World Restructuring Update 1

Slow Lightning.4592 · July 3, 2018

I kinda get the keep hardcore's in 1 mode and casuals in another - its not a terrible idea if a format can be found. But the challenge would be a.) how do you define what a hardcore player is (what makes them worthy of being in that tier) b.) are there really enough hardcore players to warrant the tech investment in seperating them...... with a.) the main problem is there a lot of players who think they are better than they are and also there are some casual players who are actually pretty decent..... so the system could not be a voluntary thing... with b. I suspect not.

I did often wonder what would happen if they made a 2nd version of EB, one where only rank say 1500 plus could join. Obviously this isnt a 100% indicator of skill (proably not even a 50% indicator) but it would alteast burn off most of the EB dross.

but anyways, like I said, WvW cant be designed around the 5% of hardcore players... it needs to be accessible and fun for the other casuals and worse.

Helicity.3416 · July 3, 2018

I think for the vast majority of players, the strength of WvW lies in the pick up and play quality.

Log in, hop on a map, join a tag (or roam), have fun.

This is improved by having a healthy community of players and commanders you know.

If solo players get reshuffled constantly you take that away from them, and the only way you can really enjoy the mode is by being in a guild. Not everyone wants this, and it becomes like the EVE online model, where you can only have fun if you're in a guild.

Not healthy imo.

Slanderman.9532 · July 3, 2018

@Helicity.3416 said:I think for the vast majority of players, the strength of WvW lies in the pick up and play quality.
Log in, hop on a map, join a tag (or roam), have fun.
This is improved by having a healthy community of players and commanders you know.
If solo players get reshuffled constantly you take that away from them, and the only way you can really enjoy the mode is by being in a guild. Not everyone wants this, and it becomes like the EVE online model, where you can only have fun if you're in a guild.
Not healthy imo.

Current system is not healthy for anyone. Veterans are sick of pugs and pugs whine about elitism. If you casually enjoy WvW you just need to put little more effort and find community guild

Etheri.5406 · July 3, 2018

@"Helicity.3416" said:I think for the vast majority of players, the strength of WvW lies in the pick up and play quality.
Log in, hop on a map, join a tag (or roam), have fun.
This is improved by having a healthy community of players and commanders you know.
If solo players get reshuffled constantly you take that away from them, and the only way you can really enjoy the mode is by being in a guild. Not everyone wants this, and it becomes like the EVE online model, where you can only have fun if you're in a guild.
Not healthy imo.

So you all keep saying, but this is already dead on most servers.

Solo players like... SFR? Full of solo players who want to jump in and enjoy the mode. Except there's 0 commanders or groups to follow left. Deso? Going in similar ways. These were THE strong high end pug servers back in the days - now still full of players but virtually every commander has left. And other servers are not much different. Literally every EU server has pugs on EB asking for commanders every hour or so; yet they rarely get them and for good reasons.FSP? Same thing. Gankdara? same thing. Surely, if you go to stacked server vabbi you'll get comms right? Just kidding they're running hidden squads 24/7 to avoid their pugs.

The pick up and play quality has drastically decreased and continues to drop. You can't "pick up and play" commanding. You can't "pick up and play" a community out of thin air. You need healthy environments for these to thrive, and frankly the pick up and play pugs created an environment in which this isn't sustainable anymore.

We already get reshuffled every 2 months. We already have huge parts of pugs on servers without comms , community or anything to follow. And right now? Well guilds can't really have fun, because their raids are permanently harassed by pugs looking to "jump in" and follow someone because they don't know where to go, what to do or how to succesfully kill players roaming. And they have absolutely no interest in learning it either.

If you don't want any interaction with a community; no guilds no talking no organisation no commitment just "jump in and play"; why do you need the same community for months straight? I mean, these players overrunning the communities we had is the reason we have these issues in the first place.

Etheri.5406 · July 3, 2018

@"Slow Lightning.4592" said:I kinda get the keep hardcore's in 1 mode and casuals in another - its not a terrible idea if a format can be found. But the challenge would be a.) how do you define what a hardcore player is (what makes them worthy of being in that tier) b.) are there really enough hardcore players to warrant the tech investment in seperating them...... with a.) the main problem is there a lot of players who think they are better than they are and also there are some casual players who are actually pretty decent..... so the system could not be a voluntary thing... with b. I suspect not.
I did often wonder what would happen if they made a 2nd version of EB, one where only rank say 1500 plus could join. Obviously this isnt a 100% indicator of skill (proably not even a 50% indicator) but it would alteast burn off most of the EB dross.
but anyways, like I said, WvW cant be designed around the 5% of hardcore players... it needs to be accessible and fun for the other casuals and worse.

It should never be a "hard" devide. You can't really select players on skill; you can't even measure skill. Anet cannot create a system which can properly divide players into groups which are challenging to fight for eachother; the skill difference is too massive and there are way too many variables to account for.

That said there are two solutions that can be done :

The first is the good old EOTM stategies. You increase EOTM rewars above WvWs. This lures reward-driven fairweather players to EOTM, where they can karma train rotate and do random wonky stuff without interfering with WvW. This more or less splits the WvW and EOTM communities based on desires and lets you balance each more easily focussed on one group.

The second is what I really want for WvW. You make ENTIRE WvW a competitive mode. You give FULL power to the alliance over a world (in the long run, at least). They can invite whoever they like, and kick whoever they like, from their world. However; the lowest rated alliances are continuously reformed (relegated) and new alliances take their place. This forces alliances to recruit and balance themselves.

You will have hardcore servers, and these servers will want good fight guilds; good roamers, good scouts, good PPT, ... and pugs. Because coverage and pugs is pretty important. And if they get spies, trolls, afkers or griefers? Well they can kick them from their world; and these players will have to join another world.

The problem with coverage differences over timezones? PLAYERS can solve these by recruiting proper guilds / commanders / pugs playing in those timezones which they NEED for ppt coverage. Problems with designing a system that works for zergs, defenders, scouts, roamers, casuals, commanders, guilds, ...? On a balanced server, you need ALL of these to PPT. And they can slightly adjust PPT to create a healthier environment for this through siege and structure adjustments. Meanwhile anet trying to measure this stuff and fix it for us? Never going to work; they're not even measuring WHEN we play; only HOWMUCH we play.

Servers get too full on a certain timezone? Some of their players will look to move / leave. Servers are too empty to keep their stuff on certain timezones? They will recruit more players in this timezone to fix it. One alliance blobbing everyone else? A second blob alliance will form and just blob down the first.And all these players? The roamers and and blobbers and defenders? They actually have a real goal; winning matchups with real incentives. All of these players need to work towards a common goal; beacuse if they drop too low they are no longer an alliance. Previously; that just got them more bandwagonners. But in this system; the alliance controls anyone who comes into the world. Winning can not only be meaningful; it can also be rewarding as players can't just transfer to the winning side.

Take EU; we currently have various national servers making the balance even more difficult. It's impossible to properly link the german servers. One is too small, two is too big and their sizes make proper links impossible. But in this system; you don't create national servers. Players create the environment they want to. Want a german alliance? Make one! Always wanted a chinese-finnish server on EU? Well if you can create a competitive alliance for it; do it. It also allows relatively easy scale up (and down) by adding and removing tiers (at the bottom) if there are too much (too little) players.Maybe there are spanish speaking players on NA servers, who'd like their own alliance. They can just make it. Maybe it turns out there's not enough spanish players - then the alliance ends up getting relegated. You want a high skill alliance? Make one! But keep in mind you need to find enough players to PPT; which isn't that easy with hardcore fight veterans only. In reality, you'll get blobs, roamers, guilds, scouts and defenders working towards winning matchups the way you did in the past. And if one server has a strong blob that keeps bullying the enemy group; they'll have to recruit more blobbers or adjust accordingly to deal with it. Give actual rewards for winning and players will do it. And you will have in-between servers which are more laid back, casual and focussed on community. Players can create whatever they desire as long as the alliance can do better than other alliances and survive. You get actual teamwork and communities as they now have a real, common goal.

No need for crazy measurements and metrics; no need for anet fixing the groups. What you need is to give communities the power to form and police themselves; and an incentive to WIN. Then they themselves will form COMPETITIVE alliances which fight each other.

The reason this cannot work at the moment is the bandwagon issue seen during tournaments. It's easier to move to the winning team than it is to help your team to win. However; if joining a high-end group requires you to be INVITED and can get you kicked; you can't just join a winning alliance. It's not just "I want to join so I join", it's "I want to join and here's why you should take me". But as long as numbers are incredibly important for coverage and PPT; and coverage and PPT are required to win, there will be a place for everyone.

TL DR : Anet you can't make a metric that balances WvW population; but the WvW population CAN fix itself if you give it the right incentives and you DON'T LET THE SYSTEM DESTABILIZE THROUGH PAY TO WIN TRANSFERS.Transfering players is essential to WvW. It's required that players can move so these things can balance themselves out. But if players can move to the winning world without limitation; then the winning world can NEVER remain stable.

aintiarna.1038 · July 3, 2018

@Etheri.5406 said:@"aintiarna.1038"
Bandwagoning. Yes, it's a problem atm, especially when organised guilds switch servers to farm pugs because it's apparently fun. Hardcore alliances will almost definitely form under the new system and any world matched against them based on coverage, playtime or other metrics I've seen discussed so far will just get hard farmed as they do now. As guild leaders and officers can control their own members and consequently the makeup of alliances, it may lead to even more unbalanced match-ups.

You don't seem to grasp bandwagoning. Veteran guilds have 2 choices : they can run mostly closed raids on trash servers or form a "stacked" server and keep their guild alive outside of guild raids. Most veterans have 0 interest in playing with trash servers; it's incredibly unfun.

"Alive outside of guild raids." What does that mean? Guilds doing GvG is fun healthy competition, but if you roam about farming pug squads eventually they will stop playing and their commanders will stop tagging up for pugs. That is pretty much what has happened on Gandara after 2 months of pug squads getting farmed by KISS, Kill and other squads that seem to be roaming all day. Last couple of resets there have been hardly any map queues and only 1 open tag for 4 maps.

Maybe if some of those guilds that like to play all day transferred to FSP and Gandara link servers you'd get some healthy competition in T1. Crazy idea, I know. Stacking on WSR must be so much more "fun", especially now that FSP and Gandara are turning into ghost worlds.

Etheri.5406 · July 3, 2018

@aintiarna.1038 said:
@Etheri.5406 said:@aintiarna.1038
Bandwagoning. Yes, it's a problem atm, especially when organised guilds switch servers to farm pugs because it's apparently fun. Hardcore alliances will almost definitely form under the new system and any world matched against them based on coverage, playtime or other metrics I've seen discussed so far will just get hard farmed as they do now. As guild leaders and officers can control their own members and consequently the makeup of alliances, it may lead to even more unbalanced match-ups.

You don't seem to grasp bandwagoning. Veteran guilds have 2 choices : they can run mostly closed raids on trash servers or form a "stacked" server and keep their guild alive outside of guild raids. Most veterans have 0 interest in playing with trash servers; it's incredibly unfun.

"Alive outside of guild raids." What does that mean? Guilds doing GvG is fun healthy competition, but if you roam about farming pug squads eventually they will stop playing and their commanders will stop tagging up for pugs. That is pretty much what has happened on Gandara after 2 months of pug squads getting farmed by KISS, Kill and other squads that seem to be roaming all day. Last couple of resets there have been hardly any map queues and only 1 open tag for 4 maps.

Maybe if some of those guilds that like to play all day transferred to FSP and Gandara link servers you'd get some healthy competition in T1. Crazy idea, I know. Stacking on WSR must be so much more "fun", especially now that FSP and Gandara are turning into ghost worlds.

What I mean is if I took 15 guildies to gankdara today, we'd have no issue to farm KISS even with 15.

Here are the downsides : We'd have hundreds of gankdara "roamers" adding to every fight we did.We'd have queues to every map during prime time; we'd not be able to jump and play anywhere.Whenever we aren't doing a guildraid, despite having 3-4 queues during prime, you do not have a single coordinated group which is enjoyable for my players to join. The level of play on gandara is so low and disorganised there are literally no commanders that my guildies would enjoy following left on the server. This means that outside of guildraids, most players would simply log off.If we went open to fight something like KILL; we'd get huge amounts of pugs yet very very limited amounts of players willing to come discord, change off roam classes, fight them with us.

For my guildies and our type of players, playing on gankdara is not fun. The only fun they could have is guild raids, occasionally, and even those are kinda meh because we'd have more pugs chasing us than our own players. So there is 0 point, to ever go to gandara. We were debating on where to move our alts; and gandara isn't even an option we consider.

You don't get healthy competition by going to gandara; you just kill your guild. Crazy idea, I know.Gankdara is a "ghost world" that still manages to stay in T1 through PPT. FSP is a "ghost world" that still sits in T1 and truthfully; I can kill them all day but I cannot outPPT 3 maps of clowns and roamers.

So; what exactly do you want us to do? Go to gankdara? I'm sorry no sane commander will ever do that; the server culture is insanely toxic towards commanders. If gankdara can't compete and is becoming a ghost world, they should stop ppt'ing and drop tiers. I'd rather have had vabbi in T1 so we could have fought WSR, but elona, FSP and gankdara were all too busy trying to PPT while avoiding getting farmed by WSR and vabbi.

Your commanders stopped tagging because they got farmed by "GvG guild" KISS? I see. Sorry but 2 of your main pugmanders asked if they could come to vabbi BEFORE those 2 months of WSR. RT, kazo, entire vabbi, entire WSR, several deso groups, ... all moved servers and NOT ONE of them wanted to go to gankdara. Why is it that every single GvG guild moved to T1 yet not one of them went to gandara? Do you think this is some kind of magic coincidence?

Playing on gankdara is NOT fun for organised / veteran guilds and moving there means your guild will die. Because the guildraids aren't even guild raids; they're "open raids" because gandara gankers will follow you no matter what. And outside of guildraids, you can't even play the way veterans / experienced players enjoy playing because everyone who played this style has already left years ago.I'd rather lead riverside in T5 despite not even speaking german than move my alt to gandara.

TL DR : It's not the enemies fault that KISS farms you despite having players to queue 4 maps. It's gandara's fault for; despite having hundreds of players, not being able to make a single group that can support their commander adequately. And this is nothing new; gandara has been screwing over their commanders by playing random classes and comps and incredibly cloudy / off tag in every single zerg for years.

aintiarna.1038 · July 3, 2018

@Etheri.5406 said:TL DR : It's not the enemies fault that KISS farms you despite having players to queue 4 maps. It's gandara's fault for; despite having hundreds of players, not being able to make a single group that can support their commander adequately. And this is nothing new; gandara has been screwing over their commanders by playing random classes and comps and incredibly cloudy / off tag in every single zerg for years.

Well, ultimately it's a self-perpetuating problem. Worlds with a reputation for being fight servers attract players with that sort of attitude who want to learn their class, interested in meta, who support commanders, etc. Why would commanders want to transfer to Vabbi? Reputation again. Not something that is easy to change either way.

Getting back to the original topic. Will alliances change any of this? I suppose if worlds are being remade every 8 weeks there wont be any with a reputation for being one way or the other any more. On the flip side, a hard-core fight alliance could end up spending 8 weeks on a newly formed world with a bunch of unsupportive, cloudy/ off-tag, ppt-addicts. :) At least they'll have something new to complain about.

Thorfinnr Sleggja.1209 · July 3, 2018

Thanks for the update.

I'd like a clarification. My apologies if it was already mentioned and I missed it in reading through the thread. Perhaps it was and I just didn't understand the application.

I, like many, have multiple guilds. The guild I am in that does WvW is just friends of mine with like 5-8 active players, and usually only 1-3 of us on together at the same time tpo pick up some simple guild favor and such.

I like all the folks I currently play with on our home Server (Henge of Denravi). I don't think having our tiny guild in an alliance is the best idea, simply because we're casual and a small number of players...I'm being realistic and practical here. And I am willing to join one of the other guilds once we work out how we are going to try to keep our little community together in WvW.

My question is this:

If I am repping my "friends guild" and playing PvE to get guild favor for bounties or whatever, but then decide to jump into WvW for a bit: Will I get sorted as a "solo" player because I am repping my "PvX" guild(not set as WvW guild) of my friends or will it place me in with the "HoD Alliance" appropriately if I have that tagged as my WvW Guild?

Also, if I do have an "HoD Alliance" guild set as my WvW guild, will there be a way for our small guild to go into WvW together when we need to do a WvW guild mission?

I guess basically I am asking will the guild we are set to "Represent" affect how we are sorted, or will that default "WvW" tag always apply in our sorting?

Maybe we don't know this answer yet.

Anyway, thanks for the update again.

Etheri.5406 · July 3, 2018

@aintiarna.1038 said:
@"Etheri.5406" said:TL DR : It's not the enemies fault that KISS farms you despite having players to queue 4 maps. It's gandara's fault for; despite having hundreds of players, not being able to make a single group that can support their commander adequately. And this is nothing new; gandara has been screwing over their commanders by playing random classes and comps and incredibly cloudy / off tag in every single zerg for years.

Well, ultimately it's a self-perpetuating problem. Worlds with a reputation for being fight servers attract players with that sort of attitude who want to learn their class, interested in meta, who support commanders, etc. Why would commanders want to transfer to Vabbi? Reputation again. Not something that is easy to change either way.

Getting back to the original topic. Will alliances change any of this? I suppose if worlds are being remade every 8 weeks there wont be any with a reputation for being one way or the other any more. On the flip side, a hard-core fight alliance could end up spending 8 weeks on a newly formed world with a bunch of unsupportive, cloudy/ off-tag, ppt-addicts. :) At least they'll have something new to complain about.

There was a very long time on EU where each server had their fight commanders, their karmatrain commanders, their roamers, their guilds, and so forth. Obviously these weren't all equally strong but it was only some national and very low end servers that were as disorganised as now. The problem is a community issue; pugs expect to "plug and play" and join groups being "winners" and having fun without putting any effort in. Even vabbi and WSR are quite disorganised compared to many servers in the past. I remember having 2-3 maps queue'd with different comms during resets - not getting absolutely massive queues - as you'd have more casual oriented commanders and more hardcore oriented commanders. And the casual oriented commanders? They actually got their players on ts and chilling; trying all the same. The moment the casuals got smashed by the more hardcore enemies? They'd just swap places with their hardcore allies and resume their day. Guilds would raid and be left alone. You'd have pug blobs on EB and guilds on borders during the week, sometimes fight blobs on borders as well. In general the vast MAJORITY of the server would come to TS and actually coordinate; even many roamers.

But anet and players stated WvW wasn't worth supporting. So most of these dedicated players left. And the pugs that replaced them were promoted a culture of open world PvE : You join and you're a WINNER no matter what you do. A culture where you just join and play what you like in zergs; it's a zerg it doesn't matter! Yet somehow you expect to win.

What I'm trying to say is you NEED a healthy veteran scene if you want this "population balance" where casuals can jump in and play without commitments. Anet didn't create a system that promotes it - veterans supported and allowed it. And now? Well we can't anymore; there's simply not enough of us and it's far from enjoyable. Soon after HoT; one of my past guildleaders quit. A point where our server (deso) would get 4 queues every prime; yet we couldn't gather more than 30 players on tag / ts on ANY map. And 20+ of those were our own players. Gandara is the same; it's pugs that destroyed the communities in WvW by demanding to join them without ever interacting with them as if its PvE. And as long as there's vastly too much casuals for the veteran community to handle? They'll just do whatever it takes to avoid them because they don't have better options.

So how does this new system make it better? Well it stops bandwagoning. For one, the main issue is that casual pugs rather chase good players than become good players. As i've said throughout this; the main issue is expecting to win yet refusing to put in any effort. It also screws with server culture. For pugs to have a consistent nice experience; they'll need to join a group and improve or risk not playing on dead servers. Not each server will have convenient leads for you to follow. It makes groups smaller and more easy to balance. It gives more room to players of strong alliances to move around - believe it or not but creating a new server can take quite a bit of work. PPT'ing vabbi from T5 to T1 several times over against 3-4 maps of pugs isn't easy.

It resets server cultures. Many server cultures are literally the reason the servers are the way they are. (Reputation, as you say.)

Gandara has a server culture of "everyone plays whatever they want" and commanders must be nice to their followers; but followers don't need to listen to commanders. Nice for followers - very toxic for commanders to try and lead. The results are obvious. Vabbi has a server culture of "you play what your group demands or you GTFO". Not nice for casual pugs; pretty nice for veterans who enjoy organised play. Again the results are clear. Piken has a server culture of casual roleplay and being PC carebearism. "If you say we played bad we'll troll you!!!". Yet again, the results are obvious. Alliances will kill these static, slowly established cultures and allow us to create new ones. Hopefully better ones.

I'm all in favor of having balanced servers again; but the attitude change that is required lies with the casuals and not with the veteran community. Realistically; I don't think anet will manage to properly balance these issues. What do I think will be the result?

I think at the start, guilds will be relatively spread. At that point it depends on how servers are. If they're equally obnoxious to play on as now then over time the guilds will form mega alliances. Once one forms, a second one to contest it can easily be created. But again, this update gives chances to pugs to get themselves out of this cycle.

Sorry we don't need 15 competitive servers; I just need one or two and the ability to lock the matchup. Then these servers can duke it out, and whenever casual servers make the mistake of interupting by PPT'ing too hard or too little; you just farm them for a week to then go back to the only mu that can provide a challenge. And if they want to improve and compete with the veterans; they can. If not, then don't.

I won't be starting a mass server at the start of alliances. Hell I might even give them casuals a chance. But realistically? I think the main improvements are more control to players and more easy redistribution of players every 2 months. Anet won't be able to prevent "stacking" because 200-300 good players are literally worth more than 1.000 casuals when it comes down to a fight. And if you "fight" them enough, well casuals ragequit hard when you farm them. 1.000 active WvW casuals won't play after you get a 2.0 KDA against them over the weekend and you hold their garri for 2 hours throughout prime... :trollface: They'll just PPT the week after to give you that same matchup again.

Keep in mind - in its current state it's IMPOSSIBLE to "fix" gandara. For the reasons I stated; no groups or existing comms will go there. Nobody can really lead how to command there either; you don't have allies or support. You can't form a community - there's an oppresive majority community of players who refuse to interact or commit to improving their own community. You cannot "change" how gandara works. You can't bring in more fighters to fix the problem; it first has to die to a point where enough players have left. That's what's slowly happening to SFR and deso. You just let them sit and stir and hope eventually players leave. Nobody will go there to fix it. So from my point of view; completely deleting servers and their hivemind is pretty healthy.

Redponey.8352 · July 3, 2018

@Etheri.5406 said:
@aintiarna.1038 said:
@Etheri.5406 said:TL DR : It's not the enemies fault that KISS farms you despite having players to queue 4 maps. It's gandara's fault for; despite having hundreds of players, not being able to make a single group that can support their commander adequately. And this is nothing new; gandara has been screwing over their commanders by playing random classes and comps and incredibly cloudy / off tag in every single zerg for years.