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World Restructuring


Gaile Gray.6029

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Noooo........ I don't usually post on the forums, though I'm a huge fan and think GW2 is amazing, thanks to an amazing team behind it :)

Now someone pleaaaase, get this to Arenanet:

WvW should change to Faction vs Faction (Meaningful)

Why would I logon to fight against "Server X", I'd much rather fight for my faction "The Vigil" vs "The Order of Whispers"! For example....Faction pride and allegiance is important in PvP, ie: "For the Queen !", it doesnt make sense to fight for "Server X"Now with the new system, its even worse, its a randomly generated server, which makes it even less meaningful who I'm fighting for.

Faction v Faction maps should be UNIQUE and not the current nearly identical copies

Currently we are out there fighting 2 nearly identical maps, which is not that attractive. There's the Alpine and Desert maps, with no background as to WHO actually belongs there? It's just "Server X borderlands". I'd rather be fighting another faction's unique map, with their own objectives. When I roam "Server X borderlands" for 30mins its not nice to travel to the SAME identical enemy "Server Y borderland". We need a meaningful war! The Lannisters vs The Targaryens vs House Stark! Thats a war! When you venture out to The Lannisters area it looks different than House Stark area ;)

Faction v Faction maps should be a bit larger, in line with PoF encouraging mounted travel and less focus on fast travel

When venturing out, you'd want to venture out a borderland that feels massive in size, and unique in terrain. Think of it like an enemy nation or a faction your venturing into. Encourage solo / group / raid content, to be inclusive for all players. Like Camps/Towers/Keeps.

Faction that holds the most territory unlocks a bonus dungeon that has rare bosses and rare loot.

Encourage factions to fight for territory to gain more bonuses and access to a special bonus dungeon with amazing loot and dynamic encounters. Otherwise why am I fighting for territory today? (Meaningful)

That's it :)

One last note:

<3 everyone at Arenanet, and to everyone else in the forums, keep it constructive, always :)

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@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:A message from McKenna Berdrow:

.... lots cut out to save space ....

Feedback

That was a lot of information and I am sure there are many questions. The team will do its best to answer them. We appreciate any feedback on this system. Your opinions of this system, as well as the community's response, will be an important part of how we tackle this project.

If the reception is not great for this system, then the other alternative is most likely to continue World Linking. Even though making a choice between the two systems might seem like too drastic a change for some people, we have been exploring other designs to deal with WvW populations for years and we believe that World Restructuring or World Linking are the only solutions that meet our requirements. Simply "blowing up" worlds or removing people from the worlds on which they currently play is high risk (which is why we have avoided it for so long), and the only reason we are considering World Restructuring now is because it allows players to maintain and continue to build some of the communities they've created through the years.

I have to say I'm pretty happy with this design. Sure there will likely be issues and so on but what it really will do is put EVERYONE on an even playing field. We won't have hosts and linked servers getting used to each other over and over again and all that goes with that. But we WILL have not just guilds that can mark themselves as WvW but also Alliance guilds that we can group with and so on.

For someone like me that has a very small guild and loves havoc it means I can form an alliance with the guild(s) of my choice and, if it works as it looks like it should, be able to play with most, if not all, of my friends when timing permits.

One interesting wrinkle I see in this potentially is... what if a bunch of big guilds decide to become allies and fight together? For example maybe something like 4 or 5 guilds that already have regularly 30-50 people in wvw. Imagine the blob that would create. I don't think there are a huge amount of real large guilds in wvw (I could be wrong), but for those large ones that are there... if they decided to become alliances then I can see big problems trying to balance the new worlds out since ANet has said that guilds and their allied partners would be on the same world. THIS is the biggest potential problem and it could actually be the show stopper.. in my opinion.

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While I love that WvW is getting some attention I can't say I like where this is leading. Now maybe I am not seeing the whole picture because of the server I am on but this seems as if it will put a lot of people of WvW while not actually addressing the current problems.

My server (Gandara) has been full for a while now and we have a decent prime time population for the most part. The problems as I see them;

1) AFKers for Pips not actually contributing but taking up a place in a map - the proposed change does not address this - please just let people cash out on leaving WvW or link pips to experience gain (no activity no progress).2) Some servers are able to maintain a high tier position simple by night capping objectives when they face little opposition. Of course come prime time on the opposing servers they are unable to compete - while the proposed change may serve to 'equalise' populations across servers at all times it would seem that simple decreasing war score for a server when they outnumber the opposition/out of prime time would be a better way.

Ultimately I do not think this will have too big an impact on me, Gandara has a large community guild which will form an alliance and so we will [mostly] stay together but smaller guilds (often those based on a common language) will be consigned to becoming nomads.

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I see it as discouraging and reducing the fun of individuals and small groups that will likely constantly get reassigned from match to match and not be able to see the same people or join in alliance voice chat.

(And, no, they won’t all be able to join the alliances. There won’t be enough room. There may be the always get on tag or get out of the alliance attitudes, etc.)

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For me world pride is quite important, Piken Square has an active WvW community drawn from a number of guilds. Sure there are the big WvW guilds (eg. Stomp for Piken) and they could join up to form an alliance but with the limits on guild membership, and the proposed limits on alliance size, it won't be possible to maintain the PS community for those of us for whom that community is the primary draw. Competition for places on the main guilds will be fiercer now than ever before and casual players like me will almost certainly not get a look in. I am not interested in WvW for its own sake, I want to be part of a community when I decide to dip my toe in ... with these changes I no longer have a community to call my own, I no longer have any motivation at all to participate.

I had a huge amount of world pride before megaservers were introduced, then to connect with my community I had to go into WvW, which I did very casually but always felt at home when I did so. If this goes through then if I go into WvW then I'll be doing so amongst strangers and that doesn't interest me at all.

Remove guild and alliance membership limits and I might be a little more enthusiastic about these changes, as it is I can't see myself bothering with WvW again.

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@Neph.2163 said:I see it as discouraging and reducing the fun of individuals and small groups that will likely constantly get reassigned from match to match and not be able to see the same people or join in alliance voice chat.

(And, no, they won’t all be able to join the alliances. There won’t be enough room. There may be the always get on tag or get out of the alliance attitudes, etc.)

This somewhat begs the questionWhy, if you want to play with specific people, are you unwilling to guild or alliance with them?Why do you want to play with specific people who are unwilling to guild or alliance with you?

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@"Heibi.4251" said:After reading nearly all the thread, up to this point, I'm somewhat ready for this post.I also hope this isn't one of those ANeT "We want your feedback, but it doesn't really matter because we are doing it whether you like it or not."

Note: Not everyone who is against this is from BG. Those folks who post "Just ignore those who don't like this change" are just very vocal and don't truly represent WvW. It is quite apparent that those who are vocal in jabbing at those opposed to this are aware of the real WvW community that exists. I know our server has tons of server pride, and I know other servers do as well. For those who attack another's post because they disagree with you it is your post that needs to be ignored. Pointing out an error is one thing, but pew-pewing someone's concerns and opinion really isn't needed here. It makes it harder for the Devs to find the real meat of the issue.

I'm against this particular change. I'm one of those who never changed servers. I've been on HoD since Beta. So here are some of my reasons to be against it.

  1. Community is alive and well. We have guilds that transfer to our server because they are looking for a less toxic environment in WvW. Getting rid of server identity will destroy much of what has been built on ours and many other servers.
  2. We have a thriving teamspeak that the players on our server have invested in. The alliance system will destroy what was built over the years. We are able to include our linked servers due to the hard work of our admins. We have friends in a lot of the guilds that have channels in our TS server. Without a "world" identity this will leave smaller guilds without a place a to go.

Server identity shouldn't be considered in this decision for the simple reason that it has no bearing on the problem of population balance. Server identity will not fix population imbalances. Server identity will not fix coverage wars. If anything they are actually detrimental and have, thus far, prohibited Anet from implementing solutions that would fix the issues of population and coverage creating imbalanced and not fun match-ups.

  1. Elitism will reign supreme. Imagine the power the alliance founder will have. He/she will have the power to kick any guild they like on a whim. You will have to conform or you won't be admitted to the alliance. We may have a common goal and cooperate with each other, but we have different ways we do it. Enforced Guild Repping already happens, so imagine the effect this will have on alliances. ANeT will be putting way too much power in the hands of too few. Look at what happens in homeowner's associations.

Solution: Don't join that kind of Alliance. If you believe your servers community isn't that kind of place then creating a Henge Alliance of like minded people should be a complete non-issue for you.

  1. I'm a member of a guild that raids in the EU time as guilds that raid in the EU. With the limited number of guilds that an alliance may have I, and my friends, may not be able to raid in the same "WvW instance". I also lead in NA about 3 times a week. I put in about 15-25 hours a week into WvW due to my EU/NA WvW times. I can see the "yea-sayers" posting "Just get them in the same alliance or join their guild". Well, limits on size guilds and guilds in an alliance and number guilds may put a damper on that. And the EU guild may not allow people who rarely raid with them(NA main players) to join their guild. Plus they may be full on guilds and due to the size of their guild(small usually) the alliance doesn't want them. If the guild isn't in the alliance you are s.o.l.

The EU time slot players, as a whole, are entitled to fair and balanced match-ups in their time zones, too. They may or may not mind if you're with them, but if you aren't an EU main player then, no offence, but your opinion shouldn't be weighing on the matchmaking for their time slot. If you are EU main then that should be your WvW Guild for obvious reasons. All that aside, there's still nothing preventing you from playing during EU hours, it might just be with different people, maybe, if your EU Guilds aren't interested in joining your Henge Alliance. That's their decision to make, though, not yours.

  1. Concern: Changing guild tags while in WvW - Say I'm repping my WvW guild and go to WvW. I wish to switch my tag to claim something but the tag I'm switching to isn't in the alliance. What happens? Am I kicked from WvW? Do I get transferred to a different instance of WvW? Do I become "red" to the other alliance members? Do I nee to rep the guild at all to enter WvW and be where I'm supposed to be with the alliance?

No. This has already been addressed. You can rep whichever Guild you want in WvW, it doesn't matter. Whichever Guild you set as your WvW Guild is used to sort you to a world for matchmaking purposes, and that's it.

  1. If my guild can't be a member of an alliance and my guildies aren't members of guilds in the alliance this would split up my guild. Not only is this proposed system a danger to community it is a danger to guilds. You will have created a true "Guild War" in a guild.

Again, create a server Alliance. Problem solved. YOU choose which of your Guilds is WvW for matchmaking, and YOU can change that sorting between matchmaking. Or you can transfer. There's really nothing drastic happening here, and actually if I've understood the dev comments (I could be wrong here so don't take this as fact) you get to skip transfer fees by using the flagging method. You could have multiple Guilds in multiple WvW Alliances and use the flagging system to switch between seasons, changing your personal WvW Guild and giving yourself opportunity to play with a wider variety of your friends than currently .... without transfer fees. Maybe a dev will clarify that .. maybe, hopefully. :neutral:

  1. Community events get destroyed. One of the things our server likes to do is try to attract new players. We hold "Theme nights" and the occasional "WvW Training Night". I'm sure other server do this as well. Well, with the new system, so much for training night for new players. Why should we bother? Theme night is also basically gone because the alliance will be more concerned with winning than fun.

There is nothing, literally nothing, stopping a server from creating an Alliance to preserve its community. There are very few servers who's active WvW community is going to be above 1000 people, and in those very few cases they need to be restructured.

  1. This goes away from the mantra that ANeT professed "Play like you want". With alliances implemented this way you destroy that - See point #3.
  2. If this was implemented on day 1 of WvW this wouldn't be an issue. But to change everything now that we've established friendships, stable communities, and good times is like dropping a big can of doggy doo in the middle of a pizza.

Anyway, I do hope some the negative to the change comments get addressed. Otherwise it will look like this was just an ANeT exercise of letting everyone blow off steam for an already made decision. And for every one of the players who says they'll quit if this happens I'm sure there a five more who will do the same.

Again: Server Alliance. Make one. It solves a good 99% of your concerns.

Do you think if Anet had implemented this 5 years ago, when it first came up, that we'd have lost more people over the years or less? Without a doubt it'd be a lot less. I can count on no hands the amount of people I know who think WvW produces balanced matchups, and even less the number of people who've stayed in this game because of community or server identity. People stay with their friends and their Guilds, wherever those people happen to be, and that won't change with the Alliance structure. In fact it gives you more access to your friends, without current server boundaries, and that's pretty fucking great. :+1:

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@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:A message from McKenna Berdrow:

I want to update everyone on the design we currently are investigating to help achieve population balance between worlds, and the goals we hope this new World Restructuring system can achieve.

The goals of the World Restructuring system are:

  • Create great matches
  • Handle population fluctuations
  • Balance teams
  • Diversify WvW experiences

It is important to keep in mind that we still are investigating and working on this system. It is possible that this system will continue to evolve as we develop it, and we will be constantly testing to make sure the system meets our goals and our expectations for a quality experience. This post is an opportunity to share with you our plans for the new system, and respond to questions before the system is far long in the development process.

Restructuring Worlds

Even though world linking has brought world populations closer together, it is impossible for us to get populations and coverage any closer because the current worlds do not give us the granularity needed to do that. For example in NA, Blackgate has decent coverage across all time zones whereas worlds like Crystal Desert have higher peak times and lower off-hour times. Because world linking isn't granular enough, we don't have the ideal link that allows Crystal Desert to have coverage that is similar to Blackgate.

This is why, in the new World Restructuring system, we will remove all players from their current worlds, and make new worlds every eight weeks. This will create more granular pieces, which allow us to avoid situations like the Crystal Desert example.

Since worlds will not exist any longer, the "World Selection" that currently is available in character select will be eliminated, and instead a selection for playing in either North America or Europe will replace it.

World Creation

The system creates new worlds and assigns them a pre-generated name at the start of each season. We use 'season' to describe the time between World Restructuring. We plan on eight-week seasons, which is similar to the current time between links. We will discuss more about seasons later.

World Creation builds teams so they have similar predicted participation, skill, coverage, and language. Team assignment moves players onto teams by calculating the contribution value of a player and using that calculation to distribute players fairly. We plan to track stats like play hours in WvW, commander time and squad size, time of day, and participation levels. The exact stats have yet to be determined and we are open to suggestions of other stats to use in this system. This new system will expand upon the current calculation that uses play hours for linking.

If a player has played WvW before, we will be able to use the statistics from their account to sort them into a new world. The system also makes a world assignment for players who have not played WvW before, when they first begin WvW. Ideally the system will assign a new player to a world on which their friends or guild mates play, thereby making it easier than it is at present for people to play with friends in WvW.

Playing with Guild Mates

We want to make sure that playing with WvW guild mates is easy in this new system. Guilds will be able to specify if they are a WvW guild. This essentially means the World Restructuring system will consider that factor at the start of each season when assigning the guild to a world. On an individual player level, once a player's guild has specified they are a WvW guild, the individual player will be able to set ONE of their guilds as their personal WvW guild. When World Restructuring happens at the start of a season, as long as you have specified your WvW guild, you will be assigned to the same world as everyone else in your WvW guild, guaranteeing you will be able to play with your guild mates.

Creating Alliances

We also want to make sure that existing WvW communities can play together in this new system. A WvW guild will be able to invite other WvW guilds to their WvW Alliance. WvW Alliances function as a party for guilds. When World Restructuring happens, the system assigns all members in the WvW guilds that make up the WvW alliance to the same world. These WvW alliances will have certain restrictions on them, such as a finite number of guilds or number of players. Our current plans for alliance size are somewhere between 500-1000 members, and we are still considering the technical and match-making ramifications of the number that we settle upon.

World Creation Summary

So to summarize world creation: at the start of every season our new World Restructuring system will use recent statistics, based on similar predicted participation, skill, and coverage, to create worlds filled with alliances, guilds, and unaffiliated players.

a3c5eWvW%5C_image1.png

The above graph displays an example of what makes up a world under the World Restructuring system. Keep in mind, due to the algorithm used to keep worlds balanced, the number of alliances, guilds, and individual players can be wildly different between worlds, but the participation and playtime should be relatively the same.

Seasons

51132WvW%5C_image2.png

Seasons break WvW into cycles where several matches will play out. The current design for seasons is 8 weeks, but we are open to feedback. Matches are still a week long, so there would be eight matches a season in the above scenario. During the season, we will still be using 1-up, 1-down.

Stages:

  1. Season
    1. Once new worlds have been created and everyone has been sorted onto their WvW worlds, the new season has officially began.
    2. During a season players can manage their WvW guilds and alliances after reset and through the end of Week 7, but their WvW guild and WvW alliances will not be updated until the start of the next season.
    3. Ex: If you are playing WvW with Guild A this season and decide to set Guild B as your WvW guild in the middle of the season, you will not be able to play with Guild B until the next season, unless you transfer (more about that later).
  2. Season End
    1. A week before the season ends, that is, during Week 8 in the season, you no longer will be able to manage your WvW guilds or alliances. Your WvW guild and alliances will be locked down at this time.
    2. Everyone is kicked out of WvW, as they are with every reset. WvW will spin back up, as it currently does after reset, and everyone will now be sorted into their new worlds.
  3. World Creation
    1. Alliances, guilds, and individual players are sorted to be on a world.
    2. This will happen at the same time as current WvW reset.

Transfers

 

Region Transfers

Transferring between regions, from NA to EU, will still exist. We have not determined the costs for transferring but a region selection will be available on the character select screen that will allow transfers.

World Transfers

We understand that even though this system tries to keep guilds and alliances together, there will be times during the season when people want to change teams. Because of this, there are plans to allow transfers between worlds during a season. This means that new worlds will have size restrictions on them, as they do currently.

Players will be able to select worlds from the WvW panel in game. Worlds that are available for transfers will show up in the new WvW world panel. Worlds can be in these three different states:

dbcd7table%5C_WvW.png

The cost of transfer worlds has not been determined.

Transitioning to this System

This system is going to take time to make. As mentioned in the WvW FAQ, part of the reason we did World Linking was because it utilized a lot of existing tech and did not require a considerable amount of time. This allowed us to address the growing population issue quickly, while also being able to address other WvW issues. This new system is going to take considerably more time to make. We do not have a release date, but this is going to require several months of work and it will share resources with any other WvW changes that we work on.

Transitioning to this system is going to be slow and we want to make this transition as smooth as possible. Once this system is ready, we plan to give everyone several weeks to form their WvW guilds and alliances. 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!

We will continue with World Linking until World Restructuring is ready to ship.

Feedback

That was a lot of information and I am sure there are many questions. The team will do its best to answer them. We appreciate any feedback on this system. Your opinions of this system, as well as the community's response, will be an important part of how we tackle this project.

If the reception is not great for this system, then the other alternative is most likely to continue World Linking. Even though making a choice between the two systems might seem like too drastic a change for some people, we have been exploring other designs to deal with WvW populations for years and we believe that World Restructuring or World Linking are the only solutions that meet our requirements. Simply "blowing up" worlds or removing people from the worlds on which they currently play is high risk (which is why we have avoided it for so long), and the only reason we are considering World Restructuring now is because it allows players to maintain and continue to build some of the communities they've created through the years.

WvW has needed fixing for quite awhile. The pairings are rarely balanced and a great many people just get rolled over when coming up against a larger server. I hope you do a lot of testing though!! I also think that each borderland should be unique - so bored with the old style. Am looking forward to what is in store for us all!

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Regarding the loss of home world and its impact on RP, @"Sojourner.4621" had a wonderful idea, see https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/378073/#Comment_378073

Given that this new system allows you to set a particular guild as your WvW guild (and that guild needs to have self-designated as WvW), it seems individual players will be able to opt into tagging or not tagging as WvW. So why not expand this to cover more standard playstyles? RP, PvE, PvP, PvX, WvW seem the main categories. The tags could be used as factors in deciding which maps to move players to.

There would be issues of multi-tagging, how to set priority in grouping players who have tagged more than one category. Obviously the WvW tag should take absolute priority -- probably be the only one weighed -- when the player is in a WvW map. But in PvE maps, it'd be great to get what players asked for at the launch of the mega server.

I have no idea how hard the coding on this would be, but what I envision right now is that each player gets to rank the five categories as to which matters most to them for megaserver map assignment. Eg for me I would put them in this order: RP, PvE, PvX, WvW, PvP. So my odds of seeing other RPers in my maps, those who have also ranked RP as first priority, would be even higher than it is now with my Tarnished Coast label used as one factor. For UI implementation, hmm. Perhaps somewhere in the Hero Panel there are five fields, with a drop down choice to select one category in each, with a check to make sure you don't enter the same one twice. Or should you be able to add weight to one you really like by listing it more than once?

I don't know if guilds would need or benefit from setting designations other than WvW. It might just make everything too complex, and other than WvW server assignments each 8 weeks, players don't need to designate a guild under a certain category to be able to play content with that guild.

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If you're in a WvW guild as it stands there's no issue at all.I am somewhat skeptical that an alliance would be so picky that it says that your guild is allowed in, so long as they kick you from it. It begs the same question... Why do you consider this guild your 'friends' if they're willing to throw you out just because an alliance leader demands it?I also doubt that you would be constantly reassigned because surely you'll find an alliance which is willing to accept you. You'll get reassigned once but then won't you find a different group of players who would be willing to accept you into their group?

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Way too complicated a solution. Fussy, fiddly, full of if-thens. The chances of this working in practice are minimal, if not for technical reasons then because it opens a hitherto unimagined range of ways for the playerbase to exploit its flaws and shortcomings. We already know to what degree WvW players will ring any possible advantage out of the existing, far simpler and less convoluted system and how impossible that has been to control. How could this possibly be any better?

In a practical sense, there are so many obvious drawbacks. I read the first six pages of the thread and many very valid concerns were raised, none of which received a reply or comment from a dev although there were plenty of replies to more simple enquiries. I apologize if they were addressed later in the thread but I only have so much time to read forums. My particular concern, other than the inevitable loss of identity, is the reliance on guilds and the requirement to designate a single WvW guild. I have several accounts and my characters on each account are not in the same guilds but they do play WvW on the same server in some cases. My wife is in multiple guilds on the same server, several of which are WvW guilds, but which have a different function within the community of that server.

It's obviously possible for all these guilds to be rolled into one mega-guild or for all of them to join an alliance but that is a ferociously overcomplicated requirement for what has until now been a very simple, "pick up and play" video game. This isn't some kind of E-sport - it's perhaps the most casual-oriented of all current, major Western MMORPGs. This format seems to be entirely inappropriate to the current audience (which is clearly not the people, including myself, who take time to read and post on these forums).

From my perspective, I've been playing GW2 since launch, which is a long time to play a video game. I am not going to make any silly statements about quitting . GW2 is very much a game that can be stopped and restarted with long gaps and there is a lot more to it than WvW. However, it is WvW and the server loyalty it inspires that has kept me playing regularly for longer than I anticipated so I envisage that a change along these lines, which will inevitably weaken those bonds, will lead to a further loss of interest in the game as a whole.

I'd stick with links.

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@Sarrs.4831 said:

@Neph.2163 said:I see it as discouraging and reducing the fun of individuals and small groups that will likely constantly get reassigned from match to match and not be able to see the same people or join in alliance voice chat.

(And, no, they won’t all be able to join the alliances. There won’t be enough room. There may be the always get on tag or get out of the alliance attitudes, etc.)

This somewhat begs the questionWhy, if you want to play with specific people, are you unwilling to guild or alliance with them?Why do you want to play with specific people who are unwilling to guild or alliance with you?

While I cannot speak for Neph, this applies to me as well.

I am casual. I don’t want another guild or alliance. But I do want to feel like I know what the heck is going on. And if the same person is running the same style group with the same tag at the same time every week, I feel comfortable with that. I eventually know how to interact with them in a positive way. Big Mez runs HoT train and DS meta every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday starting at 5pm and going past 10. I like knowing that. If I’m on on one of those days, I might join in. But I don’t want to join a specific guild just to have that option. Same thing with WvW. I want to be able to get familiar with the community. That community aspect is the important part of the game to me. If not for community, I’d be playing a different game.

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@Neph.2163 said:There are size limits to guilds and guild and size limits to alliances. You may not fit. That leaves you being constantly reassigned.

It's only a guess at this point but I'd wager that finding an alliance won't be too difficult.

I could see full 500 to 1000 guilds/alliances happen to PPT focused folks that want to guarantee coverage across different timezones but that'll be their choice to specifically value coverage over timezone organization and dominance. It will be interesting nonetheless to see how things shake out.

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@"Jayne.9251" said:I just uninstalled the game.

I wanted to leave a short note to my fellow players on Piken (and even those on the "other" forum):

Thank you.

Thank you for being there when my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer, and later brain cancer.

The community was the reason I played (even though I haven't been on in a while because of the above). You guys were the reason why I was so invested. You helped me more than you could possibly know.

I know this is just a video game, but you all gave me support when I had none.

And this decision to kill that community has completely gutted me.

xoxJ.

They haven't decided to do this yet. If you read the announcement carefully they are pretty clear that this is an idea that's still in the design stages even... and if they get enough negative feedback they simply will just keep the current linking. They are also looking for feedback and suggestions etc etc so that if they actually DO go ahead with this then it would be with lots of input from the folks here.

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Honestly, I think the change will be good and hopefully the outcome will support the reasoning. I'm not concerned about losing "community" because if there really is that camaraderie between guilds and players on your server, than an alliance should be able to continue that.

I guess one concern I have with much broader coverage throughout all time slots is map que's. Theoretically, with a balanced population (specifically focused on wvw players), you could have the same que at 9pm EST as 3am EST. I do a lot of roaming and tend to float around BL's and maybe end the night in EBG once the NA que has died down. Not a HUGE deal really, it'll be interesting to see how the coverages play out though.

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I don't think it is possible to please everyone(Roamers, Fight Guilds, PPT Guilds, etc. ad nauseum) in this situation. Alliances allow for more player choice and control over who they are GUARANTEED to play with. I think that is a very positive change. There will never be a perfect choice that works for every situation and every person.

This also allows for negative choice. There are trolls on every server that people have been forced to deal with or block. Alliances allow like minded people to exclude people they know they have no interest in playing with. With some luck this could have the effect of generally improving behavior of players so they don't get blacklisted from alliances (I know, I know, this is the internet so that won't happen.)

  • "but but but Aera, muh full guild spots!" A: Anet should add another guild spot to eliminate this argument if it is technically possible. Either a regular guild slot, or some kind of special guild slot for WvW only. This will circumvent the full guild slot argument. Sure having to create a guild for your 1 and 2 man roamer buddies is a little inconvenient, but I don't think inconvenience is a strong enough argument to torpedo a large scale rework like this.

The two toughest issues I see are :

  1. When a player is a member of several WvW guilds. In certain situations it could force you to choose. Maybe two guilds on a server that you are a current member of want to join different alliances. I think it is important there to identify the guild that is moving in the philosophical direction you wish to go, as one would expect them to join an alliance with like minded guilds. Yes, you might lose a guild you like, but maybe you find four more that are even better in a fresh new alliance. This is also a good opportunity to reconnect with guilds you liked that may have transferred off your current server.
  2. Large PvX guilds might have some organizational issues. If you are capped out and have a fairly large population of casual WvW players, you may have to make a choice between an alliance or going it alone(or mostly alone) to keep your players together. How this plays out really seems to depend on how finely tuned Anet makes the metrics they use to weight population and matchups. Being a big PvX guild that raids casually two nights a week and having to go against some hardcore powerhouse alliance would be pretty unfortunate.

As for server pride... at some point you have to take that dog out back and put it down. Anet has been killing the idea of a home server in increments ever since PvE megaservers became a thing. I think the title thing is a nice thought from Anet. Different tiers of server title for number of kills while on a particular server might be a cool idea if it is technically possible to implement. As sad as it is to have something people identify with taken away, Anet has to do something to try to rejuvenate WvW if they want it to remain even somewhat viable. I think the whole BG debate that seems to be cropping up is a sideshow. I doubt Anet is doing this because BG is as strong as they are, but the potential breakup of BG is a product of Anet needing to do something drastic about WvW. T1 essentially boiling down to BG stuffing two different nerds into a trashcan every week is just one part of the problem in WvW.

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@Tom.6032 said:While I love that WvW is getting some attention I can't say I like where this is leading. Now maybe I am not seeing the whole picture because of the server I am on but this seems as if it will put a lot of people of WvW while not actually addressing the current problems.

My server (Gandara) has been full for a while now and we have a decent prime time population for the most part. The problems as I see them;

1) AFKers for Pips not actually contributing but taking up a place in a map - the proposed change does not address this - please just let people cash out on leaving WvW or link pips to experience gain (no activity no progress).2) Some servers are able to maintain a high tier position simple by night capping objectives when they face little opposition. Of course come prime time on the opposing servers they are unable to compete - while the proposed change may serve to 'equalise' populations across servers at all times it would seem that simple decreasing war score for a server when they outnumber the opposition/out of prime time would be a better way.

Ultimately I do not think this will have too big an impact on me, Gandara has a large community guild which will form an alliance and so we will [mostly] stay together but smaller guilds (often those based on a common language) will be consigned to becoming nomads.

ANET already hit small guilds with the guild hall debacle.. this will likely only put more nails in the coffin for small guild participation .. I am more than nervous as to how this change will pan out and tbh I am not feeling all that positive about it.

I get the feeling these changes have nothing to do with addressing issues of the gamemode but more how to monetise it as the proposals thus far basically just recreate the same issues only on new world names, whilst killing the interest for small guilds to even bother jumping into it imo.

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@Richard.8207 said:

@Neph.2163 said:I see it as discouraging and reducing the fun of individuals and small groups that will likely constantly get reassigned from match to match and not be able to see the same people or join in alliance voice chat.

(And, no, they won’t all be able to join the alliances. There won’t be enough room. There may be the always get on tag or get out of the alliance attitudes, etc.)

This somewhat begs the questionWhy, if you want to play with specific people, are you unwilling to guild or alliance with them?Why do you want to play with specific people who are unwilling to guild or alliance with you?

While I cannot speak for Neph, this applies to me as well.

I am casual. I don’t want another guild or alliance. But I do want to feel like I know what the heck is going on. And if the same person is running the same style group with the same tag at the same time every week, I feel comfortable with that. I eventually know how to interact with them in a positive way. Big Mez runs HoT train and DS meta every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday starting at 5pm and going past 10. I like knowing that. If I’m on on one of those days, I might join in. But I don’t want to join a specific guild just to have that option. Same thing with WvW. I want to be able to get familiar with the community. That community aspect is the important part of the game to me. If not for community, I’d be playing a different game.

This...8 week matchup communities.. I see that working like a lead balloon. :)

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This plan, if not ready should not have been announced now! With linkings, we had an announcement and then it was implemented, NO TIME TO PREPARE OR ARGUE! With this system there is what sounds like months to prepare, gear up and bolster people IF you're on a host, because linking will continue till implementation, so bolstering a guest community now will be twice as hard since alot of people have moved on or don't play anymore. And speaking of not playing, in the time we sit around and wait for this system to go into effect, we may find people slowly trickling off in preparation to not care about their server, their guilds or their playstyle and when the system is in place, there's really no telling who will be left!

I'm not saying it should've been announced and implemented within a couple of weeks like linkings were, I just feel like giving the hosts ample opportunity to rally or get bored waiting is unfair considering guests didn't get that luxury AND still wont to a certain extent.

Unlink all servers next go around or in the weeks leading up to this, it's not like most will care about score as this gets closer anyway. Give each of us a chance to get to reknow our own people and better prepare for our own futures, give us a chance to advertise our own server recruitment messages without being naysayed by our hosts recruitment messages or vice versa.

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Is there any chance that people who paid for server transfers will be given a refund? At least in in-game gold or gems? I switched to my current server a couple of years ago and convinced a whole lot of my friends to do so as well, by either completely emptying our their banks to convert gold to gems, or just spending money for gems. One of which just transferred last week, and we're all a bit annoyed that it was just a waste.

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@Tom.6032 said:While I love that WvW is getting some attention I can't say I like where this is leading. Now maybe I am not seeing the whole picture because of the server I am on but this seems as if it will put a lot of people of WvW while not actually addressing the current problems.

My server (Gandara) has been full for a while now and we have a decent prime time population for the most part. The problems as I see them;

1) AFKers for Pips not actually contributing but taking up a place in a map - the proposed change does not address this - please just let people cash out on leaving WvW or link pips to experience gain (no activity no progress).2) Some servers are able to maintain a high tier position simple by night capping objectives when they face little opposition. Of course come prime time on the opposing servers they are unable to compete - while the proposed change may serve to 'equalise' populations across servers at all times it would seem that simple decreasing war score for a server when they outnumber the opposition/out of prime time would be a better way.

Ultimately I do not think this will have too big an impact on me, Gandara has a large community guild which will form an alliance and so we will [mostly] stay together but smaller guilds (often those based on a common language) will be consigned to becoming nomads.

I'm on Gandara as well and fully agree with your comments. I am in Quak and I really hope it goes WVW so we can all stay together in our community guild. I heard we may have a meeting tomorrow about all these changes.

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