World Linking 5/27/2022

[subversiontwo.7501]

3 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

Sure, let's start with your server. Because the people who say that almost always seem to suggest that it should be someone else paying the price for that, not they themselves and not everyone because if everyone would be affected by it, on a more regular basis what you essentially have is Alliances. People like that suggests that other people should get "world restructured" as long as it is not themselves, because they have such a more special or precious community than the others 🥴.

 

2 hours ago, Karagee.6830 said:

Gandara is never...

we have no way to know the actual participation numbers to understand which servers are the largest...

If you were to eliminate Gandara (which according to Anet is the largest server on EU...

it seems silly to do this for the alleged largest server...

It's entirely possible Gandara will have their own community Alliance as well...

Well, here's the thing. I'm just trying to illustrate a point to you. You are doing exactly what I first pointed to in the qoute above now. You are looking for motivations as to why it shouldn't be you but someone else. Me, I don't care either way. I'm just trying to open your eyes to that everyone thinks their server is just as precious as you think yours are. If you're not willing to accept being split up the way you suggest, you can't expect anyone else to accept it either. Anet knows it and will never do it. So there's no point in suggesting what you do. It's a bad idea that is never going to work for that reason alone. Their new system splits everyone up because of it.

Then, I too know that Gandara have considered trying to cram some 14-17 guilds into a single alliance, but that isn't really relevant to the topic of worlds being full and unlinked. Not in any other way than suggesting that Gandara is a server that still has alot of players and groups, so it isn't super surprising that the server is full and unlinked. Considering that the current system only has two grades of activity, it also isn't very surprising that the server is still full if it has a disproportionate amount of casual players, or players who play only specific days, when they under the existing system count as active every day. They can't count as more or less active, only active or not. It also shouldn't be surprising, with that in mind, that the new system will calculate this better just by having more grades of activity.

Edited May 31, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[Karagee.6830]

11 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

 

Well, here's the thing. I'm just trying to illustrate a point to you. You are doing exactly what I first pointed to in the qoute above now. You are looking for motivations as to why it shouldn't be you but someone else. Me, I don't care either way. I'm just trying to open your eyes to that everyone thinks their server is just as precious as you think yours are. If you're not willing to accept being split up the way you suggest, you can't expect anyone else to accept it either. Anet knows it and will never do it. So there's no point in suggesting what you do. It's a bad idea that is never going to work for that reason alone. Their new system splits everyone up because of it.

Then, I too know that Gandara have considered trying to cram some 14-17 guilds into a single alliance, but that isn't really relevant to the topic of worlds being full and unlinked. Not in any other way than suggesting that Gandara is a server that still has alot of players and groups, so it isn't super surprising that the server is full and unlinked. Considering that the current system only has two grades of activity, it also isn't very surprising that the server is still full if it has a disproportionate amount of casual players, or players who play only specific days, when they under the existing system count as active every day. They can't count as more or less active, only active or not. It also shouldn't be surprising, with that in mind, that the new system will calculate this better just by having more grades of activity.

Lol no, you moved the goalposts and you are trying to do this again even though I told you I'd be fine being automatically split in the dumb way you seemed to suggest or deleted and moved. Nobody is married to the name Gandara. Otherwise explain in detail how you think creating 3 new servers or deleting 3 would work and then we can have a meaningful discussion without you reframing the discussion every time so you can backpedal.

In your last paragraph is the essence of the problem. If you can't discriminate between people playing 50 hours a week and people playing 30 minutes a week (your assumption, not mine) then there is no way you can make ANY system work, not the current one and not alliances.

Regarding the community alliance, I reject your idea it suggests Gandara has huge numbers and it's rightfully closed and without link. It only suggests that there are a lot of people on the server who enjoy playing with each other and have stood together despite (and probably due to) being royally screwed for years by Anet. Other servers have similar plans, including the bandwagoners. Note that I'm doubtful I would join that Alliance as I would go with my guild and that doesn't seem to be the preferred option, so I have very limited stock in all of this.

Lastly I'm not sure what you meant earlier by 'who takes the difficult targets'. I attack everything on the border I'm on, including T3 keeps and garrison trying to stay ahead of defenders backcapping and avoiding large groups. If they pull EWP and a large blob comes that's life, next time I contest the garrison and go again before they can pull it once more. The only target we usually leave is the NE tower if it's tiered and has the watchtower upgrade as yoy can't sneakily attack that. I've sneaked SM castle in 3 people as well in the past, so, again, please clarify what you are asking.

Edited June 1, 2022 by Karagee.6830

[scureuil.4052]

You know, there’s no need to eradicate some server  : 3 lone servers. You delete T5, and every server get a link.  It was done once for 1 week 2 or 3 years ago.

[Dawdler.8521]

44 minutes ago, scureuil.4052 said:

You know, there’s no need to eradicate some server  : 3 lone servers. You delete T5, and every server get a link.  It was done once for 1 week 2 or 3 years ago.

Presumably no old player would ever leave or and no new players join WvW for this to remain balanced, we're all just prisoners in our own sick fantasy.

Edited June 1, 2022 by Dawdler.8521

[Feirin.5481]

Close to 100 Player left Blacktide  for Gunnars and/or Ruins of Surmia

 

Our Main Link Partner Blacktide is now on Medium (was High before) - and Miller is still on High

 

I can understand that International Servers dont want to play with German Servers.. but this is just fun to watch

Like half of the WvW Blacktide Players/Guilds did Server Transfer on Day1 or 2 when the Linking was announced

 

Server Transfers are to cheap 🤷‍♂️

[Karagee.6830]

1 hour ago, scureuil.4052 said:

You know, there’s no need to eradicate some server  : 3 lone servers. You delete T5, and every server get a link.  It was done once for 1 week 2 or 3 years ago.

Yeah nothing is stopping them from linking 3 servers in the same match

Edited June 1, 2022 by Karagee.6830

[Karagee.6830]

25 minutes ago, Feirin.5481 said:

Close to 100 Player left Blacktide  for Gunnars and/or Ruins of Surmia

 

Our Main Link Partner Blacktide is now on Medium (was High before) - and Miller is still on High

 

I can understand that International Servers dont want to play with German Servers.. but this is just fun to watch

Like half of the WvW Blacktide Players/Guilds did Server Transfer on Day1 or 2 when the Linking was announced

 

Server Transfers are to cheap 🤷‍♂️

RoS is MightyTeapot's effect probably. I wouldn't mind playing with some German servers for example, there are people who do some organised roaming on some of them at the times I play and it would simply mean we would be able to do even more damage (and possibly not be outnumbered).

And yeah instead of having 1 fee they should open every server (for moving, not new accounts those should be locked if necessary) and have dynamic pricing for transfers. You want to transfer to Gandara? Cool, give us 5k gems. Wanna transfer to, say, Fort Ranik? It's free or give us 50 gems, thank you. If that's not enough increase the gem cost even more.

Edited June 1, 2022 by Karagee.6830

[Mabi black.1824]

15 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

I'm not saying it to belittle you or disenfranchize you. I am saying it because many times you say what you say but you often have some larger groups and very active commanders out there who bears the brunt of opponents and provides the majority of shared content.

hi subversion,

you can never belittle or offend anyone because you are an extremely polite person, who they would like to have everyone on their team.

I have read with great interest the latest discussions, and at this point I ask you what is the problem of having 30 teams numerically identical ? wouldn't you like to finally start a season in competition with everyone else and that each team competes with equal weapons ?

alliances help you fill these 30 teams better, okay, we use alliances to fill teams.

 

the problem is the playing time?

the playing time for all the teams will always change, everyone will have moments that will be inferior or superior to their opponents, the time is a variable for each one of us (this week I am on vacation and I play twice as much as usual next week I am sick in bed and I do not play at all)

you have to change your perspective and take a step forward, you have to think about constantly comparing the players of the 3 teams and adjust accordingly the value of the points that the teams earn at that precise moment. otherwise you compromise the concept of competition, you will always find someone who will tell you '' you won because in the second evening we had no players '' and I want to be able to answer you '' bales are just your excuses because in the second evening if you did not have players online we do not earn war points ''

the playing time will forever be a variable and must be controlled by a variable mechanic.

 

but I still want transfers.

I still want to jump from one team to another among these 30 teams. very well we modify the transfers by reservation. open the transfer window and choose where you want to transfer, if you want to do it with a group of 30 men select the group transfer.

of course you will have to have a little patience because you can jump when other players book in turn to transfer. players will use the forum to announce the transfer and that free up 30 places on a given team. the developer must still consider something like 5% available in each team, or at least a percentage that does not question the competition .

 

which server do we start to damage to create new 3 teams?

you don't have to harm anyone. create 3 new and empty teams, free transfer. lower the population limit for all teams, and lower access to all maps from 70 to 50 players, it will take you 2 or 3 weeks to fill the new teams. and then bring the map limit back to 70 players. 

it would be really nice if finally in Europe every team could have a match, and all the matches had numerically similar teams.

[subversiontwo.7501]

Thank you for the kind words Mabi.

Let's see if I can answer the questions one by one.

Nothing is a problem with having identically sized teams, it is what all of us wants.

Playing time is a variable and that is why we can't use it to make differently sized worlds.

One critique of people who want eg., a person playing two days a week to only count for two days a week activity (the simplistic reading and suggestions done by some people) is that playing time is a variable and that such would suggest differently sized worlds.

Instead, the Alliance system (the total package of the World Restructuring with everything else) is the superior system because it has taken most of these issues into account. Anet did well when they designed that. It aims to have equal sized worlds. It aims to distribute pieces onto those worlds more with activity in mind. It aims to have different caps for guilded and unguilded players to determine when the world goes full.

Spoiler

 

I am on the fence when it comes to paid transfers, but since the Alliance system will at least have full resets and other alternatives, paid transfering will not be as impactful as in the current system. All of those things are much, much better handled by the Alliance system than the current system. Those are also some of the most important back-end bits. The eg., 90% and 100% caps to full, for example, may seem insignificant but it could be the one thing that keeps the guilds on a world from pay-transfering mid season as it is their margin to recruit split and returning friends.

If the system works as understood then every 8-week reset every server will be at 90% capacity and unguilded players will only be able to transfer on if guilded players have transfered off. You just won't have the same kind of bandwagon as we do now, where eg., 200 guilded players transfer to a server with 1300 free spots (to full) but then a thousand unaffiliated players follow them. That can't happen under the Alliance if only roughly 200 spots are in the margin and already settled guilds have first digs. The worst exploit I can see under that system is that you get strong mercenary guilds that specialise on getting hired by settled alliances after reset. However, that's not anywhere near as big of a problem and there are multiple ways for Anet to deal with things like that.

A world that gets transfered off will at most drop from 90% to 80% populated and going back up from 80% to 90% can be paid transfers from anyone. Yet, with resets, no server is going to stay at 80% for more than a couple of weeks. At reset everyone is back at 90%. A world whose guilds got it from 90% to 100% are just not going to see the same guilds next reset, they'll be too large.

So you can manipulate that system as any system, but the traffic is just so much smaller (a hundred or so, rather than thousands) and the resets makes occassional mid-season transfers possible, but continously manipulating the system (keeping a hundred or so players on retainer) is obviously going to cost more than it tastes. Maybe the likes of Guild MM is going to keep some GvG'ers on retainer, who knows, but even that is nowhere near as impactful as the bandwagons we have now.

Once you've taken all those things into account, then you'll see that in the current system some servers are full and others are not, going back to pre-links or locking everything down will simply make everything full whereas with Alliances they have found a way to make everyone open at every reset, but with a priority for the groups that otherwise would trigger further transfers. If unguilded players had better- or equal access to margin transfers they would just force guilds to start transfering again, so we would see much more transfers.

So the current system is "only some can recruit", any suggestion to lock things down is "less/no one gets to recruit" (this is the perspective taken by people who drape themselves in the flag of their server without attention to the recruitment-dependent groups on their own server that does most of the heavy lifting) whereas the Alliance system is "everyone can recruit past reset but it is capped at a 10% margin and already settled groups have first digs to stay".

 

 

Edited June 1, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[Mabi black.1824]

17 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

Thank you for the kind words Mabi.

Let's see if I can answer the questions one by one.

Nothing is a problem with having identically sized teams, it is what all of us wants.

Playing time is a variable and that is why we can't use it to make differently sized worlds

very well,

I can tell you that we have very similar desires.😊

 

a-net please if you are there beat a shot here, let us know what you think, what vision you have regarding this discussion. forget all the ongoing work of classes and balancing, it takes a little hard work to fix these 3 or 4 much more important concepts.

or are we completely out of the way?

[Mabi black.1824]

On 5/31/2022 at 3:28 PM, Karagee.6830 said:

If the way the activity is calculated is flawed then there will be no balance with alliances either, because a full alliance is only part of a team. Alliances give some control over participation (up to 500 people) and hopefully will prevent bandwagoning transfers, but it doesn't solve the problem that Anet can assign you 800 people who have next to no participation over a week of WvW because Anet are dumb that way and they consider these players 'active'. You follow? So your exceptional Alliance of handpicked 500 players may end up being outnumbered 2:1 all day long because of how Anet calculates things

surely the calculation is not perfect and can improve, but the playing time is already considered, and I will explain why I say this. we have played with gandara several weeks in recent months as we have not had any connections for 6 months either.

we had fun and I hope you guys had fun too, in the end it's the only thing that matters beyond all the castles we build here on the forum.

it is true that it does not happen often, but when gandara has a good flow of players there are really many, they can easily engage you on two maps at the same time. Desolation has been full for 1 year and + and for many months without connections.

in our high flow schedules we could still dream of being effective on two maps, because on the second map you could have at most small defense teams. we probably have the advantage of keeping a good number of players in the second night compared to gandara. so a number of players might take longer than gandara. 

for this reason the full of gandara was not the full of desolation. I'm just reporting here what I've been seeing for many weeks.

now I tell you, we have been full and alone for a long time , if you saw a map in the queue of 10 players it was a rare event if not unique and right for 1 or 2 hours. now we have a high population and we got a link with another high population team, and the change is pretty much crazy.

it's been more days that I see 20 men + queuing on eb and you can see two more maps in the queue of 5 or 10 players. it is clear that in this way arenanet has no chance to build similar teams has no tools to cultivate a healthy competition, impossible. you have to dig deep to fix things. if you still have the will to do so.

[Karagee.6830]

7 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

One critique of people who want eg., a person playing two days a week to only count for two days a week activity (the simplistic reading and suggestions done by some people) is that playing time is a variable and that such would suggest differently sized worlds.

Playing time is variable within a week and between a week and the next, but surely 8 weeks and 56 days is a large enough sample to draw pretty solid conclusions about AVERAGE participation. 

[SNIEVES.3964]

The new link did help my server Gate of madness , we got Darkhaven as a link, while on the wvw map, my guild was told by multiple Darkhaven tags, that hey don't fight Maguma, who is the blue enemy this week, i am like what crock of kitten is that, baica;;;y it sounds like my server is on its own this week

 

[MoonT.6845]

Have lost interest in this fighting constantly outnumbered, playing less and less, not just WvW  but GW2 as a whole because of it. If Anet want to retain the player base they need to put themselves in the position of people on the unlinked servers and ask themselves how much they would enjoy playing such an unbalanced game mode for month after month before they grow tired of it. 

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

11 hours ago, SNIEVES.3964 said:

The new link did help my server Gate of madness , we got Darkhaven as a link, while on the wvw map, my guild was told by multiple Darkhaven tags, that hey don't fight Maguma, who is the blue enemy this week, i am like what crock of kitten is that, baica;;;y it sounds like my server is on its own this week

 

maguuma is kinda problematic server, but this kinda cloud-blob system on "glass"cannon gankerbuilds with high mobility and tons of siege got sadly enabled due to anets nerfing policy....

we got: dmg nerfs, stealth nerfs, sustain nerfs, superspeed nerfs aoe targetcap nerfs which all harms groups

 

therefore systems like the maguuma/isleofJanthir cloudblobbing (EU has similar versions of this, like FoW) actually have it way easier to work, with literally low to now effort

 

because the smallscale builds and classes got barely to not-at-all hits, siegedmg got no hits, not even downstate or NPC health got lowered i think

 

therefore, since most people dont know the mechanics and meta classes and respective -builds, these cloud blobs are hard to beat, unless u have really very experienced players on your side

 

like honestly, maguuma isn't really a strong server, they are just extremly overpopulated and used to vastly outnumber the enemy servers in fights

[CrimsonRise.7650]

Gw2mists data

It's been a while since we've had so many transfers, a week after the relinks.

Looks like some servers are going to enjoy the queues and perhaps t1. 

 

Edited June 5, 2022 by CrimsonNeonite.1048

[aspirine.6852]

On 6/1/2022 at 11:37 AM, Feirin.5481 said:

Close to 100 Player left Blacktide  for Gunnars and/or Ruins of Surmia

 

Our Main Link Partner Blacktide is now on Medium (was High before) - and Miller is still on High

 

I can understand that International Servers dont want to play with German Servers.. but this is just fun to watch

Like half of the WvW Blacktide Players/Guilds did Server Transfer on Day1 or 2 when the Linking was announced

 

Server Transfers are to cheap 🤷‍♂️

Blame anet for refusing to block transfers after relink.

[iKeostuKen.2738]

Wondering if the idea for a mercenary faction similar to what Planetside 2 did would fix some of these under population issues. But compensate the mercenaries with more pips and better rewards. 

A opt in feature similar to just joining a borderland but it would put you in a queue till a list is filled and then send that entire list to a outnumbered server. The better rewards and pips would encourage people who join to not grief hopefully.

Would last for x amount of time and leaving early would throw you back into the same server to prevent server hopping till the limit is over if you are in mercenary queue.

Rinse and repeat. And cant be done to the server in 1st place in the matchup.

[Xenesis.6389]

39 minutes ago, iKeostuKen.2738 said:

Wondering if the idea for a mercenary faction similar to what Planetside 2 did would fix some of these under population issues. But compensate the mercenaries with more pips and better rewards. 

A opt in feature similar to just joining a borderland but it would put you in a queue till a list is filled and then send that entire list to a outnumbered server. The better rewards and pips would encourage people who join to not grief hopefully.

Would last for x amount of time and leaving early would throw you back into the same server to prevent server hopping till the limit is over if you are in mercenary queue.

Rinse and repeat. And cant be done to the server in 1st place in the matchup.

Similar suggestions by doing this with the guest transfer feature (obsolete since megaservers) has been suggested many times. But there's a whole host of problems with this that could mess up a match, griefing as you mentioned, bandwagoning and locking out players from their own matches with queues from mercs, screwing with the scores by doing nothing but still taking a spot on a potential enemy server, etc. There would need to be strict parameters set up for it, like only during certain times of the day, or only to servers not winning a match, certainly not to servers in your current matchup, or lockout timers so people take it seriously and not prance around servers causing mayhem, etc.

 

I don't think anet would look at any other methods at this point anyways, since they're working on world restructuring, (even if it's development is laughably delayed).

[Reborn.2934]

On 5/27/2022 at 8:24 PM, Cal Cohen.2358 said:

Here are the worlds for EU:

• Augury Rock (FR), Jade Sea (FR)
• Aurora Glade (EN), Dzagonur (DE)
• Baruch Bay (SP)
• Blacktide (EN), Miller's Sound (DE)
• Desolation (EN), Ring of Fire (EN)
• Drakkar Lake (DE), Arborstone (FR)
• Elona Reach (DE)
• Far Shiverpeaks (EN), Gunnar's Hold (EN)
• Fissure of Woe (EN), Kodash (DE)
• Gandara (EN)
• Piken Square (EN), Ruins of Surmia (EN)
• Riverside (DE), Abaddon's Mouth (DE)
• Seafarer's Rest (EN), Underworld (EN)
• Vabbi (EN), Fort Ranik (FR)
• Whiteside Ridge (EN), Vizunah Square (FR)

 

Here are the worlds for NA:

• Blackgate, Anvil Rock
• Crystal Desert, Yak's Bend
• Darkhaven, Gate of Madness
• Dragonbrand, Borlis Pass
• Ehmry Bay, Ferguson's Crossing
• Fort Aspenwood, Sorrow's Furnace
• Jade Quarry, Eredon Terrace
• Maguuma, Isle of Janthir
• Sanctum of Rall, Northern Shiverpeaks
• Sea of Sorrows, Devona's Rest
• Stormbluff Isle, Henge of Denravi
• Tarnished Coast, Kaineng

 

this 👇 is what we asked before 9 years, not this 👆

 

https://www.tsekouri.com/2022/02/mixed-servers-in-wvw-this-is-not-what.html

 

 

 

 

Edited June 1, 2023 by Reborn.2934

[Leaa.2943]

On 5/29/2022 at 1:24 PM, Karagee.6830 said:

The logic behind linking is sound, but the implementation is demented and it's even worse when you consider how long they kept this stuff going. If they were counting total ACTIVE player hours (ie. not people who play 5-15 minutes a day to do 2-3 dailies and log off) and pairing the 4th most active server (in EU) with the lowest etc, it might work properly. But that is still predicated on the fact that there is an enormous difference between the top most active 3 servers and the bottom 3, which is unlikely in my view (ie. 4th+15th will greatly outnumber 1st + nobody).

 

Anet could have done many things to spread out the population starting with incentivising transfer to certain servers and disincentivising moving to or leaving other servers (by using dynamic pricing for transfers). There is a fundamental flaw of a system where 3 servers get no link, but transfers are definitely part of the problem as well (even for NA), because if they had different pricing to move to different servers (depending on active players statistics) and they locked transfers at the beginning and the end of the linking period, leaving 3-4 weeks in the middle when transfers are allowed, they could manage and spread out the population. But of course anything that curtailed transfers would lower revenues, so it's never going to happen.

Funny thing the number 1 host AND link in EU are both full and closed.... That is how well their tools are working. 

[SFShinigami.1572]

There was a TON of movement around the last relink.  Next weeks T1 is going to be really interestng.

[Pharaohz.3470]

wvw still dead.

Edited August 7, 2022 by Turgon.2091
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