World Restructuring Update 2

[Blocki.4931]

@Roxory.9854 said:I love GW2 and WvW but this is getting ridiculous. WvW is an overpopulated pay to win because of the alliances announcement, server swapping and stacking. The fights are just based on numbers now not skill. Mobs with the larger numbers win, go figure. I feel these alliance announcements are money grabs to get people to pay to switch worlds thinking stacking and winning. It has only served to kill guilds and servers/worlds and make WvW less populated but it made some money for anet which is what dying games do to their population in the end, milk them for whatevers left... sad day

That doesn't even make sense. People have been bandwagoning since forever. How is the announcement that the system is changing doing anything to promote that? People don't even get anything for winning, they only kill the fun but gain nothing from it.

[subversiontwo.7501]

@"Heartpains.7312" said:May I ask what would the alliance solve? not to mention that it is taking so much time that by the time that it is ready, maybe the reasons behind it no longer exists.Essentially it changes two things:

1. It gives Anet smaller building blocks to piece together "servers" with every 8 weeks (focused around guilds and alliances with limited player control).
2. It gives you the option to change your "WvW guild" every 8 weeks to get to a new server rather than paying 200g+/gems for it.So it adresses the most recent development of world-linking and the transfer circus in which guilds/commanders are paying to get away from stacking anonymous players to get a chance to play togther with their friends and how that affects stacking and content. No one is using it for balance or (semi-) lasting server-wide organisation anymore. I may need to explain it in depth later but for now just assume that it rolls back the past year or two to how things worked when world-linking first got introduced (so it adresses issues that have appeared with linking in the past 2 years, not the full 7-ish years).

It will more or less take them the same amount of time to build that it has taken the most recent issues to appear :s .

Given the recent updates from Raymond we know that they are keeping the option to pay 200g+/gems for it and to switch regions (NA/EU) you still need to pay 200+g/gems for it. For god knows what reason since those two things are what is meowing up WvW to begin with. So they decided to spend a year on designing a new core, have not come further than a core and have decided to keep the rotten core of the old system. Thanks to the latest update we are now also, more than before, lead to believe that this is a skeleton crewed project with few others than Raymond working on it. That about sums it up.

We are now entering the 7th year of GW2 and the core issues of WvW remain the same: Population imbalance (most importantly off-hour population imbalance) makes any form of performance rewards pointless and splits the community into two extremes of PPT (for non-existant rewards) and open field fights (because no rewards and no way to keep off-region off-hour/night crews from resetting everything you worked for during your game/spare time when you should be sleeping or working/studying makes tending to objectives, and by extension winning matchups, pointless beyond controlling who you get matched up with next week). Then you can add all other unadressed/festering/underdeveloped issues under it.

So, in summary, with the recent updates we know that what they have been working on for the past year has an expressed, supposed long-term goal of adressing a core issue but they have decided to keep two key things that causes that very same issue. Not only does that miss the mark of the supposed goal but also handicaps the work they have done so far on this system. A system that at first was received as just okay and now admittedly aims at being just okay. They are somehow trying to adress the issue in further undisclosed ways, developed by other undisclosed employees that have managed to update us zero times on their work over a year while Raymond has managed a hefty :3 three. At least 7-year veteran cash cows still has a no-milk opt-out to avoid the night-crews others still will have to pay to win.

It took about 15 edits to create this post, every time it got longer and more negative. Let's end on a lighter but fitting note:

[Dayra.7405]

@subversiontwo.7501 said:developed by other undisclosed employees that have managed to update us zero times

I fear everyone of them has informed us about everything they are doing.Problem is just: They don't exist, so they didn't do anything, and had nothing to inform us about. :(

[coro.3176]

Sigh... Sorry devs (or maybe dev? singular?) . I know you're trying. It's just taking SO LONG.

Can we just .. I dunno, sort people based on their currently repped wvw guild? I don't know what your backend looks like, but maybe some combination of

• a set date/time where your currently repped guild will become your WvW guild, announced well in advance (1 month?) via website + in game mail so all WvW players know about it.
• guild leaders send mail with their requested alliances. (alliance requests must be reciprocal Eg. Both Guild Leader A and B have to request each other and not exceed some limit)
• have someone manually go through the requests and make sure the numbers check out. Look, how many hundred guilds are there? Surely it wouldn't take THAT long. The player base isn't that large, is it? Let's say a day or two of person-time?
• randomly sort the rest of the players until the servers are balanced in population.

.. and try that? I'd volunteer to do it myself, but I don't work for ANET.

[Blocki.4931]

@coro.3176 said:Sigh... Sorry devs (or maybe dev? singular?) . I know you're trying. It's just taking SO LONG.

Can we just .. I dunno, sort people based on their currently repped wvw guild? I don't know what your backend looks like, but maybe some combination of

• a set date/time where your currently repped guild will become your WvW guild, announced well in advance (1 month?) via website + in game mail so all WvW players know about it.
• guild leaders send mail with their requested alliances. (alliance requests must be reciprocal Eg. Both Guild Leader A and B have to request each other and not exceed some limit)
• have someone manually go through the requests and make sure the numbers check out. Look, how many hundred guilds are there? Surely it wouldn't take THAT long. The player base isn't that large, is it? Let's say a day or two of person-time?
• randomly sort the rest of the players until the servers are balanced in population.

.. and try that? I'd volunteer to do it myself, but I don't work for ANET.

What would that accomplish? And why would you prefer that over the system they are working on?

[coro.3176]

@Blocki.4931 said:

@coro.3176 said:Sigh... Sorry devs (or maybe dev? singular?) . I know you're trying. It's just taking SO LONG.

Can we just .. I dunno, sort people based on their currently repped wvw guild? I don't know what your backend looks like, but maybe some combination of

• a set date/time where your currently repped guild will become your WvW guild, announced well in advance (1 month?) via website + in game mail so all WvW players know about it.
• guild leaders send mail with their requested alliances. (alliance requests must be reciprocal Eg. Both Guild Leader A and B have to request each other and not exceed some limit)
• have someone manually go through the requests and make sure the numbers check out. Look, how many hundred guilds are there? Surely it wouldn't take THAT long. The player base isn't that large, is it? Let's say a day or two of person-time?
• randomly sort the rest of the players until the servers are balanced in population.

.. and try that? I'd volunteer to do it myself, but I don't work for ANET.

What would that accomplish? And why would you prefer that over the system they are working on?

It would be a barebones version of what they're working on, but with players sorted by hand and with preferences specified by guild leaders sending in-game mail until the necessary tech exists to do it automatically.

I would prefer it because it could be done now. That is, it could be ready in weeks or a month rather than the year we're probably looking at.

Perfect is the enemy of good...

[subversiontwo.7501]

@"Dawdler.8521" said:Well the devs in their opinion will go with alliances. Unless you want them to cancel it all and spend another 3+ years to implement some player suggested system that probably wont work any better than alliances, which in my opinion would be pointless.At this point they might as well do that, considering that Raymond just told us that they are not doing 2 out of the 3 things that was Alliances saving grace.1. Stopping others from overstacking what you organize (still gems)2. Giving players some wider control over access to night crews (still gems)

3. Letting you join friends without paying gems every 8 weeks

We are literally a "changing WvW guild now cost gems"-update away from this entire project being 100% pointless.

Nevermind that the system was outdated from conception or didn't directly affect population imbalances. Now it doesn't even do what it set out to do.

They could just cap server score between 5pm and midnight and still have a better impact on population imbalance now and then build something more considerate from there. That's like two clicks in a spreadsheet and they can spend the next year working on an improvement (/inclusion) to that instead.

[Dawdler.8521]

@coro.3176 said:players sorted by handCompletely unrealistic and unviable.

I am also curious what you would do at capacity. No really, I want to hear how you would sort them since you offered to do it. 5 guilds want to be in the same alliance. Only 4 guilds can fit. Do you decide which guild is going to get thrown out? Is it going to be some sort of contest to determine which 4 guilds are are cool and which of them... well, just isnt worthy of the alliance? Or would you just go by gut feeling on which guild has the worst name?

[coro.3176]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@coro.3176 said:players sorted by handCompletely unrealistic and unviable.

Time consuming and tedious, perhaps, but much faster than waiting 2 years for it to finally be released - even if all I had were a list of player names and their preferred wvw guild. There aren't that many players that care about WvW.

I am also curious what you would do at capacity. No really, I want to hear how you would sort them since you offered to do it. 5 guilds want to be in the same alliance. Only 4 guilds can fit. Do you decide which guild is going to get thrown out? Is it going to be some sort of contest to determine which 4 guilds are are cool and which of them... well, just isnt worthy of the alliance? Or would you just go by gut feeling on which guild has the worst name?

Simple. Announce the limit on the total # of players in an alliance. Then if any requested alliances are over that limit, the alliance is void and the guilds are distributed randomly among the servers instead of being kept together. The guilds are responsible for making sure their alliances are under the limit.

[Towlie.9168]

anet overthinks this update so hard...just go back to the roots

-delete desertborder (to much PvE, Runnin-simulator)

-STOP RELINKING SERVERS (put the low-pop Servers together and let it be or create new Servers at all and everyone can choose a new one for free...like the battles under the Servers made wvw that great...cuz u wanted to teach the people and organize ur server so ur Servers is gettin better...but now everyone gives a fk...wvw-guilds are only lookin for fights...public/open raids gettin pretty rare cuz why you should be passioned to train people FOR WHAT?!?!? to get relinked again?!??!?! people dont define themselfs with the Servers anymore, they define themselfs with the guild... so they only care about the guild...''oh we lost t3 hills, who cares, we won a fight 10v25'' and i think new players who come to wvw have it rly hard nowadays...WvW is pointelss at the moment

-dont try to get more PvE players in to WvW with PvE content, WvW is something u like or u dont...THATS OK...THERE IS NOTHING TO CHANGE TO MAKE IT MORE ATTRACTIVE...and dont listen to people who say ,,I play wvw twice a week but i would play it more if there would be a BIG FAT DRAGON WHO GIVES ME A BUNCH OF LOOT'' This mode were perfect in the beginning and anet made some small good decisions but the big decisions were terrible

as more anet changes things and trys to control population and stuff its gettin worse...cuz the community has to do it by itself AND they did in the early days...it wasnt perfect for everyone but it worked generally cuz the balance came over time AND ALLIANCES WILL MAKE NOTHING BETTER! it will be about blobing, killing eachother and not about capin objects like now

imagine WvW would be a PvP-match where some ppl are in the middle of the map tryin to kill eachother off-point while some are capturing Points for the daily reward and gettin loot THATS WvW TODAY

u ruined WvW, FIX IT,

peace out

[borgs.6103]

Thanks for the update. Just hoping this won't come out EOTM-late.

[Cristalyan.5728]

@Dawdler.8521 said:Well the devs in their opinion will go with alliances. Unless you want them to cancel it all and spend another 3+ years to implement some player suggested system that probably wont work any better than alliances, which in my opinion would be pointless.

Well, the devs have no opinion. They go with nothing. Do you want proofs? Let's analyze all the statements the devs (?) made on this topic.First, the statement of intention:

@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 teamsDiversify WvW experiences

As I said before, these are the goals of the actual system working atm. So, if we eliminate the non relevant words, we have only the intention of "Balance teams" remaining. The rest is a marketing promo. The devs are technical persons. A technical statement is something like: "We will try to improve.... In this case is only marketing.

Still, we have the intention of balancing the teams - this was for a long time the only complain of the players. The teams are not balanced. I think that McKenna Berdrow is a true dev. because he understood that the actual system of balancing the teams is the real cause for the WvW state and he said:

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

World Creation

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.

Too bad. The next statement on this topic (July 2018) brings the things back to the old system. Look at what Raymond said:

@"Raymond Lukes.6305" said:

July 2018 Update

In the original post and discussion, we talked about using player hours (the current method we use for calculating world sizes for links and “full” status) and then adjusting those hours by other metrics like command hours, etc. We subsequently have decided to, at least at the start, use only play hours and not adjust using other metrics.

So, the old (imperfect) method will be used. That means the "balance team" statement from the initial statement of intention is no more.

[Cristalyan.5728]

So, what we have from the initial statement of intention? NOTHING.

That this nothing is the real (technical) goal of this change is proved by the:

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

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.

With other words, you will accept this (new?) system or you will remain with the old system. No other variants. That means that the statement:

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

is only a polite way to advise us that the old "the devs knows better than you what is good for you" is back.

In conclusion:This is a marketing move, bringing nothing new from a technical point of view, with the purpose to sell in a more profitable manner the "right" to move between worlds. They intent to spent no resources in this "change. The status after one year is: "we are taking things into consideration / we worked a lot but we are still far from an end / we use the same metrics (the tools are already developed) etc.

So, I think we can try to help them by offering them our opinions - if I was wrong and the statement "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" is truly honest.

[Dawdler.8521]

@Cristalyan.5728 said:Well, the devs have no opinion.Well thats just your opinion just as this is mine. Those of us that understand the scope and intent of alliances hold our opinion on whether it will do good or bad in the long run, but ultimately its just smaller links and everybody is a link. We got that concept in the first update. We are stuck with WvW mostly as it is. Changing it alot is called developing a new game. I have dreams and hopes for GW3 sure but for now, I just want to play WvW without tier locks due to static population

[Blockhead Magee.3092]

Its good to know that they're still progressing on the plan and haven't abandoned it. That s the good news. The bad news, to me, is that it give the impression of being a year or more away. If true, that's a bummer.

[Slanderman.9532]

i disagree strongly in the part of either linking or reconstructing. Dont be afraid to make changes, it is not going to get any worse. I trust you have some knowledge in developing or making games, so put that in use.

[Ross.9612]

Will we be given a rough time line of implementation before restructuring goes live? I ask because currently I do not play WvW like i used to but I want to get back into it once restructuring takes place. Right now I'm with a casual guild for WvW because that is what I want to be apart of for the current match-ups. However, before restructuring takes place I want to be a member of a serious guild once I ramp up my playtime again. I would like to have time to prepare, and not show up one day to find I was too late on joining a serious WvW guild and now I have to run with my casual guild because I wasnt given time to ramp back into my old play hours.

[LetoII.3782]

@Irbis.4932 said:So we will see what comes out first World restructuring or CU. Expecting a thrilling race =)

Anticipate from experience WvW, CU and Crowfall to all release simultaneously.Question is which one jumps first and when. With backers still funding their kickstarters it may be a while yet

[Malavian.4695]

Thanks for the update.

[Thei.6901]

I feel updated now.

[Knighthonor.4061]

@"jqjazz.4097" said:so nothing new actually changing in wvw yet again :( Raymond Lukes.6305 said "we have made some really good and exciting progress, we are still a ways out from the launch of World Restructuring and Alliances." meaning if we wait as long as we have since the very 1st announcement wvw will be pretty much a dead zone and gw3 maybe on the horizon! oh happy days for us wvw'ers, wrap it in a xmas box and put it under the tree for 2020

Nothing new for WvW again!!

[Heartpains.7312]

Basically if we have 3 teams, team A,B and C all of them have 100 player in the team.Team A 100 player logs for 2hoursTeam B 100 player logs for 4hoursTeam C 100 player logs for 8hoursthe results would still be the same as it is right now, I think I have said it before, the friends I have they stay regardless of the matches, we get tired sometimes but we remain together in the same server. Some people eventually break due to the lame beat down I will go ahead and say it, I am sure some servers faced the same thing at some time but go ahead and look at SoR right now, why did we have to go through this for 2 months? was it hard to just manually link us with another server instead of taking those 2 months of beat down?

The alliance system will not fix issues like this, people quit, people move around, people get busy with reality

I am able to play in SoR at the moment due to the class I play, if I play necro or something that doesn't have enough mobility its pretty much GG seeing 10+ players chasing you.

So simply I am wondering if the alliance system would fix any of those things, all might have the same numbers but not all log the same time or amount of time.

I am not saying don't let people transfer etc, but it is creating major issues, they can at least look at servers who suffered too much and just try to get them linked with another server rather than just following this 2 months system.

Another issue is the links keeps changing, found players to play with on the linked server?? nvm it will change.

[Dawdler.8521]

@"Heartpains.7312" said:Basically if we have 3 teams, team A,B and C all of them have 100 player in the team.Team A 100 player logs for 2hoursTeam B 100 player logs for 4hoursTeam C 100 player logs for 8hoursTo continue that, the very point of alliances is to take such static monolithic "teams" you cant balance (ie current worlds) and split them up into 15 groups of 20 players each that can be mixed and matched to create 3 teams all with an average playtime of 4.66h or as close as possible.

[Rangerdeity.5847]

The most concerning thing about this post is how many times he says "I" as if he is the only one working on it. That was always a joke that they have exactly one dev working on it I am kinda stressed to see that might be literally what is happening.

[Blocki.4931]

@"Rangerdeity.5847" said:The most concerning thing about this post is how many times he says "I" as if he is the only one working on it. That was always a joke that they have exactly one dev working on it I am kinda stressed to see that might be literally what is happening.

He's just talking out of his perspective because he is the one making the post