What is this beta trying to achieve?

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, Custodio.6134 said:

 (or at least, as close together in population as possible, as perfect balance is literally impossible in a game with fluctuating population/activity)

Dont forget its the players that keep repeating the mantra of "numbers is all that matters" but only if they are on the loosing side because the enemy always outnumber them if the enemy win but if they win they where just more skilled than the enemy even if they outnumbered said enemy 😋

Edited December 9, 2022 by Dawdler.8521

[Dayra.7405]

Balance & Happyness: What makes more happy players:

1.  75 vs 25, or
2. 50 vs 50?

Edit: Probably you are right and I asked the wrong question (and also overdid with the numbers 🙂). "What makes less unhappy people?" is likely the more important question, especially in the light of

14 minutes ago, GODh.3892 said:

Thing is that players usually play longer when they are enjoying themselves. When things get boring, annoying, etc then they probably move to something else.

Edited December 9, 2022 by Dayra.7405

[Custodio.6134]

if i had to pick: definitely 50v50. 

i don´t understand where the fun would be in a 75 vs 25, no matter which side. 

if i´m on the side with 75, we would just roll them, getting less and less rewards (as loot and wxp-gain decreases with each of the enemies death) while being absolutely no challenge. 
if i´m on the side of 25, getting permarolled is also no fun.

if the numbers were closer (like 30vs50) that may be a bit different, as 30 people that are highly organized and know what they do (for example: a trained guilds) can absolutely crack a blob of 50+ that are just a random somewhat organized zerg. but there is a critical mass where no matter what, the outnumbered side will lose

 

[GODh.3892]

5 minutes ago, Dayra.7405 said:

Balance & Happyness:

 

What makes more happy players:

1.  75 vs 25, or
2. 50 vs 50?

I think the majority will pick the 50 vs 50, although for me 75 vs 25 is fine too... but this week i often saw 50 vs 10, etc (including spawn camping) and that is too much for me.

I do understand that it's not an easy thing to balance everything perfectly. Some people play a lot of WvW while others just once per week/month or only do dailies. And nobody like to be in long queues either (that's probably why we see a lot of AFK-ers, especially in EBG, by "running" in a corner to stay "active", etc).

Thing is that players usually play longer when they are enjoying themselves. When things get boring, annoying, etc then they probably move to something else.

I don't know/care what things that the devs are testing but IMO they should keep things interesting for the players. You probably get better testing results when the players keep playing.

[roederich.2716]

another thing:

keep in mind if the system shuffle the beta matches equal but whole guilds decide not to play in beta there will be ofc "imbalance" but not because the world restructuring does not function or is bad but because people dont take part in beta. and im sure lots players stay offline during beta cause they want to avoid being the test hamster etc.

specially in guilds is often the case if the leader decides that there will be no guild raids in this week most players of the guild stay offline as they only play with the guild.

so before judging early right now that everything is bad keep in mind if e.g. a 50 people guild the system counted with dont play suddenly the system has no influence on that.

and it happens also very often that guilds go on break if too many players or the leader has real life or holidays like right now im sure many are also on winter holiday.

[Dayra.7405]

21 hours ago, roederich.2716 said:

keep in mind if the system shuffle the beta matches equal but whole guilds decide not to play in beta there will be ofc "imbalance"

Also keep in mind that it is only one match, which not only makes absence easier, but there is no up and down in tiers for fine-balance in the beta.

Edited December 10, 2022 by Dayra.7405

[Xenesis.6389]

Doesn't matter if matchmaking is working or not, when the point of WR is to create more competitive worlds to each other, so in the end it doesn't matter who you match up with it should still be a decent match and not the old T1 vs T4 match and the T1 server completely demolishes the T4 server, which this beta looked like. All 12 or 15 worlds are suppose to be closer competitively not to just 3-4 worlds around their tier, otherwise this system accomplishes nothing from the old system, other than being more efficient at shuffling bandwagons around.

Of course Anet did it's best to throw all that in the dumpster, with broken mailing notice, late forum notice, no notice anywhere else, using call of arms week and weapon skin to draw in pve players, allowing pve or bots or alt accounts to pick their servers if they haven't played in a while, having 12 worlds when apparently there isn't 12 big guilds/alliances to fill them(my world didn't look like it had an alliance guild), dividing guild players around worlds maybe more than usual, either because of late notice or bad algorithms.

Look at the matches, there were like 2 out of 9 matches that ended up being competitive. Look at how many only had single digit 1st places, we even had two that managed to get 0 1st places, wtf did those worlds get stacked with the afk roamers?

WR Beta 6 Results

 

Edited December 9, 2022 by Xenesis.6389

[Kranlor Greyhelm.8417]

7 hours ago, Custodio.6134 said:

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). 

 

So your entire argument is based on your interpretation of what the phrase "create balanced teams" means. And anyone that disagrees with your specific interpretation is "wrong" in your eyes?

 

Which is all completely irrelevant. The fact is the group I was on was outnumbered from the first minute to the last. So even if your narrow belief about what this beta was trying to achieve is correct.....it still didn't manage to achieve it.

 

You've been arguing semantics while ignoring that we're driving towards a wall...."well technically we aren't driving towards it, because I stopped pressing the gas and it's our momentum that's taking us towards it".

[Dawdler.8521]

6 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Look at the matches, there were like 2 out of 9 matches that ended up being competitive. Look at how many only had single digit 1st places, we even had two that managed to get 0 1st places, wtf did those worlds get stacked with the afk roamers?

WR Beta 6 Results

Well, that's the thing... yes. Yes it could. That's how random works.

We still need Anet to actually tell us about the relative population values to know if anything was wrong with the numbers or if randomness of players just kittened it over this time. 

Personally, I also think we just saw what the effect of players having no motivation does - people didnt know there was a beta and thus didnt bother to care so much, because they didnt have time to organize at all. They felt sidelined by Anet.

If this is the case, doesnt it show that world restructure actually works when players do care and prepare their guilds and alliances more? Since everyone is so eager to state the fact that the last beta worked much better...

Edited December 9, 2022 by Dawdler.8521

[Xenesis.6389]

3 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

If this is the case, doesnt it show that world restructure actually works when players do care and prepare their guilds and alliances more? Since everyone is so eager to state the fact that the last beta worked much better...

It showed the biggest flaw in the system. Even with mismanaged notice, somehow some worlds were able to be filled to the brim, while others weren't, and the system is suppose to compensate for this by balancing out activity times and guild placements. If there's 10 big alliances but 12 worlds, two worlds will still have to be filled with regular guilds to make up for activity time, doesn't seem like it did to me.

We can point out how the week meant nothing to players, yet we had two matches that it still meant something to those 6 worlds right down to the end, so what happened to the other 15+ worlds? they all met maguuma alliances?

Again I question, if it's possible that matches are going to look like the mess they are today, then what's the point of WR, we might as well dump it and keep the old structure and at least the server homers will be happy still. Yes I know it's not final, it's beta, but 6 betas in doesn't look like anything is improving, in fact getting worse.

As for motivations, lol I've been trying for years to get them to realize that a 2 strong vs 1 weak system is broken. It's going to continue happening regardless of how much they shuffle the population, which in the end makes all the automated shuffling useless.

Edited December 10, 2022 by Xenesis.6389

[Dawdler.8521]

6 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

It showed the biggest flaw in the system. Even with mismanaged notice, somehow some worlds were able to be filled to the brim, while others weren't, and the system is suppose to compensate for this by balancing out activity times and guild placements. If there's 10 big alliances but 12 worlds, two worlds will still have to be filled with regular guilds to make up for activity time, doesn't seem like it did to me.

But there are no alliances implemented. It's all regular guilds. And that was kind of the point - people got zero warning for this beta, with no ability to coordinate any temporary guilds. Even if we assume they didnt change a thing since the last beta... where they prepared? Or where the gut reaction "wtf is this no one told us"?

There is no balancing of activity or relative "guild strength" implemented either so it doesnt matter what the system is supposed to do - it didnt do that last beta either. 

So yes, random is what random does. In an exact 50 vs 50 scenario... one side can be randomly inferior and loose every single engagement even if those numbers should be "balanced". We dont know whether Anets algorithm failed or not - we only have players telling us that, despite the fact we KNOW that population does not always equal presence on the battlefield, because players are players.

As an example, at this early stage in the week EU T4 is is the most loopsided of all matchups (including NA) with the following populations:

full + high
full + high
full

Of course a single server will loose... but again, two of the worlds should match each other but even there the leading world still have 2x the points of BOTH worlds. Why cant 2 of them compete? Hell that middle position world... 0.5 kd vs 1.5 kd for the leading world.

Oh and the most even matchup so far, EU T3:

full 
very high + high 
very high + high

Wait what?

Edited December 10, 2022 by Dawdler.8521

[Xenesis.6389]

8 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

But there are no alliances implemented. It's all regular guilds. And that was kind of the point - people got zero warning for this beta, with no ability to coordinate any temporary guilds. Even if we assume they didnt change a thing since the last beta... where they prepared? Or where the gut reaction "wtf is this no one told us"?

Do you understand what I'm trying to state about the guild balancing?

Yes there is no alliances, but there are alliance guilds.

Yes the previous beta had better notice, which gave time for maybe more alliance guilds to form.

But if there's less alliances guilds around this time, that means the system has more individual guilds to use(if they were unsure about using their previous alliance guild), and is suppose to compensate by adding more regular guilds to worlds to balance out the activity against those bigger pieces.

 

Quote

 

There is no balancing of activity or relative "guild strength" implemented either so it doesnt matter what the system is supposed to do - it didnt do that last beta either. 

 

How do you know this? the largest group of players in the beta is not getting sorted properly to each other by activity? isn't this the foundation of WR they're testing? Everyone is not being placed totally random in worlds, everyone is being used as a piece according to a value to build those worlds, guilds are just bigger blocks placed in worlds first, with the smaller pieces built around them according to the activity numbers, which is the base measurement for "everyone". The only thing not being measured is the type of player, ppt or fighter, which we've received no hints of that even happening or ever would, other than commander hours tracking.

 

Every individual has their own activity value, very easy to measure a guilds activity strength(and I'm not talking about combat or ppt strength here) by adding those numbers together, why would guild members be exempted from this when putting together a world, they're even bragging about getting worlds down to the smallest % of activity in comparisons, that makes no sense.

 

If an alliance guild has 500 members with ratings on average of 8, then their activity strength is 4000, the next world would need that amount of filler whether that's another guild of rating 3000, and another with a rating of 500, and another of 200 and then 300 worth of solos. You can't place guilds of 4000/3000/500 in one world, and then randomly place 200 in another with 3800 solos in another world and call that balanced, that's no better than what you would get from a regular server today.

 

So again I say, either their algorithm is broken, and if you say they're not even using balancing by guild activity then it's highly broken, or the lack of notice really screwed up organization which means a lot less guilds were active because a lot of players were misplaced as solos for not choosing a guild in time.

 

Bottom line, communication, it's easy, it's simple, why don't you use it properly anet? why do you continue to make it harder for you and your customers to function together?

[Cyninja.2954]

1 minute ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Bottom line, communication, it's easy, it's simple, why don't you use it properly anet? why do you continue to make it harder for you and your customers to function together?

 

They communicate when they feel that there is something to communicate. While I agree that some more would be nice, technically there is no need for an updated for every little detail which is being adjusted. Even less to the unplease-able anti alliance crowd.

 

Half the time even when they communicate it is either missed, misrepresented or simply misunderstood. I mean they've clearly said what the goals are for the different steps, yet somehow some people still feel the need to misconstrue things all the time.

 

Actual useful and factual feedback gets drowned out by the hysterical nonsense of some few, which is neither helpful nor productive and certainly not something the developers need to pay attention to.

[Dawdler.8521]

12 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

How do you know this? the largest group of players in the beta is not getting sorted properly to each other by activity? isn't this the foundation of WR they're testing? Everyone is not being placed totally random in worlds, everyone is being used as a piece according to a value to build those worlds, guilds are just bigger blocks placed in worlds first, with the smaller pieces built around them according to the activity numbers, which is the base measurement for "everyone". The only thing not being measured is the type of player, ppt or fighter, which we've received no hints of that even happening or ever would, other than commander hours tracking.

Say that out loud and then ask yourself whether you honestly believe Anet has already implemented player and guild skill/activity weight and used that in this beta for team balancing purposes. 😐

I am 99% certain player and guild placement was totally random in order to just achieve a target average team size, but Anet can happily prove me wrong because that only proves players failed to compete against each other, lol.

[Xenesis.6389]

13 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Say that out loud and then ask yourself whether you honestly believe Anet has already implemented player and guild skill/activity weight and used that in this beta for team balancing purposes. 😐

I am 99% certain player and guild placement was totally random in order to just achieve a target average team size, but Anet can happily prove me wrong because that only proves players failed to compete against each other, lol.

Well everyone says the other betas were balanced? and I can't believe it was more balanced with them just randomly dumping guilds around without some sort of measurement. A granular fill is going to use the biggest pieces first, that means guilds have to have some sort of activity weight to them, and simplest measurement to use is the combined activity of their members. The only other explanation is there wasn't enough alliance guilds or solo guilds to go around for a proper base fill for the 12/15 worlds this time, which in part comes back to their late notice, but it just gives me the impression the game mode is more dead than I thought it was. I just don't see a reason for WR if it's still possible to end up with worlds that mirror or even worse than current t4 worlds.