My expectation was wrong about WvW restructuring/Alliance

[SweetPotato.7456]

For myself , at this time, the WvW game mode has mature into a community that has its inhabitants, like clockwork, the map will be alive at certain point and dead at other times. Like a neighborhood, some people move away, new ones join, some go to work morning shifts some nights.  It is near perfect except the problem of time zone where everyone works the morning shifts and everyone sleeps at night, this was unable to be solved because no one can stay online for 24 hours everyday to guard the stuffs. Instead of a restructuring that destroy what we have right now, why didn't it look at this one problem, solve it first and then only think about something else?

 

Find a way to fill up the night shift time zone.
instead of taking everything apart and putting them together only to discover that it is not solving that one very obvious problem WvW need solving.
time zone.

Unless, (I am getting ahead of myself again), new maps and scoring system are in the foreseeable future. Then, by all means restructure the game mode.

 

Edited January 3, 2022 by SweetPotato.7456

[Justine.6351]

Rofl

If you solve that problem you should become a hiring HR. Companies would pay you a fortune.

[Dawdler.8521]

Ok then, bots. 

You want bots.

[anduriell.6280]

4 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Ok then, bots. 
You want bots.

Well bots use Guardians and Necros so it would work pretty well. A tag commander bot running the karma train 24/7. 

Jokes aside the only solution I can see is to link EU alliances with NA alliances so a player can pick to play on EU or NA when joining maps. 

I would implement it this way:

Alliances from both timezones are linked 1 to 1. So an EU alliance would be linked to an NA alliance. 
The scores and everything else are separated thou keeping current design.
The WvW window to pick a map will have 2 buttons so the player can pick to join that alliance map in EU or NA by using current technology placed for GW2 partners, just skipping the logon screen and map selection. 
 

To avoid players prioritizing overseas maps over their own timezone:

The overseas map button( NA instance in case of an EU player) will be available only if there is no queue in that map. Otherwise it will show greyed out. 
A guest player which is in a map who gets a queue will be notified that in some short time will be kicked from the instance. This message will work the same as the low population message in the PvE maps, So the player can get a short bonus if they accept before the time runs out.
If at the end of those 5 minutes there is no queue in the map the player can stay in that stance until there is another queue. 

So this is using existing technology in game with some improvements, it allows the players:

If there are queues in your timezone you can join the overseas alliance which is probably in downtime and earn rewards in that one. 

If you are login in during downtime and looking for fights you may join the overseas alliance and play in a more populated timezone.

Yet guest players will not impact local players as they will have to leave the instance if there is a need for their spots in the map. 

Bugs in the queue counters aside i think this would make everybody happy and it would impact current infrastructure the least. 

Edited January 3, 2022 by anduriell.6280

[Xenesis.6389]

jfc 😑

 

Congratulations on coming to the conclusion that everyone else had and why servers stacked around the clock coverage even before the game launched.

 

Now think about why we have this affect.

1. North american servers, will have mostly players in north american time zones.

2. The overnight like sea and ocx went and stacked a few servers since release, even today SOS IS STILL SUPER STACKED WITH OCX.

 

THIS IS WHY THEY HAVE TO TAKE EVERYTHING APART AND PUT IT BACK TOGETHER IN A CYCLE TO PREVENT THIS STACKING FROM HAPPENING LONG TERM. PLAYERS CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO SPREAD ON THEIR OWN, THEY WILL ALWAYS GO AFTER THE EASY ROUTE FOR REWARDS. NINE YEARS OF SOS AND BG STACKING ALREADY PROVES THIS.

 

THIS IS WHY ALLIANCES WILL HELP SPREAD OUT POPULATIONS FROM SERVERS LIKE BLACKGATE AND SEA OF SORROWS THAT HAVE STACKS OF PUGS OR TIME ZONES.

 

JOIN OR CREATE A COMMUNITY GUILD ALREADY.

Edited January 3, 2022 by Xenesis.6389

[Sleepwalker.1398]

1 hour ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

THIS IS WHY ALLIANCES WILL HELP SPREAD OUT POPULATIONS FROM SERVERS LIKE BLACKGATE AND SEA OF SORROWS THAT HAVE STACKS OF PUGS OR TIME ZONES.

 

JOIN OR CREATE A COMMUNITY GUILD ALREADY.

 

Here's the thing, if they all stack on ppt-ing [nice] guild instead of spreading out, then Alliance is a waste of time.
Had a glimpse of this when faced them in beta.

[Riba.3271]

While your words seem true on paper, night shift openmanding died because Fights are boring rn. You feel like you deal no damage, there are no conditions, it is all meta classes, the fights somehow still don't last, fighting inside enemy objective is idiotic as you lose like 80% of the time...

 

What do any of the remaining night commanders do? They all sit in their keeps and port away anytime they have to fight open field. And it isn't their fault really, their "followers" just have become so bad that they can't fight without massive clouding and stat advantages.

 

So reasons why WvW is dying off-hours are the same reasons why there is no high level scene anymore and solutions are:

- Rework claim buff to not provide combat stats: Fair fights, assessing numbers is easier, people can't only be "good" when defending, powerlevels between groups does not vary over the map (but strategies/respawns available might).

- Diversify DPS meta: Significantly increase cooldown of condi cleanses, reduce amount of AoE superspeed and nerf protection/stability upkeep.

- Increase server population stability by either removing linked servers or increasing amount of time between relinks. Also increase transfer costs. It just doesn't work when server has a 50 man nightcrew for 2 months, then magically it becomes 5 people. The night commander will just quit the game, or transfer, lose all their "regulars" and proceed to quit anyways. In ideal world commander should be able to enjoy WvW with any number of players, but like with preferance of music genres, it just doesn't happen in reality.

Edited January 3, 2022 by Threather.9354

[Leo.3428]

The blog post about restructuring did mention time zones: "Matchmaking will initially use factors such as WvW participation and playtime to place players, guilds, and alliances on teams, but we’re open to adding additional variables to matchmaking (e.g., time zone) once we’ve ironed out the initial kinks with the system."

It is not clear whether this means a better coverage of the 24 hours or more intense peak times. It is also not clear how long it would take for this to be implemented after the restructured system becomes the norm. Lots of questions.

Edited January 3, 2022 by Leo.3428

[Chaba.5410]

1 hour ago, Sleepwalker.1398 said:

 

Here's the thing, if they all stack on ppt-ing [nice] guild instead of spreading out, then Alliance is a waste of time.
Had a glimpse of this when faced them in beta.

I disagree.  People can't voluntarily bandwagon into any one alliance like they can freely with servers and server links.  There will be no more "that server is winning so I'm going to transfer there and contribute to the problem without having to ask anyone on that server first about it".  Alliances are absolutely worth it to remove that stacking.

Edited January 3, 2022 by Chaba.5410

[kash.9213]

25 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

I disagree.  People can't voluntarily bandwagon into any one alliance like they can freely with servers and server links.  There will be no more "that server is winning so I'm going to transfer there and contribute to the problem without having to ask anyone on that server first about it".  Alliances are absolutely worth it to remove that stacking.

All they'd have to do is spend the gold they'd save from server transfers and buy into an alliance. Or, they can just join for free or from a quick throwaway alliance with a few transfer guilds based off of previous match performances to create a tier. The difference is some guild and alliance leaders are going to become oligarchs and allow guilds to transfer about as freely as they do now, except they'll get paid or they'll welcome the coverage. 

[Chaba.5410]

2 hours ago, kash.9213 said:

All they'd have to do is spend the gold they'd save from server transfers and buy into an alliance. Or, they can just join for free or from a quick throwaway alliance with a few transfer guilds based off of previous match performances to create a tier. The difference is some guild and alliance leaders are going to become oligarchs and allow guilds to transfer about as freely as they do now, except they'll get paid or they'll welcome the coverage. 

That's still muted compared to what we have now because alliances are capped at smaller numbers than servers today.  It's not useful to compare full alliances to stacking of servers.

[Nauda.3678]

5 hours ago, Threather.9354 said:

So reasons why WvW is dying off-hours are the same reasons why there is no high level scene anymore and solutions are:

- Rework claim buff to not provide combat stats: Fair fights, assessing numbers is easier, people can't only be "good" when defending, powerlevels between groups does not vary over the map (but strategies/respawns available might).

- Diversify DPS meta: Significantly increase cooldown of condi cleanses, reduce amount of AoE superspeed and nerf protection/stability upkeep.

- Increase server population stability by either removing linked servers or increasing amount of time between relinks. Also increase transfer costs. It just doesn't work when server has a 50 man nightcrew for 2 months, then magically it becomes 5 people. The night commander will just quit the game, or transfer, lose all their "regulars" and proceed to quit anyways. In ideal world commander should be able to enjoy WvW with any number of players, but like with preferance of music genres, it just doesn't happen in reality.

 

I don't think any of that would fix off-time coverage (one can argue if that actually needs fixing since it can also balance out if every server has some strong part during off-time. In the end WvW is an open gamemode so differences in time coverage are normal and to be expected and I think the only ways to actually change what would change WvW too much.

 

- claim buff is a double sided sword since it also helps the outnumbered side to defend objects. Yes, it can also be used by the bigger side but that is true for a lot of balance points. Having more of something is always going to favor the bigger side more. Same is true for warclaws etc.

 

- So by nerfing cleanses, protection and stability upkeep we basically go back to 2 guard + additional support(Rev, Chrono, Tempest) support meta from after HoT? Or back to 2 guard + 1 Shoutwar combo back from Core-GW2? Zergs never played with a "gap" in the coverage of important boons or condiclear. Nerfing a class just makes stacking that class more important. That would in turn force other classes out of the group since the groupsize is limited to 5. Same thing happend in PvE Raids, when Chrono got nerfed or when important buffs like warrior banners where limited to 5 targets: You just took 2 and that blocked 1 more spot for another class.

 

- A night commander should usually have the players on the server he is playing on. Since if that commander leads nights for a long time he will have players that play during that time because they are used to it. Some link-servers can boost numbers but the main fore should already be on the same server as the night commander.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Nauda.3678

[Chaba.5410]

If world restructuring considers which hours of the day an account plays the most and not only average playtime, it would be possible to dynamically create teams with good 24 hr coverage. Timezone is something Anet said they'd consider later.

[Riba.3271]

4 hours ago, Nauda.3678 said:

 

I don't think any of that would fix off-time coverage (one can argue if that actually needs fixing since it can also balance out if every server has some strong part during off-time. In the end WvW is an open gamemode so differences in time coverage are normal and to be expected and I think the only ways to actually change what would change WvW too much.

Off hour coverage is just based on how fun the game is to play. Commanders and players will show up more evenings while sticking around longer times.

 

Right now the game is just not in a great state and thats why off hours are deadish. They cant force people to play in the middle of the night. They cant either split timezones evenly between servers because very few people want to play with less than 20 players and there arent enough commanders. People will just sleep instead.

 

Overall fighting balance needs to be based on equal numbers, else you just reward camping. For example even If there was a regulars commanders and that commanders core group just camps friendly towers and keeps with siege, stat bonuses and clouding. None of which will be available attacking, thus every night of that matchup will play out exactly the same. Which is definition of boring gameplay. Sure there are people out there that go sit in a pub every night with same people and same topics but game with repetitive system (both combat and Infrastructural wise) with random varying people wont reach anyones preferances.

 

I believe everything I suggested to be fixed made the gamemode considerably worse when they were introduced. Especially during hours when it isnt just bashing at each other on open field. Anet made lot of great changes but they just gotta look at other succesful game companies and also adjust/remove any changes that made the game worse.

[Dawdler.8521]

12 hours ago, Threather.9354 said:

While your words seem true on paper, night shift openmanding died because Fights are boring rn. You feel like you deal no damage, there are no conditions, it is all meta classes, the fights somehow still don't last, fighting inside enemy objective is idiotic as you lose like 80% of the time...

Well it's always hard to define since the many reasons WvW is bad seem to be:

- There's too much fighting.
- There's too much PPT. 
- Enemies always outnumber.
- There's no enemies.
- Nobody cares about winning. 
- Everybody on the server sucks because we didnt win.
- Objectives are too hard to take.
- Objectives are to easy to take.
- There's too much condi. 
- There's too many minstrel scrappers/firebrands.
- There's too many rangers.
- Ranged doesnt work due to projectile hate.
- Clouding sucks, bring only zerg builds.
- The zerg sucks, dying to clouders.
- Revive is the worst thing ever.
- Everyone bring revive signets and stack to res.
- There are no tags.
- There's too many tags someone tag off.
- We need a Discord tag to fight them.
- Discord gives unfair advantage.
- The enemy brought a zoneblob so they suck at fighting.
- Need everyone on the map to stack on com so we can fight.
- There are no guilds.
- Only guilds are on the border.
- Nobody responds to scouts.
- Scouts dont say anything.
etc

[Mabi black.1824]

 - alliances are great

 - alliances suck

 - belonging to the server no longer exists

 - leave me my server forever

..................really impossible to make them all happy😆

[Littlekenny.4196]

5 hours ago, Threather.9354 said:

Off hour coverage is just based on how fun the game is to play. Commanders and players will show up more evenings while sticking around longer times.

 

Right now the game is just not in a great state and thats why off hours are deadish. They cant force people to play in the middle of the night. They cant either split timezones evenly between servers because very few people want to play with less than 20 players and there arent enough commanders. People will just sleep instead.

 

Or

People will sleep anyway because they have to get up for work/school the following day.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Littlekenny.4196

[Stand The Wall.6987]

this is a problem of classic servers (homeworlds, imagine gw2 before the megaserver), they're outdated and imo no longer a viable format for mass pvp. alliances will help but the 24 hr game mode will suffer the same problem cuz of the classic server structure. the only way to get around this is to throw people into shorter matches like pvp, but instead they could last for 8 hours. this was someone elses idea i forget who.

[kash.9213]

3 minutes ago, Stand The Wall.6987 said:

this is a problem of classic servers (homeworlds, imagine gw2 before the megaserver), they're outdated and imo no longer a viable format for mass pvp. alliances will help but the 24 hr game mode will suffer the same problem cuz of the classic server structure. the only way to get around this is to throw people into shorter matches like pvp, but instead they could last for 8 hours. this was someone elses idea i forget who.

Most people aren't playing WvW to rush anything, making it closer to Spvp would make two of the same mode to compete for players while the bulk of WvW players find another game. Servers would be fine but there's no connection to your actual server and nothing to gain for it by playing WvW so no one cares, and guilds will try to get to where they can easily blob. Alliances would be fine for open world pvp but with basically the same structure and point system guilds are still going to stack or avoid for easy blob rounds during their coverage. 

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

On 1/3/2022 at 9:17 AM, Dawdler.8521 said:

Ok then, bots. 

You want bots.

and then, next step would be 200 crying posts that the bots clap the human bots, erm casual players hard and that this ruins their fun in Wvw.

PLIZ ANET NURF THE EVIL BOTS, WE CAN NOT KARMATRAIN IN PEACE 1111111oneelven!!!!!!

 

like, how'd they skill the bots? gotta be extremly bad on purpose, or they'll likely roflstomp the players. also bots need no real break and would merciless paint their map, unless u build in sorta timegates. they cannot really react, only attack, i'd guess.

 

but surely, overall bots would not be the craziest idea i guess.

_______

wvw does need updates. alliances and world restructuring are the first part, but they don't touch the gamemode directly, from my understanding.

 

quality of life updates would be really nice, but no overkills into odd directions. the importance of ppt should be lowered, and the rewards for actively fighting - as it is a pvp mode still - should be paying more off.

 

alone the reward tracks, probably over 80% of them are not very attractive and pretty old. older ones resemble dungeons, few special armor sets and then? barely any are really new. (i also do not count the mat farming ones for PoF new.. i mean come on, that expansion was ages ago)

i just hope anet uses their upcoming DLC to also give us Wvw players fresh content.

[KeyOrion.9506]

Well Sweetpotato, the problem occurs when the server in question has guilds that purposely recruited people within their particular time zone.  If a guy on east coast recruits, he's probably recruiting people that are awake in his time zone.  I'm west coast, but most of my guild was East coast.  As I was logging in, they were logging out.  That's something you will be unable to fix.  You're just going to have to recruit people that are awake in your time zone.  Or if you're having problems not finding "content", then your opponents will have to recruit people that are in your time zone.  Good luck with that.

 

My idea years ago was treat players like a deck of cards.  You shuffle them into the team for a week like a hand of poker.  Texas hold'em.  What you got dealt is what you got dealt.  However this idea doesn't take into account say if you wanted to fight with guildies or friends.  And what happens if one team was dealt more heavies with few lights, or too many mediums.  Well they could have treated it like 3 decks of cards.  First set of cards were heavies shuffled out, then second cards passed out were mediums, and then third round of cards were lights.  Repeat and rinse, and then you would have had your players shuffled out to each team.

 

I'm sure it has it's pros and cons.  Just waiting on alliances, because this is kinda somewhat will happen soon.  You'll be having a version of Texas Hold'em with Alliances.  Should be interesting.

[SweetPotato.7456]

On 1/4/2022 at 5:21 AM, Xenesis.6389 said:

jfc 😑

 

Congratulations on coming to the conclusion that everyone else had and why servers stacked around the clock coverage even before the game launched.

 

Now think about why we have this affect.

1. North american servers, will have mostly players in north american time zones.

2. The overnight like sea and ocx went and stacked a few servers since release, even today SOS IS STILL SUPER STACKED WITH OCX.

 

THIS IS WHY THEY HAVE TO TAKE EVERYTHING APART AND PUT IT BACK TOGETHER IN A CYCLE TO PREVENT THIS STACKING FROM HAPPENING LONG TERM. PLAYERS CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO SPREAD ON THEIR OWN, THEY WILL ALWAYS GO AFTER THE EASY ROUTE FOR REWARDS. NINE YEARS OF SOS AND BG STACKING ALREADY PROVES THIS.

 

THIS IS WHY ALLIANCES WILL HELP SPREAD OUT POPULATIONS FROM SERVERS LIKE BLACKGATE AND SEA OF SORROWS THAT HAVE STACKS OF PUGS OR TIME ZONES.

 

JOIN OR CREATE A COMMUNITY GUILD ALREADY.

I've played since beta,
SoS only been stacking for the pass 1 years, 2 years tops. 9 years of stacking SoS is very misleading. They weren't even host server for a long time. 

@KeyOrion.9506
Have no problem finding contents currently, I find my own contents when there are none, I play 2 time zones. I just did not like what I see during  beta, it wasn't reassuring.  I thought restructuring  was a totally new WvW at first, it was revealed that it will be called Alliance, at that time, still have flicker of hope it's a totally new WvW (totally new as in - new maps, score systems, better match up, maybe balance gear like PvP), turns out it's just forcing  people to join guild.  Then came the news that say the scoring  systems will remain,** on top of the no new maps, comes the failed beta,  the actual second beta was worse, it reshuffled players into smaller groups with new made up server names. So no, right now, I don't buy into alliance and it was not what I expected it to be. 

** amidst all that, EoD was announced, and there was a video somewhere that said Siege Turtles will be in WvW, I was like okay, this could work, YaY, Buy buy buy.....

......the disappointment when I had to watch a stream saying Siege Turtles aren't going to be in WvW while my team is getting slaughtered....

Edited January 5, 2022 by SweetPotato.7456

[Xenesis.6389]

2 hours ago, SweetPotato.7456 said:

I've played since beta,
SoS only been stacking for the pass 1 years, 2 years tops. 9 years of stacking SoS is very misleading. They weren't even host server for a long time. 

And I was on SoS from 2012-2015, they've been stacked on ocx since launch...... 🙄

[Chaba.5410]

3 hours ago, SweetPotato.7456 said:

I've played since beta,
SoS only been stacking for the pass 1 years, 2 years tops. 9 years of stacking SoS is very misleading. They weren't even host server for a long time.

How long you've played doesn't matter if you type something so confusingly contrary to known historical facts.

Now we're supposed to spend time on this thread countering your misinformation about the so-called UNOFFICIAL OCX SERVER since launch so that readers who aren't familiar with that history aren't mislead?

SoS not being a host server after server links isn't the same thing as the type of OCX heavy nature of that server that was being discussed.  What Xenesis wrote is not wrong at all and if you don't trust what he wrote, google search the old forum archive for posts going back to 2013 even about it.

Edited January 5, 2022 by Chaba.5410

[SweetPotato.7456]

22 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

How long you've played doesn't matter if you type something so confusingly contrary to known historical facts.

Now we're supposed to spend time on this thread countering your misinformation about the so-called UNOFFICIAL OCX SERVER since launch so that readers who aren't familiar with that history aren't mislead?

SoS not being a host server after server links isn't the same thing as the type of OCX heavy nature of that server that was being discussed.

What are you even talking about? every time you reply to my post, you confused me and put words there that I didn't say. Don't put words in my post that does not belong there.
It is not a historical fact.
 

 

IT IS OBSERVATION BY ME BEING  
IN WVW TOO MUCH FACT.
 

SoS didn't stack for 9 Years as the other person claimed.  I am merely pointing out that isn't the truth. 

Edited January 6, 2022 by SweetPotato.7456