Alliances are an improvement

[Raychel.9320]

 

6 hours ago, Kit.3798 said:

https://prnt.sc/gohpmQRkEOGu (I am on Aurora Glade)

Reds won 26 out of 32 skirmishes so far and outnumber you everywhere and looking at the scores from other server the situation probably doesnt look any different. The only improvement really are the +100% WXP so you're somehow able to reach "God of WvW" in a considerable time and even that isn't that well executed considering some servers don't have enough players to cap stuff depending on several reasons.

This is the match up I'm in nyzeN7I.jpg (1037×91) (imgur.com) my team (Blue) has won 0 skirmishes and only made it to 2nd place in 6 of them. Either Red or Green will always have an omniblob around hunting down our little groups of pugs that can't do anything to them and even stop us from taking back our side of the map at times. Must be really fun.

This is possibly the most unbalanced week of WvW that I've ever played thus far, so needless to say I'm not all that impressed with alliances if stuff like this can happen.

Edited August 15, 2022 by raychel.9320

[Ronin.4501]

At what point are all the people complaining about their matchups going to realize that this is the BETA for Anet to work on the kinks on their side of things?  This wasn't about putting players in favorable matchups whatsoever.  Yes, there were several guilds/servers who put together "Alliance" guilds for this week's beta, but Anet has no control over that.

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

1 hour ago, raychel.9320 said:

 

This is the match up I'm in nyzeN7I.jpg (1037×91) (imgur.com) my team (Blue) has won 0 skirmishes and only made it to 2nd place in 6 of them. Either Red or Green will always have an omniblob around hunting down our little groups of pugs that can't do anything to them and even stop us from taking back our side of the map at times. Must be really fun.

This is possibly the most unbalanced week of WvW that I've ever played thus far, so needless to say I'm not all that impressed with alliances if stuff like this can happen.

hello there fellow team mate!

so it was not mag, it was BG all along! So how this work, exactly? I mean, why I'm against BG if this thing remove servers? I haven't seen any fighting guild from BG and most of the people I fought were so bad to be from BG plus the massive siege (BG always lose their stuff because literally no one care to put siege) but I think I actually saw a guild from BG.

and I know the only fighting guild in my side is from DB so, they just keep the servers and move some people/guilds randomly or wat the hell is goin on?

[Raychel.9320]

1 hour ago, Ronin.4501 said:

At what point are all the people complaining about their matchups going to realize that this is the BETA for Anet to work on the kinks on their side of things?  This wasn't about putting players in favorable matchups whatsoever.  Yes, there were several guilds/servers who put together "Alliance" guilds for this week's beta, but Anet has no control over that.

Yeah, because betas full of bugs and bad development decisions have never represented the final product in the history of game development, right?  So, instead of talking about it and raising awareness that this is bad now, we should just have faith that Anet knows and is going to "fix it" before release. Although, it isn't uncommon for bad stuff to go from beta to live despite feedback against it in the world of game development either, soooo we'll see.

Edited August 15, 2022 by raychel.9320

[Tessi.2398]

15 hours ago, Ronin.4501 said:

At what point are all the people complaining about their matchups going to realize that this is the BETA for Anet to work on the kinks on their side of things?  This wasn't about putting players in favorable matchups whatsoever.  Yes, there were several guilds/servers who put together "Alliance" guilds for this week's beta, but Anet has no control over that.

At what point are people like you going to realize that Anet also needs the negative feedback aka we, the players that dont enjoy the current beta, to make improvements?

Edited August 16, 2022 by Kit.3798

[Tessi.2398]

17 hours ago, raychel.9320 said:

This is possibly the most unbalanced week of WvW that I've ever played thus far, so needless to say I'm not all that impressed with alliances if stuff like this can happen.

I feel you and also feel the exact same way. Like you can't even make use of the +100% WXP due to the lack of players. My server manages to win 1,2,3 skirmishes a day in the evening due to coordinated squads who know how to fight as a blob. Rest of the day you see like 10 people max

[Skorpis.4372]

I am solo player and before alliances I could join my server public voice squad when ever I like with often full squads of 50 people.

Other than that nothing has changed from my perspective.

Ofcourse I could join a guild, thats what alliance is all about but with my play schedule it is not posible.

[Mabi black.1824]

On 8/15/2022 at 6:28 AM, Dawdler.8521 said:

Ok Anet can reduce the sizes as long as you're the one explaining to 500 man PvE only guilds why you have to randomly kick most of their members by force.

And also in regards to the opposition you could be on a T5 class team meeting two T1 class teams. Do you think that would have worked any better with the normal system?

I'll make two observations here.

1 - why do you associate the guild of 500 pve players with wvw? of that guild , probably if someone likes to play the wvw mode will be able to select his guild or alliance wvw that has nothing to do with his pve companions. and if the new system wants small pieces to build better, then let's make sure that it is really small pieces . 500 active wvw players who punctually take care of selecting their alliance they do not seem to me so small piece of wvw compared to the numbers that wvw has today.

2 - why do you have to associate the old batches of first t1 or t5 with what the new system proposes? with alliance you have teams built from small pieces and therefore very similar, the current system instead usually offers you absurd games, sometimes of great numerical superiority sometimes of great numerical inferiority, so after a week of transfers out of control and after two weeks of lopsided games we finally see the teams with the most similar numbers regroup. 

if even with the new alliance system you predict that you need 3 weeks to put together the most similar teams, then we will have some big problems to solve.

[Mabi black.1824]

I summarize the numbers so far this week only EU.

t1 green k+d 43000

t1 blue k+d 41000

t1 red k+d 45000

 

t2 green k+d 44000

t2 blue k+d 38000

t2 red k+d 42000

 

t3 green k+d 42000

t3 blue k+d 47000

t3 red k+d 35000

 

t4 green k+d 41000

t4 blue k+d 46000

t4 red k+d 42000

 

t5 green k+d 51000

t5 blue k+d 52000

t5 red k+d 39000

 

I'm sure t2 blue - t3 red - t5 red have a bad experience of this beta alliance , if you find them you can correct me if I'm wrong.

we should ask ourselves why, coincidentally they are still 3 teams, like the ones we had before without a link? do we drag on some mistakes?

 

[Zok.4956]

On 8/15/2022 at 5:02 PM, Aeolus.3615 said:

It just depends how Anet does the algorithm for the aliances, alot of hight tier groups  probably will even quit since they cant ktrain at will, IF the algorith puts similiar force during that timezone on the other side.

I do not think that Anet will ever be able to shuffle the players of a team/world for a balanced 24/7 matchup or even for 24h of a day.

The shuffle-algo will continue to use "player-WvW-activity-hours" for a long time and I also don't think Anet will ever be able to balance the teams/worlds to have the same proportions of different  play-styles/activities (GvG fight guilds, publics, roamers, defenders, scouts, etc...).

 

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

I'll make two observations here.

1 - why do you associate the guild of 500 pve players with wvw? of that guild , probably if someone likes to play the wvw mode will be able to select his guild or alliance wvw that has nothing to do with his pve companions. and if the new system wants small pieces to build better, then let's make sure that it is really small pieces . 500 active wvw players who punctually take care of selecting their alliance they do not seem to me so small piece of wvw compared to the numbers that wvw has today.

2 - why do you have to associate the old batches of first t1 or t5 with what the new system proposes? with alliance you have teams built from small pieces and therefore very similar, the current system instead usually offers you absurd games, sometimes of great numerical superiority sometimes of great numerical inferiority, so after a week of transfers out of control and after two weeks of lopsided games we finally see the teams with the most similar numbers regroup. 

if even with the new alliance system you predict that you need 3 weeks to put together the most similar teams, then we will have some big problems to solve.

1) Has absolutely nothing to do with what I quoted. What I quoted was talking about the size of alliances. 500 is the only number that can be cap, otherwise players create guilds (if it's less than 500) or make the entire point of the smaller chunks moot (if it's more than 500). The one I quoted suggested less than 500, which means that the guild size HAVE TO follow suite. And guilds are currently 500. If the alliance cap is 250, guilds have to be 250 as well and you have to forcibly kick half the members in a 500 man guild. GG with that. Whether that guild is in WvW or PvE is irrelevant - guild caps are global.

2) T1-T5 still exist with the world restructure system, there are no changes proposed to that. The difference this week is that we have all teams at 0 ranking. There is no 1 up 1 down. It's just random. Numbers isnt everything, player quality matter as well, not to mention overall coverage, just a single larger night crew in the EU can weigh heavily. Even if  a beta matchup is 2500 vs 2500 vs 2500 on the dot for *perfect* mirrored numbers, one can be a T1 quality team, another can be a T3 quality team and the third can be a T5 quality team. And due to everything being random, they still meet each other. Which team do you think will win that matchup? 

Edited August 16, 2022 by Dawdler.8521

[Mabi black.1824]

13 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

1) Has absolutely nothing to do with what I quoted. What I quoted was talking about the size of alliances. 500 is the only number that can be cap, otherwise players create guilds (if it's less than 500) or make the entire point of the smaller chunks moot (if it's more than 500). The one I quoted suggested less than 500, which means that the guild size HAVE TO follow suite. And guilds are currently 500. If the alliance cap is 250, guilds have to be 250 as well and you have to forcibly kick half the members in a 500 man guild. GG with that. Whether that guild is in WvW or PvE is irrelevant - guild caps are global.

2) T1-T5 still exist with the world restructure system, there are no changes proposed to that. The difference this week is that we have all teams at 0 ranking. There is no 1 up 1 down. It's just random. Numbers isnt everything, player quality matter as well, not to mention overall coverage, just a single larger night crew in the EU can weigh heavily. Even if  a beta matchup is 2500 vs 2500 vs 2500 on the dot for *perfect* mirrored numbers, one can be a T1 quality team, another can be a T3 quality team and the third can be a T5 quality team. And due to everything being random, they still meet each other. Which team do you think will win that matchup? 

yours is a correct and linear reasoning, however I would like to modify it slightly.

1 - if there are guilds of 500 players we give them the opportunity to run all together, they will be randomly assigned to any team, and they will be a nice piece of that team. for all the other guilds, just for example from 50 players each, you would avoid that they can ally all 10 together, and thus get a single piece of 500 but I would prefer to give them a limit of 250 so I have two pieces to be distributed in two different teams. that was my thought.

2 - of course as you say the most skilled, most organized, smartest etc etc. team will win and this is right. the opposite would be wrong. what I wanted to say is that with a very similar flow the 3 teams will have fun right away, already in the first week of play, unlike what we have now.

[Zok.4956]

2 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

why do you have to associate the old batches of first t1 or t5 with what the new system proposes? with alliance you have teams built from small pieces and therefore very similar

Sure, after server/team reshuffeling, the “total sum of WvW player activity time” of all servers/teams at the time of executing the shuffling algorithm will be very close (a lot closer than it is now after a relink). 

But everything else (like different playstyles of players/guilds, player skill and experience, time coverage,...) will still not be balanced and will be like it is now. Anet will even allow bandwagoning/server transfers, if I remember correctly. So there will be overstacked and try-hard servers and others that are not.

Compare three servers (and their biggest and dominating Alliances) where one has a "night-cap-Alliance", one has a "daytime-steamroll-blob-alliance" and the third has a "Gandara-Alliance" (according to some Gandara players, Gandara plays mostly at weekends but not on weekdays) that only plays on weekends. And then you have a server/team that does not have such big and organized main Alliances. The matchups on (and against) these servers would be quite different and unbalanced, like they were before Alliances.

And: The past has shown that players and (big) guilds try to game the system and this will also happen with Alliances.

 

 

 

 

[Mabi black.1824]

3 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

Sure, after server/team reshuffeling, the “total sum of WvW player activity time” of all servers/teams at the time of executing the shuffling algorithm will be very close (a lot closer than it is now after a relink). 

But everything else (like different playstyles of players/guilds, player skill and experience, time coverage,...) will still not be balanced and will be like it is now. Anet will even allow bandwagoning/server transfers, if I remember correctly. So there will be overstacked and try-hard servers and others that are not.

Compare three servers (and their biggest and dominating Alliances) where one has a "night-cap-Alliance", one has a "daytime-steamroll-blob-alliance" and the third has a "Gandara-Alliance" (according to some Gandara players, Gandara plays mostly at weekends but not on weekdays) that only plays on weekends. And then you have a server/team that does not have such big and organized main Alliances. The matchups on (and against) these servers would be quite different and unbalanced, like they were before Alliances.

And: The past has shown that players and (big) guilds try to game the system and this will also happen with Alliances.

 

 

 

 

yes yes you have highlighted some important aspects. getting balanced matches is important and we must make it clear to anet (probably they already know) that it is not enough for us, which for us is the first step, we also want updates for the management of transfers, and we want updates to manage the 24/7 concept that should not be a problem but a feature of this mode. we have given many suggestions. to arenanet it remains only to put all the work.😉

[One more for the road.8950]

42 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

(according to some Gandara players, Gandara plays mostly at weekends but not on weekdays

I guess those Gandaran players aren't around to witness the weekday players as they only play weekends....?

[Ronin.4501]

8 hours ago, Kit.3798 said:

At what point are people like you going to realize that Anet also needs the negative feedback aka we, the players that dont enjoy the current beta, to make improvements?

Whining about your matchup is feedback that Anet can't use to improve the product, it's just whining about your matchup in a beta week that is meaningless as far as the matchups are concerned.

[Ronin.4501]

22 hours ago, raychel.9320 said:

Yeah, because betas full of bugs and bad development decisions have never represented the final product in the history of game development, right?  So, instead of talking about it and raising awareness that this is bad now, we should just have faith that Anet knows and is going to "fix it" before release. Although, it isn't uncommon for bad stuff to go from beta to live despite feedback against it in the world of game development either, soooo we'll see.

Except that what most of the posts on here are complaining about is NOT what Anet is focused on fixing. They were focused on making sure the players who correctly selected their guild were placed in the proper matchups, not "let's make this a fun beta where all the teams are evenly matched 24 hours a day".  Anet can NEVER guarantee that the matchups will be 100% evenly balanced until players start making WvW like a real-life job where they HAVE to be online and in WvW from time X to time Y.  A lot of these matchups already seem unbalanced because the players who didn't select a guild initially and got placed on a random server decided already that this week would be no fun and bailed.

[enkidu.5937]

1 hour ago, Zok.4956 said:

Compare three servers (and their biggest and dominating Alliances) where one has a "night-cap-Alliance", one has a "daytime-steamroll-blob-alliance" and the third has a "Gandara-Alliance" (according to some Gandara players, Gandara plays mostly at weekends but not on weekdays) that only plays on weekends. And then you have a server/team that does not have such big and organized main Alliances. The matchups on (and against) these servers would be quite different and unbalanced, like they were before Alliances.

And: The past has shown that players and (big) guilds try to game the system and this will also happen with Alliances.

Take 500 players that have 2 accounts. Make 2 Alliances, 1 for main account, 1 for second account. Switch between alliances whenever your matchup is not in your favor.

 

In the current system, this is hard to do, because you would have to make all those players transfer their accounts to the same server. That costs gems and needs coordination. But with alliances . . . klick, klick, done 😝

[Tessi.2398]

16 hours ago, Ronin.4501 said:

Whining about your matchup is feedback that Anet can't use to improve the product, it's just whining about your matchup in a beta week that is meaningless as far as the matchups are concerned.

Whining? My guy, I honestly couldn't care less how well you take my criticism or not. I stated several times by now that some servers seem to be outnumbered and that the playerforce is kinda unequal throughout the day and you come up with what-not theories about why it could be like this when all I am stating is how the beta feels like. I dont need your "oh but maybe anet did..", "or maybe you didn't..". it's really not helping in this situation. anyways, last reply you will see from me regarding this topic.

Edited August 17, 2022 by Kit.3798

[Mabi black.1824]

On 8/16/2022 at 6:54 PM, Ronin.4501 said:

Whining about your matchup is feedback that Anet can't use to improve the product, it's just whining about your matchup in a beta week that is meaningless as far as the matchups are concerned.

no one is complaining, or at least if I complain it is to tell you that in what I see, I see problems and therefore write it here, with the hope that your report can help improve the work and the result of development.

in this regard what I have seen so far in the beta worries me. in so many years I have never seen on my server fall a t3 garri without a call, it could arrive late or it could be a surprise attack, but these days it has happened several times, and the players do not care so much, that the first comment they have taken garri t3 comes after 15/20 minutes if it arrives. if we think / believe to give motivation or stimulate the player or to get better content . Why? What for? in the name of my guild? in the name of your guild? for your covenant or for my covenant? two months in one team and 2 months in another team. I'm afraid that to solve a problem we are creating a bigger one.

[Zok.4956]

On 8/16/2022 at 7:01 PM, Ronin.4501 said:

Except that what most of the posts on here are complaining about is NOT what Anet is focused on fixing. They were focused on making sure the players who correctly selected their guild were placed in the proper matchups, not "let's make this a fun beta where all the teams are evenly matched 24 hours a day". 

Anet wrote (1,2) : "We hope to test a new internal deployment system that automates many aspects of executing a World Restructuring beta, including the steps involved in team creation and matchmaking." and  "We’ve reduced the likelihood that players will be placed on the incorrect team or realm"

To test both, the beta would only need to last a few hours, not a full week. Make a data dump, start the placing/assigning algorithm, make another data dump, ask for player feedback (and check both data dumps) if there are player assignment errors, stop beta on production servers and continue to examine the player feedback and the data dumps.

In a good dev environment they would test all of this on a separate (identical) staging/testbed system with a copy of the live data. But I guess this ship had sailed for Anet because the "technical debt" of Anets software seems to be too high for this.

They also wrote (3):  "We’ve implemented bug fixes and mitigations for the “queue bug.”"

To test this, there is no Alliance beta required. Sure, with the beta some servers have big queues to stress test the bug fix but this can also be tested without a beta on servers that do have bigger queues. Or maybe a weekend with triple-wxp and some extra participation bonus/loot to increase the population would be enough to stress test the bug fix. But no need for a week long Alliance beta.

 

[Mabi black.1824]

22 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

To test both, the beta would only need to last a few hours, not a full week.

I do not agree with this, I am grateful that these tests last all week so my eyes can see how people react. on the first and second day I could see a lot of enthusiasm and I put the tag where there was not to make group defend more effectively. on the third day I began to wonder why I have to defend anything. on the fourth day I began to say that every glida goes for his own facts no interest in others. 

indeed if you see another faction in difficulty it is perhaps better so you waste all those useless comments in the ciat. on the fifth day I no longer put the tag.

it is perhaps better that the next betas last even two or three weeks, so we can look well in the face and all those problems that this game mode could have in the future.

[Zok.4956]

53 minutes ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

I do not agree with this,

So you don't agree with my statement that a technical test for the two backend systems Anet and I quoted would not require a full week Alliance Beta? Or did you misunderstood what I wrote?

 

57 minutes ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

I am grateful that these tests last all week so my eyes can see how people react. on the first and second day I could see a lot of enthusiasm and I put the tag where there was not to make group defend more effectively. on the third day I began to wonder why I have to defend anything. on the fourth day I began to say that every glida goes for his own facts no interest in others.

Maybe you should answer that to the players who stated that this beta test is only about testing the backend systems.

 

1 hour ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

it is perhaps better that the next betas last even two or three weeks, so we can look well in the face and all those problems that this game mode could have in the future.

Whether it makes sense depends on what Anet really wants to achieve with these "Alliance Betas".  It could be "We make an Alliance beta as proof that we are still working on this" or "We don't want to build good and expensive internal testing and staging systems for WvW alliances so we use our customers as guinea pigs and call our internal Alpha-tests just public Beta-Tests", or something else...

 

[misterman.1530]

On 8/13/2022 at 7:30 AM, Riba.3271 said:

Honestly alliances are fun: lot of action and everyone gets kills since people can't stack empty servers and leave some servers underpopulated. Alliances also allow guilds splintered across servers to group up in WvW together without large investment.

 

Somehow our beta linking doesn't have any other voice commanders though? Am I really forced to socialize and recruit some? 😱

What Alliances? The randomly-generated ones from Anet? Because that's all we've had. It's horrible. Stopped for the week because am tired of being constantly outnumbered. 

[Grim West.3194]

This alliance run has been fun. Didn't have much time to play but enjoyed it. Tons of people playing, lots of action, even during mid week.

 

In a small guild so we are in an alliance with guilds I've never heard of. Thought I knew most of the major guilds since I've been playing off and on since launch and never transferred. Apparently not. It's cool to see all of the new players too.

 

Once the shiny wears off, alliances will have their own issues. But for now it's been a great experience.

Edited August 20, 2022 by Grim West.3194