World Restructuring Beta Update

[azizul.8469]

i don't understand the madness. it is called beta for a reason. chill....

[Xenesis.6389]

Wonder why they didn't do the relinks last week to get it out of the way, instead of now dragging it through beta periods lol.

[Chichimec.9364]

15 minutes ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Thank you for your patience today, everyone. Obviously things didn't go the way we had intended, but it was still an incredibly valuable exercise for the team. We learned a lot, to say the least. We aspire to have our testing environments mirror the Live servers as much as possible, but there's nothing like having thousands of real players crash into a system all at once to expose issues!

 

To address some baseless FUD I've been seeing in some community corners, our long-term plans for World Restructuring remain unchanged. We still intend to approach feature development iteratively and keep you informed of progress every step of the way, including the successes and failures. Like the opening post mentioned, we will pull together a post-mortem analysis of the issues that impacted today's beta and share it openly with the community. Closely examining what went wrong - and remembering to celebrate what went right - is incredibly important in software/game development. If you want a refresher on our philosophical approach to World Restructuring, check out this blog post.

 

I did want to extend both a heartfelt thank you to all of the server leaders, guild leaders, and commanders that rallied their communities for this first beta test. We've been keeping a close eye on server communities the past few weeks to better understand the social dynamics involved with the shift to World Restructuring. I know it must be frustrating to see your organization efforts not pay off today, but we'll be back as soon as we can to give it another shot.

 

In case this post gets some traction, I did want to reconfirm that the WvW Bonus XP Event will remain active as planned. World relinks will come with next week's reset.

 

Have a great weekend and see you next week,

 

-j

 

Uhm, Mr. Grouch, while I very much appreciate your update here, all the work you and the other developers have been doing on the WvW restructuring, and even your mention of FUD, a very useful word that I hadn't known before, I do believe you and I still have unfinished business. As the incident referred to in my signature occurred while my server was fighting for its life against Maguuma, at a time when you were active on the Maguuma server, there is a very good chance you are the one involved in that particular murderous incident. Methinks a title like "I Killed The Grouch!" or even just "Creator Slayer" would be most appropriate. Please let me know when I can pick up my new title.  🤪

[Amarok.2147]

2 hours ago, Yolaus Kriff.3465 said:

I'm not as optimistic anymore. This feels more like they screwed up really bad and gave up. We'll see if they bring another beta soon or if it's another 4 years

I can tell you confidently that they haven't given up on it. They want to make this a reality as much as we want to play it. Like someone mentioned, they probably also felt excited to release by today and the bug wasn't caught. Hang in there 🥰 we'll get alliances soon!

[Amarok.2147]

2 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

That is a bug that has existed for as long as WvW has existed, lol. I am certain it had nothing to do with them reverting - it's not even a blip on the radar. 

The catastrophic failure of of the matchmaker to recognize WvW guild selection and dump people on wrong teams despite saying they where on the right team was probably so widespread it wasnt possible to deal with it in any limited fashion, that's the big bug. It wouldnt surprise me if some teams where massivly larger than they where supposed to be. The instancing issue is didnt help either (probably related to the failure to recognize which actual team the player is on).

I understand what you're saying, keep in mind it's still a beta. The official attempt for a proper launch would come along with EoD. Anything before then would be a huge plus 😄 gotta stay positive, I'm sure they already felt the pressure before today and now it has to be even stronger. Keep supporting the devs, it'll be here before you know it!

[Custodio.6134]

Well, I gotta agree that this was a beta test under realistic conditions, where unexpected things might happen. 

 

But there are decisions that were made, which some may call "questionable" at best. 

 

1. It is never a good idea to implement multiple features at once, which could be considered "experimental" (DX11 Beta, classes beta and alliance beta). Even though these features rest in different elements of the game, the past shows that sometimes 2 seemingly unrelated parts interfere with each other. 

2. Why combine a public test with the bonus week? Tbf, at least we got the revert to the old system after 2 hours, but maybe consider not running a bonus week in a potentially unstable state of the game? 

3. I'm aware, that the first test under realistic conditions usually provides unexpected results, but geez... The 2 hours we had showed us, that the system is fundamentally unable to run. And remember, this is just the basic system, the core, NOT even close to the final "product". In this short time span ArenaNet showed us, that alliances NEVER had any priority in development (at least, subjective from a players perspective). It feels like they just programmed it "last minute", but horribly failed. 

 

I really hope ANet and the devs finally learn from their mistakes, so that they won't happen again (or at least, not in this dimension). Oh boy, there were many mistakes made in the past, but this one actually backfired right in the face. 

Don't get me wrong, mistakes are natural and the human factor here, but it is the dev's job to NOT REPEAT these mistakes, but rather learn from them to avoid the next time. 

 

[AikijinX.6258]

I mean. Did no one see this coming lol?

[TheQuickFox.3826]

It's a pity that it lasted so shortly, because I'm getting killed by guildies again.

[Brimstar.9036]

The transparency like this hits differently Grouch. Keep up the good work, to you and the team. 

[Kite.5327]

7 hours ago, Redseven.3985 said:

I transferred regions (EU -> NA) for this beta, and I am now locked due to the only every 7 days limit. I would like to be able to transfer again immediately please. It is not fair that I am stuck now because you have reverted alliances. 

Here is Anet's reply: Hello,

Thank you for contacting Guild Wars 2 Support.

Once a Server Transfer has been completed, the action is permanent. In this case, we are not able to refund the transfer due to the server you transferred from being full.

----

What a complete sham. 500 gems and 7 days on some low pop server now - the absolute last thing I was going for when I server transferred! I was planning to play with my alliance. Now I suffer for a week for nothing, because of Anet's mistake. 

[WinterSolstice.7829]

People not knowing what an Open Beta is. Any use of the word Beta in games means nothing is remotely close to being final and is in fact being tested. Anet's LAN party isn't going to be sufficient enough to compare different make computers of different networking setups for something like this, so they needed testers and made it "Open Beta" available to participle, bringing us all one step closer to goals, fixes, understandings, and for the options to consider and try. I imagine the full on process to sort out and rig up would be janky and time consuming due to the nature of what is being aimed for with a number of trials to compare and contrast. What this proves is there is something more than players just always assuming there's nothing. I'm hoping I'll be in time for the next one, considering I was working during this one.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

This is literally the reason for test servers though.  I've played the game since beta and being in development myself, I've never understood the 'test on live' theory that goes on in GW2.  

 

Being a 'beta' is one thing, like with the e-specs.  If they aren't tuned right or if some skill facts or animations are wrong, that's covered under 'beta'.  But the analogue here would be playing a spec crashing the server or an entire spec just going missing.  That's way above and beyond beta into 'untested' territory.  

 

Not testing is typically frowned upon from dev to an actual test environment, let alone from dev to production environment.  I get the systems at play here are vastly complex, but fail to see how to iron anything out without weekly 'crash and burns' in production until it works.  Waiting multiple weeks between these exercises seems like we may be looking at Q2-Q3 of 2022 before it's stable.

 

Buckle up I guess? 😃

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

This is literally the reason for test servers though.  I've played the game since beta and being in development myself, I've never understood the 'test on live' theory that goes on in GW2.  

The problem here is that a beta for WvW - the matchmaker no less - would be pointless if practicly no one is in it. You need players for this. Lots of players. Remember DBL? Yeah... Well recieved and beta tested to perfection based on realistic WvW gameplay... And thats simple in comparison to the whole god kitten matchmaker.

Just people not wanting to miss precious pips remove 99.9% of the WvW playerbase willing to participate in a PTS beta.

As long as Anet does it within timeframes (like a week and reverting) or is able to react very fast (like this) I am perfectly fine with it.

Its not like I expected this week to contain anything else new and exciting that I'd miss compared to the last 100 weeks, had it not been a beta.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

36 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

The problem here is that a beta for WvW - the matchmaker no less - would be pointless if practicly no one is in it. You need players for this. Lots of players. Remember DBL? Yeah... Well recieved and beta tested to perfection based on realistic WvW gameplay... And thats simple in comparison to the whole god kitten matchmaker.

Just people not wanting to miss precious pips remove 99.9% of the WvW playerbase willing to participate in a PTS beta.

As long as Anet does it within timeframes (like a week and reverting) or is able to react very fast (like this) I am perfectly fine with it.

Its not like I expected this week to contain anything else new and exciting that I'd miss compared to the last 100 weeks, had it not been a beta.

 

Stress test is one thing sure, but you can test elements without needing a ton of players.  If you want players in a test server, just give them some form of compensation for missed WvW time...for a lot of them a title or other visual usually does the trick.  

 

The issues seem more fundamentally broken though if the timeframe is a 'few weeks'; so I still think this is going to be a long haul effort.  

[Promisses.8079]

work hard pls. we need different things at wvw. 😄 

[Xenesis.6389]

2 hours ago, Redseven.3985 said:

Here is Anet's reply: Hello,

Thank you for contacting Guild Wars 2 Support.

Once a Server Transfer has been completed, the action is permanent. In this case, we are not able to refund the transfer due to the server you transferred from being full.

----

What a complete sham. 500 gems and 7 days on some low pop server now - the absolute last thing I was going for when I server transferred! I was planning to play with my alliance. Now I suffer for a week for nothing, because of Anet's mistake. 

 

Why would you transfer for something that was the first beta test and both regions were going to be the test bed?

-----

I don't get why is everyone going extreme in planning, and going out of their minds over the problems for the first early test. Like seriously, relax, this was going to be a multi phase process to the final release.

Edited September 25, 2021 by Xenesis.6389

[Charybdis.9042]

10 hours ago, Arky.3072 said:

Thank you for identifying the problems as fast as you guys did.
Some of us are aware what a beta is, which means things will probably break and by participating in said beta we're agreeing to post feedback, so things can be fixed before full release.

Some constructive feedback: I think the lack of UI updates confused many. I understand if this wasn't part of today's test and that we were just testing the "select primary WvW guild" and algorithm of matchups part. But many where generally confused when they were matched up - according to the UI in the WvW panel at least - with old servernames and/or servers they didn't belong to.

Personal example: I stayed in Armistice Bastion to monitor team chat. After the beta was initiated, I was still seeing the old servers and participated in the old team chat. When I re-logged, I was part of the new chat and new servers appeared in the UI - none of which is my home world. Finding the team name in the beta panel helped a bit, but that could have been more clear, and maybe forcing players out of WvW (Armistice Bastion included) would have cleared some of the confusion.

Personally I still have complete faith in you guys fixing these issues, and I hope you gained valuable data from this.

See you in a couple of weeks for the next beta test!

This.

There is a good practice in software development to try and change the smallest nunber of things at once, in order to manage the risk of introducing issues. Trying to update the WvW dialog box in entirety to participate in the beta would risk it breaking for the normal non-beta scenarios, which is not a good place to be. So I can see that this was very carefully scoped to minimize impact on WvW.

That might sound like a funny thing to say with 3 betas going on at the same time, but the application architecture supports a very clean separation of the concerns (new classes and UI promoted from EoD, client graphical rendering, WvW team restructuring).

As a suggestion for improvement in the comms: if it was known in advance that the world names would not pull through correctly then some advanced notice to the players would have helped (this is the beta UX you're getting). Those of us that got into maps ended up focusing on red/green/blue as being most stable and useable for getting going on reset.

Somewhat ironically I was kicked out after about 20 minutes with a DX11 crash, but am looking forward to the next beta.

[panthera onca.4251]

12 hours ago, Fire Attunement.9835 said:

Hi all,

We've encountered a number of issues with the initial beta of World Restructuring and we've decided that our best course of action is to revert back to the World Linking system while we address those problems. We're going to cycle the WvW maps (forcing players out), send players back to their original worlds, and then bring WvW back up. Map state (score, objective ownership) will remain the same.

Thank you for your patience and participation. We've learned a lot and will be looking to run another attempt in a few weeks. We'll also follow up with an assessment of the issues we encountered today.

 

For next beta it would be nice if guilds could choose a language they wanna play for too... not all ppls are able to communicate in french or spanish and sorry not all guilds with most german players want to be linked with [de] 🙂 

[ingrimm.8014]

To everyone who is complaining: try making a game first, or at least try to understand what it takes to make a game. Trust me, you will never get angry about bugs again.

[Ben K.6238]

1 hour ago, ingrimm.8014 said:

To everyone who is complaining: try making a game first, or at least try to understand what it takes to make a game. Trust me, you will never get angry about bugs again.

It still happens; the anger just doesn't (usually) become public.

[Jokuc.3478]

Taking it down is of course the right move but you've had years to work on this and you can't even get the main systems right? Come on ANet, step it up.

[Custodio.6134]

35 minutes ago, Ben K.6238 said:

It still happens; the anger just doesn't (usually) become public.

additionally you must not forget: 
Alliances is a feature, that has been not only a whish from the WvW-Community for a very very long time (well, maybe not alliances directly, but at least a proper system that ensures population balance and prevents bandwagoning/overstacking, resulting in fair matchups). And World restructuring has initially been announced way back in 2018 (at least, if not earlier, but the oldest official updates about alliances i found were from February 2018, found here: 

however, this is an Update-message, so the initial announcement was way before that. I guess it got lost in the old forums though...

The WvW-Community has been asking for proper population-balance even longer, and after that initial announcement, ArenaNet has become silent for years again. The players were (and probably are still, if not more after this failed beta) already in a state, where they felt ignored, frustrated by the current system and distrust in the devs. Then the first positive message that they get finally noticed and heard dropped, which gave them hope, just to see that it took more than 3 years to create a system, that in the end turned out to be completely unfunctional on a fundamental basis. 
so in the end, what you can witness in the forums right now (the huge backlash on the beta) is the result of years of ignorance, missing communication, decisions made by the devs which were often not comprehensible for the players due to lack of information, that built up in the WvW-community. The Beta has just been the last bit, that gave the last spark needed to ignite the wildfire that was prepared (i hope) unintentionally over the last few years. 

Edited September 25, 2021 by Custodio.6134

[cesmode.4257]

I simply don't think this change is a good one.  Its too complicated and can create too many problems.  I say scrap it and come up with something else 😞 

 

The server cluster idea, I think, is OK.  Create alliances within that across servers within your server cluster.  Whats wrong with this?

 

[AikijinX.6258]

6 hours ago, ingrimm.8014 said:

To everyone who is complaining: try making a game first, or at least try to understand what it takes to make a game. Trust me, you will never get angry about bugs again.

They’ve had years. This has been years in the making. 
 

Anet are the lucky ones. They have such a devote and patient community of players. Need I say, again, waiting for years since the initial announcement. We’ve been more than patient with them. It’s not about “trying to understand” at this point. They’ve had years. This Just doubles down on the point and confirms the rhetoric where people keep saying Anet doesn’t care about WvW, and the priority list alliances were on is a bi-product of just that. 
 

imo we deserve some type of compensation. But we all know that won’t happen either.

Edited September 25, 2021 by AikijinX.6258

[Meridian.9103]

4 minutes ago, AikijinX.6258 said:

They’ve had years. This has been years in the making. 

No I don't think so. It's very obvious to me that World Restructering hasn't been actively worked on (or only in very small capacity) for a long time between 2021 and when it was first announced. These were dark times for gw2 where everything besides LW was simply "not a priority". What we've got to see yesterday was not the result of years of work with thousands of man-hours spend.