WvW population

[Chaba.5410]

12 minutes ago, Ruru.1302 said:

so if you have nothing to fight in your current matchup you should just log off completely instead of logging in your alt accounts and finding fights elsewhere? this is how guilds die

That's pretty much what it sounds like he's suggesting.

[Chaba.5410]

19 minutes ago, kash.9213 said:

pretty consistently the same groups who are likely to avoid guild vs guild matches

It's just an assumption he's using to attack the idea of having multiple accounts in the first place.  There's no proof they are "dodging gvg".  He essentially wants to ban all multi-account players from WvW to prevent this supposed thing he claims is happening.  If you scroll back, you see I ask him this question of why he wants to blame players for what is essentially a reaction to population imbalance defects and he avoided answering it.

It's the equivalent of wanting to ban transfers to lower tiers of players looking for smaller scale fights.

Too much cynicism in his argument.  Prompts me to be cynical back and suggest that if players want to just ktrain without fights, go to Drizzlewood.

Edited January 5, 2023 by Chaba.5410

[kash.9213]

36 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

It's just an assumption he's using to attack the idea of having multiple accounts in the first place.  There's no proof they are "dodging gvg".  He essentially wants to ban all multi-account players from WvW to prevent this supposed thing he claims is happening.  If you scroll back, you see I ask him this question of why he wants to blame players for what is essentially a reaction to population imbalance defects and he avoided answering it.

It's the equivalent of wanting to ban transfers to lower tiers of players looking for smaller scale fights.

Too much cynicism in his argument.  Prompts me to be cynical back and suggest that if players want to just ktrain without fights, go to Drizzlewood.

Understood. Gotta be careful taking huge sweeping measures even if things look bleak already. Those can open up all new problems if it's a reaction and not a plan.

[Arya Whitefire.8423]

If there is a lot of multi-account playing going on, especially guild-centric multi-account playing, then it make's anet's concept of balancing by historical hours played stop working.  I think the effects are small in the current system, but in the proposed alliance system they will be much larger.

Edited January 5, 2023 by Arya Whitefire.8423

[Kite.5327]

PPT servers like SOS are the problem. The problem lies there. You are entering WvW not knowing how to PvP, capping empty towers all night long. You should switch to EU if you want fights during your timezone, not cap empty towers on NA and then blame Mag for playing as intended (pvp'ing) during normal NA hours....
 

[Kite.5327]

If you were to play on EU during a more appropriate timezone, rather than pve inside wvw maps in the middle of the night, servers like SOS would drop to their intended tier, probably t4 - and servers who deserve to be ranked higher would move up, offering mag an actual challenge 

[Chaba.5410]

2 minutes ago, Arya Whitefire.8423 said:

If there is a lot of multi-account playing going on, especially guild-centric multi-account playing.  Then it make's anet's concept of balancing by historical hours played stop working.  I think the effects are small in the current system, but in the proposed alliance system they will be much larger.

I've thought about this myself in the past.  Walk through it.  The total time they play is being credited between their respective accounts.  It's no different from players who play 20 hours one week then only 15 hours another week because of other time commitments.  There's nothing being circumvented.

[Arya Whitefire.8423]

Just now, Chaba.5410 said:

I've thought about this myself in the past.  Walk through it.  The total time they play is being credited between their respective accounts.  It's no different from players who play 20 hours one week then only 15 hours another week because of other time commitments.  There's nothing being circumvented.

To the extent they're just looking for fights, it kinda doesn't matter.  Or to the extent anet greatly decreases the matchup time.

 

But if they want to "win" the ppt game, and anet remains with an 8 week matchup time.  Then what the organized groups with multiple guilds will be able to, on average have significant activity gains over guilds that are not doing the multi-account thing.  And not only that, whichever guild the multi-account guild played last time, but isn't playing this time, will make the world it's assigned to weaker.

 

You'd think you could counter this by using peak activity in the last year or 2, but that would just make most of the worlds the multi-account guild is assigned to weaker.

 

Basically organized multi-account is a huge weakness in the proposed alliance system, and it will be exploited.

 

 Rather than trying to ban multi-accounting though, I think the solution should be to stop using historical average play time as the only or most significant balancing factor.

 

[TheGrimm.5624]

On 1/4/2023 at 11:31 AM, Dayra.7405 said:

When I read this, i imagine something like this 🙂 :

Monday morning, 12.12.2022, close to the end of the weekly team meeting in a wintersun flooded office in ANet HQ in  Bellevue, nearly everyone already looks a bit sleepy after 1h of the meeting:

ANet-Game-Leader: Let's talk about the last WvW-beta and the player reactions to it. Please Report!

WvW-Lead and Crew in personal union: (shrinks in his seat) I must admit I was a bit late in anouncing the beta, also I run into the bulk-email stop, so I couldn't notify all players of the beta, I fear this resulted in many stayed absend, the data we collected are a mess. And many player in the forum complained about the imbalance of the beta. I don't know what to do now.

ANet-Game-Leader: That's a desaster, now that you got 25% percent of your time just for WvW, I want positive results. How can we convince the Player that your system is much better than the old.

WvW-Lead and Crew: Hm, I don't know, still I don't really have the resources to make it better than the old system

Someone in the 2nd row: Hm, if we cannot make the new system better, maybe we can make the old one worser.

WvW-Lead and Crew: Looks like Maguuma Yak's Bend got quite strong due to transfers to Yak Bend, but the system will close them before to much imbalance will occur.

ANet-Game-Leader: This is your chance, take it!

WvW-Lead and Crew: Hm, yeah, I could keep Yak's Bend open, additionally I can open Maguuma and then the player will see what real imbalance is.

Community-Lead: That's a plan, I guess in a few days no one on the forum will talk about the beta anymore, anyone will complain about the imbalance caused by the evil maguma player.

ANet-Game-Leader: So we have a decision. Do your work!

 

As funny as I find this imagination, I doubt it happend.

 

So lets try another version:

Monday morning, 19.12.2022, AWS Server Room where ANet runs the NA-Server:
LED's on the WvW-population server start flashing wild as an Evil Genius Maguuma Hacker hacks into the system.

Maguuma Hacker: Hehe, today I will open Maguuma even if it is already stacked as never before.

AWS-operator still sleeps in his office and doesn't notice anything.

Maguuma Hacker: haha it's done! The world will be ours.

 

Also funny, but also not likely, but the important part of this story is: I doubt that anyone at ANet deciding pop status, it is likely fully automatic.

 

So lets try a third story:

10.12.2022, Maguuma player logs on in WvW: Argh, anything in our color, content still in strike, logs off from WvW

11.12.2022, Maguuma player logs on in WvW: Argh, anything in our color, content still in strike, logs off from WvW

...

16.12.2022, Maguuma player logs on in WvW: Argh, anything in our color, content still in strike, I did not even managed Wood this week. logs off from WvW

19.12.2022 Maguuma opens, as there wasn't any content, all player played much less.

 

+1 lol. Would read again.

[TheGrimm.5624]

6 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

I have never had this need in so many years

Kind of the same here. I do have an alt from years ago but I linked them to my own server. But they weren't used for WvW, more for extra storage and guild hall building stuff. Actually need to go see what I left in their bank to come to think about maybe that's where some of those things I was missing went to.

[Chaba.5410]

1 minute ago, Arya Whitefire.8423 said:

To the extent they're just looking for fights, it kinda doesn't matter.  Or to the extent anet greatly decreases the matchup time.

 

But if they want to "win" the ppt game, and anet remains with an 8 week matchup time.  Then what the organized groups with multiple guilds will be able to, on average have significant activity gains over guilds that are not doing the multi-account thing.  And not only that, whichever guild the multi-account guild played last time, but isn't playing this time, will make the world it's assigned to weaker.

 

You'd think you could counter this by using peak activity in the last year or 2, but that would just make most of the worlds the multi-account guild is assigned to weaker.

 

Basically organized multi-account is a huge weakness in the proposed alliance system, and it will be exploited.

 

 Rather than trying to ban multi-accounting though, I think the solution should be to stop using historical average play time as the only or most significant balancing factor.

 

I'm not quite following you.  An account doesn't earn anything that is "account-bound" credited to another account just because it's owned and played by the same player.  What gains?

[TheGrimm.5624]

5 hours ago, Biermeister.4678 said:

Alts were the kids accounts that they quit playing when they got older paid money for them might as well use them 

 

I get why people would have them and use them. Just haven't run into times where there wouldn't be need to support my server somewhere. Even if that's just to stop and take time to build up defenses expecting for an attack later. Considering how many people don't do defensive action these days there is always house keeping to be done between fights. And there are usually out of balance fights that might need more hands somewhere. But again I can see the points being made.

[TheGrimm.5624]

24 minutes ago, Arya Whitefire.8423 said:

If there is a lot of multi-account playing going on, especially guild-centric multi-account playing, then it make's anet's concept of balancing by historical hours played stop working.  I think the effects are small in the current system, but in the proposed alliance system they will be much larger.

I admit after this thread the numbers geek in me would love to get access to ANets database to check MAC addresses versus account logins to get a directional feel for the number of people with multiple accounts playing on different servers. I suspect its low overall but would be curious about it.

[TheGrimm.5624]

6 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

I'm not quite following you.  An account doesn't earn anything that is "account-bound" credited to another account just because it's owned and played by the same player.  What gains?

 

So the WR system predicts that the player will be on server A for 4 hours and its Alt will be on server B for 4 hours. So when the player decides to spend 8 hours instead on server B it could have meant instead another player could have been assigned to A to fill in that spot but wasn't because it would have exceeded the hours variable. Therefore they are under represented by that player changing the account they are playing on. Sure a few people wouldn't impact this since it could also have happened by real life events impacting play time. But if you have whole guilds that do this, could see it as a way to throw off entire matchups.

Now assuming ANet knows this happens since its been stated here many times over various threads I would also assume they are factoring in AVG playtime and some +/- factor in the calculations to account for this. But those adjustments could still be thrown by whole large guilds doing these hops after new worlds are set, if that is a thing. 

 

[TheGrimm.5624]

38 minutes ago, Kite.5327 said:

PPT servers like SOS are the problem. The problem lies there. You are entering WvW not knowing how to PvP, capping empty towers all night long. You should switch to EU if you want fights during your timezone, not cap empty towers on NA and then blame Mag for playing as intended (pvp'ing) during normal NA hours....
 

I admit I would avoid normal hours. So if someone lives in NA and works nights you want to make them create a EU account? Could easily take your own idea and say instead some of MAG should get home from work, take a 4 hour nap and then proceed to play if they have coverage issues. Again not a good idea.

No coverage will be as coverage is. We will have this with the WR system as well by premade Alliances making sure they have their own times covered. ANet will need to add the logic they said was down the road later sooner to account for both play time and time zone so that the system can make sure if divides up play time and time zones when calculating new worlds each interval.

[Arya Whitefire.8423]

1 minute ago, Chaba.5410 said:

I'm not quite following you.  An account doesn't earn anything that is "account-bound" credited to another account just because it's owned and played by the same player.  What gains?

 

They, as a guild of real life players, get to "win" more matchups/seasons.

 

Let's say you have a single guild alliance of 500 players, that they average 10 hours a week per player, and they all have 2 accounts.

 

And for ease of setup, let's assume anet's averaging period is the same as the matchup period. The matchup period and averaging period can be different, but all that does is smear out the inequalities in team formation, it doesn't "fix" it.  We'll also assume that this guild has been hopping around looking for fights previous to alliances, but will try to "win" once alliances start.

 

First alliance matchup, the 2 guilds are assigned 2 worlds, each world is charged roughly half, 2500 player hours, to have these 2 guilds as part of them.

 

The alliance picks one world, and plays only that world to "win".  That world now has +2500 player hours, and whichever world they don't play on, has -2500 player hours.  Since the "winning" world is getting the full 5000, and the other is getting 0.

 

Next 8 week period, a new set of worlds is created.   The guild this alliance just played on charges 5000 player hours to the world it is assigned to, the guild they didn't play on is charged 0.  At this point 2 scenarios can occur:

 

1. They play the same guild again, anet's system "worked"

2. They swap guilds, anet's system just utterly failed, since now there is a world with 5000 extra player hours, and a world missing 5000 player hours.

 

As you increase the number of guilds you can choose from, you benefit more, and decrease the odds that all of your guilds are assigned to the same world. Further, multiple alliances can coordinate to exploit even larger advantages, by coordinating to only play on worlds where multiple of their alliances are paired up.

 

 

 

 

 

[Chaba.5410]

10 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

I would also assume they are factoring in AVG playtime and some +/- factor in the calculations to account for this

Yes, being averaged.  If entire guilds are throwing off their rolling averages (smoothed out over several weeks) by playing way more hours than they normally would on one account over another, then they'll perpetually have those accounts flip-flopping in terms of team placement.   I'm having a hard time seeing what the gain is supposed to be.

[TheGrimm.5624]

1 minute ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Yes, being averaged.  If entire guilds are throwing off their rolling averages (smoothed out over several weeks) by playing way more hours than they normally would on one account over another, then they'll perpetually have those accounts flip-flopping in terms of team placement.   I'm having a hard time seeing what the gain is supposed to be.

The gain would be just to win and or if they actually follow through with it, more reasons to actually win. I admit I want reasons to win. But its more I am hoping it encourages people to defend their stuff more. Now granted I have admitted I am mental there to care about holding to what you own but, if winning has more value to others all the better if means people won't just side on the KTrain thinking we can just take it back in a few minutes. We gave up a T3 so you could take a T0!? Makes me SMH each time I see it.

[Chaba.5410]

7 minutes ago, Arya Whitefire.8423 said:

They, as a guild of real life players, get to "win" more matchups/seasons.

Why do you keep putting "win" in quotes?  They win a match on one account and lose a match on the other.  The credit/any sort of rewards for the wins/losses goes to those separate accounts.

[Biermeister.4678]

1 hour ago, Kite.5327 said:

PPT servers like SOS are the problem. The problem lies there. You are entering WvW not knowing how to PvP, capping empty towers all night long. You should switch to EU if you want fights during your timezone, not cap empty towers on NA and then blame Mag for playing as intended (pvp'ing) during normal NA hours....
 

PPT is what WvW is Capture the Flag you get PPK by fighting over objectives if groups want to open field fight that is fine but losing the home garrison because it is a inconvenience to to them is selfish. 

Tho objectives in WvW is to win the match not just run around looking to open field another boon ball GvG is not a game mode at this time this is not Guild Wars one with a structured GvG system 

[Xenesis.6389]

37 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

I get why people would have them and use them. Just haven't run into times where there wouldn't be need to support my server somewhere. Even if that's just to stop and take time to build up defenses expecting for an attack later. Considering how many people don't do defensive action these days there is always house keeping to be done between fights. And there are usually out of balance fights that might need more hands somewhere. But again I can see the points being made.

Currently using my alt account for the past couple months, as I moved my main with a friend to try somewhere different, then they stopped playing, but I don't want to move the account again, but the alt is on a server I do want to play on. 🤷‍♂️

Btw Grimm my main will be in T4 next week, we can meet up. 🙂

[TheGrimm.5624]

5 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Currently using my alt account for the past couple months, as I moved my main with a friend to try somewhere different, then they stopped playing, but I don't want to move the account again, but the alt is on a server I do want to play on. 🤷‍♂️

Btw Grimm my main will be in T4 next week, we can meet up. 🙂

Nice! and sorry, lol. Yeah I think we will be living in T4 for this entire linking so will be down there. We can get run over by a zerg while we have a dance off. 

[Arya Whitefire.8423]

48 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Why do you keep putting "win" in quotes?  They win a match on one account and lose a match on the other.  The credit/any sort of rewards for the wins/losses goes to those separate accounts.

I put "win" in quotes since most people don't currently care about ppt.  And yeah all but one of their accounts "loses", but the players themselves "win".  And not only do they win, but they screw over an entire world  or worlds who receive less player hours than anet's system was expecting them to have.

[Chaba.5410]

54 minutes ago, Arya Whitefire.8423 said:

I put "win" in quotes since most people don't currently care about ppt.  And yeah all but one of their accounts "loses", but the players themselves "win".  And not only do they win, but they screw over an entire world  or worlds who receive less player hours than anet's system was expecting them to have.

It all sounds speculative.  You play a few weeks with a guild who rallies pretty regularly and then the next day they are inconsistent or not there and that happens now without alt accounts.  Case in point, a particular guild and driver I know of who currently resides on KN been rather dormant the past few weeks.  And given history, it's entirely likely at some point in the future they'll suddenly start back up again on the regular for a time.  Then we have the recent case of a server opening because players lowered their normal average hours (out of boredom or holidays?) which prompted a few guilds to transfer in despite the fact that they were not needed.  Now the players who lowered their hours seem to have gotten "screwed over".

My point is that these changes in population balance is probably far more widespread than we really know.  To narrow it down and blame it on multi-account users seems to be a focus on the wrong problem.

There's never going to be perfect balance between teams.  WR though will provide a mitigation to that ebb and flow of population no matter who or what causes it and by what intent by reformulating teams periodically.  We go from a 30% disparity to a 4% disparity (or whatever the numbers were from an older dev post on it).  That seems rather significant.

Edited January 5, 2023 by Chaba.5410

[Arya Whitefire.8423]

If it is worth winning, people will take every advantage, just like they do with the current system.  No system that retains 24 hour a day matchups or that bases world construction on historical average playtime will ever result in consistently fair or even interesting matches.  Both need to go away for a new system to be worth implementing.  Especially if you want anet to reward people for winning the matchups.