This works well

[RisenHowl.2419]

The alliance system is a breath of fresh air for this game mode, it allows groups and individuals that generally don't play together to join each other's runs. The completely reshuffling of teams in smaller chunks allows for better population balance as well.

 

From a guild perspective:
There's more people to recruit, new faces and interactions!

New matchups against multiple other guild groups that are from different servers, keeping content fresh

Allying with other guilds builds player-driven communities

 

From an individual player perspective:
You get to meet more guilds!

You have a bigger pool to draw from if you want to create a new guild yourself without having to convince established guild's members to jump ship

More balanced populations lead to more content in all time zones

 

It seems like much of the complaining comes from the same players, the people who refuse to join a guild or work with other people in a player driven game mode. Honestly, that's on them. If you don't want to play with others no one's forcing you to, this system allows you to jump from shard to shard each relink so you never have to interact with the people you dislike so much for an extended period of time.

 

There are some valid complaints about bugs:

 

There were a number of people that got placed on the wrong team

Queues reset for seemingly no good reason when you attempt to move maps, locking you out

Team and map names are hilariously wonky, literally none of this syncs up

Moving maps occasionally places you on another team

 

All said and done though, this is a great beta test. There are a LOT of pve players coming into wvw for the event week which causes a few problems, namely maps being queued out by people who don't actually want to fight other players and general inexperience with these groups causing one-sided wins for comped guild groups. This seems like something that will even out on its own though given time.

 

For the pve players coming to wvw for the event, welcome! We're happy to see you and hope you enjoy yourselves. There's a few things you can do to greatly improve your wvw experience:

 

-Join comms, just ask in chat for the discord code. Download discord and join their server, it's all free and easy to do

-Look up builds and gameplay videos for your class, the same way you would for any pve raid

-Stay tight on tag, that's where all the healing and boons are

-Don't push past the tag, that's where all the damage and crowd control is

-Keybind your dodge key, get used to using it

-Keybind everything else too. In the time it takes to skill click through 2 skills you could just as easily land 5 with keybinds

-Bring stunbreaks and condition cleanse, you will actually need them

-When you die, you rally one of the enemy downed players. Don't rally the enemy players

-Don't run transfusion on necros, when you get pulled into the enemy bomb you pull all the other downed players in with you, causing a squad wipe

-Everyone was new to wvw at some point, don't get discouraged. Every time you see another player or group of players doing something impressive, remember they were once in your shoes.

-WvW commanders don't owe you their time. If they want to run closed, that's up to them. If they want to run open, that's up to them. If you don't like it, buy a tag of your own. Throwing a fit in team chat for three hours just makes them want to tag up for you less.

 

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by RisenHowl.2419

[Strider Pj.2193]

A thanks and a +1 if I could.  Wellsaid.

[shatterhex.8310]

Very good analogy on the restructure there. Our entire guild had no problems with getting put in wrong teams or anything like you mentioned people were having valid issues with. I don't doubt for one minute weird things happen. Our guild decided that in the end we thought it seemed quite well balanced. We're mainly a fight guild with about 20 active players in the BL most of the time. We're all on board with the new faces and new experiences, keep it going. 

[displayname.8315]

It definitely helped balance the teams which is the only important thing besides learning large-scale pvp.

[Custodio.6134]

totally aggree. We (as a guild) even made friendship with another guild that is on a different server. We would probably never have met them as allies if it wasn´t for that beta. It gave us a huge opportunity for future allies once world restructuring is complete. 

 

[RisenHowl.2419]

I feel like there's a number of people complaining on the forums about how this has 'lost' them their server identity. You can all make guilds to preserve that identity, here's some name suggestions:

We don't like playing with [THEM]

We're not being carried and all is [VAIN]

We never left our starting [SRVR]

Who are you people We don't know [YOU]

Alliances suck this isn't a [BETA]

We're going to cap that [CAMP]

Pls give squad participation or we'll [SCRM]

I need warclaw please cap a [KEEP]

No one else on this shard wants to [RP]

We never look at stats but we're definitely [GOOD]

There's too much change it makes us [CRY]

Our PVE guild says we're [OKAY]

We will never join [COMS]

We don't understand and will never look it [UP]

Guilds are scary please hold our [HAND]

Stacked bandwagon please let us [JOIN]

They upset us and now they're [BLKD]

 

Feel free to use any of them to start your own community!

[Cyninja.2954]

On 1/17/2022 at 8:15 PM, RisenHowl.2419 said:

It seems like much of the complaining comes from the same players, the people who refuse to join a guild or work with other people in a player driven game mode. Honestly, that's on them. If you don't want to play with others no one's forcing you to, this system allows you to jump from shard to shard each relink so you never have to interact with the people you dislike so much for an extended period of time.

 

Pretty good summary.

 

The irony of it all: most of these players want the convenience of organized WvW which is provided by others, while retaining the freedom to do whatever they feel like, no matter if useful or not.

 

There are some concerns with the alliance system, besides the current bugs, which will affect all players to some extent (unfortunately most nay sayers are to concerned with their own ego atm to actually come up with these as to actually provide good arguments):

 

- alliances, much like guilds, while giving players more freedom and control, will also mean far more devastating consequences for anyone who leaves or gets removed from one. So far, if you leave or are removed (hopefully the earlier and on good terms) that has a minor effect on your pairing/server

 

- akin to the earlier point, giving more power to guild/alliance leaders can be a good thing or bad. Some people/players are not good with power

 

- currently the experience between being in a WvW guild and running internally versus not being part of an organized community is quite large. Any player who has been part of an active WvW guild which undertakes activities can attribute to this. This experience difference is bound to become even larger with guilds/alliances

 

- some servers have well known open tag commanders. In german they are called "fame commanders" and when they tag up, you can expect people to follow. So far it's always been a great way to get new players to experience huge blob fights without to large of a commitment. Now I'm sure most of these commanders will have their respective guild/alliance, for those who don't yet (if there is any), still that would make it very much a luck of the draw for new players if they get paired with such an alliance/guild or not

 

That said, my personal experience throughout the betas has been positive. Maps are active a lot longer. Point disparity and fights have been far more interesting (on EU). I'd have a hard time to tell which tier I was in by activity alone, feels like 2-3 (on EUs 5 tier system) which is far superior than T1 lag-fest and humongous queues and Tier 4-5 dead maps.

 

Overall I believe the alliance system allows for a far more flexible system to address issue in the future in concern to population imbalances, growth or decline. Something the fixed server system is notoriously bad at (you can only do so many server pairings and unpairings before it becomes a joke).

Edited January 19, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[corwin.8356]

I would agree. 

I got to run with a guild group from another server, liked their style and discord and I'll be swapping Thursday.

 

I think people fail to see through to endgame on these changes. No more paying to change servers, you're just stuck until pairings end and then you (or even your whole guild ) can change alliances. The backend balance tweaks should help with lopsided matches, and hopefully bandwagoning. (I have some doubts on this simply because any system works until you add people actively trying to game it.

 

As far as the beta itself, I picked my guild, ended up on the right shard, and have had few issues other than massive queues during primetime NA and once through with the recycling queue. I've see way rougher betas.

 

Plus I purposely picked a guild that isn't on my default server to test. 

[Za Shaloc.3908]

On 1/17/2022 at 11:15 AM, RisenHowl.2419 said:

The alliance system is a breath of fresh air for this game mode, it allows groups and individuals that generally don't play together to join each other's runs. 

 

 

Yeah, this is how I see it too. Personally I love playing with new people. It is refreshing to have a whole new group of people to get to know, to fight old friends from my home server, and to see opposing players from an allied perspective. I also got to roam with some friends I haven't played with in ages because of server restrictions. I chose not to rep any guild this time around to shuffle myself a bit and I greatly enjoy the prospect of being able to float between repping my home server guild and detaching from it as I wish. For me personally, as a bit of a floater myself, the beta has been an ideal setup for me. 

 

I just hope they don't keep pairings for too long when they actually implement alliances.

[RisenHowl.2419]

On 1/19/2022 at 12:50 PM, Za Shaloc.3908 said:

 

Yeah, this is how I see it too. Personally I love playing with new people. It is refreshing to have a whole new group of people to get to know, to fight old friends from my home server, and to see opposing players from an allied perspective. I also got to roam with some friends I haven't played with in ages because of server restrictions. I chose not to rep any guild this time around to shuffle myself a bit and I greatly enjoy the prospect of being able to float between repping my home server guild and detaching from it as I wish. For me personally, as a bit of a floater myself, the beta has been an ideal setup for me. 

 

I just hope they don't keep pairings for too long when they actually implement alliances.

I'm hoping for 1 month for each linking, that's enough time to move from t4 to t1 without things getting stale