Current server system is so bad and future is looking bleak

[godfat.2604]

5 minutes ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

this is something we must all think about together. with the new alliance mechanic we will get very similar teams, all teams will be very similar, you will no longer see full servers or empty servers, the alliance goal is to have + or - equal teams so that is what we will have. somewhere they have communicated that they are considering a small margin of 5% of free space to allow the movement of the latest arrivals or for those who have not connected for a few months etc etc. so with the new mechanic if you want to allow the displacement of an entire alliance of 200 or 300 players you need to define how to do it

I agree, and I think at the beginning of the new worlds (let’s still call them worlds because alliance is ambiguous in this case), when the populations are all the same, it means all the worlds are full, so I would suggest we cannot transfer to anywhere at that time. I think it’s fine to have some margin for individuals as they stated as well.

I only brought up being able to transfer, is based on keeping the same world for a whole year. Population is dynamic, it won’t be the same day by day, week by week, not to mention a whole year. That’s when there can have lower population servers that can be open for transferring to.

This actually means the technique “hibernation” will still be effective… however I don’t think there’s a good way to counter hibernation. We don’t really know if players are really not playing, or intentionally tanking unless humans are paying the attention, which we can make wrong judgement call as well. It’s also fair if people stop playing when it’s not fun anymore, and after hibernation a lot of new players joined, they come back from hibernation that’s also fair because now it can be fun.

One way to counter this would be, when we determine that a player doesn’t play for some time, we can drop them from the current server because they’re not counted into the population anymore, so it makes sense to drop them. However I seemed to recall that Anet did state many years ago that it’s also not fair to kick people out of their server/community if they’re not playing for some time… Again this why I said it would be very similar to the very original design without linking, it’s just that we restart over every year or so. I do think the original design was fine, it’s just that we lost too much population and we seriously need to rebalance everything (by shutting/merging/reshuffling servers), and Anet refused to do so.

Alliances, will just be a mean for a group of people can stick together when the times come to reshuffle. Also, I don’t think it’s really an issue if there are some lower population servers. Leaderboard and match making can come into play, and I know there were players actually preferred to play in a lower population server so roamers can make more impact. I am not sure if they’re still around anymore though. Maybe they all quit when we have links in play.

[Strider Pj.2193]

5 hours ago, godfat.2604 said:

I agree, and I think at the beginning of the new worlds (let’s still call them worlds because alliance is ambiguous in this case), when the populations are all the same, it means all the worlds are full, so I would suggest we cannot transfer to anywhere at that time. I think it’s fine to have some margin for individuals as they stated as well.

I only brought up being able to transfer, is based on keeping the same world for a whole year. Population is dynamic, it won’t be the same day by day, week by week, not to mention a whole year. That’s when there can have lower population servers that can be open for transferring to.

This actually means the technique “hibernation” will still be effective… however I don’t think there’s a good way to counter hibernation. We don’t really know if players are really not playing, or intentionally tanking unless humans are paying the attention, which we can make wrong judgement call as well. It’s also fair if people stop playing when it’s not fun anymore, and after hibernation a lot of new players joined, they come back from hibernation that’s also fair because now it can be fun.

One way to counter this would be, when we determine that a player doesn’t play for some time, we can drop them from the current server because they’re not counted into the population anymore, so it makes sense to drop them. However I seemed to recall that Anet did state many years ago that it’s also not fair to kick people out of their server/community if they’re not playing for some time… Again this why I said it would be very similar to the very original design without linking, it’s just that we restart over every year or so. I do think the original design was fine, it’s just that we lost too much population and we seriously need to rebalance everything (by shutting/merging/reshuffling servers), and Anet refused to do so.

Alliances, will just be a mean for a group of people can stick together when the times come to reshuffle. Also, I don’t think it’s really an issue if there are some lower population servers. Leaderboard and match making can come into play, and I know there were players actually preferred to play in a lower population server so roamers can make more impact. I am not sure if they’re still around anymore though. Maybe they all quit when we have links in play.

Well..  they WILL still be called worlds.  An alliance will be (per their communication) almost 20% of that world.  There may also be one other alliance on the world as wel.  The remainder will be unaffiliated  guilds and individual players filling in the last 60% (ish)

 

Dropping a player from an alliance won’t remove them from the world until the next 8 week period (current linking period was noted to be the length of each world formation). And even then, depending on the shuffle process those players may still be on the alliances world that dropped them.  
 

The proposed system that they are working towards would allow guilds to recruit new players though with the new player being able to join the during the next world formation phase.

[Dawdler.8521]

3 hours ago, Strider Pj.2193 said:

Well..  they WILL still be called worlds.

*Teams

[Strider Pj.2193]

57 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

*Teams

No.,  Worlds

Restructuring Worlds

Even though world linking has brought world populations closer together, it is impossible for us to get populations and coverage any closer because the current worlds do not give us the granularity needed to do that. For example in NA, Blackgate has decent coverage across all time zones whereas worlds like Crystal Desert have higher peak times and lower off-hour times. Because world linking isn't granular enough, we don't have the ideal link that allows Crystal Desert to have coverage that is similar to Blackgate.

This is why, in the new World Restructuring system, we will remove all players from their current worlds, and make new worlds every eight weeks. This will create more granular pieces, which allow us to avoid situations like the Crystal Desert example.

[Odin.6487]

your title makes it seem like you are surprised. 

 

anet has trouble doing very basic things that other studios interns can do. the only reason this game is alive is because the combat system is top notch. 

[SFShinigami.1572]

On 8/31/2022 at 12:03 PM, Karagee.6830 said:

Are you the evil snowman commander?

 

o/

[Dawdler.8521]

11 hours ago, Strider Pj.2193 said:

No.,  Worlds

 

Restructuring Worlds

Even though world linking has brought world populations closer together, it is impossible for us to get populations and coverage any closer because the current worlds do not give us the granularity needed to do that. For example in NA, Blackgate has decent coverage across all time zones whereas worlds like Crystal Desert have higher peak times and lower off-hour times. Because world linking isn't granular enough, we don't have the ideal link that allows Crystal Desert to have coverage that is similar to Blackgate.

This is why, in the new World Restructuring system, we will remove all players from their current worlds, and make new worlds every eight weeks. This will create more granular pieces, which allow us to avoid situations like the Crystal Desert example.

Even Anet mixes team and world as one ("balance teams", "team assignments", "move players onto teams", "change teams", "world creation builds teams") and the betas has only ever refered to the new groupings as teams ingame, not worlds.

So basicly whatever but also yes, teams 😛 

Heck even the last beta announcement mixed in a THIRD nomenclature: "We’ve reduced the likelihood that players will be placed on the incorrect team or realm"

Edited September 3, 2022 by Dawdler.8521

[Riba.3271]

Honestly, I think the people who are for alliances underestimate how little most people communicate or play the gamemode.

What do you think will happen if your favorite commanders will take over 3 months break from the game and comes back surrounded by strangers? Will he even contact you and even if does, will you tell him to spend 20 euros to transfer to their alliance linking just so he can play maximum 10 hours a week with your alliance as there won't be any pugmanding?

Alliances just do not work because people will quit the game rather than wait couple of weeks for a new alliance linking. They want to play today, not in 2 weeks.

Of course trusting game developers to arrange activity for everyone is a weight off your shoulders but unfortunately only person you can trust is yourself, and even if anet throws every server "30 hours of pug commanders" and couple of guilds, half of those pug commanders and guilds will be having a break and won't command or maybe might instead be leading in different language. It will truly be land of idiots as no one will have reason to change as the people critising will be gone after a few weeks... And no one within alliance can critize you acting like a toddler with dirty diapers or 13 year old edgelord as you can just get them kicked.

What I have been trying to say is that stability of servers is good. Having 20 percent of your server being regular that requires you and people you're allianced with to be active, really isn't a great system that incentivises you to reach out to anyone or be reached out by. Of course no one wants WvW to be dead but if we had few enough single servers, we could have active WvW with stable population and goals as a community. Reason to log in even when alone or a new player, that is.

Edited September 3, 2022 by Riba.3271

[Strider Pj.2193]

1 hour ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Even Anet mixes team and world as one ("balance teams", "team assignments", "move players onto teams", "change teams", "world creation builds teams") and the betas has only ever refered to the new groupings as teams ingame, not worlds.

So basicly whatever but also yes, teams 😛 

Heck even the last beta announcement mixed in a THIRD nomenclature: "We’ve reduced the likelihood that players will be placed on the incorrect team or realm"

🙂

 

Definitely true when talking about the betas.  (Which, that communication has led to a lot of people being able to be misleading about what world restructuring is). 
 

But as the betas have been about ensuring you are with the guild that you have selected and not about joining actual guilds together in an alliance, the term ‘teams’ is much more appropriate.  
 

When (or maybe I should say ‘if’ lol) we get to actual alliance formation in the beta process then maybe they’ll change their language.

 

Or…. Well, let’s face it, I still have reservations about them following through with this, Including that our current overlords developers actually know what they want to do with it.

[Mabi black.1824]

On 9/3/2022 at 12:33 PM, Riba.3271 said:

Alliances just do not work because people will quit the game rather than wait couple of weeks for a new alliance linking. They want to play today, not in 2 weeks

the point is not that alliances do not work, in fact the goal of alliances is to have very similar teams and I think it will work very well in this regard. it's everything else that is missing, or maybe only missing us because arenanet has already thought and planned everything else. it is as if you have a beautiful new frame, now you have to paint the picture in it.

someone imagined that the new worlds/teams could be built with a couple of alliances for 40% and guilds and players for the remaining 60%. the obtuse vision of that 40% might not care, but for the remaining 60% you have to build a common goal, stimulate their competition, give them a reason to commit in the long term. if you don't you simply lose them all on the way, maybe little by little, but for sure they will all become invisible.

or maybe that will be just my end.

Edited September 5, 2022 by Mabi black.1824

[Aeolus.3615]

On 9/3/2022 at 10:35 AM, Dawdler.8521 said:

Heck even the last beta announcement mixed in a THIRD nomenclature: "We’ve reduced the likelihood that players will be placed on the incorrect team or realm"

Actually that happened to alot of players still on the last beta, to my guild inclusive and  we all rep 100% the same guild tho.

By talking to the other players that had the same issue when it happens is guild  based and not a individual problem.

Edited September 5, 2022 by Aeolus.3615

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Aeolus.3615 said:

Actually that happened to alot of players still on the last beta, to my guild inclusive and  we all rep 100% the same guild tho.

Team placement have nothing to do with guild rep tho.

[Cyninja.2954]

4 hours ago, Aeolus.3615 said:

Actually that happened to alot of players still on the last beta, to my guild inclusive and  we all rep 100% the same guild tho.

By talking to the other players that had the same issue when it happens is guild  based and not a individual problem.

 

Players need to make sure they select the correct guild for the beta match-up. Which guild is being reped is inconsequential to this.

 

There was a special selection window to toggle a choice (and yes, that too had bugs which have been getting fixed).

[Aeolus.3615]

21 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

 

Players need to make sure they select the correct guild for the beta match-up. Which guild is being reped is inconsequential to this.

 

There was a special selection window to toggle a choice (and yes, that too had bugs which have been getting fixed).

 I am just talking about players that rarelly swap tag's or just represent one guild, but yeah there were those that  didnt choose the guild to represent in wvw  in time as well.

[Strider Pj.2193]

4 hours ago, Aeolus.3615 said:

 I am just talking about players that rarelly swap tag's or just represent one guild, but yeah there were those that  didnt choose the guild to represent in wvw  in time as well.

It’s not representing a guild though.  There is a tab on the WvW screen that gets added as we get closer to a beta where you check a box for the guild.  It has nothing to do with the guild panel menu.

 

 

 

this thread has the image needed.

Edited September 5, 2022 by Strider Pj.2193

[Chaba.5410]

On 8/31/2022 at 2:20 PM, Riba.3271 said:

There were propably lot of willing players at lower tiers but no commanders or groups that could the critical mass of players to sustain income of more players. If we keep 1-up-1-down and reduce amount of servers, it will be vastly better than having links with transfer sprees and lopsided matchups every 2 months

World Restructuring is a dymanic system that grows and shrinks the number of teams in order to create a critical mass of players on each team.  It is superior to the static server system.

Edited September 6, 2022 by Chaba.5410

[enkidu.5937]

Yesterday’s episode of „Players and Devs” . . .

 

Reasonable playerbase:

“Please restrict server transfers to 2 weeks before relink. Matchmaking will be so great! Its easy.”

 

Devs in a bubble:

“Why not introduce alliances, so players can jump between teams, stack their accounts and create their own matchmaking. And lets delete all server communities and give this completely into the hands of the players as well.”

 

Reasonable playerbase:

. . . 😗

 

So stay tuned for our next episodes of „Players and Devs” !

Today at 4 pm:

Blue alliance “Fightclub leet” meets for a private raid with private voice chat, to dominate the maps and farm a kittenton of lootbags out of random newbies and PvElers.

Wednesday 1 to 9 am:

Green alliance “NightwatchFlip” spreads over off-hours, to completely dominate the warscore.

Thursday at 6 pm:

Red alliance “Ktrain4life” switches to their alt accounts, because a juicy random blob has been sighted on EBG in a different matchup.

 

Friday at 7 pm:

The grand season’s final 🤩 Devs wonder why matchups have ended in a complete mess . . . and decide to introduce a new warclaw skin to make everybody happy again.

[Mabi black.1824]

8 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

World Restructuring is a dymanic system that grows and shrinks the number of teams in order to create a critical mass of players on each team.  It is superior to the static server system.

I totally agree with you on this. and I am absolutely convinced that the new system will build teams that are very similar and much better than anything we have seen before starting from day 1. what I miss is everything else.

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, enkidu.5937 said:

 Today at 4 pm:

 

Blue alliance “Fightclub leet” meets for a private raid with private voice chat, to dominate the maps and farm a kittenton of lootbags out of random newbies and PvElers.

 

 

Wednesday 1 to 9 am:

 

Green alliance “NightwatchFlip” spreads over off-hours, to completely dominate the warscore.

 

 

Thursday at 6 pm:

 

Red alliance “Ktrain4life” switches to their alt accounts, because a juicy random blob has been sighted on EBG in a different matchup.

 

 

Friday at 7 pm:

 

The grand season’s final 🤩 Devs wonder why matchups have ended in a complete mess . . . and decide to introduce a new warclaw skin to make everybody happy again.

 

Yeah you're right the current system you describe is pretty meh.

[enkidu.5937]

2 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

I am absolutely convinced that the new system will build teams that are very similar

No its the exact opposite. There will be alliances with 500 ppl that play PPT during the off-hours. How do you want to compensate that? Do you want to give every team an off-hour PPT alliance (or equal force of randoms)? No chance, cause there are not enough.

 

 Or compensate every PPTler with a useless PPKler? Oh, the PPTlers will love that 😁 The better they score, the worse will be their teammates that Anet links them with 😝

 

Other alliances will just do open field blobbing and don't care about PPT and winning at all. Then there will be Karma train alliances, double account Alliances and so on.

 

Alliance X has an alliance blob raid every day at 5 pm and 10 pm (and guild raids between). And you compenaste this with what? How do you want to avoid that Alliance X will dominate their time zone in every match? Give every team a similar Alliance X (or equal force of randoms)? No chance, cause there are not enough.

 

Anet is about to create the total balance nightmare. Matches will still be onesided scorewise, and on top we will have more imbalace in time zones that in the current system. Because a significant amount of ppl just want to brain-afk dominate and Anet will make it much easier for them.

[Mabi black.1824]

1 hour ago, enkidu.5937 said:

No its the exact opposite. There will be alliances with 500 ppl that play PPT during the off-hours. How do you want to compensate that? Do you want to give every team an off-hour PPT alliance (or equal force of randoms)? No chance, cause there are not enough.

your reasoning does not convince me enkidu, let's try to make the point. the alliance system redistributes us all, in the most similar way possible, in terms of number of players, activity and flow. with the current system they told us and all of us have also seen it, that we can get differences that reach up to 50% . with the new mechanics we will not see this stuff anymore.

 

it is clear that we will continue to see moments of superiority and moments of inferiority during the day but this is normal, 24/7 is a feature of wvw , alliances do not provide for changes to this, it is something that goes further, if anet wants to make the competition more beautiful should choose how to control this feature, the regulator is arenanet , choose your rules and that they are the same for everyone,   so you make the competition even more truthful, more beautiful, more engaging.

 

as for the speech of the alt account I do not really know what to recommend but I imagine that even here we need rules from arenanet, if and when it will have the time and the will to do it, nothing to do with alliances yet.

 

in the end, to win the game both ppt and ppk are useful if only those different groups had a common goal. the real problem is that everyone will think about his little green lawn, no one will look at the neighbor's lawn, each one on his way, so every 8 weeks they will be assigned elsewhere.

Edited September 6, 2022 by Mabi black.1824

[TheQuickFox.3826]

It's time to put the alliances out of beta and onto the live servers. Not because it is bugfree but because this will force the devs to keep working on it with continued updates. And the last beta's went quite well.

[enkidu.5937]

14 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

with the current system they told us and all of us have also seen it, that we can get differences that reach up to 50%

That just shows the confusion of the Devs. They think they can balance with statistics on paper. How can they really believe that current problems can be solved by replacing "high pop server + low pop server" with "alliances + randoms" ! That will create an even higher gap. Or do you expect that a bunch of complete randoms can fight an alliance raid?

 

Look at the current matches: There are lots of matches where at least 2 teams are very close in score. How could you expect more in a game where matches run for a whole week? Where differences in teams are snowballing due to structures upgrading to T3 -> harder to take, more score tick. Where the stronger teams usually focus on the weakest team (instead, the two weaker should unite vs. the stringest).

 

When you link the strongest servers with the weakest and so on, it is absolutely impossible to reach a 50% difference on paper between 2 teams. Instead, you can have a difference of much more than 50% of activity during a single match (e. g. tier tanking). And an even higher difference during a specific time zone. And with alliances, Anet even facilitates those things like time zone stacking.

 

14 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

with the new mechanics we will not see this stuff anymore.

Oh, so let’s check the current problems that lead to onesided situations. None of them are caused by server linking. In fact, the current system makes it quite hard for people to exploit matchmaking, because mass transfers and stacking twink accounts currently requires the people to be willing to abandon their server, to coordinate in a transfer, to pay for the transfer.

 

 

Top 1 problem: Time zone stacking

-> The new alliance system will make this easier. The no. 1 theme of most alliances will be the time zone, so of course people will stack together with other people that play during the same time zone. That’s super bad news.

 

Top 2 problem: snowballing / people leave when they face a stronger enemy

-> The new alliance system will make this much more worse. Totally random players vs. highly organized and stacked alliances? Oh boy.

 

Top 3 problem: Server stacking directly after relink

-> The new alliance system will make all of this easier. (Depending on the final version, maybe mass transfers will just be replaced by account hopping.)

 

So, ofc there are problems with the current system. But they are not caused by server linking and as a consequence they will not be solved by replacing "high pop server + low pop server" with "alliances + randoms". It will make it worse, because instead of "server-based public zerg vs. public zerg" we will have "alliance raid" vs. complete randoms.

Edited September 7, 2022 by enkidu.5937

[enkidu.5937]

PS: @ Mabi black

 

I mean, when we look at that number of up to 50% difference, it tells us that letting players group in servers and link them works actually great [sic]. It’s definitely not what causes the issues.

 

On 9/22/2021 at 3:35 AM, Josh Davis.7865 said:

For context, in the existing World and World Linking system, we could see as much as a 50% difference in player activity between the largest and smallest worlds. In the new system, when sorting individual players we were able to balance each server to within .007% of each other, even when accounting for languages.

 

So, up to 50% difference in activity means e. g.: there is a match where Red has 80 players online (on average over the whole week), Blue has 100 and Green has 120. And that is the most extreme server linking that Anet has ever seen??? Sorry, I’m not shocked at all. So, in the following weeks, Red would go a tier down, green a tier up, and the following matches would be balanced even better.

 

I’m excited to hear, why the kitten do they want to remove this system of servers and linking?!?! 😗

 

You can even opt the current system with super easy improvements, e. g.:

- allow transfers only the last 2 weeks before relink

- or at least allow only a small contingent of transfers of lets say 100 players outside of this transfer window

- add 3 new servers to EU, to increase granularity and at least provide every server with a link

- or give players the choice, either to form an alliance, or to stay in their non-player-controlled servers (to preserve their 10-years-old communities), or to just go as a unaffiliated random player

-> so, Anet would have great granularity and can link alliances with servers and randoms

 

Just disable transfers for 4 weeks after relink, why the kitten did Anet not even test that!?! Why did they instead just decided to completely remove servers?! Sorry, but that’s just insane incompetence. 😏

Edited September 7, 2022 by enkidu.5937

[Dawdler.8521]

21 hours ago, enkidu.5937 said:

No its the exact opposite. There will be alliances with 500 ppl that play PPT during the off-hours. How do you want to compensate that? Do you want to give every team an off-hour PPT alliance (or equal force of randoms)? No chance, cause there are not enough.

What do you mean by how? The skirmish system was adjusted to compensate for this like half a decade ago. 2h during the night is worth the same as 2h in prime which is worth the same as 2h during any of the 12 skirmishes in 24h.

The result no matter how much "bad" PPT you do is... your team wins. Goes 1 up. Meet new enemies. Maybe win, maybe loose. Because you know other teams does the same.

Thats how WvW work.