World Restructuring

[Cyczer.7834]

@Rod.6581 said:I see a lot of people here talking how this changes will destroy their guild as a community. Can anyone explain to me how any of the changes in game can do that?

Most of my guild mates have stopped playing GW2 long time ago. Still we chat on Discord while playing other games. We post on guild forum from time to time. When visiting other cities, even countries we get together for a beer or two (or more :) ).

If your guild mates are so important to you as a community, how is it possible that a change in single game mode of a single game can destroy it?

It wont harm wvw except for those people are roleplaying. Its just the same playerbase complaining about every single change rather than adapting.

[albsi.7153]

An Alliance should only be caped by the Players not by the Guilds, on my Server we have a lot of small Guilds with around 2 to 20 active Players, if an Alliance is limited to 5 Guilds, it has maybe 20 or 30 Players. That is not useful, so we would be forced to create a big community Guild or enter an existing one only to play together.The alternativ is a 6th Guild slot for a big Community Guild, but no Guild limit in Alliances would be better.

An Alliance and a Guild should have Infos about the amount of players that use them as WvW Guild/Alliance and about the maximum Amount. Like 53/500 Players or something like that.They also should see the Playtime they are rated for like 213h/Week.

---

I don't really see the need for this system from my perspective. The last matches we had don't felt unbalanced, there where times we win most of the fights and some we lose a lot of them. Mostly depending on the weekday, the time of day and if there where commanders and players. There where almost no times in which a server/link had more than 70% of the maps. Most of the time all 3 Servers had around 20-40% of all objectives.I'm on a EU Server that got almost always linked since the linkings and is set to a specific language.

It always takes 2-3 Weeks to find the balance and get used to the other Server in a Linking with only around 40-50% of the players from the other Server. With this system i think it will take a lot longer, maybe most of the time the 'new server' exists. I think this will be a bad experience.Maybe set the time for a new Server to a longer time (3 to 6 Month) or leave the Servers as they are.

Another thing that bothers me with this new system is that the communication will get a lot harder. Now every server has one or two voice chats (TS³, Discord), with the new System all alliances and many guilds will need a voice chat. It will get really hard to coordinate players on 10 different or more voice chats, it is already hard to do that with 2 or 3 in the linkings.

[SailorSpira.9371]

I see a lot of people complaining that hardcore WvW guilds are going to make massive alliances, but the reality is WvW focused guilds are some of the smallest guilds in the game. I'm sure you would be hard pressed too find a WvW focused guild (who run comps and coms and have set schedules) that could roster 50 unique players to select them as their WvW guild, once you take into account that most of these players would run 2-5 guilds. So the "Hardcore WvW Guilds" even at the speculated 5 guild max you would likely not get more 250 (I suspect a lot less) in such an alliance, which would be approximately 10-12% of a server.

In addition most WvW focused guilds want some form of competitiveness, stacking into "mega alliance guilds" doesn't make sense. Most people I've spoken to in these types of guild have said they would want an alliance spread out across multiple time zones to help create a stable backbone of commanders for the communities they would be put in and accommodate their members in multiple guilds. How to avoid stacking has also been a topic of great discussion.

The bigger population alliance are going to be made up of less organized, no requirement guilds, PvX guilds and community guilds. I believe this 500 - 1000 limit is more to allow for these type of players.

It is going to take all types to players to make new servers and the new system work and I believe that Anet is trying to make a system that will prevent stacking as much as possible.

Note: I still have concerns over how small guilds will fit into the Alliance system.

[Klipso.8653]

I really hope this brings PvE players into WvW, nothing tastes better than those delicious glass bags

[Pagan Highlander.5948]

@DippyDragon.3180 said:Been fighting for TC since day one. Not in a guild, but have many friends and acquaintances on TC WvW, through our good times and hardships.Most guilds not interested in a player who doesn't use teamspeak or whatever, as I play in silence so I can keep an ear out for children. So not sure where this leaves me; will I still see all the people who are part of TC again, or is that it, and we're to be spread across new worlds with no history.

you could have easily joined the TC Discord and still can. No need to talk or be in comms. Also, if you were in there, you could find a guild that would want you in their Guild. There isn't a single guild that i know of that requires you to ever speak. This goes for anyone in tarnished coast. Embrace the Changes and start planning on how to make the new system great/

[Drinks.2361]

@"SailorSpira.9371" said:I see a lot of people complaining that hardcore WvW guilds are going to make massive alliances, but the reality is WvW focused guilds are some of the smallest guilds in the game. I'm sure you would be hard pressed too find a WvW focused guild (who run comps and coms and have set schedules) that could roster 50 unique players to select them as their WvW guild, once you take into account that most of these players would run 2-5 guilds. So the "Hardcore WvW Guilds" even at the speculated 5 guild max you would likely not get more 250 (I suspect a lot less) in such an alliance, which would be approximately 10-12% of a server.

That is exactly it, none of the strong fight guilds are particularly worried about mega alliances because they'll farm the ktrain blob as is tradition & VERY few actually still care about winning a week beyond manipulating their tier to get other fights.

For the most part if the fight focused guilds get in alliances it'll be so that their more active members have people to run with on their off nights. They've pretty much self limited their rosters to be in the 20-30 range to get fights for years now, they're unlikely to start blobbing it up to PPT just because their old server got deleted.

[Caliburn.1845]

@Drinks.2361 said:That is exactly it, none of the strong fight guilds are particularly worried about mega alliances because they'll farm the ktrain blob as is tradition & VERY few actually still care about winning a week beyond manipulating their tier to get other fights.

For the most part if the fight focused guilds get in alliances it'll be so that there more active members have people to run with on their off nights. They've pretty much self limited their rosters to be in the 20-30 range to get fights for years now, they're unlikely to start blobbing it up to PPT just because their old server got deleted.

True up to a point. The fights guilds are not going to all stack together, they'd get no fights obviously.

But roster size is related to guild purpose and how WvW functions. GvGs are small, so you keep a small roster. When winning doesn't matter, you prioritize other things such as GvG.

But under this new system, at least when it begins, people will care about winning. And what do you do when winning matters? You run as many people as you can on one pin. First few months after release I was on Darkhaven, no where near a top tier server. And we still had 5+ guilds fielding rosters of 60+ members a night. As GvG has faded we have already started to see the return of mega-guilds that field 50 or more a night. SF, and TSYM for example. When this new system goes in, we're going to see more guilds break from the traditional 20-30 man roster, and get real large real quick.

[Donari.5237]

@StormPE.8201 said:@Donari.5237 It seems to be implied that PvE will be remaining the same. If that's the case, you may draw more traction/attention to your RP community request in another thread. If McKenna could verify that for certain, I'm sure it would set a lot of the RP'ers in this thread at ease. Thanks for replying to my questions, I was of the impression that the RP community was frequenting WvW. This clarifies a lot.

Is this referring to all aspects of PvE shard assignment?

@"McKenna Berdrow.2759" said:This is just for WvW. PvE will function as it does currently.

I believe what that statement says is that open world maps will continue to be assigned as previously without requiring alliances (since every single time you load into a PvE map you are going through the sorting; the WvW changes envision a sorting process that happens only once every 8 weeks) except that there won't be server affiliations any more so those won't be a factor.

And that last bit is why the RP community is not at ease. Server affiliations have been the main way of getting oneself randomly sorted into maps containing strangers that also happen to RP. There's generally a "critical mass" effect going on, where two or three RPers on their own get stifled and laughed at no matter how stellar their writing skills, but hundreds of them spread through the map add depth and dimension to the play experience for most everyone around.

McKenna put in the FAQ:Q. How will this affect roleplayers? A: This is something we had not fully considered and we will start looking into possible solutions.

Thus not only can it not be verified for certain, I think this is the thread for it. ANet wants all the feedback in one place so they needn't hunt all over, and this is a big implication of the new system that affects thousands of people so feedback is needed on it. I understand why non-RPers are a bit baffled at the concern, and don't blame them. I'm just trying to keep the issue on ANet's radar as a very relevant consequence of their suggested change.

[cobbah.3102]

Sorry just another 2 cents worth which will make it to 4 cents worth ,get rid of 3rd party progams and macros .lets get all the players on equal footing some of us do not know how it works anyways but never been one to try to get every advantage especially 3rd party if they are not in the game they shouldn't be

[Baldrick.8967]

@"Heibi.4251" said:Two concerns on the "Guild Cap" in alliances.

1. A Guild cap will punish smaller guilds that can be beneficial to the alliance overall. Scouting, Havoc and the like. If the cap is set at an arbitrarily low number without regard to actual player numbers then ANeT has basically told the small guilds that they really don't matter and that they should just go join a big guild.
2. In relation to #1. Bigger guilds will basically devour the smaller guilds because players from those smaller guilds who want to play in the big league will have to join them to play. Sure, they can rep any guild while in WvW, but there is always the heavy handed 100% guild rep policies we all know exist out there. Not to mention the overall guild cap in general. This is creating a big nasty monster that will drive players away.

Solution:Base the alliance purely on total number of players. No extra algorithms involved. You could have 30 guilds as long as you come in under the player total cap. But still, there is going to be a lot of heartache out there when an alliance caps out, just like now when a world is full and you can't transfer there.

Small guilds were already ignored when they brought out guild halls and guild buffs and the huge gold sink that was upgrading a guild hall.

Having a low total number of guilds cap in an alliance is just another way of being shafted as a small guild- and i won't be surpised if the number mentioned of 5 is the limit, rather than basing it on active wvw members.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

@Raymond Lukes.6305 said:

@Rampage.7145 said:@McKenna Berdrow.2759 I think 8 weeks is way too much, it should be 2, 4 weeks tops i think so if you get a bad match up at least you are not stuck with it for 2 months, that will definitely make players quit in the long run. If you ask me i'd say match ups should be 24h only tbh get different people to fight everyday, that would keep the game fresh

Not McKenna but:Eight weeks to a season is not set in stone. This is up for discussion but 8 weeks is what we currently have for re-linking.

and I can tell you that the server I am on can't wait for the next relink... being stuck for 8 weeks with a server you don't 'click' with is really punishing.

[Heibi.4251]

@Baldrick.8967 said:

@"Heibi.4251" said:Two concerns on the "Guild Cap" in alliances.

1. A Guild cap will punish smaller guilds that can be beneficial to the alliance overall. Scouting, Havoc and the like. If the cap is set at an arbitrarily low number without regard to actual player numbers then ANeT has basically told the small guilds that they really don't matter and that they should just go join a big guild.
2. In relation to #1. Bigger guilds will basically devour the smaller guilds because players from those smaller guilds who want to play in the big league will have to join them to play. Sure, they can rep any guild while in WvW, but there is always the heavy handed 100% guild rep policies we all know exist out there. Not to mention the overall guild cap in general. This is creating a big nasty monster that will drive players away.

Solution:Base the alliance purely on total number of players. No extra algorithms involved. You could have 30 guilds as long as you come in under the player total cap. But still, there is going to be a lot of heartache out there when an alliance caps out, just like now when a world is full and you can't transfer there.

Small guilds were already ignored when they brought out guild halls and guild buffs and the huge gold sink that was upgrading a guild hall.

Having a low total number of guilds cap in an alliance is just another way of being shafted as a small guild- and i won't be surpised if the number mentioned of 5 is the limit, rather than basing it on active wvw members.

Which speaks poorly of the ANeT devs and management. They don't seem to see the harm this will create. Smaller guilds will be affected in a negative way if they choose to use the number of guilds in an alliance rather than using the true measure of strength - actual player numbers.

Speaking of small guilds - we have our level up to 69. But we have a sister guild that helped us achieve such a level. Though we were hoarders and were able to accomplish our guild rank to a certain point. We love you, CH.

[Oogabooga.3812]

I do like the ideas. This will fundamentally change how the players view this game mode. Here are a few thoughts:

1. The community will need to accept ESPIONAGE as valid gameplay - if a large alliance uses TS/Discord etc., after a few matchups, some players will have access to many such VoIPs to listen in on comms, unless the alliance changes it every 8 weeks. Obviously, multiple accounts have always been the spies' bread and butter, but if allowed access to the enemy comms, their job is even easier, and I think more people will take part. Can we have an ability to curbstomp traitors building 50 ballistae on supply depots? It could be where a certain number of people, say 20, mark a player as a "spy" (visible to the map), which turns him hostile and we can kill him.
2. The mode should be renamed to Alliance v. Alliance (or Guild v. Guild!?), since it helps to downplay "server pride." Eventually, those who care more about winning a matchup will join a guild/alliance (roamers and small guilds); those who don't care about winning won't and will freely move from matchup to matchup (unless they're looking for that guild/alliance to join).
3. On the small guild note, I would highly recommend that there not be a cap to the number of guilds that can join an alliance. It should be based on the number of players in the declared alliance. This allows players in roaming/havoc guilds to retain their GUILD pride when they join a large alliance. However, I do see that this would also cause problems with the number cap, so I don't know how this would be done.
4. Talking about the cap, what is to be done about alliances/guilds that recruit members when the alliance number is already at the cap? Will a message be sent to the alliance guilds that a certain amount of players e.g. a small guild, need to be kicked? Would such an alliance be forcefully disbanded if they don't comply?
5. Please add to the Report a player pulldown an option for "Hacking."
6. I do think that a guild of 500 roamers (Roamers Against Thugs [RAT]), though intriguing, would be a detriment to any matchup, since they don't play together and will die against any group fight, essentially taking up a large percentage of the population that could be used for a blob alliance.
7. I think the fighting guilds ought not to join any alliance, because, as they say, "they don't care about winning, just good fights."
8. I think that large alliances should recruit smaller PPT or havoc guilds or else never complain about the lack of good scouts or having to respond to every crisis.
9. PvEers will find doing dailies much more frustrating to do - the maps will definitely be more crowded.

[Celsith.2753]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@"Belorn.2659" said:With caps at 5 guilds and a total of 500-1000 members, my prediction is that the guild cap will hit in the vast majority of cases. The wvw guilds I know on my server is all much smaller than active 100+ members. This will then create alliance "guilds" which members of multiple guilds will join in order to make alliances be more dense and reach the member cap with just 5 guilds.

The guild cap will hurt small guilds. It will hurt players who currently is in multiple small guilds that each provide one aspect of wvw. It would be nice if the new system would actually help smaller guild that do one thing and do that very efficiently. 5 guilds with each 30 active wvw players is only going to be a 150 member alliance and that drawback is going to push players to abandon such guilds.But isnt the point to balance the alliances within the worlds alongside non-alliance guilds and players?

Simple math: alliance X has 5 guilds with 150 players and alliance Y has 2 guilds with 500 players. They are going to fight each other. Unbalanced? No its not.

Because if alliance X is part of a world 1 together with one more alliance of 350 players and random guilds+pugs numbering 500 players while alliance Y is part of world 2 together with 500 guilds+pugs and no other alliances, you still have 1000 vs 1000 players in world 1 and 2. Yes yes I ignore the MMR which take into consideration play time etc, but lets assume it end up equal. That's how it's balanced in very simple terms.

There will be no "need" to reach alliance cap. The only result is your alliance take up a larger chunk of the world population.

This is actually my biggest concern. Talking to people ingame it's clear that most alliances are going to come in two forms - ones full of meta class comp'd guilds and ones made for a community to stick together, which obviously will be at a huge disadvantage in fights regardless of if the numbers are even.

So how is the matchup system going to tell the difference between the types and match worlds roughly like v like? If it fails to do this then the system has failed to resolve the issues of the current system.

[CoolingAsteroid.6351]

Can't say I'll miss the old server/world centered communities (Tarnished Coast for me), but this should streamline GvG much more easily and not force everyone in a guild to transfer to a singular world, also have high hopes this change will resolve the population balance WvW currently faces to help breathe some fresh air back into the game mode.

[Azynax.5176]

So what about the players that didn't have any specific wvw guilds and prefer to stay that way? I played wvw a lot but i don't have any specific wvw guild and i don't plan on getting one so how do you calculate my participation and contribution point?

[Azynax.5176]

Well i don't really mind playing solo without any guild but just curious on how they calculate the participation or contribution point for solo players.

[Dawdler.8521]

@"Oogabooga.3812" said:

2. The mode should be renamed to Alliance v. Alliance (or Guild v. Guild!?), since it helps to downplay "server pride." Eventually, those who care more about winning a matchup will join a guild/alliance (roamers and small guilds); those who don't care about winning won't and will freely move from matchup to matchup (unless they're looking for that guild/alliance to join).

Eh what do you mean? Neither would be a correct description of WvW. World vs world (well, WvWvW) is quite literally the correct description in the restructuring since its not alliances or guilds fighting, its worlds containg alliances and guilds.

This change would be about as logical as renaming sPvP to Class vs Class in order to stress that bringing a carry class is more important than players.

[HazyDaisy.4107]

I guess 1 potential positive to this is if you were never linked with certain hosts or certain guests you may be in a way under this new system. Still, I would've loved to have seen what a 12th/13th/ 14th or 15th place pairing could've done with these link tests and I'm alittle dismayed that something like this wasn't tried in 2 years, it's like there was fear to do something crazy after the quad server debacle.

[The Dervish.7384]

@Threather.9354 said:Regarding EU (showing my support for the change, not a question for anet)

Yes sure you might lose chance of meeting your server friend that hasn't logged in last 6 months. But I feel like he isn't exactly contributing member in past 6 months.

Some people gives breaks. Lets say one of your friend takes a break (RL stuff or whatever reason). Servers are created when he/she is on break. Then he/she decided to login. He/She played a while without any friend with him/her then bored of course. Now, he/she had 2 paths do choose in normal situation. Keep playing with friends or Log-off to another long break. With your suggestion, you lose him/her forever. Because, never have a chance to catch friends in WvW. That will make him/her sure to lose friends in WvW and boredom to not login again.

[The Dervish.7384]

@Raymond Lukes.6305 said:

@Rampage.7145 said:@McKenna Berdrow.2759 I think 8 weeks is way too much, it should be 2, 4 weeks tops i think so if you get a bad match up at least you are not stuck with it for 2 months, that will definitely make players quit in the long run. If you ask me i'd say match ups should be 24h only tbh get different people to fight everyday, that would keep the game fresh

Not McKenna but:Eight weeks to a season is not set in stone. This is up for discussion but 8 weeks is what we currently have for re-linking.

Currently 8 weeks for re-linking is not means players are happy with links or period. FYI.

[Farnion.6543]

My first reaction after seeing this system was that I strongly disliked it. I have identified with my home server and grown fond of playing with the same people there over the years. I think that having changing groups of people to play with would reduce my enthusiasm in participating in WvW, especially doing things that may be boring for me (like scouting) but help the server.

Problems I see with the new system:

• Organizing over teamspeak will have to be essentially privatized in the sense that there will be ts for each guild, since the fluctuations make it impossible to have consistent ts servers. I had the feeling that for commanders trying to lead public zergs it was one of the main hurdles to get casual players to download ts, register on the server and listen to the commander there. Now someone who wants to casually play would need to register to a new server every 9 weeks (if guilds allow them on there), so will basically be left out of organized large-group play.
• Matching players according to their skill level would result in one server containing the majority of people who regularly do a commander for large groups, one tier of groups containing experienced players without commanders and one tier of people who never/rarely played wvw and have no idea what to do.
• There have been surveys concerning wvw for all kinds of things (alpine vs. desert, repair hammers etc) but to me it seems that this system overhaul is starting to be implemented without such a survey. The reactions in the forums seemed positive, but this may be a biased reaction and a survey would offer more quantitative feedback.

Let me finally sketch an alternative to this new system, that may be able to avoid certain downfalls of this alliance thing:The mercenary systemEach player can switch between being a loyalist (staying on their current server) or a mercenary. Mercenaries get assigned to a new server every 9 weeks and are a tool for ANet to balance populations. As a reward for their services, they get 1 (additional) gold for each tier of wvw rewards (wood, bronze, etc) that they complete. A guild can select to be a mercenary guild and players can select one of their guilds which is a mercenary guild if they want to be a merc and transfer with them (a bit like in the new system). These guilds will remain intact and are at ANets disposition to balance strengths. Perhaps such mercenary guilds could additionally receive tactics/guild weapons as a reward for their participation.If a mercenary switches back to loyalist, they will end up in their original server again.

This system leaves people who identify with their home servers a chance to forego the money reward for being a merc. At the same time this money should ensure that ANet has enough mercenaries to balance out things. Since servers remain intact, ANet can still earn money from transfers. On the implementation side, this system would likely require to establish most of the functionalities of the new proposed system with alliances but without destroying the server identities. This abolishment of server identities is an action that cannot be taken back in a meaningful way, so why not try an intermediate step first and see how it plays out?

[rapthorne.7345]

These are great steps in the right direction, but a massive contributing factor to WvW sucking right now is the ability to just swap worlds if you are on one not doing so well.

Eliminating that feature is the only way to stimulate proper competition

[Zionka.6897]

wow, this popped up when I was having a few days off, and got really long. I can't read the whole thread, but I'm kinda sad about this, initially. To completely lose the last thing in the game that had a sense of community, after the mega server thing. What I am particularly unsure about, is the guild being a "WvW guild" I am, and will continue to be, in a tiny little guild of close friends, and no other. We will ocasionally go to WvW together, but most often, we'll just go alone, since only 2 of us are on the "home" server. By and large. we're just PvE with the occasional WvW. It doesn't seem very clear if it has to be a black and white thing, all or nothing. Also not clear on if it will no longer matter if guild members are (for now?) on other servers. Ugh.. I'm just so confused. I'll try to keep up with it as it draws closer to actually being implemented.

[Torolan.5816]

So if I undestand this right:You get assigned to a newly created world every 8 weeks.You can mark one of your guilds as wvw guild, and guilds can form alliances who are then preferably grouped on a new world together.*Guildless randoms are thrown in where statistics say they fit in best.

So far, so good. Sadly it is still pointless to make wvw memorable, even more so than before. If my guild is disbanded today, nobody will ever see how good we fared in wvw. Guilds stay faceless and meaningless beside the idea of grouping on the level of guilds instead on the level of servers.

From a technical and coverage wise point of view, maybe this will indeed help. On the emotional side probably not.