Alliances: Friends vs Skill

[Dawdler.8521]

No friends, only bait.

[Swagger.1459]

@Whiteout.1975 said:

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Whiteout.1975 said:

@"Swagger.1459" said:“ Will you build hard-core and casual worlds?

No. The goal is to balance worlds by population. The matchmaker, at this time, is unconcerned with trying to match skill.”

So if your team wins matches and move up tiers with balanced populations between worlds. Will that be because of skill or an "unconcerned" matchmaker?

• For example: Does this mean a player can just choose a WvW Guild, not really participate, but essentially just get carried to whatever awaits them through that guild/alliance? I'm just curious.

move up? Teams reset and move players around.

Are you familiar with moving up ranks for example like in sPvP? Because that's basically similar to what I was thinking of. You do good... You move further up because you are good.

Here are the world restructuring info threads we have...

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/26547/world-restructuring

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/26877/world-restructuring-faq

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/45856/world-restructuring-update-1

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/61986/world-restructuring-update-2

[subversiontwo.7501]

Hah, interesting thread and proposition! It made me crawl out of the woodwork.

The first thing you need to do with the terminology is not to define friends and skill. It is to define friends and friends.

In the context of the discussion the term friends can be understood as a social or social organisation aspect and as a social organisation aspect to leverage numerical superiority.

[+] The friends that the world restructuring is looking to improve are the social- or social organisation aspect of making it easier to play with friends, recruit them to the game and organize to do something together and establish a sense of "us".

[-] The friends that the world restructuring is looking to limit or balance is the act of collecting friends to leverage numerical superiorities - that is the aspect of the term friends that stand in some kind of contrast to skill. It's not necessarily so that they are directly looking to promote skill but that is the indirect result of dealing with imbalances in population (numerical superiorities). So by adressing population imbalance they are indirectly making performance more valuable.

We can't tell what the end result will be, if the organisation of alliances (500) and worlds (2500) will lead to a more stable of numbers and performance over time - well organized and high performing groups may wear themselves out (or may not come back in sufficient numbers to make a dent) and we may see even the new system devolve into coverage wars. The system itself doesn't directly deal with coverage either way. It deals with it indirectly however and at least creates a foundation for better balance. So the balance will be better but we still do not know whether it will be good enough to make performance a dominant factor over coverage.

Any improvement is welcome though because the current system is very negative for various reasons. The current system causes the split between PPT and PPK instead of letting them overlap and the current system forces the players to make alot of decisions that they outright know beforehand are destructive relative content creation. For example, if a night-capping-only PPT server climbs to Tier 1 due to the system, the other two servers are forced to punish its positive day-time players (who are trying to compete in prime time but may be lacking sufficient organisation and resources to do so due to the server's demography). The have to ruin whatever attempt at building up a positive presence in prime time in order to get rid of the server and its negative off-hour presence. It is completely detrimental to fostering good content but the system forces that or the other two servers will be stuck with a third server who can never compete with them when the normative players are awake.

 

Past that, there will always be a balance between friends (numbers) and skill (performance) or between organisation (ability) and execution (skill) in an MMO game. That is the nature of the genre, the mode and one of the things that makes the mode fun. It exists in GvG for example, with different guilds having different cultures even though they always play equal numbers on the field. It will be existing within player choice where people will organize their alliances in different ways for different means. Some alliances will likely be made to keep a social community on a server alive, other alliances will be made to keep friendships between guilds alive and another set of alliances may be made to reach #1 on the ladder. Some alliances will have two guilds under one structure and other alliances will have 20 guilds with independent structures.

The important thing of course being that it is a choice and different routes to similar ends whereas in the current system that choice isn't really there or the choices that are available are not constructive or positive for the mode (or how it is intended). You can obviously organize a server with people who have superior coverage due to having abnormal time to play or schedules and you can obviously do things like buying a presence from players/groups with abnormal demography relative the region. However, those things are in direct opposite of what ArenaNet and GW2 tend to stand for. The mode was built with regions and map caps in order to establish some sense of playing field (together, of course, with things like keeping server-performance [the datacentre] in check and for things like taxation reasons).

If some server chooses to organize their 500 as a union, as a federation or as loose collaboration, that is all player choice and positive choice within the framework of the mode. Whoever does that most effectively is also bound to change and be far more vivid than the stale nature of antisocial behaviour or social engineering for coverage. A developer that builds a ruleset that encourages antisocial behaviour or social engineering that bends the rules is obviously acting very irresponsibly towards their players - encouraging children to skip school to sit up at night or encouraging players with addiction issues to end up with problems in their social or professional lives or encouraging players of a region to evade whatever reasons they had for making regions in the first place.

That obviously isn't ArenaNet or GW2 (outside of how they have handled coverage mechanics for WvW so far B)).

The fact that we have a divide between PPT and PPK or that most people no longer cares about winning is on the one hand a problem with content in the mode but on the other hand a positive thing because it is direct examples of how the community have choosen not to play by the broken and exploitative ruleset that ArenaNet have been in no hurry to fix. It also shows some cultural differences between the regions where NA has had more exploitation of the system and EU has been more self-regulated due the immidiate issues being discovered with language servers and regions. They are a curse and a blessing.

In that discussion you have the answer to why the EU region has never had a Blackgate for example. They've never had that NA equivalent.

Ed. Added some spoilers for the talk about the game and design rather than players and organisation to not deter from the thread.

[miguelsil.6324]

There is no skill required in zergging, just maintain boons up and ur utilities at will. everything happens to fast for you to think "oh i should use this skill because it will be very useful and make a diference".

[Sylosi.6503]

@"miguelsil.6324" said:There is no skill required in zergging, just maintain boons up and ur utilities at will. everything happens to fast for you to think "oh i should use this skill because it will be very useful and make a diference".

There isn't much skill required in any part of WvW, the basis of skilled PvP in games is competitive PvP where players of similar skill, outlook, experience, etc compete against each other, that is in very short supply in any aspect of WvW. Then add zero balance on top of that, a fairly mindless one dimensional game mode (in terms of fights) and relatively undemanding combat (e.g - mechanically this game is pretty easy, has minimal resource management, etc) and you have a clown fiesta in terms of "skilled" gameplay. Which is why no one genuinely wanting skilled PvP still plays WvW on a regularly basis.

[TheGrimm.5624]

In either chase I think they are basing it on playtime so skill vs friend may not matter, it's more are they playing the game mode. On top of that skill is a broad term and has different meanings. I understand the OPs idea but skill is varied here. A skilled PvP player might be good 1v1 but bad 20v20. A PvPer might be skilled at beating another player and earning PPK but be beat by a PPTer because they strategically took more objectives in the same time. That's why I think they brought it down to playtime and then are planning on players either taking the random allotment or to self-organise. I predict that they first pairings are going to be massacres as the organised groups are going to slaughter the people that are more randomly thrown together. That will go on for a bit until more people start grouping together to form more alliances. I also see we will still be dominated by one of the largest factors that is neither friend more skill, but coverage. The groups that make sure they have the most diverse time zone coveraged will still have an edge. An alliances that can sport 100 people in a single two hour window will be beat by one that can have 5 20 man groups in 5 different 2 hour windows. That's not a bad thing, it balances zerg vs smaller groups but it does give advantage to whoever is more organised.

[Whiteout.1975]

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Whiteout.1975 said:

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Whiteout.1975 said:

@"Swagger.1459" said:“ Will you build hard-core and casual worlds?

No. The goal is to balance worlds by population. The matchmaker, at this time, is unconcerned with trying to match skill.”

So if your team wins matches and move up tiers with balanced populations between worlds. Will that be because of skill or an "unconcerned" matchmaker?

• For example: Does this mean a player can just choose a WvW Guild, not really participate, but essentially just get carried to whatever awaits them through that guild/alliance? I'm just curious.

move up? Teams reset and move players around.

Are you familiar with moving up ranks for example like in sPvP? Because that's basically similar to what I was thinking of. You do good... You move further up because you are good.

move up what though? Alliances shuffle players around every reset. So what is there to move up? thats the point I was making.

I thought I kinda already said "what", but basically a ladder like system... "You do good... You move further up because you are good". Also, define "reset" here please regarding Alliances... Do you mean seasonal or something else? Because you can still have a "reset", as it often happens, where ranks and tiers (tiers maybe) are reset at the end of a season in games or some kinda fair time frame. Then you can start climbing the ladder again till you get a finite winner or set of "winners" again. Then often repeat the process of climbing back up each time after.

[Whiteout.1975]

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Whiteout.1975 said:

@"Gop.8713" said:This thread sort of went in a different direction than I was expecting from the OP, but to answer the question I thought the OP was asking, I'll say I would much rather play with like-minded ppl than skilled ppl. Fighting and losing is just part of the game, it's the refusal to fight that I can't abide . . .

lol well I hope that a good thing. I completely agree though, I'm in the same boat of playing with like-minded people over skill. What I'm referring to when I say "skill"... I'm basically referring to like skill as team together. Not from an individual to individual basis. Like "oh that team is skilled". So when players win a match through this World Restructuring System I was wondering how that would look as a team. Will the "team" be considered "skillful" if certain people are still carried too much? OR will you just win due to random chance this time, not so much population imbalance and skill as a team gets disregarded ultimately because of it?

I think it's important that people feel their accomplishments when they actually deserve them because that just makes sense to me. So I'm just curious :)

How would skill in the way you are defining it here, be determined by the computers that would run the matchmaking system you want?

I am not sure how any computer can objectively determine player group skills in the way you describe.

I would imagine through winning and losing initially... Though, if you want I a healthy match-up (which I do) then I would greatly consider offering a greater sense of fair and overall respectable match-ups. Like... Right about even numbers for starters. Though, I hope your not expecting me to lay out an entire blueprint for you lol.

However, your more than welcome to entertain me on what "computers", as you say, can and can't do regarding the subject if you want ?

[Whiteout.1975]

@"subversiontwo.7501" said:Hah, interesting thread and proposition! It made me crawl out of the woodwork.

The first thing you need to do with the terminology is not to define friends and skill. It is to define friends and friends.

In the context of the discussion the term friends can be understood as a social or social organisation aspect and as a social organisation aspect to leverage numerical superiority.

[+] The friends that the world restructuring is looking to improve are the social- or social organisation aspect of making it easier to play with friends, recruit them to the game and organize to do something together and establish a sense of "us".

[-] The friends that the world restructuring is looking to limit or balance is the act of collecting friends to leverage numerical superiorities - that is the aspect of the term friends that stand in some kind of contrast to skill. It's not necessarily so that they are directly looking to promote skill but that is the indirect result of dealing with imbalances in population (numerical superiorities). So by adressing population imbalance they are indirectly making performance more valuable.

We can't tell what the end result will be, if the organisation of alliances (500) and worlds (2500) will lead to a more stable of numbers and performance over time - well organized and high performing groups may wear themselves out (or may not come back in sufficient numbers to make a dent) and we may see even the new system devolve into coverage wars. The system itself doesn't directly deal with coverage either way. It deals with it indirectly however and at least creates a foundation for better balance. So the balance will be better but we still do not know whether it will be good enough to make performance a dominant factor over coverage.

Any improvement is welcome though because the current system is very negative for various reasons. The current system causes the split between PPT and PPK instead of letting them overlap and the current system forces the players to make alot of decisions that they outright know beforehand are destructive relative content creation. For example, if a night-capping-only PPT server climbs to Tier 1 due to the system, the other two servers are forced to punish its positive day-time players (who are trying to compete in prime time but may be lacking sufficient organisation and resources to do so due to the server's demography). The have to ruin whatever attempt at building up a positive presence in prime time in order to get rid of the server and its negative off-hour presence. It is completely detrimental to fostering good content but the system forces that or the other two servers will be stuck with a third server who can never compete with them when the normative players are awake.

 

Past that, there will always be a balance between friends (numbers) and skill (performance) or between organisation (ability) and execution (skill) in an MMO game. That is the nature of the genre, the mode and one of the things that makes the mode fun. It exists in GvG for example, with different guilds having different cultures even though they always play equal numbers on the field. It will be existing within player choice where people will organize their alliances in different ways for different means. Some alliances will likely be made to keep a social community on a server alive, other alliances will be made to keep friendships between guilds alive and another set of alliances may be made to reach #1 on the ladder. Some alliances will have two guilds under one structure and other alliances will have 20 guilds with independent structures.

The important thing of course being that it is a choice and different routes to similar ends whereas in the current system that choice isn't really there or the choices that are available are not constructive or positive for the mode (or how it is intended). You can obviously organize a server with people who have superior coverage due to having abnormal time to play or schedules and you can obviously do things like buying a presence from players/groups with abnormal demography relative the region. However, those things are in direct opposite of what ArenaNet and GW2 tend to stand for. The mode was built with regions and map caps in order to establish some sense of playing field (together, of course, with things like keeping server-performance [the datacentre] in check and for things like taxation reasons).

If some server chooses to organize their 500 as a union, as a federation or as loose collaboration, that is all player choice and positive choice within the framework of the mode. Whoever does that most effectively is also bound to change and be far more vivid than the stale nature of antisocial behaviour or social engineering for coverage. A developer that builds a ruleset that encourages antisocial behaviour or social engineering that bends the rules is obviously acting very irresponsibly towards their players - encouraging children to skip school to sit up at night or encouraging players with addiction issues to end up with problems in their social or professional lives or encouraging players of a region to evade whatever reasons they had for making regions in the first place.

That obviously isn't ArenaNet or GW2 (outside of how they have handled coverage mechanics for WvW so far B)).

The fact that we have a divide between PPT and PPK or that most people no longer cares about winning is on the one hand a problem with content in the mode but on the other hand a positive thing because it is direct examples of how the community have choosen not to play by the broken and exploitative ruleset that ArenaNet have been in no hurry to fix. It also shows some cultural differences between the regions where NA has had more exploitation of the system and EU has been more self-regulated due the immidiate issues being discovered with language servers and regions. They are a curse and a blessing.

In that discussion you have the answer to why the EU region has never had a Blackgate for example. They've never had that NA equivalent.

Ed. Added some spoilers for the talk about the game and design rather than players and organisation to not deter from the thread.

Thanks :)

I just want to say that I appreciate the effort in your post for starters. Also, for starters you are right. The term friends I was trying to relate to your team as a whole and perhaps how people might view you. Like at least in my guild I view everyone in it as a friend ultimately so that's kinda where this stems from. I just imagined the collection of Guilds forming an alliances would ultimately have some kinda of friendly connecting as well.

I hope no one get's me wrong here though. My post isn't an attack on alliances if anyone thinks that. I'm for the at least baseline concept of Alliances at the end of the day because I just think also that it's better than not having a true sense of a "foundation" (like you say) to stem off of. Hopefully stemming into a stronger foundation. My post is merely to offer a potential (and likely from my perspective) flaw within that foundation. So that it may be caught early on. Potentially leading towards a stronger foundation to build from had it otherwise gone unnoticed or been disregarded.

My main thing is that I what people to "feel good" about winning or losing for all parties involved. And I attribute this feeling strongly to quality participation. So people earn what they earn because they actually participated in receiving that hypothetically potential reward or at least received that mental clarity knowing they undergone the most fair and respectable matches available to them. For example, if they lose... I want them to easily recognize that it was indeed their fault, as a team, they had lost. There is no poor matchmaking system to blame because it doesn't exist kind of understanding. Like I said in a earlier reply:

@Whiteout.1975 said:And it should also go without saying that you can't have quality population balance without quality participation.

[Dawdler.8521]

@Whiteout.1975 said:

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Whiteout.1975 said:

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Whiteout.1975 said:

@"Swagger.1459" said:“ Will you build hard-core and casual worlds?

No. The goal is to balance worlds by population. The matchmaker, at this time, is unconcerned with trying to match skill.”

So if your team wins matches and move up tiers with balanced populations between worlds. Will that be because of skill or an "unconcerned" matchmaker?

• For example: Does this mean a player can just choose a WvW Guild, not really participate, but essentially just get carried to whatever awaits them through that guild/alliance? I'm just curious.

move up? Teams reset and move players around.

Are you familiar with moving up ranks for example like in sPvP? Because that's basically similar to what I was thinking of. You do good... You move further up because you are good.

move up what though? Alliances shuffle players around every reset. So what is there to move up? thats the point I was making.

I thought I kinda already said "what", but basically a ladder like system... "You do good... You move further up because you are good". Also, define "reset" here please regarding Alliances... Do you mean seasonal or something else? Because you can still have a "reset", as it often happens, where ranks and tiers (tiers maybe) are reset at the end of a season in games or some kinda fair time frame. Then you can start climbing the ladder again till you get a finite winner or set of "winners" again. Then often repeat the process of climbing back up each time after.Yes, that is how Anet described alliances. A season would be 2 months and due to the way everyone would land on new, randomized worlds, they'd have to fight up the ladder like system. Just like how tiers work now, except you'd never have a Blackgate situation for example.

In theory Anet could do this part right now (just reset glicko to 0 and randomize server tiers first reset of a 2 month period) but unfortunetly it would be pointless unless the monolithic servers are broken up at the same time. So they cant really move forward yet.

[Knighthonor.4061]

@Whiteout.1975 said:

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Whiteout.1975 said:

@"Gop.8713" said:This thread sort of went in a different direction than I was expecting from the OP, but to answer the question I thought the OP was asking, I'll say I would much rather play with like-minded ppl than skilled ppl. Fighting and losing is just part of the game, it's the refusal to fight that I can't abide . . .

lol well I hope that a good thing. I completely agree though, I'm in the same boat of playing with like-minded people over skill. What I'm referring to when I say "skill"... I'm basically referring to like skill as team together. Not from an individual to individual basis. Like "oh that team is skilled". So when players win a match through this World Restructuring System I was wondering how that would look as a team. Will the "team" be considered "skillful" if certain people are still carried too much? OR will you just win due to random chance this time, not so much population imbalance and skill as a team gets disregarded ultimately because of it?

I think it's important that people feel their accomplishments when they actually deserve them because that just makes sense to me. So I'm just curious :)

How would skill in the way you are defining it here, be determined by the computers that would run the matchmaking system you want?

I am not sure how any computer can objectively determine player group skills in the way you describe.

I would imagine through winning and losing initially... Though, if you want I a healthy match-up (which I do) then I would greatly consider offering a greater

sense

of fair and overall respectable match-ups. Like... Right about even numbers for starters. Though, I hope your not expecting me to lay out an entire blueprint for you lol.

However, your more than welcome to entertain me on what "computers", as you say, can and can't do regarding the subject if you want ?

Win or lose what? There is no Winner or Loser in WvW.Also the way group fights skill is described in that OP, how will that be determined from one player from another that's just spamming or something?

[Whiteout.1975]

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Whiteout.1975 said:

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Whiteout.1975 said:

@"Gop.8713" said:This thread sort of went in a different direction than I was expecting from the OP, but to answer the question I thought the OP was asking, I'll say I would much rather play with like-minded ppl than skilled ppl. Fighting and losing is just part of the game, it's the refusal to fight that I can't abide . . .

lol well I hope that a good thing. I completely agree though, I'm in the same boat of playing with like-minded people over skill. What I'm referring to when I say "skill"... I'm basically referring to like skill as team together. Not from an individual to individual basis. Like "oh that team is skilled". So when players win a match through this World Restructuring System I was wondering how that would look as a team. Will the "team" be considered "skillful" if certain people are still carried too much? OR will you just win due to random chance this time, not so much population imbalance and skill as a team gets disregarded ultimately because of it?

I think it's important that people feel their accomplishments when they actually deserve them because that just makes sense to me. So I'm just curious :)

How would skill in the way you are defining it here, be determined by the computers that would run the matchmaking system you want?

I am not sure how any computer can objectively determine player group skills in the way you describe.

I would imagine through winning and losing initially... Though, if you want I a healthy match-up (which I do) then I would greatly consider offering a greater

sense

of fair and overall respectable match-ups. Like... Right about even numbers for starters. Though, I hope your not expecting me to lay out an entire blueprint for you lol.

However, your more than welcome to entertain me on what "computers", as you say, can and can't do regarding the subject if you want ?

Win or lose what? There is no Winner or Loser in WvW.Also the way group fights skill is described in that OP, how will that be determined from one player from another that's just spamming or something?

Win or lose a match like I've been talking about in this post... What else? Granted you get an ultimate "winner" in a ladder system.

Okay, so what makes this this statement "There is no Winner or Loser in WvW.", true now? And what especially makes this true for alliances in the future? Because I'm discussing Alliances with WvW specifically. I however can understand there not feeling like a point to "Win" or much of a care to "Lose" currently in WvW.

I think you need to reread the OP. I said "A world wins" in that example from the OP. I never said from an individual to individual level. "Skill" is taken from a group perspective not an individual one. I'm basically referring to if a team wins because they are good or at least better than whatever other team... The Winner's being more skilled.

I never clarify what kinds of participation I expect to see specifically in combat "spamming" something potentially like you said. Though, in combat participation can be discussed as well. Instead, I'm initially wondering what kind of participation that may exist with winners and losers for matches in general. Like I said in another reply:

@Whiteout.1975 said:

• For example: Does this mean a player can just choose a WvW Guild, not really participate, but essentially just get carried to whatever awaits them through that guild/alliance? I'm just curious.

[Slick.7164]

Balance is same number peeps vs same number. It not like a server pretend to be dead so they can outnumber everyone like the last 7 years. anet can see that and fired them dick heads that used to do that. Outnumbered meen outnumbered girl. If a server goes vacant spying and shit, they dont get transfers unless one of them mofos leaves that server. Person leaves.one person can join. Fair is Fair

[subversiontwo.7501]

@Knighthonor.4061 said:Win or lose what? There is no Winner or Loser in WvW.I think this is another topic where your inexperience leaves you with an information or knowledge gap.

There are winners and losers in WvW. When people are talking about that winning or losing doesn't matter they are talking about that the players (for the most part) do not attribute any value to winning or losing. However the current system does have winners and loser in the matchups and has a ladder system where the #1 server very obviously is the #1 server. The problem with the current system is that it better measures who has players awake when others are sleeping than it does in measuring who plays the best. That is why we tend to say that winning or losing doesn't matter. However, there very clearly are winners and losers.

These are also the reasons why people talk about the scoring system so much when they talk about population balance (the #1 issue with WvW among players). Population balance do to some part have to do with the dinosaur systems of servers and queues or that people may end up on servers that have too few players playing (actively) to organize and initiate all forms of content (ie., why they are working on alliances). The second half of the argument is the scoring system. That is also why Anet are finally working on those two things (as per the April 2, 2019 roadmap).

There they are looking at solutions from anything but the most simple such as raising the value of PPK over PPT or raising the value of PPT during a region's 18:00 hrs to 23:00 hrs relative off hour times of the day; to more complex systems such as taking K/D values into account for PPK or to premier K/D points over number of attackers and defenders per kill to balance out the scales of fights over different hours or using the outnumbered buff to get relative figures of coverage where faction ratios matter rather than total numbers to also balance out the scales of player populations over different hours. Again, the first examples are examples of things that are easier to implement but are perhaps not as precise and risks excluding players who feel more or less forced to play during off hours in a region (language barriers, server accessability etc.) whereas the later few examples are examples of things that are more difficult to design and implement but has more precise and inclusive balance or flexibility once successfully in the game.