We don’t know how difficult the linking process is nor do we know what analytics they are tracking.
From what Tyler has said, mainly on reddit, the 3 months is purely to allow glicko for the linked worlds to settle. My argument would be is it really necessary to do that? Glicko is not measured for the low ranked world so linkages can’t be defined by glicko. And in terms of keeping the mode fresh it might be better to have more volatile glicko to keep more variety in matchups.
I don’t think Glicko should be allowed to settle. Already statements were made here about people leaving T4 because that tier appears to be locked and getting stale.
Wow, didn’t notice that before…there’s about a 200 point cliff separating T4 from T3, where the rest of the pack has less than 100 point cliffs to bump them into the next tier.
This is exactly why allowing glicko to settle is a mistake.
Overwatch is out and is a far better team and objective based game
The mistake is having players play to legendary for in-game rewards.
No. That is not a mistake. Legendary backpack in PvP is what resurrected PvP in the first place. If there was no legendary reward, PvE players would not have come to PvP, and we would still wait 10 minutes in queue, while Twitch channel would have had 250 viewers on Pro League, instead of 2500 like it had last monday. Why? Because of no players. Legendary items in PvP is a marketing strategy to make PvP more active, because most players enjoy PvE, not PvP.
Its going to kill it as well, may many players I know (including me) have burned out on spvp due to the grind exacerbated by the extremely poor matchmaking. And with Overwatch out there is a better objective, team based pvp game available now.
The tournament is… as it is, and now you wish to ban it’s players?!
So the pro league and the game itself have no integrity any more? The exploiters have shown by their actions that they have no respect for the game, why should anet treat them with any consideration at all?
Well they didn’t ban some proven exploiters at all and allowed them to play in the pro leagues yesterday.
It’s a rank system for god’s sake…
Tied to a reward track that had the aim that everyone should be able to get the reward. There are conflicting goals at work.
Speaking for myself on Kaineng, I am NOT in favor of World Linking as it stands right now. However, the poll seems to indicate that Linking will get some attention if this poll passes – so given an impossible choice, I guess it’s Yes. I’m hopeful it can be reworked into a positive system.
This was why I voted yes as well, however posts by the devs have me worried that they see the current system as it is as a solution to population disparities when it isn’t and that further development on it might not be until after other changes such as the scoring changes, in which case it might not be for 6-12 months.
I voted yes because I wanted maps to be full again like a couple of years ago, and this addressed it.
Anyone who says this is a bandaid is just flat out wrong.
The OP stated that population has dropped significantly on TC, many on the smaller servers are clearly dissatisfied with the linkage system and therefore will probably stop playing as well, which implies nothing has really changed therefore it is a bandaid.
We don’t know how difficult the linking process is nor do we know what analytics they are tracking.
From what Tyler has said, mainly on reddit, the 3 months is purely to allow glicko for the linked worlds to settle. My argument would be is it really necessary to do that? Glicko is not measured for the low ranked world so linkages can’t be defined by glicko. And in terms of keeping the mode fresh it might be better to have more volatile glicko to keep more variety in matchups.
Now we get to present day. All the servers mentioned above are locked however most of their linked servers are not. Nobody in their right mind should want to move to somewhere like TC or BG’s linked servers because it means you’ll be stuck in a two hour queue.
Yet ET has received a lot of transfers.
How can you tell whether it was the world linking or the reward tracks or something else that has “reinvigorated” this game mode? ANet changed everything all at the same time, so it’s impossible to tell what has actually had an impact or made a difference.
Yep as I said before the wording is at the very least disingenuous, world linking probably had the least effect of any of the changes on any population uptick.
Linking is a great idea but it is being poorly executed. Anet needs to decide if they really want to fix balance or just make money to the point wvw dies because of greed.
The beta linking start should never have had the top servers being linked especially BG. What was the point of linking the top server only to make it pennies to stack the server linked to BG.
Enough time has already passed in this beta to see unlinking the top server or servers needs to happen now to help the bottom servers. Anet has the inside numbers and scoring to see what is going on and does not need 3 months to act for beta server linking. This is beta and we get that!
100% agree with all of this. I don’t think servers should be locked however but they need to find solutions to population disparities whilst still allowing players to move if they desire. I still think some sort of overall 3 faction system with dynamic map opening and closing based on population and based on alliances between current servers is where they should be going.
And if they do? More money for Anet to invest in WvW … Finally making our game mode competitive and viable to the pve market shop crowd.
Budgeting doesn’t work like that.
NA is currently on with under 1,100 viewers.
I joined Twitch and watched Pro League. It’s so awesome. It has about 2500 viewers. I love all this enthusiasm players have for PvP ingame.
Thank you ArenaNet, thank you. These high numbers shows the world we are many players loving PvP in this game.
2500 viewers is nothing, there are individual Overwatch streamers with more than that let alone the tournament streams. Having said that I doubt it reached 2500 today given last week it didn’t even reach 1500.
The tier system is meant to put u where u belong, if ur having close matches and win about 50% of the time thus staying where u are it seems like u reached ur appropriate place
In which theres no point in playing any more, which is counter-intuitive design considering this an MMO, where the whole point is to keep players interested through opportunities for progression.
This isn’t counter-intuitive, to progress you have to progress your skill to be able to climb into the higher skill divisions. It’s of interest to the players that want to be better performing at pvp
Its counter intuitive when the legendary achievements are designed to be obtained by progressing up tiers and anet themselves state that the intention is that anybody be able to get the legendary backpack if they play enough.
@Skyshroud: It’s completely logical: Anet can unlink the pairings once the other lower servers are more populated.
And then they’ll stack the next server in the matchup with the larger server they want to stay with (players have already said this is what they’ll do), I can make the gold required for the transfer in 1 night. The fact is the server linking as it is currently implemented makes it far easier to stack than before which I’m sure was not the intention but could easily have been foreseen. And anet as is their wont are moving as slow as molasses in fixing the situation, heck they won’t even acknowledge it as an issue.
(edited by morrolan.9608)
On NA servers the matching of SBI into T2 is very poorly done when it didn’t even come close to first in its previous T3 matchup and is clearly significantly behind both FA and Maguuma. It just results in an extremely poor match for the week for all 3 servers.
While I understand the poor matchup and the frustration associated with it, poor matchups existed even before this latest wvw beta.
Yeah but they’re seemingly doing the matchups manually now so there’s no excuse.
On NA servers the matching of SBI into T2 is very poorly done when it didn’t even come close to first in its previous T3 matchup and is clearly significantly behind both FA and Maguuma. It just results in an extremely poor match for the week for all 3 servers.
The only other hitch now is they are already working on the scoring changes(which is expected to take a while), so any other population balance avenues won’t be worked on until that is done.
Yet they’ve supposedly been working hard on WvW changes for well over 18 months now. One can only assume most of that development has been thrown out.
If you are a 5, the system will try to team you with 5 and then match you against other 5s, so 5 vs 5, You can also get 4 vs 6 (but these games are winnable as well).
Looking at the feedback this is not happening.
I remember the old days when SoR/BG/JQ would spend our last day just karma training one of the maps in a perfect circle. It was always a nice way to end the week.
Yeah that was great and it happened when TC replaced SOR as well. Of course YB, as they are wont to do, spoiled that party. YC couldn’t have a mutual K train oh no, it was only OK for them to k train on their terms.
if people are calling in sick to play a game, those people have bigger issues……
Edit: People can take AS MANY days off as they want presently. Your world wont change whether you win or lose a wvw match…..
Well yeah and anet shouldn’t pander to them as this will. But then anet have been pandering to those with OCD issues ever since they discovered that casual players won;t sustain the game.
BTW hope you tell DK that.
There are very few (if any) features in the game that couldn’t be improved with additional resources invested in them. However, that then becomes a question of priorities. Do we improve Feature A, Feature B or Feature C first? Or perhaps we should prioritize building an entirely new feature instead?
So the first thing we need to ask is: “Is World Linking a positive improvement to the game and worth keeping around?”
If it is, then the next time we ask players to determine which feature work we prioritize, additional World Linking improvements can be one of the options. But it’s important to ask that question in a poll where it’s clear what the tradeoffs to that choice are. For instance: Players may want improvements to World Linking, but perhaps not at the expense of delaying improvements to Scoring.
I can’t tell whether or not I like world linking enough to vote unless I can first find out a few things: If we do away with world linking, what will be done instead? If I approve of the changes, how am I to indicate that I want improvements to scoring before I want improvements to world linking?
Spot on, I voted yes but this reply make some want to change my vote and maybe I won’t vote yes for an initiative in future polls due to this sort of ambiguity.
Our primary motivation for avoiding running another tournament, is that at the end of every tournament we saw a permanent dip in the number of players playing WvW. Presumably this was due to players burning themselves out during the tournament.
However, we can still run a poll to see if the majority of the community wants another 4 week tournament, even if it might be bad for the long term WvW population numbers. Though even if ‘running another tournament’ won the poll, we’d probably hold off until we get the scoring updates in.
I really hope you do hold anotehr tourney…would like to be able to get a weapon….can’t get one unless you have another….don’t have enough to turn in.
Read the thread, there will be alternate ways of getting tickets for those weapons.
The wording is disingenuous in implying players came back due to world linking. Players came back mainly due to alpine and the other qol changes.
And as I said on the world linking thread my feedback on the poll is that a yes/no poll is insufficient. I like the general thrust of the technology but I think it was implemented badly with the issues such as easier server stacking and the disreagrd shown to low ranked servers. The poll has to provide more options.
WORLD LINKING POLL
Dear Anet, In the poll just posted to ‘approve’ world linknig, you indicate you have seen a big increase in WvW participation. As Alpine and other WvW changes (reward track etc) were released at same time, how do you know the participation has increased from world linking?
Very good point that has to be emphasised. I doubt the linking had very much to do with the increase at all.
Also my feedback on the poll is that a yes/no poll is insufficient. I like the general thrust of the technology but I think it was implemented badly with the issues that the above poster has articulated to do with easier server stacking. The poll has to provide more options.
Patch today and no fix yet :-(
If you had it waypointed there is a bug that enemy teams can sometimes use the waypoint.
It is really just that. If you win too many matches it forces you into losses. If you lose too many it forces wins on your even if you afk. You really can’t do anything about those matches. What the point of even trying? Might as well to lose on purpose to trick system into thinking you need wins. Back to season 1 crap. GJ.
I don’t understand, the MM is not like S1 where that could literally happen. From what I understand like S2 you are being grouped with players of a similar mmr to you its just the matchmaker is trying to match you against enemies in your pip range closer to your mmr. How is it trying to force you actually into a win/loss/win/loss situation?
When anet introduced the squad UI they should have restricted it to say 25 players in WvW. That maybe would have helped. This idea was given as feedback way back when they had the CDi on this as well so its not as though its hindsight.
The two things they learned were the cost/grind balance in HoT wasn’t in line with the expectations of their players. This is why they switched gears to bring it back in line with the April patch. They saw their established community voting with their wallets. That problem is solved now, and we shouldn’t see such a radical change in the grind versus income level in future expansions.
The second lesson they learned is that GW2 players expected a MUCH larger amount of core-like content for kitten price tag.
I would ask why didn’t they realise this from the start? Why did it take the poor performance of HOT and the storm of criticism that followed it to make them change?
SkyShroud:
The Population discrepancy is the main problem agreed, but the scoring has also been one of the reasons why especially NA has kept stacking servers and time zones. So scoring is another piece in the puzzle.
Changes to scoring will encourage more NA stacking though.
I can understand this position, tournaments were a double edged sword. It broke and destroyed servers, and but also boosted and solidified others. I was on SoR for all three tournaments and we had a massive player exodus after each one. The burnout was real, I personally got so burned out after the first season I barely stepped into wvw for months.
I was on SoR until it imploded out of T1 and season 1 basically led to the destruction of SoR as it was then. Hence why I’m personally salty about seasons. I loved my time on SoR, the best time I’ve had in the game.
No. I had a dev answer this question last season.
According to him, all rewards are useless after the end of this year’s seasons. I think that’s why some of the division crossing requirements were removed. Otherwise, many people would have been out of the running for wings by the end of S2 ( including me.)
The same dev did say that there would be an alternate way to get the wings.
But we still don;t know if our progress towards obtaining the wings will be taken into account eg. competing 3 of the 4 year of ascension meta achievements.
So uninstall this too – this game is balanced around the idea that Elite specs are the new thing and if you’re not going to pay you’re going to be underpowered. Your team will rage at you and for good reason.
Its not a good reason, the balance should be such that he can play the core class without being significantly underpowered.
Shame that wars can’t fight/hold 2 decent players at once like scrapper, neither he can go stealth to avoid being loaded with condis/CC
Pro league teams are thinking seriously of going back to using warrior and none of them will be running engi.
ok then why im i being placed with people that have no clue how to rotate when i do?
Cause MMR doesn’t actually reflect skill. They should have reset it. It is blindingly obvious many many players are carrying an mmr which doesn’t actually reflect their skill level, hence matchmaking gets distorted. It is mindboggling that they are so set on not resetting it when other games have no problems at all resetting it each season.
Why is GW2 so different?
Why do anet think they know better than companies that are more experienced at running competitive online games?
The top tier servers are “stacking”, but they aren’t stacking themselves. They are stacking their lower tier counter part. Guilds go to the lower ranked server to play with the higher tier server (b/c they can’t go to the higher tier server). This in and of itself could balance populations from top to bottom “IF” ANet somehow locks down transfers (though I don’t see this happening since transfers = $$$). I know many guilds would be pretty upset if they got locked into a lower tier server and then had to play on a lower tier match up (that, say, maybe didn’t get as well stacked on other servers).
With the model they’ve chosen they need to redo linkages often and they need to increase the cost of transfers so the bandwagoners can’t just jump from ET to BG’s next partner when it changes for 100 gold which can be earned easily.
100g, 200g, it doesnt matter. As long as people can do it, they will. And when GW2 WvW become a race to not play WvW and instead farm gold in PvE for the next transfer, it will become a kittenty game.
Then as I and others have said they need to change the entire structure of WvW cause the mode is kittened.
The top tier servers are “stacking”, but they aren’t stacking themselves. They are stacking their lower tier counter part. Guilds go to the lower ranked server to play with the higher tier server (b/c they can’t go to the higher tier server). This in and of itself could balance populations from top to bottom “IF” ANet somehow locks down transfers (though I don’t see this happening since transfers = $$$). I know many guilds would be pretty upset if they got locked into a lower tier server and then had to play on a lower tier match up (that, say, maybe didn’t get as well stacked on other servers).
With the model they’ve chosen they need to redo linkages often and they need to increase the cost of transfers so the bandwagoners can’t just jump from ET to BG’s next partner when it changes for 100 gold which can be earned easily.
Holy crap people were quick to assume the worst. So glad I’m not a game developer.
People should read the patch notes.
Apropos of this thread here is what Tyler just said on reddit: “The current plan is to change world links once every quarter. It takes 4-6 matches (weeks) for Glicko to place the newly linked worlds in their correct tiers, so changing links faster than once a quarter would mean almost perpetual inaccurate matchups.”
My feedback is this is not enough and they are not doing anything to discourage overstacking.
Anet – they weren’t accurate from the start and the linking becomes worse daily……
So I guess we all need to move to et until that is full as well to show Anet how moronic a 3 month time frame is.
Just made another reply to Tyler’s statement so may as well put it here as well:
Another point, how can you get an accurate glicko rating when you aren’t measuring glicko for the lower ranked server anyway?
Apropos of this thread here is what Tyler just said on reddit: “The current plan is to change world links once every quarter. It takes 4-6 matches (weeks) for Glicko to place the newly linked worlds in their correct tiers, so changing links faster than once a quarter would mean almost perpetual inaccurate matchups.”
My feedback is this is not enough and they are not doing anything to discourage overstacking.
MMR is probably fine. They probably should have just reset it for this season. All the people that got carried previous seasons now have higher MMR than they should.
And many many people have a lower mmr than they should hence why not resetting it is a huge mistake.
season 3 we get both
i.e.red – blue
8 – 8
8 – 9
9 – 8
8 – 9
9 – 8something like that maybe.
otherwise, one team gonna have slightly higher overall MMR.Season 1 would have been closer:
6 – 7
6 – 5
5 – 5
5 – 4
4 – 4Your season 2 example is accurate, though could be closer in some circumstances.
Season 3 will be like a sorted version of season 1:
4 – 5
4 – 5
4 – 6
5 – 6
5 – 7
What about if there were lower ranked players in there say a couple of 2s, how would it be sorted then? Would it be:
2 – 5
2 – 5
4 – 5
5 – 6
5 – 7
Cause if thats the case there are still going to be matchmaking issues for outlying players.
There’s a problem here – you don’t get wins towards the wins achievement even if you’re rated in a higher league – so say I was diamond and made sapphire – this should give me the wins for emerald and amber league towards my achievement – but it doesn’t.
This is both sad and upsetting.
Oh please just play more, this is a good change and the only real issue is to do with the crossing division achievements which they have clearly dealt with.
They have pretty much said there won’t be any further tournaments but there will be other ways of getting the tickets.
season 3 we get both
i.e.red – blue
8 – 8
8 – 9
9 – 8
8 – 9
9 – 8something like that maybe.
otherwise, one team gonna have slightly higher overall MMR.Season 1 would have been closer:
6 – 7
6 – 5
5 – 5
5 – 4
4 – 4Your season 2 example is accurate, though could be closer in some circumstances.
Season 3 will be like a sorted version of season 1:
4 – 5
4 – 5
4 – 6
5 – 6
5 – 7
How about some more details of how matchmaking works especially in the patch notes? And why wasn’t mmr reset?
Poor viewer numbers today, started at under 1000 only got to 1400 in about the 2nd last match.
Lol. Really? You actually think that KDR matters when you have overwhelming numbers?
In fact with overwhelming numbers the KDR should be high.
Fix the stacking issue that has been around since launch. Winning is ONLY about stacking a server, skill is pointless. Penalize players that stack to win. WvW sucked at launch because of stacking and NOTHING has changed.
Everything else just doesn’t matter until the stacking issue is fixed.
Spot on this server linkage system clearly won’t solve anything unless they do more.
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