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What is this beta trying to achieve?


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If it's trying to improve the matchmaking, I've got to say it doesn't seem to be working too well. Every one I've been in so far has felt less balanced than a normal server matchup. This latest one is hilariously bad, we were wildly outnumbered from minute one, and it has got worse as the week has gone on (presumably because people have been driven away by the disparity in numbers).

 

The other issue I have is what this is trying to do for levels of play. I'm not a very good player, I aspire to mediocre on a good day. This isn't a case of "git good" because I'm too old and limited to manage that these days. My skills are where they are, which is fine for the normal level of WvW I play in. Now suddenly I'm in a fight against roamers that kill in a literal second. I try and take a camp, if one turns up I might as well give up. I'm just hoping enough teammates show up that we have a chance, but did I mention we're outnumbered?

 

Who is this good for? Competitive higher players don't want to play against people like me, that represent no challenge. Players like me will be driven away. The only people happy with this will be high skill players that take pleasure from punching down. Do you have enough trolls playing WvW to keep the game alive if they drive out all the below average players?

 

I would have thought by now, with this many betas under your belt, that the matchmaking would be starting to take shape. That we'd be getting matchups that were balanced with some progress on matching skill levels. But nothing. Are you purely testing the mechanics of building the matchups, after all this time?

 

I'm very worried for what these changes are going to do to my enjoyment of this part of the game.

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To see how many things they can break to have more betas.

Quote

Competitive higher players don't want to play against people like me, that represent no challenge.

Actually, that's exactly who they want to face, it's not about the challenge, it's about the easier reward... There's a reason why these same competitive players don't schedule more gvg's with each other, and don't go after other competitive groups regularly in open field unless the conditions are highly in their favor.

Edited by Xenesis.6389
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While we haven't been given any info on what the beta IS trying to achieve, our best bet is that it's some backend stuff.  Maybe the queue bug(s)?

 

We do know that matchmaking is NOT on that list.  There is no matchmaking in the betas beyond getting roughly even numbers of bodies per team.  However, since some players play way more than others, a guild of highly active players can make it pretty much impossible to have a balanced match without more considerations.  It is no surprise that the betas feel unbalanced; it is surprising that we keep having them with no communication on why they're happening.  It no longer feels like they're any indicator of progress on Anet's end--rather, they seem to be throwing them at us as some sort of advertising or hype building and it's backfiring spectacularly.

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Unless Anet shows us the relative population numbers, we dont know how "successful" it is since that is its singular goal.

What if the most unbalanced matchup in this beta has exactly even numbers on all 3 sides?

What are you supposed to say then? Blaim Anet that players arent performing?

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when it comes to matchmaking and "level of play" in a 24/7 game mode keep in mind that its your own responsibility to improve on the game if you cant win. thats part of any competition no matter where you go in live, be it sports, business, politics, school etc etc etc etc etc etc...

 

and yes, anet posted what their next steps are.

and they tell it all over the place now for some time.

you guys always claim you want more info but dont read the info when its given out...

A beta is only a small test from devs for devs.

its not for you to have somewhat better experience for a week or so.

if i was anet i would not communicate at all anymore because too many people here seem to not even understand what they are writing in their info but believe to be the better devs. if you guys are specialists you can apply for a job at anet but by coincidence nobody of you got a game studio himself....

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1 hour ago, roederich.2716 said:

when it comes to matchmaking and "level of play" in a 24/7 game mode keep in mind that its your own responsibility to improve on the game if you cant win. thats part of any competition no matter where you go in live, be it sports, business, politics, school etc etc etc etc etc etc...

 

and yes, anet posted what their next steps are.

and they tell it all over the place now for some time.

you guys always claim you want more info but dont read the info when its given out...

A beta is only a small test from devs for devs.

its not for you to have somewhat better experience for a week or so.

if i was anet i would not communicate at all anymore because too many people here seem to not even understand what they are writing in their info but believe to be the better devs. if you guys are specialists you can apply for a job at anet but by coincidence nobody of you got a game studio himself....

I'm a software engineer with 40 years of experience. But thanks for the "lesson" in how these things work. Care to share your background so we can judge if you are in a position to make this post?

 

Maybe instead of the passive aggressive posturing, you could point us towards all these detailed posts about what they're trying to achieve, what their next steps are, etc? Some of us spend time in game, rather than searching the web to get this background. So the only thing we get to experience is the actual gameplay of the beta. Which appears to be getting worse with each iteration.

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If I had to personally guess the majority of the work in the WR phase has been despaghettification of existing code from 10 years ago, along with the goals they've stated before (I don't really have the time to go digging it up) being:
- creating the ability to shuffle players between all these fake worlds
- allowing players to select guilds so they are randomly shuffled with their friends
- other nonspecific backend stuff

Nothing in this beta has been about matchmaking in the slightest except for the goal of making balanced Populations by their "active wvw player" metric which has previously been used to define the population of servers (full, high, med, etc)

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Worst matchup ever since the first beta (and i played them all) for my assigned alliance.

Just look at wvw stats for exemple for Titan's Staircase (blue) vs Silent Wood vs Seven Pines.

Blue is dominating at all time of the day (avg ppt 200+ while others have hardly 80+). From what i saw it looks like "pro"-wvw vs pve players (few 'smart' roamers/scouts/commanders, few communication). Their ebg keep has never been fliped yet and their home keep only once.

Perfect balance does not exists for sure, but there would be surely some ways to do one not so bad (average K/D, wvw play time/rank, ... ?).

Very bad balance make things even worse, players leaving due to frustation level, increasing unbalance level.

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3 hours ago, Kranlor Greyhelm.8417 said:

I'm a software engineer with 40 years of experience. But thanks for the "lesson" in how these things work. Care to share your background so we can judge if you are in a position to make this post?

 

Maybe instead of the passive aggressive posturing, you could point us towards all these detailed posts about what they're trying to achieve, what their next steps are, etc? Some of us spend time in game, rather than searching the web to get this background. So the only thing we get to experience is the actual gameplay of the beta. Which appears to be getting worse with each iteration.

So you want to tell us that you are 40 years in software business and judge on a betatest like you did without picking the information of the dev what the beta is about?

You dont expect any further comment from me on this do you?

have a nice day.

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1 hour ago, roederich.2716 said:

So you want to tell us that you are 40 years in software business and judge on a betatest like you did without picking the information of the dev what the beta is about?

You dont expect any further comment from me on this do you?

have a nice day.

So apparently passive agressive posturing is your only option for posting. Thanks for "contributing" to the discussion.

 

You have a real nice day too.

 

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The target in the current beta (Phase 1) is (just as mentioned in every post before) exclusively tied to team creation, which is (as we lack alliance functionality for now) currently exclusively based on guilds

The goals are:

1. Create balanced teams based on guild choice (or lack of doing so by going alone into the beta) 

2. Find any bugs related to that (and sometimes other bugs by chance) 

 

That's it. As ANet didn't add anything in Phase 1, nithing else is considered, but will be added in the future phases (including language sorting probably, alliances, rewards, matchmaking etc) 

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On 12/5/2022 at 10:41 PM, Dawdler.8521 said:

What if the most unbalanced matchup in this beta has exactly even numbers on all 3 sides?

The servers are no where near balanced. There is one balanced group of servers in the US, 2 groups with one server completely dominating (winning 50 out of 58 skirmishes), and 1 group with 2 servers completely demolishing the third server. In the EU, it's a similar picture. I group of servers is balanced and the other 4 are completely dominated by a single server. It's so bad that one of those groups have a single server winning 59 out of 62 skirmishes.

 

Edited by Graymatter.4723
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On 12/5/2022 at 10:41 PM, Dawdler.8521 said:

Blaim Anet that players arent performing?

It's not the players. The numbers on the servers are not balanced. Our server is outnumbered on almost all maps from NA time all the way through to the end of OCX time. We can scrounge up 20-30 players to defend one keep while blue is running with 3 x 50 man zergs in that same time space.

Edited by Graymatter.4723
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32 minutes ago, Graymatter.4723 said:

 

The servers are no where near balanced. There is one balanced group of servers in the US, 2 groups with one server completely dominating (winning 50 out of 58 skirmishes), and 1 group with 2 servers completely demolishing the third server. In the EU, it's a similar picture. I group of servers is balanced and the other 4 are completely dominated by a single server. It's so bad that one of those groups have a single server winning 59 out of 62 skirmishes.

 

Pretty pointless to quote in two separate posts, but you see this just make it even more interesting to see the relative population numbers of this beta. Anet hasnt posted it for any of the betas afaik so I'm not particularly hopeful they will now, but still.

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10 hours ago, Custodio.6134 said:

The target in the current beta (Phase 1) is (just as mentioned in every post before) exclusively tied to team creation, which is (as we lack alliance functionality for now) currently exclusively based on guilds

The goals are:

1. Create balanced teams based on guild choice (or lack of doing so by going alone into the beta) 

2. Find any bugs related to that (and sometimes other bugs by chance) 

 

That's it. As ANet didn't add anything in Phase 1, nithing else is considered, but will be added in the future phases (including language sorting probably, alliances, rewards, matchmaking etc) 

That kind of backs up the point of my post then. Because if pretty much the main thrust of this beta is creating balanced teams, then this has been a disaster. Either they've decided to have a beta without anything approaching a mechanism for creating balanced teams, or they think they have one and have been proven to be hilariously wrong.

 

Either way, it wouldn't be a good look if this was their first beta. The fact this is after so much development effort and a number of previous betas makes me worried about the whole roadmap.

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Kinda funny this thread was made by a roamer that can't fight.

 

If you put that effort into scouting and siege monkeying there would be something for people to show up to and defend.

 

People tend to focus everything on the matchmaking and completely overlook the fact that players don't want to actually play the maps they just want to run train.

 

 

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8 hours ago, displayname.8315 said:

Kinda funny this thread was made by a roamer that can't fight.

 

If you put that effort into scouting and siege monkeying there would be something for people to show up to and defend.

 

People tend to focus everything on the matchmaking and completely overlook the fact that players don't want to actually play the maps they just want to run train.

 

 

Are you psychic? Just wondering how you know that I don't scout and don't help with siege?

 

Actually I do my best, in terms of fighting. I'm old, my reflexes are not great. I'm basically not a great game player. I'll roam and flip as much as I can. I'll assist with defending and I'll run with a group if they are around and I'm there. And I'll call out what I see as I roam, and assist as much as I can.

 

None of that helps when the team we're up against constantly has twice our numbers. Especially when their roamers seem to be of a much higher standard than I generally experience down the WvW ranks. Nobody wants to face getting flattened continually. And nobody that isn't a sociopath wants to spend their time punching down.

 

Which is my point. Either this beta isn't testing the match making aspects at all. Or it is testing them, and it's proving that they are still very, very broken.

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6 hours ago, Kranlor Greyhelm.8417 said:

Either this beta isn't testing the match making aspects at all.

exactly this is the case. 

matchmaking is NOT a part of the beta (yet). 

lemme quote myself (yet again):

On 12/7/2022 at 12:21 PM, Custodio.6134 said:

The target in the current beta (Phase 1) is (just as mentioned in every post before) exclusively tied to team creation, which is (as we lack alliance functionality for now) currently exclusively based on guilds

The goals are:

1. Create balanced teams based on guild choice (or lack of doing so by going alone into the beta) 

2. Find any bugs related to that (and sometimes other bugs by chance) 

 

That's it. As ANet didn't add anything in Phase 1, nithing else is considered, but will be added in the future phases (including language sorting probably, alliances, rewards, matchmaking etc) 

Additionally you have to keep in mind, that player behaviour is massively distorted during the 1-week beta-phases because: 
1. people are tired of the betas that are visually the same since they started (no visual or functional changes/additions)
2. many non-regular players flood into the beta (even if it is just because of the bonus-week)
3. players don´t bother organizing properly anymore, since the effort is simply not worth it for just 1 week that doesn´t matter for anything at all

In addition to the system obviously not 100% working as intended (reminder that that everything is still development in progress, which is predestined to have bugs, functional flaws etc), since the purpose of the beta is to find those errors. 

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5 hours ago, Custodio.6134 said:

exactly this is the case. 

matchmaking is NOT a part of the beta (yet). 

lemme quote myself (yet again):

 

You say this, then the part of your original post that you quote says:

 

"1. Create balanced teams"

 

So you appear to be arguing against yourself. The aim of this beta was to produce balanced teams, which is the critical part of the match making process. And the experience of a lot of people in this beta is that what appears to be the primary purpose of the beta has failed miserably.

 

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36 minutes ago, Kranlor Greyhelm.8417 said:

You say this, then the part of your original post that you quote says:

 

"1. Create balanced teams"

Nope, these 2 points don´t contradict each other, as they adress 2 totally different parts of the system. 

creating balanced teams literally means just that. Assigning players to teams, with the intention of making them equal sized. (or at least, as close together in population as possible, as perfect balance is literally impossible in a game with fluctuating population/activity)

matchmaking on the other hand does not care about team creation at all, but rather putting teams into a matchup based on some kind of factor (which used to be the glicko-rating in the past, and is now the 1-up-1-down-system). 

 

Edited by Custodio.6134
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