Jump to content
  • Sign Up

Rose-colored glasses?


Chaba.5410

Recommended Posts

Saw a comment here about how Anet had WvW right many years ago.  It prompted me to post a selection of forum posts from those many years ago (literally 9 years and 11 months ago).  The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess?

"Not being funny but they are ridiculous, our server is frequently matched up against FR and DE servers with twice the population as we do, also on top of that WvWvW is suppose to be a 3 for all for 3 servers against each other, yet. everytime we get 2v1 its getting too frequent to be coincidence, and i could list alot of other problems with your WvW but ill leave that to the rest of the community."

"some servers shouldn’t even be matched up and they still need time to figure out some of this. We have had matches with servers like darkhaven where we stomp them , then 3 days later we get another matchup with them and they beat us badly. Sea of Sorrows shouldn’t even be playing with american servers for example and I think they need to continue to the data for day to day until they have population stability as its no where near stable yet across shards. Also some servers have hours of que times before people can get in so i would not in any way like to see 2 week rotations yet."

"it makes more sense to throw certain matches in the last second so you get placed with even worse people who you can sweep, and then repeat the process over and over to always have max bonuses. This behavior isn’t discouraged b/c there are no rewards for winning or ranking highly in WvW."

"just tried out wvw and the map is huge. only have one spawn point to rez at and thats the beginning. seems everything is a zerg. is this all the pvp gw2 has to offer? im sure its better in a guild. lord it has to be. even the smaller pvp in the mists seems like a big ol zerg fest with no skill involved.
i must be missing something. im sure its better then what i got to see tonight"

"It would be nice to at least see them place some limitations on transferring to higher population servers, such as having to have a contact on that higher server to tranfer there (so people getting it late can still play with friends). You have servers with long queues, and then you have servers like Kaineng without enough people around, yet people still flock to the higher pop servers. Hopefully the reopening of digital sales will help those out on those low pop servers."

"Dear everyone who transfered off of your losing server onto the winning ones….stop crying. Here is a great idea. How about instead of everyone and their mother flocking to like 5 of the most winning server…you stick with your server?!?!?! /Gasp!

Dear anyone out there who iskitten at their long queue. Come to Northern Shiverpeaks! At anytime of the day I can INSTANTLY get into WvWvW. We could really use the help"

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 2
  • Haha 1
  • Confused 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

A few people in this forum are outright Deep In Delusion. It really deserves a stylish meme.

 

The only thing better back then was that there was more players.  WvW itself hasn't changed significantly since HoT (seven years ago?) and even that was just one map and some structural kitten.  Class balance aside.

Edited by floppypuppy.5789
lol, Cee anser is a forbidden word here
  • Like 2
  • Confused 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Saw a comment here about how Anet had WvW right many years ago.  It prompted me to post a selection of forum posts from those many years ago (literally 9 years and 11 months ago).  The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess?

What exactly are you arguing against?

Anet did a lot of things right in WvW.

However, Anet also got many things wrong (like: the bad first version of the Desert Borderland map, poor skill balancing, years of neglecting the game mode, etc. etc.).

And then of course there are things that some like and some don't.

The fact that WvW still exists (after Anet's many mistakes and neglects) is proof that Anet got many things right with WvW originally.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Zok.4956 said:

What exactly are you arguing against?

Anet did a lot of things right in WvW.

However, Anet also got many things wrong (like: the bad first version of the Desert Borderland map, poor skill balancing, years of neglecting the game mode, etc. etc.).

And then of course there are things that some like and some don't.

The fact that WvW still exists (after Anet's many mistakes and neglects) is proof that Anet got many things right with WvW originally.

 

You're right I didn't present context.  There was a comparison being made about WvW between then and now and the restructuring plans, as if back then there weren't all the same problems that exist now.

Everything people complain about now are essentially the same complaints that have been made since launch (the more things change they more they stay the same).  Just because WvW still exists and still has a (much smaller) population playing it, doesn't mean they've fixed any of the structural flaws that was as obvious back then as it is today.

Therefore it's rather absurd to me to use nostalgia for a higher populated past when talking about WvW.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well main issue with these Alliance/Linking systems is that first 3 weeks of matchups you either win almost all skirmishes or can't do anything to stop enemy outscoring you. Of course once you set in your right tier, matchups will be more fair., but that is still unacceptably high percentage of matchups.  Another obvious flaw is that you have no idea which timezone your server is active at as the links change every 2 months and commanders/guilds transfer around more.  Both effects are obviously terrible for WvW. People who only play nighttime or noontime, usually have reasons why they do so.

Nobody is asking to bring "old system back with 27 servers" but bringing old system back with less servers (12 or 15). This way fight groups might transfer to T4-T5 server for 500 gems then climb up having to PPT and increasing overall activity of WvW: Whereas if a group transfers in linking system, they always get considerable population advantage and will win the matchups with just numbers. You would also be more willing to dish out 1800 gems out for a long-term server since the activity there would be more staple instead of almost half population coming from links.

Another issue that nobody speaks about is that even though almost guilds left pug-heavy main servers, those pug-heavy servers are still marked full. Thus they cannot fit any guilds in them even if they wanted to and this reduced fights in WvW since these servers will have no group capable of gathering numbers to fight these guild leads. What I am saying is that existance of links makes the population algorithm messed up overtime as transfers to links reduces the maximum cap of players on a server until no server can be self-sufficient. Linking system was pretty nice when links were max 15% of total population of linking, but we are approaching 40%+ number at this point making timezones very unstable.

Edited by Riba.3271
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Riba.3271 said:

Nobody is asking to bring "old system back with 27 servers" but bringing old system back with less servers (12 or 15).

How can I get you to see how both the "the old system" and server linking are still static server-based teams that are weak to a host of problems caused by population volatility even as far back as the first year of this game?  You want less servers?  That happens automatically with a far more dynamic system that can shrink and grow as total population changes.  I'd rather be able to select the players I want to team with through such a system than be constantly merged with no choices.

Edited by Chaba.5410
  • Confused 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

I'd rather be able to select the players I want to team with through such a system than be constantly merged with no choices.

It is simple, you can select players by being on same server. And you can train players to be as you want by staying on that server. But linking systems have the issue of players constantly changing and ones that do not like you learning to avoid your group.

 

13 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

problems caused by population volatility even as far back as the first year of this game? 

Well large part of the problems was that lowest cost servers were very dead and there were too many tiers to climb for servers. Playerbase was and is too small for 29 servers but can maintain 12. If you start in tier 4, it only takes 3 matchups to climb to tier 1 (Glicko system should stay gone!! yay!). Populations weren't nearly as volatile as back then even though some sides had more players. But that is why they were in highest tier and had staple enemies with understanding of what timezone (and even map) to log in.

Main reason I am for stable servers (no linking or worlds beta) is that entertaining places will be more populated whereas places without open commanders won't be. Link system and alliance linkings are just throwing a dice will you have open commanders where over half the players will get in inactive servers and commanders will have very little reason to tag up since strengthening server or getting points is pretty irrelevant in both systems.

Edited by Riba.3271
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Riba.3271 said:

It is simple, you can select players by being on same server. And you can train players to be as you want by staying on that server. But linking systems have the issue of players constantly changing and ones that do not like you learning to avoid your group.

It sounds simple until that server is full for months and months at a time and you can't play with your guild or family and your friends who you convince to pick up the game recently can't join you.  Choosing to play with your selected guild at the start of every team formation period is even the first most important part of world restructuring that Anet is trying to implement and fix bugs for before progressing onto other functions.  I feel like you're purposely ignoring years worth of complaints about that part of the current design by calling it "simple".

Edited by Chaba.5410
  • Confused 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Riba.3271 said:

Well large part of the problems was that lowest cost servers were very dead and there were too many tiers to climb for servers. Playerbase was and is too small for 29 servers but can maintain 12.

It wasn't because the playerbase was too small.   No no no lol.  Not with the old population being based on the number of accounts logged in at any one time and organized mass-logouts by Full servers like Blackgate so they could "overstack" well beyond the intended sizes.  The playerbase did become small though as people quit rather than put up with that BS.

"Low cost server" didn't mean "low population server".  Not when guilds could transfer upwards for free because they got their fees paid for by organized server communities.  Just send everyone in your guild that auto-clicker to install and leave it running overnight.  Voila!  Next day you're a Blackgate player!  Congratulations on winning!

Edited by Chaba.5410
  • Thanks 1
  • Confused 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Riba.3271 said:

Main reason I am for stable servers (no linking or worlds beta) is that entertaining places will be more populated whereas places without open commanders won't be. Link system and alliance linkings are just throwing a dice will you have open commanders where over half the players will get in inactive servers and commanders will have very little reason to tag up since strengthening server or getting points is pretty irrelevant in both systems.

So your main concern is because of lack of commanders and you became concerned about this because of experience with this beta where they are forming teams only through the average playhours of individuals and guilds and not yet by using other metrics?

Please see:

"The system uses stats like play hours in WvW, commander time and squad size, time of day, and participation levels to create worlds that are balanced. "

 

Edited by Chaba.5410
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Chaba.5410 said:

It sounds simple until that server is full for months and months at a time and you can't play with your guild or family and your friends who you convince to pick up the game recently can't join you. 

Some servers have been full for years mostly because linkings changed population algorithm. There was exodus of several hundreds of people from each high populated servers to links leading to full status being reached with lower and lower population. The servers that didn't lose as many people are essentially the baseline for full status. So by removing link servers, you can fit more players and guilds in your server and there will be more incoming traffic.

1 hour ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Full servers like Blackgate so they could "overstack" well beyond the intended sizes.

Yes, there was SFR on EU and Blackgate on NA. But Jade quarry could give Blackgate run for their money. Exactly same is happening with link system, where Desolation lost only like 1 matchup last linking and Gunnars hold will lose 0 this linking. Full status does nothing these days since people can just transfer to the link so linking system is just worse regarding this matter

1 hour ago, Chaba.5410 said:

"Low cost server" didn't mean "low population server".  Not when guilds could transfer upwards for free because they got their fees paid for by organized server communities. 

Well, this doesn't exactly mean unfair matchmaking if lot of servers in highest tier did the same. Sounds more like guilds had more fights and pugs had more commanders to follow? While scrubs could fight scrubs at lower tiers.

1 hour ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Next day you're a Blackgate player!  Congratulations on winning!

You can do same with link servers (Blackgate still wins everything!). Alliances does fix the population difference but removes any regular timezones, quite a bit of acquitances and reason to log in unless farming bags. Usually you get through hard times with expectations people will get better doing so but as most players change with alliances/links, it is better to just log out.

Each game has people who refuse to lose and will stack a team. Thankfully you could dodge this by finding a comfortable staple server in tier 2 or tier 3.

 

1 hour ago, Chaba.5410 said:

So your main concern is because of lack of commanders and you became concerned about this because of experience with this beta where they are forming teams only through the average playhours of individuals and guilds and not yet by using other metrics?

Please see:

"The system uses stats like play hours in WvW, commander time and squad size, time of day, and participation levels to create worlds that are balanced. "

Obviously if commanders weren't flaky people who often lead a lot some months and very little others, such matchmaking would work.

So main issue with alliances is that you have no way of saying after new alliance linking that the commanders that are supposed to be "linked with you" are gone, whereas you could tell it within your server.

 

For about half commanders main thing that incentivises them to tag up is knowledge there will be similarly skilled activity. For example piken has a daycrew thus you will be aiming to tag up around that time as it will be more fun. With alliances you have to learn it again every 2 months and run maybe dozen raids with nothing to challenge you. So essentially while primetime will most likely not be affected much, other timezones will be more dead as not only is server building irrelevant, it is also unlikely there will be any enemies.

Edited by Riba.3271
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Coldtart.4785 said:

I played during a time when we had "T2 GVG heaven" with SoS v FA v Mag. To say that anything that's happened in wvw since then has been even half as good as that is laughable.

Did you think that all happened just naturally?  It was a purposely engineered situation done by exploiting/abusing everything wrong about the system.  Call it "the server meta".

Much gold passed through my accounts.  Much time I spent talking to guild contacts and other server "leaders" and "FA War Council" and working donation drives to help ensure FA had the necessary coverage to exploit the scoring system.  Several of us T2 servers cleaned out the bottom tier servers pretty good, didn't we?  Who needed server linking when we could just consolidate the playerbase ourselves and who cares about those poor lower tier players?  What an insurmountable "glicko cliff" we created with the help of Anet's WvW tournaments, population methods, and matchmaking!

Edited by Chaba.5410
  • Thanks 2
  • Sad 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Did you think that all happened just naturally?  It was a purposely engineered situation done by exploiting/abusing everything wrong about the system.

The single server system accomoditated that since overstacked servers fought other overstacked servers and stayed in high tiers. Whereas with World linking system (and alliances) the matchups will be completely garbage first 3 weeks. With old system groups had control over going where similarly skilled groups are for fights and faced them more regularly. Of course GvGing, open raiding or following commanders is more enjoyable where you have more options of enemies and allies.

Overall, let people stack. Just keep tiers less as tier 4 won't be completely empty and there is a chance for some servers to climb a few tiers from there with 1-up-1-down instead of taking 3 months of building glicko rating. Overcoming internal server drama and problems actually gives long-term purpose and shouldn't be reset every few months with new players.

20 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

who cares about those poor lower tier players? 

Typically lower tiers had smaller groups and less skilled players, which is something people willingly wanted instead of dealing with tryhards and 5 people showing up to defend a camp. Not everyone wants a 25+ man constant EB crowd on their and enemy side. Having a choice of playing lower tiers or working hard to grow them up, isn't a bad thing.

About glicko system. It was problematic itself and shouldn't be back. I remember spending 2 months on AG+Blacktide winning every matchup trying to go up 2 tiers. It was just impossible to make new servers.

Edited by Riba.3271
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Riba.3271 said:

The single server system accomoditated that since overstacked servers fought other overstacked servers and stayed in high tiers. Whereas with World linking system (and alliances) the matchups will be completely garbage first 3 weeks. With old system groups had control over going where similarly skilled groups are for fights and faced them more regularly. Of course GvGing, open raiding or following commanders is more enjoyable where you have more options of enemies and allies.

What you call "accommodated" is better understood as abusing exploits.  It was not at all healthy for WvW in the long-term.  How many players and guilds did we get to quit from their lower tier servers that ended up in the T3 meat grinder?  Maybe you didn't have this problem in EU because you in EU didn't have so-called "server leaders" working behind the scenes to abuse the system of population and coverage.

Consolidating playstyles onto specific servers in no way gave "more options of enemies and allies".  Do you honestly believe that Maguuma gives more options of enemies?  If that were true why does everyone avoid EBG when facing Maguuma?
 

3 hours ago, Riba.3271 said:

Typically lower tiers had smaller groups and less skilled players, which is something people willingly wanted instead of dealing with tryhards and 5 people showing up to defend a camp. Not everyone wants a 25+ man constant EB crowd on their and enemy side. Having a choice of playing lower tiers or working hard to grow them up, isn't a bad thing.

That's just not true, but an illusion created by the population and coverage nature of WvW.  Tiers never reflected skill and you contradict yourself even by referring to the overstacked servers of the higher tiers.  There was GvG happening down in T8 too.  And zergs.  Want to see my old videos?

Edited by Chaba.5410
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

3 hours ago, Riba.3271 said:

Having a choice of playing lower tiers or working hard to grow them up, isn't a bad thing.

I should add that we also had lower tier servers getting bandwagoned to which triggered more player attrition through the lop-sided match-ups caused as they rose up (too slowly) through the ranks.  That was a bad thing.  Glicko-based rank matchmaking didn't get dumped for no reason.  You're never going to escape that with the old system where entire teams could get stacked rather than ArenaNet placing people on teams and only letting them stack up to 500 players at any one time.  Dumping glicko and limiting stacking mitigates that.

Edited by Chaba.5410
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Riba.3271 said:

With old system groups had control over going where similarly skilled groups are for fights and faced them more regularly.

Alliances give players that control.  Team formation based around additional metrics that have been discussed already and can also be seen in the FAQ do exactly that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Tiers never reflected skill and you contradict yourself even by referring to the overstacked servers of the higher tiers.  There was GvG happening down in T8 too.  And zergs.  Want to see my old videos?

Well while there were skilled individual players, as soon as you dropped through the GvG stack at T2-T3 and my experience when facing T4 servers like Gunnars Hold, Augury Rock and Aurora Glade, they had nothing skilled even if they had large groups. Which wasn't bad, they could slap each other with noodle builds and have lot of fun fights against each other.

 

12 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Alliances give players that control.  Team formation based around additional metrics that have been discussed already and can also be seen in the FAQ do exactly that.

Alliances have issue of giving up any knowledge of what timezone to log in (regarding both allies and enemies) for activity and reason to push through weaker timezones since points and server building won't be a thing. For example in old system GvG guilds chose communities willing to stay T2-T3 for most of the time so they get maximum amount of fights. With Linking and Alliances, any pug nightcrew linked with you would force you to transfer.

17 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

I should add that we also had lower tier servers getting bandwagoned to which triggered more player attrition through the lop-sided match-ups caused as they rose up (too slowly) through the ranks.  That was a bad thing.  Glicko-based rank matchmaking didn't get dumped for no reason.

Yes I already mentioned that glicko system was terrible as even if you won your matchup,  there is a chance you lost glicko points. What I was suggesting was original server system with only 12 servers (renamed or lowest pop ones deleted) and 1-up-1-down matchmaking. This way any group transferring to T4 only needs to win a 2-3 matchups to be in T2 or T1.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...