Why are Alliances not ready yet?

[Thei.6901]

This is being talked and worked on(supposedly) since 2015, if not even earlier. We are mid 2022 and we get "betas".

Companies make entire MMO's in 5-6 years, Terry David made entire OS from scratch in 10 years ALONE and Anet can't reconstruct a game mode in 7 years?  Maybe just outsource it to some guys in Bangladesh...

 

inb4 thread gets swept under the rug.

[Sviel.7493]

While alliances were mentioned (promised?) many years ago, development has only been ongoing for couple years.  During those years, most of the company was focused on the most recent xpac.  It's fair to criticize the delay in starting on them, but the actual implementation isn't too far off the mark.  After all, they now have to deal with tons of spaghetti code to make sure the new systems play nice with the old systems.

[Telgum.6071]

It's 2022 and people still think Alliances has been in active development since 2015, with two expansions and living worlds in between.

[Gorani.7205]

Listening to "when its ready..." (TM by ANet) for many years. Learned to cope with the disappointment so far.

[Strider Pj.2193]

1 hour ago, Sviel.7493 said:

While alliances were mentioned (promised?) many years ago, development has only been ongoing for couple years.  During those years, most of the company was focused on the most recent xpac.  It's fair to criticize the delay in starting on them, but the actual implementation isn't too far off the mark.  After all, they now have to deal with tons of spaghetti code to make sure the new systems play nice with the old systems.

But let’s be clear, when they released EOD, they stated almost immediately that there was going to be yet another expansion.

 

So, is alliances to wait AGAIN for another expac?

 

Or is it the queue bug?  I think we all remember the ‘reason’ why they didn’t  do a beta during spring despite it being on the ‘road map’ for spring.  Supposedly it was because of the queue bug…. That has been around since before HoT…. And is still around…

 

Or, will we get yet another mysterious ‘problem’ they have to fix before alliances can be developed more..

[Blockhead Magee.3092]

Because Anet was unwilling to be straight with us.  When they abandoned alliances, they said nothing until they got a few people back on it.  They abandoned it again without telling us until they, once again, got a few people to work on it.  

 

Noting their track record, we can expect it to be abandoned soon and picked up again in the future.  Eventually they'll probably even get it done doing it this way.  

[Xenesis.6389]

It's because of PVE, and a host of other reasons.

World restructuring has been talked about for some time, even back in 2016 they were trying to figure out if other methods such as linking a bunch of smaller servers could work for better populations(idea was rejected in the forums btw), using more smaller pieces would be easier to put together to get within population thresholds of each other.

World restructuring evolved from that and while it was announced in 2018 not much work went into it that year, Raymond posted a couple updates, but it was apparent again that the wvw team had been chopped down in size again after the 2016/17 updates. After that Anet also went through a restructuring, losing a lot of devs while other projects were cancelled.

Then Mike left, leaving Anet to basically restart. So what's the first thing they had to do? jump start their main game in gw2 again,  because they had been coasting on living story for four years already, so they went right back into making a pve focused expansion asap(maybe this was one of the projects in the back that was delayed). So all those years they weren't working on World restructuring, basically it only started last year when a new game director was hired, and boldly claimed wvw is a cornerstone, then put aside again near expansion launch to get that and it's follow up content in order.

And while that's a perfectly understandable excuse as to why it's been delayed so much for so long, it still isn't reasonable that 1/6 of their end game areas(wvw, spvp, fractals, living story, raid, strikes) is completely ignored for so much for so long(meanwhile two were added in the past seven years and now are even top priorities for steam release), while they galivant around in boon balls pretending everything is ok.

[Thei.6901]

4 hours ago, Sviel.7493 said:

While alliances were mentioned (promised?) many years ago, development has only been ongoing for couple years.  During those years, most of the company was focused on the most recent xpac.  It's fair to criticize the delay in starting on them, but the actual implementation isn't too far off the mark.  After all, they now have to deal with tons of spaghetti code to make sure the new systems play nice with the old systems.

 

Even a couple of years is more than enough time to thought out the system and start doing the backend. A single person can do this(don't count the UI). This is a change to the world structure, not the actual gamemode mechanics.

The implementation is not just far off the mark, it's in another dimension at this point. If they are indeed working really makes me wonder about their abilities. The lack of communication doesn't inspire any confidence either. I mean... even their Summer Roadmap doesn't mention wvw apart from the beta mentioned in the posted image. After all that time this is all they have to say?!

The very few people left in the guild who still wish to play are waiting for alliances. (not that anyone really believes it's coming)

16 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Then Mike left, leaving Anet to basically restart. So what's the first thing they had to do? jump start their main game in gw2 again

Meh, I don't think the change of the director is that significant. There are still other people who manage the teams and can influence the decisions. More and more this looks like a carrot on stick.

Edited August 7, 2022 by Thei.6901

[Baldrick.8967]

It's really simple.

 

In the dev pecking order, alliances come 2-3 orders of magnitude below fixing the toe paint color on a random NPC (which might otherwise offend someone).  

 

So they work on it on Friday afternoons once a month, unless something more important needs doing (see above).

[Salt Mode.3780]

If all of this was the reasons for why they pushed back Alliance, players should not need to speculate instead they should be more transparent. It isn't a secret that they had massive layoffs, this was news for some time. They had every right to say "we had to reallocate resources from the Alliance project to work on other aspects of the game," or somewhere along the lines of that. Not only did they not do that, they were quiet, then when Alliance became a meme, they decided to give false hope by discussing about it and how WvW is the cornerstone of the game. 

2022, EoD expansion release and Alliance is still waiting on another BETA TESTING. Yet they had the audacity to say they are releasing another expansion. So the excuse for Alliance being delayed was cuz they were working on EoD/PvE content in-between, does that mean the excuse for Alliance being delayed now is because they are working on PvE content and the future expansion?

Players should not need to make excuses for a company, they aren't a newly established group, GW2 isn't a new game. 

As WvW being the cornerstone of the game, the previous patch update I have yet to see WvW changes at all, whether it be balance changes or just overall WvW updates. 

[Xenesis.6389]

1 hour ago, Thei.6901 said:

Meh, I don't think the change of the director is that significant. There are still other people who manage the teams and can influence the decisions. More and more this looks like a carrot on stick.

They've changed directors a couple times after and everything was still stalled. Work apparently doesn't go on without a main direction and those other people probably just fell back to working on living stories until things got figured out. Not until Colin and Josh were brought back those top roles did it seem like stuff started rolling again, namely a new expansion. It's just obvious wvw stuff is side stuff to do in the off times, and will never have full development commitment again. And yes the "cornerstone" was just a carrot to get wvw players excited about an expansion they were getting nothing out of.

Edited August 7, 2022 by Xenesis.6389

[Karagee.6830]

58 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

They've changed directors a couple times after and everything was still stalled. Work apparently doesn't go on without a main direction and those other people probably just fell back to working on living stories until things got figured out. Not until Colin and Josh were brought back those top roles did it seem like stuff started rolling again, namely a new expansion. It's just obvious wvw stuff is side stuff to do in the off times, and will never have full development commitment again. And yes the "cornerstone" was just a carrot to get wvw players excited about an expansion they were getting nothing out of.

All fine and dandy, but in these years they could have just taken a graduate and put him/her to decide links in a vaguely rational way and manage transfers costs dynamically and intelligently, so people would not be as pissed off and dejected by the gross imbalance in numbers we have today.

This was easy to do and they chose not to do it. And they need to understand that if Alliances are years away, we need some hot fix, especially if we don't want to scare away the people who will come from steam. 

Edited August 7, 2022 by Karagee.6830

[Xenesis.6389]

Just now, Karagee.6830 said:

All fine and dandy, but in these years they could have just taken a graduate and put him/her to decide links in a vaguely rational way and manage transfers intelligently, so people would not be as pissed off and dejected by the gross imbalance in numbers we have today.

This was easy to do and they chose not to do it.

Well Raymond Lukes was still working on wvw all this time, so......

But I think people need to realize it's not easy putting together the links as they think it is, they also rejected the idea to help make it easier in the first place, so we really have no one to blame but the players for moving so much. 🤷‍♂️

[Karagee.6830]

7 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Well Raymond Lukes was still working on wvw all this time, so......

But I think people need to realize it's not easy putting together the links as they think it is, they also rejected the idea to help make it easier in the first place, so we really have no one to blame but the players for moving so much. 🤷‍♂️

False problem. The transfers are a direct result of the systems in place and of...the transfer policy. Even with the rest of the systems as is (tiers, links etc), they could have made it impossible or much harder and more expensive to stack via transfers. All they need to do is increasing the cost when people start moving and have some servers (the empty ones) free to transfers to. The average wvw player is cynical and will tell you they don't do this because they would lose revenues, but I think even with higher costs people will still transfer, so I wouldn't be so sure: if you halve the number of bandwagoners because on average you charge double, then the revenues would stay the same. And if you can at least manage to split the transfers in 2 groups to 2 different servers, you would already greatly improve the current situation.

^ this requires almost no coding, just half a brain.

Edited August 7, 2022 by Karagee.6830

[Xenesis.6389]

31 minutes ago, Karagee.6830 said:

False problem. The transfers are a direct result of the systems in place and of...the transfer policy. Even with the rest of the systems as is (tiers, links etc) they could have made it impossible to stack via transfers. All they need to do is increasing the cost when people start moving and have some servers (the empty ones) free to transfers too. The average wvw player is cynical and will tell you they don't do this because they would lose revenues, but I think even with higher costs people will still transfer, but I wouldn't be so sure: if you halve the number of bandwagors because on average you charge double, then the revenues would stay the same. And if you can at least manage to split the transfers in 2 groups to 2 different servers, you would already greatly improve the current situation.

Yeah, sure, not the players fault, it's all anet, they don't have a choice! they forced them to move!

Your idea works if most servers are near the thresholds of populations, but we've had times where near half of them are in the bottom medium levels, so to put an increased cost on those would be pretty stupid and punishing players for late transfers just to be with friends. If you really want to increase the cost, then just increase the flat rate cost of 500 to medium back to 1800 for all.

And no to free transfers, that's what started the destruction of servers in the first place, it was free transfers for the first 6 months of the game that got us stacked servers once people figured out coverage was a thing. Then doing it twice right before tournaments was another stupid move, (so in those instances I'll hand that blame entirely to anet, but that hasn't been done since 2013, the rest is all players who get restless/bored and decide to stack over and over again). I'd only advocate for free transfers when alliances is near ready to launch, then let the movement apocalypse begin.

Purpose of the current transfer charge was to make the lower population servers attractive to move to and maybe help even out the population, relinks wasn't even suppose to last this long, it was a quick temporary measure to help get matchups feeling full again. But players want easy rides so they move to the highest pop server links, HI BG, fight guilds also don't give a kitten about server communities, they have no loyalty but to themselves and allied guilds, they and their entourage are the ones that do most of the transfers today. They move to new servers, recruit what they can, then move in 6 months, leaving a wasteland behind, that's not all anets fault, that's entirely player made.

Anet could control this more strictly by putting high cost and no transfer restrictions like BG 99% of the time, but then we'd get more people complaining about not being with "friends". I'd just wait out for the world restructuring at this point and hope they put a nice high flat rate to move after that, the system should be where we won't have medium/higher worlds, but mostly full/very high worlds, and everyone is mostly auto sorted to be with friends already.

Anet has to build a system like this in the first place to control populations because the players are too dumb, lazy, and greedy to do it themselves.

Edited August 7, 2022 by Xenesis.6389

[JTGuevara.9018]

9 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

It's because of PVE, and a host of other reasons.

World restructuring has been talked about for some time, even back in 2016 they were trying to figure out if other methods such as linking a bunch of smaller servers could work for better populations(idea was rejected in the forums btw), using more smaller pieces would be easier to put together to get within population thresholds of each other.

World restructuring evolved from that and while it was announced in 2018 not much work went into it that year, Raymond posted a couple updates, but it was apparent again that the wvw team had been chopped down in size again after the 2016/17 updates. After that Anet also went through a restructuring, losing a lot of devs while other projects were cancelled.

Then Mike left, leaving Anet to basically restart. So what's the first thing they had to do? jump start their main game in gw2 again,  because they had been coasting on living story for four years already, so they went right back into making a pve focused expansion asap(maybe this was one of the projects in the back that was delayed). So all those years they weren't working on World restructuring, basically it only started last year when a new game director was hired, and boldly claimed wvw is a cornerstone, then put aside again near expansion launch to get that and it's follow up content in order.

And while that's a perfectly understandable excuse as to why it's been delayed so much for so long, it still isn't reasonable that 1/6 of their end game areas(wvw, spvp, fractals, living story, raid, strikes) is completely ignored for so much for so long(meanwhile two were added in the past seven years and now are even top priorities for steam release), while they galivant around in boon balls pretending everything is ok.

Jesus...Anet is such a mess internally...

well...good luck on the Steam release, I guess! Bwahahah..

[RisingDaewn.8703]

Quite simply the games Competitive game modes, haven't been a priority for a long, long time over the years, so the WvW Dev team has shrunk since the early years of the game.

To be honest with you though, 10 years ago when I started playing this game, I never knew WvW existed as a new player, but then I was a low level and grinding levels in PVE, cause that was the only way to level up fast back in the day.

Sure WvW got some updates we really needed like the Reward system, qol and some balance updates which were really needed especially after the expansions bringing more power creep and broken e-specs, but obviously WvW is not nearly as popular as during it's early years, where they would market it and pour alot of resources into, or even how active and populated it used to be 4-5 years ago.

WvW Alliance Timeline : Guildwars2 (reddit.com)

 

Edited August 8, 2022 by CrimsonNeon.6712

[Svarty.8019]

On 8/7/2022 at 12:43 PM, Thei.6901 said:

Why are Alliances not ready yet?

I'd like to see an official response to this reasonable question.

 

[floppypuppy.5789]

The obvious answer is that cornerstones are placed at the bottom.  The bottom of the priority list in this case.

[Knighthonor.4061]

On 8/7/2022 at 7:43 AM, Thei.6901 said:

This is being talked and worked on(supposedly) since 2015, if not even earlier. We are mid 2022 and we get "betas".

Companies make entire MMO's in 5-6 years, Terry David made entire OS from scratch in 10 years ALONE and Anet can't reconstruct a game mode in 7 years?  Maybe just outsource it to some guys in Bangladesh...

 

inb4 thread gets swept under the rug.

its not done, likely because the team is as conflicted about this feature as we are, with many of us also agaisnt this feature since it will break communities and make the game mode even more Guild Locking. 

[Mabi black.1824]

12 hours ago, Knighthonor.4061 said:

its not done, likely because the team is as conflicted about this feature as we are, with many of us also agaisnt this feature since it will break communities and make the game mode even more Guild Locking. 

if only that were the reason. it would only show that in arenanet there are intelligent and wise people. and I don't see any shame in someone changing their minds. I myself if I look at myself as I was 10 years ago, and look at myself now I see a different person, I have changed and many of my ideas have changed with me. if I look back and still see the same person after 10 years then I would be a failure.

so there would be no problems, as I have already said just talk to each other freely and easily player and developer. and maybe it would be a good time to make those 3 or 4 changes (simple and undemanding) to greatly improve the balance and the combinations and consequently the experience for each player of this mode.

[patton the great.7126]

Alliances won't fix the core issues with WvW. We knew in 2015 how useless it was, was just nice to hear anet acknowledge wvw existed. Can't say I expect it to come. Look how they word the "betas"! I mean 4 betas and that's all they have to show for a 7 year old idea? 

Edited August 9, 2022 by patton the great.7126

[Dawdler.8521]

10 minutes ago, patton the great.7126 said:

Alliances won't fix the core issues with WvW

It's true, it does nothing to fix the invisible garri cornerstone.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

On 8/7/2022 at 12:41 PM, Xenesis.6389 said:

And while that's a perfectly understandable excuse as to why it's been delayed so much for so long, it still isn't reasonable that 1/6 of their end game areas(wvw, spvp, fractals, living story, raid, strikes) is completely ignored for so much for so long(meanwhile two were added in the past seven years and now are even top priorities for steam release), while they galivant around in boon balls pretending everything is ok.

Its not just WvW, there have been no significant updates to PvP, Fractals or raids in a handful of years.

 

It seems right now the devs are scrambling to make their old content viable again because they finally realised they can't just keep making infinite new content indefinitely, which is a lesson we thought they learned in LWS1. But I'd imagine no one from that era even remains, so that explains that.

 

You know what though? I agree, they should go back and update old content and make it much more viable not only to new players, but to veterans, because there's already alot of it and adding more things to do will only make the game even more stale than it is, rather than revitalising it, because each new task is one less player available for a different task, so you end up with stuff like one single party listed for a certain type of content in the LFG, if you're lucky, out of hundreds of thousands of players.

 

The population has been stretched like a rubber band. Consider, at release PvE players filled several dozen servers, and now they can't even fill one megaserver, and that's to say nothing of the competitive game modes which are in even worse shape (especially since WvW still lacks megaserver/Alliances).

 

The best thing we need right isn't Guild Wars 3, its Guild Wars 2.0., where everything they've already done is polished and streamlined into a consistent experience.

Edited August 9, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

1 hour ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

It's true, it does nothing to fix the invisible garri cornerstone.

They can't fix that, its what makes WvW a cornerstone of the game. 😛