ANET, Know your playerbase

[Counterakt.9106]

I am not sure Anet understands the type of players that play their game. Different groups look at alliances differently from their perspectives. It works for one set and doesn't work for another. They get their alliance feedback from a small subset and have designed the game. Let me try to define them. 

Roamers:

  They like to 1v1 or roam with one or two friends. Typically they should be ok with the current changes. Typically play pvp seasons. They don't have to be matched with any alliance they will be ok on their own as long as there is activity in their time zone.

Hard core guilds:

   They like to fight. They comp up, review videos, try new builds. They have passionate players. Typically have drama and occasional. Whenever they lose they convince themselves the enemy had more players. They implode once in a while and try to reform as the comm goes on hiatus. Typically revolves around the availability of one or two commanders who struggles to juggle between irl and game life. They like and want alliances because they think alliances will balance the game population. They keep switching servers, hate the gem cost to transfer. they hate servers getting full.

Casual Guild groups:

   They care about ppt. They care about pips. They typically do fractals and other pvx content as well. They train new people and act as a feeder for hard core guilds.

Havoc groups:

   These are group of 5-10 players who know each other for a long time. They just fight in a cloud or run havoc in bls, typically try to take objectives. If they get into a good alliance it is ok for them. If they are part of a weaker alliance they are going to have a hard time. The current system largely works for them, they might be a little apprehensive about alliances.

Server moms:

    These are people who live and die for server pride. They scout and hold bls. They talk all day in map chat. They repair walls, run supplies, defend camps, tier up keeps. These people keep the content alive between one group logging in and another one logging out. They absolutely hate alliances because their 'home' now is overrun by a bunch of randoms. Typically there is no place for them in any good alliances and they don't want to be part of any alliances. 

Casuals/PUGs: 

 These people login whenever they want, just take part in whatever content they get. They take it light chat in map chat. They know which pugmanders are decent, which players will push, which players will run away. They play accordingly.  Current system works fine for them. They are already in the servers that suit their playstyle and temperament. They don't have the time to record videos, show up on raid times. They don't qualify for being in a hard core alliance. They don't like alliances because of all the randoms that they don't know.

Cloud: 

   Slightly different than casuals. They fall between roamers and hard core guilds. They are passionate about the game. They care about kdr. They are typically retired pvpers, gvgers whose real life caught up with them. They typically hate well supported hard core guilds. The don't qualify for attendence requirements of hard core alliances. They like bags. They like to be aware of who is playing  around them and hence hate alliances.

 

I may have missed or wrongly characterised some of the groups of players. But I think this a fair representation from my POV playing this game for all these years. There is also some overlap between these groups. But I think ANET gets their feedback for alliance design overwhelmingly from the hard core guild leaders, who are but a minuscule percentage of the population. 

The very guild/alliance leaders who are known to go on extended hiatus randomly. When guilds imploded the fallout was caught by the server construct, from which rose new guilds. But now, if a hardcore alliance implodes the people in that community will get dispersed. ofc, there will be a few of them who keep in touch through discord, but the rip that is caused in the fabric of that community can't be healed as easily. 

Edited October 19, 2022 by Counterakt.9106
typo

[Xenesis.6389]

3 minutes ago, Counterakt.9106 said:

But I think ANET gets their feedback for alliance design overwhelmingly from the hard core guild leaders, who are but a minuscule percentage of the population. 

They take all wvw feedback from only that group of players. From siege nerfs, to wall/gate nerfs so they can have "fights on inner more often", nerfing all the tools that can counter them or stop them from doing melee pushes that they love to do with the ball, a support meta that revolves entirely around them in which they can utilize more successfully over the lesser numbered or organized.  No different than other games taking feedback from only the hardcore raiders. They run around with those groups regularly in wvw, pretty obvious what's going on there, there's not much else to do or say about it, it's not going to change.

[TheGrimm.5624]

Interesting categorizations of the player base. Mind you I am server pride side of fence. That said and others in other threads have said as well server pride people will need to take their own steps in order to preserve their servers if they want to. Now what makes that rough is a lot of server pride people are used to having a home, they don't need to do any maintenance on it they just need to log in and play and support their side in whatever way they do. They get into combat and generally know how others around them will react, which guilds will do what and when and are familiar with each other even without getting into a server wide voice app. They will chat, emote, joke and play while potentially all being on different voice apps. Moving forward they can still do that but they will have to deal with more red tape that they didn't before. The system will also lead to politicking which a lot of players are not a fan of which as you point out will probably lead to either more drama or people just drifting on the wind. Once we get into the actual Alliance phase 2 tests that have how guilds are linked with just 1 lead and I could see that will be a bit much for people as well. This might lead to some server communities not grouping up since one person at the top might have all the power to just disband everyone which meltdowns have been know to happen if people have ever played games that had these systems. 

The system will probably lead more towards more mega guilds which is a different topic but that could happen and does for some now. What we don't want them to do is just shelf the project again else that might also shelf any other changes that are looking to be part of it in later phases. So we do need to continue and down the path and see how players might be able to give feedback that improves issues as people see them. Per the reason the biggest issue that was raised was more balanced populations so for the start that's what we need to test and have people try and play their normal times to get decent data. The extra XP might be throwing that off some just will the holiday launching at the same time but data is data. Best to plan that it will happen and get other ready for it versus the opposite when it rolls out. If anything the betas are god for that some awareness is raised and more people look into what's going on and getting more info on it. Good hunting!

[Chzara.6590]

Perfectly balanced. Can be released like this. 5-10 players versus 2x 50+ zergs 24/7 couldn't do population balance any better.

[TheGrimm.5624]

4 minutes ago, Chzara.6590 said:

Perfectly balanced. Can be released like this. 5-10 players versus 2x 50+ zergs 24/7 couldn't do population balance any better.

 

Coverage is different and in the beginning they have been saying they won't be able to factor this in so yes this will still be an issue to some degree. They are hoping that players making Alliance will factor this in themselves by making sure they have guilds in their Alliances that handle the coverage for them. I think we will see the more organized Alliances the higher up in tiers and the less so will be in lower ones even if they dominate in their matches during certain hours. 

[TheGrimm.5624]

36 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

They take all wvw feedback from only that group of players. From siege nerfs, to wall/gate nerfs so they can have "fights on inner more often", nerfing all the tools that can counter them or stop them from doing melee pushes that they love to do with the ball, a support meta that revolves entirely around them in which they can utilize more successfully over the lesser numbered or organized.  No different than other games taking feedback from only the hardcore raiders. They run around with those groups regularly in wvw, pretty obvious what's going on there, there's not much else to do or say about it, it's not going to change.

 

Its funny because I have guildmates that ask me why I post on the forum. They ask how do you know ANet even reads them. I tell them I don't and don't assume they do, but I can hope. I also tell them its like politics, if you never write to your representative they will assume all is good and then seek other sources for feedback. So we come here to try and post feedback for one's self and for other guildmates that may not pop in here to provide feedback. Like how Counterakt broke out groups and thought about how it might impact each one, its a good way to show the point. That said I think they just called me a PvXer Casual Havoc Pickup Roaming Mom. Man I would make one ugly Mom and I think they called me easy. Not saying wrong in spots but...ouch. If that's the case though then PCHPRMs' represent!

[Chzara.6590]

No the only thing you will have with this alliance stuff is that WvW guilds clump together so they get the least amount of pugs possible and can constantly farm whatever ended up on those bagservers that couldn't get into these wvw alliances.

[Chzara.6590]

Anyways. I'm out of this shitshow. One bag less these blobs can farm. GG now it's down to 4-5 players you can farm 24/7.

[TheGrimm.5624]

6 minutes ago, Chzara.6590 said:

No the only thing you will have with this alliance stuff is that WvW guilds clump together so they get the least amount of pugs possible and can constantly farm whatever ended up on those bagservers that couldn't get into these wvw alliances.

 

You are not wrong there. That's why we will need to watch the mix they use for Alliance/Guilds/Non-Guilded ratios when the numbers are formed up. That's also what I assume we are testing. But hear you its a chaotic week out there.

[Xenesis.6389]

33 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Its funny because I have guildmates that ask me why I post on the forum. They ask how do you know ANet even reads them. I tell them I don't and don't assume they do, but I can hope. I also tell them its like politics, if you never write to your representative they will assume all is good and then seek other sources for feedback. So we come here to try and post feedback for one's self and for other guildmates that may not pop in here to provide feedback. Like how Counterakt broke out groups and thought about how it might impact each one, its a good way to show the point. That said I think they just called me a PvXer Casual Havoc Pickup Roaming Mom. Man I would make one ugly Mom and I think they called me easy. Not saying wrong in spots but...ouch. If that's the case though then PCHPRMs' represent!

I post to kill time with a joke or pass along some information, no other reason to these days. It's a little tiring posting counter arguments to stuff that's been discussed hundreds of times over the past ten years. Or you post a suggestion and anet isn't going to read it, and it'll get ripped to shreds by everyone else cause people don't actually want changes as much as they cry for it. Or post something to try and get a discussion going and might get like two meaningful replies out of it. There really is no point to these forums for years. I fall into these groups over the years, Roamers/Casual guild group/Havoc group/Casual Pugs/Cloud/Hardcore Guild(for two weeks I quit cause I couldn't stand their "extremely" immature voice chat). But my voice still doesn't matter.

[Pemberly.6305]

I think the player stereotypes are right on.

Let me add one thing.  With the constant nerfing of classes (eg.scrapper) Anet has actually made the game harder to play. The margins for error are smaller.

 

Have they gotten to the point where casual players are leaving WvW because it is too hard?  My anecdotal evidence is there are fewer 40+ blobs (ally and enemy) across the time zones I play.  Commanders running open tags are fewer, because the remaining pugs aren't as talented....and so on.  All of this points to the demise of the casual player in WvW.  I wonder if Anet has any hard data on this?

 

Edited October 19, 2022 by Pemberly.6305

[displayname.8315]

16 minutes ago, Pemberly.6305 said:

My anecdotal evidence is there are fewer 40+ blobs (ally and enemy) across the time zones I play.  Commanders running open tags are fewer, because the remaining pugs aren't as talented....and so on.

Week is so bad it's like their matchmaking has actually gotten worse.  No roamers, no tags, no hidden tags.  Just like one stacked server and a bunch of nothing.

[Chaba.5410]

Bye, Server Moms!

[TheGrimm.5624]

17 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Bye, Server Moms!

 

I think those people will choose to go the route of server Alliances versus just let themselves drift though so I wouldn't wave bye to them yet. I don't know if I would agree with the OP there about how that group will handle it. I think they will see it more like they do now with regular server to server relinks as long as they are in a server type Alliance where they have faces they know.

[Counterakt.9106]

I am not saying these groups are black and white. There are a lot of people people that belong to 2 or more of these categories. The point is alliances design seem to cater to a very small but extremely vocal percentage of the player base. The people that this will affect negatively don't typically read or contribute to the forums.

Servers have a sort of permanence. I could go on hiatus for 6 months and come back and it will be there. Alliances are too fluid. You go for a month and come back someone else has taken your place. You will have to start all over again in a totally new community. This is one of the main reasons I avoid joining guilds and the reason I don't like alliances. 

 

[Chaba.5410]

57 minutes ago, Counterakt.9106 said:

Servers have a sort of permanence. I could go on hiatus for 6 months and come back and it will be there.

This is the problem with servers.  You could go on hiatus for 6 months and stop counting as population towards your server.  People then transfer to your server and it goes Full.  Then you come back and can start playing again even though your server is Full.  You've just circumvented the population cap while some other poor sap has been playing the whole time you've been on hiatus and waiting those six months for the server to open up so he can play with his guild.  Anet can't predict when these sleeper accounts will come back, if ever.  They shouldn't even be on a team if they aren't playing.

Edited October 19, 2022 by Chaba.5410

[Counterakt.9106]

6 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

This is the problem with servers.  You could go on hiatus for 6 months and stop counting as population towards your server.  People then transfer to your server and it goes Full.  

Lol every server has people go on hiatus for months and come back. It all evens out accross servers.

 

8 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

 some other poor sap has been playing the whole time you've been on hiatus and waiting those six months for the server to open up so he can play with his guild.  

Doesn't make sense to me. If I am gone for 6 months, I don't get counted, so technically the server should open up right?

[subversiontwo.7501]

6 hours ago, Counterakt.9106 said:

I may have missed or wrongly characterised some of the groups of players.

I honestly think it is the other way around. You've added more categories than you need to or than is relevant. Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate where you come from with this thread and I actually think you are tending the embers to what can be an interesting discussion. However, factors like experience and whether you are solo-ish or group oriented matter far more than notions of scale or preference of content (like PPT or PPK).

The last bit you already cast some light on in the first post when you bring up things like "havoc groups". They are essentially just small guilds and while it may sometimes be important to define "havoc" in discussions about things to do in WvW, it isn't necessarily important when trying to attribute some kind of identity. Nore do such a group have to be very impacted by joining an alliance or be reassigned different worlds. They are usually small groups that transcend different subtypes of content (small-group roaming, small-group capture, small-group clouding a public tag/squad). The same goes for scale. If you take a small group (eg., Cake), a medium group (eg., XV), a large group (eg., Bush) and a nomadic/beta/alliance container (eg., Seth), they all have players who play at all of these scales and there is an overlap in rosters. Experienced players usually do far more than just one thing in WvW. So you are unlikely to see someone from eg., Cake, "hate" hardcore guilds when/if roaming or clouding. They know better and wield more tools.

Instead, much of the divide rather comes from inexperience or uninvolvement. The kind of scout (server mom, in your words) or clouder that you are going to see "hate" on other groups or other types of content are going to be those inexperienced with that content or who otherwise lack the means to be impactful within- or against that type of content.

That is the type of scout you see raging in team chat about no one comming to help them. They are usually incapable of driving content on their own (you can be a "scout" and still have a small group capable of beating somewhat larger sieging groups), incapable of seeing their own role against a larger backdrop (how important is that one tower to the total map or matchup; or simply to entertaining Pugs with pre-existing content; ie., you don't necessarily bring 50 from a fight to beat 10 off a tower just because 1 player is hyperfixating on it) or understanding the place of their chosen role in the content (eg., that while things like scouting certainly has a place and role in WvW, fight-capable squads can be impactful without scouts, but scouts who only manage to file scout reports can't be impactful without squads). Those things are just knowing one's place. If there's a 50v50 going on across the map and 10 hit a tower you stand in, maybe it's up to you to be capable enough to deal with them with 5 or accept that the tower isn't prioritised by your world in its current matchup.

Similarily, pugs don't exist without tags and tags are usually guild-born (good tags are usually guild-cored, even when public). As a result, it isn't very constructive to put a divide between pugs and guilds even if one can easily define and distinguish between them. They are different, yes, but they are not separate and both does not necessarily need to be heard or considered to any comparable amount.

The categories you try to outline can be important for a larger discussion of "who to listen to from a developer standpoint". However, I don't think Anet has strayed away from that really and they do not necessarily have to be directly related. Rather, what Anet have done is moved from a statistics-only oriented type of feedback towards more of a focus-group oriented type of feedback. That is an improvement. It is (much like Grimm pointed out) however, still inferior to actively managing one's own community as a developer. However, that costs money that Anet are clearly not willing to spend on either forums or WvW. So we can use the official forums and lament that developers no longer value community management the way that they used to do a decade or two ago; but if we assume Anet handled that stuff better for GW2 before, we're out on thin ice because focus groups are a step up from merely sifting through noise/stats.

Edited October 20, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[Chaba.5410]

14 minutes ago, Counterakt.9106 said:

Lol every server has people go on hiatus for months and come back. It all evens out accross servers.

 

Doesn't make sense to me. If I am gone for 6 months, I don't get counted, so technically the server should open up right?

That's just not true about evening out. The servers didn't all have the same population levels early in the game. In fact, wvw communities advertised how to use an autoclicker program to circumvent the original Full status before the population change.

Just because you are gone doesn't mean the server opens up. Depending upon how Full, it may take a lot more players to go on hiatus. But then why should all those players be allowed to come back on the same server for free when everyone else had to pay? And thats not even counting the total potential from the PvE players that suddenly join when there's a new shiny event in wvw.

Edited October 20, 2022 by Chaba.5410

[Sviel.7493]

Part of the reason the hardcore guilds dominate feedback is because they have organized communities and representatives that can reasonably claim to speak for a bunch of people.  Even if the devs made a good faith effort to get feedback, a disproportionate amount of readily available responses will be from that organized group.

That said, they do have these forums and other avenues, but that's still just fractions of the playerbase.  In the end, they may be best served by seeking less feedback since the little they get tends to be skewed.  Either way, I don't think it's a good look that they seem so in the pocket of a few large guilds--especially since those guilds are, ultimately, a small portion of the WvW population and an even smaller portion of what the WvW population needs to be.  Catering to them at the expense of everyone else is not the path to growth.

[Mabi black.1824]

6 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

But then why should all those players be allowed to come back on the same server for free when everyone else had to pay?

because it's beautiful. I have several friends who took extended breaks, and not because they were bored, but because they had commitments in real life. When you see them come back after a few months, it's nice. Just like when you see a friend you haven't heard from in a while. This is definitely another of the many positive aspects of the server, when you write here and talk about server community it is exactly that. 

The observation here is correct. Imagine being in alliance, and taking a good kick from the leader of the alliance after a couple of months that you do not show up (maybe for real life commitments) when you come back there is no longer that community base, you will not even have any idea where you are and who you have around.

These are not the balance issues. We know how the mode is designed 24/7 will never have the same numbers, players want similar teams, with a weekly flow on the same order of magnitude and the same rules for everyone. If we decide that a player is counted and as active up to 6 months of hibernation, this will be valid for all teams.

[Dawdler.8521]

17 hours ago, Counterakt.9106 said:

But now, if a hardcore alliance implodes the people in that community will get dispersed. ofc, there will be a few of them who keep in touch through discord, but the rip that is caused in the fabric of that community can't be healed as easily. 

But alliances are groups of guilds. They dont instantly get "dispersed". Do they all implode at once, everyone rage leave their guilds? Why would they? They are still all playing together since thats their selected WvW guild. Why couldnt they simply join/create a new alliance, especially if many guilds in the old still want to play together?

You may have nailed the server moms but I question this scenario.

Edited October 20, 2022 by Dawdler.8521

[Svarty.8019]

20 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

They take all wvw feedback from only that group of players. From siege nerfs, to wall/gate nerfs so they can have "fights on inner more often", nerfing all the tools that can counter them or stop them from doing melee pushes that they love to do with the ball, a support meta that revolves entirely around them in which they can utilize more successfully over the lesser numbered or organized.  No different than other games taking feedback from only the hardcore raiders. They run around with those groups regularly in wvw, pretty obvious what's going on there, there's not much else to do or say about it, it's not going to change.

I agree with you and the OP, but guess what? When Anet played WvW on the livestream, they played as a havoc group. I can't believe they're experiencing first hand how miserable it can be to run small-scale and yet pander constantly to the whims of the field-standers.

 

And for the record, if you want to stack all your mates in a field for one hour a week, that's not hardcore in my book, that's casual. The hardcore, for me, are what the OP labels, somewhat derisively,  "server moms".

 

Rock on Server Moms, I'm with you!

[MarkBecks.6453]

21 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

 

You are not wrong there. That's why we will need to watch the mix they use for Alliance/Guilds/Non-Guilded ratios when the numbers are formed up. That's also what I assume we are testing. But hear you its a chaotic week out there.

Well if you call Blobs running full zone blobs 24/7 then some servers scored by getting Players from Europe and players from South America, so it keeps their Blobs active all day. I am concerned with Alliances, because this will not fix the drain, and I think that Servers should be unlinked to assess accurately the player base on each one, and then do the linking. just my thoughts.
 have also landed on a different server to my standard guild, and my Alliance, and most of the chat is in a foreign language (doesn't matter which) but closed raids on discord in their preferred language leaves me out in the cold and can't solo because they send a blob to defend the camps, and clearly have much more numbers than us. How on earth can the metrics be so wrong? And last point, in the middle of a Festival, so really don't think it's going to be accurate whatever the outcome.

[Counterakt.9106]

11 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

But alliances are groups of guilds. They dont instantly get "dispersed". Do they all implode at once, everyone rage leave their guilds? Why would they? They are still all playing together since thats their selected WvW guild. Why couldnt they simply join/create a new alliance, especially if many guilds in the old still want to play together?

You may have nailed the server moms but I question this scenario.

I think guilds will lose relevance and alliances will soon become mega guilds. In my current link, I see massive lagfest boon balls going at each other pretty much through prime time. They even wear the alliance tag instead of their guild tags.

Edited October 20, 2022 by Counterakt.9106