WvW Alliances will kill almost EVERY social interactions and friendships crafted over the past 9 years outside of your "main" WvW/Raid Guild and all Solo Players and small Guilds

[Mabi black.1824]

hi cyninja,

for sure you and I disagree on many things here.

however, we can be constructive and find a point that unites us, namely the current system of balance of matches.

for this I say to treasure the ongoing work of alliances, for the actual count of active players, guilds and groups of guilds,and I ask if in some way we can use it by maintaining the social aggregation tool of the server / team.

in the final version of alliances it will be necessary to foresee something like this, in some way we must also think about motivation and competition (as well as the fun that I take for granted ).

you can not think of stirring everything after 4 weeks and then leave again.

who is my team ? what is my goal? how are we put in the ranking?

if you lose this you lose a lot of incentive for this game mode.

[Chaba.5410]

4 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

who is my team ? what is my goal? how are we put in the ranking?

if you lose this you lose a lot of incentive for this game mode.

Are you sure your idea of competition and motivation isn't bias from being familiar with server-based team formation?

From the viewpoint of a new player, many of those questions just aren't asked initially.  Their initial motivation generally is learning the basics and gearing up their characters; learning how things work.

After restructuring, those questions won't get asked at all.  Their sense of competition would align with single seasons rather than a forever-server.  They'd make friends and join their guilds if they were so inclined.

It's weird to me when someone says their sense of competition and motivation will be lost when teams are shuffled periodically.  That's because my own bias is from playing in an in-house ice hockey league where teams were formed by reshuffling every season.  I never felt like I was unmotivated or that the games were noncompetitive.

Edited January 24, 2022 by Chaba.5410

[Ronin.4501]

11 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

The proof? The fact that the developers are undertaking the massive effort and risk to implement alliances in the first place.

Every single step taken over the years to maintain WvW like server linkings and reduction to tiers (as happened on EU right before COVID).

The idea for alliances came up years ago not out of a whim, but a necessity and the developers realizing that the server system does not manage player population in a way which is sustainable for the mode. During a time when multiple matchups had active WvW on resets until long into the night, and not just for 1-2 hours. During a time when WvW was more than 1-2 stacked servers. Now, years later, WvW is in a far worse shape with far less players and if hadn't been for COVID, likely in a far worse shape yet.

Most players don't post on the forums in wild support or against the alliance system because those disinterested simply quit WvW and those interested don't care for the arguments by now. Alliances are coming out of necessity and there is no reason to believe otherwise or "convince" anyone of this being a good or bad idea.

Long-term players have seen the decline of the player-base over the years. Most complaints come from players with similarities: not very active with their (or any)servers WvW community, not part of active WvW guilds, a far more casual approach to WvW or simply venting because they got a bad matchup with the beta. In short: the bulk of the player base which at most follows, but does not actively shape the game mode and from that perspective alliances might very well seem like a bad idea (and they might be). Alliances also might be a great way to invigorate more active players which actually create content and shape the mode, which in turn would mean more content even for less active players.

TL;DR:

There is no need to convince a majority of players who are complaining about alliances and as such, why bother?

 

Thank you.  I couldn't have said it better myself.

[subversiontwo.7501]

13 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

however, we can be constructive and find a point that unites us, namely the current system of balance of matches.

for this I say to treasure the ongoing work of alliances, for the actual count of active players, guilds and groups of guilds,and I ask if in some way we can use it by maintaining the social aggregation tool of the server / team.

The complexity of this is the different parts and goals of the system(s).

We can talk mechanics, we can talk balance and we can talk about other things too.

In terms of mechanics vs. balance they can make alliance caps 2500 and any server today could fit into one alliance, meaning that any alliance at its cap would have full control over its world. That would solve the social question. The reason this is not being considered is the balance question. They are making alliances (and guilds) smaller relative their world than a server is relative its world (link) today for balance reasons. Beyond that we have all manners of less important discussions surrounding how to guide player behaviour, how WvW should relate to the rest of the game (with its megaservers and no transfers) etc.

These things are also why it is important to keep the different parts apart when we attempt to talk about it because the world restructuring itself, the mechanics, is mainly just a mean to reset all world pieces to the same size to avoid differently sized worlds in matchups and provide alternatives or checks to gem-transfering that ruin the population balance or stops existing groups to bring new players into the game, mode, world or group. There is little conflict over that. It is more so that people can't keep- or tell mechanics and balance apart.

The caps are there to consider just how much control players should have over world populations and create more granularity or balance for matchups. This is where the people who argue against world restructuring or alliances tend to become quite schizofrenic because they want to keep their own social aggregation but they are worried about others' social aggregation and control. They essentially argue for the cap to be larger and smaller at the same time (or larger for them, but smaller for the other) which lacks logic and balance concerns as a whole.

You see that all the time in the "me, the solo" and "them, the guilds" concerns that this thread is an example of.

So the only mechanical argument for servers would be that you like P2W transfers and wildly incompatible matchups (wanting differently sized worlds for various reasons: whether you prefer more players [wins, coverage, more content] or less players [no queues, better recruitment, smaller content]). There are far more balance arguments to be made for and against the size of caps but as I said that discussion is very marred in inexperienced players who do not understand it, want to have the cake and eat it or conflates the balance and mechanics parts.

Edited January 25, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[SweetPotato.7456]

18 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

The proof? The fact that the developers are undertaking the massive effort and risk to implement alliances in the first place.

Every single step taken over the years to maintain WvW like server linkings and reduction to tiers (as happened on EU right before COVID).

The idea for alliances came up years ago not out of a whim, but a necessity and the developers realizing that the server system does not manage player population in a way which is sustainable for the mode. During a time when multiple matchups had active WvW on resets until long into the night, and not just for 1-2 hours. During a time when WvW was more than 1-2 stacked servers. Now, years later, WvW is in a far worse shape with far less players and if hadn't been for COVID, likely in a far worse shape yet.

Most players don't post on the forums in wild support or against the alliance system because those disinterested simply quit WvW and those interested don't care for the arguments by now. Alliances are coming out of necessity and there is no reason to believe otherwise or "convince" anyone of this being a good or bad idea.

Long-term players have seen the decline of the player-base over the years. Most complaints come from players with similarities: not very active with their (or any)servers WvW community, not part of active WvW guilds, a far more casual approach to WvW or simply venting because they got a bad matchup with the beta. In short: the bulk of the player base which at most follows, but does not actively shape the game mode and from that perspective alliances might very well seem like a bad idea (and they might be). Alliances also might be a great way to invigorate more active players which actually create content and shape the mode, which in turn would mean more content even for less active players.

TL;DR:

There is no need to convince a majority of players who are complaining about alliances and as such, why bother?

TL;DR* bunch of speculation, nothing more.

* too long did read.

Edited January 25, 2022 by SweetPotato.7456

[Mabi black.1824]

20 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Are you sure your idea of competition and motivation isn't bias from being familiar with server-based team formation?

From the viewpoint of a new player, many of those questions just aren't asked initially.  Their initial motivation generally is learning the basics and gearing up their characters; learning how things work.

After restructuring, those questions won't get asked at all.  Their sense of competition would align with single seasons rather than a forever-server.  They'd make friends and join their guilds if they were so inclined.

It's weird to me when someone says their sense of competition and motivation will be lost when teams are shuffled periodically.  That's because my own bias is from playing in an in-house ice hockey league where teams were formed by reshuffling every season.  I never felt like I was unmotivated or that the games were noncompetitive.

you may be right.

for sure during the betas I encountered this problem, I had no interest or motivation to do anything more.

I played I enjoyed everything in an extremely relaxed way. I mean..... you want my castle ...... take it quietly ....... I'll see to reset it in 10 minutes and so on. that is what I would like to avoid or at least I would like to avoid when the new alliance system begins.

[The Boz.2038]

I mean, yeah, knowing that the beta does nothing for your server placement because you aren't playing as your server will make you not want to bother with things that enhance server placement.

The beta is for a system that, when implemented, will replace server placement deciding factors with guild placement deciding factors. So, you're back to "I have factors that I care about because they determine where I'm placed in the next match".

[Mabi black.1824]

11 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

The complexity of this is the different parts and goals of the system(s).

We can talk mechanics, we can talk balance and we can talk about other things too.

In terms of mechanics vs. balance they can make alliance caps 2500 and any server today could fit into one alliance, meaning that any alliance at its cap would have full control over its world. That would solve the social question. The reason this is not being considered is the balance question. They are making alliances (and guilds) smaller relative their world than a server is relative its world (link) today for balance reasons. Beyond that we have all manners of less important discussions surrounding how to guide player behaviour, how WvW should relate to the rest of the game (with its megaservers and no transfers) etc.

These things are also why it is important to keep the different parts apart when we attempt to talk about it because the world restructuring itself, the mechanics, is mainly just a mean to reset all world pieces to the same size to avoid differently sized worlds in matchups and provide alternatives or checks to gem-transfering that ruin the population balance or stops existing groups to bring new players into the game, mode, world or group. There is little conflict over that. It is more so that people can't keep- or tell mechanics and balance apart.

The caps are there to consider just how much control players should have over world populations and create more granularity or balance for matchups. This is where the people who argue against world restructuring or alliances tend to become quite schizofrenic because they want to keep their own social aggregation but they are worried about others' social aggregation and control. They essentially argue for the cap to be larger and smaller at the same time (or larger for them, but smaller for the other) which lacks logic and balance concerns as a whole.

You see that all the time in the "me, the solo" and "them, the guilds" concerns that this thread is an example of.

So the only mechanical argument for servers would be that you like P2W transfers and wildly incompatible matchups (wanting differently sized worlds for various reasons: whether you prefer more players [wins, coverage, more content] or less players [no queues, better recruitment, smaller content]). There are far more balance arguments to be made for and against the size of caps but as I said that discussion is very marred in inexperienced players who do not understand it, want to have the cake and eat it or conflates the balance and mechanics parts.

hi subversiontwo,

I believe that mechanics and balance can and must work together and it is up to the administrator to decide how.

I try to express myself with an example.

no one could prevent anet from forming 32 teams every year on 01 January. make them clash every 4 weeks in 5 different matches ( t1 - t2 - t3v - t4 - t5 ) and create a ranking for these teams.

no one could prevent anet from defining which cap to apply to teams 2500 - 2000 - 1500 etc.

no one can prevent anet from limiting transfers to 1 annual possibility.

on the basis of this hypothetical mechanic at this point the administrator builds his algorithm for equilibrium. What? with the count of active players, active guilds, and guild groups that have been forming (much of the on going work of world restructuring) add some filters to consider time zones and language and the game is done.

I am not saying that it is simple, but it is up to the administrator alone to define what mechanics he wants and on the basis of this to define the equilibrium criteria.

in sum the first goes together with the second or if you prefer the first has as a consequence the second.

[Mabi black.1824]

25 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

I mean, yeah, knowing that the beta does nothing for your server placement because you aren't playing as your server will make you not want to bother with things that enhance server placement.

The beta is for a system that, when implemented, will replace server placement deciding factors with guild placement deciding factors. So, you're back to "I have factors that I care about because they determine where I'm placed in the next match".

hi boz,

we really all have a hard time defining this change. you yourself in answering associate the word ranking with the word server / team.

can we at least share that the social server tool was important for many of us to feel part of a team? to give us a reason to contribute to a better result for your team? 

and when you saw it abandoned by some guilds because things get more complicated you only had the opportunity to cement this sense of belonging and team spirit with the teammates who remained by your side.

if you are not in one of the many groups that wander aimlessly just to find easy or winning clashes then you will know what I mean.

and of course for all these travelers they will not waste even a second to erase these communities and everything they represent.

[The Boz.2038]

Yeah, sure, okay. 

Do you think that this particular team spirit is something that can't be recreated through guilds and alliances?

[Mabi black.1824]

although by hypothesis the mechanic resets all teams every 12 months, the server remains an important and motivating social tool in the game mode.

[Mabi black.1824]

5 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Yeah, sure, okay. 

Do you think that this particular team spirit is something that can't be recreated through guilds and alliances?

I think so, the fact that you are part of a guild means that you share many things in the game with different friends.

but the guild or alliance remains only a fragment of your team. both one thing and the other are busy for the team not for themselves.

also when you are paired with a server you have the certainty that that is your team for better or for worse, no one it can kick you out and you don't have to ask permission from anyone to get into it.

and in the end it is a tool that already exists, it could be a mistake to delete it without some extra reflection.

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

also when you are paired with a server you have the certainty that that is your team for better or for worse

Well except links get tossed around like wet rags - or your prime server become a link and doesnt even get to stand by its name.

Edited January 25, 2022 by Dawdler.8521

[Mabi black.1824]

you are definitely right. maybe that arenanet where to solve some mess with balancing and transfers?

[enkidu.5937]

On 1/25/2022 at 3:06 PM, The Boz.2038 said:

Yeah, sure, okay. 

Do you think that this particular team spirit is something that can't be recreated through guilds and alliances?

Who doesnt know he fundamental step in team building:  separate ppl into different groups, different voice chats, different languages etc. 🤪 😝 😏

 

Ofc alliances will destroy any remaining team spirit. I mean at least there is a tiny chance that alliances fail hard and 80% of the players will become random players and revive good old pug zergs. Theoretically.

 

As a fact, no one needs this idiotic "world restructuring", obviously fixing the transfer system would be absolutely sufficient. Because underpopulated world-links get sorted into lower tiers, and overpopulated ones into upper tiers. Everyone with a brain cell would have tested how well-balanced matches would be when transfers were only allowed 1 week before relink.

 

The only remaining problem is guilds / alliances / meta-only zergs that seperate themselves from the major part of the team and overstack / overpower a specific time zone or map.

 

Just compare an imaginative WvW where everyone would be a random player (= great balance) with a WvW where everyone is member of an alliance where friends meet at a specific time to play together (= massive imbalance). And what Anet does is to massively promote the latter one.

[Chaba.5410]

4 minutes ago, enkidu.5937 said:

Ofc alliances will destroy any remaining team spirit.

I posted this elsewhere.  It applies here too.  Here's your "team spirit".

 

Real community: feels good because guild/alliance has been through both thick and thin together and still enjoys rallies.

Fake community: feels good because server is winning due to being stacked in numbers and coverage. players leave when losing starts.  lacks self-awareness.

[Caedmon.6798]

On 1/25/2022 at 3:06 PM, The Boz.2038 said:

Yeah, sure, okay. 

Do you think that this particular team spirit is something that can't be recreated through guilds and alliances?

I see certain people,roamers/solo players/guilds/tags on my server since 2012,some do move to another server at times but always come back. I know the people that play well,i know the ones that dont play well,i have a pretty good relation with "most" people on my server,met good people,met bad apples, i know what to expect from my server in lots of situations, i know the guilds we usually have and what they can or cant do and talk with several of the main guilds on my server often aswell. Most people on my server know what to expect from each other,by having played together for months or years. This same "team spirit" cant be recreated with the new system and its a shame its going in this direction.

If i just want quick fights without any feel to it i'd just go to pvp rather. But pvp isnt exactly what i enjoy anymore neither,so in that case i'd rather logg off and play something else.

Edited January 31, 2022 by Caedmon.6798

[The Boz.2038]

4 hours ago, Caedmon.6798 said:

This same "team spirit" cant be recreated with the new system and its a shame its going in this direction.

I don't get it. What is the mechanics that prevents you from forming the same team spirit with a guild/alliance?
Your initial set is less random, you can invite the people you like and have played with into a guild, and you can build the people already there into familiar teammates. You just listed things that you liked that happened to you, and said "this can't happen any more". Why? How?

How is a matchmaker that allows you to *choose who you play WvW with on a regular basis for free* less conducive to forming team spirit?

[subversiontwo.7501]

On 1/25/2022 at 2:42 PM, Mabi black.1824 said:

hi subversiontwo,

/.../

on the basis of this hypothetical mechanic at this point the administrator builds his algorithm for equilibrium. What? with the count of active players, active guilds, and guild groups that have been forming (much of the on going work of world restructuring) add some filters to consider time zones and language and the game is done.

Hi

I completely missed this since my inbox is bombed by reaction notices.

I wrote something related to your question here in another thread (the most recent relink thread from Cal) where you had made a post.

I think it is important to separate a couple of discussions here: systems and progress

Progress (Beta)

All things concerning the beta is down to progress. They are working in steps of 1) World creation, 2) Alliance creation, 3) Algorithms, 4) Matchups, 5) Rewards and so on. So as far as the beta is concerned (and the only things we at this point should be concerned with and possibly concerned about) they are only really testing step 1. To complicate things but not dive deep into it: They also move from vague ideas to concrete commitments. So they may test some idea about step 3 in step 1 but it is on such an early uncommitted level of idea that we don't really need transparency about it or be concerned with it. As far as we should be concerned step 1 does not test any form of balance beyond the player total and world creation functionality.

Systems (Balance, specifically step 3, the algorithms)

That brings us to the second part of this post. From talking progression or context to talking system and theory. The issue here is that there are so many options. You have three main factors: players, activity and ability. That bit is pretty simple. The things that complicate it is that you can question whether all of those things should be balanced or not. You can question what they should be balanced by (the world-creation system, the matchup system, the reward system etc.). You also need to consider stability. The first factor (players) is relatively consistant. The two other factors (activity, ability) are relatively inconsistant. That makes them difficult to balance and it raises questions about if they should be balanced, to what degree and then by what they should be balanced.

The world restructuring (and step 1) is mainly concerned with the first factor: player totals. The world system we have today only have two results of the first two factors. Worlds are 1 or 2 pieces. Players are inactive or active. The new world system will likely consider more granularity for those factors: There will be more pieces and there will likely be more grades of activity. I think most players agree with attempting to do that and I think ArenaNet have some committed idea to it. However, the more granular activity becomes the more it becomes inconsistant, difficult to balance and the more it becomes controversial among players. It will reach a point where players who are very active will begin to feel punished for being active and where it can lead to some very real concerns with player behaviour and health (stress, feeling forced to play etc.). So while having more grades of activity than just "yes and no" is not very controversial or problematic, fine tuning such a system is.

They relate to each other, activity can be seen as existing in totals or it can be seen as detracting from totals (ie., worlds have the same amount of players and a mix of activity; or if some players are very active but get pieced together with players of no virtual activity at all they are going to feel very small and alone). The big kicker here are players who are very casual or whose activity is very inconsistant for some reason. The big saviour is that the system will sort these issues out every 8 weeks in one way or another so it is still better than the festering old. For example, players returning from inactivity en masse may ruin one "link period" but the system will force decisions before the next. The same goes for paid transfering.

The last factor, ability, is more controversial to begin with. One reason for the systems change is to make players less of a factor and ability more of a factor. So you are going to have players who regard that ability should not be balanced at all or rather that ability is best left balanced by just spreading the organisation levels (alliance, guild, solo player) out as evenly as possible. Any other measurement of ability would require some system to measure ability or success. While not impossible that requires complicated choices to be made about matchups and verticality or horsiontality in the matchup system. A vertical system, a ladder, that reflects ability is a goal of its own and a balance factor of its own. It has its merits. It doesn't require ability balance in world-creation. A horisontal system would allow a larger variety of matchups but assumes better balance in world-creation, it would also require a merit/reward system on alliance, guild and player level to measure ability and piece together worlds. It is not impossible, but it is more ambitious, more sensitive to exceptions and takes away the ladder etc.

What is controversial about ability is that it of course is a very large factor but at the same time it is very difficult to measure. We can very clearly tell when one player dominates another or when one guild dominates another. Yet the relationship between things like PPT and PPK, scaling and the like is very complex. Similarily, for activity, coverage is a well known issue that complicates activity as just a measure of time. I can understand why people are concerned about these things, but I also think that it is here that we can begin to demand less of the developers and consider that we just need to see some of these things play out on the live servers over time. It is not a beta concern but iteration concerns. What we do know is that footprint will be more valuable regardless of what you do (ie., size-success ratio) and at the later stages of the beta or early stages of live, we can expect different communities to value these things differently but that the new system will at least provide us with more tools than the old system (creating very strong PPK groups will be available to more players, creating very strong PPT groups will also be available to more players and striking a golden average between them will also be available to more players). At worst, it is still better than P2W to achieve any of the same things, because today we pay in gold and gems to do these same things and we do it where the framework of the system is far more clunky.

So to sum all of this up:

Players (the first factor) is already broken down to more granularity based on three pieces - alliances, guilds and players (so far in the beta, we have only seen guilds and players) to form a world. Activity (the second factor) will likely change from a system with two grades to a system with more grades. However, it becomes controversial if you begin to turn it into too many grades. The devs likely have an idea here but it have not come as far towards a commitment. Ability (the last factor) is likely still just on the drawing table. It exists in theory, but as many different theories, and they are likely far off a commitment to any one. Not the least because it is tied to the last stages of matchup progression and collective rewards. The other things or factors need to work well first. That should also explain the progression because they concern themselves with players first, activity second and ability last. This also means that if you consider that logic, then the alliance functionality will come in before balancing comes and when balancing comes activity will likely come before ability.

 

Edited January 31, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[Mabi black.1824]

I am not an expert in this area of programming because I do something else in life .

for what I see in the game and for what I also see in the last connections of the servers,I try to explain myself with the example of my guild.

guild of 5 or 6 players active daily, too bad we have 25 other members that we have not seen for about 4 years.

now when you create the pairings and balances I suspect that it counts 30 players of the guild and not the 5 active actual ones, because no one at the moment can select a wvw guild and therefore the administrator can not have an actual feedback of the active player.

with the new system of world restructuring and related assignments instead we will get it, and I am sure that we will have a considerably better balance of the number of players on the field (although it will never be perfect).

at that point eliminating the social tool and the concept of team will only be a choiceand the administrator, since he will have already achieved a huge step forward in balance.

[subversiontwo.7501]

1 hour ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

I try to explain myself with the example of my guild. guild of 5 or 6 players active daily, too bad we have 25 other members that we have not seen for about 4 years.

now when you create the pairings and balances I suspect that it counts 30 players of the guild and not the 5 active actual ones, because no one at the moment can select a wvw guild and therefore the administrator can not have an actual feedback of the active player.

It actually is the other way around 😊. It is the other way around even in the current system. If your friends are inactive (in WvW) they are not counting towards the population cap. So if someone who has not played in a year comes back online today or a PvE friend checks out WvW with you they can play on their full server, but they will push that server deeper into full if they play enough to meet the population requirement (eg., wood chest or similar). This is updated on the next recount (weekly) and matters for the next relink (bi-monthly). When worlds are created in the new system your guild will count as 5 and once your 25 other friends play enough you count as 30 next time.

Less important stuff below this header 😇

This is why it is so important to differentiate between alliances and worlds. For your world you count as 5 (active players) for your alliance, if you join one, your guild likely will count as your roster. We don't know the alliance mechanics yet, but that is only logical. So if an alliance with 470 players take you in they hit the cap of 500 players but when that alliance is seeded on a world the alliance is counted as 475 players or less. That creates the margin for friends to come back. The announcement post references a 10% marginal reserved against transfers on a world. So people can only pay to transfer a world up to 90%, the rest is reserved for returnees etc.

It's also important that highlight that solo players getting shuffled around more is on purpose and it is good for the guilds. The solo players make up the guilds recruitment pool. Having alot of solo players on your server that you know never want to join your guild (but want in on your public content) is a problem now. Most guilds who transfer do that to open up their recruitment pool. The system is doing that on purpose to give players the choice but suggest that they should join a guild if they want a stable community (or an alliance if they are a small guild). So the system constantly exposes larger guilds and alliances to new players or new smaller guilds who may be looking to join a guild or alliance. This is why it is unsurprising to see most players complaining about world restructuring also be players who do not want a guild but want a community (ie., possibilities without responsibilities) but that comes at the expense of the people who create those possibilities, shoulder those responsibilities and actually socialises: not just pick the cherries and pretend all contribution is equal. Matching content and sharing content is more important.

It is best exemplified by the perennial team chat truth: In an ideal world scouts and tags cooperate, but the cold hard truth is that a tag without a scout still holds value while a scout without a tag (or matching response) is worthless. So big public stuff is important because they share content with anything from pugs to scouts who otherwise have nothing and some organisation (ie., a small guild) can be very important for matching content. If they can take objectives, hold objectives and occupy other groups with fewer numbers they quickly become very valuable even if they concern themselves less with public stuff. They still match content. It's less about size and more what you do.

Additionally, it is possible for you to select another guild as your main WvW guild while your 25 friends are inactive and once they come back and want to play WvW you can just select that guild as your main guild for the next relink. So if your friends come back and you prefer playing with them, you will only be on different worlds until the next relink. This is an important social factor for world restructuring since most of these things assume paying gems and making possibly irreversible transfers now. The new system gives you opportunities every 8 weeks and paying gems simply shortens that period but is also reset by that period.

For example, I moved my main account off my original server in 2016, I did not move it back until 2021 and it cost me 1800 gems (which is more than the game costs). The saving grace was that I understood that already by 2016, so when I transfered off I also paid less to get a new account to put on my old server, so I never really left it. Had I not had that foresight I would have been detached from my friends there for 4+ years of the server being full or me not having the means to transfer. I would likely have quit the game instead. Other players did. Had I not been as attached to the game as I was in 2016, I would never have paid for additional accounts. Other players were not and should never have been expected to. They have quit the game instead and can not return.

Another good example is talking about the guild spots. Most of my guild spots are dedicated to dead WvW guilds. They're not dead as circles of friends. We still talk most days. We still play other things together (other games, other modes etc.). However, due to the server system they are dead for WvW purposes. There have been made attempts to revive them but that have almost always involved re-buying the game 15x over or finding 15k gold among skint WvW players. So any attempt has been dead to begin with. Most of these guilds became dead and scattered when some players quit as other players often had to transfer to find new guilds for similar content. Many of these guilds were also not detached from their server but rather were important for their servers and the server's public content. So it's less of a guild vs. server thing than some people believe too. These become server problems when server organisers and public commanders become trapped on other servers for periods of time far longer than 8 weeks. The new system is quite important for these reasons.

Edited January 31, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[Mabi black.1824]

most likely it is as you say. but from what I see on the maps something still doesn't come back to me about how they build links and how players matter today.

transparency and communication of the potential of the teams that clash, I asked for it also for this reason.

[Chaba.5410]

3 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

most likely it is as you say. but from what I see on the maps something still doesn't come back to me about how they build links and how players matter today.

transparency and communication of the potential of the teams that clash, I asked for it also for this reason.

It is good to ask.  I think you've missed a lot of past communication, which is understandable since a lot of it is years old now and buried.

Only active players count towards WvW population.  Right now an entire server's active population is added up.   Anet then links these large chunks of play hours together to try balance population.  It's clunky because it's like building with Duplo bricks instead of Lego bricks.  It also doesn't account for those inactive players who might suddenly start playing the game again and adding to the numbers of a server which might already be full and allows players to transfer to a linked server that isn't full.

World restructuring breaks servers up into smaller bricks.  When you mark your guild as your battle group, your individual play hours are counted towards that guild's total play hours.  When guilds form alliances, which are limited to 500 players, one alliance might have more total play hours than another even if they have the same number of players.  But that's still a smaller brick than a server.  And inactive players are forced to join teams that aren't full if they suddenly want to play again until the next reshuffling.

(At one time a poll was taken to gauge player interest in the creation of a bunch of tiny servers for linking in an attempt to create those smaller bricks without world restructuring.  It was rejected.)

Edited January 31, 2022 by Chaba.5410

[Dawdler.8521]

14 hours ago, Caedmon.6798 said:

This same "team spirit" cant be recreated with the new system and its a shame its going in this direction.

Thats not "team spirit" thats just familiarity with a few members on your server that, as you say, move to another server at times but always come back. 

And for the beta we saw guilds form unofficial "alliances" or use their community guilds to be on the same team as a group.

But no apparently it cant be recreated. I guess the people we played with as team during the beta week are all just fakes.

[Xenesis.6389]

Seems to me that Mag recreated their server community pretty well in the beta. They owned ebg as usual, and I saw players including ones not in their alliance say they had a great time at the end of the beta week, (unless someone from their alliance wants to chime in to say otherwise?). Is there a reason other servers can't duplicate this with their own server communities? do people think with these server communities they need to invite each and every individual on their server from all time zones even though they never ever play with half the players on the server? It's kinda funny when the biggest cloud server of roamers can get better organized than some of these other server communities.

Even with the limitation of dedicating one guild for the cause, I don't even think that's too much to ask considering you have five guild slots. You want to play with a dedicated wvw community but don't even want to dedicate one guild slot to that community? I don't disagree that a new guild slot should be added because of this change, like adding a free character slot back when revenant was released, frankly I wish they would answer that question right away to alleviate fears and let players plan ahead on that issue, are you going to add a guild slot or not? yes or no? But in the meantime, people need to stop groaning and start preparing if you want to keep playing with certain players.

Some people fear playing under new conditions, saw people saying they knew no one in the beta, ok, well usually in relinks you get a new server to play with, and like half your population is suddenly new, does that stop you from playing? do you start rping a hermit and not talk to anyone? do you stomp your feet and stop scouting? It doesn't really take long to get know people in your play times, you have eight weeks to shoot the breeze with people, maybe even join a guild or alliance together. This ain't five minute spvp speed dating, you're going to be together for eight weeks, to get to know the good and bad of people you will be playing with... and trust me.... sometimes eight weeks is too long.... at least you'll get a free redo shuffle after.

As for server loyalty and identity.. I get people want to be part of a "team", I get it, so do I, it's like sports you want to root for and be a part of your favorite team, for the most part guilds not servers tend to fill this role for many years now. Do players realize that most players these days address servers by their colors and not even their names anymore? I couldn't even tell you the reputation of half the servers anymore, only what guild might be on them, but even that changes so often now.

They've been bandwagoned off and on, their major guilds run off to the next fotm server, sent to be a link under host name, gets bandwagoned for cheap, goes back to being a host with 75% of their population turned over. Stackgate, beastgate, blobgate, magswag, yakscart, siegebend, nsppt, dankhaven, sos(beep), jqq, zombie coast, fort as(beep), ebay, wagonbrand, dragonwagon, garnished toast, maguumy bears, sanctum of rallybots, has little meaning anymore, because now you're known as GREEN BLUE RED.

Superbowl 2022, Bengals vs Team Blue!