Is WvW meant to be unbalanced?

[Chie.3061]

It feels like there are no effective handicaps to balance fighting against larger servers that end up outnumbering your team by 60+ players.

 

  As far as i'm aware the only thing world choice affects is the team you play with in WvW but that system seems to guide people into playing servers that just play WvW the most to stomp the servers with less people that play WvW. 

 

I don't understand if there is a mechanic you can engage with when you are outnumbered threefold or if its just left like this on purpose.

 

I get that it's called world vs world so it makes total sense to have teams be based on worlds but to me that feels like a huge detriment to the fun the of mode just to preserve the name. Having a game mode that fundamentally leads to imbalanced teams just doesn't make sense to me. 

Edited October 9, 2022 by Chie.3061

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

They're trying to fix it with Alliances, but its still in beta testing.

[Chie.3061]

1 minute ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

They're trying to fix it with Alliances, but its still in beta testing.

Ah thats great to hear, thanks for the heads up. I only recently joined but i'm glad there is an effort for things to change. 

[TheGrimm.5624]

1 minute ago, Chie.3061 said:

Ah thats great to hear, thanks for the heads up. I only recently joined but i'm glad there is an effort for things to change. 

 

Welcome to GW2, the Mist Wars and the Forum Wars! Make sure you are strapped in, you might be in for a bumpy ride. Good hunting!

[TheGrimm.5624]

6 minutes ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

They're trying to fix it with Alliances, but its still in beta testing.

 

Spot on here, but bear in mind equal numbers may not account for coverage time. As Mariyuuna said they are working on that and we have a beta for some of the coding next week that you might have gotten an ingame mail about (Thanks ANet that is a positive change). We might get a website post on what's being tested as well next week before the event starts on Friday but there are also previous ones that you can find on this subforum or the main site as well.  

[Xenesis.6389]

8 minutes ago, Chie.3061 said:

It feels like there are no effective handicaps to balance fighting against larger servers that end up outnumbering your team by 60+ players.

 

  As far as i'm aware the only thing world choice affects is the team you play with in WvW but that system seems to guide people into playing servers that just play WvW the most to stomp the servers with less people that play WvW. 

 

I don't understand if there is a mechanic you can engage with when you are outnumbered threefold or if its just left like this on purpose. 

It's a game mode that runs 24/7, there's going to be gap times with different time zones from around the world, plus not all servers have have equal players that play equal times, fairly hard to do when thousands of players are involved in a large scale player mode.

There are no helpful mechanics for being outnumbered, there's siegerazor but really only helpful for taking a tower which a zerg can easily deal with, there's bloodlust and guild claims for extra stats, but really does nothing against pure player numbers.

Just have to weather the storm, play on another map and try to find more similar numbers to fight. There are unfortunately circumstances that do lead to snowballing on a weaker server, and that goes back to the points system, and everyone wants easy kills and points.

World restructuring is being worked on to help level out population a little more, in fact another beta is starting on friday and running for a week, populations should be a little move spread out, but still expect the fat map queue boon ball groups around. 🤷‍♂️

[Sviel.7493]

There are, technically, mechanics that allow underpopulated servers to at least play the game.  For example, the siege system theoretically allows a small group of defenders to slow down a large enemy group.  They can't stop them entirely because defense is limited by Supply, but the idea is that they slow them down long enough that their allies elsewhere can take objectives or show up to reinforce them. 

The effectiveness of these mechanics varies depending on the map you're playing.  On Eternal BattleGrounds (EBG) or Alpine BorderLand (ABL), they were very poorly implemented.  The newest map, Desert BorderLands (DBL) allows for much more robust defensive play.  No matter how large a group of enemies is, they aren't breaking anything quickly if their Supply has been drained and they can't build siege.

However, due to things I won't talk your ear off about unprompted, there's been a steady shift towards intensifying the inevitablity of zergs.  Even some things that were intended as defensive advantages, like Shield Generators, are primarily used offensively instead.  Anet then saw fit to increase siege vs. wall damage, decrease siege vs. siege damage and nerf the health/defense of walls and gates.

It's still possible to harass a common zerg to the point where you can occasionally defend things while outnumbered.  This is more or less all I do when I log on.  It only really works on DBL, at this point, but could work a bit on ABL if half a dozen people or so really tried to make it happen.  Anet will likely make some changes (for better or worse) in this area eventually, but they're currently holding off on almost everything until the Alliance update is finished.

[Thomas.2564]

I honestly fail to see how the alliances are gonna change anything about the ubalance in wvw. Since all the banwaggon gullds and their fanboys, who just wanna push w and 1 push on EB, will most likely just make one alliance and keep doing what they'ev always done. That's what i think anyway. Its just the way it is, and its not something u can really blame anet for. This is just the sad reallity of how most ppl wanna "fight" these days. 

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Chie.3061 said:

It feels like there are no effective handicaps to balance fighting against larger servers that end up outnumbering your team by 60+ players.

Yes there is. 

It's called tiers and 1-up-1-down. 

It's the same way ranked sPvP works except its on a larger 24/7 scale. Or would you argue that sPvP has no function to try and balance the "good" players against each other (eqvivalent to larger worlds) vs the "bad" players against each other (eqvivalent to smaller worlds)?

Is it perfect? No. Would alliances make it perfect? No. 24/7 three-way battles over a week is by their nature random. Not even 3 absolutely identical larger worlds fighting can win in the same matchup, can they... Because that's not how reality works. You can be certain that one of them - or all 3 of them - will have a situation where 50+ roflstomp over much smaller numbers. Probably such a situation every day on any random border.

This is WvW. And I do mean that literally. This is WvW.

[Mabi black.1824]

18 hours ago, Chie.3061 said:

It feels like there are no effective handicaps to balance fighting against larger servers that end up outnumbering your team by 60+ players.

 

  As far as i'm aware the only thing world choice affects is the team you play with in WvW but that system seems to guide people into playing servers that just play WvW the most to stomp the servers with less people that play WvW. 

 

I don't understand if there is a mechanic you can engage with when you are outnumbered threefold or if its just left like this on purpose.

 

I get that it's called world vs world so it makes total sense to have teams be based on worlds but to me that feels like a huge detriment to the fun the of mode just to preserve the name. Having a game mode that fundamentally leads to imbalanced teams just doesn't make sense to me. 

hi chie,

welcome to this mode of wild madmen. and I thank you so much for this post, you were so innocent and at the same time so deadly, because you put under the eyes of all and especially of arenanet what a new player perceives in just 2 or 3 weeks of play. you have said so clearly that you have chosen and are part of a team, in a mode that provides team vs team, and how much these teams can be broken in terms of balance.  

there is really nothing else to add, essential, honest and sincere, just thank you.

[Bern.9613]

On 10/9/2022 at 1:31 PM, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

 

 

Edited October 16, 2022 by Bern.9613

[Baldrick.8967]

19 hours ago, Chie.3061 said:

Ah thats great to hear, thanks for the heads up. I only recently joined but i'm glad there is an effort for things to change. 

 

I think you failed to detect the sarcasm.  It's literally beeen YEARS since they mentioned alliances.  It's quite clear they aren't interested in devoting more than the odd intern's last hour on a Friday if it's the last day in the month to wvw development hence why it's getting nowhere fast.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

19 hours ago, Thomas.2564 said:

I honestly fail to see how the alliances are gonna change anything about the ubalance in wvw. Since all the banwaggon gullds and their fanboys, who just wanna push w and 1 push on EB, will most likely just make one alliance and keep doing what they'ev always done. That's what i think anyway. Its just the way it is, and its not something u can really blame anet for. This is just the sad reallity of how most ppl wanna "fight" these days. 

The whole point is the cap, Alliances are limited to 500 players, which severely limits the amount of bandwagoning that can be done since currently its estimated an Alliance will only be a third of a server. This helps to keep the amount of manipulation in check compared to the current system.

 

Compared to now when you can bandwagon an entire server and control the matchup.

 

It also helps keep bandwagoners from avoiding fights with other bandwagoners, since alliances will have no control with what other alliances they get teamed up with. Any players who want to stick together or avoid each other will have to be in the same alliance, and the cap comes into play again.

 

Currently we have a "you will deal with this and you will like it" system that mostly affects the players who don't bandwagon, but in theory with alliances it gets reversed so its mostly the players who bandwagon who have the "you will deal with this and you will like it" system.

Edited October 10, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Zoser.7245]

Alliances will be exploited anyways unless Arenanet design a dynamic system that can change the alliance on the fly when a large imbalance in the match  scoring and/or in the hours played by each alliance is detected.  Dedicated guilds that will not play the alliance they joined will make that one useless  with a 500 players limit, more  like a Gruyère cheese in terms of active population.  If bandwagon exists, it's because the majority of players in this game prefer the easy going life and achievements. And that will  not change with the alliances.

"In theory"  hardcore guilds should prefer even, tight and hard matches to enjoy the battle, the use of the strategy... etc. In practice, a lot of them if not the majority, love to stomp everything on their way. The typical karma train.  Also the most dedicated ones knows each other and will always try to get allied together with the strongest alliance, meanwhile the game metrics can't determine if a player with 10000 WvW dedicated hours and a lot of kills is a skilled one or a player that has spent that time pressing the autoattack in zerg while chatting or enjoying the conversation at their discord channel and will die all the time if not carried.  Or if a skilled player has created new alt accounts for choose between alliances without have to pay server transfers.

So it's too easy for hardcore guilds to exploit it.  I know some guilds that already have images/clones of themselves ready, with their players having alt accounts to join those cloned guilds.  Then join different alliances with each clone and after few test hours decide which alliance is the one they prefer to play for the whole war in each match and leaving the others abandoned.  How many guilds will follow that way is the question.

That doesn't mean that a greater number of balanced matches will happen due to the cap limit to 500 players and more between casual alliances. It should work in that way.  But matches against hardcore guilds  exploiting will be a nightmare.  Hopefully the population will be large enough to create enough balanced games/matches at the time and most guilds won't go to the trouble or effort of manipulating them. But if the population is low, it could end up as our PvP...  and windtrading, really bad.  I still have my doubts if losing the identity of the server will worth it, since many casual players could/would get lost with the alliances. But we will only watch it once the final system is released.

Edited October 10, 2022 by Zoser.7245

[gashen.3874]

the trouble is that a few teams have a vast numerical advantage that the gameplay suffers.

examples are whiteside ridge,another is augury rock to name but two.

it becomes boring in the end,like pissing in the wind, but it,s always been like this and i can,t see it changing any time soon.

[displayname.8315]

A 500 alliance sounds like a lot but the avg attendence of a full roster guild isn't anything special.   Getting rid of the ability to stack on relinks for 500 gems will be the biggest help to the mode.

[TheGrimm.5624]

1 hour ago, Zoser.7245 said:

Alliances will be exploited anyways unless Arenanet design a dynamic system that can change the alliance on the fly when a greatly unbalance in the match's  score and/or in the hours played by each alliance is detected.  Dedicated guilds that will not play the alliance they joined will make that one useless  with a 500 players limit, more  like a Gruyère cheese in terms of active population.  If bandwagon exists, it's because the majority of players in this game prefer the easy going life and achievements. And that will  not change with the alliances.

"In theory"  hardcore guilds should prefer even, tight and hard matches to enjoy the battle, the use of the strategy... etc. In practice, a lot of them if not the majority, love to stomp everything on their way. The typical karma traing.  Also the most dedicated ones knows each other and will always try to get allied together with the strongest alliance, meanwhile the game metrics can't determine if a player with 10000 WvW dedicated hours and a lot of kills is a skilled one or a player that has spent that time pressing the autoattack in zerg while chatting or enjoying the conversation at their discord channel and will die all the time if not carried.  Or if a skilled player has created new alt accounts for choose between alliances without have to pay server transfers.

So it's too easy for hardcore guilds to exploit it.  I know some guilds that already have images/clones of themselves ready, with their players having alt accounts to join those cloned guilds.  Then join different alliances with each clone and after few test hours decide which alliance is the one they prefer to play for the whole war in each match and leaving the others abandoned.  How many guilds will follow that way is the question.

That doesn't mean that a greater number of balanced matches will happen due to the cap limit to 500 players and more between casual alliances. It should work in that way.  But matches against hardcore guilds  exploiting will be a nightmare.  Hopefully the population will be large enough to create enough balanced games/matches at a time and most guilds won't go to the trouble or effort of manipulating them. But if the population is low, it could end up as our PvP...  and windtrading, really bad.  I still have my doubts if losing the identity of the server will worth it, since many casual players could/would get lost with the alliances. But we will only watch it once the final system is released.

 

Agree people will allows try and game the system and I am sure we will suddenly get a lot of posts after Alliances (not sure when) are live where the guilds that like to jump now find themselves more limited in the middle of a match. As I have said, I am on the server pride side of the discussion, and I agree will be looking forward to more info on the mechanics of how the new groups are created. But we are making some assumptions here I think. We know that people will be matched together into new teams which they previously called shards, but we haven't heard if they will do away with servers in general. Aka after Alliances will people be able to transfer servers, but will that change their team? Will they even need to versus just don't be in Alliance since they can now try and recruit fresh people ever two months anyway?  Server/teams are not the same. Remember that people will have to ID their WvW guild and once they change it it won't apply until the next Teams are built out, aka they won't actually be able to switch until the next matchup. So yes people can choose to switch and not play until 2 months later, will they though? If they transfer servers and transfers now mean nothing to WvW because the server itself is not used while building teams so all they do is change an attribute that now means nothing to WvW. Alt accounts are an outside factor that can't be accounted for since you can't tell if its actually two people or one. Will be interested in how they handle temporary population changes and how people are assigned to teams after teams are created. We know they were going to be using some playtime attributes to spread un-alligned guilds around but we haven't seen how they were handling new players and players not choosing a guild as their WvW guild or how an Alliance guild's are impacted if they have more people trying to get in after they were allotted 'x' number of possible players in the Alliance. Are they actually locked out of WvW and forced to overflow until someone else signs out? Will these people be round robinned around the servers to fill gaps and assigned to that Team until end of the Team? More info pending. They may be planning on deadmans' land bottom tier server group that anyone that has put in 0 play hours since the last team creation are assigned to until they build some playtime data, not sure except I would hope they are planning something on new player entry into the mode that wouldn't imbalance teams that were matched up already.

Translation a limited group of people will try and game any system no matter what is put out there, but we also have a lot of open details to go through. But not sure if server transfers will even be a thing after Alliances and you might be locked into a team for 2 months or else just going to the overflow system if you aren't playing for the team you were assigned to. Here's hoping to see what pre-beta test info we get before the event starts at the end of the week.

[Baldrick.8967]

Given the looong time this has been in development, expect any final version they release to be gamed by the large guilds.

 

Who hasn't got at least 2 alts and probably more, all on different servers, who has been playing for a while?  

 

It will just be a question of 'this match up looks good, let's dominate that one'.  And everyone jumps on one of their alts and hey presto, bandwagon away.

 

Sadly this is the way most pvp goes in most games these days, with people all wanting to be on the 'winning' side.  The problem is caused by no comeback mechanic or advantage to the smaller side- at least GW had some advantage to the losing side and PW had the ultimate mechanic in that you could face so many attacks that you couldn't defend them all (although even that got gamed after a while).

Edited October 10, 2022 by Baldrick.8967

[Svarty.8019]

Squazillions of solutions to imbalanced matchups have been proposed.

 

On the livestreams they used to do and ended "because of covid", but never brought back, Cool Hand Raymond Lukes (he of the wall, arrow cart and dragon banner nerfs) stated that he didn't like handicapping as a solution. Presumably he meant that he was too busy (or possibly cba) to consider handicapping a solution, since it clearly would benefit the game mode.

 

Evening up the sides numerically would be the ideal solution, but as Baldrick states above, it's going to be rigged by bandwagon ahats with multiple accounts. Sadly, even in the World Restructuring betas we're seeing uneven sides and it's very not fun if you don't have any commanders.

Happy Tenth Birthday GW2,
Happy Fifth Birthday World Restructuring.

[Dahkeus.8243]

I mean…there is no real way to entirely balance two groups of different sizes fighting each other.

[Witch of Steam.5138]

From what I can tell : the Anet devs that Play WvW Prefer and Admire the Unbalanced Boon-balling and Constant washes one way or another. 

They do not seem to want, nor care, about ' balance' , or anything that might bring about more interesting or engaging Playstyles. 

Their history with updates to the gamemode itself ( like that proposed change to give more rewards for having more people involved in the Blob ) Seems to Back up this claim. 

[Mabi black.1824]

On 10/11/2022 at 1:11 AM, Baldrick.8967 said:

Who hasn't got at least 2 alts and probably more, all on different servers, who has been playing for a while?  

 

It will just be a question of 'this match up looks good, let's dominate that one'.  And everyone jumps on one of their alts and hey presto, bandwagon away.

I've never created one in so many years, arenanet builds teams for me, and I play the mode as it was designed. they are different teams that are compared. world vs world. if, like me, he practiced a minimum of sport as a boy, they will have taught you that the team that arrives first is only one, the others will follow. all normal, there is no punishment for coming second and much less for those who arrive last. the important thing is to participate honestly. 

it is a duty to learn from one's mistakes and always try to do better. for all those who use and abuse an alts like the ones you see jumping from one server to another to stack better, they only show how cowardly they can be or otherwise do not have the skills to play honestly. they can try to deceive me and always be on the bandwagon of the winner, but deep down they know that they are just a coward.

alliances or not, this is where arenanet should put the real work, to implement everything it has available and make sure that the player just honestly plays the mode they have designed.  the content and fun is always there at your disposal, it is the mode itself, it is not possible and it is not necessary that everyone has to win to get first.

[Mabi black.1824]

On 10/11/2022 at 5:34 AM, Dahkeus.8243 said:

I mean…there is no real way to entirely balance two groups of different sizes fighting each other.

I mean...... this mode provides many different teams that compare, competing with each other, 24/7 it is clear that you will constantly see equal groups facing each other, it is impossible and even normal, but at the end of the week all teams should have a flow (and therefore number of players) + or - similar, and that the best wins.

you can see it yourself at this precise moment,in eu, Wednesday at 12.30 Italian time, there is a team that has k+ d 81,000 and there is a team that has k+ d 25,000

Has arenanet made so many upgrades and/or changes to improve the construction and balance of these competing teams? have you seen so many? you don't have to answer me it's not necessary. probably for arenanet it is not a priority. he probably thinks he is engaging development in other things.

in my opinion it is a mistake, improving this aspect in a pvp mode, building equal opportunities and investing in motivation to stimulate your players, I am convinced that it would lead you to better numbers. in every sense, also in terms of profit and economic return. always talking only about pvp.

[Chzara.6590]

I'll happily say it again and again and again. Alliance can't fix mankind. Too many people prefer to log off for a whole week if they lost a couple fights. Too many people enjoy going 10v2 and such. Alliance won't change anything and it's hillarious to believe it could. All it changes is you guys being paired with randy rando and friends and having a new name for your "server", "Team" or whatever you want to call it. Neither Alliance can fix doubleteaming.

[Luthan.5236]

Actually: Yes - otherwise you would not have a need for WvW. For balancing regarding player numbers ... there is PvP. Though they seem to try to create a better balancing number-wise by creating the alliances system. Then still you need to be careful on how to use your numbers. (Going as a big zerg for one objective while enemies might split attack different stuff forcing you to split as well - or ignoring them and losing stuff.)

Technically the defenders should have the advantage. If they use siege and the tactics of the structure you defend. (But I guess long ranged siege - a treb - just can kill the walls from afar and then the can overrun you with a bigger zerg. Unless you mangage to counter the treb or something like that.)

Edited October 16, 2022 by Luthan.5236