About the new EU World Links (6/27/2019)

[enkidu.5937]

@"Mini Crinny.6190" said:Got linked with Riverside reset and all the Riverside players seemed very excited to have a link so it felt good for us that we could provide them with something they want xD, i also instead of the usual 'Thanks' i was using 'Danke' instead ahaVery nice indeed, some ppl from the one server already joined the other's squad / Discord / TS and vice versa. From time to time, ppl and Coms already tried to use both languages "Danke" ;)

Some mad ppl were battling in team chat for questionable reasons, but River's team chat is usually on the lower end of the toxicity scale, so I wouldn't expect bigger problems there in the future ;)

We also expect a siginificant increase in River's pop activity, since ppl played much less in the last 3-4 weeks as they normally use to. So, the "medium" status may not be representative for the current server pop. Pretty much excited about this link, and lots of other Riversiders too.

Let the Aurora River flow to upper tiers =)

[Egg.6198]

Piken server with no link server now and after 6 months of getting two dead servers BT and to some extent FoW rince repeat, this is the worst decision made. From someone who plays WvW as their main game mode, play nearly every night primetime and late evenings, seeing the server struggle with coverage and numbers over the past 6-7 months I have a good idea what is going on.

Also I have been transferring to each link server since December last year, since mid-end of January been transferring to stay with my guild/friends there also. Piken is never open, reads as full and now I can not even transfer despite how expensive its becoming.

Piken server is dying slowly and has been since February and yet it reads full. Your system for recording server pop is probably recording all the alt accounts, weekend warriors, daily hunters and part timers that do not make up the core group of the wvw pop. We spike a bit on reset/weekend like most servers and then back to low pop through out the week. I am sure other servers have similar problems and the old system of recording pop clearly does not work anymore and the steps towards making change anet is doing are good but make is so people can transfer if you remove a link server that the person has been relying on stay linked with a main server or just make all servers have a link server, simple.

[melandru.3876]

@aspirine.6852 said:

@Forbidden Virtue.1089 said:Fair links? Blacktide is a dead server.. Where do you guys keep getting this nonsense? #ArenanetTrollingTheWvWCommunityAGAIN

Deso is not a dead server though, it's one of the highest populated one. If you want to complain look at Aurora Glade, that is not a full server being a host and having a terrible link. And Piken/KOdash got nothing...

aurora glade has bad and kazo, 2 veru active wvw guilds

i'm pretty sure ag has enough numbers

[aspirine.6852]

@melandru.3876 said:

@aspirine.6852 said:

@Forbidden Virtue.1089 said:Fair links? Blacktide is a dead server.. Where do you guys keep getting this nonsense? #ArenanetTrollingTheWvWCommunityAGAIN

Deso is not a dead server though, it's one of the highest populated one. If you want to complain look at Aurora Glade, that is not a full server being a host and having a terrible link. And Piken/KOdash got nothing...

aurora glade has bad and kazo, 2 veru active wvw guilds

i'm pretty sure ag has enough numbers

True, I hope you are right. I do not wish anyone to have low popultion unless they choose to be on lower tier servers.

[melandru.3876]

@aspirine.6852 said:

@melandru.3876 said:

@aspirine.6852 said:

@Forbidden Virtue.1089 said:Fair links? Blacktide is a dead server.. Where do you guys keep getting this nonsense? #ArenanetTrollingTheWvWCommunityAGAIN

Deso is not a dead server though, it's one of the highest populated one. If you want to complain look at Aurora Glade, that is not a full server being a host and having a terrible link. And Piken/KOdash got nothing...

aurora glade has bad and kazo, 2 veru active wvw guilds

i'm pretty sure ag has enough numbers

True, I hope you are right. I do not wish anyone to have low popultion unless they choose to be on lower tier servers.

blacktide however really is a dead server :/ still some guys frm HI on it, but all the rest moved off months ago (monty, stikko aswell i believe)

[Burn.5021]

@"Stephane Lo Presti.7258" said:

• The difference in play hours between the largest and smallest link has decreased by 37% from last linking.
• The standard deviation on play hours between links has decreased by 39% from the last linking. This means that on average, links are much closer in play hours than before.You have actually just acknowledged that players are quitting the game. This is not very encouraging to those who still remain. Players want to see an active game or they will simply migrate to the next option.

Also, "active playhours" is a highly flawed metric to base populations on as it does not account for activity. You can easily afk for 1000 hours on 10 alt accounts using multiboxing to completely throw off your comparisons that only contributes more unbalance.

It is also common sense that relinking is meaningless when players are allowed to transfer directly after just to cause unbalance again.

[silvana.7620]

Well, was not on reset, but a few buddys where, link = Abaddon's mouth with Ruins of Surmia, they where a lot of insults and nazi jokes in teamchat.this morning was a bit better but still not great... let's see what times brings us with this link maybe just adjusting to each other maybe?

Hope this test will show things to Arena Net. hope they also gonna explain more about this soon, bcs i do not see the benefit from it yet.

[acdspydar.8920]

@Burn.5021 said:

@"Stephane Lo Presti.7258" said:

• The difference in play hours between the largest and smallest link
  has decreased by 37%
  from last linking.
• The standard deviation on play hours between links
  has decreased by 39%
  from the last linking. This means that on average, links are much closer in play hours than before.You have actually just acknowledged that players are quitting the game. This is not very encouraging to those who still remain. Players want to see an active game or they will simply migrate to the next option.

Also,

"active playhours"

is a highly flawed metric to base populations on as it does not account for activity. You can easily afk for 1000 hours on 10 alt accounts using multiboxing to completely throw off your comparisons that only contributes more unbalance.

It is also common sense that relinking is meaningless when players are allowed to transfer directly after just to cause unbalance again.

It's time to server stack with alts. All servers to become Full

[Adzekul.3104]

In regards to the Piken situation, on reset last night, for the first hour, we had only one border queued and it was circa 15 (so almost nothing). Within the second hour, there was a second queue of circa 10 on another border. I cannot fathom why Piken Square stays "locked" (note: not going to use "full" anymore because this is simply erroneous - the decision has been made behind the scenes to manually prevent people from transferring to Piken, rather than to let the population number float - prove me wrong, please.).

I gather Kodash has similar grumbles, but cannot speak directly on this. I only know we had no resistance when we flipped their EBG garri, some time around the 1 hour mark after reset last night. We attacked with a squad of 25 and another tag with circa 10. They defended with max 15. The victory felt a bit hollow, since they had no chance (15 unorganized vs 35 organized). So in the subjective, emotional sense, the "fairness" (see below) just wasn't there.

"Fairness" is fine as your core principle for balancing, but it is emotional and subjective. So asking people to (blindly) trust the system you have implemented without some increased transparency is not a particularly robust expectation/argument. You can, of course, get people to agree that you have made the right and fair decisions, if you provide the objective population data to support your position.

Or, you could unlock the "locked" servers (and leave the "full" servers "full" noting my distinction between the two terms above). If you are concerned about overall EU-WvW population: don't be. We have been needing a reduction in tiers from 5 to 4 for quite some time. NOTHING you do to the game mode will bring back the Warclaw-release-day populations. Not even Alliances. Well, maybe if you mega-buffed the rewards to be equivalent with SPvP rewards, but we know that will never happen.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

Kodash? wasn't it flooded with bandwaggoners recently?

so they moved on now? What a surprise.

[Seductive.5741]

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:Kodash? wasn't it flooded with bandwaggoners recently?

so they moved on now? What a surprise.

Recently ? You mean last year October/November LUL

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

and they stayed for a bit and then moved on. dont blame anet for the behaviour of bandwagoners. It is those who destroy a server.

[Cambeleg.7632]

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:and they stayed for a bit and then moved on. dont blame anet for the behaviour of bandwagoners. It is those who destroy a server.

Plus the Link System gave by Anet, that supports this kitten bandwagoning, you'll mean, right? 'Cos without the Link System, bandwagoning would not be so popular and cheap activity.

Let face the reality: this step is just a "flight forward". Alliances -the excuse why they are "gathering data as we prepare for World Restructuring"- won't save the game mode at all, it'll be only the same with minimal variations for bandwagoning. Smoke over smoke, 'cos we still didn't get real data about how it'll work.

And meanwhile, other games are starting to appear... and some of them could eat this cake portion.

[RetiringCommJAZZ.8026]

@"Fatherbliss.4701" said:

Really at the end of the conversation this comes back to balanced matches. At least 50% of the pairs listed above have coverage gaps. I guarantee guilds will be moving based on this post. Meaning, come reset time tonight the populations will have already swung into different directions. I counted my guild today. I've got 114 players who haven't been online in over a month. Over 60 who haven't played in six months. Many of the latter were die hard WvW players and big supporters of the game. I understand that this is very hard to balance just using raw data.

The "Full" servers listed currently in the game aren't even remotely even in terms of activity. I think looking at this from a macro level of seeing when the largest hours of play occur would be incredibly beneficial. Just some thoughts. I'm hoping we can get more people chiming in today before reset tonight.

At what point will Devs re-think the WVW Algorithm??At what point will Dev's remove Players who have NOT ventured into WVW in The last 6 month's from the equation that prompts them to say a server is Full??At what point will Dev's ASK "WVW Guild leaders" Their opinion, instead of just going of an outdated algorithm & those forum/reddit keyboard warriors??

The Piken situation last night was ridiculous, NOT 1 Single queue for the 1st 20 minutes of reset, and only 1 "Small" queue after 1 hour of game play.How can this constitute a FULL server?

Some Piken guilds (and I'm sure this is on other servers also) have now got split people once again...Only this time we cannot server hop them to a link as we have been doing since the beginning of the year. So our (and others) have players who mainly WVW that cannot play together for a minimum of 2 motnth's, which is absolutely disgraceful.

Anet has previously stated that their algorithms can pinpoint players wvw time a commanders tagged time and zones, Then surely it can Identify WVW Core Guilds, it's Leaders and Interact with those Leaders for idea's/suggestions/improvements and opinion.....

A change is Drastically Needed, Lets hope you Listen and act in the "WVW" Players best interests for a change.Thank You

[phreeak.1023]

I am satisfied with Aurora. We had some trashtalking at the beginning from some keyboard hooligans but then it was really fun. Some of us went to the Aurora discord and some of the Aurora went to our TeamSpeak and we had fun flipping red and blues fort (or whatever u call them in English :P ) with great and intense fights.

[Leaa.2943]

@"Adzekul.3104" said:In regards to the Piken situation, on reset last night, for the first hour, we had only one border queued and it was circa 15 (so almost nothing). Within the second hour, there was a second queue of circa 10 on another border. I cannot fathom why Piken Square stays "locked" (note: not going to use "full" anymore because this is simply erroneous - the decision has been made behind the scenes to manually prevent people from transferring to Piken, rather than to let the population number float - prove me wrong, please.).

I gather Kodash has similar grumbles, but cannot speak directly on this. I only know we had no resistance when we flipped their EBG garri, some time around the 1 hour mark after reset last night. We attacked with a squad of 25 and another tag with circa 10. They defended with max 15. The victory felt a bit hollow, since they had no chance (15 unorganized vs 35 organized). So in the subjective, emotional sense, the "fairness" (see below) just wasn't there.

"Fairness" is fine as your core principle for balancing, but it is emotional and subjective. So asking people to (blindly) trust the system you have implemented without some increased transparency is not a particularly robust expectation/argument. You can, of course, get people to agree that you have made the right and fair decisions, if you provide the objective population data to support your position.

Or, you could unlock the "locked" servers (and leave the "full" servers "full" noting my distinction between the two terms above). If you are concerned about overall EU-WvW population: don't be. We have been needing a reduction in tiers from 5 to 4 for quite some time. NOTHING you do to the game mode will bring back the Warclaw-release-day populations. Not even Alliances. Well, maybe if you mega-buffed the rewards to be equivalent with SPvP rewards, but we know that will never happen.

Been the same with Gandara for i don't know how long. There are people who want to play with their guild but could not transfer there and been paying transfer fee to links for the last half a year or more. Good money for Arena Net i am sure, but not very fun for those stuck in the hamster wheel of paying transfers each time re-link happens and Arena Net keeping hosts closed. At this point it feels like A-Net is manipulating WvW by treating it as they do. It feels like transfer fees are their priority rather then making sure all servers can stay healthy.

It is obvious they can not do anything about stacking servers anyway since they keep links open for transfers and WvW players waiting until after re-link before moving. And then we are stuck with overstacked servers anyway. A-Net manipulate, players try to reverse it and in the end Arena Net get a lot of transfer fees and closed hosts are the loosers regardless.

[Burn.5021]

@"Leaa.2943" said:Been the same with Gandara for i don't know how long. There are people who want to play with their guild but could not transfer there and been paying transfer fee to links for the last half a year or more. Good money for Arena Net i am sure, but not very fun for those stuck in the hamster wheel of paying transfers each time re-link happens and Arena Net keeping hosts closed. At this point it feels like A-Net is manipulating WvW by treating it as they do. It feels like transfer fees are their priority rather then making sure all servers can stay healthy.

It is obvious they can not do anything about stacking servers anyway since they keep links open for transfers and WvW players waiting until after re-link before moving. And then we are stuck with overstacked servers anyway. A-Net manipulate, players try to reverse it and in the end Arena Net get a lot of transfer fees and closed hosts are the loosers regardless.Remember that transfers mean gem sales. Gem sales mean revenue. Revenue is the be all and end all. Player satisfaction has never mattered more than revenue. The irony here is though, when players are happy, the revenue flows in. It must be a very complicated concept to comprehend.

Re-links have actually very little to do with world balance. The algorithm used is beyond flawed and allowing transfers directly after re-links make them entirely redundant as it just cause unbalance again.

How is it possible for Blacktide to be a "Medium" population server when it is clearly dead? How on earth can "Full" servers be linked when they are already suppose to be full? Are we being lied to about server populations?

It won't surprise me if re-links are changed to a monthly schedule - more transfers, more revenue - WHOOHOOOO $$$$$! But where is the next expansion? It has been more than a year and a half already.

It is time for the community to smell the tasty coffee!

[Duca di Ebonhawke.1045]

@Leaa.2943 said:Can we open up the kitten servers that been closed for ever some even not being full. I mean people want to move to their friends and guilds and have to pay for moving to the link they were on to stay with their people for several link periods now. You could start to wonder if this is made so that you get more money through the jumping of links. No server should be closed for so long as they have now.

This is a serious issue and ANET , should help to fix it. There are server like Piken Square where guild people has for months paid gems for being together with their friends and guildies. We as Piken also sign a petition asking for open because of continuous gems spending. Now , we are as result alone do not get any support and with guilds split and community partially broken. I cannot believe that this is what ANET wants to disappoint players loyal for years. Please open at least for few days so that we can transfer who was on linked and cannot join our community .

[Vlad Morbius.1759]

I'd love to know the logic behind TC being paired with IoJ not taking anything away from them but we sit in 10th they are 24th and you put us up against FG who sits 5th paired with JQ at 15th? Personally it seems more like someones just tossing darts at a board, it's completely absurd and there is no bloody logic in how you're doing this and if it's some formula you've devised it's clearly broken! Please get this fixed before we lose everybody on Tarnished Coast!

[Astralporing.1957]

@Seductive.5741 said:Desolation , Gandara, Seafarer's Rest are all Full / T1 and still got a link , yet Kodash stuck in T5 and full doesnt get a link , while the other full german server who was stuck in T5 gets a link . Where is the logic in that ?T1 servers are not so close to each other in population that they could be balanced against each other without any linkings. On the other hand, they are also not so far away that they could be balananced when one of them gets a link (any link, even the smallest one), but another doesn't.

The thinking probably works the same for any other tier, down to theT5, that unfortunately has to do with what's left, since it's probably the lowest priority. Possibly Anet might consider condensing EU to 4 tiers (without beefing up T1, that is)

Also, while population can impact server ranking and overall strength, it's not a direct link. A more casual server with theoretically bigger population can be getting rolled over by a smaller but more organized one. Or sometimes one or two key guilds from a server will take a break, and what is left is zergs of random players that aren't on voice comm. And things like that aren't easy to balance (and likely aren't even being taken into consideration, alongside other things that should be important but are ignored, like coverage).

[RisingDaewn.8703]

Obviously, they need to reduce the Tiers and servers, otherwise some servers will be unlinked, so it wouldn't be 'fair'.Besides, the linking system is pretty much creating imbalance, especially with Server populations being off the mark in some cases.I wonder where players will bandwagon next, even if Blacktide is 'dead', certain link Servers becomes viable again.

[acdspydar.8920]

@CrimsonNeonite.1048 said:Obviously, they need to reduce the Tiers and servers, otherwise some servers will be unlinked, so it wouldn't be 'fair'.Besides, the linking system is pretty much creating imbalance, especially with Server populations being off the mark in some cases.I wonder where players will bandwagon next, even if Blacktide is 'dead' and certain link Servers becomes viable again.

This proposes a dreadfully wonderful idea... What would happen if say 500 players, just to forsake the system, transferred to a dead lowtier server and for 2 months just obliterated everyone

[RisingDaewn.8703]

You do know that already happens, when Populated links become host servers, as many hosts lose population, right?

[acdspydar.8920]

But of course, just keep doing it until all servers become locked lol

[Roxory.9854]

That was the most boring reset we have had in years, very sad, looked like a dying game last night in the borderlands. I wish they would focus more on fixing the problems they have instead of putting time into gimmick core swap events. Sure the events are fun but without a balanced wvw core the match's and fighting are not fun, what's the point then? We ran around all night and there was nothing to fight but npcs and unorganized pugs. Alliances, you get saying that word, I don't think it means what you think it means. ;)