I don’t understand how this will be any better than what we already have. Scores are just chunked into half of the time EOTM style matchups occur and consolidated smaller numbers still add up to our existing problem. People brought up nightcapping here and this doesn’t seem to address that. Maybe it would make more sense to scale the scoring somehow to the number of active players on the map across all servers currently in a matchup for that 2 hour slice of time? One server could be blobbing while the other 2 servers have like 5 people but they could be ticking for a lot less with the way it scales relative to the number of active people (participation), but I think that would make it harder to find definition in finding variations in matchups between servers per week.
Think about it this example, if one server has a larger NA presence, they may own 60% of all the objectives in their time frame. Another server in the same tier has the largest OCX/SEA population and can own 80% of the map objectives in their time frame because they have little opposition. With the old scoring method, the OCX server owning 80% of the objectives generates more total PPT during OCX hours than the larger NA server does during NA primetime. If this flip-flop of objectives occurs for about the same number of hours, then the OCX server will out-PPT the NA server under the old scoring method…with the new method, their score could roughly be the same after a 24-hour period. This doesn’t take into account all the other scoring factors, but hopefully it makes sense looking strictly at PPT.
As someone who has been on a low pop server for a long time, the worst part is knowing there is no permanence, or what to expect going forward. Will we, next time, be linked to a T1? Back in T4? Still with YB? Yeah, Anet may have avoided the specter of outright server merges, but they’ve done so at the price of leaving the secondary servers in limbo, pairing after pairing.
I agree…even if it ends up being in a mismatched tier, I just want a place to call “home” for the duration of my stay in GW2…tired of being a vagabond going from one host to another and not getting to make friends for more than 2 months at a time. I’m used to being in one game on one server for years before moving on, EQ for about 5 years, WoW for 7 years, Rift for 3 years, and developing friendships along the way. Hard to do when the majority of your WvW team will only be with you for 2 months and then you’re paired with some other host. Mega-PvE servers also make it hard to get to know people, because it seems all the faces are new each time and it’s hard to tell who is actually on your own server.
If enemy have lot’s of player you get more kills.
Sure, when I 1 v 20 I usually get 20 bags… or is it 20 ppl getting each 1 bag out of my carcass…
Amazing how that works…it’s like you’re pyschic or something to carry just enough bags for the 20 players that roflstomped you 6 ft under! No wonder you couldn’t run away from them fast enough…20 bags weigh a person down!
Remove reward tracks so that WvW players are even more broke because they don’t like to PvE? It’s already been well established that you can easily earn more loot/gold in PvE than WvW.
Also, isn’t it better to get PvE players into WvW, and you know, convert them into dedicated WvW players? If we don’t do that, WvW will die off even faster with no new blood coming in. That’s how I started out…I was PvE only, but got bored at level 80, so I stared WvW and have been having a blast ever since!
For NA, I think server merges would have to be more aggressive than 15…12 servers at most, but with T4 usually seeing 2 server pairs being severely undermanned against the 3rd server dropping down from T3, they could even consolidate to 9 servers and have just 3 tiers.
My server pairing has DBL for our home BL, and we were outnumbered last night…the other 2 servers came to play with larger groups! We also had queues on DBL over the weekend, too. (NA T3)
Just add Charr canons or Asura teleporters on all 4 sides of the center area that launch people to cover those distances quickly…or allow gliding in DBL.
Along those lines, perhaps when a server is outnumbered on a map in relation to another server, the more populated server only gets 1 point for player kills, but the outnumbered server gets 3 points per kill. If two servers are not outnumbered in relation to each other, then they continue with the usual 2 points per kill between them. Let’s have some scoring adjustments when large population differences exist, not just extra rewards. I realize other scoring changes are forthcoming, but something like PPK adjustments could be easily implemented a lot sooner.
Some nice posts from the op
I don’t know how to fix the population issue. I do know that I like belonging to a named server, seeing the same commanders on the map, the same people. My concern which having instances in three colours would be that you would lose this feeling of belonging to a server and the degree of ‘pride’ that comes with that.
I have swapped servers on numerous occasions but this has mostly been trying to find the ideal server that suits me. I like the way that each server has a feel and almost it’s own character.
Server linking appears to be meh as people are band waggoning to the lower population servers, changing costs for transfers didn’t appear to stop anything. I do feel that to fix this something major would need to happen, ie closing linked servers, changing transfer windows and cost to make us think more carefully as players around the server that we choose.
Speaking from experience, what you are describing related to server pride, as I mentioned previously, is from the perspective of a host server, not a guest server. Community and server identity on guest servers is at the lowest it’s ever been. In PvE, we have mega-servers…no sense of community or identity there as it’s a blend of several servers randomly connected, which also makes it harder to recruit for WvW guilds. In WvW, guest servers don’t have their own tags, don’t get recognition for taking objectives, and in general, are swallowed up by the larger population of the host server so that you see very little of those that you once knew from your own server.
Btw: The maps are equal in size.
Lol…yeah, I was looking at that, too. ABL is actually taller from North to South, but narrower from East to West. DBL is more square, a bit less N/S than ABL but a bit more E/W than ABL.
Factions will reduce identity. Loss of identity means less attachment to game. Less attachment to game means players fairweather to other games,
Without community, identity, population balance becomes moot. Because there will be no players.
If players “fairweather” to other games, they weren’t looking for a community identity in the first place. Also, you must be on a “host” server, or you would know that “guest” servers already have little identity left to speak of. Being on a “guest” server myself, I see very little of those from my own server in WvW anymore. When an objective gets taken and a message flashes across the screen, it does me no good to remember what server I came from, I have to remember who my “host” server is, which changes every 2 months. Right now, my server is paired with one that had previously been our mortal enemy for at least this last year. We loved to curse them…and now, I’m one of them. It really gives one a Jekyll/Hyde experience. What kind of identity is that?
At least if we’re talking factions, it would be possible to recruit for each faction on any mega-server instance. Now, when I’m in LA, all I see is recruitments for guilds that are not even on my server. I guess “vagabond” is an identity, but it’s not a community.
(edited by Sylvyn.4750)
Worlds have now been re-linked.
We have reset glicko volatility and deviation for all worlds to the same value, but have left their rating unchanged (this includes worlds that were previously guest worlds but are now host worlds). Just to reiterate, resetting glicko volatility and deviation will result in greater rating shifts in the first few matches. This will give worlds the opportunity to move into their ideal matchup tier much faster.
^^ for all your questions about how the tier matchups were determined…in addition to Glicko RNG.
We need our gliders in DBL…would be so much fun!
If we had an actual donut shape to run around in…wouldn’t that just promote more k-trains that never meet if they all run in the same direction, like going counter-clockwise at the Indy 500?
The hay bales are meant for people use the cliffs as shortcuts. It’s not a useless adition.
Huh…guess I never used those before…but still…just one was needed?
Hey, but you got this new, old map that people hate. Who needs scoring changes…
They actually improved it a lot. It’s pretty much just as fast now to get to the keeps as the other borderland map.
They could still remove some stuff in the way but the map is pretty enjoyable now.
The only thing that needs looking at is the whole central area that serves no purpose at all. It should be a waypoint to capture in the middle of the map.
I Lol’d at this part of the patch notes for WvW:
“Desert – Added a new hay bale to the southeast side of the Desert borderlands.”
The only time it truly has an effect is when the “spy” uses up all the supplies of the enemy by building pointless siege or pulling the tactivators, but that’s not really the same thing as spying.
I guess we should call that variety a Saboteur…
pvers are all guilty before proven innocent. They are all leeches and should not be in here to defile the sanctity of wvw. All they do is run in a circle and kill npcs.
/proceeds to run in a circle and hit doors
A WITCH!
BURN HIM! BURN HIM!!!
“How do you know he is a witch?” asks Sir Bedevere.
You’re what people call a fairweather. You leave when the odds are against you.
One could make the same argument for those that transfer/bandwagon around…it creates imbalance on a more permanent basis compared to those that pop in/out of WvW/PvE.
Like when SBI was in T4? Yeah, balance was indeed a myth…
I don’t mind that they know our position, which could be discovered with good scouting anyway. What really hurts defense when we’re already outnumbered is a spy inside the keep burning up supply and pulling tactivators within 15 minutes of a planned assault. This has happened even when the attacking server was way ahead of us in total score, so they were probably just trolling for a fight and bags.
So, for those that say they never PvE for loot/gold, how are they getting into Ascended armor without a more reliable income stream of gold and mats? As for actual drops in WvW, I have gotten two Ascended pieces over the last year, myself, one plate item and one ring, so they seem to be fairly rare drops. Looks like buying gems is the only way to get anywhere for those dedicated to WvW, or at least get there before the game ages itself out of existence.
Bad dice roll mate…DB had an 8% chance to go up against Mag and 5% chance to go up against FA this round. Lucky for you we’ll be getting a new matchup Tuesday when they roll a DBL back into the mix.
Awesome, we get mixed BL’s and split up the last week of these linkings and get two matches out of it. So whoever gets stuck in T4 may only be there for 4 days.
What if they roll T4 in both parts of the week?
Ever the optimist…:-)
Yak’s Bend player here — We have consistently been running havok groups against you, out rotating, and straight up winning 20v30 fights. The LGBT guild was camping spawn for a long time against YB, and we pushed out with 5 people against their 15+.
At some point, you also need to understand that since you weren’t in T1 maybe your population isn’t that skilled and it’s not all getting out zerged. Because honestly if you are losing to a 60 man blob with your 40 people, the solution is to run havok groups and back cap across multiple maps. Just saying.
Realize too that with my server group at least (SF, GoM, FC), there is almost no cross-server coordination on comms. At best, people are mostly running on their own guild TS servers or sometimes on the community TS for their own individual server. I saw a lot more effort in the first round of linkings that we had a couple months ago to get everyone on the same comm channel on each map when following a commander…now with 3 servers on one team, it seems that level of coordination has gone by the wayside. When I’m online anymore, I never see those kind of callouts to join TS from commanders, commands are just relayed via map chat, which can help set up an attack or defense but does not allow for real-time control over the flow and the focus of a battle. I’m sure YB, with larger guilds and one established server-wide TS, has the advantage there as well.
T4 was a hellish mess when I left. Not sure how it is now.
No change…sadly.
Unfortunately, Anet doesn’t offer free transfers like other game companies do in order to spread out population from over-populated servers to under-populated servers, because…it would make too much sense, but not enough money. Games that depend on monthly subscription income need to keep their subscribers happy, so they occasionally offer free transfers from overcrowded servers. Here, we are in a free-2-play model, meaning if you want anything beyond the basic game, anything that improves convenience or adds extra frills to your character, that is going to cost you. Instead of buying gems with real money, you could grind for gold and then exchange for gems…but that will take a while if you and your friends are starting over from scratch. And yes, I too would wait to see how the next round of pairings shakes out, which should occur on the 26th.
It’s just a thought on a scenario that could have 3 competitive tiers, and not t1 rotating sometimes with t2, t3 forced to endure t4 servers, t4 forced to endure t3 server, mismatches and barely any fun thanks to poor links. But I know there are players who don’t want to be on t1 sized servers anyways.
Having played on GoM for about a year now, I’d say it is too small to go back to being its own separate server. Man, it was even dead in EBG before the linkings…I could be the only one defending SMC against a zerg of 5 enemy soldiers…epic, right? Since then, we’ve lost some core fighters and commanders, and server pride and identity is about as low as it can get. I think many realize this and are probably ready to move on to the next phase of WvW, whatever that ends up being, as long as it keeps things alive and interesting.
YB isn’t a “t4” server, the 4 in the 4 link are though. I’m interested to know if you fold the t4 servers onto the t3 servers, how big would their population be? enough to compete with t1 servers?
I’m wondering if it’s better to try and build bigger t3 servers to compete with the top 6, would it be better to try and produce 9 servers for a better rotation between tiers instead of the walls that keep getting created between tiers.
I already know we’ll get complaints from players who want to play on emptier servers, but you know what, that eventually will happen anyways as we continue to lose players from wvw and gw2.
The Quad server is more T3 by sheer population/coverage rather than T4, though. They are a lot closer in score to the T3 servers than they ever were in T4, clobbering the other 2 server pairings in T4 by 100-150k points each cycle.
I agree, we should just have all T4 servers rolled into T3. SF & DH don’t have the population to be host servers, and the remaining servers they were combined with didn’t have much population left to speak of, either.
You must have missed all the other threads on the situation in T4. All we can do now is wait for the next round of pairings and hope the linkings will be better balanced.
Seeing that CD isn’t doing so hot in T3, let’s flip the argument around…it’s not that the Quad Server idea was bad or that the population generated was too much, because it obviously isn’t for T3, it’s that SF and DH were left with being UNDER populated compared to everyone else. It’s like 10 famous Major League football team quarterbacks got to pick all the MVP players to complete their teams, and as an afterthought, two minor league guys got to pick a few of the leftovers and are being thrown into major league games without a full roster. There’s just no way to fix it without giving the two minor league teams some of the MVPs that the other teams got. They need to shoot for all server pairings to have roughly the same populations, because just like in sports, it’s all about coverage.
He also mentions the problem with the server links having a harder time coordinating on comms. It was easiest with coordinating your own server on TS, it was a bit harder with having a partner server and jumping between a couple TS channels, but with 3 and 4 servers in a link, no one even bothers trying to coordinate a multi-server pug group anymore on comms, we’re back to just typing in map chat. At that point, it seems easiest to just go hang on your own server’s TS and see if you can join a small group, which means large groups have no real-time coordination and are more likely to get stomped by a large group from a single server on comms.
As Johje pointed out, population and coverage disparities are still too extreme with the server links. Even the server links with 3 and 4 servers do not have the population or coverage to take on Tier 1 servers. Ideally, the server linkings should strive to make team populations in each tier capable of advancing to T1. As it is, the bottom two server groups in this current rotation, SF & DH, can’t even compete with any server group that gets the short straw and is thrown into T4. That’s where the imbalance really makes itself known and creates a situation that none of the 3 server groups in T4 wants to be in. Close battles are fun, severely outnumbered battles are not.
However, to combine the two thoughts above, to create larger populations that can better compete with any other tier and to improve communications within that population, I think it continues to point towards server merges as the solution. What about bandwagoners that continue to create population disparities? Once servers are merged, have a minimum and maximum population limit that each server must maintain, where transfers to a server can’t go above the maximum limit and transfers out are not allowed once the minimum limit is reached.
The solution is better server pairing. Anyone could see after the first day that CD quad server alliance was too strong for the rest of tier 4.
SoS and CD are doing what they want to do, six against one and then thinking they have so much skill when numbers and nothing more are tearing Tier 4 into a “we don’t want to run today, they just blob us out” for most guilds.
Wait I thought it was YB & SoS vs CD, can you guys please make up your minds it’s starting to get so confusing which conspiracy theory is the most absurd.
It’s all in the eye of the beholder…one vs another with a 3rd party taking advantage of the other two being distracted. Now…in T4, it is obvious that SF & DH never teamed up against either CD or SBI…so much for the Rebel Alliance…more like Battlestar Galactica’s “ragtag, fugitive fleet, on a lonely quest.”
… well I don’t know what to say, I guess sorry that Anets hates you.
I didn’t get a screeny of it, but we saw an Anet tag on one of SBI’s soldiers tonight…your theory has been confirmed…lol!
But I’ve seen a Anet tag on Dh showing up in the last two weeks (haven’t played much on this one to say if he was still running).
Wonder if they are checking out all sides of the imbalanced matchup in T4? One can only hope!
… well I don’t know what to say, I guess sorry that Anets hates you.
I didn’t get a screeny of it, but we saw an Anet tag on one of SBI’s soldiers tonight…your theory has been confirmed…lol!
Good points, and actually it was quite satisfying delaying them as long as we did…they could have capped so many camps in that time instead…guess some people get tunnel vision and strategy goes out the window…hehe.
I dunno, ArchonWing, there was some pathetic stuff going on last night…lightyears ahead in points, fighting over an hour to take one measly tower, and then the teabagging…really?
On the negative side, T4 is going to end up with “what T3 reject server do we get this week…”
“…to rofl-stomp us?” (finishing your sentence, because population/coverage of the other 2 server pairs in T4, DH and SF, are nowhere near any other server pair that might drop into T4)
The problem with NA-T4 is that the main server it is populated with are in reality T5 server (rank 13-15) and not the T4 server (rank 10-12). https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/de/na/wvw
This produced an impassable border, not glicko itself.
Which could have been mitigated with better server pairings, such as not combining any T1 or T2 server and having the other 18 make up the other 6 teams. Giving CD 3 other servers created a solid T3 server against 2 T5 servers.
The problem of winner up looser down is that it is very stale if the ranking is correct:
1 week: 1-2-3 & 4-5-6 & 7-8-9
2 week: 1-2-4 & 3-5-7 & 6-8-9
3 week like 1st
4 week like 2nd
and so on.Other problems are:
- 3 never plays against 4, (6 never against 7) they always only switch places.
- whenever the 7th is in T2, the 3rd is in T2 as well, which give a very bad match
Except we see 2nd and 3rd place changing pretty often in each tier so it won’t work like that. Plus if players really want to move up they will push harder for the win since they know winning actually means moving up a tier and not just shaving 10 glicko points off the 200+ glicko wall.
The glicko wall is real, and is not only affected by how well one server does against the other two in its tier, but how well the other 2 servers in the tier above do against a higher tier server moving down. In effect, T1 through T3 can (and did) pull themselves upwards if they experience a lot of up and down movement and leave a huge gap between T3 and T4. If we keep glicko, it has to be reset with each new pairing so that the incremental gaps left over from past pairings don’t spiral out of control over time.
Yes my Thief is really struggling in WvW now. My Unloads only do 12-13K each against other squishes. My AoE damage with an evade skill, Vault, only seems to do 14K damage. My dagger auto-attack chain only does 7K damage in around 1.5 seconds. My unblockable distance closer, Shadow Shot, does just 6K per use. It’s a good thing that I can’t use these skills more than once in quick succession!
Also my dodge rolls seem to do just 5K AoE and my Impairing Daggers with Mug combo only seems to do 8K damage as an opener – it’s horrible. Also, my Basilisk that I was already using also happens to be applied to people around me with absolutely no investment. I can also chain multiple dodge sources with a bit of stealth to exit almost any encounter. It’s absolutely miserable and impossible to play!
This sarcasm is killing me, stop!
Yeah, he forgot to tell you his unblockable sarcasm damage is 15k, unbuffed! I hope Anet nerfs that sarcasm trait, it’s OP!
It was about 38% or so and yes, I voted for 1 month too. Thing is, would people have voted differently if they knew in advance that the results would be averaged? Good thing elections in the real world don’t work that way.
How would people have voted if they knew the top servers were going to be unlinked? How would they have voted if they knew the 4 headed monster was going to be created?
The survey now lacks credibility because of the lack of info.
Good point…
“Since alternate matchmaking systems require some of the same peoples’ time as the scoring improvements we’re currently working on, Glicko alternatives or adjustments may be options in future polls once the scoring improvement work is done.”
Arena Net already said they are not getting rid of glicko. Get over with it.
Actually, they said we are going to have a poll about it…soon.
Don’t know why the kitten the OP is still complaining. Look at the scores. DH ISN’T LAST PLACE FOR ONCE! Sf and Dh are actually competing for 2nd….there’s actually a chance either one can get it this time. A ton of players have returned and become active on dh again. We’ve had some very good fights this week. SBi is still huge and dominating but they play differently than CD….and honestly SBi seems alot smaller than CD. They have alot of groups running each map, but they aren’t ‘everywhere’ ALL THE TIME in true blob fashion like CD was. We won’t be taking SMC or invading sbi’s garrison or anything like that. But we can actually repel both sbi and sf if we work hard enough on our home bl (today was proof of that). Plus Dh can now fight most of the enemy zergs for once, given sbi and sf aren’t running anywhere near as huge as cd was.
This is honestly a very fun match. Every other week since merging with DH has been horrible, but this week things have finally changed.
We won’t be getting 1st place, and were still gonna be losing all our stuff in EB all the time. But we have actual waypoints and T3 keeps and towers in our home bl! Something we haven’t had in such a long time. Everyone is spending on upgrades and stuff as well, we got a real good turnout and some motivation to keep us going.
Ty anet.
Don’t know what time zone you run in but I logged in late PST last night and saw our PPT was down to 22 per tick. SBI had flipped almost all of EBG and our BL (SF), taking our EBG keep and BL garrison and almost everything else. DH BL looked pretty overrun too. SBI blobs seem about the same size as CD’s but there are fewer on SF showing up for the late night coverage.
People voted for the linking, they voted for the frequency of re-linking. They didn’t vote to have T1 servers unlinked and to have a 7th place server without help and a 1st place server with help. I just want to play on an even field.
You are really stubborn, ain’t you? All “balancing” takes place on the very day it relink. Those “T1” servers weren’t T1 at that time nor were they full at that time, and basing on the data at that time, it was decided to link them as such. One month is all it need to have data at that point become outdated. People voted for the frequency of the linking, people should have account for this kind scenario, people should accept the consequence of their decisions.
For the record, I voted for one month knowing the consequences of the voting and frequency of the relinking. How about you, what did you voted?
Technically speaking, only a very small percentage actually voted for the 2 month linkings that we got, around 15%, so you should really only be telling 15% of the population to “accept the consequences of their decisions”. The rest of us, the 85%, are immune from your statement because we did not get what we voted for.
Nope. That is a naive way of looking at things. Those who voted 2 months and more which is the majority should accept the consequences of their decisions. 2 months period is the final result because the people who voted for one month which is less than 40% iirc is not considered as the majority. Are you part of that less than 40%?
It was about 38% or so and yes, I voted for 1 month too. Thing is, would people have voted differently if they knew in advance that the results would be averaged? Good thing elections in the real world don’t work that way.
Usually a full aura Ele isn’t going to be doing much DPS so just ignore him and go about your business.
Everyone above needs to realize that Coopa is on Gate of Madness, as am I, and has experienced part of that 2v3v4 fiasco in Tier 4. Even now, though, the DH and SF server pairs aren’t strong enough to take on anything that pops down to T4. Yes, the majority wanted to continue with linking per the polls, and the first linking matchups I thought were pretty good. For NA T4 this round…not so much. Hopefully the next round of pairings in late August will restore our faith in server linkings, at least for those of us in NA T4, since most other tiers seem relatively happy.
Well said. I think some people are under the impression that players on lower tiers are upset because they’re a lower tier. From what I’m gathering that’s not really the case, at least for me it isn’t. Being on a low tier isn’t a big deal to me at all, but I want to face servers of comparable population or skill or what have you. All I’m saying is I miss when the fights were relatively competitive and not a cake walk for one server and a nightmare for the other two.
Exactly, it’s not about the tier, it’s about having more balanced matchups rather than the constant blowouts over the last 6 resets. It doesn’t have to be exactly balanced, but give us more like 10v15 fights instead of 10v30.
Yes, it has already been well hashed out that anything moving down to T4 to take on DH & SF was going to be hard for us to compete against. The populations of each of our server groups is so far behind every other server or server linking that we are all boggled as to how it was determined that these combinations would lead to anything resembling a balanced matchup.