Guild Wars 2

It seems to me that the biggest problems with WvW, in this order, are population balance between servers, population balance between time zones on servers, animosity between PPT play and fight play, the lack of track rewards similar to pvp and the broken Glicky calculation. Notice I didn’t mention siege or class balancing. Siege is a reality of large scale conflict and class balancing should be fixed in pvp. Maybe there are some tweaks to be made to siege or class skills but those are trivial compared to the problems associated with population and incentives.

1. SERVER POPULATION BALANCE

I have been collecting data from the API and looking at raw activity numbers and while populatin balance may not be as big a problem in the top 2 tiers, in the lower tiers it is depressing. Also the balance in population between the upper tier and the lower tier results in basically two completely different games being played. Top tier being prone epic map blob fights and the lower tier being restricted small scale skirmish fights.

I am a fan of alliances. I know there is a complaint that this will impact pug play but given the alternative of population imbalance this would be a huge improvement. The below link gives ideas on how to implement pugs into alliances also. Of course if an alliance cant reach is population cap for a particular week, recuirting mercenaries (pugs) is a good option. This link gives a pretty good explanation of the need and a possible implementation: https://toughlovecritic.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/putting-guilds-back-into-guild-wars-wvw-alliances-part-1/

And to beat a dead horse, In the interim server transfer fees should be removed (but the 1 week hold should still apply as should the population caps) If a move to alliances is going to happen, having access to multiple WvW communities would be helpful in finding out where you want to end up and who you want align yourself with. This goes for pugs and guilds.

And one more thing, attempts to base population on activity will never work and doesn’t properly reward players for their efforts and can create grind conditions for more competitive players on truly lower population servers.

2. TIMEZONE POPULATION BALANCE

This problem is rampant on all tiers. On NA servers those that have coverage in OCX SEA timezones have a huge advantage as they can cap things in the middle of night and collect a ridiculous PPT for hours. The same is true for EU servers only the NA timezone becomes the problem. Trying to find people for these timezones is a nuisance. You either need off hours players in your own region which are hard to find or you need to recruit from other regions and those players will be playing with a bad ping generally. It is the most common complaint I hear becuase nothing sucks more than that small team capping the entire map while you sleep. All your efforts disintegrate and there is not a kitten thing you can do about it.

How about a global WvW megaserver? If we ditch servers for alliances, the we can ditch the notion of NA and EU. Have them all run on the system. One complaint I hear is that somebody is going to get screwed with a bad ping. I think this can be resolved with regional resets which transfer the the bulk of the load to the server of the region that is in its prime playing time. It will create a little down time which will break the continuity of the game but is better than the alternatives. This will only hurt the ping those middle of the night players. That is unfortunate but it is better than the mess we currently have. If alliances contain both NA and EU guilds ( NA/EU combined guilds) then the timezone coverage will work itself out. Players can even be force to register for a particular timezone for that week meaning that they cant play in other time zones during that match. Essentially enforcing balance among time zones with alliances and filling in with mercs if necessary.

I am not a fan of restricting the play times for WvW as some suggest. Any attempt to bracket WvW between 6pm to 2am destroys the most interesting and important part of WvW, the global community. It makes more sense to encourage NA/EU coordination than it does to simply throw it away. MMO gamers are a global community and the games should continue to evolve into that, not run from it.

3. PPT VS. FIGHT (Give GvG a place to call home)

People complain that PPT is recipe for unhealthy gaming behavior. Sure, and so are competitive attitudes and excessives amounts of caffeine. Gear grinds are also unhealthy but we still see people engaging that to be the first to get item X. Grinding is more a personality thing. I don’t like it but I have friends that do. So lets put to bed the notion that PPT is some how unhealthy (or cancerous). The problem with PPT currently is the off hours capping which was addressed above.

The fight guilds are the first to complain about PPT because “fighting is the fun part.” Sorry to say, that WvW is PPT. There is no large scale wargame that is not dependent on territorial control. Because WvW is a weekly match, score is awarded for time of control. There really isn’t any other way to to do it. The real problem isn’t PPT. Its that fight guilds have no place to truly show how awesome they are or how they stack up to other guilds in a “fair” fight.

Anet could alleviate some of its devloping PPT vs Fight community problems simply by giving a structured GvG Arena for Fight guilds. This can be built into WvW as some sort of buff reward mechanic or simply a different game mode. Fight guilds love to develop fight tactics and the open world of WvW and its inherent imbalance in gameplay makes it difficult to kitten which builds and tactics are better. I think the game would benefit from this immensely. It would be a boon to WvW theorycrafting and would help resolve the tension between the strategic PPT players and the tactics oriented fight players.

4. REWARDS

I didn’t realize how much a problem this was until I recently started playing sPvP. There is no reason reward tracks cant be included in WvW. The rewards should not be based strictly on 1st, 2nd, 3rd place. It should be based on objectives and kills (yaks and vets included) inside WvW. And reward for captures should be scaled to the number of people capping the objective. If 5 people capture a keep they should recieve 10 times the reward points of 50 people capping a keep. It would refelct the relative skill and effort in the achievement and discourage blob karma trains (at least for rewards). In addition, the weekly winner should get their reward points earned doubled for the following week. Giving the rewards the same week as the victory might encourage surging so giving the reward the following week evens out the week to week efforts.

As for the type of rewards, I think tracks like PvP are sufficient. It would allow players in WvW who absolutely don’t want to do PvE dungeon grinds or map meta events a way to collect the loot (which is sometimes important to WvW builds). I like to play all three game modes but not everyone does and Anet should accommodate game mode specialist because they become the community backbones of those game modes. Game mode specialist are a tremendous resource for players both new to the game mode and new to the game … and also a valuable resource for game developers when it comes to finding and correcting bugs and problems with mechanics.

5. FIX THE GLICKO

Some people think that rating systems are bad and we should use a simple ladder. And for weekly matchups and with few competitors maybe ladders aren’t so bad. The problem with ladders is that the rankings can be erratic and volatile and also when implementing a system, who starts at the top and who starts at the bottom. Not a big deal if you have ten teams in your league but what if you had 100? Arbitrarily starting someone at the bottom is pretty crappy and could take them a year to get to there rightful place at the top. The beauty of rating system like Elo and Glicko is that they allow every team to start at the same point in the middle and move to there respective (and relative) skill level. This means alliances could be created and destroyed without penalties the to players. They could simply create a new alliance and start at the default ranking if their current alliance is dysfunctional. It would add some volatility but would also allow for interesting revolutions in the field of play.

Another important feature of ratings systems is that when implement properly they always encourage more balanced competition. However, I pointed out previously the current system impacts mobility between tiers which is something that should be fixed. As it is now it is more difficult for a high performing server to break into the next tier than it should be. This is becuase the current scoring system in glicko (using the sin function) underwards strong performances and over rewards weak performances. This results in weakly performing servers being aided by the scoring mechanism and the stronger performing servers being penalized. Here is my original post on the matter: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Error-in-WvW-Glicko-Scoring

sparc.3649:

Liston.9708:

Been some time since only people who enter wvw count against the cap and set capacity status.

What is unknown is how quickly the status reacts to mass transfer on or off a server – seems to be @ 3 weeks.

No transfers is just silly – every game I ever played had some form of transfer available. This coming from a guy who also is on the same server as originally rolled at head start and never moved…..

Oh, don’t get me wrong; I’d be doing that just to be a d***! It’s gets old seeing all the fair weather players bounce around just so they could be “winners”. Yea, they’re “winners” alright >.> They’re certainly a “special kind of special”!

I seriously doubt bandwagonners are the problem. The fact that you feel their jumping around lacks character is pretty much irrelevant. There isn’t as strong a motivation to be a part of a server as their is to be a part of a guild. Which is why WvW should become more guild centric. They are the community builders … not some fixed game element like a server.

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

The Fees have not stopped server stacking.

The game is currently broken and there is not a FIX for population imbalance within the current WvW Server centric framework.

Dusty Moon.4382:

No – the server fees are there to block people from all being on the top 3 servers only. No server transfer fees are what caused the destacking of the lower tier servers in the first place. All it would do is recreate the same issue.

And yet you need to pay to transfer to ANY server regardless of tier. Not as much, but there is still a fee.

The issue still exists. There is no salvaging things as they are. The fees are pointless now. Until the changes they should just give the freedom to poke around the different communities.

They should still limit populations, they just shouldnt limit mobility.

Dusty Moon.4382:

TorquedSoul.8097:

My understanding was that the server transfer fees where intended to help maintain some population balance. I don’t believe that anyone thinks that is working.

Given that WvW is considered completely broken as a result of the population imbalance and that most of us expect the “server” model to disappear, it makes little sense to keep us locked on a particular server.

I have been considering looking at other wvw communities to search for guilds. I expect whatever change is made to WvW to fix the population problem will be guild centric and as such I want to find a guild that is a good fit for me. However I am limited to the server that I am on and unless I want to pay $50-$100 in transfer fees while looking I am stuck where I am.

The population balance is broken. It doesn’t matter now if players stack servers because they do it regardless of the fees. And given the uncertainty of the game mode and the lack of information, some of may want to explore our options … and not pay through the nose to do it.

No the server fees were there to PREVENT SERVER STACKING. We had no server transfer fees for 6 months of the game and everyone moved to the top tier servers and left the other tier servers

Not sure who you are responding to.

They really need to open this up and just let people move around.

Who are we kidding at this point.

I want to avoid setting up f2p accounts just to look around. I think that is a bigger problem than just ending the transfer fees.

I’m not suggesting that it would fix anything. I am suggesting that the fee hasn’t really help the problem.

And since we expect a solution to the population imbalance as that is getting focused on in the changes, in the interim it would be nice to be able to explore the rest of the WvW community without paying for the transfers.

My understanding was that the server transfer fees where intended to help maintain some population balance. I don’t believe that anyone thinks that is working.

Given that WvW is considered completely broken as a result of the population imbalance and that most of us expect the “server” model to disappear, it makes little sense to keep us locked on a particular server.

I have been considering looking at other wvw communities to search for guilds. I expect whatever change is made to WvW to fix the population problem will be guild centric and as such I want to find a guild that is a good fit for me. However I am limited to the server that I am on and unless I want to pay $50-$100 in transfer fees while looking I am stuck where I am.

The population balance is broken. It doesn’t matter know if players stack servers because they do it regardless of the fees. And given the uncertainty of the game mode and the lack of information, some of may want to explore our options … and not pay through the nose to do it.

Thanks for responding and I look forward to seeing the changes.

psizone.8437:

TorquedSoul.8097:

Gunner Morton.8340:

Why are there no devs posting it on this subforum?

Given the tone of the posts in this subformum would you want to respond to any of it. I think that people have a right to air their grievances, but don’t expect a dev to show up so you can tell them personally how crappy a job they are doing.

I’m confident they are reading it but there is no value in commenting on anything at this point.

They shouldn’t shy away from posting because of a few bad seeds. One of the main reasons for the majority of the negative posts is the lack of communication.

They’ll need a strong backbone to get through the first week or so of openly communicating but once the angrier posters are satiated (and mods delete the actual insult posts) then progress can be made.

“There’s no point in posting because people will say negative things” is a terrible attitude to have and will get us all nowhere.

I’m fairly certain if they hopped in to the middle of the storm of “why are you killing WvW” posts it would degenerate into Dev vs Forum in a hurry.

They are reading the suggestions and ignoring histrionic outbursts.

Straegen.2938:

A Guild Alliance system addresses the issues presented. There is a great article about this here:

https://toughlovecritic.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/putting-guilds-back-into-guild-wars-wvw-alliances-part-1/

I don’t fully agree with their concept but this system would be far better than Megaserver or the current server system.

I like the alliance system in general but I would want them to keep things on a 24 hour cycle and integrate all Timezones into the same system (NA/EU) like what I posted here … https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Scoring-based-on-3-hour-block-schedule/first#post6016600

Gunner Morton.8340:

Why are there no devs posting it on this subforum?

Given the tone of the posts in this subformum would you want to respond to any of it. I think that people have a right to air their grievances, but don’t expect a dev to show up so you can tell them personally how crappy a job they are doing.

I’m confident they are reading it but there is no value in commenting on anything at this point.

Is WvW going to change so much that the API will change dramatically? And if so will we developers have an opportunity to get a look at the API before it goes live? you know, like when the WvW Beta testing starts?

What lower tier servers are trying to push up?

Ansau.7326:

For months only? BB was nightcapping even before you started to play this game…

By the same way, let’s nerf morningcapping from kartoffenside…

TorquedSoul.8097:

It does appear that they play a little later into the night (about 4 hours) than the other top tier servers in EU. You can see their activity on page 7 of this report.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uamfenexf9zbh5j/2016-02-20_2-1.report.pdf?dl=0

WoW, congratulations for such insane work!! Do you do this every week for all matchups?

I have the data for all the tiers but I generally only look at NA servers because I am looking for a new server in the lower tier. I just realized that the EU data is flakey so I pulled that report I linked. Supply efficiency should not be above 100%. Never happens on NA data but it is happening in EU. odd.

The OP is right that off hour capping is a huge advantage. Whether you view it as unfair depends on how you view the game. If you think that WvW is about building global communities then it isn’t really unfair. But if you think the game should be strictly skill based, then you hate it.

In its current state community organization overrides “skill”.

It does appear that they play a little later into the night (about 4 hours) than the other top tier servers in EU. You can see their activity on page 7 of this report.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uamfenexf9zbh5j/2016-02-20_2-1.report.pdf?dl=0

Tongku.5326:

funghetto.1584:

“Points per kill will be turned on and kept on. This is to more directly recognize the contribution that fighting other players adds to the success of the world.”

more players now ganking whatever goes by.
or even better spawn camping.

i ask to remove it.

(never saw so many gankers around showing their burst and evades allowed in every class after release of Hot)

The purpose of existance of WVW is mass, open world PVP and it is has lost massive amount of players due to going in opposite direction and lack of support for those. From the sound of things, you are the kind of player that would feel more at home in EOTM rather then WVW and like many others here, I very much disagree with you.

I would make an entire PPK system. In this system all PPK bonusses would be stackable up to max of 5 PPK per single kill, and there would be more then 5 ways to get to the conditions which will provide max kill value.

For example:

Base = 1 PPK per 1 kill, as is now

Kill opponent whose side outnumbers you by 30%, 1 PPK
Kill opponent whose side outnumbers you by 60%, +2 PPK
Kill opponent while under effect of defense event, +1 PPK
Kill opponent while opposing players have generated orange swords, +1 PPK
Kill opponent while the opposing force is under effect of any of the guild banners, recent stealth effect from the SMC fountain, etc. +1 PPK
Kill opponent while being the only sole defender under the effects of defense event, +2 PPK, this would be a little bonus for people who solo defend camps, yaks, towers, etc.
Kill opponent after remaining 1 hour on a map or completing 10 events on the map (whichever comes first, and the number values are actually TBD, kinda like the PVE map bonusses), +1 PPK
Make the above stackable to max +3 PPK

Next, tie the above PPK bonusses to MF and provide MF bonus.
Next, impliment personal reward tracks and tie them into the PPK bonus.

Just the above would greatly contribute to improving the whole WVW. Being more PPK instead of PPT focused, matches would be determined at least in large part by actual player battles instead of capping and holding empty objectives. Getting kills + additional MF while being outnumbered would go a LONG way to give players an incentive to get better (thus reflect a bit more on skill) and blob a bit less.

Under this system, you can still blob, but you’d be just slightly better off not doing so.

I wonder how keeping track of all that information to evaluate PPK would impact server performance?

gennyt.3428:

TorquedSoul.8097:

Trajan.4953:

Can we all just agree on one thing, PPK is given to appease fights groups only but has little to no value in the overall score as a havoc group can easily counter any PPK by taking unguarded objectives on the Desert BL’s. It’s a band aid.

I can agree with that. And given there is never going to be a “Fair” fight in WvW it is right to not over-reward for kills. You can’t have an week long open world conflict with thousands of people and expect fair fights. To expect this is bordering on insanity. The history of warfare doesn’t support it why should a game simulating large scale warfare have it?

I’m tired of hearing people say “we could have won if it were a fair fight, if they didn’t have [greater numbers, all that siege, cheesey builds.]” If you don’t like the game that Anet made, go play game a like this that was better implemented …

oh right, there aren’t many games like this and those that do exist don’t result in fair fights either (EvE anyone.)

Please ArenaNet, give the fight guilds their Arena.

This game doesn’t really simulate large scale warfare….

Plus, I don’t think many players expect “fair” fights in WvWvW. However, when you show and or become known for poor sportsmanship, don’t expect people to jump at the chance to play with you, in the end it’s a game regardless if you’re friend or foe. This is why, in a developmentally stagnant mode, I laugh at the “red is dead, this is war!” type people. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Also you do realize fight guilds aren’t always GvG guilds right? The term “zerg busting” should ring a bell. All thumbs are fingers but not all fingers are thumbs good sir.

From my experience, fight guilds are interested in fights. Sure they don’t all engage in a structured GvG, but I hear plenty of complaints about fight imbalances, the use of siege equipment and cheesey OP builds which makes me think that if they could abandon the PPT nonsense and just have an arena, many would be happier.

When I hear game balance I laugh. Until population is balanced nothing else really matters. And even when that happens there will be complaints about style of play. “Our” style is more honorable, noble and skill based, their style is cheesey, rude and unsportsmanlike. This mindset comes from the losers more than the winners. When you are losing week after week you have to make sense of it. You know, the game is broken, Its imbalanced, the other side is afraid of a fair fight or they are just plain bad people. It gets tiring after a while … the “we can win if want to, but its more meaningful to say the other side is bad and blame Anet for encouraging their style of play.”

Trajan.4953:

Can we all just agree on one thing, PPK is given to appease fights groups only but has little to no value in the overall score as a havoc group can easily counter any PPK by taking unguarded objectives on the Desert BL’s. It’s a band aid.

I can agree with that. And given there is never going to be a “Fair” fight in WvW it is right to not over-reward for kills. You can’t have an week long open world conflict with thousands of people and expect fair fights. To expect this is bordering on insanity. The history of warfare doesn’t support it why should a game simulating large scale warfare have it?

I’m tired of hearing people say “we could have won if it were a fair fight, if they didn’t have [greater numbers, all that siege, cheesey builds.]” If you don’t like the game that Anet made, go play game a like this that was better implemented …

oh right, there aren’t many games like this and those that do exist don’t result in fair fights either (EvE anyone.)

Please ArenaNet, give the fight guilds their Arena.

Dawdler.8521:

TorquedSoul.8097:

This is at the heart of the matter. The real solution is to drop the concept of regional servers if possible. Then full map coverage becomes a trivial issue.

And instead, latency become a major issue.

Elder Scrolls Online did this. Well actually they said that EU and NA was separate at launch and then when players caught on the truth it was like “oh right we forgot about that, you are all playing on US servers” followed by months of silence.

ESO AvA was kitten in the EU. Unplayable lagfests. And guess how hard the game bombed? Yeah. Regional servers are needed.

Which is why I suggested a server cluster rotation so that the prime playing times of all time zones would be able to avoid lag. It would only impact those there were playing during not standard times for those regions (mornings and and the middle of the night.)

Shilajit.9023:

what is happening with players, they think na/eu server are divided based on time zone .

that is not the case na/eu are divided based on ping. if you play from eu u’ll get higher ping on na servers & same goes for eu cuz of the technical limitations.

this is why mmos breaks region not because of timezone but people seems to think otherwise & think their time is superior to others who are not from their timezone.

This is at the heart of the matter. The real solution is to drop the concept of regional servers if possible. Then full map coverage becomes a trivial issue.

However the internet ping issue is not likely to be resolved. One solution is regional switching of servers based based on time. For instance, having three 8 hour blocks (NA, EU, SEA) and then each server synchronize game state and switches over to the next time zone server cluster. This means that those playing on their “active” time block (for NA maybe 4pm to midnight) play on the NA server cluster, but after midnight players are dumped briefly (like a mini reset) and then the EU server clusters take over.

This would cause some ping problems for those that play during odd hours but overall it resolve the coverage wars problem and only cause 3 brief interruptions to play a day.

Of course the concept of a “world” should get ditch for large alliances also to resolve population imbalance problems. And have tiers not based on scoring but alliance population.

I’m sure I am missing a multitude of technical issues but I am just throwing this out there. Probably wont happen but it would be nice.

Screw PPK. When someone dies in WvW, they are out for the rest of the week. That will make the fights tense and make defending a hell of lot more easier.

And the better fight squads could slowly win through attrition even if they were outnumbered.

Heh? Heh?

briggah.7910:

thread looks to be turning into another pvf/hate on yb thread.

Anytime someone mentions the score, this is bound to happen.

Sviel.7493:

So this is just the point value of the captured thing rather than the actual points gained from it? If so, we have to consider that a server that’s facing low capping servers has less opportunity to cap things itself. Thus, someone crushing their opposition will fare poorly in this graph.

Also, the total PPT from all structures on a BL is 145. The total points from Yaks in one tick is ~205.

Thus, while nifty, I don’t think this metric is going to prove useful. Of course, maybe the point was just that it’s cool, in which case, ignore me…

When normalized and compared to the actual (or estimated) PPT score, it can show how efficient a server is in scoring. I’ve done these calculations for Tier 1 NA already. But the posted chart by itself simply shows how much work is done by a server. Which is useful in understanding activity. And yes, those tiers that more rapidly backcap each other will have higher activity levels. Those servers that cap little but score more, are holding objectives longer. They are either good at defending or facing unmotivated opposition.

Helys Vikonas.9125:

Interesting break-up. The tiers are pretty easy to distinguish in most cases too.

Any chance of getting the same graph for EU servers? Would love to see how things stand over here.

I was unaware that the start times for EU and NA were different. I assume that both are using UTC time but the EU start is about 7 hours earlier I think. So I am missing data this week but I should have a full set of EU data next week.

Some servers that are performing strong are still working their way up so are placed much higher than their rating/tier on this chart. Dragonbrand is the big mover. That process is a bit slowed by the scoring mechanism used in Anets Glicko. Long boring write up here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Error-in-WvW-Glicko-Scoring

Zenith.6403:

That looks interesting. So it’s the point value of captured objectives 14th of February? Where did you get this information?

Its the point value of all captures for the week starting on the February 14th.

This chart shows the total point value of all captured objectives during the week. More captures doesn’t always translate into more PPT points because of capture timing but it does provide a sense of the activity level (active population) of the server.

Another “I hate the new maps” thread. Attacking a defended objective is suppose to be hard. Having terrain that alters combat is a good thing.

Those that complain simply want arena style fights. I sincerely hope Anet gives you a GvG arena so you all stop with complaints.

The biggest problem with WvW is population imbalances. The second biggest problem is WvW server cultures that, for what ever reason, don’t promote participation.

WvW is a game of community and numbers. Skill only matters when numbers are balanced. The reason that fights and kills are weighted so little in the scoring is because the expectation of a fair fight is low.

The center event should be a managed arena event.

Make it 20v20 GvG fights and which ever server wins the most matches gets the buff.

The total event should take 6 hours.

Squad challenges are queued. There is no limit. All challenges are met in the order they are received.

If a squad lays down a challenge and no one responds in a half hour, the get the victory by default. If all challenges are ignored they still only count as one victory per half hour and then the clock starts ticking again.

The arena should be just a big open space. No obstacles. Pure theorycrafting and maneuvering tactics.

Simple, Skill based and will engage the ego of every fightmander in WvW. They can even have a spectator mode so that we can all watch the horror show unfold.

I guess the glicko problem is going to get buried with this unrelated thread.

When you consider this design flaw with the cost of server transfers, servers have essentially been put in a pay to win situation of they want to move up tiers.

In this case, I would say the poor pairing is the result of poor modeling.

The poor pairing is the result of the population flux and server stacking and the flux and stacking is driven by the poor model that makes it difficult to push up into the next tier.

displayname.8315:

Virtute.8251:

What TorquedSoul has shown is that ANet should probably change the type of curve being applied, because the curve they use is too aggressive in punishing the winner and propping up the loser.

Yep this curve that punishes the winner and props up the loser should go, or be adjusted.

IMO glicko is just bad because it forces people to PPT push, instead of simply winning.

I still like idea of winner gets +1 rank (2nd and 3rd get +0). So matches would not flip flop ever week, but after a few wins the rank up would be enough to move a tier.

Or maybe the curve change.. since a total blowout win could move you were you belong.

Its the strength of victory (SOV) component that Anet added to the glicko 2 system that results in the PPT push. Glicko 2 can be used with the standard Elo approach of win/lose/draw = 1/0/0.5 where the final score doesn’t matter.

SOV works fine so long as the scoring mechanism is based on the historical scoring data and no one is competing against others who have dramatically different ratings that would require a blowout win to avoid losing points. The entire reason for ratings systems is to ensure competitive matches so those situations shouldn’t exist anyway. The PPT grind happens when the match is assured of victory but the players must keep grinding to stay even in rating. That is the result of either poor pairing or poor modeling.

The benefit of an SOV system is that it would naturally reduce oscillations in the rating by dampening the changes based on score provided performance was consistent. Glicko 2 is also suppose to reduce oscillations but it buffers based on volatility in ratings and not an individual match score.

Because there are so few servers in the field of competition and because they all must compete every week, a simple ladder would have probably been best for WvW.

The glicko would work great for Structured PvP though using a simple win/lose/draw scoring system.

Thanks for having a look at my original post.

However I think merging it with this post may have been an error as they are different issues.

My original post deals with the WvW Glicko rating system and how the old Sine function for calculating the “actual” score is not consistent with the historical data and is therefore not properly rewarding the servers performance. As it stands, it doesn’t reward strong performers enough and doesn’t penalize weak performers enough. This greatly impacts tier mobility.

Here is the link again to the original post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Error-in-WvW-Glicko-Scoring

Macilien.3078:

I’m not an expert, but as far as I can tell the sine is just used to determine the degree of a servers win/loss, this value is then fed into the glicko algorithm to determine the points each server gets for the matchup, so the sine itself does not determine the points each server gets.

The sine function is used to report the “actual” score that is compared to the “expected” score. In Elo and in Glicko they are used the same (Actual-Expected) x some multiplier.

By not having the calculation of the actual score tied to the historical distribution of results in their strength of victory system, they are not properly rewarding the effort.

I originally posted this in the WvW forum but maybe that wasn’t the right location for it.

Here is the link to the original post. I don’t want to re-post the entire thing.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Error-in-WvW-Glicko-Scoring

psyco.4082:

Just curious, but did you use your model or analyze the EU data to compare?

I used NA and EU data. Anything I could get from millenium.

I simply commented on the consequences of the math. There are other behaviors that could cause server movements through the tiers. Population stacking being one of them.

The question I would have is whether the population stacking is a natural phenomenon or one brought on by the need to have a significant advantage to move up to the next tier. Because of the difficulty in moving between tiers, servers may need to recruit to increase their population to make the move.

This essentially results in tiers sorted by population so why have a rating at all.

The tragedy of this is that lower population server with better skill can still get tier locked because of the inability to achieve the ridiculous results that are required.

The problem is related the scoring mechanism used by Anet: I just wrote a big long post on it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Error-in-WvW-Glicko-Scoring/first#post5976718

The image at the bottom show how the sine function punishes servers trying to push up and allows weakers servers to keep pulling them down.

I’m not sure if this should be reported as a bug but there is an issue with the current modeling in the WvW ratings system. I assume that this link is still a valid description of the strength of victory modeling. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/The-math-behind-WvW-ratings/first#post2034699

The problem is that the Sine function model that is currently used to award the actual score in the glicko rating deviates considerably from the actual real distribution of results. I retrieved a history of scores from http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups and parsed the results and converted the scores into the portions used by the Anet Glicko system. I then converted that distribution into a probability distribution that the rating system uses to assign the “actual” score that is use to correct the ratings. I’ve attached an image of the plots that I did for this explanation.

The black curve is the real distribution of scores. It was normally distributed about 0.5 with a SD of 0.15.

The Green curve is the Sine function curve that is currently used. This curve currently over rewards lower performing servers and under rewards higher performing servers. The worst error occurs at 0.7 and 0.3 on the x axis. In these locations the error is about 0.11. this means that higher performing servers (0.7) performing in this range are getting about a 10% penalty in score and the lower performing (0.3) server is getting a 10% bonus. It doesn’t matter what your server rating is, if you perform in the error range you being rewarded improperly.

The real problem with this is when a server is expected to have a really high score not to lose rating points. The best example of this right now is Dragonbrand (1839.9965). They are currently competing against Stormbluff Isle (1667.1971) and Maguuma (1534.7854).

According the current system, Dragonbrand would have an expected score of 0.71 against Stormbluff Isle. According to the sine function currently used, they would Dragonbrand would need to have a score portion of 0.64. But according to the real data all that should be required to achieve that score is 0.59. That 0.05 difference is significant over the course of the week where the overall proportion shrinks as the scores go up. Against Maguuma the situation is worse. The Sine function requires a portion of 0.73 when only a 0.65 is justified by the historical data. The conclusion is that Dragonbrand (and any top ranked server in a teir) must work harder than necessary not to be pulled back down. And the lower ranked servers will have an easier time pull the top down.

If the servers were pooled and randomly competed this wouldn’t be a problem. It would simply result in a virtual floor and ceiling for the ratings. Downward pressure on the top and upward pressure on the bottom. Everything pushed to the middle. But when you have tiers, this makes Tier mobility difficult. Servers pushing up have to put forth a monumental effort to break in to the next tier and the servers on the bottom of the a Tier get protected by the system even after they stop performing at a level worthy of their tier. To be more blunt, it screws servers like Dragonbrand and Tarnished Coast and benefits servers like Blackgate and Sea of Sorrows who have had long periods of poor performance and still refuse to drop down to the next tier.

In a Strength of Victory system like the one Anet is using, the score awarded should be consistent with the distribution of the historical scoring data. I understand that when a system is initiated and there is no data to reference you must guess. But now there is plenty of data to use for reference.

I’m not sure where the Sine function came from but modeling normally distributed data can be done with a logistic curve much more easily. I believe this is why Elo used it. I have modeled a logistic curve to fit the historical data and it shown in the chart as the red line. The sigmoid midpoint is 0.5, and the k value is 10.91. This k value gives the lowest sum of squares of the difference between the historical data and the logistic model.

You should consider fixing this to reward hard working servers that are trying to push up the ranks and maybe more importantly to properly punish servers that are coasting at the bottom of upper tiers.

Just as an aside, reducing the range of the MMR variability by capping it at 100 has also aggravated the problem because it forces servers like Dragonbrand and Tarnished Coast to compete against lower ranked servers more often which keeps them weighed down.

I’ve also attached a csv of some of the derived data. I’ve included column headers but it is still a bit messy.
Columns
Proportion: a score proportion
Count: The number of times the proportion block (by 0.01) appeared.
Cumulative: Cumulative count.
%cumulative: total Probability distribution of real proportions data.
Sine: the result of the proportion as a function of the Sine function currently used.
Corrected: The result of the proportion as a function of the logistic function.
diff^2: squared diff of %cumulative and Corrected.

EDIT: Changed the x axis on the graph to be more consistent with my comments.

Is the WvW API misreporting Kills and deaths? I am seeing some maps reporting 0 kills and deaths at the end of the week. I am pretty sure this isn’t the case in Tier 1. The maps that are reporting deaths and kills seem to be terribly low.

I’ve attached my last pull from last weeks (2016-01-31) WvW api. BlueHome is reporting zero kills and zero deaths.

Nabrok.9023:

The same could be accomplished with a “successful_yaks” field. For towers/keeps/castles this would be the number that arrived, and for camps it would be the number that reached their destination.

This would be ideal for those of us that analyze data as well as scored kills and stomps.

Since the auto upgrades will be going away, will the tier of objectives be available in the WvW match endpoints?

I wasn’t sure if GM’s in game would still have that ‘not arenanet’ message. I will report the email.

Is this BS or what? here is the text of the message.

“We are sorry to inform you that your login account torquedsoul.8097 will be shutdown or partially limited within 72 hours due to currency transactions or abnormal login. If you want to remove restrictions please click the following link to validate:
(address omitted)
Please keep in mind that Guild Wars 2 is a global game with hundreds of thousands of players. This means that standards of behavior must be upheld.

GM En Flaming"

Trying to avoid having players install any additional software. For larger groups this could be a problem.

Is there any hope of having a squad endpoint for commanders that shows total supply available in their squad?

Looks like this discussion has been going on for a while. This link was in github,
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/api/Character-position/5253349

I hope this means that map info is both feasible and is going to happen.

Many group organization apps would benefit greatly from this simple piece of information. I recognize that exact coordinates may create some problems, but how difficult would be to add the characters current map to the API?

Just knowing whether a character is active and what map they on would be huge for those organizing large groups (WvW and Raids). Getting the exact coordinates may create a burden, I wouldn’t that high level info would stress the servers too much.