My concern with Alliances

I understand that the team is considering making alliances capped at 500 players, and that may have some benefits from a population balance point, but there is also the reoccurring issue of time zone coverage. There is no guarantee that players within an alliance will always log in to play, let alone have decent numbers at all times of the day. Thus leading us to similar circumstances we have had since launch... So I have a couple of suggestions...

1- Up the Alliance player cap to make sure there are higher percentages of players participating overall and present across time zones.

Or

2- Add more active maps to WvW and greatly increase the size of each alliance. Place a 50 person cap on each map to spread players out.

Edit to include official Alliance info... Please familiarize yourself if you don't know about Alliances or can't remember something...

1st post on Alliances... https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/26547/world-restructuring

2nd post on Alliances... https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/26877/world-restructuring-faq

Relevant quote from the faq thread..."Q. How big are alliances in comparison to world sizes?

500 players is around 20-25% of WvW world sizes currently (this is only using players we consider active WvW players). Therefore, a single alliance can be a significant size of a world population but not the majority."

3rd post on Alliances... https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/45856/world-restructuring-update-1

we dont know how this thing works yet. therefore only when it is out we can adjust it. and so to ensure it works; they must beta test it, beta test it, beta test it.

@Sovereign.1093 said:we dont know how this thing works yet. therefore only when it is out we can adjust it. and so to ensure it works; they must beta test it, beta test it, beta test it.

We already have an idea how things will work... The devs posted the blueprints and my suggestion is based off of that information.

Ty

The larger you make the chunks, the more difficult it is to balance the three sides. 21 chunks into 21 spots had a wide range of populations, but 21 chunks into 12 spots .

The higher the ratio of chunks to spots means the better the balance is.

@Swamurabi.7890 said:The larger you make the chunks, the more difficult it is to balance the three sides. 21 chunks into 21 spots had a wide range of populations, but 21 chunks into 12 spots .

The higher the ratio of chunks to spots means the better the balance is.

Yes, on paper. When you look at caps of 500 vs 500 vs 500 then players automatically assume that things will be great... That's not the case. There are not any guarantees that any of those 500 individuals on any alliance will log in and will cover every time zone. The human element causes the issue with any balance equation.

You put more in the pot then you have higher percentages participating.

@Swagger.1459 said:

@Sovereign.1093 said:we dont know how this thing works yet. therefore only when it is out we can adjust it. and so to ensure it works; they must beta test it, beta test it, beta test it.

not good enough.

@Swamurabi.7890 said:The larger you make the chunks, the more difficult it is to balance the three sides. 21 chunks into 21 spots had a wide range of populations, but 21 chunks into 12 spots .

The higher the ratio of chunks to spots means the better the balance is.

they can't balance wvw unless it is like queu pvp. there just is no possible way.

@Sovereign.1093 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@Sovereign.1093 said:we dont know how this thing works yet. therefore only when it is out we can adjust it. and so to ensure it works; they must beta test it, beta test it, beta test it.

Good enough to make a suggestion.

you can suggest on an idea that isn't set but it is useless until tested.

all u have is spirit. no outline to skeleton. just air.

@Sovereign.1093 said:you can suggest on an idea that isn't set but it is useless until tested

I'm free to post what I like.

no one is stopping you from voicing your idea.

this thing here is like shrodinger's cat. 2 ideas exist until tested.

@Sovereign.1093 said:no one is stopping you from voicing your idea.

You are very nice, ty.

@Swagger.1459 said:

@Sovereign.1093 said:no one is stopping you from voicing your idea.

You are welcome.

Could try maybe actively recruiting players or guilds in off prime timezones?

@Rysdude.3824 said:Could try maybe actively recruiting players or guilds in off prime timezones?

good idea but will work if the intirety of population were like eotm.

Matchups wont have only people from alliances, they'll also have unsorted people. Anet said they'll balance population based on activity (I'd assume across all time zones) so if alliance cant cover whole day they'll get small guilds/unsorted people who can.

i hope the speculation will work.

Here's another factor to throw in: Each week how will ANeT match up the alliance v alliance v alliance? How many alliances are there actually going to be once all the guilds team up? Are some alliances going to be left out of the weekly matchup because ANeT doesn't have the capacity to create more BLs for the necessary number of alliances? Is ANeT going to designate a BL as an "(alliance name) BL" ? How many alliances will be teamed up each week? Will ANeT select SEA, NA, EU time slot alliances to make coverage equal? This is my major concern about alliances. Currently you have an easy way to designate who will face who - Server Identity. The problem with servers is the imbalance in populations and that dang coverage issue. Well, that's my two cents worth.

@Swagger.1459 said:

@"Swamurabi.7890" said:The larger you make the chunks, the more difficult it is to balance the three sides. 21 chunks into 21 spots had a wide range of populations, but 21 chunks into 12 spots .

The higher the ratio of chunks to spots means the better the balance is.

but they also said the "worthyness" of a player chunk to build up servers will be judged by time he spends on average in wvw - so for "no guarantees that any of those 500 individuals on any alliance will log in" - if they only play eratically once in a while they will be considered rather smaller chunks.

assuming info we've got is ALL that exist in regard to the system (which is imo bold assumption) I myself see two potential issues:

1. 500 man alliance playing barely anything in wvw for month or two suddenly crushing a battle due to suddenly bringing all 500 players to active use (or 500man alliance full of no-lifing hardcores suddenly dropping off)
2. average hours per month/week/day may not be a good enought metric on it's own to solve issue of coverage - in extreme case you could get situation where two servers are made and matched, has exacly same count of average player-hours but have mutually exclusive coverage zones - making the battle unfun to both sides.

you can't really do anything with issue 1 realistically speaking, issue two could be decently solved by exchanging basic metric of player-hours for something more elaborate that would track not only average activity of players in alliance but also average coverage of that activity.

as for idea posted in the OP. I'm unsure how for alliance size, but I am all for more WvW Maps.

i hope the speculation will work.

@Swagger.1459 said:

@Swamurabi.7890 said:The larger you make the chunks, the more difficult it is to balance the three sides. 21 chunks into 21 spots had a wide range of populations, but 21 chunks into 12 spots .

The higher the ratio of chunks to spots means the better the balance is.

This thread makes no sense, the premise is all wrong. 500 is the (presumed) alliance cap, not the world population. There wouldnt be 500 vs 500 vs 500 under alliances. That cap is irrelevant. There would be 2500+ vs 2500+ vs 2500+ in a matchup of 3 worlds... like worlds work today. Because Anet will match multiple alliances and random people vs multiple alliances and random people to match current world sizes, roughly. Except with this system they can be flexible and drop or expand tiers without killing servers.

Players dont just vanish into thin air because WvW gets rearranged to alliances. It's still the same players. If WvW has 30,000 players now... it'll have 30,000 players under alliances too. If they're not there for alliances they've quit the game and that's fine, I guess. It's allowed.

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@"Swamurabi.7890" said:The larger you make the chunks, the more difficult it is to balance the three sides. 21 chunks into 21 spots had a wide range of populations, but 21 chunks into 12 spots .

The higher the ratio of chunks to spots means the better the balance is.

From the stickied thread...

"We are currently leaning toward alliance size being 500. This is technically easier, as we already support groups of this size (guilds), and it gives us more flexibility to make the worlds even."

@Swagger.1459 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@"Swamurabi.7890" said:The larger you make the chunks, the more difficult it is to balance the three sides. 21 chunks into 21 spots had a wide range of populations, but 21 chunks into 12 spots .

The higher the ratio of chunks to spots means the better the balance is.

Which means each world will likely have 2 alliances, and a random sorting of non allied guilds and non allied individual players.

Which means up to around 2500 players on each World.

World= alliance (x2 likely) + non alliance guilds + non alliance and non guild affiliated individuals,

@Swagger.1459 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@"Swamurabi.7890" said:The larger you make the chunks, the more difficult it is to balance the three sides. 21 chunks into 21 spots had a wide range of populations, but 21 chunks into 12 spots .

The higher the ratio of chunks to spots means the better the balance is.

The 500 man limit is obviously there because guild cap is 500 man. It's the easy baseline unless you want to change current guild cap. An alliance cap of say... 250... is pointless. People just make a guild instead and get 500 man cap automatically. An alliance cap of say... 1000... start to become counterproductive to what the system is designed to do - cut the WvW population into guild size chunks (500) rather than world size chunks (average 2500+ as per their note that an alliance would be 20%ish).

The TL;DR of alliances is that it's just smaller link servers. Instead of 2-3 like now, we're gonna see like... 10-20+ "servers" linked together (ie alliances+guilds+randoms). Maybe many more in a world.

@Swagger.1459 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@"Swamurabi.7890" said:The larger you make the chunks, the more difficult it is to balance the three sides. 21 chunks into 21 spots had a wide range of populations, but 21 chunks into 12 spots .

The higher the ratio of chunks to spots means the better the balance is.

In that same thread there is even a graphic showing multiple alliances + solo players in a cloud, paired against another cloud. Alliances =/= entire population. It's basically just one large guild, paired with a smaller "large guild" and solos that make up the entire population.