server vs server vs server is doomed to infinite failure.

Secondly if they were working on it, they have so few resources being applied to recoding WvW that we’ll all be playing a different game before they actually fix anything.

Try reading the forums more often and search for other tier 8 topics. Not everything is on page one. Since you may be too lazy to look, here is a link for you to page 8 of this thread.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Tier8-wishes-ANEt-to-get-better-soon/page/2#post1718504
Read Habib’s response on page 1 3rd post from the bottom.

Don’t assume that I’m the uninformed or that I don’t understand the system or the core problem. My answer was short because I have seen official response to it AND this has already been brought up multiple times previously.

This topic has been beaten to death. Just give it a rest.

Of course I saw that post … don’t assume that I’m uninformed either. But what Habib said was that “they were looking in to it”, and that is not at all the same as “they are working on it.” Go back and read the several dozen similar posts from devs saying they are “looking into” some significant issue for WvW and notice how many of them have ever actually been addressed. ANet’s batting average is horrible, and recent posts from Ferguson pointing out how limited their coding resources are doesn’t suggest that we should expect much to get better.

Tell you what … you publicly predict when ANet actually floats a patch that changes the WvW system to something that provides balanced matches the majority of the time. Be specific. I say it won’t happen within the next six months, and by then most of us will be gone anyway. So what’s your faith-based prediction? (because history is certainly not on your side)

Besides, how monumentally stupid is it of you to say ’’This topic has been beaten to death. Just give it a rest" and then send me a PM telling me that I should read your post?? I mean, WTF??

Shiren.9532:

Too bad ArenaNet took down their blog because it was full of little gems like this:

http://www.gw2fans.com/misc/news/images/resized/2010-07-30-levelling2.jpg

You know, the flat levelling curve with a bunch of words they didn’t really believe in because 7 months out from the gate and they supplement their levelling curve with a tonne of systems which exactly mimic traditional MMO skinner box progression?

We moved level grind progressions into WvW ranks and real time gated gear grinds. Look at how unique and innovative we are as a company. It’s totally not the same thing that’s been done before that we criticised for prioritising time sinks and psychology tricks over fun and engaging content you want to play rather than feel obligated to repeat to advance.

Promote and launch the game on one philosophy, develop and grow the game on the one you said you set out to avoid. I wish there was more integrity in GW2s continued development.

^this^

ANet has resorted to useless and mindless progression because they are neither clever enough nor sufficiently resourced to do anything better. They either cannot or are unwilling to fix the fundamental issues of WvW and make it more inherently enjoyable … so they added distractions instead. GW2 is a sadly unfulfilled promise and has become simply a placeholder for me until TESO arrives.

VLNt.9862:

Cameirus.8407:

VLNt.9862:

The limit imposed i understand since no machine and internet line can hold that much data transfer. So with the limit we have the queue. The idea is somehow to bring the players with big activity in WvW in front of those with less. The new ranking system is ok. So a raider with lvl 16 would take the place of a lvl 1 invader.
Dunno, topic open for discussion….

at the risk of an infraction, F-you.

No. You are no more important than any other player. Only your misplaced ego makes you think otherwise.

I expected this kind of answer too ^^, and indeed a “F-you” is an infraction. The purpose of my post was to support the group of players dedicated to WvW. I think they deserve the entry before someone else. They deserve to enter before a player who join to hunt raptors and they deserve to enter before a occasionally pug like myself.

That’s simply ignorant. The players who bump up in rank the quickest are neither the most skilled nor the most dedicated … they simply run with the zergs. They don’t deserve any special consideration at all. It would be a great way to kill WvW even further by having one player able to bump another from the match.

fivekiller.1432:

Cactus.2710:

I don’t understand the answers to this thread. While various client side settings may make visual rendering faster, ability lag is almost entirely due to server side engine, hardware, and network limitations. You’re going to drive your self crazy trying to fix a problem from your end that can only be fixed by ANet at their end (which they probably won’t, by the way, since it is expensive in terms of hardware, purchased bandwidth, and coding time).

Lag will eventually go away, though, as soon as enough players leave WvW because of it. It’s kind of a self-fulfilling solution, and probably one that ANet is counting on.

Many players do not understand the difference and use the word lag to describe both the skill lag you are speaking of and the frames per second drop they experience from hardware issues.

The OP doesn’t inspire confidence that he is tech savvy (no offense, i’m not extremely so myself) and as such many of us are assuming he is probably experiencing both.

Cactus is correct that you cannot improve your skill lag if your internet connection is acceptable. Skill lag being the thing that happens when you hit your abilities and they do not work.

if your computer is at least minimum specs though. turn all your settings to minimum. the problems you are seeing after doing that are likely the problems you cannot fix yourself.

That’s a good point. Some players do indeed incorrectly refer to rendering issues as “lag”, and for sure lowering the video settings client side will dramatically help slow rendering. I should have realized that some may have confused the two terms.

Furiousbeard.7602:

Anet is working on it. Please search this thread for other tier 8 topics.

Now THAT was extremely amusing.

First of all, ANet is not working on it. They’ve indicated no plans at all to change WvW matchups and without doing so there will ALWAYS be problems like we have in Tier 8. If you understood how the ANet’s kittenization of the Glicko-2 system actually works you’d realize that the same exact thing could happen in Tier 1, except in reverse. The ONLY way to avoid what’s going on in Tier 8 is to switch to some kind of instanced system for matchups … server vs server vs server is doomed to infinite failure.

Secondly if they were working on it, they have so few resources being applied to recoding WvW that we’ll all be playing a different game before they actually fix anything.

bjchase.3074:

Not all of us have. And more specifics as to your situation in the support area may get you farther.

Everybody I know has been experiencing them. They are indeed totally random (all situations, all hours, all environments), and you crash back to the character select screen … you don’t crash out of the game. That’s an ANet issue, pure and simple.

I don’t understand the answers to this thread. While various client side settings may make visual rendering faster, ability lag is almost entirely due to server side engine, hardware, and network limitations. You’re going to drive your self crazy trying to fix a problem from your end that can only be fixed by ANet at their end (which they probably won’t, by the way, since it is expensive in terms of hardware, purchased bandwidth, and coding time).

Lag will eventually go away, though, as soon as enough players leave WvW because of it. It’s kind of a self-fulfilling solution, and probably one that ANet is counting on.

Esprit Dumort.3109:

The devs told us that culling and lag were separate problems. Now that culling has been removed, I imagine the lag issue will start seeing some attention. And yes, the lag is server side, but people with less powerful machines see the effects more readily as large fights test the limits of their computers, trying to draw all the players and particle effects that server tells it to, and thus bogging down their machine, coupling server lag with processor lag.

The lag only occurs when large numbers of players congregate in a small spot, aka zerg wars. It was neigh unplayable the first couple days after the patch, but I feel like it’s improved or people are blobbing less. Now it seems to be lag only strikes during a SMC Lord Room fight and occasionally and in less severity in massive battles that occur away from SMC.

Your first paragraph is accurate. Your second paragraph is not.

Lag may only be CREATED when large numbers congregate in a small spot, but the resulting server/network overload can AFFECT anyone in the game no matter whether they are in PvE or WvW, or even on another realm (i.e., “server”). That’s because ANet merges server capacity for WvW and dynamically allocates it based upon need. An overload from somewhere can make lag occur almost anywhere.

Setsunayaki.4907:

Here is my suggestion for fixing WvW.

First and Foremost. My thanks go to Arenanet for fixing the culling issue. I am into networking, OS Design, Game Programming and Music. It is not an easy thing to accomplish and its quite expensive, specially rewriting the code.

My worries deal with the long term system itself of WvW, along with players who have multiple characters.

Certain questions are raised with an example being

“What will happen when new players play GW2 a year from now and they enter WvW to find they have to compete with players who have a System-Advantage over them from earned abilities. Those who spent 2000 – 4000 hours to cap all the first tier abilities and how about 2000 – 3000 more hours capping second tier abilities?”

The answer is a complete disadvantage, so below is my suggestion:

You know how each character class has a trait system? Where we have 70 points?

Why don’t we have a 70 – 80 point WvW trait system as well? One independent from Character Classes?

The way it works is that we enter World vs World and we customize a character outright for WvW performance.

The trait lines name examples can be:

Offensive, Defensive, Economy, Logistics, Command, Siege (This can also be in offensive or defensive traits too), but you get the idea.

So basically, We enter WvW and we have:
Character Class Traits (What we have now)

AND

WvW Trait line (Abilities functioning in WvW)

The reason I came up with this is because each character class has 75 trait skills (12 * 5 and 3 * 5 as the minor traits)

This would be really cool because it would allow for each player, regardless their experience base to actually customize any character for WvW and combine with character trait skills.

It would make this WvW more interesting, more independent and unique. It will prevent the problem of players getting systematic advantages over new players in the long term as I would hate to see how new players five years from now will get into WvW with players having 10000 hours worth of playtime or more and many tiers capped….on one or multiple characters…

I would love to enter WvW and tell my team

“Ok, since we are countering larger groups, I will take Defense 30, Command 10, Siege 20 and Economy 10….

…and then later say "Oh the situation has changed, I’ll take “Offense 30, Command 30, Economy 10”

Rather than say “Oh! yeah…I can bring a necro to do condition damage, but I can’t because my elementalist has 200 points and I want to get 100 more for Supply +5”

This trait system might be cool for small groups and zergs to be on more equal footing with one another, because what the current system is doing is hurting small groups because small groups go and capture camps, survive for a long time and then the 40 – 50 man zergs out there in a sea of red hunt those groups down because they will get more WXP from killing 7 – 8 players than killing 5 zergs.

It just feels like small groups are like cattle in a farm that everyone allows to live to fatten them up, so that then they could be scooped up by large zergs.

I just feel that if I have to spend 4000+ hours capping stuff that I will have to leave to another game because as the current system stands, there is more grind than any other game I have played and the developers speak of more abilities in the future.

This hurts the new guilds too…
Imagine I make a 20 man guild in the future and run together for 200 supply. A 20 man guild with a +5 supply buff and +5 camp buff is going to carry 400 supply, which is something I can’t compete with unless each member gets 300 points.

It no longer becomes about competitive skill as much as the combined WvW skills attained vs players who do not have the same skill (or any skills)….

Well. I am sorry for the long, drawn out post….but Its just my feelings to this system. I thought about the trait lines because it could be really cool and finally allow players to freely play alts and not have to worry about throwing their lives away (Yes, 4000 hours is a VERY LONG TIME in teenage to young adult years…very important time to learn and grow. It is more time than one spends in classroom time obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree)

If it takes more lines of code than the lines of text in your post it isn’t going to happen.

fivekiller.1432:

Cactus.2710:

fivekiller.1432:

Cactus.2710:

D W.5179:

Super easy fix ANet, almost no changes are needed to the scoring system using the following:

Separate the server ranking list, from the match line-up list. Done. I’ll explain:

The list of servers rank by glicko score will not change. This will still be the ordered list of 1st to last place.
The list of server match-ups though would now be determined by winner move up loser move down. This will keep match-ups from going stale and tiers becoming out of scale with each other. This means that the list of current match-ups will be close, but not equal to the list of server ranking in order.

That’s a really dumb idea as dozens of players have pointed out in other threads. It just makes blowouts happen more often.

as pointed out in other threads, this is not true. The WvW system is not capable of balanced matches. Nearly every match is a blowout. WULD won’t change that.

I hope arenanet doesnt’ share your misguided view as someone on a server who’s only won maybe 2 games in 3 or 4 months I would love to go down a tier now and then and win a game here and there. I like winning sometimes.

I never said that WvW is capable of even matches, with or without WULD. If you read my post just above yours you’ll see that I said exactly the opposite.

It is true, however, that WULD would generate even more blowouts. If all the servers in Tier A are evenly matched and all of those in Tier B are as well, all six servers enjoy a reasonably equitable match. WULD means that the following week four out of the six servers are likely to experience a blowout. The server that got bumped up to Tier A likely loses big, the server that got bumped down likely wins big, and the other two servers in Tier B likely lose big. This scenario is GUARANTEED to play out like that any time there are significant differences in populations from one tier to another … in other words, pretty often.

At least in my “misguided view” I can understand that four is more than zero.

Which tier is tier A and tier B? I think you’re assuming too much. You assume these tiers exist and you assume the shift would play out as you describe it. There is evidence that moving tiers doesn’t guarantee a blowout worse than the previous tier.

Regardless, your math is flawed and I wouldn’t analyze it this way anyways. As for the math, there are 8 tiers, not 4. Most all of which are bad matchups and unwinnable by at least one team. This is why you shouldn’t use data from a hypothetical example to prove a hypothesis.

Even so, the new tiers experiencing blowouts as you say would not be the same tiers as the previous matchup. it would be the red teams getting a chance to win and green teams getting a chance to lose. my whole point was this is better for the game as outside of tier1 and tier 8 no team will stagnate in months long losing streaks. And tier 8 will at least get new servers to sit as green.

@Mausler, I’m not experienced or familiar enough with the europe servers to really say much about it. I can tell you when i look at the last matchup i don’t see the balance to which you’re referring.

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/27

We may just have a different view of balance.

Did the IQ in the room just drop by thirty points? It doesn’t matter which is Tier A and which is Tier B … it’s an example, and it’s an example that has existed in the past, probably exists now, and for certain is capable of existing in the future.

And you really, really need to improve your reading comprehension. I never said anything about there being four tiers or eight tiers. There were six servers involved in my TierA/TierB example, four of which would experience a blowout from one side or the other under a WULD scenario. Get it?? Four servers … nothing was said about four tiers.

Good lord …

fivekiller.1432:

Cactus.2710:

D W.5179:

Super easy fix ANet, almost no changes are needed to the scoring system using the following:

Separate the server ranking list, from the match line-up list. Done. I’ll explain:

The list of servers rank by glicko score will not change. This will still be the ordered list of 1st to last place.
The list of server match-ups though would now be determined by winner move up loser move down. This will keep match-ups from going stale and tiers becoming out of scale with each other. This means that the list of current match-ups will be close, but not equal to the list of server ranking in order.

That’s a really dumb idea as dozens of players have pointed out in other threads. It just makes blowouts happen more often.

as pointed out in other threads, this is not true. The WvW system is not capable of balanced matches. Nearly every match is a blowout. WULD won’t change that.

I hope arenanet doesnt’ share your misguided view as someone on a server who’s only won maybe 2 games in 3 or 4 months I would love to go down a tier now and then and win a game here and there. I like winning sometimes.

I never said that WvW is capable of even matches, with or without WULD. If you read my post just above yours you’ll see that I said exactly the opposite.

It is true, however, that WULD would generate even more blowouts. If all the servers in Tier A are evenly matched and all of those in Tier B are as well, all six servers enjoy a reasonably equitable match. WULD means that the following week four out of the six servers are likely to experience a blowout. The server that got bumped up to Tier A likely loses big, the server that got bumped down likely wins big, and the other two servers in Tier B likely lose big. This scenario is GUARANTEED to play out like that any time there are significant differences in populations from one tier to another … in other words, pretty often.

At least in my “misguided view” I can understand that four is more than zero.

D W.5179:

Cactus.2710:

D W.5179:

Super easy fix ANet, almost no changes are needed to the scoring system using the following:

Separate the server ranking list, from the match line-up list. Done. I’ll explain:

The list of servers rank by glicko score will not change. This will still be the ordered list of 1st to last place.
The list of server match-ups though would now be determined by winner move up loser move down. This will keep match-ups from going stale and tiers becoming out of scale with each other. This means that the list of current match-ups will be close, but not equal to the list of server ranking in order.

That’s a really dumb idea as dozens of players have pointed out in other threads. It just makes blowouts happen more often.

I’d prefer to have a blowout every other week rather than every single week.
I understand why you call it “dumb”, but I think it’s a better alternative than the current.
There are plenty of examples and scenarios that show why glicko fails in a tiered environment. This options mixes the tiers more often (more blowouts, you’re correct), and the reason for this would be to keep the tiers in the same score scale with other tiers. I don’t expect everybody to understand and/or agree with this, I just think it’s better than what we currently have. I’d love to hear a solution that is the best of both worlds; minimal blowouts, but tiers don’t get off scale with each other in regards to glicko score.

You will have at least as many blowouts, not fewer, but you are correct that WULD helps break tier locking.

The real problem is that it will be impossible to make WvW matches that are both balanced and fresh under the current server vs server vs server format. It simply cannot be done. ANet can’t control server populations and WvW population doesn’t track server population anyway … and it certainly doesn’t around the clock. We’re going to keep arguing and complaining about WvW matches until either ANet gets a clue and changes the match format to some sort of instanced system … or until we all get so tired of it we just leave.

Heijincks.9267:

Actually they are actually working on one.

Sorry … I don’t believe you. The most recent comment I’ve seen from Colin Ferguson on the subject of new maps for WvW was this one dated about a month ago. If you’ve seen something more recent, please post the link.

Interviewer: Do you plan to add new WvW maps ? If so do you have a deadline to communicate? Can we expect to see these maps for this year ?

CF: We are always looking for ways we can improve the WvW experience, and new maps certainly would be a way to do that. While we would like to add new maps to the game at some point, creating maps is our most labor intensive process and WvW maps take quite a lot more effort to build than any other type of map so we’re exploring some other avenues to create new gameplay opportunites until we have enough time to properly build and test any new maps.

Centrix.4065:

Cactus.2710:

ANet has already stated that players pop from the queue at random … there is no first-in/first-out system that would generate a number for wait time. It’s stupid as hell, but it is what it is and given ANet’s track record on fixing dumb decisions I wouldn’t expect anything to change.

FIFO and FIRO have nothing to do with the ability to show how many people are in the queue. And it’s not something that would take long to make, most likely less than 30 minutes of actual work (+ weeks of deciding whether they will put it in or not). They already have the queue system, which internally knows which characters are in the queue. Just add a few lines of code that counts how many people are in the queue and show it.

If you know there are 5 people in the queue or 500, it will make it possible for you to estimate your odds of getting in the map.

You need to read some of the several unanswered threads about queues … the ones that describe queues for empty maps, the ones where players point out that people in their party still show on the mini-map if they log off without first leaving WvW, and the ones where ANet admits they aren’t really sure what is happening. ANet can’t tell us how many people are in the queue if they don’t know the actual number themselves.

Besides, the original post (the one I was responding to) asked for wait times, and even average wait times aren’t meaningful in a FIRO environment unless they are accumulated over a long period of time … and in that case they wouldn’t be current enough to be very useful.

Asglarek.8976:

They didn’t fix the major issue they passed the buck on culling a fix would be a total redesign on their gw2 engine from the ground up not a redesign on the antiquated gw1 engine. What they did with culling is the same thing they did with orbs they just removed it and kittenly I might add by only giving the client some laymanish presets lowest/low lol how pathetic is that.

What they did was expose just how bad their engine is now that culling on their end is gone the real issue will be as I have said all along skill lag and how it will eventually destroy wvw.

^this^ some more

And skill lag is not confined to WvW. Server overload is server overload, and it’s not like WvW is hosted on separate servers. I’m not even on a upper tier server and I get skill lag all the time. It’s not typically huge outside of a major fight in WVW, but I can be roaming around soloing my daily and have erratic delays for various abilities. For some reason, and has been pointed out by many others, it mostly happens on abilities that require an animation … instacast abilities usually fire off right away. The typical delays range from a few tenths of a second to maybe as much as a second, but they are definitely noticeable and they are definitely server-side (my computer is upper tier and my IS kitten olid). Edit: LOL … the censorbot thinks I typed a slang term for urine. The original text reads “my ISP -is- solid” (less the hyphens)

Another thing that people keep overlooking is that ANet uses a merged-capacity system for WvW. There is no such thing as a unique set of servers for any realm or tier. That means that server capacity has to dynamically adjust to demands no matter what tier or realm they may come from. You could theoretically be in Tier 3 and have a huge SM fight in Tier 1 cause a momentary delay for you (in either WvW or PvE) as the system reallocates capacity … reallocated capacity is capacity that is not instantly being used.

Fifteen years ago when my son was only about five years old I watched him playing a kids video game on his computer (yes … he had his own computer). He was using a trackball for a mouse and it was simply amazing to watch the speed and dexterity of his fingers. I was literally transfixed and couldn’t stop watching.

I sometimes think that the most significant limit to what our kids can do is our own preconceived notions of what they should be able to do.

D W.5179:

Super easy fix ANet, almost no changes are needed to the scoring system using the following:

Separate the server ranking list, from the match line-up list. Done. I’ll explain:

The list of servers rank by glicko score will not change. This will still be the ordered list of 1st to last place.
The list of server match-ups though would now be determined by winner move up loser move down. This will keep match-ups from going stale and tiers becoming out of scale with each other. This means that the list of current match-ups will be close, but not equal to the list of server ranking in order.

That’s a really dumb idea as dozens of players have pointed out in other threads. It just makes blowouts happen more often.

Manoa.5897:

Now, we do know that it’s been officially been confirmed that ANet IS looking at the WvW server rating issue. Hopefully a fix comes soon. It’s starting to feel too little too late. :-/

I had never heard of the Glicko-2 system when I first started playing WvW, so I looked it up on WikiPedia and also read the description of ANet’s particular implementation of it on the GW2 official forum. It was immediately apparent to me that this wasn’t going to work and I and others have been posting about the inherent flaws for months now. The Glicko-2 system was never intended to be used in a tiered environment because of the isolation it breeds and it certainly isn’t valid to pretend that red-vs-blue, red-vs-green, and blue-vs-green are all independent matches as ANet does.

If those of us who aren’t statisticians or mathematicians were able to see this coming months ago after just a few minutes of thought it’s truly disappointing that ANet could not. Even now all we have from them is an indication that they are “looking into it”.

All that being said, ANY ranking system isn’t going to fix the fundamental problem of unbalanced matches. Server populations don’t equate to WvW populations, and server populations certainly don’t indicate 24/7 coverage. I personally do not see how server-based matches will ever give the kind of balanced game play we all want, and I think the entire system is going to have to change to some sort of instanced matchup. Just my opinion …

RyuDragnier.9476:

Cactus.2710:

Beorn Saxon.4762:

But they are reacting exactly the way anet intended them to. Anet put in this system to reward players to stick to one alt, so what do you expect?

That doesn’t mean that players aren’t being stupid. It just means that ANet is stupid also for having put something in WvW that undermines WvW. Lots of people here saw this coming … ANet apparently didn’t.

But wait…if I recall, aren’t the ranks shared across EVERY CHARACTER ON YOUR ACCOUNT? If so, then how the hell is it killing the use of alts, if every kill you get regardless of character you’re playing helps fill the exact same bar?

LOL. Recall again …

ANet has already stated that players pop from the queue at random … there is no first-in/first-out system that would generate a number for wait time. It’s stupid as hell, but it is what it is and given ANet’s track record on fixing dumb decisions I wouldn’t expect anything to change.

Beorn Saxon.4762:

But they are reacting exactly the way anet intended them to. Anet put in this system to reward players to stick to one alt, so what do you expect?

That doesn’t mean that players aren’t being stupid. It just means that ANet is stupid also for having put something in WvW that undermines WvW. Lots of people here saw this coming … ANet apparently didn’t.

Samhayn.2385:

Cactus.2710:

blurps.2340:

Colly.4073:

Why the hell they added the rest is beyond me :/

Obviously you didn’t read these forums much. Players cried their eyes out about there being no progression and rewards in WvW so hard, you’d think the world was about to end.

That’s the problem. Players who didn’t understand WvW, or didn’t really care much for a play style based upon strategy and objectives, but who still wanted large scale battles kept hammering ANet for “more progression”. Several of us here tried to point out the pitfalls of instituting individual achievements that disincline players to pursue team objectives, but ANet didn’t understand their own game enough to realize how badly this would undermine it. They could have put in place individual achievements that reinforced team goals, but instead they made credit based upon individual kills. That’s just stupid and it’s no wonder that now we just have mobs of players mindlessly fighting in the road for no purpose other than rank and titles. That can be fun at first, but it quickly gets boring and it for sure isn’t WvW.

We must play different games, all I see now is giant balls of people avoiding fights and running to take Objectives, 70 people to kill a road guard and flip a supply camp? Yeah every night. If anything killing someone is the slowest way to rank up. Being a roamer myself I can tell you that once someone is killed once the points they are worth afterwards is garbage.

That is indeed different than what I’ve seen lately. The other night DR and DH fought a totally pointless mass battle on the road between lowlands and SM. It lasted at least an hour and was still going strong when I got bored and left, but nobody seemed interested in doing much of anything else. Lots of action but no result other than rank points. Maybe things will change, but your experience doesn’t sound a whole lot better than mine even though it’s different.

blurps.2340:

Colly.4073:

Why the hell they added the rest is beyond me :/

Obviously you didn’t read these forums much. Players cried their eyes out about there being no progression and rewards in WvW so hard, you’d think the world was about to end.

That’s the problem. Players who didn’t understand WvW, or didn’t really care much for a play style based upon strategy and objectives, but who still wanted large scale battles kept hammering ANet for “more progression”. Several of us here tried to point out the pitfalls of instituting individual achievements that disincline players to pursue team objectives, but ANet didn’t understand their own game enough to realize how badly this would undermine it. They could have put in place individual achievements that reinforced team goals, but instead they made credit based upon individual kills. That’s just stupid and it’s no wonder that now we just have mobs of players mindlessly fighting in the road for no purpose other than rank and titles. That can be fun at first, but it quickly gets boring and it for sure isn’t WvW.

muylaetrix.2096:

lettucemode.3789:

No, not really, I’ve done some graphics work and so I know what the term means :P Whether I meant the technical term or the Arenanet-WvW term, either way you are drawing less stuff, I chose simple (admittedly ambiguous) words because I’m lazy.

server side culling (the server only tells you about xx objects because if we try send all relevant info to everyone, we might not have enough bandwidth to send all data and some clients might get no data at all) and client culling (the client doesn’t render stuff which you can’t see) are two different things.

lettucemode.3789:

Source for this? Otherwise I’m sticking with my theory. Habib made a post about the changes they were going to make to fix it a few months ago, and the only network change he mentioned was getting the higher-ups to approve using more. They were never anywhere near the cap.

i think we are speaking about the same post. i read it as “we don’t have enough upload bandwidth. to send all data to everyone we need more bandwidth. this will cost money as we need to upgrade our connection”

the culling used by anet was a cost saving measure to compensate for their insufficient bandwidth.

….

ofc, i could be wrong :p

You are not wrong … Lettuce is. Habib’s post on culling clearly listed server-side network bandwidth as being one of the culprits, albeit one of the easiest to fix.

Voilodion.3791:

Ashanae.9362:

I will camp EB JP everyday if this way i can prevent my enemy to get more sieges.

While I have no problems with people attacking other people anywhere in a WvW zone, please don’t try to convince us that you do it for some noble strategic reason, and not because it’s a chance to gank people who weren’t planning to fight back. You’re not fooling anyone.

You’re right, of course, but from my perspective ganking people who were trying to gift themselves a PvP award without planning to fight for it (while simultaneously wasting a slot on the map) does have a certain sense of justice to it. I’ve never camped the JP but I can’t bring myself to demean those who do. As long as ANet considers doing WvW to be a required element of achieving (i.e., earning) a legendary there should be some burden to actually have to fight for it.

swilkers.5938:

Cactus.2710:

swilkers.5938:

Yams.6082:

swilkers.5938:

I have a level 9 thief that can dominate players in WvW. It’s a joke playing a backstab thief in WvW.

I’d like to report this nincompoop for hacking. Either that, or he owns up to the drivel that he’s spouting.

Really? Wearing ZERO armor I can kill several in a mob. If you can’t kill much then maybe you should LTP.

Like Yams says … nincompoop.

Are you really asking for video of thief play?? I assumed that it was general knowledge that backstab thieves were OP steath. My bad if not. ANET is seriously missing this point aparently. ANET, you do realize that WvW thief stealth is entirely OP? Why should a thief be able to crawl away from a failed attack??? Answer…they should not. There is ZERO penalty for thief bad play. If you play a thief, you can ALWAYS get away.

Again … nincompoop. The entire concept of a thief as outlined by ANet is based upon stealth. Attack from stealth, have access to high burst damage, and retreat in stealth if the attack fails. A thief who cannot stealth is a dead thief .. every .. kittening .. time. A thief who failed in his attack and had to stealth away is a thief who didn’t kill you. That makes him really annoying … but not necessarily OP. If you pretend he was never there you have the same end result.

I’ve seen a marked improvement in the ability of enemies to counter me as a thief the last few weeks. Apparently these whining threads like yours have served at least that useful purpose as some players appear to have learned from them … yourself excluded, of course.

hex.3218:

They paint a nice big target. The higher the title on an enemy, the more I want to kill that enemy.

I try to die often so that the enemy doesn’t get very many points for it.

Graybes.8251:

Ya know you have a really good point. Ranks/titles are kind of supposed to be a bragging rights thing but right now the only person who knows that you have a specific rank is yourself. Even with these new titles you are still just a nameless enemy. A big aspect of bragging/showing off is people knowing WHO accomplished something. Right now that doesn’t happen

The new titles are not completely pointless though. At least you will have an idea of how experienced a player you may choose to fight could be. The higher the rank the more time they have spent in WvW and they COULD be more experienced/skilled. But other than that the whole bragging rights thing just doesn’t really exist.

I don’t see how the new titles relate to a meaningful accomplishment at all. As you say, about all they represent is how long somebody has spent in WvW, whether that time was spent doing something useful or not. I spent at least an hour last night fighting on the road between lowlands and SM in EB. There were two large groups of players pushing each other back and forth, constantly being refreshed by the nearby waypoints. It was admittedly fun but totally pointless and soon boring, and as a thief all I had to do was periodically stealth up to the front of the enemy, daggerstorm the crap out of them, stealth back out and stand at the back of our group waiting for loot bags to drop at my feet and points to stack up. Totally mindless in the context of WvW.

akunadin.5017:

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

Yes, I am experiencing the same thing. It started happening after the February patch I believe and is worse now. I had my WvW settings both set to ‘Lowest’.

Indeed for me allso all skill-lag skitten after the February patch and its only getting worse.

As i mentioned before, 6 months playing with culling now will turn into 6 months of playing with skill-lag. Wot is imo 5 x as bad!
Since i dont see A-net fix this problem on ther short term.
Allo i think it will kill GW as i dont see the real PvP ppl cope with this for to long. I for sure will not play with this kitten lag for to long.

Regards.

The difference is that removing culling actually took some effort to recode several things. Skill lag, on the other hand, is caused almost totally by server-side hardware issues that could essentially be fixed by writing a couple of checks. The fact that we have so many complaints about it and yet ANet can’t seem to find their pen makes it seem likely that it isn’t going to get fixed … ever. A much more likely scenario is that ANet will just wait until player dissatisfaction lowers the map population enough for things to stabilize. It’s the much cheaper approach.

D W.5179:

This is strictly hypothetical, please treat it as such.

If all 3 servers in tier 8 get a ton of transfers, and we have great even fights in tier 8, but ALL 3 servers with their mass hypothetical transfers end up performing at a much higher tier’s level, how would glicko treat that.
The way I would see it is, if we are all 3 fighting at an even level, we would end up averaging our points (979, 636, 577) and settle with all three servers at the average; 730.
So to further this hypothetical scenario (only because I’m asking about how the system would react to this, not because I think this is what is happening), let’s say all 3 servers in T8 start performing at a T1 level… wouldn’t they still just sit at roughly 730 points forever unless one team managed to break in to T7 to fight a server that actually has some points?

Please discuss, and try not to flame me ( too much :P ) because I’m not trying to insinuate anything here about my server or any other servers strengths, and I’m not voicing an opinion on the transfers, I’m just honestly curious if the system could recognize that a tier as a whole has gotten stronger, or not.

It’s called tier locking, and it’s a huge flaw of using the Glicko-2 system for tiered match play. The same thing could happen in Tier 1 if all three servers there lost 80% of their players but still battled to essentially even scores each week.