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World Restructuring FAQ


Raymond Lukes.6305

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Question. So if the season starts and you have not ticked a guild as your WvW guild for whatever reason, new player, returning, have been inactive, have not read the changes etc, etc.. and you want to play WvW can you play? Where will you end up, on any non full world? What is the criteria used for where you will be assigned?

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A potential unintended consequence of this would seem to be fewer ppl tagging up. It may be impractical for zerg commanders to tag down but why would a small group use a tag if it is going to make the com's hours count more against our world's population cap? I don't see this as a problem from a gameplay perspective I mention it only bc devs have said in the past that they want more tags since they feel many ppl will not play if they log in and don't have a tag to follow . . .

I'm also concerned with the player valuation metrics. I understand the goal is to have balanced worlds and I understand that not all players make equally effective contributions, but I'm not sure it's possible to really measure a player's contribution with any kind of accuracy. For example, I log a ton of hours but I mostly just run around and have fun. I'll cap some things maybe kill some ppl but I'm much more likely to just get killed, wp and play some more. Another player might only play a few hours a week but use those hours to tier a keep than then stands for days. A third might spend hours a day running with a zerg that exerts control over a large portion of a map, and that player would get a lot of caps and kills along the way but the zerg might have been just as effective with or without that individual player so their actual contribution might be small. Another player might just want to pvp and so spend their time on a bl getting lots of kills in 1v1s but always running from larger groups and ignoring the objectives completely. The same can be said for participation -- some players will scout a keep for hours with zero participation and others will get to six and then sit afk in spawn until it's time to flip a camp again . . .

So no metric -- hours, caps, participation, kdr, yaks cuddled, etc. -- provides a good valuation bc none of them really tell you anything about what a player is actually doing. And no, I don't have a solution for this. But I'm betting that your most effective tool in balancing worlds will be found in manipulating the ratio of players in alliances to players in unaffiliated guilds to unaffiliated players. Players with world-focused goals that actually impact the results of the match will be most interested in being in a guild that is part of an alliance. Players in unaffiliated guilds will most likely be players that have some sort of individual goal that is too big to accomplish alone but that may or may not really affect their world very much. And then finally the players who don't bother to select a wvw guild at all are most likely to be players with individual goals like pvp or personal rewards that don't really have anything to do with the world goals at all . . .

So with this rework you've actually done a fairly brilliant job of creating a system where the players will self-select into groups that identify their contribution more accurately than any of the metrics you're trying to use. And if they do a bad job of contributing in that way, the group itself deals with them and you don't have to lift a finger. All you have to do is set us loose to play the game while adjust the ratio as you get more data. It's really pretty great . . .

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So, if you want to be amenable to roamers you need to not have the guild cap at an arbitrary number like 5, and A. Allow many small guilds to enter in alliance B. Do it strictly on (most likely active) population, not guild #. C. Perhaps allow small/roaming guilds to accompany large guilds in a different quota.

Roaming culture can be a lot more server based than others, and as the system is proposed I see no way small roamers are going to have their guild accepted into the alliances all their friends zerg in. This system is preferentially dividing based on guilds that are incentivised to run larger (guild cap) and group with others that run in tagged organised squads. This system means that in general, you need to carefully select the guilds that will be the most beneficial to large-scale ppt in order to be effective.

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@Raymond Lukes.6305 said:

Q. What is beneficial in this system to roamers?

Moment to moment gameplay should be similar to how it is now for roamers, except now that matches are more balanced, the objectives roamers take, and point’s roamers earn for their world will have a bigger impact on the match. When the worlds are balanced anything anyone does matters a lot more, because it is not going to be made irrelevant by the much bigger world.If you want to guarantee playing with other roamers that you are friends with, then you can make a guild. If you do not want to do that, then there should still be plenty of roamers on the new worlds.I’ve seen some roamers worried about this system, and I’d be interested in hearing what in this system could change to make it better for roamers in their opinions. If you could mark your account as a WvW roamer account, and the system guaranteed a percentage of roamers on each world, would that feel better? Or is there anything else we could do besides use a different system. We would love to hear other ideas, and even though we haven’t been able to respond to everything we have been reading it all and taking notes.

Since my work hours are wacky I roam a majority of the time. Roam and Scout. My WvW guild I normally run when I have a weekend off or holidays or whenever I can but mostly roam and scout for the world. Since I have a guild that is all good but it would be nice to tick myself as a roamer and that way I could be a percentage of that instance to help. I don't want to see kills override skills but rather make sure that all participants are rewarded alike. Obviously the reward system should be progressive such as the PiP system for those at the top (which I am not). Roamers are generally penalized because we may be Scouting a keep and have to run away to tag a camp or what not to keep participation active then run back only to see your wall come down and then BAM! too late to call reinforcements. This has always been a concern for us roamers vs participation. We are still participating but can lose out in a hurry.

Kinda still trying to take this all in but the WvW community has asked for changes for so long and it looks like it is coming to fruition I just hope you devs are ready for the abuse :open_mouth:

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I agree the number of players in alliance vs. unaffiliated guilds vs randoms is the important bit. I'm not sure why they mentioned limiting the number of guilds in an alliance rather than just the number of people unless it is a technical issue. Also, that reply was to a question where someone asked if they could have five hundred one-person guilds in their alliances, so maybe the point was just that the number of guilds allowed in an alliance won't be absurd . . .

I'm not sure I really understand the concerns from roamers though. To me what smallscale is is ppl who would rather not zerg and so instead discover what small groups can do and do those things. I think of roamers as a very adaptable group, it's hard for me to imagine a game environment where they couldn't thrive . . .

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@Alypsis.3425 said:Question. So if the season starts and you have not ticked a guild as your WvW guild for whatever reason, new player, returning, have been inactive, have not read the changes etc, etc.. and you want to play WvW can you play? Where will you end up, on any non full world? What is the criteria used for where you will be assigned?

I'll assume the new system will prompt you with options when you intend to join WvW (new UI for alliance/ world etc).I'm more interested in how the system will sort roamers or mini-party guilds. Eg. There's only 3 of my guildies that runs WvW in a 25-30 active member PvE guild. Do I need to join a WvW Guild and have it tagged as my WvW guild to join up with that specific guild's alliance? What if a player have all 5 guilds maxed out and non of it is a WvW guild? (Banks, friendly inactive guilds, personal guild hall guild etc) Will they be directed to a random alliance or will they be given a list to fill an alliance? Will there be a BETA/ test for the players to experience this new system? (a separate world like Eotm)

Will guilds/players from the same server given priority for an alliance? Will players be able to manipulate the alliance? (Fill an alliance population cap with free accounts)

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@"Hitman.5829" said:I read all of it and I still have no clue how all of this is going to work! Alliance? what does that mean? does than mean we choose to kill or not kill red players in WvW because they are our allies? If we form an alliance, do we gank 2 vs 1? What is going on?

This is a FAQ (frequently asked questions) for the other thread.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/26547/world-restructuring/p1

will explain ya.

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Q. Will all servers be tried to balance at the same level or at rough tiers? I'd imagine with the EU language restrictions it will be more difficult to achieve that.

The goal is to have worlds be balanced at the same level. That way we can create great matches. We are not trying to make 3 tier-one-worlds and then 3 tier-two-worlds

An important question remained unanswered: Are, for example, only German alliances, guilds and free players linked together in one world or is this also mixed with other nationalities together?So that French, Spaniards and Germans together can form a world?

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Q. How will inactive players becoming active again affect alliances. E.g. An alliance is close to the max capacity and a few inactive guildies return, mark their guild as their WvW guild and > put the alliance over the population cap.

If the alliance is capped no more players can join. It would be up to the guild on how they want to handle having those guildies play with them. Leaving the alliance and creating a new one, is what I expect most guilds would try and do. They could also leave the alliance and decide to just be sorted as a guild in the next season.

I expect this to lead to toxicity and fight over remaining alliance slots, preventing people from staying with their friends if they play more casually. I'd think current communities would want to try and stay together, even if some of them does not play every day. But with these caps implemented, less active people would be dropped out from their previous communities, leading to even more elitism ("casuals go to a casual alliance", "100 gold for an alliance slot" etc).

Please, think this through a little bit more. Thanks.

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Hi Anet, Can you tell me how do you count the no. of player for an alliance (Max. 500) ? Since you have mentioned the player can select their only WvW guild for the season, i am confused that how the headcount on this limit (500) is counted. Is it simply the no. of normal guild member or the no. of WvW guild member? If a guild has 500 guildies and only 100 of them has chosen this guild for this season, can they still join the other guild to form an alliance?

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Ideas:

  1. To simplify your calculations on caps. I wouldn't use the "Number of Guilds Allowed" as a benchmark. The number of players should be the ONLY consideration. What little community we have left can be reformed under the alliance, but if you limit the number of guilds we may not achieve this and some guilds will be left out in the cold. Those guilds will be at the mercy of algorithms when going to WvW. On our server we are already thinking of ways to stick together.
  2. Returning players - instead of punishing them with a possible 8 weeks of hell away from their guild and friends have a prompt when they log back in telling them to set their WvW preferences(WvW Guild, NA/EU, etc). You may lose players and gem purchases if you throw returning players into a situation they have to hold their noses every moment they are playing.

Question:We have guilds that are on our server from the EU. Will they be relegated back to the EU? Since they chose to play on an NA server in the first place I think that NA should be their current default.

Just a few thoughts on a Saturday morning.

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QUESTION:

It has been stated that one of the factors in world creation will be to try to group together "friends" or people you play with. I'm sure this will be weighted against over all population of your world with your friends and the population of the other servers. My question: does the "friend factor" work across alliances? For example, what if there are 2 alliances formed and all the players play with each other. Are the odds good that both alliances will be on the same world? Some practical aspects: a current server, Awesomesause, has a healthy NA and EU population. The NA guilds form an alliance and the EU guilds form an alliance. Is there a high probability that these two alliances will be on the same world when this system is implemented?

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@"SugarCayne.3098" said:You do realize that by saying guilds will be used for population metrics it will increase the “must represent 100% of the time” factor for most big guilds?

And if they don’t like their pairings? Do not represent.

You are creating a massive problem with that. It will be exploited.

Repping has nothing to do with the metrics and no effect on alliances. It hinges entirely on which guild you set as your "wvw guild", which you can rep 100% of the time or 0%. There is nothing to exploit here that isn't already in the system.

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@Raymond Lukes.6305 said:

I’ve seen some roamers worried about this system, and I’d be interested in hearing what in this system could change to make it better for roamers in their opinions. If you could mark your account as a WvW roamer account, and the system guaranteed a percentage of roamers on each world, would that feel better? Or is there anything else we could do besides use a different system. We would love to hear other ideas, and even though we haven’t been able to respond to everything we have been reading it all and taking notes.

I think this idea is a good start and it's nice to know that you guys are also wanting to hear roamers opinions! Right now every server has certain reputation and you got to plan your playtime accordingly: some servers will bring nonstop roaming action that you don't want to miss out on and some others have nothing else but blobs all week long, so you sort of know when not to bother because it's simply going to be waste of time. Also in the current state higher the tier, less roaming action there seems to be. Transferring to lower tiers isn't going to be an option anymore due the worlds and people getting shuffled around anyway, so this kind of action guarantee sounds good.

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@Chaba.5410 said:

@Chaba.5410 said:What about for guilds that share players? This sounds like it limits those guilds. I thought alliance cap will be based on population.Each person can only designate a single guild as their "wvw" guild. You can be in other guilds that also do WvW, but, for purposes of being assigned to a side in a specific match up, only the designated guild counts.

Exactly, so those guilds with shared members form an alliance but the alliance is potentially capped on number of guilds. How will that work?

they will have to choose between Furry A or Furry B. or Furry A and Furry B will have to be in the same alliance.

I feel like you aren't reading what the FAQ question and answer was.

oh, we've been suspecting it being a cap parameter 1) # of guilds AND 2) population. IE: 5 guilds AND 500 PLAYERS. but your designated guild is the one that reflects your alliance world location. your 2nd guild if not in the alliance or figured a work around, will be be in pug heaven. i think the misconception are people looking at it as an OR cap. the shared guilds will have to work on being in the same alliance or a work around like merging temporarily with 1 guild for wvw designation. then rep the other guild. All in all the combination of 2 guilds in 1 will push the total alliance player cap in the numbers but leave spots for guild max parameter.

OK let me give example...

There's possibly four main guilds. They all rally at different times. They all share some members and want to keep everyone together, which is the purpose of an alliance - keeping a community together. They also want to invite two other small guilds who provide havoc support/scouting and also have a few shared members. The number of people in total is about less than 150 players spread out across several timezones. But let's say the alliance is capped at 5 guilds. Basically the only way then to keep the players together is to have everyone become a member of one of the guilds and they have to set that to their WvW guild. That sounds silly, especially if not everyone in every one of those guilds has an open guild slot. What is the purpose then of an alliance if people have to use a single guild to ensure staying together? It means basically that we should just be creating a single "floater" guild as the alliance rather than create an alliance.

I would hope each player would only be counted once.

They should probably just set alliance population caps without capping the amount of individual guilds. Seems like an unnecessary restriction unless I’m missing something.

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@Islwynn.6527 said:RE Roleplayers

Why not make a ROTM map for those who are into it? I imagine they find us non-roleplayers as annoying as we do them in a map meant for fighting.

RPers worry here isn't about RPing in WvW (I imagine that happens very rarely).The worry is with the Megaserver consequences from removal of permanent worlds. The parameters deciding what copy of a map the megaserver assigns you to includes, apart from Guild, friends list etc, also your chosen world. Since this is the only sorting factor that does not rely on previous contact, it's a large part of what makes RPers able to find each other.By word of mouth there's an unofficial RP server on each of NA and EU, so someone looking to RP can choose Tarnished Coast and the megaserver will prioritize the maps with other TC players, and thus a higher likelyhood of running in to other RPers. With permanent worlds gone, this will no longer be possible, making it much harder to find other RPers initally.

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Similarly to the question about inactive players going active, how will the opposite be handled? What happens of people who have set their WvW guild and are part of an alliance but then go inactive, when will their inactivity be counted to remove them in the count of max players? Each new season?

Also I am very worried about friends (roamers) not being able to play with me because I would've set my WvW guild (zerg) to an alliance that wouldn't benefit from them being tied to it. This system makes me fear I'll have to choose between my friend groups when in the current one I can simply play with them whenever they log on. Need more information about what will be done of transfers. Currently it seems like the friends in the situation I've mentioned would have to transfer every 8 weeks to be sure to stay with me when they play.

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After reading the original announcement over a couple times, and going over the FAQ's here, I frankly can barely wait for this new system to be implemented. ANY system is going to have its pitfalls, but this one is one that obviously has borne the weight of a large amount of planning sessions and so on. imo.. Good job ANet. Looking forward to pounding WvW (and yes ROAMING and HAVOC all the way)!

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@cobracommander.5861 said:

oh, we've been suspecting it being a cap parameter 1) # of guilds AND 2) population. IE: 5 guilds AND 500 PLAYERS. but your designated guild is the one that reflects your alliance world location. your 2nd guild if not in the alliance or figured a work around, will be be in pug heaven. i think the misconception are people looking at it as an OR cap. the shared guilds will have to work on being in the same alliance or a work around like merging temporarily with 1 guild for wvw designation. then rep the other guild. All in all the combination of 2 guilds in 1 will push the total alliance player cap in the numbers but leave spots for guild max parameter.

I would hope each player would only be counted once.

They should probably just set alliance population caps without capping the amount of individual guilds. Seems like an unnecessary restriction unless I’m missing something.

*snipped for brevity

I agree that guild restrictions only make sense for the most extreme examples; the strawman being tossed about was the alliance of 500 1-man guilds. Excepting a ridiculous case like that, I suspect (and hope) that guild restrictions would almost never come into play and that any given alliance is capped on players rather than guilds. I can't think of a good reason why you couldn't have 50 10-man guilds in an alliance while another would have a single 500-man wvw guild.

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@Euryon.9248 said:

oh, we've been suspecting it being a cap parameter 1) # of guilds AND 2) population. IE: 5 guilds AND 500 PLAYERS. but your designated guild is the one that reflects your alliance world location. your 2nd guild if not in the alliance or figured a work around, will be be in pug heaven. i think the misconception are people looking at it as an OR cap. the shared guilds will have to work on being in the same alliance or a work around like merging temporarily with 1 guild for wvw designation. then rep the other guild. All in all the combination of 2 guilds in 1 will push the total alliance player cap in the numbers but leave spots for guild max parameter.

I would hope each player would only be counted once.

They should probably just set alliance population caps without capping the amount of individual guilds. Seems like an unnecessary restriction unless I’m missing something.

*snipped for brevity

I agree that guild restrictions only make sense for the most extreme examples; the strawman being tossed about was the alliance of 500 1-man guilds. Excepting a ridiculous case like that, I suspect (and hope) that guild restrictions would almost never come into play and that any given alliance is capped on players rather than guilds. I can't think of a good reason why you couldn't have 50 10-man guilds in an alliance while another would have a single 500-man wvw guild.

The guild restriction is a way to stop the overstacking mindset that's been part of WvW since the beginning. The workaround for the 50 guild alliance is to have one "holding" guild, that each of the 50 guilds and their players can declare as their "WvW" guild, then they can still rep their 50 different guilds. What will break this holding guild apart is when the guild or the alliance reaches their population cap. This is the mechanic that prevents stacking. it allows guilds to grow but the tradoff is that when the alliance/guild reaches it's cap, an individual guild must leave in order to grow. This destacking mechanic is not present in the current system and has allowed population imbalance to perpetuate.
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