Guild Wars 2

Chessrook.8643:

This is something I’ve noticed for a while. Certain Dolyaks don’t actually give credit upon completing their trip, if the far end of it isn’t captured by the team that owns it. Confusing to understand, so let me give an example…

The Dolyak at Pangloss travels, normally, from Pang to Ogrewatch and on to Stonemist. However, often those who own Pang and OW don’t own SM. Because of this, the Dolyak moves back and forth between Pang and OW, running the whole way.

Here’s the problem. I have escorted this Dolyak between Pang and OW numerous times in the past when TC was red. Enough to upgrade half the tower from nothing sometimes, and sometimes more. Yet I NEVER get the “Event Succeeded” message. Only if I leave and run around elsewhere do I eventually get an “Event failed” message.

Now before anyone says anything, I know I’m not supposed to get coin or karma or anything for Dolyak escorting. What worries me, however, is whether this will affect World XP with the upcoming patch. And will the lack of events there cause a decline of WXP potentially gained by it?

Look I know. Botters and the like took the whole “escorting dolyak” thing to ridiculous levels and filled up the maps with mindless drones following Dolyaks for free loots for minimal reward. I guess I just want to know if we Dolyak escorters are going to continue to get shafted.

Or maybe I’m just rambling too much.

I don’t think you ever get credit for escorting a yak unless it gets attacked (by mobs or enemy players) and you actually do something to defend the yak.

In my opinion, progression is the crutch that game devs fall back on when they aren’t clever enough or motivated enough to make the actual game and its mechanics adequately enjoyable for the long run. Nobody needs “progression” (better stuff, new stuff, etc) to play basketball, chess, or poker. Those games are well designed with enduring appeal (depth, variety, uncertainty, etc) such that they are fun to play without gimmicks. WvW in GW2 could be the same thing if it had more depth and better balance, but instead of heading in that direction we’re going to get “stuff” to keep us distracted.

Too little server-side data capability, whether it be server capacity, game engine capability, or in/out bandwidth, is what causes lag. Culling was instituted to reduce lag by restricting the number of character’s data that the game had to track and transmit for client side rendering. Given enough players active in the same localized area you can theoretically have lots of lag even if you have lots of rendering culling because some player actions need to be transmitted even if some of those players are visually culled. It all depends upon the relative magnitudes of the packets involved.

I strongly suspect that ANet is stealth experimenting to determine just how little server-side capacity they have to add to follow through on their pledge to eliminate culling, and they probably are stealth experimenting with different rendering algorithms as well. There have, after all, been a couple of small undocumented patches lately.

Habib Loew.6239:

The best way to think of this system is as additional grind.

There … I fixed that for you.

covenn.7165:

I want it to be character bound to reward people that stick to their class instead of FotMing around to whatever the current OP class is.

Really? Because which class is more OP than the other classes has changed so strikingly or so often??

Oozo.7856:

Cactus.2710:

In my opinion, it is not possible to identify which play style … the AD/BSTY/NoQQ and KoS harassing type of elite roaming groups or the players performing the less glamorous functions in a more scattered manner … contributes more to the server point scores.

I can help with that. The latter contributes more to the point score. A server needs both, but needs more of the latter than the former to be successful IMO.

I meant on a per-player basis ….

Gravy.7589:

AD, BSTY, NoQQ are honestly the only guilds on DR that are kitten hard to face and they always run together. No disrespect to any other DR guilds but that bunch is just so noticeably better then the rest of you. They run lots of tanky/hammer/stun builds that are backed up by some nasty burst thieves and they do it well. Giving them props for their level of play is justified.

Well, the guys from AD/BSTY/NoQQ who run together indeed make up a terrific roaming group, and the rest of us on DR value their presence highly. They perform a great function and they’re like cavalry when they show up when we’re engaged doing something else.

Note the “something else” part of that last comment, though. AD/BSTY/NoQQ purposely structure themselves to comprise an effective, self contained fighting force. Most of the rest of us are focused on doing different things … like setting up siege for an attack, operating siege for defense, running supplies for repair or to replace siege, capping one of the ogre/frog/etc camps, etc/etc/etc. Those different things often involve sending a couple of players off on their own, and they often get joined by one or two randoms for a brief period. A small group that is doing something on one side of the map may request a couple of players from a different group somewhere else on the map for temporary help. The result is that there are LOTS of times where you may encounter a group of DR players from other guilds who simply were not set up to be a strong open field combat team … even those some of those players may have been individually capable of it. For example, there is almost no focus on complementary player classes in the majority of the non-roaming groups you will come across on the map, and of course the close knit teamwork is unlikely to be there either simply due to the circumstances of the activity focus.

By the way, a few times last night we came across a small group of KoS from SBI that were an awesome fighting force. They knew their stuff and played great together. They weren’t unkillable but it always took greater numbers for us to do so.

In my opinion, it is not possible to identify which play style … the AD/BSTY/NoQQ and KoS harassing type of elite roaming groups or the players performing the less glamorous functions in a more scattered manner … contributes more to the server point scores. Anybody not wasting their time on the grub is helping in one way or another, and sometimes the contribution they make isn’t even recognizable until much later in the match.

xiv.7136:

Basically stealth is the crutch that makes the thief player look better than he/she actually is.

Actually, stealth is the primary mechanism that makes a thief more useful to play than an engineer. Stealth just also happens to be the mechanism that makes a thief more annoying to fight than a mesmer. Culling accentuates both.

Heru.5427:

Everyone posting in this thread could do with watching this video: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/180776/Video_Guild_Wars_2s_programming_tricks_revealed.php
There are some misconceptions in some of the posts here.

I watched that entire video. The biggest thing I learned from it is that realms are not unique to servers … ANet uses a grouped-server system where server capacity is dynamically allocated as a function of need. That would mean that Tier 1 “servers” would actually be drawing from capacity not being used by lower tier servers. That sounds good on paper, but there is no way that a capacity reallocation would happen fast enough to react to the sudden need for more server capacity to suddenly handle a massive WvW battle … in any tier.

In addition, server capacity does not equate to bandwidth.

Magnetron.5823:

Hmm i like the new changes, but i am afraid of the removal of culling.. I hope they have some new ways to reduce the lag in WvW especially the skill lag.

I rather have culling then lag in my skills.. But we will see!

^This^ It seems that a lot of folks here don’t realize that culling was put in place to minimize ability lag (and probably also client side rendering problems) when too many players ended up in the same localized area, thereby swamping the ability of ANet’s servers to handle all the data packets. ANet could remove culling, but unless they added a kitten load of bandwidth, cap the map populations at some low number, or institute some software mods reduce the number of packets required, we could end up being able to see everyone but not be able to do much about it.

Sajuuk.6420:

Please enjoy your lag and queues while i enjoy the actaul game in T7 i have spent at least 1500 hrs in WvW since the game has first kicked off and the issues above are a myth over here.. if you guys spred ur selfs out a bit you will learn that there is space for everyone

I’m pretty sure that’s not actually true, at least not right now. If the WvW populations were spread equally amongst all servers I’d bet $100 that ALL tiers would regularly be complaining about lag unless ANet set the maps caps really low.

Lag is the result of insufficient server-side bandwdith, culling is simply how ANet tries to mitigate it, and culling already exists even on low tier servers. It’s just that on the lower tiers culling pretty much accomplishes what it is supposed to do, whereas on the higher tiers it can’t because even with culling there is too much data to process from all the players (visual rendering is NOT the only data that needs to be handled). Equalize all the server populations and you’d most likely still have way too much data to avoid lag on all servers.

Of course all that may soon change depending upon what ANet’s upcoming solution to culling is, but right now equal populations would most likely just mean equal lag for everyone … not the absence of it.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Cactus.2710:

Gab Superstar.4059:

VOLKON.1290:

Gab Superstar.4059:

VOLKON.1290:

The morning comes, the disconnects continue. Hopefully someone at the office is looking into this?

I seriously hope not.

I don’t want Arena Net to waste their money on kittens who decided to hoard on one server and then complain about lag.

If you guys didn’t bandwagon, or encourage others to do so, server population would be more evenly spread out and you wouldn’t have lag.

Hate to disappoint ya son, but I was born and raised in the Quarry before you were even a pixel in the mind’s eye. Here’s a tidbit o’ data for you… populations are still the same due to the cap on players allowed.

Are you under the impression that every tier has queues?

Every tier has the potential for battles large enough to cause heavy lag, queue or no queue … they simply are more likely in the upper tiers. That doesn’t make lag in the lower tiers any less annoying … only less often.

Indeed. But if you increase the server bandwidth only to fix the lag a few players experience 1-2 times a week you are wasting resources which could be put to better use elsewhere.

It’s Company 101, don’t waste resources on things that will hardly be noticeable to the consumers in favor of things that will actually make an impact on a larger scale.

That’s certainly true (I ran a very large commercial business for about 20 years). The problem is, in the ideal situation where the WvW populations were balanced across all servers and tiers and the maps were actually able to hold the originally intended capacity (roughly 500 players per map), lag would be a problem for everyone and it would occur way more than just once or twice per week. In all reality, the bandwaggoning in the upper tiers is the only reason that those of us in the lower tiers have a manageable game experience. That’s a flawed implementation.

Most of the forum posts I’ve seen seem to dislike the change. Most of the chat and TS3 comments I’ve seen/heard have been in favor of it. I don’t think there is any sort of consensus on it.

Personally, I like it. I don’t think a WvW style of play should simply point you to all the battles. You wouldn’t have that in any real life equivalent conflict, so why here? Uncertainty adds a layer to the game play that requires you to actually scout/report … and maybe even defend.

Carried to an extreme, we could have the map tell us which server and how many enemy are triggering the orange swords, what each of the enemy wall/gate strengths/upgrades are, how much supply is in each and every camp, and display all the enemy defensive siege everywhere. If we had never had the orange swords at all I don’t think anyone would be any more likely to be griping about it than they are now about the absence of any of my other examples.

MRA.4758:

Cactus.2710:

You mean like they confirmed the map population cap numbers after several hundred forum posts asking for it?? What were those numbers again?

Those numbers have actually been known well before this forum has been started. They aimed for at least 500 players per map, one third per server, so the cap should be somewhere around 130-140 players per server. However, I assume they tweak this number regularly as they update the engine to guarantee server performance, so I guess it will be hard to state a precise and universally correct number.

Cactus.2710:

Or maybe like they confirmed the actual (I mean ACTUAL) despawn times for various siege in different situations after several hundred posts pointing out that 30 minutes isn’t the number??

Yes, I remember that well. They answered the question on the first page of this thread. Although I think their system might be bugged, since I regularly perceive a different behavior than the intended 30 minutes.

Cactus.2710:

Or maybe you mean how the most detailed prefaces for the upcoming WvW patch have been somewhere on these official forums instead of contained within interviews hosted by third party fan sites?

I am pretty sure they they will post the update notes first in this forum, as they always have. I am sure that there will also be a fancy webpage. But this is future stuff, and I am pretty sure they haven’t fixed all the details yet. So what details you are actually missing?

Cactus.2710:

Got it … my mistake.

No problem, you are welcome. I am here to help.

~MRA

LOL. The stated map cap numbers are bogus and everybody except you knows it. The real numbers appear to be as low as 60 or maybe 80 (ANet admitted that they recently dropped them), but ANet has never given us the real number … most likely because they don’t actually know it (check the queue threads about logouts not being properly accounted for).

Yes, the siege despawn times bear zero resemblance to 30 minutes except for trebs, yet the ONLY official number we ever got from ANet was (and still is per their last comment several weeks ago) was the bogus 30 minutes.

Check out the Dragon Nest web site http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/7169/Guild-Wars-2-What-Marchs-WvW-Patch-Will-Bring.html (referenced on GW2 Junkies as well). Check out the Dragon Season web site. http://dragonseason.com/Front/tabid/124/EntryId/211/Lunch-with-Colin-Johanson-Part-II.aspx Both have recent (within the past week or so) interviews with ANet staff (Habib Loew and Colin Johanson) giving considerably more information about the upcoming WvW patch than ANet has posted anywhere to this forum.

Gab Superstar.4059:

VOLKON.1290:

Gab Superstar.4059:

VOLKON.1290:

The morning comes, the disconnects continue. Hopefully someone at the office is looking into this?

I seriously hope not.

I don’t want Arena Net to waste their money on kittens who decided to hoard on one server and then complain about lag.

If you guys didn’t bandwagon, or encourage others to do so, server population would be more evenly spread out and you wouldn’t have lag.

Hate to disappoint ya son, but I was born and raised in the Quarry before you were even a pixel in the mind’s eye. Here’s a tidbit o’ data for you… populations are still the same due to the cap on players allowed.

Are you under the impression that every tier has queues?

Every tier has the potential for battles large enough to cause heavy lag, queue or no queue … they simply are more likely in the upper tiers. That doesn’t make lag in the lower tiers any less annoying … only less often.

Gab Superstar.4059:

You can call me hopeless all you want. But with the exception of you, the T1 / T2 players started this thread, and they are the ones who are complaining about lag. It’s also funny that they complain about constant lag for extended periods of time throughout WvW, while you complain about experiencing lag in WvW at least “four times in battles I’ve been in over the past couple of weeks”. Do you really think that lagging four times over the course of 2 weeks can compare to the lag you see in T1?

Why is this so difficult for you to understand? I NEVER complained that the lag on DR was as bad as it is on a T1/T2 server. I stated two things … lag happens on DR in spite of your original comment, and lag happens whenever large enough populations gather in a small enough area in spite of the overall server population. OF COURSE that situation will happen more often in the upper tiers, but it’s a critical flaw in the design of the game and the hardware resources put in place to support it that such bad lag can happen in the normal course of play.

Now go away … you bore me.

MRA.4758:

Cactus.2710:

salluks.6017:

.. an official confirmation would be appreciated.

Good luck with that. And if they do confirm anything, it will probably be on some social networking site you never heard of instead of their own official forums.

Yeah, right, after all, they did not confirm anything about the past ratings in this forum, beside the actual formula and parameters, a link to the documentation of the system, weekly updated scores, and a lengthy post by designer Habib Loew explaining the whole system. So, given that history, you better expect nothing from ANet.

\sarcasm.

~MRA

You mean like they confirmed the map population cap numbers after several hundred forum posts asking for it?? What were those numbers again?

Or maybe like they confirmed the actual (I mean ACTUAL) despawn times for various siege in different situations after several hundred posts pointing out that 30 minutes isn’t the number??

Or maybe you mean how the most detailed prefaces for the upcoming WvW patch have been somewhere on these official forums instead of contained within interviews hosted by third party fan sites?

Got it … my mistake.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Cactus.2710:

I thought I was petty clear … “everyone” meant everyone who was in chat (actually, both map chat and TS3), and that was way more than five people. It has happened at least four times in battles I’ve been in over the past couple of weeks, and chat lit up about it every time. It also regularly happened any time we hit [WM]‘s main zerg back when we were fighting Kaineng. You said you were on DR, hadn’t ever experienced that kind of lag, and therefore assumed that server pops were the root cause for the problem. I’m telling you that I’m on DR, have experienced it several times, and that server pops have nothing to do with it … it’s strictly a function of the number of players in close proximity. ANet’s game engine and server bandwidth bog down when trying to transmit and receive all that data. Believe it or don’t, your call.

0.5% of purchased accounts being able to play WvW is 0.5% no matter how you cut it. Would you have bought a game engine and server hardware that was only capable of handling that low a percentage of the copies you sold? And on top of that, would you design the game so that you had no control at all over server balance to mitigate the bottleneck you created? Maybe you would, but I wouldn’t … it’s a terrific way to strangle the game.

In contrast, the upcoming TESO plans to handle 2,000 players on the map at the same time and 200 players in close proximity without a performance hit.

Are you telling me that what? 50 people simultaneously said “I am lagging” in chat? That you monitored the other server’s chat for the same thing? Here’s a tip for you: Check for when Jormag is up on JQ / DB, go to Earthshake waypoint, and try some abilities out. I guarantee you that you will see ability lag before you ever see Jormag. Yes, server lag gets worse when you are in close proximity to a high amount of players. But the chance of seeing that huge amount of players is ten times higher in a T1 server, as is the amount of people throughout the zone who are also dragging the server down. See, there will never be a map in T5 where all servers have a queue, save for maybe during ~2h on reset night, and that is EB. In T1 on the other hand, I am sure all maps have a queue for all servers during multiple nights of the week.

Your argument about 0,5% is still completely kitten. Would you refuse to go to an aquarium who had 2000 visitors a day, simply because only 10 people per day could dive with the sharks? I know I wouldn’t, I am certainly not interested in diving with any sharks.

The fact that you trust game companies in 2013, even after having played GW2, is also kind of strange. What TESO says and what TESO delivers will be entirely different things, rest assured.

You’re hopeless.

Everyone who was active in TS3 said their abilities lagged badly. That was maybe a dozen people who bothered to say anything about it in the worst example, about a handful in the others. Nobody said they didn’t have lag. Everyone who wrote anything in map chat right then and immediately afterward said they had bad ability lag … nobody wrote that they didn’t.

An aquarium and sharks is the best analogy you could come up with? Seriously?? A better analogy would be my cell phone company recruiting 3,000,000 subscribers and only having installed capacity for 16,000 (16×4×240) simultaneous users with no provision for load balancing.

As for TESO, who knows what they will actually deliver. My point was that they actually have thoughtfully considered the issue and are trying to plan accordingly … something ANet obviously didn’t.

Again, the bottom line is that you used DR as an example that ability lag doesn’t happen on less populated servers … and I’m telling you that I’m also on DR and that I and my guild mates have experienced it several times. You can call me a liar if you want, but other than that I can’t fathom why you’re still arguing the point.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Cactus.2710:

Gab Superstar.4059:

I seriously hope not.

I don’t want Arena Net to waste their money on kittens who decided to hoard on one server and then complain about lag.

If you guys didn’t bandwagon, or encourage others to do so, server population would be more evenly spread out and you wouldn’t have lag.

It is T1 that’s complaining about lag, not the other tiers. In fact, here on DR I have never had ability lag, and have only heard of players who had it maybe 1-2 times.

If you didn’t bandwagon to the servers with already high server load, you wouldn’t see lag, and I don’t want Arena Net to implement fixes for your lag because it would waste money to remedy a situation you put yourself in.

I’m on DR and have experienced horrible ability lag quite a few times … typically when two large forces were fighting in the lord’s room of SM. I’d jump into the fray and start spamming my #6 key almost immediately, then three or four seconds later I’d be dead without ever having the heal fire off. Everybody else complained in chat of the very same thing. It happened every time there were really large groups in the battle. It has NOTHING to do with the total server population or even the total player population on a WvW map …. it has everything to do with how many players are in close proximity and it can happen on any server in any tier.

And no, I’m not running a toaster on dialup. I have a broadband ISP and my computer is a liquid cooled 3770K/GTX680 with 16gig of 1866MHz RAM and temps that rarely exceed 40 deg C.

ANet supposedly has sold 3 million copies of GW2 worldwide. There are 16 tiers, 4 WvW maps per tier, and ANet has had to cap the player populations at maybe 250 total players per map to make the game playable. That works out to be about half a percent of the accounts that can play WvW at any one time even if the players were uniformly distributed across all servers. The fact that WvW populations are not at all uniform certainly makes it worse, but the root cause for all of this (lag, culling, queues) is that ANet dramatically short sheeted this game from the start.

And I have never experience lag in SM, ever. When you say that “everyone else” I assume you mean like 5 people, which to be honest is not representative at all when two large forces meet.

Your talk about 3 million accounts is of course laughable, really. Do you really think that

A: All of those accounts have a unique account holder?
B: Everyone who ever bought GW2 still plays the game?
C: Everyone who ever bought GW2 plays WvW, and nothing else?
D: Everyone who ever bought GW2 plays in the same prime time?
E: That prime time is 24 hours long?

I thought I was petty clear … “everyone” meant everyone who was in chat (actually, both map chat and TS3), and that was way more than five people. It has happened at least four times in battles I’ve been in over the past couple of weeks, and chat lit up about it every time. It also regularly happened any time we hit [WM]‘s main zerg back when we were fighting Kaineng. You said you were on DR, hadn’t ever experienced that kind of lag, and therefore assumed that server pops were the root cause for the problem. I’m telling you that I’m on DR, have experienced it several times, and that server pops have nothing to do with it … it’s strictly a function of the number of players in close proximity. ANet’s game engine and server bandwidth bog down when trying to transmit and receive all that data. Believe it or don’t, your call.

0.5% of purchased accounts being able to play WvW is 0.5% no matter how you cut it. Would you have bought a game engine and server hardware that was only capable of handling that low a percentage of the copies you sold? And on top of that, would you design the game so that you had no control at all over server balance to mitigate the bottleneck you created? Maybe you would, but I wouldn’t … it’s a terrific way to strangle the game.

In contrast, the upcoming TESO plans to handle 2,000 players on the map at the same time and 200 players in close proximity without a performance hit.

The problem with the borderland maps in general is that they have so much wasted space where nothing happens. I’m in favor of large maps that spread out the action, but there is very little action in the water and all the cliffs on land channel everything into small areas as well. None of it was very well thought out, and the easiest way to make an improvement would be to drain the majority of the lake in each BL.

Gab Superstar.4059:

I seriously hope not.

I don’t want Arena Net to waste their money on kittens who decided to hoard on one server and then complain about lag.

If you guys didn’t bandwagon, or encourage others to do so, server population would be more evenly spread out and you wouldn’t have lag.

It is T1 that’s complaining about lag, not the other tiers. In fact, here on DR I have never had ability lag, and have only heard of players who had it maybe 1-2 times.

If you didn’t bandwagon to the servers with already high server load, you wouldn’t see lag, and I don’t want Arena Net to implement fixes for your lag because it would waste money to remedy a situation you put yourself in.

I’m on DR and have experienced horrible ability lag quite a few times … typically when two large forces were fighting in the lord’s room of SM. I’d jump into the fray and start spamming my #6 key almost immediately, then three or four seconds later I’d be dead without ever having the heal fire off. Everybody else complained in chat of the very same thing. It happened every time there were really large groups in the battle. It has NOTHING to do with the total server population or even the total player population on a WvW map …. it has everything to do with how many players are in close proximity and it can happen on any server in any tier.

And no, I’m not running a toaster on dialup. I have a broadband ISP and my computer is a liquid cooled 3770K/GTX680 with 16gig of 1866MHz RAM and temps that rarely exceed 40 deg C.

ANet supposedly has sold 3 million copies of GW2 worldwide. There are 16 tiers, 4 WvW maps per tier, and ANet has had to cap the player populations at maybe 250 total players per map to make the game playable. That works out to be about half a percent of the accounts that can play WvW at any one time even if the players were uniformly distributed across all servers. The fact that WvW populations are not at all uniform certainly makes it worse, but the root cause for all of this (lag, culling, queues) is that ANet dramatically short sheeted this game from the start.

Omaris Mortuus Est.2738:

Blizzard off free transfers to low population servers and I think Anet should do this too.

Of course people wont get the same fights in lower servers, so an incentive must be made to make it appealable for some people to go. But then I think the numbers should be limited and kept up to date. Afterall you dont want to have a guild decide to move only to then find only half of them were able to transfer.

But yes, thanks to the hugely expanded time of free transfers, WvW is a bit of a mess.

You’re talking apples and grapes. Blizzard matches faction versus faction, not server versus server. In addition, they group servers into battlegroups, which gives them the flexibility to move servers around from battlegroup to battlegroup to balance queues.

Pvp.2758:

Cactus.2710:

Pvp.2758:

Why can Lords be ressed by banner/battle res?

Because he died.

Why does the circle cap RESET after this is done?

Because he isn’t dead anymore.

You’re welcome.

So something meant to res DOWNED players can be used to res DEAD NPC’s to reset a circle cap that can take 5 minutes to reach 90%?

Awesome possum.

I didn’t say that it made sense. In case you haven’t noticed, there are lots of things in WvW that ANet didn’t consider very well, or at all. If WvW wasn’t merely an afterthought, it certainly plays like one.

Disparate queues, uneven matches, and stagnant tiers are NEVER going to go away unless ANet changes WvW to some sort of faction system instead of being server based.

Pvp.2758:

Why can Lords be ressed by banner/battle res?

Because he died.

Why does the circle cap RESET after this is done?

Because he isn’t dead anymore.

You’re welcome.

Dragin.4520:

in Dragonbrand we had about 45 people on our main server YEs we did a headcount. we counts Tarnish coast to over that 70-80 so how do we have a que if we can’t even match at the people attacking us WVW. If we can’t even get enough people to defend it in.

If you don’t think that the queue system in WvW is miserably broken you haven’t been paying attention.

salluks.6017:

.. an official confirmation would be appreciated.

Good luck with that. And if they do confirm anything, it will probably be on some social networking site you never heard of instead of their own official forums.

Straegen.2938:

I say each server does three matches per day and their opponents are selected primarily by similar average populations during those hours. So a strong NA prime say FA would fight two other strong NA primes with similar populations for 8 hours.

Aside from ANet writing a new server selection, most other changes would be minor. I think this system resolves stagnation, prevents servers from being completely over matched and requires minimal changes to the current system.

I think you are correct that more balanced matches could be achieved that way, but I’m pretty sure that would take a great deal of the strategy out of the game unless towers/keeps/etc could be upgraded faster. Teams would be better off zerging/capping than defending since the higher level defenses (siege, upgrades) would have much less time to contribute to the score.

It would also make server-wide benefits less worthwhile. A foraging buff gained by the server after midnight wouldn’t be useful to someone playing in the early afternoon.

Lastly, I think a system like that could be gamed pretty easily. A server wouldn’t have to juggle their playing times very much to potentially gain a big edge in any particular match.

I really don’t understand these threads. Stagnation is virtually unavoidable unless you are willing to accept more blowouts. There is simply too much disparity in WvW populations (which don’t necessarily track server populations) between servers right now for it to be any other way. For almost any tier a winner-up/loser-down type shakeup will result in a blowout the following week … even more than we have now.

ANet is going to have to come up with a different way of setting up matches that isn’t simply server versus server versus server for this to change. Look at what the next two big MMOs have planned for their equivalent to WvW … the matches are faction based, not server based. That gives them WAY more flexibility in preventing match disparities.

Aberrant.6749:

If you’re having issues vs thieves leaving fights when you don’t want them to, I suggest adding in more CC. CC is a thief’s bane.

As a non-glass cannon thief I can attest to this. It’s also why thieves are not the greatest class in a zerg. I often get chain stunned into oblivion even with my debuffs unless I simply shadowstep away, and all I’ve accomplished with that is take myself out of the fight. What all the whiners seem to forget is that the thief who ran away from your group is the thief who didn’t kill you.

I’ve always felt that being able to go invisible at will is more annoying than it is OP (discounting culling contributions, of course). A player who dies to any other class is much more likely to just chalk it up as having gone against a better geared, better spec’d, or better played enemy. Dying to a ghost, however, is more annoying even if it doesn’t necessarily happen more often.

Sid.8512:

It would neat if you could merge European and American servers together to make 17 tiers. Yes, there will be an issues when it comes to time zones and some other things. But still battles will be more epic and you will play a variety of servers each week.

I don’t understand why this bad idea keeps coming up since ANet has already pointed out the increased lag that would occur if they did that. Packets that have to travel further take longer to do so because they almost always have to be received and forwarded by more intermediate servers … some of which may have their own temporary bottlenecks. Time zones aren’t the issue … lag is.

holska.4127:

… it’s a bit silly to just list features of another game here because you’re hyped up for it.

It isn’t if you’re trying to convince ANet to modify GW2 accordingly. Yes, we could all just let GW2 fade into oblivion (pun intended) when TESO (or AA) arrives, but I don’t see how it’s silly to let ANet know what we find exciting.

It’s a stupid mechanic to have to pick up a loot bag in combat. If you earned the loot you should be able to receive it, period … no matter what happens afterward. Besides, the loot bag is simply another thing that needs to be rendered, thereby needlessly adding to the bandwidth/culling issues.

Yams.6082:

Why does DR QQ all the time about coverage and numbers? What do you want us to do about it, not play?

Why do you make silly generalities? Lots of us from DR have said that we enjoy primetime against both SBI and IoJ when the numbers are close, and several SBI have agreed that SBI is capable of better coverage than either DR or IoJ. The only QQ’ing I’ve seen here has come from:

-1. a couple of DR (not the entire server) who are tired of the coverage disparity
-2. a couple of DR (not the entire server) who have complained that one or two SBI (not the entire server) have portrayed the score differential as some sort of competency difference
-3. several from all three servers who lament the loss of the huge amount of fun this matchup would provide if the numbers/coverage were more even

So no, we don’t want you not to play. We like playing against you. We just wish we had the ability to play as often as you do.

Krash.9486:

Cactus.2710:

Krash.9486:

I am sure Anet has smarter people than me coming up with this stuff.

I’m pretty sure they don’t.

I am pretty sure that is meant as insult to Anet’s intelligence….but I choose to take it as a complement to mine! =)

Thanks!

Both, actually.

EasymodeX.4062:

Isaac.6041:

The Green team is the winner 16 out of 17 matches this week.

Working as intended: the server with stronger WvW capacity won last week, and then won this week. This means the brackets are mostly accurate.

Good thread.

It only means that the rankings within a bracket are mostly accurate … it doesn’t mean that the brackets are mostly accurate. If you can’t understand that you don’t understand how the Glicko-2 system works in a tiered environment.

Slamz.5376:

If anything I think this highlights a sickness in the rating system.

Winning teams have an easy time staying on top of their bracket.
They have a hard time breaking through to the next bracket.

I feel like there has to be some sort of artificial churn put in place just to improve the health of the ratings.

You are correct, except that doing so would also create some nasty blowouts.

insanemaniac.2456:

MrLT.6028:

Drakh.3128:

How is it possible that a server winning it’s tier by 2x the points of the other 2 servers will loose rating? Sorrow’s Furnace for example from this week is ahead 221-125-120 and despite this they are loosing 51 rating? How are they ever going to move up if winning doesn’t increase their rating?

Because they didn’t win big enough.

but they dont belong in t8! obviously! theyve won every week since week 2 of their stay! by kittens of points!

But they’re beating much weak teams, so they won’t get much ranking credit for it. Check out how the Glicko-2 rating system works on Wikipedia. You get more points for beating a team higher in the rankings than you are … less points for beating a team lower than you. Unless SF gets the opportunity to show what they can do against a stronger team they won’t ever get enough additional ranking points to move into T7, and since ANet was dumb enough to try to apply the Glicko-2 formula to a tiered system SF will never get that chance. There are lots of us here on these forums that predicted this would happen … we call it “tier-locking”. The Glicko-2 system even assigns a penalty for inconsistency, so if SF roflstomps ET and FC one week then beats them by only a bit the next week they could actually lose rating points. It’s a kittened up system.

Samhayn.2385:

Columba.9730:

I don’t believe them. If this were true they would have demonstrated that its possible on a small scale by now. They haven’t.

They do have it in a small scale. No culling in spvp at all.

Say what? Of course there is no culling in sPvP … the groups are way too small there for it to be needed at all. It doesn’t sound like you understand what culling is and why it exists. By “small scale”, he meant a brief or limited trial.

Isaac.6041:

The Green team is the winner 16 out of 17 matches this week.

What a nice balance of matches ArenaNet. I guess if you want to win then you better be green.

That’s as backwards as saying that if the Charlotte Bobcats want to win a lot of games they’d better be in first place. What kind of school system did you come from?

Krash.9486:

I am sure Anet has smarter people than me coming up with this stuff.

I’m pretty sure they don’t.

EasymodeX.4062:

Cactus.2710:

I can easily imagine that some of those things would be difficult to implement and may even have unintended consequences, but please tell me why any of that would be “silly.”

Underlined for your convenience.

ANet’s not going to overhaul WvW from top to bottom. They’d lose more players than they’d gain.

Hence, silly notion. Much better to enhance what already exists to shift it towards a better course, rather than try to re-build the entire thing.

They may want to rethink that … TESO and ArcheAge are both creeping over the horizon.

Check out this video from GW2Junkies, a reasonably high profile fan site. Skip to the 45:00 minute mark and listen to the perceptions of a couple of T1 guild leaders regarding the future of WvW. It’s both enlightening and depressing at the same time. Nobody has much faith that ANet has either the inclination nor the resources to fix WvW, and both guild leaders pretty much refer to GW2 as merely being a placeholder for the next few months. I don’t see how ANet can possibly expect to fend off any of that without some sort of rebuilding of WvW.

http://gw2.junkiesnation.com/2013/02/26/guildcenter-post-drama-recap-with-aneu-votf-evoe-lotd/

The OP is evidence that cute ideas are not often good ideas.

Sumwun.3846:

Retrospek.4583:

DR needs to take a page from this, and realize that not everyone should be part of the main front of the zerg, we do need to leave others behind to defend things.

This one item causes more internal strife on DR than anything else. zerg zerg zerg is the answer for many. why send 5 people to take a camp when 20+ can. in 6 min after the camp is capped, those 20 people are somewhere else while it is getting taken back too.

I got to interact with an amazing member of AoD a few times over the last week and it has been fantastic to share a map with him. Good ol’ Bela from AoD is a fortification hero and another amazing commander to work with. ( I don’t know if Bristol is AoD, I think she is, but I only hear her, never see her lol)

Here are a few fantastic things this DR member does while he is helping a map.
1. He dedicated his primary efforts to something specific, and he sticks to it.
2. He doesn’t expect everyone else on the map to do everything for him
3. He communicates clearly, with detail, and considers more than what his focus is on.
4. He asks for help, he doesn’t demand
5. He send’s / request’s help tailored to what needs helping.
6. He considers multiple objectives.

Anti siege treb set up in DRB to take out out Hills treb on SE tower. he doesn’t call for a zerg of 20 people to take it out. Instead sends a single scout, and with communication between that scout and Hills the treb was taken out. Our forces still out dealing with more important stuff.

He reminds his people to upgrade, and to keep eyes on the upgrades. He knows the best way to stop someone from taking a tower with nobody in it is to upgrade it. He pays for a lot of these upgrades himself. quite the opposite of some of the excuses I hear for ignoring a tower post-zerg-flip.

He and Bristol BOTH would run off to other locations to put silver into it for fortification. Sadly, they can’t be on every map making sure things are actually working right. I know it’s not only them who does this. But there sure are more people not doing it than doing it.

I totally agree. Belascuza has a broad sense of what to do, communicates well, and keeps his cool. I’ve partied up with him quite a bit and he does whatever is necessary, whether it’s on his own or running a group. Nice guy as well.

And yes, Bristol is in AoD (as am I). She holds the officer title of “Treb Lady” (seriously … the guild title was created specifically for her) and she is renowned for placing, building, and operating siege. She pretty much knows what anything is capable of hitting from anywhere. She’s also, of course, our unofficial greeter on the server’s TeamSpeak.

Straegen.2938:

Cactus.2710:

It doesn’t take much careful reading to figure out that Anet doesn’t really have solutions for any significant WvW issue. Read the 2nd part of that interview again … he talks about having only two software people to handle EVERYTHING related to server issues (lag, culling, queues) and WvW game mechanics. Look at all the times he says he doesn’t even know what’s behind some of the issues because they don’t have the resources to find out. The bottom line is that anybody who enjoys WvW type of play needs to either accept GW2 for what it is or wait for another game to come out, because this one isn’t going to change much at all. It’s often fun to propose things we feel would make the game better, but they aren’t going to happen if they require a different engine, more bandwidth, or different code … the resources simply are not there.

Where in the article does it say there are only two programmers to work on everything? Could you quote that part for me and paste it here because I am not seeing it. People who don’t code and particularly don’t code in large n-Tier systems simply have no idea how time consuming developmental issues like these are. It isn’t like banging out some web script for a web page. The code lines surely numbers in the millions and is very high tech. I would again point out that virtually no other company out of the box has produced this level of software.

He did mention they haven’t looked at queues yet because of a personnel resource issue, but that isn’t an uncommon issue in large software shops and again it has been around six months post release which in MMO time is extremely brief.

Two … three … who knows. The specific term he used was “a couple of engineers”, and he used it different times to explain his resource limitation. By the way, I was referring to the interview in the link posted by SoPP above … it is very enlightening.

Excerpts:

Interviewer: Before I let others ask about WvW, something that’s come up in our guild meetings is we’d love to have guild halls

Colin: Me too, that’d be great. It’s just a matter of skill set wise the people who work on that, are also the same people who work on like seven other systems in the game. Basically all that stuff uses your account data and there’s only a couple of engineers really who completely understand how that whole system works and so we’re always time limited on what systems those guys can work on and them training others so they can work on those systems. So we’re slowly trying to expand all that stuff it’s just a matter of time really.

Interviewer: Talking about space, if you disconnect in WvW and your team is doing well, you end up having to go back in a queue which can be an hour or more. Is there anyway we could reserve a spot for a bit so we could get back in right away after a disconnect?

Colin: Right now, no. You know I talked about the same couple of people who are required to do a lot of the guild features, are the same couple of people who need to do all the server back-end for the same stuff that you just said. Really anything that involves large amounts of server messaging or things, those are always bottle necked by the very very best programmers we have who can work on that extremely difficult set.

Straegen.2938:

Every MMO that had a designer/developer make a specific comment about an upcoming feature or fix ate said comment at every turn when it was even a second late or wasn’t everything everyone thought it would be.

Most companies simply don’t allow designer/developers to be interviewed leaving the user base completely in the dark because of complaining like this. I suggest players be satisfied that ANet is talking about the issues and focusing more on real fixes rather than incremental patches.

All in all, I am still waiting on someone on the forums to point out another MMO that has this much content (PvE, WvW, sPvP) within the first year of release and wasn’t a disaster. If that company exists, why aren’t the people complaining here playing that game? Relative to all other competitors, ANet delivered a massive system that mostly works great with some expected and unexpected flaws. They haven’t shied away from talking about said flaws either. I say we give them the benefit of the doubt this soon after release.

Just an opinion.

It doesn’t take much careful reading to figure out that Anet doesn’t really have solutions for any significant WvW issue. Read the 2nd part of that interview again … he talks about having only two software people to handle EVERYTHING related to server issues (lag, culling, queues) and WvW game mechanics. Look at all the times he says he doesn’t even know what’s behind some of the issues because they don’t have the resources to find out. The bottom line is that anybody who enjoys WvW type of play needs to either accept GW2 for what it is or wait for another game to come out, because this one isn’t going to change much at all. It’s often fun to propose things we feel would make the game better, but they aren’t going to happen if they require a different engine, more bandwidth, or different code … the resources simply are not there.

style.6173:

Let’s be honest… There are only so many weeks of playing the same servers before it gets boring. What you typically see on any servers is that week one of the match-up you see the most number of people in WvW and then participation begins to slip. There have been a number of ideas suggested to keep the match-ups more dynamic. All have had arguments in support and against. I’ve been thinking through this and think a different alternative is needed.

1. Keep the current rating system with some tweaks to allow faster movement between levels.
2. Introduce 2 server maps that will compliment the standard 3 server maps.

Match-ups would work like this. Assume all of the rankings stay the same for 2 weeks in a row for simplicity of explanation.

Week 1:
1v2 (JQ vs SoR)
3v4v5 (SoS vs BG vs Kain)
6v7 (TC vs FA)
8v9v10 (DB vs Yak vs Mag)
etc…

Week 2:
1v2v3 (JQ vs SoR vs SoS)
4v5 (BG vs Kain)
6v7v8 (TC vs FA vs DB)
9v10 (Yak vs Mag)
etc….

The idea of this model is to keep match-ups tied to existing rankings but give more variety in match-ups. Plus the whole 1v1 concept would require different strategies than 1v1v1.

Personally, I’d be super excited to see some new opponents, especially the current match-ups in my week 1 example above.

Interesting idea, but if it takes more than 20 lines of code it won’t happen. Read the link at:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Mike-Fergusson-about-WvWs/first#post1507034

ANet doesn’t want huge turnouts … their servers can’t handle it. WvW apathy is their solution to lag and culling.

Acelerion.6820:

Agramon island in daoc was nothing but open space with no strategic worth whatsoever.

It was a hub. If you prefer arena style play, fine … but that isn’t “the obvious solution” to WvW.

Acelerion.6820:

I disagree. Plenty of other games developed interesting and rather unpredictable play.

Not by plopping everyone down in the middle of a field with no objectives. Name one that did.