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Rethink Linking


Fricken.3819

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Honestly, I wish they would just unlinked servers again, Make 7 tiers over the old 8. Make new names for the servers and let people have one free transfer. My biggest problem with links is the loss of server communities, and before you say, "oh my community is great" it's not what they once were, (EU and NA) and linking has stressed and killed many servers. Links make bandwagoning to full servers possible, they make friction between host and link (teammates not by choice). Links only grow because of a bandwagon of the host, then dead after relinking. Give servers identity again, maybe reduce the tiers from 8 to 7 on NA ( EU IDK), which would help with the disparity between tiers of winning, meaning going up or down one tier and being wrecked, going down one tier and smashing the match would be less. yes, there would be bandwagon but it is already happening.

Communities could choose where they want to be unlike now where 2 months you could be T1 and 2 months t4 as a link or with a bad link. At least the people that want to be in 100+ man queues in T1 would be there, and people in tiers 7 could roam and ppt their hearts out and middle tiers could be fight focused and less blob oriented. Keep the 1 up 1 down system, but kill the linking.And before you say "what if I am still in a tier I don't want to be and server I want is full?" Join a server that is very high and help get them to the top. "what if my guild is on a full server?" then if you are that important to them, have them move to a very high server and start something new and move up tiers quickly. And before you say, but "when I play the server is empty even in T1" this is probably because you play at a time of low activity for your server and the mega blob guild or pug tag is not on.1) Start and group, squad, or roam until your blob shows up.2) Find a server/ guild that is active when you play.3) move to EU or NA for the time that's better suited for you.There are many guilds on servers that play at "off prime time hours". Don't complain that it is slow off of "prime time." build something in your timezone and help your server or join a community in that time slotYes, I know many of you may not agree with my opinion and that is okay since we aren't getting anything for WvW for a while it seems, what would it hurt to try this?Edit; Maybe giving map caps depending on each tier would help in the curve of the bandwagon of lower tiers? just a thought

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You're nostalgic about a specific time of the game history that you enjoyed, more than for the system. Removing tiers now wouldn't bring that back, it would just further show the problems with the game mode, and expose just how empty some of the tiers would be, and how way out of whack the population of the servers would be.

Also, just like you don't choose which server you're linked with, you never chossed who to be on a server with. To accomplish some sort of control over that, we'll have to see how the Alliance system (eventually) turns out.


Regarding choosing what sort of gameplay you want to play, I think they could accomplish that better by making separate maps for different modes, rather than artificially splitting people for it. Or just make the game mode relevant enough that people actually want to play the game mode in all it's different ways, since that would be the most efficient way for winning a match-up. So the problem is closer related to the fact that most doesn't care if they win/lose, rather than the population.

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@"joneirikb.7506" said:You're nostalgic about a specific time of the game history that you enjoyed, more than for the system. Removing tiers now wouldn't bring that back, it would just further show the problems with the game mode, and expose just how empty some of the tiers would be, and how way out of whack the population of the servers would be.

Also, just like you don't choose which server you're linked with, you never chossed who to be on a server with. To accomplish some sort of control over that, we'll have to see how the Alliance system (eventually) turns out.


Regarding choosing what sort of gameplay you want to play, I think they could accomplish that better by making separate maps for different modes, rather than artificially splitting people for it. Or just make the game mode relevant enough that people actually want to play the game mode in all it's different ways, since that would be the most efficient way for winning a match-up. So the problem is closer related to the fact that most doesn't care if they win/lose, rather than the population.

Yes, I was there for that time, but I was also there when everyone left wvw because of Red BL being the only bl with bad mechs. etc. yes 7 tiers may be too much, but linking (beta) is not better than the old system, and waiting on alliances is a dead meme. Cutting everyone one down to even 5-6 servers would be healthier for the mode than linking is for the game until the "next big thing they won't finish" comes out.

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@Fricken.3819 said:Yes, I was there for that time, but I was also there when everyone left wvw because of Red BL being the only bl with bad mechs. etc. yes 7 tiers may be too much, but linking (beta) is not better than the old system, and waiting on alliances is a dead meme.I disagree with the bold. The old system had frequent lower tier matchups in which every structure on every map was the same color for hours on end. I have yet to see that happen with linking.

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@Shining One.1635 said:

@Fricken.3819 said:Yes, I was there for that time, but I was also there when everyone left wvw because of Red BL being the only bl with bad mechs. etc. yes 7 tiers may be too much,
but linking (beta) is not better than the old system
, and waiting on alliances is a dead meme.I disagree with the bold. The old system had frequent lower tier matchups in which every structure on every map was the same color for hours on end. I have yet to see that happen with linking.

That would be because of the Glicko system, not tiers. I would love to keep 1 up 1 down. and T7 should be slow ... it's the bottom tier. if you want more action move to a higher tier, make a guild, and if the population gets bad enough, Anet should add and delete tiers as needed and offer transfer to people in that tier.

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@Shining One.1635 said:

@Fricken.3819 said:Yes, I was there for that time, but I was also there when everyone left wvw because of Red BL being the only bl with bad mechs. etc. yes 7 tiers may be too much,
but linking (beta) is not better than the old system
, and waiting on alliances is a dead meme.I disagree with the bold.The old system had frequent lower tier matchups in which every structure on every map was the same color for hours on end. I have yet to see that happen with linking.

Lucky you :). I have seen this (not very often, but a few times) since the linking system started.

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@"Fricken.3819" said:and if the population gets bad enough, Anet should add and delete tiers as needed and offer transfer to people in that tier.Literally was the purpose of alliances, except there is no "offer". Dynamically shifting server caps, and thus tiers depending on the total population.

Simple fact is that monolothic servers is a temporary solution to a constant problem.

Yeah you could probably make 8 tiers with perfect balanced player numbers if you just dumped players anywhere you wanted. And in 2 months the servers will be unbalanced again. Then they have to delete a tier... but where to put everyone? Oh I know - together with other low pop servers.

So the solution to the problem you created by reverting links, is to create links.

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People want to be on the winning side, no matter how much they claim to be looking for a challenge and a fair matchup. This is human nature and pretty much why you can't allow people to move freely during a competition. Balance, in terms of quantity as well as quality (if possible), needs to be set up in advance and then locked for the duration of the matchup. People will simply move to the winning side otherwise. There are also those who will just log off for a few weeks if they aren't winning, turning a bad matchup into a terrible one.

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@Dawdler.8521 said:

@"Fricken.3819" said:and if the population gets bad enough, Anet should add and delete tiers as needed and offer transfer to people in that tier.Literally was the purpose of alliances, except there is no "offer". Dynamically shifting server caps, and thus tiers depending on the total population.

Simple fact is that monolothic servers is a temporary solution to a constant problem.

Yeah you could probably make 8 tiers with
perfect
balanced player numbers if you just dumped players anywhere you wanted. And in 2 months the servers will be unbalanced again. Then they have to delete a tier... but where to put everyone? Oh I know - together with other low pop servers.

So the solution to the problem you created by reverting links, is to create links.

No, not really, because it would not be smaller communities being put with full servers every 2 months and have no choice in the matter. I don't want the tiers to be balanced. If 3 servers are in T1 it's because of the population, not skill anyway. why try and have balanced tiers (not possible in any system yet they have given). the bottom tier is promoted as care bear tier, off-hour ppt and roaming and it gets increasingly more hardcore as you go up. Want a different experience... move to a server to get that. Adding more tiers is just a means of shifting the tier disparity. So if you win it takes more than 3 weeks bottom to top. Honestly let a server be dead and people want to transfer to a dead server, it's their choice to, if they want to be in lag fest T1, it's their choice. Trying to balance as you said a "monolithic servers" is a bad idea, so give people more space to play how they want. Yes, a "BG" style server will be number 1... but does first mean anything in wvw right now? No. Also what is the perfect population for wvw? because I sure as hell don't want T1 numbers with alliances or old SoR numbers before links but some people want that kind of play.

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So Tier 8 becomes ez unopposed k-train with 5 people, or run into a roamer once an hour and beat them and call it skill. Got it.

You know what, they really should just restart wvw back to how it was on day one, no links, no 1u1d, but with the benefit of having a population threshold and counting wvw players only from the beginning. If people bandwagon again, so be it, some people obviously don't want even populations to have things like tournaments, frankly we don't deserve it anyways.

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I like linking as it is. It's cool that the cards shuffle every once in a while and things change, the core community stays but new people also drop by and go.I'm on Piken (EU) and we have this population that we mostly don't have a link and are soon feeding the bottom but if we get a link we will get to T2 maybe even T1. And I actually like that because it adds some diversity. I don't really like T1 but it is nice to be at the top from time to time. The drop sucks but once it stabilizes its again ok and different.

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@"Cuks.8241" said:I like linking as it is. It's cool that the cards shuffle every once in a while and things change, the core community stays but new people also drop by and go.I'm on Piken (EU) and we have this population that we mostly don't have a link and are soon feeding the bottom but if we get a link we will get to T2 maybe even T1. And I actually like that because it adds some diversity. I don't really like T1 but it is nice to be at the top from time to time. The drop sucks but once it stabilizes its again ok and different.

Wouldn't it be nice for you to choose when you want to shuffle the cards? That's what transferring is for, some people don't like being put with communities with anywhere near the same goals. Linking is a forced transfer that does not matter because people transfer and bandwagon anyway. My biggest issue with links is the tier disparity in matches and linking only creates more bandwagon to the "new STRONG linking". even if it was 6-7 tiers would be better for the mode than 4 wins to be first or 4 loses to last.

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@XenesisII.1540 said:So Tier 8 becomes ez unopposed k-train with 5 people, or run into a roamer once an hour and beat them and call it skill. Got it.

You know what, they really should just restart wvw back to how it was on day one, no links, no 1u1d, but with the benefit of having a population threshold and counting wvw players only from the beginning. If people bandwagon again, so be it, some people obviously don't want even populations to have things like tournaments, frankly we don't deserve it anyways.

Skill? if you want to call it that, lol and in ny opinion with transfers and linking tournaments should not happen because the population will never be on a level field. When there were Gold, Silver and Bronze tiers, being the top of each meant something more than being the blob with overpopulation in T1. So even if you were the bronze tier winner in a tournament, you were the winner of your low pop. tier not because your skill was less. Population and coverage do not equal more skill it equals bandwagon mostly and that's okay if you want to be in 200 man queue on reset, I prefer10 man even if maps are empty a few hours a day.

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@Fricken.3819 said:

@XenesisII.1540 said:So Tier 8 becomes ez unopposed k-train with 5 people, or run into a roamer once an hour and beat them and call it skill. Got it.

You know what, they really should just restart wvw back to how it was on day one, no links, no 1u1d, but with the benefit of having a population threshold and counting wvw players only from the beginning. If people bandwagon again, so be it, some people obviously don't want even populations to have things like tournaments, frankly we don't deserve it anyways.

Skill? if you want to call it that, lol and in ny opinion with transfers and linking tournaments should not happen because the population will never be on a level field. When there were Gold, Silver and Bronze tiers, being the top of each meant something more than being the blob with overpopulation in T1. So even if you were the bronze tier winner in a tournament, you were the winner of your low pop. tier not because your skill was less. Population and coverage do not equal more skill it equals bandwagon mostly and that's okay if you want to be in 200 man queue on reset, I prefer10 man even if maps are empty a few hours a day.

It's possible for tournaments to return when alliances come out, because they will be able to reset the populations every 2 months or however long they want to place that at, that is the key point in keeping populations closer together over time. There will be less reasons to bandwagon move because you would already get the free option to join guilds and friends before the world reset to then be placed in the same worlds. Players of course will still want to super stack worlds if bigger rewards are involved, but that can be limited if they wanted to. This is why we can't have nice rewards without huge time gating in the current game, because players constantly abuse the systems.

There's always going to be imbalance with coverage no matter what system you choose due to week long matches, the only way to get around that is have instanced time limited matches (as in spvp or battleground matches), but then it wouldn't be wvw anymore. Also reset lasts for 2 hours of the week, a 200 man queue for 2 hours on friday with the possibility that prime time rest of the week would be healthy? I would take that over 10 manning empty maps.

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No links only works when they merge a lot of servers together because without a link, there would be too much dead server who will stuck forever in the last Tiers and slowly dying till noone plays there anymore.

Example is Riverside on EU. They never had a link until last year (because anet decided the server was full, even no one was playing and we couldn't get 30-40 ppl for one squad). A lot of people moved on to another server and they were stucked in the last tiers for a long long long long time and went to medium suddenly when anet decided to reopen the server.

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@phreeak.1023 said:No links only works when they merge a lot of servers together because without a link, there would be too much dead server who will stuck forever in the last Tiers and slowly dying till noone plays there anymore.

Example is Riverside on EU. They never had a link until last year (because anet decided the server was full, even no one was playing and we couldn't get 30-40 ppl for one squad). A lot of people moved on to another server and they were stucked in the last tiers for a long long long long time and went to medium suddenly when anet decided to reopen the server.

People leaving the server means they left to a community or server that gave them what they wanted, the server population should have shown that it needed to be open, but that's nothing to do with links. if the server dies and you don't like the play, move. Anet shouldn't force people to your server because you failed as a community to force bandwagon for just 2 months till they leave again.

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@"Fricken.3819" said:Honestly, I wish they would just unlinked servers again, Make 7 tiers over the old 8. Make new names for the servers and let people have one free transfer. My biggest problem with links is the loss of server communities, and before you say, "oh my community is great" it's not what they once were, (EU and NA) and linking has stressed and killed many servers. Links make bandwagoning to full servers possible, they make friction between host and link (teammates not by choice). Links only grow because of a bandwagon of the host, then dead after relinking. Give servers identity again, maybe reduce the tiers from 8 to 7 on NA ( EU IDK), which would help with the disparity between tiers of winning, meaning going up or down one tier and being wrecked, going down one tier and smashing the match would be less. yes, there would be bandwagon but it is already happening.

Communities could choose where they want to be unlike now where 2 months you could be T1 and 2 months t4 as a link or with a bad link. At least the people that want to be in 100+ man queues in T1 would be there, and people in tiers 7 could roam and ppt their hearts out and middle tiers could be fight focused and less blob oriented. Keep the 1 up 1 down system, but kill the linking.And before you say "what if I am still in a tier I don't want to be and server I want is full?" Join a server that is very high and help get them to the top. "what if my guild is on a full server?" then if you are that important to them, have them move to a very high server and start something new and move up tiers quickly. And before you say, but "when I play the server is empty even in T1" this is probably because you play at a time of low activity for your server and the mega blob guild or pug tag is not on.1) Start and group, squad, or roam until your blob shows up.2) Find a server/ guild that is active when you play.3) move to EU or NA for the time that's better suited for you.There are many guilds on servers that play at "off prime time hours". Don't complain that it is slow off of "prime time." build something in your timezone and help your server or join a community in that time slotYes, I know many of you may not agree with my opinion and that is okay since we aren't getting anything for WvW for a while it seems, what would it hurt to try this?

Just wait for alliances like everyone else.

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@"Fricken.3819" said:Honestly, I wish they would just unlinked servers again, Make 7 tiers over the old 8. Make new names for the servers and let people have one free transfer. My biggest problem with links is the loss of server communities, and before you say, "oh my community is great" it's not what they once were, (EU and NA) and linking has stressed and killed many servers. Links make bandwagoning to full servers possible, they make friction between host and link (teammates not by choice). Links only grow because of a bandwagon of the host, then dead after relinking. Give servers identity again, maybe reduce the tiers from 8 to 7 on NA ( EU IDK), which would help with the disparity between tiers of winning, meaning going up or down one tier and being wrecked, going down one tier and smashing the match would be less. yes, there would be bandwagon but it is already happening.

Communities could choose where they want to be unlike now where 2 months you could be T1 and 2 months t4 as a link or with a bad link. At least the people that want to be in 100+ man queues in T1 would be there, and people in tiers 7 could roam and ppt their hearts out and middle tiers could be fight focused and less blob oriented. Keep the 1 up 1 down system, but kill the linking.And before you say "what if I am still in a tier I don't want to be and server I want is full?" Join a server that is very high and help get them to the top. "what if my guild is on a full server?" then if you are that important to them, have them move to a very high server and start something new and move up tiers quickly. And before you say, but "when I play the server is empty even in T1" this is probably because you play at a time of low activity for your server and the mega blob guild or pug tag is not on.1) Start and group, squad, or roam until your blob shows up.2) Find a server/ guild that is active when you play.3) move to EU or NA for the time that's better suited for you.There are many guilds on servers that play at "off prime time hours". Don't complain that it is slow off of "prime time." build something in your timezone and help your server or join a community in that time slotYes, I know many of you may not agree with my opinion and that is okay since we aren't getting anything for WvW for a while it seems, what would it hurt to try this?

I 100% agree the linking, alliance bandwagoning and pay to server stack is killing and sucking the fun out of what was my favorite game. The communities are focused on building alliances instead of building the server community that they are on. This is a shame because the server community, working together and playing as a team of guilds is almost all but lost on my server since this fiasco of alliances was announced. The server should be a community where guilds play, grow and work together. Right now the temporary linking is killing this. If you happen to get a good link and we work together for two months building camaraderie and we say our goodbyes and thank yous and bam you put with your enemies and toxic map chat. First day of a bad pairing and everyone is complaining and trashing each other to the point map chat is useless. Take away this toxic linking PLEASE!!! We have played every night on a borderland for over 7 years but now it just not fun and we are all playing another game that is not NC Soft based and putting our monies there because you killed our server, our fun and our community. Before alliances, we had a great community, friends on every guild, an active community server discord and we worked together and it was fun whether we lost of won! Ty, for those wonderful years but it appears you lost interest in us so we have lost interest in your game. Funny too, we all looked on efficiency to see how much we spent over the year on Guild Wars and many of us were in the thousands of dollars. The reason you are losing so much money is not because of the players, its because of your decisions to create a pay to stack server and win situation that took what was once a beautiful thing and made it a toxic cesspool.

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@Swagger.1459 said:

@"Fricken.3819" said:Honestly, I wish they would just unlinked servers again, Make 7 tiers over the old 8. Make new names for the servers and let people have one free transfer. My biggest problem with links is the loss of server communities, and before you say, "oh my community is great" it's not what they once were, (EU and NA) and linking has stressed and killed many servers. Links make bandwagoning to full servers possible, they make friction between host and link (teammates not by choice). Links only grow because of a bandwagon of the host, then dead after relinking. Give servers identity again, maybe reduce the tiers from 8 to 7 on NA ( EU IDK), which would help with the disparity between tiers of winning, meaning going up or down one tier and being wrecked, going down one tier and smashing the match would be less. yes, there would be bandwagon but it is already happening.

Communities could choose where they want to be unlike now where 2 months you could be T1 and 2 months t4 as a link or with a bad link. At least the people that want to be in 100+ man queues in T1 would be there, and people in tiers 7 could roam and ppt their hearts out and middle tiers could be fight focused and less blob oriented. Keep the 1 up 1 down system, but kill the linking.And before you say "what if I am still in a tier I don't want to be and server I want is full?" Join a server that is very high and help get them to the top. "what if my guild is on a full server?" then if you are that important to them, have them move to a very high server and start something new and move up tiers quickly. And before you say, but "when I play the server is empty even in T1" this is probably because you play at a time of low activity for your server and the mega blob guild or pug tag is not on.1) Start and group, squad, or roam until your blob shows up.2) Find a server/ guild that is active when you play.3) move to EU or NA for the time that's better suited for you.There are many guilds on servers that play at "off prime time hours". Don't complain that it is slow off of "prime time." build something in your timezone and help your server or join a community in that time slotYes, I know many of you may not agree with my opinion and that is okay since we aren't getting anything for WvW for a while it seems, what would it hurt to try this?

Just wait for alliances like everyone else.

Alliances = DED MEME lol

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Guilds and people take way more than 2 months to integrate to community. They should def abolish relinkings. They should do following things:

  1. Make so that relinks only happen when the amount of tiers changes (to keep versalitility, This would happen almost never)
  2. Make population of link server same as main server
  3. Adjust population caps to match the total of the main + linked server
  4. Reduce transfer costs to Very High servers to 1500 gems
  5. Maybe make one extra tier?

Won't the WvW pop suffer? Answer is simply NO! because:

  1. Open tags will be tagging more often because people around them don't change that frequently and facing similar servers often
  2. Guilds will feel make friends staying with same server meaning they will eventually start open tagging due to boredom/power of friendship
  3. Servers will be more organised due to knowing they're working only for allies, not next weeks enemies also.

Right now issues within WvW are: People+guilds transfer too often and there aren't nearly enough open tags. Abolishing link system while keeping amount of tiers low would be best solution.

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Heh, you guys were probably sitting on top servers when links happened. You don't seem to understand the only reason links were introduced in the first place was because the communities were already breaking apart, if all server communities were still doing great before there wouldn't have been a need for links. How do you guys not get this? You think links is the problem but there's a bunch of foundational problems that will continue to exist and communities won't magically sprout back up to what they were in 2012-15.

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@"XenesisII.1540" said:Heh, you guys were probably sitting on top servers when links happened. You don't seem to understand the only reason links were introduced in the first place was because the communities were already breaking apart, if all server communities were still doing great before there wouldn't have been a need for links. How do you guys not get this? You think links is the problem but there's a bunch of foundational problems that will continue to exist and communities won't magically sprout back up to what they were in 2012-15.

I agree with you saying, "a bunch of foundational problems that will continue to exist", but linking does not fix the issue it was set to be used for. I was on SoR at the time of linking back then. and we moved to DH then because we did not want to be in T1 with BG. Yes, communities were dying but linking only exacerbated the problem. No communities won't SPROUT back up, but the ones left may get to grow or stick around and healthy competition may happen from time to time.

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