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Mike Z. Interview: World Restructuring News


Sviel.7493

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@subversiontwo.7501 said:

@Gop.8713 said:

@"Stand The Wall.6987" said:its funny how with the plans they've laid out, you can transfer for 7 weeks of the match but not for the 8th week. should be the other way around, for obvious reasons... its funny in a sad way.

It's been a very long time since I read the summary but my recollection was that while you could change your wvw guild at any time that would not change the 'world' you play on until the next time the populations were reshuffled. Regardless, that they would even be able to force such a waiting period under the new system would be progress. Again, I don't expect restructuring to be a fix, I only expect it to allow the devs more flexibility . . .

As others have said I'm also worried that this may have taken a little too long already. A lot of the things that would have been a lot more fun under alliances aren't really all that much fun anymore :(

OTOH, new system, new life, new possibilities. I'm sure restructuring will bring about some positive changes I'm not anticipating as well . . .

What about people not in Guilds? What happens to us? I been repping my own guild since Vanilla as pretty much a one person guild.

You have been posting like a gazillion threads on this forum recently, have you never read the initial Alliance post?

a3c5eWvW_image1.png
-That's how the new "servers" (or worlds, or battlegroups or w/e) will be composed.-The working estimate was roughly 2500 players with alliances peaking at 500 and guilds at 300.-So any one alliance will at most make up 1/5 of the total "server".-This also allow them to grow or shrink the sizes of the "servers" based on total population while using those three building blocks (alliances, guilds, players).-If the WvW population drops really low, instead of reducing tiers and combining servers they could split servers down to, say, 1500 players (1/3 in alliance).-Despite this image posted by Anet people constantly get it on the backfoot and thinks that an alliance will be a server, which it won't.-Alliances are just a building block that lets smaller guilds stick together through transfers/resets as an alternative to making one big guild.-So an alliance (eg., 4x25=100) can actually be smaller than a guild (>300). In fact, you're likely to have influential alliances at only 100-ish players.-That's what we already see with the relink and transfer circus, it's often less than 100 players initially transfering that creates a new stack server.-It's just that among those 100 players are 10 commanders and then everyone else transfers to gain access to those commanders and that content.
-Ed. By 2019 standards the commander density is likely closer to 2, but the argument is still the same B) .

What I don't understand is how will this Alliance system adjust on the fly between resets. Let's say something happens and the alliance I am on, it's top guild stops playing the game for another game before reset hits. How will Alliances adjust for that before server reset period can reorganize the Alliance build?

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Reading the above quote, it paints Alliance as a system that puts teams and players together for WvW matches. But people are dynamic and change. One day a guild of 100 people may all do WvW, and then 12 hours later poof they never to be seen again leaving to a different game. Now my Alliance is down 100 players while enemy alliance still has all its people. Now what? How will Alliances address this?

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@"Knighthonor.4061" said:What I don't understand is how will this Alliance system adjust on the fly between resets. Let's say something happens and the alliance I am on, it's top guild stops playing the game for another game before reset hits. How will Alliances adjust for that before server reset period can reorganize the Alliance build?No one knows that. In the Anet posts they have mentioned that the system will take statistics into account (and they have outlined how the transfer systems will work, both the "relink" and the paid transfers) but they have not gone into specifics on how they will track and balance the details of activity. At the same time, such a system must be difficult to make solid so I am not pinning much hope to it. It may very well be so that the system tracks too slow so if a guild calls it quit on week one you may be stuck on a weaker world for eight weeks. At the same time, at least the system will have full resets every eight weeks so it's no different from getting stuck with a bad link now and under the alliance system you will at least have options to transfering if your own server dips, quits or see a mass exodus. The new system is leaps and bounds better but at the same time, in their own admittance, alliances won't solve all or the most important problems alone.

That's another one of those perspective and expectation things: You shouldn't expect alliances to fix the core issues of the population balance, instead, you should expect it to fix the things that the megaservers broke in 2015. It deals with the transfer circus, not the nightcapping etc. It is highly unlikely that the activity algorithm will be good enough to deal with the more direct balance issues. Alliances basically is EotM-worlds 2.0 (where relinks are a 1.5 duct tape ad hoc to stem the leakage). It solves mode/split problems that were created when EotM was abadoned, not the problems that have persisted since 2012.

The only thing we know about attempts to adress the 2012 problems is the possibility of balancing score around 8-hour stretches that was mentioned in the Apr 02 roadmap. They've not mentioned any details about that project and they've repeatedly said that no other systems projects are leaving the pre-planning stage before alliances are implemented. It wouldn't surprise me if their next project is to divide score into four stretches (ie., day, night, dusk and dawn or prime, off-hours and two half-primes) with different score, upsetting the OCX community. A simple solution but obviously a much worse solution than eg., the one in my profile, both for social reasons and balance reasons.

Then again, all of this can never be anything but speculation derived from the information Anet puts out. Mike Z obviously had me fooled with the communication we've had over spring and summer as I estimated that alliances were in stress test and that we would have had a release date for Q4 2019 announced on aug 30th. That is clearly not the case. The speculation we do can be more or less substantiated though and logical. It was not an unreasonable expectation assuming the apr 2nd statement that they had the programming team focusing on it (following Raymond's comments about how far along the backend was in both design an programming before and another team added) was actually true. Today we know that priorities very likely shifted after the roadmap or that it never was true. That leads us to question how many of those hands are on deck now or how many hands they are total.

That's also interesting because assuming some kind of logical or plausible worst-case scenario that WvW has been skeleton crewed and will continue to be so, essentially having the entire game mode being treated as SAB, a developer pet project run on the side, then it becomes even more important that whatever effort is put in is put towards community service with the means that are available. That goes for both sPvP and WvW. It pains me to say it, but if they can only amount to fix things that they break over so much time they should probably not attempt to improve the mode as a whole and if they can't get direction and ample resources from management then it is better to focus on appeasing what remains of the community and focus on simple things they ask for like balance and mode-overlapping TDM-design (like swiss and matrix-like loading rooms/tournament maps for GvG stuff), ie., midtier projects.

They should also be upfront about that because with the right expectations we can focus on being positive and thankful for what the employees do with their spare time instead of being disappointed in the company. Either that or outsourcing the mode(s) to someone who cares and dares to give it a try B) .

 

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@"Knighthonor.4061" said:What I don't understand is how will this Alliance system adjust on the fly between resets. Let's say something happens and the alliance I am on, it's top guild stops playing the game for another game before reset hits. How will Alliances adjust for that before server reset period can reorganize the Alliance build?

Well if they are nice they won't select a "WvW" guild and will just be put into a random world. No system is going to be perfect, there's always going to be people leaving and joining/coming back to the game that affect population.

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@Djamonja.6453 said:

@"Knighthonor.4061" said:What I don't understand is how will this Alliance system adjust on the fly between resets. Let's say something happens and the alliance I am on, it's top guild stops playing the game for another game before reset hits. How will Alliances adjust for that before server reset period can reorganize the Alliance build?

Well if they are nice they won't select a "WvW" guild and will just be put into a random world. No system is going to be perfect, there's always going to be people leaving and joining/coming back to the game that affect population.

But stuff like this is what Alliance was supposed to address. Otherwise it's just Server links by a different name. This some stuff I would love for Anet to clear up and provide clarity. But that's soon to come anyway.

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@Knighthonor.4061 said:What about people not in Guilds? What happens to us? I been repping my own guild since Vanilla as pretty much a one person guild.Anet is planning to kill WvW for random players. So if you plan to do more than just farming pips you have to join an alliance, obey to the wishes of that leadership or gtfo.

Each alliance will most likely have its own voice chat and raids with hidden tags at determined hours. You as a random player are then supposed to scout for them, build up supplies, upgrade keeps and hold enemy keeps low tier so they can enjoy their gaming experience. Good luck trying to get in their private squads ;)

@Knighthonor.4061 said:Reading the above quote, it paints Alliance as a system that puts teams and players together for WvW matches. But people are dynamic and change. One day a guild of 100 people may all do WvW, and then 12 hours later poof they never to be seen again leaving to a different game. Now my Alliance is down 100 players while enemy alliance still has all its people. Now what? How will Alliances address this?They plan to re-link alliances / guilds / randoms every 8 weeks, as it is now. Big-scale transfers will only be allowed 1 week before re-linking. Minor transfers like switching between guilds will only be possible if there is some free capacity on that world. This is still subject to changes.

a3c5eWvW_image1.pngThis world creation will fail so hard and the drop in population will be huge. They should keep the old servers with everyone (mostly randoms) that want to stay and just add the option for player-controlled alliances. A world would then consist of alliance A + alliance B + old server X + old server Y. They should then re-link the worlds every week, to ensure good pop balance, and thus give competitive teams the opportunity to make it to the top, with casual teams in the bottom tiers. jmho

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@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Knighthonor.4061 said:What I don't understand is how will this Alliance system adjust on the fly between resets. Let's say something happens and the alliance I am on, it's top guild stops playing the game for another game before reset hits. How will Alliances adjust for that before server reset period can reorganize the Alliance build?

Well if they are nice they won't select a "WvW" guild and will just be put into a random world. No system is going to be perfect, there's always going to be people leaving and joining/coming back to the game that affect population.

But stuff like this is what Alliance was supposed to address. Otherwise it's just Server links by a different name. This some stuff I would love for Anet to clear up and provide clarity. But that's soon to come anyway.

that is exactly what it is....it still doesn't take into consideration timezone coverage or transfers...thus, will not fix anything.Hopefully it will entice a few to return to 'test it out' but if wvw just gets neglected again it will back to same ol same ol

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@Acheron.4731 said:that is exactly what it is....it still doesn't take into consideration timezone coverage or transfers...thus, will not fix anything.

it does take into account coverage at least. since they're moving around single players, guilds, and alliances, they can more accurately solve the coverage problem. thing is anyone can transfer anywhere at anytime and band wagon.

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@Stand The Wall.6987 said:

@Acheron.4731 said:that is exactly what it is....it still doesn't take into consideration timezone coverage or transfers...thus, will not fix anything.

it does take into account coverage at least. since they're moving around single players, guilds, and alliances, they can more accurately solve the coverage problem. thing is anyone can transfer anywhere at anytime and band wagon.

But will they be moving around players, Guilds, etc during live play time of WvW? That's the question. Shuffling around people during reset is pretty much the same as current Server Links.

Shuffling players, Guilds, etc during a live on going WvW match will be very controversial if that's their go to plan with this Alliance system.

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@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Acheron.4731 said:that is exactly what it is....it still doesn't take into consideration timezone coverage or transfers...thus, will not fix anything.

it does take into account coverage at least. since they're moving around single players, guilds, and alliances, they can more accurately solve the coverage problem. thing is anyone can transfer anywhere at anytime and band wagon.

But will they be moving around players, Guilds, etc during live play time of WvW? That's the question. Shuffling around people during reset is pretty much the same as current Server Links.

Shuffling players, Guilds, etc during a live on going WvW match will be very controversial if that's their go to plan with this Alliance system.

Friend, go read the link I posted for you. It explains your questions.

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@Knighthonor.4061 said:But will they be moving around players, Guilds, etc during live play time of WvW? That's the question. Shuffling around people during reset is pretty much the same as current Server Links.

Shuffling players, Guilds, etc during a live on going WvW match will be very controversial if that's their go to plan with this Alliance system.

probably not. that would be too janky.

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@L A T I O N.8923 said:I mean those two sentencesCould have been said a year...or maybe half a year ago

Why now?

One does wonder...

Mike actually talked a little earlier in the interview about how important it is to communicate with players.

Here’s the thing: we have to be communicating with the players. If the players do not know what is coming, then they feel like they’re getting blindsided with every release. In April, I did a kind of a ‘here’s the state of the game’ and ‘where we’re going’ roadmap look. We were actually in the process of figuring out what the next one would look like when this event was put on the calendar.

We want to be – we need to be active in our communication with the players. They may not necessarily always see that we’re listening. But we’re lurking on all the forums, and on Reddit, and we’re in the game. So we’re hearing what people are talking about. We also have data metrics on our end telling us what players are doing. A lot of it is sifting through that data to figure out what is noise and what is super important to this game. How do we make sure that we continue to keep it healthy?

But, clearly, they haven't told us much of anything. This response was after he was directly asked about sPvP and World Restructuring. It seems to suggest that he considers 'silently lurking' the same as communicating. So maybe this is all just a huge misunderstanding...

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@Knighthonor.4061 said:What I don't understand is how will this Alliance system adjust on the fly between resets. Let's say something happens and the alliance I am on, it's top guild stops playing the game for another game before reset hits. How will Alliances adjust for that before server reset period can reorganize the Alliance build?

Read the post again, the system isn't designed to readjust the worlds every single week, it does it every 8 weeks, yes like links does now. Alliances, a group of guilds, only matters at the time of world creations, it's a system to keep a mass amount of players together. Between that wvw functions as it does today.

During the 8 week period, the first 7 weeks you will be able to change your alliances by doing things like dropping or adding guilds to it but it won't take affect until the next world reset (don't confuse this with match reset). The difference is instead of matching one server to an entire other server, they will now have much more pieces to put worlds together. The biggest thing the system will do is spread the pug population around, and not have it all stacked on one giant winning server for years, won't be thing since the worlds will, again, be reset every 8 weeks.

Frankly it would be hard for them to readjust worlds every time a guild moves off, because 100 people moves from one world to another, where do you expect them to grab a 100 to fill the void? just randomly rip them off from other servers? reset the entire worlds again? They cannot constantly restructure worlds because a group of idiots can't stay on one world for too long.

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@XenesisII.1540 said:

@"Knighthonor.4061" said:What I don't understand is how will this Alliance system adjust on the fly between resets. Let's say something happens and the alliance I am on, it's top guild stops playing the game for another game before reset hits. How will Alliances adjust for that before server reset period can reorganize the Alliance build?

Read the post again, the system isn't designed to readjust the worlds every single week, it does it every 8 weeks, yes like links does now. Alliances, a group of guilds, only matters at the time of world creations, it's a system to keep a mass amount of players together. Between that wvw functions as it does today.

During the 8 week period, the first 7 weeks you will be able to change your alliances by doing things like dropping or adding guilds to it but it won't take affect until the next world reset (don't confuse this with match reset). The difference is instead of matching one server to an entire other server, they will now have much more pieces to put worlds together. The biggest thing the system will do is spread the pug population around, and not have it all stacked on one giant winning server for years, won't be thing since the worlds will, again, be reset every 8 weeks.

Frankly it would be hard for them to readjust worlds every time a guild moves off, because 100 people moves from one world to another, where do you expect them to grab a 100 to fill the void? just randomly rip them off from other servers? reset the entire worlds again? They cannot constantly restructure worlds because a group of idiots can't stay on one world for too long.

Like I said what you described won't fit the population issue as explained since it's pretty much Server Links by a new name since it does nothing to address the issue that players are dynamic and leave and go randomly and freely. I gave a scenario about on how population can drop for one server and nothing alliance or server links going to do about that.

In fact I predict this Alliance system will create less of what traditionally we called "Faction Pride" and over time we will see less and less people staying around, and then comes the above scenario when population gets unbalanced again and we back at square one.

This why I need clarity on how this Alliance system plans to address the population issue without causing more population drought in WvW. But Anet will soon provide that information when they announce the launch date for this feature.

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@Stand The Wall.6987 said:it does take into account coverage at least. since they're moving around single players, guilds, and alliances, they can more accurately solve the coverage problem. thing is anyone can transfer anywhere at anytime and band wagon.

Raymond has stated that Alliances 1.0 will not take time zones aka coverage into account. Maybe 2.0 in another 3 years will?

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@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Knighthonor.4061 said:What I don't understand is how will this Alliance system adjust on the fly between resets. Let's say something happens and the alliance I am on, it's top guild stops playing the game for another game before reset hits. How will Alliances adjust for that before server reset period can reorganize the Alliance build?

Read the post again, the system isn't designed to readjust the worlds every single week, it does it every 8 weeks, yes like links does now. Alliances, a group of guilds, only matters at the time of world creations, it's a system to keep a mass amount of players together. Between that wvw functions as it does today.

During the 8 week period, the first 7 weeks you will be able to change your alliances by doing things like dropping or adding guilds to it but it won't take affect until the next world reset (don't confuse this with match reset). The difference is instead of matching one server to an entire other server, they will now have much more pieces to put worlds together. The biggest thing the system will do is spread the pug population around, and not have it all stacked on one giant winning server for years, won't be thing since the worlds will, again, be reset every 8 weeks.

Frankly it would be hard for them to readjust worlds every time a guild moves off, because 100 people moves from one world to another, where do you expect them to grab a 100 to fill the void? just randomly rip them off from other servers? reset the entire worlds again? They cannot constantly restructure worlds because a group of idiots can't stay on one world for too long.

Like I said what you described won't fit the population issue as explained since it's pretty much Server Links by a new name since it does nothing to address the issue that players are dynamic and leave and go randomly and freely. I gave a scenario about on how population can drop for one server and nothing alliance or server links going to do about that.

In fact I predict this Alliance system will create less of what traditionally we called "Faction Pride" and over time we will see less and less people staying around, and then comes the above scenario when population gets unbalanced again and we back at square one.

This why I need clarity on how this Alliance system plans to address the population issue without causing more population drought in WvW. But Anet will soon provide that information when they announce the launch date for this feature.

You are right, i am afraid. Again, I don't think alliances coming in now (since wvw pops are at an all time low) really solves anything anymore. On top of that, what server pride people still had (which was often in the host servers to a degree) will be lost and ppl will just hop around aimlessly more than they do now.Without active population monitoring and the ability to do 'weekly' adjustments when grps leave a server...no issue gets resolved.

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@"Knighthonor.4061" said:Like I said what you described won't fit the population issue as explained since it's pretty much Server Links by a new name since it does nothing to address the issue that players are dynamic and leave and go randomly and freely.

That part won't ever be fixed unless they stop transfers all together no matter what system you run, or run instances like battlegrounds. But still they can move all they want, their world will be reset at the end of the season anyways. You're still missing the point that the alliance system will spread the players out more evenly every 8 weeks instead of just having a couple servers dominate for years. Your "scenario" would be fixed at the next world reset at end of season.

Again you cannot expect them to reset worlds every time a group of players leave or stop playing, that would disrupt and affect all the other players who have settled into their guilds alliances worlds for that period, people will get sick and tired of being shuffled every week because some dumb idiots want to constantly stack. There's still a possibility of shortening seasons to say 4 weeks because it will be an automated system, unlike now.

Faction pride, that concept died years ago, even before links came in, wvw was dying when HoT came in, and 6 months later they had to bring links in. Guilds were still moving around even before that especially the ones that wanted to make their "fight" tiers. The only server that apparently carried on to probably this day is BG, and only because they won almost every week for years, who wouldn't be happy and prideful about their server then?

Population drought is due to other issues too, like for instance a lack of commanders, private tags means less tags now, and less people are even willing to tag up to run pugs these days. The number of casual pugs that jump into wvw to run behind a commander or leave and go back to pve or don't bother to play is obviously going to take a hit, probably already has and maybe also affecting the server population levels last couple weeks.

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@"LetoII.3782" said:Forgive me for not holding my breath

Honestly it'll be like holding your breath around the most toxic sauciest fart - inevitably it's going to damage you either way lol.A lot of points brought up in this thread, but I think constant interactive frequent/regular transparent communication (I'm not sure how many more words I can throw at this to denote the importance) is what is missing. No, not just "reactive communication" when the kettle boils over and disappear, that isn't how it should be done. I know they do listen to input & read our stuff, but we have 0 idea since the way things are forces us to bombard them and hope something pierces through and we see the results only after a looOOOooooOOOong period of waiting when we have essentially forgotten about it and other new issues arise. Welp, whatever happens, happens. Broken records are playing everywhere. My sincerest hopes (not going to include alliances because I know it won't solve the problems), is that Anet decides to focus resources into WvW with a bigger dedicated team so things roll out faster, responses to problems are dealt with faster, and enjoyable aspects become a frequent experience for all.

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@L A T I O N.8923 said:

@"Sviel.7493" said:

For Swiss tournaments, the front end is done, and we’re just shoring up the back end to make sure that it’s going to run and people aren’t going to lose progress. The work that we’re doing right now is going to have some impact on how we finish world restructuring as well. We’re killing two birds with one stone.

World restructuring is the paramount feature that the competitive team is working on right now. We knew we needed to get Swiss done, and now all hands are trying to get world restructuring done as soon as we can.

It ain't much, but it's more than we've had for the past year...

Note that Swiss tournaments were supposed to be out already, which means they're behind on Alliances because the previous project went long.

Source:

I mean those two sentencesCould have been said a year...or maybe half a year ago

Why now?

Could they really though? How does it matter?

Knowledge my Young oneKnowledge

Hindsight is always 20/20 though.

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@Visiroth.5914 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:it does take into account coverage at least. since they're moving around single players, guilds, and alliances, they can more accurately solve the coverage problem. thing is anyone can transfer anywhere at anytime and band wagon.

Raymond has stated that Alliances 1.0 will not take time zones aka coverage into account. Maybe 2.0 in another 3 years will?

link to that, please perhaps maybe? :D

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@Stand The Wall.6987 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:it does take into account coverage at least. since they're moving around single players, guilds, and alliances, they can more accurately solve the coverage problem. thing is anyone can transfer anywhere at anytime and band wagon.

Raymond has stated that Alliances 1.0 will not take time zones aka coverage into account. Maybe 2.0 in another 3 years will?

link to that, please perhaps maybe? :D

I can't find it but he or McKenna did state that. The response was: 'well how the heck does this fix anything then?'I wonder if Raymond or McKenna are still around?Only ones that post here now are Ben and Stephane

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