Math to back up why Maguuma should go it alone next relink.

[zastari.1730]

Here's my perspective as someone that began on game launch day 1 on Maguuma, quit this game several times, and just resumed playing on Mag after a 4 year break.

 

Maguuma is fundamentally like a cat. Cats don't hunt their prey to satisfy hunger, they do it because it's fun. Maguuma used to be the kind of server that would open up NWT or NET and then spawn camp the enemy instead of cap the lord because all they cared about were the fights. Very catlike.

 

However, much like cats, Maguuma is inherently destructive to its ecosystem. The Maguuman cats are not good population ecologists: They don't know when to cap the tower. Instead, they bleed the enemy team dry until they all log off and do something else. This results in a boom/bust population cycle of content.

 

I can't entirely fault Maguuma for this, because a lot of their behavior is incentivized by dev reward structures: Siege mechanics and tower upgrades create broken incentives that get worsened by the circadian cycle of game activity/inactivity; reward tracks give players a problem (gliders and mounts) and then force them to grind to get up to parity with every other player in the game mode; roamers are given no way to contribute to the realm other than +2 points at a time, so they create their own subgame using some complicated form of communication involving salty pink text and unbuilt siege plans thrown on dead enemies. This list is very incomplete as well.

 

At the same time though, the players have a lot of fault too. Roamers don't realize that they have no roamers to fight because of their own actions. They don't think of the population dynamics that occur when they spam emotes or throw siege on people, because the pile of people that log off and go do something more productive with their time is invisible to their spite-centered world.

 

Groups don't have good groups to fight for the same reason. Group battles are turned into wars of pride and spite instead of gfs. No fight ends with "gf" between enemy commanders, instead it end with complaints about ANet, servers, and server meta. Or, worse yet, enemy teams group up and team cap objectives while ignoring fights because they only care about paying the spite back. I'm sure these groups don't even log off fulfilled — just a bit less agitated because they were finally able to extend the middle finger the entire way.

Regarding the skill of Maguuma versus other servers, I think pretty much everyone that plays this game now is bad, myself included. I think this because the meta appears stale. I don't see interesting builds or team comps, I don't see the meta being pushed, I don't see an active GvG scene rolling modern builds out to PuG group warfare. Skill expression itself is exiting this game. If you think you're especially skilled now, you're deluded and you should go play a game that has high skill expression and active competition so you can go get an accurate self-image of skill.

 

Everyone else that's less delusional, I just hope that there's just a little bit of drive to git gud underneath the layers of hubris, anger, and spite. Otherwise this just seems like a miserable game to play.

Edited January 11, 2023 by zastari.1730

[Hesione.9412]

4 hours ago, exeggcuter.8394 said:

Hmmm so I guess the real truth is that the blame lies with the players themselves. Voluntarily choosing to go to the server already winning. And thus making the experience worse for everyone, including themselves. Meanwhile ANet is making a killing on the gems used to transfer between servers.

 

I feel like pointing another thing out: I think (possibly mistakenly!) that the original idea of transferring servers was merely so friends could play with each other. ANet could not have possibly assumed it would have been abused to more or less buy victory. It's no coincidence that it was among the first things WvW had changed to it many years ago, at least according to the wiki.

 

I know it's hard to accept, but there are a ton of players that deserve a lot of the blame for it getting this bad. Keep in mind it's literally the main reason the world restructuring is happening. Because players abused the current system so hard it needs to be scrapped and replaced entirely.

 

TLDR: read the above. :þ

Yep, the answer to all the problems in WvW is, not being sarcastic, players.

Exploits in WvW? Sure it's Anet's code that makes them present. But it's players choosing to use them that's the problem. And when it's entire groups and not just one player, come on. And, for some of them, you can't target the player to report. And if you know who they are and are doing nothing, e.g. because they're in your guild, then you're part of the problem even if you're not using exploits yourself.

Relink problems - major guilds transferring off servers around the time of the relink so that server populations are incorrect for the designed relink. Player problem, not Anet.

Server coverage basically only NA or only OCX (NA server problem) - not sure how Anet is supposed to magic up WvW players who play in off-NA hours.

A bunch of players want to "win" WvW by cheating and/or bandwaggoning. 

What I would really like to know is whether WvW player nunbers are increasing, holding, or going down - as a seasonal trend. 

[ArchonWing.9480]

So people got farmed by boon blobs. Down with boon blobs!

Players get farmed by a non-boon blobs: Down with not playing in a boon blob!

Well what don't you folks get farmed by that you don't massively outnumber? Heard Queensdale is a good and safe place. There's ever a dodge trainer that can help you if that's too hard.

Edited January 11, 2023 by ArchonWing.9480

[hanabal lecter.2495]

These servers getting stomped on is what happens when they relied on a boonblob commander gamestyle for 10yrs rather than honing individual skill and adapting to other styles of combat.you get groups that fail immediately after their tag dies or are unable to make any decision without being told what to do by big papa tag. These boonblobs brought this upon thsemselves.

Edited January 13, 2023 by hanabal lecter.2495

[Chaba.5410]

1 hour ago, zastari.1730 said:

Here's my perspective as someone that began on game launch day 1 on Maguuma, quit this game several times, and just resumed playing on Mag after a 4 year break.

 

Maguuma is fundamentally like a cat. Cats don't hunt their prey to satisfy hunger, they do it because it's fun. Maguuma used to be the kind of server that would open up NWT or NET and then spawn camp the enemy instead of cap the lord because all they cared about were the fights. Very catlike.

 

However, much like cats, Maguuma is inherently destructive to its ecosystem. The Maguuman cats are not good population ecologists: They don't know when to cap the tower. Instead, they bleed the enemy team dry until they all log off and do something else. This results in a boom/bust population cycle of content.

 

I can't entirely fault Maguuma for this, because a lot of their behavior is incentivized by dev reward structures: Siege mechanics and tower upgrades create broken incentives that get worsened by the circadian cycle of game activity/inactivity; reward tracks give players a problem (gliders and mounts) and then force them to grind to get up to parity with every other player in the game mode; roamers are given no way to contribute to the realm other than +2 points at a time, so they create their own subgame using some complicated form of communication involving salty pink text and unbuilt siege plans thrown on dead enemies. This list is very incomplete as well.

 

At the same time though, the players have a lot of fault too. Roamers don't realize that they have no roamers to fight because of their own actions. They don't think of the population dynamics that occur when they spam emotes or throw siege on people, because the pile of people that log off and go do something more productive with their time is invisible to their spite-centered world.

 

Groups don't have good groups to fight for the same reason. Group battles are turned into wars of pride and spite instead of gfs. No fight ends with "gf" between enemy commanders, instead it end with complaints about ANet, servers, and server meta. Or, worse yet, enemy teams group up and team cap objectives while ignoring fights because they only care about paying the spite back. I'm sure these groups don't even log off fulfilled — just a bit less agitated because they were finally able to extend the middle finger the entire way.

Regarding the skill of Maguuma versus other servers, I think pretty much everyone that plays this game now is bad, myself included. I think this because the meta appears stale. I don't see interesting builds or team comps, I don't see the meta being pushed, I don't see an active GvG scene rolling modern builds out to PuG group warfare. Skill expression itself is exiting this game. If you think you're especially skilled now, you're deluded and you should go play a game that has high skill expression and active competition so you can go get an accurate self-image of skill.

 

Everyone else that's less delusional, I just hope that there's just a little bit of drive to git gud underneath the layers of hubris, anger, and spite. Otherwise this just seems like a miserable game to play.

Holy Cow! How long have you been back? I summoned you in a thread just last week...
 

 

Edited January 11, 2023 by Chaba.5410

[Xenesis.6389]

3 hours ago, Bristingr.5034 said:

Honestly, Mag would be neutered if the other 2 teams just work together. Literally just have both teams ignore each other and only fight Mag - together. Prevent them from holding SMC (or getting it back), take over their keep, tier it up, and just farm their kitten at spawn all week as karma.

But servers don't like to work together, so it'll never happen. So the next best option is to just ignore EBG that week.

I've seen SoS double team with FA on TC in ebg, SoS to langor, FA to Bravost, same with the TC borderlands, practically every day the same routine. But somehow this can't be applied in T1 for them, although I would guess that would be because they're one of the biggest runaway servers around, Mag really did a number in their ppt heads. Oh and SoS loves their acs, while FA loves their trebs, they're at least prepared for T1.

But yeah that saying, the enemy of your enemy is your friend, just apply that to T1. But people just like no challenge easy caps. 🤷‍♂️

[Famine.7915]

From what I've seen. People find it frustrating to fight Mag. When they opt not to play just because of the matchup, it makes the population lopsided. We should not balance only from a population number from the week of matchup that two servers face Mag. I can't confirm this, but I imagine the "low" population servers in comparison suddenly spike once in a different matchup.

[Famine.7915]

4 hours ago, Evenge.4067 said:

You manipulated the actual population by playing on alts on other servers until Mag was open for transfers.  It's been done before.  BG used to manipulate the system back in their over population dominance. 

There's your facts skeeted all over your face. 😉

You give Mag far too much credit. You think Mag plans that far ahead? XD

[Towelie.9504]

The good part is Alliances are coming out Soon(tm) and is there to fix all populance balance issues!

 

The bad part is that Alliances won't fix anything because Anet does not have the balls to simply limit elgible WvW guild sizes to something reasonable like 100 players (which is still a TON of players even when this game mode wasn't dead) and instead it'll slowly drift into a handful "alliance guilds" of 500 people a piece which end up basically being the same servers we have today.  Congrats, all that "effort" these past 5 years to put in a basic population balancing sorting "algorithm," if it can even be called that, just became useless.

 

Instead of dealing with the outrage and angst of people who some reason think 500 man guilds are needed in a game that has lost most of its population and in a game mode that is basically in hospice waiting for someone to smother it with a pillow ArenaNet will go the passive route of allowing 500 man servers grouped into guilds and then go back to ignoring the problem for another decade.

Edited January 11, 2023 by Towelie.9504

[MedievalThings.5417]

They need to remove tier 4 for NA.  Make NA 3 tiers, which gives people less places for their alts to play and should force people to play or not at all.

They also need to limit transfers to 1-2 times per year, AND not allow transfers the 2 weeks before a relink and the 2 weeks after.  That would slow down the bandwagoning some.

They should also charge substantially more for every transfer in a 12 month period.  First transfer maybe 2k gems.  Second, 5k gems.  If they allowed a third in 12 months, 10k gems.

Tired of watching players destroy this game mode because they don't like even odds or want to fight anything challenging.

Edited January 11, 2023 by Ubi.4136

[Junkpile.7439]

I find it kind of funny that players who play in massive cloud think that they are super skilled. There is often guilds inside these clouds too and i always wonder why they have to run inside zone cloud when they  could just zerg bust solo. When i win fight in this game i never think that i am good. Enemy is always just too bad.

Edited January 11, 2023 by Junkpile.7439

[lotus.5672]

15 hours ago, Tryfan.1457 said:

It's a demonstration of how a small issue can snowball into a much bigger issue.

 

The Mag community has been such for a while now that they will regard EBG as "theirs" and the spirit is such that they will band together the whole map to make it so. Above a certain mass of players, classes that retain mobility and safety while dealing damage become extremely strong. The reason for this is that it takes too long to get a significant number of these classes (ele and engineer are the biggest abusers, but mesmers rangers and thieves are also bad) to actually be dead and stay dead. When pressed, they retreat deeper into the cloud or into places that are not easy to follow, such as through portals or behind walls, and you can't stop it.

 

So, in this situation, you have a large number of characters and no ability to thin it out quickly without being an absolutely massive blob yourself. The best guilds routinely down huge numbers of cloud members but the number of actual kills are much lower because of these advantages. Even when kills happen, they are often hard rezzed. Again, these are advantages that require a very large group of people and a certain class mix to have work.

 

However, once this is achieved, like I say, it snowballs. When you won't lose more than one or two for every push of a blob, you can afford to spec into much higher damage builds than a typical medium size blob will be using, as long as you match it with defensive utility so you can get away if you happen to be in the direction the blob moves. It's no coincidence the Mag blob has so many elementalists, more than any other class, it's the easiest to do it on but by no means the only one. So these groups are now fighting a cloud that has much more damage than them and is much less vulnerable to dying than them.

 

Groups offset this with boons, but another large population element of the cloud is boonripping necros. Because of this, only the strongest, best organized groups can actually take on a full sized cloud and win, normally about 40 or 45 vs over 60 from the cloud.

 

No server can maintain a cohesive group on EBG at that number able to coordinate the support builds required to deal with that much damage when you have so little opportunity to do massive damage back. So, over the months and years, EBG has become less and less populated. The so called Ogrewatch sentry meta, one of the dullest and dumbest things I have ever witnessed in this game, got less and less popular. Without a major group on with coordination to fight, any other group will just be swarmed by the cloud and all die. People know this now, and stopped bringing anything but a cloud-defeating capable blob there. EBG became a wasteland with everything ticking t3 points to Mag. Desperate to find ANYONE to fight, Mag puts emergency waypoints into every tower they tier up, further dissuading any group smaller than a megablob from bothering. The snowball continues. All small group and roaming content at this point is now dead.

 

This was the situation a few months ago. Until then, you could still get the occasional fun on non-EBG maps. But people learn after a while. No one at all was bothering to come into EBG at all, other than a few clueless noobs who didn't really understand what was happening.

 

So the ewp meta was expanded to every map. Roaming and groups smaller than 40 died on alpine and desert as well. It takes more groups than any other server has going at a single time to split up the cloud enough for groups smaller than that to exist. Sure you still see them occasionally, because people want to wvw, but they are slaughtered. A 20 person group has no chance against the cloud showing up to an ewp tower and rolling over them with 40-60. You don't need coordination for that, 20 people would never be able to kill enough of the eles and rangers and engineers fast enough to sustain through. So that content is dead, and the snowball continues.

 

Right up until you see the condition of the BGs now. An overwhelming number and mechanic advantage on one map has killed all ability for anything but a well coordinated blob to play on any map at all. So Mag sits bored waiting for the casual groups to show up to try to get some wvw fun and roll over them for their vaunted kdr, sitting and picking their noses when they aren't around, wondering why their action is so dead. Coordinated groups like BANE and FTL (for this week's matchup) are still quite capable of blasting the cloud to pieces, but even then, it's fighting for twenty or thirty minutes constantly at a time while the cloud hard rezzes itself over and over, never getting to move or fight decisively because the cloud never presents a single target large enough to beat down quickly enough, again thanks to mechanics that break above a group size threshold. This is fun in small doses, but it gets dull way faster for the organized group than it does for the cloud.

 

And there's the end result. Dead maps, unless several blobs get up and roam around at once. Green t3 everywhere because small groups and roaming is completely killed by the population imbalance. And the funny thing? Because of the way ANet tracks population (by server activity in wvw maps), when the maps go dead like this, it even makes Maguuma look underpopulated, to the point where they even opened up (and dozens more people transferred in). If no one is roaming or playing in small groups, even some Maguuma fanatics stop bothering to go in.

 

I don't anticipate any solution. That people will (and have) stop playing with Maguuma at all when they refuse to permit any group smaller than 40 to exist seems to be completely okay with both Maguuma and ANet. Won't be the first time short term glee ends in long term desolation. This situation won't persist forever, and we'll see what things look like on the other side. Unfortunately, because I don't think ANet actually leaves any kind of discretion to actual people over their algorithm, it is going to take a LONG period of disastrously bad wvw to change anything. I wouldn't be surprised if they just let it be this way all the way to alliances, in the mistaken belief that will solve anything.

 

 

Stop playing 4 minstrel supports/1 dps per party and you might start to get some kills on players with little to no self stab

[Famine.7915]

Currently, Mag can have 5 people on map, AFK and still not lose anything for the rest of the week. If you don't play, then... Yeah I guess you're outnumbered.

[Tryfan.1457]

6 minutes ago, lotus.5672 said:

Stop playing 4 minstrel supports/1 dps per party and you might start to get some kills on players with little to no self stab

This is the kind of brain dead response I expected, yes. Nobody said the blob can't get kills. The problem is getting enough kills on a cloud to make any progress in a fight. There's no mass to attack. You kill one or two every ten seconds (the rest mistforming, stealthing, or invulning deeper into the cloud or through a portal), the cloud hard rezzes the ones you got last time. You can't split up or spread out because 60+ people using meteor shower, barrage, engy stuff, wells from every direction do a lot of damage and there's a lot of cc and pulls being thrown at it. Individuals can run away faster than a blob can chase, this has always been true.

 

Every blob I have been a part of the last two weeks has completely kitten on the cloud in kdr, by more than 3 to 1. But when that comes from a 20 minute fight in a single camp because the cloud never stops rezzing itself, the map isn't going to change much.

[jul.7602]

1 minute ago, Tryfan.1457 said:

This is the kind of brain dead response I expected, yes. Nobody said the blob can't get kills. The problem is getting enough kills on a cloud to make any progress in a fight. There's no mass to attack. You kill one or two every ten seconds (the rest mistforming, stealthing, or invulning deeper into the cloud or through a portal), the cloud hard rezzes the ones you got last time. You can't split up or spread out because 60+ people using meteor shower, barrage, engy stuff, wells from every direction do a lot of damage and there's a lot of cc and pulls being thrown at it. Individuals can run away faster than a blob can chase, this has always been true.

 

Every blob I have been a part of the last two weeks has completely kitten on the cloud in kdr, by more than 3 to 1. But when that comes from a 20 minute fight in a single camp because the cloud never stops rezzing itself, the map isn't going to change much.

Again, it's because your blobs are weak. That's why they are getting farmed. Most of the blobs these days are just K-trains with PvX players. Any well comped blob of 30 or more semi-competent people, will farm the cloud.

[Tryfan.1457]

12 minutes ago, Famine.7915 said:

Currently, Mag can have 5 people on map, AFK and still not lose anything for the rest of the week. If you don't play, then... Yeah I guess you're outnumbered.

 

Any roamer or small group will be hit by anything between 4x and 10x their numbers from the ewps everywhere.

 

So yeah, enjoy your zero content until the blobs arrive.

 

Mag always likes to say they only want to fight. I've never seen a group of people more afraid of an even fight.

 

[Kite.5327]

Oh your server's populations are just fine, your own fault if you dodge fights cause used to attacking doors and pve champions. Maybe learn your class and how do some dueling and then enter a wvw map. 

[Tryfan.1457]

1 minute ago, jul.7602 said:

Again, it's because your blobs are weak. That's why they are getting farmed. Most of the blobs these days are just K-trains with PvX players. Any well comped blob of 30 or more semi-competent people, will farm the cloud.

Do you have difficulty with reading comprehension? Reread what I said and realize I literally said the same thing. The blobs with 40+ people always farm the cloud. That doesn't change the fact taking twenty minutes to take a camp keeps all the maps green.

 

[Tryfan.1457]

Just now, Kite.5327 said:

Oh your server's populations are just fine, your own fault if you dodge fights cause used to attacking doors and pve champions. Maybe learn your class and how do some dueling and then enter a wvw map. 

"Dueling", lol. Against Mag.

 

Why not just admit you have no idea what you're talking about now?

 

[lotus.5672]

12 minutes ago, Tryfan.1457 said:

This is the kind of brain dead response I expected, yes. Nobody said the blob can't get kills. The problem is getting enough kills on a cloud to make any progress in a fight. There's no mass to attack. You kill one or two every ten seconds (the rest mistforming, stealthing, or invulning deeper into the cloud or through a portal), the cloud hard rezzes the ones you got last time. You can't split up or spread out because 60+ people using meteor shower, barrage, engy stuff, wells from every direction do a lot of damage and there's a lot of cc and pulls being thrown at it. Individuals can run away faster than a blob can chase, this has always been true.

 

Every blob I have been a part of the last two weeks has completely kitten on the cloud in kdr, by more than 3 to 1. But when that comes from a 20 minute fight in a single camp because the cloud never stops rezzing itself, the map isn't going to change much.

As I said, stop stacking minstrel supports and you might start winning fights. Even your minstrel players are trash though, commanders keep getting pulled left and right cause your guards cant do the only thing they are supposed to do, give stab

[jul.7602]

9 minutes ago, Tryfan.1457 said:

Do you have difficulty with reading comprehension? Reread what I said and realize I literally said the same thing. The blobs with 40+ people always farm the cloud. That doesn't change the fact taking twenty minutes to take a camp keeps all the maps green.

 

Completely wrong. Keep coping.

[Famine.7915]

55 minutes ago, Tryfan.1457 said:

 

Any roamer or small group will be hit by anything between 4x and 10x their numbers from the ewps everywhere.

 

So yeah, enjoy your zero content until the blobs arrive.

 

Mag always likes to say they only want to fight. I've never seen a group of people more afraid of an even fight.

 

Nah. Nobody is leading Mag. It is quite literally: A few people see dot -> Chase dot -> Kill dot -> Moar dot? If the dots linger around, it will attract more of the map because they must be putting up a good fight. Mag isn't complicated.

[TheGrimm.5624]

3 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Heard Queensdale is a good and safe place. There's ever a dodge trainer that can help you if that's too hard.

 

Archon, I took your advice. You failed to mention that once this NPC has knocked you down 12 times in a row another NPC spawns to laugh and throw siege on you. Not cool, not cool.

[Sreoom.3690]

Maguma sucks the joy out of playing  WvW

[Sreoom.3690]

Typical Mag fight...get clouded, isolate one of two mag players...they use their running builds to run away...you disengage, they come back to harass any trailing players...rinse, repeat...real fun game play.