Horizontal Tier Matchmaking instead of vertical Tier Matchmaking

[enkidu.5937]

For a decade, every WvWler was part of a big longlasting community (aka servers or worlds). Even if that player would have never joined voice chat or a community meeting, they would still find a familiar environment that suits their playstyle. The current Betas give us a taste of whats on the horizon: WvWlers will be split into two major groups of (1) totally randoms without any affiliation, and (2) ppl that organize themselves as alliances. At least for my part, I’m very interested in how these randomly shuffled “teams” can create a new team feeling, after servers / worlds are gone. 🙂

 

Matchmaking in WvW has always been vertical:

The superior teams travel up to Tier 1, and the underpopulated teams travel down to Tier 4 or 5.

 

Horizontal Tier Matchmaking, as I understand it, would no longer sort the teams warscore wise as “good” or “bad”, from top Tier to bottom Tier. Instead, it would sort the teams, starting from the middle, to the left and right:

Left: high PPT

Right: high K/D

(to keep it simple)

 

Horizontal Tier Matchmaking might be a valuable approach to balance the upcoming time-zone stacking. It might also balance the upcoming problem of “alliance raid” farms “randoms”.

I understand the satisfaction of some sort of players to dominate in an easy-to-win mode 😝 But hey, Devs recently talked about to make WvW a competitive mode, so yeah, why not 😎

Edited January 24, 2022 by enkidu.5937

[Cyninja.2954]

18 minutes ago, enkidu.5937 said:

Horizontal Tier Matchmaking, as I understand it, would no longer sort the teams warscore wise as “good” or “bad”, from top Tier to bottom Tier. Instead, it would sort the teams, starting from the middle, to the left and right:

Left: high PPT

Right: high K/D

(to keep it simple)

 

I am a tad confused. If you take the vertical tier list and flipped it to the side, it would become horizontal. Which is exactly what your horizontal tier list is. The only difference is you are looking at other variables for sorting.

 

How is (if we assume every letter stands for a matchup of 3 sides):

A

B

C

D

E

 

any different from:

A B C D E

?

 

What you are left is still 1 row, no matter if horizontal or vertical, where there is 3 teams per matchup of which 1 team moves left and another team moves right at the end of the given matchup. Certainly the way by which teams are moved can be changed, that is unrelated to the horizontal or vertical setup though.

[enkidu.5937]

19 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

The only difference is you are looking at other variables for sorting.

First, you are right. But to make this work, we have to pretend that K/D is important, to catch the fight club ppl. That’s why its horizontal. 😁

 

Second, I unfortunatelly cannot unveil any more details about Horizontal Tier Matchmaking. Devs recently said, that they primarily listen to our concerns, not our suggestions, . . . to find a final solution by their own. So, the best thing we can come up with is a well-placed inception in their heads, to let them find the ultimate solution by themselves.

 

I may quote the ultimate Book of Game Development at this point:

 

Only Devs keep the holy spreadsheet of statistics

and they will not share power.

 

. . . so let them find the ultimate solution by themselves 😎

[Xenesis.6389]

What happens when a server has both the highest score and kdr? 

What happens when the kdr is the same for multiple servers in the same match?

 

Sever/VP/KDR

AR/139/0.8 - TC/123/0.7 - BG/159/1.6 || JQ/145/0.7 - FA/124/0.9 - DH/151/1.3 || SoS/138/0.7 - CD/158/1.0 - DR/124/1.2 || IoJ/149/0.8 - EB/148/1.4 - NSP/123/0.7

 

Going by the current match numbers above, how would you sort next weeks match?

[subversiontwo.7501]

Another thing: World Restructuring could enable more of a horisontal matchup progression (or rather, it could take the ladder out and have no vertical progression) if it succeeds in achieving better balance. If a balance of say 1-9 worlds is good enough where 1 and 9 can face each other and generate relatively good content then there is no need to segment the worlds in 3 tiers. That should not be confused with that the ladder should go because it still serves a purpose as an additional balance check and something to play over assuming balance becomes good enough to reflect some sense of performance. Even that does not have to be perfect, it just needs to be generally accepted across the playerbase or in spirit. The biggest concern with the ladder as we know it is that most players with some insight have always the mid tiers the best (that is why the ladder is being manipulated and always has been).

Anyway, I'm just trying to say that World Restructuring could enable both horisontal and vertical progressions, with different advantages and drawbacks (essentially varation versus balance check and goal).

Edited January 25, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[Dawdler.8521]

8 hours ago, enkidu.5937 said:

For a decade, every WvWler was part of a big longlasting community (aka servers or worlds).

I guess we dont count 95% of guilds as part of the community since I can count the ones that hasnt moved in a decade on my world with one finger.

Also your horizontal matchmaking falls apart the moment a team has high PPT and high k/d

Edited January 25, 2022 by Dawdler.8521