You will be thrown together with random guilds in future

[Dawdler.8521]

6 hours ago, Polar.8634 said:

Also if system works as advertised, there should not be situation when 50 man blob runs empty border as server populations would be balanced out. Fights with equal numbers are most fun so I am waiting for it.

Even if you are looking forward to it that’s not how it works though. Even with perfectly balanced populations at any given time, a 50 man can easily PPT an almost empty border simply because the enemy is busy elsewhere.

Even worlds today are incredibly poor at putting people where they are needed and becoming outnumbered when they don’t necessarily have to be.

Kitten I’ve seen so many times when half the queue in EBG could have outnumbered and dominated DBL but nooooooooo… we’re outnumbered instead.

flattening the population curves will help, but it’s not magic.

Edited November 19 by Dawdler.8521

[TheGrimm.5624]

8 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

You know we could see data for this, right? All the beta weeks have had more activity than the weeks before and after them.

Not wrong, but how many of those betas didn't include Call to War bonus? Wasn't it zero? Don't discount that. I can't say that they didn't draw in more players but nothing in those data points didn't indicate who it was drawn to Call to War versus WR beta either. Is there a third party that tracks normal versus seasonal players out there that might lend insight? 

Edit: This is why I was saying before we should have a WR beta without CoW so we can understand is it a better matchup or inflated numbers due to reward chasers.

Edited November 19 by TheGrimm.5624
Edit: Added details.

[Dawdler.8521]

24 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Not wrong, but how many of those betas didn't include Call to War bonus? Wasn't it zero? Don't discount that. I can't say that they didn't draw in more players but nothing in those data points didn't indicate who it was drawn to Call to War versus WR beta either. Is there a third party that tracks normal versus seasonal players out there that might lend insight? 

Edit: This is why I was saying before we should have a WR beta without CoW so we can understand is it a better matchup or inflated numbers due to reward chasers.

We know people play for loot. Even if WR is a horrible failure in practice that no one plays a week after it's released, it still doesnt change that facts of this statement, call to war or not.

It really doesnt matter. People keep thinking so much about a simple redistribution of same players that play WvW now that their brains overcook.

[TheGrimm.5624]

1 minute ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

We know people play for loot. Even if WR is a horrible failure in practice that no one plays a week after it's released, it still doesnt change that facts of this statement, call to war or not.

It really doesnt matter. People keep thinking so much about a simple redistribution of same players that play WvW now that their brains overcook.

Let's try this again. So are you saying increased activity is due to WR betas or Call to War? I am thinking its due to Call To War based on other things linked to Call to War. So can we claim that the WR test lead to higher pop weeks or were they impacted by these additional bonuses which lead to larger player bases? During the next test, remove the Call to War bonus to give a better read. Apply it instead to a non-WR week to gauge differences in WR versus Call To War. Or do you do disagree in separating the variables in the WR versus more loot factors? I don't deny I might be missing a factor but in past experiences when you mix variables in a questionable outcome sometimes the assumed influence factor is not the one that actually impacted the result of the test and that impacted the results in the test. Food for thought.

[Dawdler.8521]

6 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Let's try this again. So are you saying increased activity is due to WR betas or Call to War? I am thinking its due to Call To War based on other things linked to Call to War. So can we claim that the WR test lead to higher pop weeks or were they impacted by these additional bonuses which lead to larger player bases? During the next test, remove the Call to War bonus to give a better read. Apply it instead to a non-WR week to gauge differences in WR versus Call To War. Or do you do disagree in separating the variables in the WR versus more loot factors? I don't deny I might be missing a factor but in past experiences when you mix variables in a questionable outcome sometimes the assumed influence factor is not the one that actually impacted the result of the test and that impacted the results in the test. Food for thought.

Is call to war part of it? Duh, of course.

Do we know the exact relation percentage? No and it's stupid to go that indepth because it's impossible to know unless you interview every single player. And even there, are you going to ask whether they play like 20% more due to call to war? How does that impact the total? If they played 9h that week instead of 10h due to having a hot date they didnt have last week, is that supposed to go into the variables? Maybe someone went on vacation. Maybe someone got a fresh take and really got into WvW to triple their time. Maybe someone went on the bathroom an extra time this week. And we're not even counting the tuesday patch which can cause havoc if it's a living story one. Does everything skew the percentage?

If you want to list the numbers week by week so you can follow up a year of WR or something, just do it.  Wvwstats.com is still going I think, you can easily get the totals into excel. I cant be bothered to take every week into account.  

[Polar.8634]

3 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

50 man can easily PPT an almost empty border simply because the enemy is busy elsewhere.

I know but still should be better. I am not talking about night gaming either

[geist.4126]

To be honest. The way to break this blob meta would be to limit wvw guilds to 30 people and randomly throw them together in equal matchups.

[Bizgurk.5639]

1 hour ago, geist.4126 said:

To be honest. The way to break this blob meta would be to limit wvw guilds to 30 people and randomly throw them together in equal matchups.

I'd like to disagree. The WvW community knows each other for years, even among different worlds. You could throw 30 people from blobbing guilds of each of the current worlda together and we'd still be able to create a blob. We're not strangers to each others anymore.

[geist.4126]

Is that why they all stack to one server? Nah, it's because farming randoms is more fun than actual fighting. And no, you wouldn't because you wouldn't end up on the same side in a matchup. You would be forced to fight each other.

[Cyninja.2954]

14 hours ago, Arya Whitefire.8423 said:

Nah I played all the betas on multiple servers, the losing teams all turned into ghost towns on weekdays outside prime time hours.  With the exception of the very first beta.  So like, unless you're the winning team, I hope you enjoy logging into a T3ed enemy held garrison every night.

I am sad to hear that. Unfortunately your subjective experience is not reflective of the limited data we as players have access to, nor is it reflected in the official announcements made by the developers on this matter.

I guess it's also not reflected in the not mentioned data from the developers since I'm pretty sure they would have pulled the plug on this project if the data they had was this bad.

Edited November 19 by Cyninja.2954

[CrimsonOneThree.5682]

You get thrown into links with random guilds and players, due to the nature of the Linking system already.

Add in transfers to links and alt accounts, like some servers can be so strong in terms of ppt and coverage, or have strong squads and leads for farming kills and winning the majority of fights, yet you see players on their alts playing on those servers, because X matchup or link is bad on their main.

I know servers who trained up players, who had guilds on servers, just end up transferring off their main server for years. Not many of them benefit that much from it, because of the dwindling population of skilled players, opposing guilds and good commanders, there is nowadays. 

While the dominant T1 server, has a high or medium link usually in the EU, so players bandwagon there freely to 'win' T1.

I don't like what WvW has become, population balancing and distribution has always been pretty bad, but it is even worse in the current system.

So we have to wait, until we see the new system progress in it's development.

@Riba.3271@tyrellian.3706

Edited November 21 by CrimsonOneThree.5682

[TheGrimm.5624]

On 11/19/2023 at 3:45 AM, Dawdler.8521 said:

We know people play for loot. Even if WR is a horrible failure in practice that no one plays a week after it's released, it still doesnt change that facts of this statement, call to war or not.

It really doesnt matter. People keep thinking so much about a simple redistribution of same players that play WvW now that their brains overcook.

 

On 11/19/2023 at 4:17 AM, Dawdler.8521 said:

Is call to war part of it? Duh, of course.

Do we know the exact relation percentage? No and it's stupid to go that indepth because it's impossible to know unless you interview every single player. And even there, are you going to ask whether they play like 20% more due to call to war? How does that impact the total? If they played 9h that week instead of 10h due to having a hot date they didnt have last week, is that supposed to go into the variables? Maybe someone went on vacation. Maybe someone got a fresh take and really got into WvW to triple their time. Maybe someone went on the bathroom an extra time this week. And we're not even counting the tuesday patch which can cause havoc if it's a living story one. Does everything skew the percentage?

If you want to list the numbers week by week so you can follow up a year of WR or something, just do it.  Wvwstats.com is still going I think, you can easily get the totals into excel. I cant be bothered to take every week into account.  

So how can you imply that its was WR that drew people with more balance in the matches versus its was Call To War which we have seen will draw players in? You said yourself Betas were more active but then said Call To War Duh? Which is it, was it better matches or better rewards that you think created additional activity that you saw? I asked about separating the two to break them up to understand the impact of each versus mixing them together. Does that make more sense?

[Zok.4956]

On 11/19/2023 at 12:48 AM, XenesisII.1540 said:

I'm currently watching a 50 squad guild run over an empty bl, hard ppting on sat before prime time a relink week. People still want to win!

I wouldn't call that "want to win" but "karma train". 😉

 

On 11/19/2023 at 12:26 AM, psizone.8437 said:

It's less about people quitting the match midway and more about having the baseline player base of the teams be more even than they are right now with a better spread of players across the hours.

The "beta-system" did nothing to better spread players across the hours - this was functionality that was planned after alliances were finished. And because alliances are no longer being fully developed but only the existing beta status of world restructuring is being made permanent, it is very questionable whether that will ever happen.

 

Edited November 21 by Zok.4956

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

 

So how can you imply that its was WR that drew people with more balance in the matches versus its was Call To War which we have seen will draw players in? You said yourself Betas were more active but then said Call To War Duh? Which is it, was it better matches or better rewards that you think created additional activity that you saw? I asked about separating the two to break them up to understand the impact of each versus mixing them together. Does that make more sense?

It was a statement of fact in response to a claim that there was no activity when in fact total kills+deaths was noticeably higher.

Many people complaining probably came from an always winning high tier world and now had the pleasure of playing on an “average” world, because that’s how it works.

What you think it implies is up to you.

[Chaba.5410]

1 hour ago, Zok.4956 said:

The "beta-system" did nothing to better spread players across the hours

In one of the beta follow up posts, Anet wrote that the disparity in playhours was down to around 1%, where usually it is 30% without WR. Not clear what you are trying to say. Most recent blog post mentions timezones.

Edited November 21 by Chaba.5410

[Tythan.2936]

On 11/18/2023 at 4:17 PM, Riba.3271 said:

It was quite obvious that a system where you don't get to choose the best server for you and your friends will be a downgrade from having a choice. Even in best case scenario, you get average result.

Unfortunately there are people and developers here that are desperate for change so they don't see the reality.

 Are those developers desperate for change in the room with us sir ? Most people lost count of the years since they announced Alliances.

[blp.3489]

3 hours ago, Zok.4956 said:

The "beta-system" did nothing to better spread players across the hours - this was functionality that was planned after alliances were finished. And because alliances are no longer being fully developed but only the existing beta status of world restructuring is being made permanent, it is very questionable whether that will ever happen.

The last update says that they have already added time zones to the team-building algorithm:

Quote

We’ve also added some new metrics to our team-building algorithm to help create more balanced matches, taking into account commanders, time zones, and more.

[Mabi black.1824]

On 11/18/2023 at 11:05 PM, Dawdler.8521 said:

On 11/18/2023 at 9:47 PM, anduriell.6280 said:

“bandwagoning” whatever it means for you will still happen just it will have a price tag, a cost to join the winning guild. 

... You mean like how "fight servers" are known to have paid for the "pro" guilds to move there?

No, it's saying that 500 organized and experienced WVW players, in WVW 2023 , sounds like a whole server stacked. And when WR goes live, you're going to need 30 minutes of in-game time to tell me if I was wrong.

[Mabi black.1824]

On 11/19/2023 at 12:26 AM, psizone.8437 said:

It's less about people quitting the match midway and more about having the baseline player base of the teams be more even than they are right now with a better spread of players across the hours.

People are less likely to quit the matchup if their team isn't massively outnumbered from the start.

Except you're completely forgetting about the social aspect, for all the players who feel like they're part of a certain server/team. Even if they lose, they continue to offer their own time and content because they are involved as a 'team'. With WR (reshuffle every 4 weeks) the player is unlikely to ride a feeling of participation. So if you're in a bind it's much more likely that people won't show up or disconnect. 

Mind you WR is fine, it definitely leads to a 10x better population balance, but it also leads to the problem I pointed out to you above. inevitably. So you have to give WVW a new design. Now it's based on a server concept, after that I don't know. With WR you have to give the player the context, the purpose, the references to be able to confront each other. or there will be trouble.

[Mabi black.1824]

4 hours ago, Zok.4956 said:

The "beta-system" did nothing to better spread players across the hours - this was functionality that was planned after alliances were finished. And because alliances are no longer being fully developed but only the existing beta status of world restructuring is being made permanent, it is very questionable whether that will ever happen.

You've surely missed the last communication from Anet.

[psizone.8437]

48 minutes ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

Except you're completely forgetting about the social aspect

True, that's the major downside of this. But in fairness, the social aspect has been getting worse over the years for most servers due to the dwindling populations and server stacking.

It might suck for some people but at least it'll slow the death of the game mode.

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

No, it's saying that 500 organized and experienced WVW players, in WVW 2023 , sounds like a whole server stacked. And when WR goes live, you're going to need 30 minutes of in-game time to tell me if I was wrong.

Well I’m sure that will be totally different from seeing a tick of 10 within 30 minutes of reset because the enemy worlds are stacked.

[Zok.4956]

8 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

In one of the beta follow up posts, Anet wrote that the disparity in playhours was down to around 1%, where usually it is 30% without WR. Not clear what you are trying to say.

The fact that the totals of play hours were less different was not the topic. During the betas, the different player counts during different times of the day weren't really any better than outside of the betas. At least that's my observations on EU. At some times of the day our team had a blob (and the opponents were non-existent) and at other times of the day the opponents had blobs (and we had a ghost town and no players to counter it).

8 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Most recent blog post mentions timezones.

And what exactly does that mean for a more even population distribution over the 24 hours of a day? An example: The servers/teams still marked as "DE" (originally german language servers) are all essentially in the same time zone. Nevertheless, they are mainly active at sometimes quite different times of the day. Just looking at the time zone of the game clients/accounts wouldn't bring any improvement in this case.

6 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

You've surely missed the last communication from Anet.

You're partly right, I must have missed the mention of "time zones" in their annoucement.  However, so far it is only a brief mention among other things. And I'm skeptical when Anet announces things for WvW that aren't quite concrete/detailled yet.

[Chaba.5410]

22 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

The fact that the totals of play hours were less different was not the topic. During the betas, the different player counts during different times of the day weren't really any better than outside of the betas.

 

22 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

The servers/teams still marked as "DE" (originally german language servers) are all essentially in the same time zone. Nevertheless, they are mainly active at sometimes quite different times of the day. Just looking at the time zone of the game clients/accounts wouldn't bring any improvement in this case.

Wait, what?  You wrote about players needing to be better spread across the hours.  Now you're dismissing it because EU primarily plays all in the same timezone?  You lost me at what point you're trying to make.

Edited November 21 by Chaba.5410

[XenesisII.1540]

40 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

The fact that the totals of play hours were less different was not the topic. During the betas, the different player counts during different times of the day weren't really any better than outside of the betas. At least that's my observations on EU. At some times of the day our team had a blob (and the opponents were non-existent) and at other times of the day the opponents had blobs (and we had a ghost town and no players to counter it).

And what exactly does that mean for a more even population distribution over the 24 hours of a day? An example: The servers/teams still marked as "DE" (originally german language servers) are all essentially in the same time zone. Nevertheless, they are mainly active at sometimes quite different times of the day. Just looking at the time zone of the game clients/accounts wouldn't bring any improvement in this case.

You're partly right, I must have missed the mention of "time zones" in their annoucement.  However, so far it is only a brief mention among other things. And I'm skeptical when Anet announces things for WvW that aren't quite concrete/detailled yet.

The betas were missing the time zone sorting, it will be included in the next beta, it may make a difference. I don't expect a huge difference but it should help.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/wvw-update-guild-hall-arenas-and-world-restructuring-beta/

Quote

We’ve also added some new metrics to our team-building algorithm to help create more balanced matches, taking into account commanders, time zones, and more.