World Restructuring

[Nep Leet.5491]

Wouldn't Guilds and Alliances almost completely negate the whole intent of the Individual Player Metric that's there to ensure balance? It feels as though it would end up being back to the same-old-same-old as we have currently.

For instance: You have an alliance of guilds who play mostly during prime time. Will there be enough individuals/guilds/alliances out there to balance the other play times for that World (and all the other Worlds with the same imbalances), or will nothing really change from the way it is currently?

I feel this restructuring will not solve any issues with matchup balance. I feel it only replaces the concept of "Servers" with "Alliances". The imbalance issues remain.

Unfortunately, the only way to ensure balance is if the system only measured the individual, thrown together in a herd with other individuals, with no friend/guild/alliance association. Sure, it would SUCK not being with your friends/guildmates, but it would be balanced.

Bottom line, having it both ways truly is not possible. The WvW community will need to genuinely realize they can either have balance (via the Individual Player Metric only) or community (guilds/alliances).

The WvW community will have to come to terms with what they REALLY want here: balance OR community.

[Vagrant.8613]

Hate to be that guy but I assume this will make it harder to farm outnumbered pips? I just finished my wvw legendary armor and wanted to take a break before working on the legendary backpack.

[Klipso.8653]

This is kitten for commanding,I know who our regular scouts are, I know which guilds have certain advantages/weaknesses and I know our pugs usual habits.

This just throws everything into a Ktrain blender and removes any community that our guilds have built together.

The ONLY upside to this is that we will finally be able to recruit players for the first time in 3 years.

[Tyyphoon.5301]

This is a terrible idea. Instead of allowing people to play how they want (ANET's essential idea) -- you are now going to pigeon-hole players into scenarios they would rather not like to be in, in regards to WvW. I, for one, opt to remain guildless as many others have already spoken out about, for personal reasons. ANET has already limited diversity in skill and traitlines for class builds. Now this. EOTM was the original solution to those that wanted "Alliances". Where is EOTM now? Completely a barren wasteland.

Where does this put the roamer populations? Many of the roamers played with each other or against each other for certain reasons. We have come to know more or less each other -- for better or for worse. Now you will be forcing ALL players to join big guilds, even if its against their wishes. How does that sit with ANET's tenet and original intent for the game? Forcing more zergling play, it seems.

I've played this game in all aspects (all of PvE, all of PvP, all of WvW) for over 4 years. I've been a scout, roamer, zergling, havoc, etc. As originally a BG-native. I've fought in all 3 WvW seasons (Season 1 on BG, Season 2 on SoR/TC, Season 3 on BG). I've seen the buying of various guilds by BG and JQ in their primes (which is what started the snowball effect we have today of servers buying/trading guilds), various backdoor manipulations by server figures, etc. I am not new to the abuses and manipulations I've seen by various players and guilds to the original game's WvW system. This kind of system will just introduce more of the same. (Maguuma has been the only server upto now that I've been able to play carefree.)

The equilibrium point of WvW has finally reached. Just let it be. You will cause more harm to the game mode than good with these changes as has been experienced by ANET's intent to meddle in the natural flow of the game.

TLDR: Laissez-faire is much better than Keynesianism, in its most conceptual sense (i.e. non-economical).

[Sarrs.4831]

@Tyyphoon.5301 said:Where does this put the roamer populations? Many of the roamers played with each other or against each other for certain reasons. We have come to know more or less each other -- for better or for worse. Now you will be forcing ALL players to join big guilds, even if its against their wishes. How does that sit with ANET's tenet and original intent for the game? Forcing more zergling play, it seems.

Why don't you just form a guild with the roamers you like and set that as your WvW guild?

[CarSh.8256]

My question was answered. :)

[LINKAZZATORE.8135]

@Silver.2076 said:Let's talk about the EU servers. There are currently national (DE, ES, FR, EN) servers there. Will the guilds of the servers be merged so that DE and FR fight for the same world?

Personally, I think it would be great, because this way the cover can probably be better balanced. But it is no secret that it can also lead to problems.

Quote:

Guilds will be able to set their language. An alliance will take the language of the guild that created it. If you aren't playing with a guild then the system will use whatever language you set the game as to sort you into a world that is that language.

[Namer.9750]

@Nep Leet.5491 said:

The WvW community will have to come to terms with what they REALLY want here: balance OR community.

Um. That is precisely the problem. The people who play competitively want balance and the people who play casually want the community.

There's no real way to support both properly.

That said, the banwagoners and the server communities have had their way for half a decade and we've bled players all through it. We need something new now, or we'll keep bleeding players while these people just log in to afk on some siege.

[ugrakarma.9416]

This new system is simply incredible. Speechless.

As a suggestion, I hope UI improvements are on the table as well like customizable alliances, such as icons or badges. Maybe even rankings based on contribution, If if not possible, okay! just continue with this!

[Nidome.1365]

@"DeadlySynz.3471" said:Even though this thread is long, it looks like many of the people failed to read through it, as the questions were already answered:

• I cant play with my friends (You and your friends create a new WvW guild, set that as your guild, bam, you play together if you choose, problem solved)
• I have multiple guilds for a reason, havoc, zerging, fights etc.. (Create a unified guild between the 3, then you can do whatever you want, there are 500 slots, it is highly unlikely any guild will be able to populate all 500 slots with active members. Problem solved)
• What about my separate PvE and WvW guilds I play with (Map out the players you want to play with in both, create a guild with those players, both needs met, bam, problem solved)
• This destroys server identity (server identity doesn't matter anymore, transfers killed it. Server identity isn't a valid argument as long as transfers exist)
• What if I'm a casual ? (Find other casuals who feel the same way as you and create a "casual" WvW guild, bam, problem solved)
• This will turn out to be an EoTM fest (Not sure how anyone arrives at this conclusion. Insert Team 1 that enters map intending to K-Train, runs into Team 2 that has no intention on K-training. Team 2 continually hunts and runs over Team 1; there is no EoTM. Good luck on trying to convince your entire team to EoTM K-train in the first place, but even better luck trying to convince the other 2 enemy teams to agree to it. You'll have better luck winning the lottery than trying to organize some massive transfer in between alliances to orchestrate a picture perfect EoTM K-train. This is certainly not an issue and never will be)

One thing I've noticed reading through this thread, just how little support there is behind the current system. I knew there were some people for the existence of servers, but didn't realize just how few people there are. There is literally a handful of naysayers in this thread only, which when multiplied over the big picture in comparison to the support of the new idea, we basically have a very very small fraction of the population that's behind servers. This prove this new alliance system is fully warranted.

Your "answers" aren't answers at all but patronising claptrap. All of your "problem solved" lines are absolute rubbish.Many people are guild capped.Why should people who aren't in guilds now be forced to join one to play with the same people regularly. They are not the ones who created the server imbalance issue so why should they be the ones punished for it?I have seen guilds try and merge before and they usually fall apart because merging guilds always seems to create political friction.Server identity and community does exist - there are a lot of people out there who have never transferred servers, or have transferred server only once because they selected the wrong server by accident when creating their account.In fact the people complaining about the proposed changes in chat the most are scouts who cite server identity and community as the reason why they scout.

The population imbalance issue was created by uncontrolled server hopping. This solution rewards the people who created the server imbalance and punishes those who didn't.

You final paragraph is without substance. People unhappy with the status quo are more likely to visit forums. If you don't visit the forums you don't post on them. Therefore people unhappy with WvW as it stands are vastly more likely to visit the forums and thereby become aware on this thread and post to it.In the past 3 hours I have seen more negative than positive posts about the proposed changes in WvW team chat along with an number of issues that hadn't occurred to me - one question someone raised was "What about language servers"?

The current system isn't perfect but the proposals look worse.

[Fatherbliss.4701]

A few thoughts. I've been in favor of a system like this for some time now. It will cause some players to leave, sure. Yet I still believe it will cause more to try WvW out and potentially for players to come back. When the reward tracks came out there certainly seemed to be a big resurgence. I'd like to see that come back. Balance changes and coverage issues are two of the biggest items that come up from the community.

What I've liked about this type of concept is it puts the recruitment, retention and involvement right back on the community again. You want balance in your alliance? Great! Start recruiting for not just players but also guilds to fill in your coverage gaps. Players already know the guilds that are on various servers. We have spreadsheets. :) For those players who don't like organized WvW guilds, I'd highly recommend starting up a community guild now. Find or advertise among other server links you've liked in the past. Link those community guilds together. Call it the Me(n)tal Militia or something. There are so many ways this can be divided up.

In my mind a method to come up with a total overall number of participation goes like this: Determine a set of metrics that are already in the API which can then be utilized for an overall player score. Kills, deaths, hours played, WvW achievement points divided by hours played (this streamlines the data to come up with a number that isn't solely determined by time), rank, commander hours, damage taken/healed...whatever these might be and add that up. Average it across the alliance. Compare/contrast with other alliances.

Then consider putting a modifier on that number the farther away from "Prime time" a member is to increase the overall value of their performance. Find the highest concentration of the playerbase (activity) for NA and EU. As a player's activity is further away from that period of time they get a bonus to their score. Basically stating that their contribution would be substantially higher. It breaks out the off hours component in a way that Arenanet doesn't have to actually track when people play. Otherwise there still is always going to be an imbalance somewhere along the line. Kudos for showing the community that there is activity. I'll forgive you for not posting this as a response to my Christmas wish on Reddit. :)

[asha.4159]

More thoughts.... For those who actually play a lot of WvW lets see it for what it is....

If we look at the current problem - on dieing EU servers like SFR - Commanders frustrated that people arent in guilds to be trained and do their own thing like roaming or pip farm at spawn. They come up against Vabbi who want fights = boring match up lootbag farm for Vabbi. You have to PAY hard earned money to switch to what you feel is a decent server or what you want to do/ with friends, lovers, GW2 wives, etc.... SFR is full so recruiting new blood that want to follow commander = no chance.

The solution/ changes announced is awesome because PPK players will join PPK guilds/ alliances, PPT/ casual players join PPT/ casual guilds/alliances - your matched up doing what the guild/ alliance wants to do as people would lean towards joining a guild/ alliance attracted to their skill and gameplay and possibly time anyway. It wont be hard now for a open mic commander to get 35-50 PPK fighters now vs another big blob, or for a decent number to do PPT or casual stuff or roaming other roamers.

WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNNER

[borgs.6103]

Will you increase the number of guilds we can join so we won't be forced to leave our upgraded guilds just for a chance play with our friends? I've read the comments here about how to just make a guild with your buddies and all that, but that's gonna eat a slot and not to mention have a really low guild level that won't have the necessary WvW upgrades we need and have been using.

[Klipso.8653]

@"Zephyr.8015" said:Quite honestly I am upset, especially because you name Blackgate as a problem server when its not. It is not BG's problem that servers don't want to participate in WvW, it is also not our problem that other servers aren't putting in time and effort into WvW in comparison to others. Looking at this site: https://wvwstats.com/timezones BG does not have the WvW population people think it does. I am so kitten glad to hear that anet has listened to the massive amount of haters of BG that carry around giant amounts of salt from Season 1 and 2. Because its BG's fault they don't put in effort, its BG's fault they get rolled over, its BG's fault that they don't play the game type as well. Anyone on SoS can tell you they have been doing well these past two weeks against us, by putting in effort and playing the game type. All this alliance thing will do is require more guild politics/map politics and cause drama. I am sure BG isn't alone in the fact that we have members of guilds who are in multiple WvW guilds, forcing them to choose 1 guild for an 8 week period or just in general to WvW with isn't cool. But I guess that's an exclusive issue on closed servers having to recruit from a limited pool of players, while other servers can recruit a lot more. This boils down to effort, the fact that you'd rather break apart servers who do WvW well to make it fair to those who don't want to put in effort.

This is a hard fact that will be ignored by the ignorant

[CarSh.8256]

My question was answered. :)

[SnowPumpkin.1809]

@asha.4159 said:More thoughts.... For those who actually play a lot of WvW lets see it for what it is....

If we look at the current problem - on dieing EU servers like SFR - Commanders frustrated that people arent in guilds to be trained and do their own thing like roaming or pip farm at spawn. They come up against Vabbi who want fights = boring match up lootbag farm for Vabbi. You have to PAY hard earned money to switch to what you feel is a decent server or what you want to do/ with friends, lovers, GW2 wives, etc.... SFR is full so recruiting new blood that want to follow commander = no chance.

The solution/ changes announced is awesome because PPK players will join PPK guilds/ alliances, PPT/ casual players join PPT/ casual guilds/alliances - your matched up doing what the guild/ alliance wants to do as people would lean towards joining a guild/ alliance attracted to their skill and gameplay and possibly time anyway. It wont be hard now for a open mic commander to get 35-50 PPK fighters now vs another big blob, or for a decent number to do PPT or casual stuff or roaming other roamers.

WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNNER

The problem is those guilds will only recruit players that can dedicate all their time to WVW, or can train as you said, or raid with them etc. If you can't or don't you will be in a map for 8 weeks with people you don't know and huge guilds that run around saying get lost pug. I play a lot of WVW I can see this happening easily, as it already does in some cases with Guild raids. I think it's a bad idea to give guilds the reins in WVW. It's already a problem and one of the main reasons for imbalance in skill and population. I'm not sure what else ANET could do, guilds can't be broken up or friends, there has to be some happy medium but I don't think this is it.

[Blaeys.3102]

There are potential solutions that would help balance populations without decimating the current server communities in the game. I recall a video that made the rounds several years ago that discussed implementing more than 3 borderlands maps in a given match, allowing for a single regional wvw match - where all of the servers are essentially grouped (and periodically regrouped) into three large teams - and then enough borderlands maps are generated to accommodate for all of them in the given time period. While still not a perfect solution, it has to be better than what they are proposing here, which essentially invalidates the communities built in the last five years.

Of course, this would require more work from Anet, but that is better than putting this onto players (and the inevitable elitism that comes with that as casual guilds jockey for semi-decent wvw experiences).

I tried to find the video but cannot - I remember it being extremely well done. If someone remembers it (or the person who created it sees this), it would be worth linking.

[matthewr.3980]

@Nidome.1365 said:Why should people who aren't in guilds now be forced to join one to play with the same people regularly.

Why should people be forced to join a guild so that they can more easily play with the people they often enjoy playing with?

Because that is a basic mechanic of most MMOs? :#

How were people playing with others on the same server without being in the same guild currently? Communicating over facebook or something? :o

[ugrakarma.9416]

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:We also want to give titles related to the worlds on which players currently are playing when World Restructuring goes live. If there are other transition ideas, we would love to hear them!

I've been at the Sea of Sorrows since joining GW2. pls Make it happen!

[Neph.2163]

For me, WvW is my endgame. It is the reason I play.

I also very much enjoy seeing the same people, including the ones that might only be flying their personal guild tag, or small guild tag.

At present, I very much do not like this idea.

[asha.4159]

@SnowPumpkin.1809 said:

The problem is those guilds will only recruit players that can dedicate all their time to WVW, or can train as you said, or raid with them etc. If you can't or don't you will be in a map for 8 weeks with people you don't know and huge guilds that run around saying get lost pug. I play a lot of WVW I can see this happening easily, as it already does in some cases with Guild raids. I think it's a bad idea to give guilds the reins in WVW, it's already a problem.

Definition of Guild - an association of people for mutual aid or the pursuit of a common goal.

Yes there will be elite guilds - raids/ trainings/ expectations - but casual ones with less restrictions are already around and dont have a culture to git gud or gkick.

[Israel.7056]

@Klipso.8653 said:

@"Zephyr.8015" said:Quite honestly I am upset, especially because you name Blackgate as a problem server when its not. It is not BG's problem that servers don't want to participate in WvW, it is also not our problem that other servers aren't putting in time and effort into WvW in comparison to others. Looking at this site:

https://wvwstats.com/timezones

BG does not have the WvW population people think it does. I am so kitten glad to hear that anet has listened to the massive amount of haters of BG that carry around giant amounts of salt from Season 1 and 2. Because its BG's fault they don't put in effort, its BG's fault they get rolled over, its BG's fault that they don't play the game type as well. Anyone on SoS can tell you they have been doing well these past two weeks against us, by putting in effort and playing the game type. All this alliance thing will do is require more guild politics/map politics and cause drama. I am sure BG isn't alone in the fact that we have members of guilds who are in multiple WvW guilds, forcing them to choose 1 guild for an 8 week period or just in general to WvW with isn't cool. But I guess that's an exclusive issue on closed servers having to recruit from a limited pool of players, while other servers can recruit a lot more. This boils down to effort, the fact that you'd rather break apart servers who do WvW well to make it fair to those who don't want to put in effort.

This is a hard fact that will be ignored by the ignorant

If BG players are in fact simply better at playing the game than anyone else then they'll continue to win. It might not be possible to implement BG's current nightcap/ daytime turtle strat as effectively but that shouldn't matter right?

[Heibi.4251]

@McKenna Berdrow.2759 said:

@"Kabar Jaw.4670" said:So if a guild has a large population but only a portion of that guild actually plays WvW, would they have to make a new guild in order to keep the population accurate?

No. Only players who set that guild as their WvW guild will count towards that guilds WvW population.

I'll be posting a longer message later but this caught my eye. And for the record, I'm not for this change.

So another question comes up. Say I enter WvW using my "WvW Guild" but during my time in WvW I switch my guild tag to one I haven't designated as my "WvW Guild". Would I suddenly get kick from WvW? Would suddenly get marked "red" to the other players? Would I be transferred to another Wvw "instance"?

[LINKAZZATORE.8135]

@Tolmos.8395 said:I would like to reiterate the previous questions posed, and not yet answered, about how this will affect Roleplayers.

Even though I'm not a roleplayer myself, I always found their play style something that made the game world feel a little bit more active. Instead of a silent chat with a bunch of people AFKing in town, folks are pretending to do... well, whatever it is roleplayers do. It's nice to see, and it's a long lived tradition of MMOs (in the 20 years I've been playing, I've been seeing RPers do their thing).

I took a hiatus from this game a while back, before the megaserver, and before leaving I was on Tarnished Coast. It felt alive; always something going on. Upon arriving back to the megaserver, it's hit or miss. Some instances feel active, with the roleplayers doing their thing, and others are dead silent.

It sounds to me like this is going to further that disparity between instances. Almost every MMO I've played at least had some remote head nod to RPers, but it feels almost as if this game is slowly adding more and more things to scatter and deter them, like trying to break up kids loitering outside of storefronts.

If RP really is something that is discouraged by Arenanet, it would be nice if y'all would take the time just to go ahead and say that so everyone can have an understanding of their situation. But otherwise, if that isn't the case, a little encouragement and explanation as to what the future of these players will be (and maybe even a carrot, now and then) might help a lot.

As much as RPers probably spend on the gem store looking pretty, I think they've at least earned a small acknowledgment of their existence.

Nice joke.

[Klipso.8653]

@Israel.7056 said:

@Klipso.8653 said:

@"Zephyr.8015" said:Quite honestly I am upset, especially because you name Blackgate as a problem server when its not. It is not BG's problem that servers don't want to participate in WvW, it is also not our problem that other servers aren't putting in time and effort into WvW in comparison to others. Looking at this site:

https://wvwstats.com/timezones

BG does not have the WvW population people think it does. I am so kitten glad to hear that anet has listened to the massive amount of haters of BG that carry around giant amounts of salt from Season 1 and 2. Because its BG's fault they don't put in effort, its BG's fault they get rolled over, its BG's fault that they don't play the game type as well. Anyone on SoS can tell you they have been doing well these past two weeks against us, by putting in effort and playing the game type. All this alliance thing will do is require more guild politics/map politics and cause drama. I am sure BG isn't alone in the fact that we have members of guilds who are in multiple WvW guilds, forcing them to choose 1 guild for an 8 week period or just in general to WvW with isn't cool. But I guess that's an exclusive issue on closed servers having to recruit from a limited pool of players, while other servers can recruit a lot more. This boils down to effort, the fact that you'd rather break apart servers who do WvW well to make it fair to those who don't want to put in effort.

This is a hard fact that will be ignored by the ignorant

If BG players are in fact simply better at playing the game than anyone else then they'll continue to win. It might not be possible to implement BG's current nightcap/ daytime turtle strat as effectively but that shouldn't matter right?

Take a good look at that link and tell me again how our community hasn't endured 3 years of a bullshit lock