Who was the designer that made the “glicko” or w/e system?
That is one root of our problems.
Going back to the launch complaints, from what I remember glicko is a system (independent of gw2). ANET chose to apply it to their ratings, and the problem (again going from memory) is that it works much better with more of a sample size. (IE not 24 servers).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glicko_rating_system
Yeah the system works, but not in a game like this. Had there been no Glicko, and had they gone with a simpler winner up loser down system then there would have been less movement early on. Less player movement should equal better matchups. Better matchups should equal less players leaving the game etcetcetc.
overstacking ruined t2. Basically killed roaming too
T2 has had one or another overstacked server for more than a year. TC was overstacked then SoR imploded and TC moved up, SoS was overstacked for a long time, then FA took their turn to be overstacked, and now YB is overstacked.
Seems the nature of the playerbase to want to overstack one server or another.
I would advocate that it’s time for ANet to blow up Glicko as Liston has said, and just make it winner up loser down. For all I know it would be just as terrible, but new terrible is better than this mess.
(edited by Kaiser.9873)
Add in [CL] to confirmed leaving FA.
The thing is its not de-stacking the top…. WTF is the point of any of this.
This is the exact point. The population caps, as I understand them, were to move players from the top more toward the middle. But, none of the guilds, other than the ones that had already decided to come to YB, in the top three are leaving. All that has happened is that FA and SoS are being decimated by guilds leaving. YB has lost many guilds during the course of this as well. Our queues are less now than they were when the matches were neck and neck. T2 and T3 are the tiers being most effected by all of this, and not for the better.
I’ll say it again. Tiers should not have to die for movement to occur. It’s bad for WvW, and bad for the game in general.
It shouldn’t take this to move tiers. This coming from a YBer. Moving up or down tiers should be far more dynamic than what we are seeing. It shouldn’t take having to destroy a tier to get movement. The fact that it does is doing terrible things to this game. I loved old T2, and played in T2 for 2 years on either SoS or YB.
The really sad thing is that both SoS and FA should have had the opportunity to play against T1 before now. SoS during their T1.5 days and FA during their ownership right after the T2/3 debacle with DB. The fact this didn’t happen points out some major flaws with Glicko and/or Glicko stacking.
Believe me when I say this is absolutely no fun for us either. Maybe you raid and there’s little to do, or perhaps you hit the sweet spot, and FA/SoS have players on map to fight.
The thing that is insane is that most nights we have smaller queues than we did when the matches were really close. Reset is terrible, but after that at most 2 maps with any queue at all, and that goes away by mid-PST.
I could definitely get behind limiting how many downed could rally off a double-down, or maybe even limit it to rallies only come from a spike. That way it’s not some random caught in the AoE that allow the rally.
Well, it kinda ought to be ranged power weapon regardless. We pretty well have melee covered with dagger(soon adding GS into the mix), ranged condi with scepter, and ranged support with staff.
I suppose you could tweak some stuff, and make dagger condi melee and axe power melee. Though to do this you would need to make staff the ranged power option with associated buffs to actually make it a ranged power weapon.
Not a Heavy
Is still fun
Needs more defense
blah blah blah
Then maybe EoTM is factored into WvW population. Is yours played a ton?
I may be wrong, but I believe a dev said that EOTM does not factor into the calculations as it’s not considered part of the actual WvW matchup (if you go into EOTM and look at your inventory, it shows karma instead of badges).
They stated that EotM was NOT calculated into their formula as it was a different mode than true WvW.
Of course it’s possible, maybe even likely, that even losing all the GvG guilds from T2 didn’t move FA let alone YB off of full.
FA has reportedly flashed to Very High briefly a few times this last week. That may give you some idea of how overstacked YB is (and by extension, NA T1).
See, I didn’t think this was possible. I thought they said that it was more of a hard number rather than a floating number. Of course for all we know Anet is simply counting people that enter for any length of time as one tick for that day. So it’s possible that people that use WvW as a cheap way to LA, or as a way to access the bank/crafting stations are causing inflated averages.
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Ah that’s true too. The dev when he posted said several servers were above the “full” status by quite a bit — so any departures would just bring it to the top, not overflowing. Hadn’t considered that.
Yep, which is fine. I think we all knew for a really long time that some servers are super-stacked and it will take a lot of players leaving those servers to become not-full again. At what point do those players leaving stop counting towards the server’s population? Immediately or smoothed out as a “time artifact”?
Because, let’s be honest here, it should be an immediate thing since a player that transferred is in no way a potential participant in their old server’s WvW population.
I would agree about transfers immediately being taken off the rolls so to speak. For some reason I have an idea that it recalculates monthly, but that’s just a gut feeling. Of course it’s possible, maybe even likely, that even losing all the GvG guilds from T2 didn’t move FA let alone YB off of full.
I don’t think I’d mind it so much if they had to build the AC a bit away from the wall so the arrows would actually obey some real physical laws. Of course then you get into the pickle of why defenders on walls are just as exposed as the attackers are.
EotM has been biggest success in this game so anet should change whole server system. One good idea would be that priory, order of whispers and vigil would fight against each other. For example If you did select vigil in your first character personal story you would fight vigil side.
Cannot tell if serious. If you are you are so wrong about EotM. If not good play sir.
Yeah, seems like Robert Gee actually did read the feedback, as almost all of these changes were directly addressed multiple times. This is very very encouraging.
I don’t understand why Anet is trying to force people on to servers they don’t want to go on. The negative of being on a full server is massive queue times. This is something that THE PLAYERS SHOULD DICTATE whether or not they want to deal with, NOT ANET.
In a way I really agree with this. However, when guilds move to servers with high queues often they don’t really understand what that means. T1 NA is an elephant’s graveyard of guilds that moved without realizing just what waiting in queue really means. Many of these guilds went T1, couldn’t raid together, and died. Many of these players, who spent gems to move, couldn’t be bothered to farm the gold to move again, and consequently quit the game. This is something ANet is trying to slow down. Whether or not locking servers helps no one can know yet, but it is a step ANet felt was wise to take at the time.
What I would advocate is a two week trial period on any transfers. Let them try out the server for two weeks to decide if it’s what they wanted. If not let them return to their home server at the end of the trial without any outlay of gems. If they do decide to stay then the gems are removed from their account. They can then move again to a different server to see if it’s more what they are looking for. ANet still gets their gem sales, and players are happier with their decision.
I played all the eSpecs this last weekend, and though Tempest and Reaper felt fun to a point they were woefully underpowered in comparison to Chronomancer. I won’t even touch on Dragonhunter.
Everyone keeps saying there are no SEA players, but this is a fallacy. There are many SEA players. One issue is that SEA guilds trend toward being very large. This leads to them congregating on just a few servers. If the SEA guilds spread out a bit they would find that there are many things to do without dominating a TZ completely, and in the process skewing an entire tier.
EU is more sparsely populated, primarily because there are EU servers. Why would they play here with much higher ping than in EU where they don’t have to deal with the ping. Much of the EU playerbase on NA servers are NA players with odd schedules or school schedules, although I’ve played with quite a few fun Europeans.
As far as OCX goes there are plenty here and there for them to get fights, and many do find good fights in tiers other than T1.
Tier 1 created a good part of this problem by gathering guilds left and right in order to stay in T1. Had these guilds thought about what moving en masse to T1 would do it’s quite likely that everything would be quite a lot better for all involved.
SEA players would have plenty to do if they weren’t all stacked on just a few servers. Now you have even more wanting to move to JQ? I could maybe feel a bit of empathy if they wanted to go somewhere to counter JQ SEA, but wanting to go to the most stacked SEA in T1?
It is alright, but the current iteration of Necro is better. Reaper is good as a skirmisher, but as a frontliner it needs some more active defenses.
Blighter’s Boon makes the spec due to great LF generation you get from it. GS is……just not very good atm. Dagger/WH is a better melee setup right now. RS is very nice as is, but wish the leap could be targeted a bit better. RS5 hits like a truck when it hits. RS4 is very good.
Tempests have a shout, Feel the Burn, with no cast time, 20 second CD that outdamages all of our shouts except CttB plus it applies a burn and gives a fire shield plus might for every hit you take.
I still don’t understand why Reaper shouts have any cast time whatsoever. Warrior shouts have zero cast time and Guardian shouts have zero cast time.
Even Tempest has 2 shouts with zero cast time(one of which is their stunbreak), 2 shouts with 1/4 second cast time, an elite shout with 3/4 second cast time(60 second CD), and an heal shout with 1.5 second cast time. Plus these shouts actually give some defenses when used with a frost aura(-10% damage) and Magnetic Aura(5 seconds). Most of these on shorter CD’s than Reaper shouts.
Then ya got the Reaper. Weaklings, Save you, and Your soul sitting at 3/4 second. Suffer and Rise sitting at 1 second. Chilled to the Bone, 2 seconds with 120 second CD. All of this with, in general, longer CD’s
I’d prefer GS5 to be like a targeted leap with a chill field at the landing spot.
Chilled to the Bone should be a 90 second CD.
After playing all the eSpecs during this beta Chronomancer seems to far outpace the others. Reaper seemed kind of pathetic in comparison, and that comes from a necro main that rarely plays mesmer.
FA/SoS/YB for 21 weeks. The only thing keeping us going is hate right now.
I’ll start by saying that T2, at least, has lost significant numbers to T3. Most of those were GvG guilds, and the hangers on of GvG guilds. YB was queueing 4 maps all weekend 3 weeks ago, but last night we only had EB and home BL with low teens on the queue. Some of this may be burnout, or people avoiding WvW due to the lack of any volatility in the matchups.
It seems that T1/T2 matchups are at least semi-permalocked for the foreseeable future, and I would hazard a guess that the population lock won’t change until the matchups do.
idk why ppl say the reaper is bad honestly I haven’t had any issues with it, there is such a thing as you can’t learn how to play a class right away in just a couple of minutes or an hour, the reaper is a learning curve some catch on right away and know exactly how to use it and kick butt and have 0 issues with it. I know I don’t see any issue with the current Reaper to me it feels smooth and fine if you know how to use it right.
This isnt about learning. This is a numbers and feeling issue. It feels too slow to be fun. And it feels far too weak for how slow it is. And the numbers prove that that is completely true.
They specifically said that GS would be slow but hit harder to compensate. This is not true currently.
That’s my issue with GS atm. It’s just not really fun, because it’s too slow and clunky. If it hit harder I could get over how disjointed it feels, but as it stands shiro Rev is far more fun.
RS though is wonderful. The only problem power was #5, and once I figured that out it was nice enough.
Reaper is great for in and out cleaving. It doesn’t really feel tough enough to be a full on frontliner, but rather a skirmisher.
Servers will stay prety much where they are unless one of the 3 below happens
1. Mass exodus happens like what happend to SoR
2. Two servers tag team a server long enough for one to drop down and one comes up
3. A sever fights its way up
Agreed. Very few people will leave a locked server, and with players returning after HoT drops those that are full now will stay full for the foreseeable future. You will probably see even more go full with returning players added to the count.
Probably gonna start my weekend with Dev, Ret, and Inv. Most likely teamed with Shiro and Jalis legends. I’ll try S-S/H first just to see changes. Then diverge from there into some different builds and setups to see what I’m comfortable with in WvW.
Kinda interested in a Mallyx/Shiro build as well, but we’ll see how far I get before I dive into other things.
Nope. Gonna test out Rev and Reaper in WvW, and that will take all my time as I didn’t spend a ton of time with Rev last time.
It would have to be either Asura or Charr for me as I don’t like the running animations on Humans, Sylvari, or Norn. If I could get past the look of the running it would be Norn, but it feels so slow, and I don’t want to feel even slower on a Rev.
The OP’s #1 and #2 would do a ton for GvG guilds that want to fight, but don’t want to bounce around as much as they need to now to get the fights they want.
It would also do a ton to lessen the PPT vs GvG problems that crop up repeatedly. Disagree with #3 and #4.
GvGers will need a larger venue for their bigger GvGs(20s). That’s the OS atm, and will most likely remain the OS. From the videos I’ve seen of Guild Halls they look a bit too small for 20s, but should suit 10s and 15s very well. Guild Hall arenas could lead to an evolution of the GvG as well. Especially if they are too small to get a regroup off without being harassed too much by ranged.
In all honesty I would love for ANet to make a radical change to WvW, and give contribution points for official GvGs. Make a scoreboard, and allow the results from the scoreboard to add to the server’s tick. Take out the Spider Grove down South and make it Thunderdome. GvG drivers interact with an NPC down there to get their guild into Thunderdome. They must select 5v5, 10v10, 15v15, or 20v20 plus the number of rounds in order to activate the event. Once the two groups are in Thunderdome no one else is allowed in, nor can anyone interfere until the match is over. They then fight until one or the other group all get pinned. Auto-rez, and begin again until the number of rounds have been fought, or until one of the drivers calls GG. A set number of points are added automatically to the server of the winning guild.
If they did that then OS would only be used for scrims, and the mechanic wouldn’t matter as much.
(edited by Kaiser.9873)
As a player that only occasionally play my warrior anymore(played him for well over a year as my main) I hope that warrior comes back to the fore as a frontline juggernaut. It almost hurts to see so many bow and rifle warriors anymore.
So how about the fire parts “burns” boons off of a target?
Instead of transferring conditions from you it removes boons from the target. Kind of put the doom in dhuum so to speak.
The quickest and simplest way to solve the lower tier population problems(NA) is to eliminate the lower tiers. I have never played on EU servers so I have zero idea how the pop is spread over there.
I’m not denying that there are probably players in the lower tiers that enjoy that kind of gameplay, but when you’re talking 20 players per night(example given by low tier players in their own threads) the few that actually enjoy that versus the ones frustrated by the situation are negligible. So merge T7 and T8 with T5 and T6.
T8#3 -> T5#1, T8#2 -> T5#2, T8#1->T5#3
T7#3 -> T6#1, T7#2 -> T6#2, T7#1 -> T6#3
After this is done implement a change in Glicko where the high cap is 2000 Glicko, and the low cap is 1000 Glicko, or if you like make a high cap of 1000 Glicko with a floor of 0. Reset Glicko to zero, and have a round robin series of 1 day matches to find out your initial order(as was done in the beginning).
Gold Bracket T1/T2
Silver Bracket T3/T4
Bronze Bracket T5/T6
Have a set schedule of tournaments, not this haphazard system of, “Hey why don’t we do a tournament?” in order to rerank servers periodically.
(edited by Kaiser.9873)
I think Reaper is going to be more of an sPvP / roaming class.
I think if you play a Reaper in T1 blob fight you will melt (light armour, no mobility and no “oh ….” buttons).
Reaper will be alright in a heavy frontline party. Something like 2 guard/1warrior/1 reaper/1 necro. You can build up armor pretty easily, and vitality is the strong for the Necro. Life force generation is going to be the PITA for a Reaper.
I’m about to believe that gw2 was originally made as a cash cow. The players should buy the game and gems, play it for a few months and then change to the next game of nc soft (“Wildstar-hype”). I didn’t see that the provider company had have a long-time plan (living story, weekly new gem shop items) for guild wars 2.
But wildstar has flopped as I heard (never played it), so most of the players stayed or returned to gw2 or moved forward to other games. NC-Soft was surprised that people still play the game, even with complains, and spent constant real money in it. This game had have the order to die fast, but this plan has failed, luckely ^^. So I personally think, they try to catch-up the lost time. Maybe it’s too late for wvw, but we will see, I will let me surprise. Everything else is already written months and years ago.
Yeah NCsoft is not good. I didn’t do a ton of research prior to buying GW2, and never played GW1, but had I realized NCsoft was attached I might have foreseen some of what has come to pass. After playing Aion and City of Heroes/Villains I got a bad taste in my mouth for NCsoft.
For example one of our biggest problem is the population: too much on top tiers with giant queues
Oh kitten … NO there’s isn’t “giant queues” any longer. The only world with ridiculous Q’s is Yaks Bend during NA right now. They have almost 200 players total sitting and waiting during NA. The rest of us are lucky to Q 1 map! Even for reset on JQ, we just Q’d the 4 maps for an hour or so. That’s after shuffling and asking for players to come into WvW to begin with.
Sorry for barking at you but, this imagery that T1 has massive q’s filled with all the players it absorbed from the lower tiers just isn’t true. The games just bleeding that many players. There’s so much apathy toward the mode it’s becoming malaise. A lot of players just don’t care and it’s dragging down everyone.
You are very wrong – Yak’s Bend, is queued most of the day and all night now – but that’s thanks to the many new guilds who see a community, not a server…
This is wrong. EBG is queued nearly all the time, but the BLs are lucky to have one queue outside of reset. Super late night I can’t comment on, but Saturday EBG had a large queue, YB had a small queue, and one other BL flash queued. Sunday EBG had a medium queue, YB had a single digit queue, and that was it.
Heh, what if they called it, “Tinkerer”, or “Mechanic”? What would you think of it then?
I do think CU will drain some players, but from what I’ve seen and read about it, not in a year. It doesn’t look, nor sound anywhere near ready.
So a question for the poster who says his friends and family are on another “ghost town” server. Why weren’t they on your server to start? Why did they stay on a “ghost town” server for this long to all of a sudden, after ANet changed the transfer protocol, want to move to a server that has topped T1 for months on end?
For instance it is still a GIANT mystery to me why there isn’t a chest spawning when you defend something.
That Anet would not give the same amount of rewards for defending AND capturing is beyond me. Even more dramatic after so long into the game and countless threads on how ppl tend to not defend just to keep farming.
This would do a great deal to solve the KTrain mentality. Also since there are many people that don’t necessarily want more loot from WvW, how about different loot?
For instance take a week and instead of badges of honor make the “badge drops” into dungeon tokens for a particular dungeon instead. You could cycle through with “special events” of different dungeon tokens for the week instead of badges of honor every month or so. May be a terrible idea, but it would be something different.
Is lordkrall still arguing semantics about only versus predominantly?
I have two 80’s of each profession with two free character slots. Plan on making one of each profession with the elite spec for that particular prof.
Ugh, I have no life.
@Jayne:
Unfortunately so far that’s been very very true, but I think that there could be a way to reward players for participation without turning it into a sham of WvW.
Maybe make one of the bigger rewards come from the killing of players, or perhaps from fighting off a keep take, rather than taking the keep itself(not just a tag, but actual wall down situation). The more players involved in the attack the better the reward for defenders, or something like that. The more often that structure is attacked scale the rewards in some way.
Maybe base rewards off of contribution. Kill X number of players in a week get X amount of new badges used to purchase WvW exclusive skins or something. Make the number of these new badges that could be earned in an hour/day/week limited in number to discourage people just flipping stuff all day every day.
If defending or killing players rewarded as well as just Ktraining around the map then it’s possible that Ktraining would come to a screeching halt.
1-Its great that fractals and the living story are getting so much love. You can get legendary precursors from both segments.
2-What about WvW? We get one new map?
3-What about all the people that just do WvW?
4-How is a person that just plays WvW to obtain such love?
5-And yes there are a large percentage of us that just play WvW.
1- They’re paying $50.00.
2- Yeah and it’s all free.
3- They can play for free too.
4- By playing more than one game.
5- All pvp type players should have realised by now that MMO’s are mostly PVE oriented, Anet didn’t charge you because it’s all they got for now and because they waited too long to start an expansion. If it wasn’t for whiners GW 2 would still be only living story oriented and you wouldn’t have a new map.
We might have only 2 maps more than you but we’re paying. Maybe the next expansion will have more than one map for you. Until then there’s always other games and making posts to be heard.
Not sure if serious, but I’ll assume you are.
1. Many many WvW players are buying the expac. I bought the Ultimate.
2. Guild Halls aren’t free, and you know, some ppl will enjoy GvGing there. Not to mention the things for WvW you will need the guild hall to make.
3. You don’t have to get the expac to keep PvEing.
4. So put some more things required for legendaries in WvW so PvE ppl that want one need to play more than one game type as well.
5. So because we enjoy a different game mode than you we don’t deserve to be heard or even acknowledged? Also many WvW players are buying the expac so that point is moot. Even though the majority of players in almost every MMO are PvE, or at best PvX, the developers included a PvP/WvW game mode, which should get more time than it does from them.
I think that you’re right in that the filler in WvW has always been the casuals and PvXers. In general there aren’t more than three or four hardcore WvW guilds on any server that rally 25+ per night 5 nights a week anymore. There can be an argument made that most of those hardcore guilds moved up tiers, or simply quit the game outright.
Those filler groups do desire something for their time more than simply winning fights, and taking keeps. There has been a general lament around this community that ANet simply does not value us as players, or customers. Most gaming companies have “shown love” to player communities by either fun events, or by giving them some method to outfit their toons that other communities don’t have easy access to. As we’ve seen by almost universal reaction the golem rush wasn’t what most wanted.
I don’t see problem. If you wanna fight go EotM. If you wanna PPT and play map tactic go normal WvW.
Except outside of a few commanders EotM is not a fighting area. Even when a guild groups goes into EotM to find fights they get berated by their “teammates” for derailing the train.
Blob fights can be very fun. I prefer ~20s v ~20s, but at times you aren’t going to find that. Some of the most fun I have had in this game was BG v JQ v SoR threeway Hills fights.
This is a great, comprehensive write-up.
I can say that I think I agree with each and every point you make here. I think making reward tracks ala PvP a thing would be fantastic. Increasing gold on rankup, while disconnecting it (as much as you can) from EotM is an immediate implementation need. Increasing rewards for player kill is also something they need to do immediately.
One thing WoW did right was to make it very easy to see who PvPed alot. That’s something that would make a WvWer have a sense of accomplishment with, and should have been in from launch.
Again on the EotM thing. As it was supposed to be a way for queued players to get into WvW while they waited for the real thing. I think they need to make it less viable than real BL WvW. I have often wondered how many players EotM draws away from the lower populated servers just because of the higher payoff.
(edited by Kaiser.9873)
I’m far from an Anet fanboy at this point, and I have to admit that I’m a bit disillusioned with the game right now. I will say that we reap what we sow in many cases, but in this case we were slammed with an unneeded event that had very poor planning and even worse implementation.
Many of the problems with WvW right now is our fault as players. Overstacking as the main issue. Overstacking has reduced some servers to graveyards, and promoted others to being almost unplayable due to queue and lag. Unfortunately the poster child of overstacking atm is my server. The goal is worthwhile, but I’m not sure the system is going to let it work out for us.
ANet has to take much of the heat for WvW’s problems as well. Lack of oversight, lack of resources, lack of achievable goals, lack of direction, and general ambivalence to the game mode has burned too many players out. That, and Anet’s seeming push to make WvW into a KTrain at all times, has made me realize that they have zero idea what’s going on in WvW.
What can ANet do to make WvW vibrant again? I think there are some moves they can make to revitalize the mode.
1. Free transfers from full servers to medium servers for 2 weeks.
1b. Make a transfer last for 1 month before a player can transfer again.
2. Hire a team that is purely WvW-focused.
2b. This team has autonomy to make changes and oversee WvW without Mikey O’Brien trying to pump WvW full of PvE garbage.
3. Institute immediate Glicko caps.
3b. No server can have more than 2K, or less than 1K Glicko.
4. Allow the OS to be megaserver, and allow it to spawn extra instances as it fills.
5. Have at least 2 tournaments per year.
5b. Transfers should be locked before announcing the tournament.