Guild Wars 2

I think that a lot of bitter posts about how certain maps favor the attackers versus the defenders would bring some much-needed drama we haven’t seen since the matchup forums were closed.

-ken

during seasonal tournament play, there is no randomness at all. matchups are determined purely on the basis of tournament points, with rating being used to break ties.

during the off-season, there is some randomness added. this is done to prevent stale matchups, but as a side effect it also affects colors. colors for servers that have exactly the same rating will be effectively random, but the farther apart the ratings are, the less likely the randomness is to change the color from the ‘expected’ one.

-ken

I don’t duel. and if I see a teammate being attacked I will immediately provide my assistance, regardless of whether it was asked for or not. if it turns out that I was interrupting a duel (and the enemy isn’t dead already) I’ll back out and let them resume, start over or whatever.

if someone is obviously trying to duel me, I avoid them. I don’t typically run a build that’s good for 1v1 fights, and I assume that anybody trying to duel is either built for 1v1, or it’s a trap and their friends are waiting to jump me. either way I’m at a disadvantage so I just stay away.

despite this, I still find myself in my share of 1v1 fights. I don’t consider them duels — they’re never agreed to in advance (other than, by simply being in a WvW map you implicitly agree to all fights). usually it’s because I want to kill an enemy dolyak and the other guy doesn’t want me to (or vice-versa).

usually I’ll see them through to the end (and if an enemy dolyak is involved I’ll try to make sure it doesn’t survive) but sometimes if the fight looks like it’s going nowhere (e.g. bunker guardian vs bunker guardian) I’ll try to back out (stop attacking and just walk backwards). sometimes the other party agrees to disengage and we go our separate ways, other times they don’t (and sometimes in such cases they lose when they could have had a draw).

-ken

if account-bound-WXP had been the only change, I certainly would be playing on alts more.

but I’m actually playing on alts less now, due to the trait reset. I don’t have the time (or the inclination) to play with builds so only 1 of my characters is currently ‘playable’.

-ken

psizone.8437:

Snowreap.5174:

psizone.8437:

You have alienated everyone who didn’t transfer to higher population servers and did nothing to make sure that everyone had a fair chance of fighting.

This isn’t true. I’m one of the people who didn’t transfer to a higher population server, and I definitely do not feel alienated.

“disillusioned” is something completely different.

-ken

When I’m in my home borderland during primetime and see 6 defenders against multiple 40+ player zergs I feel alienated, not disillusioned.

I’m sure you do, but I don’t, and even if I were feeling alienated it wouldn’t be Arenanet making me feel that way but rather all the people on my server who left (and in that case I would only feel that way if they had left while implying that I was not welcome to go with them, which they did not do because they are stand-up folks).

so it’s not true that Arenanet is making everyone feel alienated. they are just making you, and perhaps a few others, feel that way. statistically, based on samples from this thread, the number of confirmed alienated players on low-population servers is only 50%.

remember, you are not a “low population player”. Arenanet doesn’t have anything against you personally, just because you choose to play on a low population server. you are a “player” and like every other “player” you could easily have transferred to another server; nobody is stopping you except yourself.

there is no “high population player” club that you are being excluded from, you don’t need to feel alienated, you are absolutely welcome to join them (except on HoD, they don’t want you there, see their post on the WvW recruitment forum).

-ken

psizone.8437:

You have alienated everyone who didn’t transfer to higher population servers and did nothing to make sure that everyone had a fair chance of fighting.

This isn’t true. I’m one of the people who didn’t transfer to a higher population server, and I definitely do not feel alienated.

“disillusioned” is something completely different.

-ken

don’t forget the experience scrolls that you can use to instantly get to level 20. this doesn’t help directly, but if you do happen to have some stored in the bank it will help you get to level 30+ faster so you spend less time playing with no traits.

-ken

ah, that was what was unclear to me. I didn’t realize that the “wardrobe” would include all appearances, rather than only the ones that you got via skins or transmutes.

thanks for the explanation.

-ken

tournaments provide strategic opportunities you don’t normally get in non-season WvW play.

in this case, YB wanted to finish the season ahead of SBI. EB wanted to finish ahead of BP. due to the way the matchups were assigned, EB and YB were in a position to help each other achieve their goals.

I’m surprised they were able to pull it off; normally EB and YB don’t really like each other. really, EB doesn’t like anybody most of the time. which is just how it should be.

-ken

this can happen if you knock a wall or gate down, drag the lord outside, then the defenders either repair the damage or a wall/door upgrade finishes building.

the lord is tough to fight, but isn’t the brightest bulb, and has no idea how to use the door portal to get back inside, so he just stays out there.

-ken

the problem with 1v1 is that the stronger server is pretty much guaranteed the win.

in a 3-way match it’s possible for the 2 weaker servers to gang up on the stronger one which can make things more fun.

but opportunists can use the same system to gang up on the weaker server in a race to see who can get more PPT. if the second place server needs more PPT to catch up to the first place server, last place is often the easiest place to get it. this means the first place server needs to grab PPT from last place also, to keep second place from getting all of it.

the fact that karma training is highly rewarded while defense is not further encourages this — karma trains will naturally look for the easiest objectives to flip, and those are usually the ones owned by the last-place team.

-ken

in order to be fair to individual players, this would need to be based on current PPT rather than overall score.

if you play during a time of day when your PPT is very low, then you should get the buff even if your server has a huge overall lead. otherwise your gameplay is being penalized just because other players on your server (in other time zones) are doing well.

but in that case, imagine the crying from the people in your time zone but playing on the other servers: “omg that server has a huge overall lead and they have the buff! how is this even remotely fair? it just makes it that much harder for us to catch up on the scoreboard! thanks anet for kicking us when we’re down!”

either way, somebody is going to complain. what we need is a mechanic that makes it harder to pull ahead, the farther in front you already are. but done in a natural way that doesn’t make it feel like you’re being penalized during your gameplay time just because other people who played before you were doing well.

-ken

a significant fraction of my guildmates who no longer play GW2 left because they got bored with the existing maps. they were too small, it was too easy to learn every part of them, and there were too few of them (only 2, the borderland map and the EBG map).

instead of fewer players on our existing maps, what we need are more maps or bigger maps, even if the latter option means raising the cap to allow more players.

-ken

I used a skin that I got from an achievement chest on one of my items, and I regret it (there was no indication before applying the skin that I wouldn’t be able to dye the item afterwards and that I was stuck with the ‘preview’ color). I’ve been meaning to buy a splitter tool to remove the skin and restore the original item appearance, but I haven’t gotten a round tuit.

Am I now stuck with the new appearance until I can reacquire a new original item? to put it another way, in order to get the old appearance back is it my only option now to dispose of my current item then repeat the steps that were required to get my original item?

I’ve been deliberately vague about what the item or the steps were since I assume other players will be in the same situation but with different items.

-ken

yes, it is possible for league play to hurt your overall ranking. but the impact shouldn’t be especially big because the Glicko-2 rating system compensates by expecting you to beat lower-rated opponents by a certain amount, and by expecting you to lose to higher-rated opponents by a certain amount. as long as you win or lose by about the same amount as Glicko-2 expected, your rating won’t change very much.

in practice, servers rarely win or lose by the expected amount (except perhaps when playing opponents in their own tier) but even so, temporary bumps or dips in rating have a tendency to even themselves back out over time.

I really wouldn’t worry about it. rating & ranking really don’t mean a whole lot. mostly they are measures of how much coverage your server has compared to others.

-ken

during tournaments it’s not a 3-way competition. it’s a 9-way competition (6-way in NA gold league) so you need to look beyond just who you’re playing this week.

-ken

even monkeys can recognize when they are being rewarded unequally:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dMoK48QGL8

but unlike the monkeys you are not powerless to change the situation. if you want the better rewards, stop buffing and healing and start doing aoe dps instead. also, don’t bother with upgrades or defense. find a karma train and sitck with them.

-ken

after April 15, all characters on your account will have the same rank. this means your newbie is going to start (in your example) at rank 100.

it’s the same amount of WXP to go from rank 100 to rank 105, regardless of whether you do it on your newbie or your main.

if you create a bunch of newbies before April 15, the WXP will be added up (not the ranks) so you’ll only get 5K WXP for each one.

no exploit here.

-ken

just pick the top 10 songs from the current pop teen charts. listening to those 10 over and over and over will make you want to kill someone.

-ken

it’s option #1. otherwise it wouldn’t be the same number of points available on every character, each character would be different based on how many were left unspent.

-ken

not bottom yet, but wow Kaineng must have gotten transfers or something because they’re now playing above their rating.

not sure how long we can hold them back.

-ken

there’s a chance for you to get another color, based on how close your rating is to the ratings of your opponents. if your ratings are very close the color assignments are nearly random. but if the ratings are far apart your chances increase of getting green if you are higher, or red if you are lower.

-ken

there’s a good explanation here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Pls-explain-how-wvw-matchup-algorithms-work

-ken

Rhalas.4167:

HOD WVW has gotten a huge boost.

this is not surprising. HoD is the highest-ranked NA server (#13) with free transfers. many players would have no reason to transfer to a lower-ranked server. lower ranked servers have fewer players, and earn fewer rewards.

-ken

my point is, there was already a red post that answers the question, but you have to read the whole thing carefully.

that post explains that “pre-season pricing” and “post-season pricing” are in fact different (even though we didn’t have any such thing in season 1), and that they will be based on ratings from different dates.

season 1 brackets were based on the rankings in effect the moment season 1 began. Arenanet has not announced that this is going to be any different in season 2, so the same rule applies. the only thing that has changed is how matchups within the brackets are being determined — this time it is going to be Swiss Style.

sure, another red post on this would be nice, but if we don’t get one, your best bet is to plan on using the March 28 ratings.

-ken

leagues will be decided March 28. the March 14 ratings are used only for pre-tournament transfer pricing. once the tournament begins, pricing will be changed based on the March 28 rankings. it only makes sense that the tournament brackets will also be decided on March 28.

why on earth would you assign the brackets based on March 14 ratings, but set the mid-tournament transfer prices based on March 28 ratings? that would make no sense.

rewards will be at the end of the tournament. that’s how Swiss-style tournaments work.

account-bound WXP won’t happen until after season two. I think someone from Arenanet commented on this in the past (probably Devon). you can try searching for the post if you like.

-ken

here’s the citation:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/get-ready-for-wvw-spring-tournament-2014/

the “Pre-tournament sale” chart says below it that prices will be based on the rankings on March 14. the chart also says that this pricing will be in effect from March 18 through March 27.

just below that, the “Tournament pricing” chart says that prices will be based on the rankings at the start of the tournament, March 28.

the March 14 rankings don’t determine the tournament brackets, they only determine the pre-tournament transfer pricing. that is all.

the March 28 rankings will determine the tournament brackets, and also the price of transfers during the tournament. transferring to servers at the top of each bracket will be the most expensive, and servers at the bottom of the bracket will be least expensive.

-ken

league placement will be determined on March 28.

the March 14 rankings were used only to determine pre-tournament transfer pricing which is in effect from March 18 through March 27.

-ken

Frosch.7809:

I’m wondering what people from Kaineng or SoR or Ehmry may think about the discussion in here – my own server had all larger WvW guilds and several smaller ones leave, and plenty of other servers in Silver and Bronze are in a similar position. There’s the opposite from what i can hear, like HoD getting stacked from free transfers, it doesn’t change that you guys should thank ANet for messing things up again instead of blaming each other.

I’m from Ehmry Bay and I think this whole thread is mostly pointless. WvW in this game is mostly about population and coverage. period. as long as players are going to be allowed to go wherever they want, there will always be population and coverage imbalances, and as a result there will be servers getting steamrolled.

this is just how it’s going to be until Arenanet forces players to play on servers they don’t want to be on, or they completely redesign WvW to not depend primarily on population for scoring. I don’t see either of these things happening any time soon, so learn to get what enjoyment you can from this system.

complaining about it isn’t going to make it more fun.

-ken

NSP is currently listed as being in tier 6 due to matchup randomization. that applies to the current matchup only.

the final assignment of which servers will be in which leagues will be done at the end of the matches that start tomorrow (i.e. on March 28). it would not make any sense to do it any other way.

the rankings from March 14 were only used to determine server transfer prices after the March 18 patch (and as input into the randomization system for deciding the March 14 matchups).

if NSP does badly next week (or SF does very well) they could still end up in Bronze league for the tournament. but if they do well and hold onto their current #15 ranking, they will end up in Silver league.

tournament brackets will be based solely on server ranking. there will not be any randomization involved.

-ken

here are the estimated probabilities for tomorrow’s matchups. as before, the “na1” and “eu1” files have probabilities of getting a particular server as an opponent, while the “na2” and “eu2” files have probabilities of getting specific pairs of servers as opponents.

note that these will be the last numbers I post for a while. Season 2 of tournament play will begin next week, and during the tournament matchups will not be randomized.

-ken

the pre-tournament transfer pricing is designed only to discourage players from transferring to higher-tier servers.

almost nobody wants to transfer to a lower tier server, unless maybe you’re in tier 1. but lots of people want to transfer to a higher tier server because they want to play on a server with more people. the new pricing system encourages players to give the #13 or #14 server a try (because it’s free). under the old pricing system every server was “very high” so the prices were all the same. if going to #13 is the same price as going to #2, you might as well go up to #2, right?

this isn’t a great system because servers #16 through #24 are going to be hard-pressed to get players (why go there when you could go to #14 or #15 for the same price?) but it’s better than the pricing we had before.

-ken

most engineers are not good writers. actually, most of every profession are not good writers (except perhaps professional writers, for whom I am willing to accept that even the below-average ones are still “good”).

I think what they meant to say is that the March 28 rankings will determine what league you end up in. At the same time, tournament pricing will kick in, in order to discourage players from transferring to servers at the top of each bracket for easy wins.

That all applies during a tournament. During non-tournament play a much simpler transfer pricing system will be in place. The non-tournament system will go into effect on March 18, and the transfer cost during non-tournament play will depend on the ratings established at the end of the previous match (so for example, on March 18 transfer costs will be based on rankings from March 14).

So all this talk about March 14 ratings applies only to the transfer costs that will be in effect from March 18 through March 21. Transfer costs between March 21 and March 28 will depend on the ratings from March 21. Transfer costs from March 28 through the end of the Season 2 Tournament will be based on ratings from March 28.

After Season 2 is over, we will presumably go back to non-Tournament pricing (the pricing scheme that’s in effect now, not the one we had before March 18).

-ken

get on a higher population server. run with a karma train, and have an AoE build so you can tag lots of enemies. loot everything (bind a key to Aoe Loot and use it). salvage items often, and sell the mats on the trading post. you can often do this while running between objectives (put your character on autorun).

-ken

Ehmry Bay has historically had very little interest in bandwagoning their way to the top, or lowering their standards just to boost population. This is why you don’t see very many recruitment threads from them.

If you’re the kind of person who can be persuaded to transfer based on a recruitment thread, it’s likely that you’ll transfer away if the going gets tough. Ehmry Bay isn’t interested in fair-weathers or server-hoppers. Save everyone the time and trouble and transfer elsewhere.

Live or die, win or lose, Ehmry Bay will do what they can with what they’ve got. Usually that turns out to be more than their opponents expected.

-ken

Allie Murdock.8152:

I will be passing this on to the team to think about!

I feel like the team is already spending too much time thinking. This is why patches take so long; they need to be reviewed and analyzed by every area — you can’t tweak anything without getting sign-offs from PvE, PvP, WvW, server systems, client engineering, infrastructure, game architecture and QA. and all those people on all those teams don’t have time to review a thousand proposals for small tweaks, so everything needs to be bundled up into mammoth patch sets so that it can be reviewed efficiently.

meanwhile we wait for basic fixes, or we get tired of waiting and move on to other games.

-ken

I think the point is that DB, SBI and SoR are ranked #7, #8 and #9. in terms of rating, these servers are as closely matched as they can be (without giving another server an even worse matchup), and despite this the matchup is still a blowout.

the problem is that population is the single most important factor in determining server strength, players are free to go where they want (and create even more imbalance) and ArenaNet hasn’t done anything to change this in any meaningful way.

adjusting transfer costs on the basis of PvE population is pointless. blanket ‘free transfers’ to half the servers (regardless of whether any particular target server is currently well-matched with the servers near it, or not) is not likely to have any productive outcome. etc.

you either have to lock players into tiers and forcibly move them between servers to create balance, or you have to completely redesign WvW so that population isn’t the most important determining factor. I do not see how Arenanet can reasonably do either of these things, which means things are never going to significantly improve.

-ken

the thing about randomized matchups is, they’re randomized. have you ever rolled the same thing three dice rolls in a row? it happens.

and in GW2, many of the repeats aren’t even unlikely ones. the randomization system isn’t designed to ensure you always get a different matchup, it’s designed only to ensure that you have a chance to get a different one (because different matchups usually result in blowouts, which aren’t fun). let’s look at DB+SBI+SoR:

3/14: 15.9% (#3 most likely outcome)
3/7: 50.6% (#1 most likely outcome)
2/28: 51.9% (#1 most likely outcome)

ok, DB got an unlucky roll this week, and the randomization system kicked in to give you a less-likely matchup (your #3 option). really, the problem here isn’t the lack of randomization; the randomization is what gave you this match again. here are all of the predicted matchups for DB this week, with their probabilities of occurring (expressed as percentages):

0.023881 Tarnished Coast Maguuma
0.017480 Tarnished Coast Fort Aspenwood
0.105918 Blackgate Maguuma
0.078282 Blackgate Fort Aspenwood
35.582545 Sea of Sorrows Maguuma
26.434173 Sea of Sorrows Fort Aspenwood
3.431385 Maguuma Fort Aspenwood
15.902196 Stormbluff Isle Sanctum of Rall
12.462647 Stormbluff Isle Isle of Janthir
2.994132 Stormbluff Isle Borlis Pass
1.682697 Stormbluff Isle Yak’s Bend
1.119851 Sanctum of Rall Isle of Janthir
0.083935 Sanctum of Rall Borlis Pass
0.008348 Sanctum of Rall Yak’s Bend
0.064809 Isle of Janthir Borlis Pass
0.006536 Isle of Janthir Yak’s Bend
0.001185 Borlis Pass Yak’s Bend

without randomization, it probably would have been DB+SoS+Mag this week.

also, YB+BP+IoJ is not a huge surprise to see repeated. here are the probabilities you had each week:
3/14: 46.3% (#1 most likely outcome)
3/7: 78.6% (#1 most likely outcome)
2/28: 69.5% (#1 most likely outcome)
2/21: 78.0% (#1 most likely outcome)

yes, getting the most likely outcome 4 weeks in a row doesn’t feel random, but sometimes you get a winning streak. or a losing one, depending on how you look at it.

-ken

thanks!

also, I found out there’s another way to fix the problem. it seems that you can go directly to a thread by following a direct link like this one:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Cannon-destroying-rams-through-gate

once you’ve managed to bypass the error that way, the forum seems to go back to normal again.

-ken

does anyone know if there’s a way to delete individual cookies in Chrome? I don’t want to clear all my cookies; it would be a bigger disruption for me than just giving up the GW2 forums altogether.

-ken

here are the estimated probabilities for tomorrow’s matchups. as before, the “na1” and “eu1” files have probabilities of getting a particular server as an opponent, while the “na2” and “eu2” files have probabilities of getting specific pairs of servers as opponents.

-ken

“It’s your fault you’re on a dead server, so we’re penalizing you for trying to improve your gameplay.”

I know that’s not what Arenanet intended, but it sure feels that way.

-ken

and by “kitten” I mean a word which means “slow down”.

-ken

I don’t get the impression that Arenanet is trying to encourage people to go to lower servers, so much as they’re simply raising the price on transfers to the desirable servers. the idea here isn’t to encourage people to move down, it’s simply to discourage them from moving up.

part of that discouragement comes from the absolute price increase from 1800 to 2400 gems. and part of that is to make the increase especially obvious by lowering transfer costs for servers very few would want to go to anyway. if Arenanet raised the prices across the board to 2400, maybe fewer people in total would transfer, but proportionally most of them would still go to the top 6 servers (especially ranks 4-6). but by raising the prices for only some servers, people will look at the transfer cost and they will question the value they are getting for their gems. “why should I pay 2400 gems to go there, when I could pay 0 gems to go elsewhere?”

the next thought would then be “hey, why pay 0 gems to go to a lower server, when I could pay 0 gems to stay where I am already?”

suddenly the value of staying where you are has gone way up — it is the same price as transferring to the rank 24 server, but instead of ending up on the rank 24 server you can stay right where you are!

I think the pricing is a good idea because it will act to kitten the flow of players to higher ranks, but I don’t see how this will encourage very many players to transfer to a lower server. really, Arenanet would have to give me gems to get me to transfer down.

-ken

I don’t see how free transfers are going to help. are there a lot of players out there on higher-ranked servers who aren’t having fun in WvW, who think that WvW would be more fun on a server with largely empty maps, and for whom the gem cost was the big thing preventing them from moving?

-ken

it seems to me that the results of the new transfer pricing will be:

1. if you want to transfer anywhere where WvW still has a lot of population, it is now going to cost more.

2. if you decide that transferring was a mistake and you came from a bottom-half server, you can transfer back again for a reduced cost (or free if your server was low enough).

3. depending on your destination, you can probably save some gems if you wait until season 2 starts before transferring, but the penalty will be that you are limited to EotM for a couple of weeks. this is not a big penalty if EotM was the only fun thing on your old server.

I guess I’m happy that transfers to my server are going to be free for a week, but I don’t think it’s going to change anything in terms of population. so what if transfers are free? nobody wants to come to my server anyway. at this point if Arenanet wants people to transfer down I think they would have to pay us, not the other way around.

-ken

here are the estimated probabilities for tomorrow’s matchups. as before, the “na1” and “eu1” files have probabilities of getting a particular server as an opponent, while the “na2” and “eu2” files have probabilities of getting specific pairs of servers as opponents.

-ken

using horrible default keybindings is definitely a newbie thing to do.

-ken

this sounds like a new bug then, possibly introduced in a recent patch.

-ken

I suspect that what is happening is, if the waypoint is contested you get redirected to your citadel instead. when you are already on the map, using a waypoint is very fast so if you click quickly you can get in before it goes contested again. but when you’re on another map it takes too long, and by the time you’re ready to load in the waypoint is already contested again and you get redirected.

this happens in PvE also sometimes, when you try to go to a waypoint on another map and you get redirected because your destination became contested at the same time.

-ken