Guild Wars 2

This is why I asked in https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/api/Free-to-Play-Accounts-access-to-API/
!!!!!!

Anet is going to great lengths in locking down F2P accounts to protect the game/economy/etc.. Server communities have a shared interest in protection too. If the API exposed the account type and we could block authorization using that information, it would be one more incentive for the legit user to purchase a full account.

Hello,

Something I am not seeing in any FAQ: are the free-to-play accounts going to be allowed to make API keys? Or will there be an API method available to detect if an account is free-to-play?

Endless Ascalonian Mages Tonic

Wonder how this will play out…

Right now BG is gaining rating off FA and SoS. TC and JQ are gaining rating off YB. Should the effect of this increase in the ratings difference between T1 and T2, making the so-called glicko wall even higher?

T2 lost a lot of population and I think that’s being reflected right now.

Dare say you, Jay, that BG is playing WvW as Anet intended?

JDilla.3150:

The people in Fort Aspenwood and Sea of Sorrows chose to leave. Now, if those suckers would’ve still been around then yes T2 would’ve still been fun.

Consider that the GvG guilds on YB could no longer raid due to the queues and GvG guilds don’t necessarily care about which server they are on outside of a tier’s ability to be a good place for fights. So the entire scene packed up and left. If they had stayed, no, it would not have been fun for any of them, especially the GvG guilds on YB.

So-called “fights tier” requires servers to cultivate good action in multiple timezones, have minimal NA queues outside of reset, and militia commanders/zergs doing a mix of PPT and fights so that GvG players don’t get bored outside of their raids.

JDilla.3150:

The guilds from T1 chose to come to YB on their own … and no we didn’t pay a single gold/silver/copper to bring those guys.

Sounds like you should read this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Matchup-wishlist/page/7#post5372018

“Yes, it was YB guilds and players who helped to fund our move over. "

Which is fine. Lots of servers do it.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Spazzoni.1703:

Megaserver decimated any sense of server pride. No more yelling in Lions Arch for reinforcements when a keep is going down. Even PVE types would come help in some capacity.

This is how people got into WvW in the past. They hear the announcement in LA, and come in; there’s something exciting going on, everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goal: the experience is fun and there’s server pride/cohesion.

Now: new plaeyers come in by themselves, have no idea what’s going on….
run out of spawn a few times only to get one-shotted by gankers, and never return.

Come to think of it, WvW players did way more than Anet has done to bring new players into WvW.

Spazzoni.1703:

Megaserver decimated any sense of server pride. No more yelling in Lions Arch for reinforcements when a keep is going down. Even PVE types would come help in some capacity.

I missed the memo that said mega-server would be applied to Lion’s Arch. I could have sworn LA was supposed to be left out when it was originally announced.

ArchonWing.9480:

So ATM, neither SoS or FA is full. In fact SOS has dropped to “high”

Why is there no concerted effort to stack these servers out of balance; I thought there was a sentiment to break the t1 wall for more variety. Or is variety just having 4 stacked servers overrun the other two and deciding which is the fourth one?

It has been traditionally difficult to attract guilds to a tier that is very unbalanced.

lil devils x.6071:

If that luxury is removed from them to where every has 24/7 coverage that means every timezone will have to work harder to maintain their position rather than ride on the backs of the other time zones to be carried. The cushion is removed when all servers have the same coverage.

I’m not sure about that. T1 is the best example of 24/7 coverage and the size of NA population in T1 is a lot smaller than they once were in the past, implying that their luxury has already been removed. There are several factors influencing that, one of which is still the high value of non-NA playtime. There’s little incentive for NA players to “work harder”. Take away their 24/7 coverage and yea, now they do have to work harder.

coglin.1867:

We had tournaments that were straight up set so the winner moves up and the loser moved down, with no floor or ceiling at all. Some servers did drop through the floor.

What? We never had any tournaments where there were no floor or ceiling. Gold, Silver, and Bronze are brackets that no server could cross even if their population size dictated the necessity. I think it is highly telling of these brackets that EU has a 9 server rotation that corresponds to their 9 server Gold league while NA had 6 servers locked at the top, which corresponds to NA’s 6 server Gold league.

The Swiss-style matches from Season 3 were to me nothing more than a FASTER METHOD to sort servers by population and coverage than glicko. I thought that was excellent.

coglin.1867:

Liston.9708:

And some servers were trapped because they could not rise above their bracket or drop below their bracket during a tournament……

That is wrong.

No that isn’t wrong. HoD should have been in Gold league and SoR in Bronze during Season 2. In Season 3, Maguuma should have been in Silver. The slow adjustment of glicko made those servers be in the wrong brackets for seasons without the possibility of moving into their proper place.

Non-NA playtime is already valued more than NA playtime. It is NOT equal in value to NA playtime. It’s value should be brought in line with NA playtime.

When OCX and SEA players tell me they just want to fight and not have to feel stressed out about PPT, feel great pressure from their server to PPT/PvDoor, I question the logic of the posters here who say there should be no devaluing of non-NA playtime reflected in the scoring system.

Most NA players have a greater luxury to make wider playstyle choices than OCX/SEA players because score from NA playtime is “a dime a dozen”. These are NA servers. NA is the most populous segment of WvW. If your guild is on a borderland doing GvGs instead of capping/defending objectives, your activity doesn’t affect your server score during NA like it does during OCX/SEA.

Don’t believe me? The high value of non-NA playtime to score is reflected in the high gold value placed on transfers for non-NA players and guilds. You OCX and SEA guilds know it.

I think there’s a thread in the Bugs forum about this. Have a guildmember who gets the black screen when he goes in the water. He uses the Mac client.

Liston.9708:

Swamurabi.7890:

News flash

FA is now VERY HIGH
SoS is now HIGH

I expect two weeks from now FA will be HIGH and SoS will be MEDIUM

Wonder if the gvg exodus is finally kicking in with the further exodus reflecting the status as you project……

I’m going to guess it reflects the GvG guilds leaving because SoS went down too and they didn’t have very many who left after the GvG guilds.

They should keep free accounts out of WvW otherwise players of free accounts may never purchase.

DeWolfe.2174:

funassistant.6589:

Are we killing WvW?

Just look at Jethro’s posts on here and the tin foil hat foolery and you’ll get your answer. Honestly though, “we” have been doing a good job at keeping the game mode GOING! Look at the bright side of it….

For #1, stacking is absolutely necessary. You can’t build a competitive World and community on wishful thinking. It takes a lot of work keeping the community organized and moving forward. That alone is what made the upper Tiered worlds what they are. We filled coverage gaps and minimized or eliminated queues to keep the community healthy. That’s something the Dev’s can never achieve through design alone. As the game aged and player attrition took place, everyone should have moved up if they preferred large scale combat. If ones preference is for the wilderness feeling of solo roaming, then staying on a lower tier’s as it’s the perfect fit.

It’s really not rocket science folks, as long as we have the ability to, we can make the most of the mode.

Players that preferred large scale combat did move up. But did you think it was an unlimited resource? I didn’t.

sephiroth.4217:

Pretty much yer, you can either enjoy the game or sit in T2 and complain on forums

You forgot the other choice: you can transfer and complain on forums about feeling forced to transfer.

Samuel Loretan.8601:

At this point, all “Full” servers are going to be balanced.

Oh, really?

rhejeckt.5791:

I correlate so many things to songs. After reading these posts I have come up with a theme song for the various tiers. Remember, it’s all in fun and, hopefully, a break from all the seriousness in this thread:

tier 1: Bad Boys, Bad Boys-whatcha gonna do when they come for you? (referring to YB)
tier 2: Oh It’s crying time again-you’re gonna leave me (referring to guilds moving off to other destinations)
tier 3: Run for the Hills; Run for your Life (referring to FA/SOS dropping)
tier 4 & below: You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes-you get what you need (Not a higher tier but enjoying your communities )

I am certain there are better songs for each, but these came to mind & were instigated by the posts in this thread.
Now, please continue :P I realize this is a serious situation as far as a MMO game goes, but a brief intermission so everyone involved can breathe…

Tier 8: Running on Empty

Dhemize.8649:

Exactly how T4 and below felt …. But you know, let’s all look the other way.

Exactly, Dhemize. And no one looked the other way except Anet. Volumes were written by players about it back then too, begging for some sort of match adjustments. You and Elizabeth only seem to have an interest in posting salt about servers and matches. There’s a forum for that and it isn’t here.

WvW is not a bubble. It is an interconnected system. There are cyclical waves that ripple through all tiers, that hit all servers. The population in this game that hasn’t quit has been moving upwards to recapture the large-scale WvW that they remember from earlier in this game (those that stayed didn’t care for that WvW style). That’s also the direction the wave of population loss has been moving. There’s only so much population this game will support.

It was telling that the player attrition from the lower tiers to the higher tiers was starting to take effect on T2 when Maguuma imploded and couldn’t be replaced. No T3 server presented itself as populous enough to compete in T2 (T3 for awhile before that had been struggling with unbalanced matches). The hole in population between T2 and lower tiers culminated in the stacking of DB and created the so-called meatgrinder between T2 and T4-sized servers. When that situation stabilized, T2 was left with a half-imploded SoS and even less population between T2 and lower tiers. It could be seen in the large glicko rating cliff between T2 and T3.

That wave has come to T2 and will translate into T1. No one is immune from this because WvW is a system. T2 population spread out to lower tiers and it is not enough to avoid any population holes that will present between T1 and T3. T3 servers will get sucked into a T2 they never had the population to compete in until a T1 server fails. In the past when a T1 server imploded, there was a server with close enough population to replace it. Those days are gone. T1 will be left a shell of what it was.

Jayne.9251:

Chaba.5410:

Swamurabi.7890:

It would also smooth out spikes in server population.

Yes, exactly.

EU servers don’t have non-EU Prime population spikes like NA servers have non-NA Prime population spikes. They have some off-hours, but not like NA servers have. The NA population on NA servers getting smoothed out with OCX/SEA population would lead to lower scale WvW during NA prime than what EU servers would experience (and what higher tier NA servers are used to.)

Sure they do.

Some servers, at least in gold league and some in silver, have day crews that start hours before prime. And a few more have night crews. You can get prime-time blobs of 35+ during those times.

The non-EU prime spikes in EU aren’t anywhere near what is seen in NA.

Swamurabi.7890:

It would also smooth out spikes in server population.

Yes, exactly.

EU servers don’t have non-EU Prime population spikes like NA servers have non-NA Prime population spikes. They have some off-hours, but not like NA servers have. The NA population on NA servers getting smoothed out with OCX/SEA population would lead to lower scale WvW during NA prime than what EU servers would experience (and what higher tier NA servers are used to.)

Xillllix.3485:

because of the T1 guilds that stacked on YB and turned T2 into a EotM karma train. There is just no more good fights in T2.

If that had never happened, it is a pretty good bet that matches would have been a complete toss-up, not predetermined, with YB and FA being full and SoS able to get more players.

silver.1476:

World vs. World
Fixed a bug that allowed Superior Arrow Cart and Guild Arrow Cart skills to ignore line-of-sight checks.

This was in todays patch notes, however, superior acs still have no restriction to los checks. Can fire over walls they shouldn’t be able to on both allied/enemy keeps and towers.

Is that only Superiors? If not, then I think the bug fix was for an exploit, not FoV camera targetting.

From here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3eh64z/changes_coming_to_transfer_cost_calculations/

"
[–]anet_samuel 39 points 1 month ago

The new method isn’t based on players currently playing or logged in. It looks at the active WvW population over a period of time.

permalinksaveparentreportgive goldreply

[–]Lksaarlocal wvw backliner 5 points 1 month ago

Is thatperiod of time timezone agnostic (a whole day?) or even matchup agnostic (more than a week?)

permalinksaveparentreportgive goldreply

[–]anet_samuel 44 points 1 month ago

It looks at a period long enough to smooth out rapidly changing artifacts like timezones or matchups.
"

I’m interpreting that to mean the range on the rolling average is longer than a single match, maybe even two matches.

To me that sounds like an effect of the algorithm would smooth out a single server’s timezones.

Elizabeth Reed.9173:

Funny how all the complaining about YB being the dominant server in T2 now is coming from the exact FA folks who once dominated T2 for the past 6-8 months… Bite down hard FA ppl. What goes around comes around.

This was written by a YB player. As was this My point is that everyone recognizes that the issue with the largest exodus of players from a single tier within a single month is one beyond servers.

Swamurabi.7890:

WvW NA will eventually resemble a lava lamp

Since the new algorithm has been described as smoothing out “time artifacts” such as timezones, my guess is that EU prime times are going to end up the place to be for the large scale WvW battles that long time players are used to compared with NA prime times. What I mean is that NA prime on NA servers now has a higher competition with OCX and SEA primes for “WvW activity” than EU prime does on EU servers. Did what I describe make sense?

NiloyBardhan.9170:

Chaba.5410:

Sungtaro.6493:

And does the twenty guilds leaving T2 include the two guilds that are reported leaving just recently? One from FA, one from YB.

Nope. I started with the 15 GvG guilds that left according to their spreadsheet and counted from there. This doesn’t include individual players.

YB: EP, Hymn, Ark, AUX, BOO, fR
FA: BMO, Bae, Syn, oT, TFH, PS, VP, DN, JINX
SoS: MM, BGA, GS, Agg, GBP

Now add in LUN (YB), Rynter’s guild that quit the game (YB), and CL (FA). Up to 23 now.

There are a few unreported guilds I’m not counting, like UL from YB was rumored to have left too since they are GvG guild, but they were on break afaik. And I’m concerned for the status of TE. That might be Rynter’s guild? Then there’s HUNT (FA) which is a small-man guild that left when the GvG guilds did. I didn’t count them either.

[LUN] isn’t leaving lol
Nice try though

And your point? Still 23 guilds total have left T2 as of the last 24 hours. This thread is about the state of T2, which will have ripple effects across all of WvW as the 2nd most populous tier, not the state of YB.

Swamurabi.7890:

A more problematic result … is that there will also be a slow reaction of a server receiving players and could be VERY HIGH for longer than it should.

The highest VERY HIGH server … could get a spike of coordinated transfers before it becomes full.

Sounds like us players are figuring out possible ways to game the new system. Anet better stay ahead of us. :O

morrolan.9608:

Hasn’t FA slipped to very high since the system was changed?

Only extremely briefly last week. I wonder if that was a result of golem week averages.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Sungtaro.6493:

I look at IOJ. ANET will let what happens, happen. There will be no intervention to save servers.

The servers, FA and SOS, will have to use their resources or methods to maintain morale to keep interest in WvW and T2 for their populations. There will be no white knight for this situation. It will play itself out.

This situation is merely Act One of what will happen.

And does the twenty guilds leaving T2 include the two guilds that are reported leaving just recently? One from FA, one from YB.

Speaking of IoJ…

Remember back when there were four T2 servers so one was always matched up in T3? Remember how badly they behaved? Now it’s happening to them. Maybe they’ll fall to T8 as a result — like IoJ did.

Remember when Maguuma imploded in T2 after Season 2 and there was no server close in population to replace it? That was the total WvW population bottoming out.

HoT will bring some freshness and population back to WvW. It won’t last. And with the new population calculation, the large scale zerg battles in WvW will most likely be a thing of the past. Players seeking that style of WvW will probably not find it.

An answer would be nice, but I also want Anet to review their new algorithm in light of the player exodus from T2. Or at least I want be assured that Anet is revisiting it.

These are players who left completely, meaning they have absolutely no potential to add more hours to WvW activity and no one will replace their hours. IMHO their hours should be immediately averaged into the servers they transferred to and removed from the FA average. Both YB and SoS also lost a lot of players so there should be plenty of data.

Rynter.3975:

Chaba.5410:

And I’m concerned for the status of TE. That might be Rynter’s guild?

Correct. We’re done, as likely to go back to GW2 as to PlanetSide 2, which means never.

Pity, because the game at its very core is pretty kitten good, but the longer we played the more flawed design choices we began seeing in the game.

It was nice to run with you guys the one time I did. You guys reminded me of how fights guilds were in the starting days of GvG in NA. It was refreshing. Take care.

Estimating about 170 players who played an estimated 2-3 hours daily no longer log into WvW on FA because they are no longer on the server. Are they still included in the population count?

Sungtaro.6493:

And does the twenty guilds leaving T2 include the two guilds that are reported leaving just recently? One from FA, one from YB.

Nope. I started with the 15 GvG guilds that left according to their spreadsheet and counted from there. This doesn’t include individual players.

YB: EP, Hymn, Ark, AUX, BOO, fR
FA: BMO, Bae, Syn, oT, TFH, PS, VP, DN, JINX
SoS: MM, BGA, GS, Agg, GBP

Now add in LUN (YB), Rynter’s guild that quit the game (YB), and CL (FA). Up to 23 now.

There are a few unreported guilds I’m not counting, like UL from YB was rumored to have left too since they are GvG guild, but they were on break afaik. And I’m concerned for the status of TE. That might be Rynter’s guild? Then there’s HUNT (FA) which is a small-man guild that left when the GvG guilds did. I didn’t count them either.

Jana.6831:

Super Kruegs.8967:

Please consider nerfing all siege damage to players while you are at it. I think we can all understand siege v structure or siege v siege but the damage cannons, acs, ballistas, and mortars do to players is ruining good PvP and players ability to counter siege with skills. Especially consider nerfing the condis of these siege items like dat insane mortar burn and cannon chill.

Let me think when someone died to my sup AC the last time….
Never, I guess.
They might die if there’s 2 ACs though, but the times I’m with someone in a tower are really rare.
Solution to too many ACs – get either a balli and get them down (or an AC ‘til they will be nerfed) – if that isn’t possible, get a cata or treb and knock the walls down. You’ll still have the problem of too many ACs in the tower, so you ask a friendly mesmer to port you into the tower and destroy all acs you can find so the rest of your zerg can follow safely. If there’s no mesmer around tell your zerg to dodge twice to the stairs, empower, group aegis, kill the ACs.

Not saying ACs don’t do too much damage, although I really don’t think so, but you might be right, but there’s always the defending side and also ways around ACs.

Were you around this game when the damage by ACs was buffed? Ever since then, ACs have been a big discourager of fights.

Rynter.3975:

Anyways, my guild, which was on T2, quit. Most members did chargebacks so we won’t be coming back ever.

That’s pretty sad. You guys were on YB too, yes?

I’ll repost here what I’ve written elsewhere: "About 20 guilds have left T2 for lower tiers, including one of the T1 guilds. The number of players who have abandonned T2 is over twice the amount that OnS and TW brought from T1. "

PariahX.6970:

I expect it will take annoying queues at HoT launch to get a lot of Tier 1 to wake up and smell the fullness

Probably! Just saying that the overstacking of YB provided a much bigger incentive for all the T2 guilds leaving than the population change.

emendez.3705:

even is YB climbed to tier 1 i can assure you from someone who is tier 1 you will have the same problems if a tier 1 server gets put in tier 2 but worst. Sucks i know

I agree because the T1 servers have better off-hours coverage than YB. That doesn’t bode well for YB either.

The solidification of the glicko walls between tiers and the monumental effort it now takes to move between tiers has a lot to do with the reduced match-up variance and WvW tournaments. Remember when Anet first introduced some randomization into match-ups, NA players hated it so Anet reduced the variance.

In hindsight, more active adjustments to the variance to prevent tier locking would have affected the movement decisions of the NA population over the past two years. That would have done more to prevent guilds stacking into T1 than the new world population calculation. For example, both SoS and FA lost guilds to T1 exactly because the low variance prevents T2 servers from getting an occasional T1 server to fight.

Nate.3927:

actually, it’s livening up a lot of the lower tiers

IMHO it was the T1 overstacking of YB in T2 that is “livening up” the lower tiers. T1 isn’t having a mass exodus of players and guilds leave due to Full status.

Tani.5139:

Recruiting wise, T3 might actually be the place to be in the future- before the server lockouts new OCX players would realise pretty quickly that to play wvw (with roaming as the exception) in their timezone they needed to move up the highest tier possible. Now that T1/T2 is mostly perma-locked T3 would probably be it.

T3 servers are Very High and risk going to Full status if a large amount of OCX and SEA guilds stack into a single tier and that would be disastrous to what they’re trying to accomplish here. So OCX/SEA is bit stuck between that risk and not having enough players on a lower tier.

SkyChef.5432:

I could be a good commander or a good driver. But my wife won’t let me talked on TS at night. She’s my commander so I just have to settle to be a follower.

He’s also a good cook!

Well, the OP wrote that he likes occasional roaming and zerging as well.

What always gets me is the number of players who prefer servers that have tags around but never seem willing to tag up themselves. I understand it is really difficult for a lot of new tags to deal with criticism and I hear EOTM is one of the worst places to tag up in, even surpassing EBG. Perhaps Anet will attempt to address that for WvW too. LOL. Sorry for my sarcasm.

Johje Holan.4607:

This thread has convinced me that there should be no full servers. I believe it hurts the players on those servers and ultimately the game.

One of the biggest driving reasons behind guild movement off non-T1 servers has been the Full status. That hasn’t suddenly changed with this new calculation. It is what lead guilds in the past to leave DB, SoR, DH, and SoS.

CrimeMaker.8612:

Chaba.5410:

Sounds like DB is getting a bandwagon again.

Yeah lol AR and DH didn’t blob as much during the start of this week but we had to switch our playstyle because DB blobs are massive.

I’m serious. Three guilds from FA went to DB just within the past few days and there’s been quite a few posts on this forum from players asking about DB (like the OP).

Sounds like DB is getting a bandwagon again.

briggah.7910:

Lord Kuru.3685:

But this will all be fixed soon enough. After all, they promised WvW will be top priority when HoT comes out, right? Right?

Can you provide links to source where they “promised” us anything?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-Invitational-Statement-from-John-Corpening-game-director-for-World-vs-World/first#post5350913

“we’re working on more solutions for the areas I have outlined”

That’s as close to a promise as any.