Did you enjoy the beta alliance system and would you like to see more of it?

[Counterakt.9106]

9 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

How is this any different from what we had before?

Because it was super expensive to stack servers. They stacked CD  at some point, BP at some point eventually those servers died down because guilds/alliances eventually disintegrate. Now alliances make it FREE to stack match ups. If an alliance crumbles the same set of people immediately can stack the next alliance matchup. Every time a guild/alliance disbands, without the server safety net to catch the fallout and rebuild, WvW loses players. How can this be healthy for the game?

Edited December 8, 2021 by Counterakt.9106

[hunkamania.7561]

I think it's good but 500 people in a alliance is way too much and we've been saying that for awhile.  prob should just be a guild 80-100 tops

[Counterakt.9106]

4 minutes ago, hunkamania.7561 said:

I think it's good but 500 people in a alliance is way too much and we've been saying that for awhile.  prob should just be a guild 80-100 tops

No it isn't. with 80 people alliance, we hinder community building even more. Suppose the commander stops playing after a while, what happens then. With servers I can stop playing for a year and come back, I still have a home and a community to build back from.  With alliances, I will be among strangers and have all my friends split into different alliances.

[Dawdler.8521]

56 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

How is this any different from what we had before?

That is a loopsided tick, true. But then again all 3 sides are actually close in overall score and without doing the exact math of it, any of them look theoretically capable of winning the matchup with the time left (maybe unlikely, but still) while 2nd/3rd place can easily overtake each other. That even matchups come wednesday arent that common, although they do happen.

Going by the skirmish score, that kind of loopsidedness also occured waaaaaay into the skirmish, probably the last 30m or something.

Edited December 8, 2021 by Dawdler.8521

[Ella.1254]

I don't get all these people who claim to be serious WvW players yet weren't paying attention to this. I've known for months that Beta testing was coming, and a couple of weeks about this one. I wanted to play with friends too. So what did we do? Well we made a new guild for it, we all joined that and ticked the box to make it our Beta alliance guild. Easy peasy poof, we were all together.
I mean how hard is it???
Beta is just that, Beta. It's a test, It's a way to find bugs, a way to figure what needs to be fixed and fix it. If you don't like bugs, don't play Beta. But saying you're going to uninstall the game because 1) you weren't paying attention or 2) something that was a Beta wasn't perfect is childish.
To Anet: I am glad you guys are finally paying attention to WvW; we've felt ignored for a long time. Most of us know this will be a process and are willing to wait and see how it progresses. I hope you continue with your tests. We need new life in WvW.

[Ella.1254]

12 minutes ago, Counterakt.9106 said:

No it isn't. with 80 people alliance, we hinder community building even more. Suppose the commander stops playing after a while, what happens then. With servers I can stop playing for a year and come back, I still have a home and a community to build back from.  With alliances, I will be among strangers and have all my friends split into different alliances.

With how often people pay to switch servers I don't see how that's true, especially since a lot of worlds become closed. With alliance you'll just have to wait until the next matchup to join your friends.. Also as long as you've added people to your friend list or stuck with them in discord you should be able to find familiar faces. Only thing that would prevent joining *some* of them (because I can guarantee not everyone will be in the same alliance)  is when an alliance has maxed out.

Also I agree, an 80 person alliance won't work. Guilds hold more players than that; how can you have a working alliance system that holds less than a guild?
Personally I think 500 is just right.

[Counterakt.9106]

17 minutes ago, Ella.1254 said:

With how often people pay to switch servers I don't see how that's true, especially since a lot of worlds become closed. With alliance you'll just have to wait until the next matchup to join your friends.. Also as long as you've added people to your friend list or stuck with them in discord you should be able to find familiar faces. Only thing that would prevent joining *some* of them (because I can guarantee not everyone will be in the same alliance)  is when an alliance has maxed out.

Also I agree, an 80 person alliance won't work. Guilds hold more players than that; how can you have a working alliance system that holds less than a guild?
Personally I think 500 is just right.

You would be surprised by the number of people who have stayed in the same server for years. 

Alliances seem to be a big middle finger to people who love their server identity, while incentivizing people who keep jumping servers and are more loyal to their guild. 

 

Anet, if you are reading this, do you really want to alienate a big chunk of your playerbase who called a server their home for years? 

What for? To make it FREE for people who kept jumping server and probably games to keep doing it? It doesn't make any sense strategically or financially. Do you really want to leave community building at the mercy of a few (potentially narcissistic) people instead of the current organic way? 

 

Just improve rewards and people will play more. Make emblems of avenger useful to build leggy weapon or something. Those who ppt will start fighting. Give some WvW commendations like reward for coming in first in match up. So people who only care about fighting will start ppting. Make it possible to use emblems of avengers + wvw commendations to craft leggy weapons/fancy skins. Time gate it with skirmish tickets. PvErs now want to play wvw.   WvWers don't feel like endlessly running on a hamster wheel. Boom everyone is happy!

 

 

[Custodio.6134]

34 minutes ago, Counterakt.9106 said:

Just improve rewards and people will play more. Make emblems of avenger useful to build leggy weapon or something. Those who ppt will start fighting. Give some WvW commendations like reward for coming in first in match up. So people who only care about fighting will start ppting. Make it possible to use emblems of avengers + wvw commendations to craft leggy weapons/fancy skins. Time gate it with skirmish tickets. PvErs now want to play wvw.   WvWers don't feel like endlessly running on a hamster wheel. Boom everyone is happy!

 

 

While that statement is completely true, this is not the correct place, since we are in the topic of world restructuring. 
Rewards and incentives for winning a matchup and rewarding a mixture of PPK and  PPT, rather than just one of them being the main deciding factor is of course an issue. i totally aggree with that. But this is neither what we are discussing here, nor is it the right place for that topic

[Xenesis.6389]

2 hours ago, Counterakt.9106 said:

Because it was super expensive to stack servers. They stacked CD  at some point, BP at some point eventually those servers died down because guilds/alliances eventually disintegrate. Now alliances make it FREE to stack match ups. If an alliance crumbles the same set of people immediately can stack the next alliance matchup. Every time a guild/alliance disbands, without the server safety net to catch the fallout and rebuild, WvW loses players. How can this be healthy for the game?

As opposed to an alliance leaving current servers in a massive black hole of population and that server getting dunked into the bottom for months? At least with the alliance system worlds will be recreated every two months to keep the population healthy, and less possibility of a relink happening with an already poorly populated link and a host that just lost a ton of guilds on the day of relink cause "people bored" of the server. I'll take alliance worlds over not playing for two months waiting on the next relink.

 

Yes alliance is free transfers, but it's not stacking if they're also building populations across the board around those stacking bandwagons, as opposed to players super stacking one server while leave one or more servers in the gutter waiting for a rebuild when the next bandwagon chooses them.

 

And to the people that keep suggesting to leave it to the players, obviously haven't played nine years or have been sitting in a one server bubble to see how terribad players have messed up this system far more than anet has. Just seeing a server go from link to host to link in a matter of six months should tell you how bad the population fluctuations can get, and obviously needs a system to slap them and tell them to stay there and stop screwing up populations.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Misnomer...this isn't remotely near what alliances will look like.  This beta is for bugfixes only, so no idea why any serious discussion outside of that is occurring.

 

I mean at this point we're at 'well it doesn't crash but nothing else really works quite right' stage.  That's super early and super annoying they took a week on it, because some of us are stuck in outnumbered hell still, and now with no reward for that.  

[Counterakt.9106]

 

 

51 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

As opposed to an alliance leaving current servers in a massive black hole of population and that server getting dunked into the bottom for months? At least with the alliance system worlds will be recreated every two months to keep the population healthy, and less possibility of a relink happening with an already poorly populated link and a host that just lost a ton of guilds on the day of relink cause "people bored" of the server. I'll take alliance worlds over not playing for two months waiting on the next relink.

 

Yes alliance is free transfers, but it's not stacking if they're also building populations across the board around those stacking bandwagons, as opposed to players super stacking one server while leave one or more servers in the gutter waiting for a rebuild when the next bandwagon chooses them.

 

And to the people that keep suggesting to leave it to the players, obviously haven't played nine years or have been sitting in a one server bubble to see how terribad players have messed up this system far more than anet has. Just seeing a server go from link to host to link in a matter of six months should tell you how bad the population fluctuations can get, and obviously needs a system to slap them and tell them to stay there and stop screwing up populations.

You already seem to be aware of the issue with one guild/alliance leader screwing up the entire server. Now you give more power to few people. 500 people in the server getting controlled by the whims and fancies of 1 or two people. If two leaders in an alliance had differences of opinion everyone gets stuck in between them for 2 months.

Someone suggested, reducing the alliance size to 80. I say reduce it to 50 and randomly place them based on timezones etc. Now we are talking. They wont have a big influence on everyone else.

But the flip side is you have a very splintered community. So I don't like that option either. 

IMO, alliances won't solve anything and introduce more problems down the line. 

 

 

38 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Misnomer...this isn't remotely near what alliances will look like.  This beta is for bugfixes only, so no idea why any serious discussion outside of that is occurring.

 

I mean at this point we're at 'well it doesn't crash but nothing else really works quite right' stage.  That's super early and super annoying they took a week on it, because some of us are stuck in outnumbered hell still, and now with no reward for that.  

If you don't give your opinion right now, it will be too late to give feedback once they go far down the rabbit hole. Better to jump the gun in this scenario before the gears start rolling.

[localghost.9145]

All you meet are handholding guild groups or map blobs. There is no place for guild that run 10-15 and prefer to fight other groups of the same size. Every single guild you meet are handholding with other guilds. Horrible.

[Xenesis.6389]

2 hours ago, Counterakt.9106 said:

You already seem to be aware of the issue with one guild/alliance leader screwing up the entire server. Now you give more power to few people. 500 people in the server getting controlled by the whims and fancies of 1 or two people. If two leaders in an alliance had differences of opinion everyone gets stuck in between them for 2 months.

What the hell do you mean? You get in the worlds with them, you don't need to follow them like you do now. I don't know why people think this is handing the entire server over to one person. They have no power of when or where you play. Do you guys even know that's theres been alliance of guilds already running in wvw for years now?

 

Quote

 

Someone suggested, reducing the alliance size to 80. I say reduce it to 50 and randomly place them based on timezones etc. Now we are talking. They wont have a big influence on everyone else.

But the flip side is you have a very splintered community. So I don't like that option either. 

IMO, alliances won't solve anything and introduce more problems down the line. 

 

If you don't give your opinion right now, it will be too late to give feedback once they go far down the rabbit hole. Better to jump the gun in this scenario before the gears start rolling.

 

Limit to 80? brilliant! soooo what do you do about people joining one guild of 500 to get around this barrier? do you guys bother to take one moment before making suggestions like these? It's like the guilds live rent free in some of your heads with the amount of power you think they have your play time and space.

 

But yeah sure give your feedback on a system that's been talked about since 2016, took a 4 year delay since the announcement, and finally in the works now, sure, every joe shmoo now wants to give their 2 sentence idea on what the system should be now. Go right ahead, highly doubt it's changing now.

Edited December 8, 2021 by Xenesis.6389

[Mazdan.2071]

>>>>>>>I don't get all these people who claim to be serious WvW players yet weren't paying attention to this.

 

Many are casual or semi casual which is, and has been the selling point of this game since day one--casual friendly. I play WvW almost every night; that week I was putting in longer hours at this place we call "work". So I could not play the two nights leading up the reset. Working is something a few of us have to do in order to pay for all the lazy freeloaders who play video games all day, kitten on Facebook, and troll others on Twitter. I know, many of you might not know we exist, like gnomes, or gravity, but we do.

 

Also while I do this thing called "work", I do not have the luxury of monitoring the forums for news and such because I don't get paid to so that sort of thing. These are called "rules" and they go hand in hand with "work". So I never "got the memo", and now I can't play with my friends--which is kind of the whole point of MMO's, but I know, the problem lies with me and my "work". Silly Billy expecting to be able to play an MMO with friends whenever I want. Stupid me. I mean this is the norm with all MMO's.......err....amirite?

 

I have tried to run WvW during this chaos, and found either folks who don't respond to callouts, or complete tryhards constantly asking " Wut build u runnin?" (from some bronze or silver tryhard in a "big man" guild) in order to verify if I am "worthy" to even play WvW on "their turf". As a Platinum General, I don't have to verify anything to anyone. I got PvP stats as well to back that up. I know the game and my build(s) well and do just fine. I just may be high when playing it so I don't always "run straight" but I'll get there. ; )

 

P.S. Everytime Gw2 tries to go "hardcore" and cater to "that" crowd, it doesn't go well. PVP tried to become Esports and now it's basically an unfixable bot hackfest. In PVE they added Raids which are a flop. They scaled them down to strike missions and Dragon-whatever they are called and those are also a flop. ::shrug:: Fractals are still going strong though.

 

BTW, what does Alliances actually "fix"? Blobbing? Not seeing it. Better group play? Not seeing it. Better matchups? I'm on Titan's Staircase (stupid name, sounds like a crap death metal band from the 90's), and they are kicking the complete crap out of the opponents. I don't see any positives, only negatives that are more than simple "bugs". Again, can't play with friends is a big deal. Big man guilds trying to dominate the space is also off-putting as well. Bad matchup as well with people I've come across who are complete jackasses.

 

ESO is looking better and better which is sad in and of itself, but have fun and enjoy the eventual fall. I'll say it now:  I told you so.

 

[Nidome.1365]

23 hours ago, saerni.2584 said:

I actually have one of those 100g Commander tags...And I have never changed servers either. So I've been outnumbered to the point of absurdity and (after relinks) been on teams that had players everywhere and outnumbered the enemy 100% of the time. I get it. But I don't think Alliances rewards the server hoppers (if anything it finally puts server hopping to rest). Alliances is a more healthy way to let friends play together without the server hopping and the bandwagoning that came with it.
 

Alliances rewards the server hoppers because they will end up in charge of the mega guilds (it's already happening) that will control which smaller guilds get to be in their alliance requiring smaller guilds that want to work together to kowtow to them in order to achieve that. You will end up with a situation where the leaders of the mega guilds get to manipulate everything. Making the small guilds, medium guilds and roamers who currently play together on servers jump through hoops to maintain that ability should not be a requirement of any change but it seems this could well be a requirement of the Alliance system. This could create a very toxic environment which would cause considerable harm to WvW.

My biggest concern is that appeasing the people who currently manipulate the server imbalances will be at the expense of those that never.

Unfortunately we cannot wind the clocks back and undo the unintended consequences of those past free transfers, but we should learn from that and make sure that we identify all possible unintended consequences of alliances and put something in place to mitigate any harm they could cause.

 

[Counterakt.9106]

3 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

 

 

But yeah sure give your feedback on a system that's been talked about since 2016, took a 4 year delay since the announcement, and finally in the works now, sure, every joe shmoo now wants to give their 2 sentence idea on what the system should be now. Go right ahead, highly doubt it's changing now.

In that 4 year delay the player demographic has changed drastically from hardcore to casual. Existing system works fine for casuals. You are the one who is in the minority.  Doing this change this late in the game lifecycle will just work to alienate the remaining players.

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

11 hours ago, Ella.1254 said:

I don't get all these people who claim to be serious WvW players yet weren't paying attention to this. I've known for months that Beta testing was coming, and a couple of weeks about this one. I wanted to play with friends too. So what did we do? Well we made a new guild for it, we all joined that and ticked the box to make it our Beta alliance guild. Easy peasy poof, we were all together.
I mean how hard is it???
Beta is just that, Beta. It's a test, It's a way to find bugs, a way to figure what needs to be fixed and fix it. If you don't like bugs, don't play Beta. But saying you're going to uninstall the game because 1) you weren't paying attention or 2) something that was a Beta wasn't perfect is childish.
To Anet: I am glad you guys are finally paying attention to WvW; we've felt ignored for a long time. Most of us know this will be a process and are willing to wait and see how it progresses. I hope you continue with your tests. We need new life in WvW.

I 100% agree with this

[SweetPotato.7456]

On 12/8/2021 at 7:24 AM, Danikat.8537 said:

@Shroud.2307 - what if instead of choosing a guild to join or being placed into a random team you could choose a team to stick with?

For example my team for this beta is Griffonfall. If in future I had the option of saying I want to be an individual player not tied to a guild or alliance and I always want to be sorted into Griffonfall, no matter where everyone else goes, would that solve the problem?

I think if only individual players who don't want to be part of any bigger group except their team (basically their server) did this it wouldn't have a big impact on population balance, because I doubt there would be large numbers (compared to the number of players in guilds and alliances, or the total population) so Anet could still balance populations by moving everyone else around, and it might give a sense of having a 'home' that you stick with.

Of course there's no guarentee you'd always see the same people because they could move even if you don't, but that's already the case, there's nothing stopping individuals and guild moving between servers now (they have to pay for it of course, but that doesn't stop people). But the team you're playing for would stay the same.

Isn't this the original server system?, I have already picked. 

Edited December 9, 2021 by SweetPotato.7456

[havenstance.1746]

Logged in tonight, and noticed my server was gone. No longer on CD, logged right back off, GW2 can rot, this is not something I'm interested in even trying. Might as well go play running simulator and forget your game ever existed, at least until you take this junk out and shove it up whatever orefice it fell out of. The fact is, we the players, enjoyed the bragging rights that came with being the server leading the push. You literally just trashed wvw, thanks for ruining the only viable game mode in GW2 to appease the forum cry babies.

[havenstance.1746]

14 hours ago, Ella.1254 said:

I don't get all these people who claim to be serious WvW players yet weren't paying attention to this. I've known for months that Beta testing was coming, and a couple of weeks about this one. I wanted to play with friends too. So what did we do? Well we made a new guild for it, we all joined that and ticked the box to make it our Beta alliance guild. Easy peasy poof, we were all together.
I mean how hard is it???
Beta is just that, Beta. It's a test, It's a way to find bugs, a way to figure what needs to be fixed and fix it. If you don't like bugs, don't play Beta. But saying you're going to uninstall the game because 1) you weren't paying attention or 2) something that was a Beta wasn't perfect is childish.
To Anet: I am glad you guys are finally paying attention to WvW; we've felt ignored for a long time. Most of us know this will be a process and are willing to wait and see how it progresses. I hope you continue with your tests. We need new life in WvW.

 

IF you were a serious WvW player, you'd understand why we hate this mess. I'm now stuck on a server with NOBODY on it. There aren't even fights happening at all. I'm sorry but this isn't what WVW was ever about, and if you can support this mess, you are the problem with this world, plain and simple.

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

1 hour ago, SweetPotato.7456 said:

Isn't this the original server system?, I have already picked. 

And phase 2 beta... lol sheeeesh

[Mabi black.1824]

as some wisely suggest.... let us be constructive. there will certainly be a way to take advantage of the work on counting players who dissect an alliance and the same alliances .......... while maintaining the concept of team / world .

and I state that I am not interested in maintaining my team in every way (although I am sorry). reset all the teams / worlds but at least one for which to get busy in the end you will want to give it to me?

but perhaps this logic is already part of your final version of alliances? 

will think the time to fix the communities that because they are advantaged by alliances (so a certain base of players has already defined with whom they prefer to play)

 

as I have already written...... let's be honest with each other...... the balance in the matches must be solved.... this is crucial to improve the gaming experience for everyone.

and in this regard we want to block once and for all these stupid transfers?

make your calculation algorithm work with the aim of balancing the matches to the maximum ....... and after 24 hours you see groups of sheep migrating from one team to another....... really you should make this decision let's say right in 2 seconds.

what do you think?

 

 

[Zeria.3578]

I used to play on the servers with strong SEA/OCX persent because I'm Asian. But now I don't know where to go and the team I choose looks pretty dead during my prime time. In the previous world linking system I can still play on FSP/FoW to have some fun. But now, everywhere looks dead. Good job on balancing.

[Prophet of Flames.2783]

23 hours ago, Ella.1254 said:

Easy peasy poof, we were all together.
I mean how hard is it???

 

Very hard if the system puts you in another alliance anyway regardless of indicated pairing preferences.

But to your bigger point, you had to go out of your way to still play with the people you're used to playing with. That's our exact problem, there is no reason for this if Anet just abandons this poor idea of Alliances.

[Prophet of Flames.2783]

17 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Limit to 80? brilliant! soooo what do you do about people joining one guild of 500 to get around this barrier? do you guys bother to take one moment before making suggestions like these? It's like the guilds live rent free in some of your heads with the amount of power you think they have your play time and space.

 

But yeah sure give your feedback on a system that's been talked about since 2016, took a 4 year delay since the announcement, and finally in the works now, sure, every joe shmoo now wants to give their 2 sentence idea on what the system should be now. Go right ahead, highly doubt it's changing now.

Eh you don't allow those to join an alliance under that idea. Not supporting the idea (or any idea regarding alliances) but please just think further before acting all high and mighty to others about their ideas. You're the dummie here.

And it might change with enough feedback to how terribly conceived the idea is. Or it might not change and WvW will end as we know it. Enough people are willing to walk, and those left are the toxic guild players who were never carrying WvW anyway. So it either changes, or WvW is left as a deserted game mode that can no longer be played for real.