[Sugg.] Separate Tiers Into Leagues

                                                                                                                      Introduction

WvW should not be a one-size fit all game-mode. It's time to understand that and plan accordingly.

If the last five years have taught us anything, it's that the WvW playerbase has many different skill levels, interests, and playstyles. This proposal would be used in conjunction with Server Linking to give different players in WvW different experiences depending on which server they play on.

WvW Host servers would now be divided into three Tier Blocks, called Tier Leagues. Tier 1 would be Gold League. Tier 2, Tier 3, and Tier 4 would be Silver League. A fifth tier, Bronze League, would be added. Server linking will allow ANet to use the remaining 9 servers to balance matchups within those tiers.

1 Up 1 Down would operate in Silver League only, while the matchups remain constant in Gold League and Bronze League.

Changes to WvW can address a specific League. For example, PPT might be the scoring method of choice for one League while PPK might be implemented in another League. The goal is to cater to the interests of the players in that League.

Let me talk about the Leagues, which servers would be a part of them, and the different intended characteristics and playstyles of each League.

                                                                                                                          Gold League

For those looking to compete at the highest activity levels of WvW play, with non-stop action, Gold League is the place for you.

Host Servers in this League: Blackgate and 2 of the following: Yak's Bend, Sea of Sorrows, Maguuma, and/or Jade Quarry

What all of these servers have in common is organization, skill and the ability to use the mechanics of the game to their fullest potential. For example, Blackgate has consistently kept up server organization and coverage. Maguuma has a lot of skilled players and use scouts and roamers very effectively. Sea of Sorrows also has a good amount of organization.

Playstyle: Generally, going for rewards and fights (bags) rather than server competitiveness since the Tier is locked.

Changes to Game Mechanics for this League: Minimal. Gold Tier should remain as Tier 1 currently operates, except that the Host Servers in this Tier are set. Link servers and the open/closed transfer system would be used to balance the perpetual matchup. 1 Up 1 Down would no longer apply to Tier 1.

Rewards: Increase the rewards for killing enemy players.

                                                                                                                            Silver League

For those looking for an experience akin to the Tournament experience of old, with a group of competitive servers and a great deal of server parity, Silver League is the place for you.

Host Servers in this League: 9 of the following: Maguuma, Yak's Bend, Sea of Sorrows, Stormbluff Isle, Dragonbrand, Fort Aspenwood, Henge of Denravi, Tarnished Coast, Crystal Desert, and/or Jade Quarry.

From my experience, there is a good amount of parity between these servers already. Links can further balance the matchups. The only issue for these servers is winning a T2 matchup and spending a week in Tier 1. This would be eliminated by separating Tier 1 and Tier 2 - 4.

Playstyle: Use all the resources available on your server and compete for first place within this League. Server pride would play a much bigger role.

Changes to Game Mechanics for this League: Slightly reduce the map cap for each server, reducing zergs and making each side more competitive during each other's off hours.

Rewards: Increase the rewards both for winning the week's matchup and for your server's rank on the Leaderboards (like a boost to magic find or gold/badges/karma accumulated in WvW depending on the rank of your server).

                                                                                                                          Bronze League

Note: For those who would not like to see a Tier 5 added, the following servers could remain as Linked Servers to balance the Gold and Silver League matchups.

For those looking for smaller scale, more casual WvW, Bronze League is the place for you._

Host Servers in this League: Gate of Madness, Ehmry Bay, Darkhaven or Sorrow's Furnace

From what I've found, these servers although small are still alive and have retained their communities.

Playstyle: Smaller groups, roamers, casual WvW, testing out ArenaNet's potential changes like portable cannons or siege repair hammers. Because the matchup is perpetual, the focus (like Tier 1) should not only be to win the matchup. A good place to learn how to WvW.

Changes to Game Mechanics for this League: Reduce map caps by a larger margin than in Silver League, Only Tier 2 objectives, and consider removing one of the Alpine Borderlands, leaving just EB, 1 ABL, and 1 DBL map.

Rewards: Increase rewards for capping camps, sentries and ruins.

                                                                                                                    Adjusting Leagues Every Re-Link

The four groups of servers that will be created through this system are: Linked Servers used to balance matchups, Bronze League Servers, Silver League Servers, and Gold League Servers. It's possible for a server to gain enough transfers or lose enough population that switching two servers from one League to another may be warranted. This would happen at ArenaNet's discretion and be enforced upon Relinking. This may not happen every Relinking but the option is available.

                                                                                                                                     Conclusion

This concept of WvW Leagues hopes to do what WvW as a whole has not: cater to the different groups of people that enjoy this gamemode. If you have a suggestion about the implementation of this concept, or about the individual Leagues, please leave them below. I will be looking over your responses and updating the OP with your suggestions. Thanks!

I like how you have JQ suggested for silver league when it's obvious they want to be bigger, and yet Mag who obviously doesn't want to bother with BG anymore, doesn't want a link, and wants to be in mid tiers, in gold league. Also tier one or gold isn't the place for highest level of play, it's just for higher numbers.

Other than that I do agree with the idea of separate leagues now. Let players transfer to servers of different level of populations they want to play with. Lower map caps as well to support this.

try this bc it may rekindle player interest

Are you going to force certain "playstyle" for each "league"? That's just preconception nonsense on how you think a tier is "supposed" to play like.

I find this concept ridiculous and it twist WvW into an abomination.

This idea has been brought up before. Heck I have even brought it up for discussion on the old forums. The problem is that locking servers into tiers makes scores essentially meaningless. It doesn't matter if you show up, or even do anything. You will still be in the same tier matched up against the same servers permanently no matter what you do. People would basically just play for individual rewards. People may say they don't care about scores and PPT and all that, but it is a big factor in driving peoples behavior.

WvW is not really setup to work this way, being a 24/7 game mode that revolves around fighting over objectives.

Remove ALL waypoints except spawn.Combine all the maps into one giant map.Remove the borderland portals (except Lion's Arch) and make it so you have to run to your borderland.

Sure, these are interesting ideas, but it's not what anyone wants to do and it isn't going to save wvw.OP, I appreciate your attempts to do "anything" to save wvw as a game mode, but that isn't going to do it.

@XenesisII.1540 said:I like how you have JQ suggested for silver league when it's obvious they want to be bigger, and yet Mag who obviously doesn't want to bother with BG anymore, doesn't want a link, and wants to be in mid tiers, in gold league. Also tier one or gold isn't the place for highest level of play, it's just for higher numbers.

Other than that I do agree with the idea of separate leagues now. Let players transfer to servers of different level of populations they want to play with. Lower map caps as well to support this.

By highest level of play I meant highest activity level. Let me change that.

The servers I listed are examples and can be switched out with other servers. The pattern of three Gold League servers, nine Silver League servers, and three Bronze League servers would remain the same regardless of which ones are placed where.

Thanks for your feedback!

Scores are already meaningless, ranks are meaningless... No point pushing your server hard to get first, go up a tier, and then get stomped back down a tier the week after, there's a already a big divide between some tiers. All about the pips these days anyways.

@X T D.6458 said:This idea has been brought up before. Heck I have even brought it up for discussion on the old forums. The problem is that locking servers into tiers makes scores essentially meaningless. It doesn't matter if you show up, or even do anything. You will still be in the same tier matched up against the same servers permanently no matter what you do. People would basically just play for individual rewards. People may say they don't care about scores and PPT and all that, but it is a big factor in driving peoples behavior.

WvW is not really setup to work this way, being a 24/7 game mode that revolves around fighting over objectives.

In addition to what this guy writes, WvW is at it's best and most interesting when it has a mix of playstyles. It seems like OP wants to separate playstyles. We have already seen what happens when specific servers stick to a single playstyle - it drives opponents away. That will essentially bore everyone even more than they already are especially after we've already been through something similar when tournaments locked teams in place and compounded glicko cliffs that took an extraordinary effort to break.

On top of that, doesn't seem like the OP provides for any way that a server team can hop leagues, which would be necessary when servers get marked as Full. It would be bad design for players to be locked out of a specific league simply because of Full status.

It looks like the OP is advocating for a sort of ESO-style campaign system where different campaigns have different rulesets. This cannot be done with teams made up by multiple servers.

@Chaba.5410 said:

@X T D.6458 said:This idea has been brought up before. Heck I have even brought it up for discussion on the old forums. The problem is that locking servers into tiers makes scores essentially meaningless. It doesn't matter if you show up, or even do anything. You will still be in the same tier matched up against the same servers permanently no matter what you do. People would basically just play for individual rewards. People may say they don't care about scores and PPT and all that, but it is a big factor in driving peoples behavior.

WvW is not really setup to work this way, being a 24/7 game mode that revolves around fighting over objectives.

I added a proposal for how servers would switch from one League to another. Please take a look and tell me what you think.

Implementing this would be a lot of work and leave WvW with much of the same issues we have now and introduce some new ones.

• Matches would become more routine than they are now: you play the same groups every week for sure, instead of at least having an easy (or crazy hard) week to mix things up.
• There's no flexibility in match ups. Worlds are going to gain/lose people and the teams need to be able to evolve to accommodate.
• People are locked into a single type of match up for ages, when only a handful can sustain GvG or ZvZ or even roaming night after night, week after week. Even hardcore WvWarriors want to have some variety.

We don't have a lot of examples of what happens when ANet tries to "go large or go home" on WvW: Desert Borderland map(s), skirmish rewards, & removal of water (mostly) from WvW. Whether one admires DBL or not, it's pretty clear that it's been a disappointment for many WvWers, partly because it didn't address the things some (many? most?) felt were missing from Alpine, but also because ... Well despite the fact that nearly everyone playing WvW thinks WvW needs to be "Fixed", none of us can much agree on what's wrong with it or (if we do) how to fix it. We resist change, we even fear it.

So I'd rather see ANet put together a list of dozens of smaller changes and try them out singly or combined, give us a few match ups to get a feel for how they change the game, and then take a look at the data and our response (on Reddit, in the forums, etc). I'd like the see them experiment incrementally and learn (from us) what works and what doesn't, what affects how we play & what doesn't, what makes us turn out in greater numbers and what scares us away.

At that point, maybe we as a community will have a better idea of what we really need.

Until something like that happens, I can't imagine that any single proposal of this scope is going to be popular among more than a fraction of WvWers.

At this stage of the game, it's probably better to just split BG into 3 servers and fight themselves in gold league. YB has non existent off hour crew, SoS don't have many people and no organization - they stay in t1 because 5-10 people karma trains the 3rd server daily, JQ has coverage (except oceanic) but cannot even field close to the numbers of most t1-t2 servers with links in prime times.

I really don't see how WvW can be competitive in this age of linking, instability, broken activity algorithm and lack of reasons to care for their server.

@Mysteriax.6049 said:

@Chaba.5410 said:

@"X T D.6458" said:This idea has been brought up before. Heck I have even brought it up for discussion on the old forums. The problem is that locking servers into tiers makes scores essentially meaningless. It doesn't matter if you show up, or even do anything. You will still be in the same tier matched up against the same servers permanently no matter what you do. People would basically just play for individual rewards. People may say they don't care about scores and PPT and all that, but it is a big factor in driving peoples behavior.

WvW is not really setup to work this way, being a 24/7 game mode that revolves around fighting over objectives.

This part? "It's possible for a server to gain enough transfers or lose enough population that switching two servers from one League to another may be warranted. This would happen at ArenaNet's discretion and be enforced upon Relinking. This may not happen every Relinking but the option is available."

I see you are trying to work your proposal within the current server system. Rotating servers somehow, while being a compromise, will still have the effect of locking players out of the league ruleset they prefer. We'd see players on servers moved out of their desired league trying to transfer to whichever servers are in their desired league (if not Full) and this forum filling with complaints about being forced to transfer or being locked out LOL.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of being able to try out different rulesets. It helps shake up monotony. I just think the server system won't support that idea too well while a campaign/battlegroup system would.

I like some of the ideas, but do think they retain some of the core problems with WvW (Servers for one).

If you want to open up more different play styles for more people, I think this would be solved better with a change to the map system, instead of the tier system. In short, set different maps in each match-up to encourage different play styles. Then players can go to the maps that supports the play style they enjoy.

Example:

• EBG = as is
• Alpine = Roaming focused, more PPK, max tier2
• Desert = Siege focused, more PPT, less PPK

And if they ever added more maps, they could enhance this further. Making maps for specific play styles (that can be smaller, not all maps need to be EBG size)

• Round map, where players will always have 2 clearly defined fronts, so they always know where the action is.
• City Ruins map, with lots of los breaking, destructible walls.
• A Jungle or Desert that punishes players for grouping up too much (wormsign!) and encourage lots of small fights over many smaller objectives.

They can do a lot of things to encourage play styles without changing the tier system, or lock peoples out from other styles they might enjoy etc.

That said, you almost had me at "Tier 5", #nostalgia