RE: Half Implemented World Linking

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Reading through the blog post again, it appears they are going with an EoTM style system with nameless teams (like Quaggan Boogaloo, Water Bottle Mayhem, etc.) and the actual manual guild grouping (i.e. alliances) is left until later.

The post mentions guilds being used as a surrogate since both an alliance and a guild are capped at 500.

Say a guild is created called 'Darkhaven' just to mimic current server identity--who controls this guild? If the roster fills up, how will this guild be managed? If you are stuck with one or more people you dislike but like a different subset of people--you are stuck with half the surrogate guild on ignore / block?

Basically, there is potentially a large problem with interpersonal issues.  Alliances in full avoids this--as you can break up an alliance each 'season'--but here there is no way not to get paired with bad apples without becoming very exclusive and we know how that ends with private tagging.

That is, from my experience, guilds can get VERY catty in WvW; I've seen so many splinter guilds of pre-existing guilds named in mocking ways and BM'ing all over the place.  The problem is subsets of the pre-existing and splinter all get along with various other subsets and can continue to play with eachother because of server/shard--now it's going to be super difficult to peace keep / organize.

 

[TheGrimm.5624]

20 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Reading through the blog post again, it appears they are going with an EoTM style system with nameless teams (like Quaggan Boogaloo, Water Bottle Mayhem, etc.)

Would agree.

20 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

and the actual manual guild grouping (i.e. alliances) is left until later.

Would agree.

20 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

The post mentions guilds being used as a surrogate since both an alliance and a guild are capped at 500.

Would agree.

20 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Say a guild is created called 'Darkhaven' just to mimic current server identity--who controls this guild? If the roster fills up, how will this guild be managed?

This is where I think they ran into an issue. The Alliance system and the Guild system were still planning on a 'Lead'. Whether or not that lead shared was up to the original lead so it left questions on if it was an Alliance system or just a way to more informally create Guilds with differing names into a bigger group. So to reduce complexity they dropped the issue of allowing groups to link and lean into having people form larger guilds, which was already in place. So you example of EoTM is very close.

20 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

If you are stuck with one or more people you dislike but like a different subset of people--you are stuck with half the surrogate guild on ignore / block?

Yes without any options outside of just leaving the larger group.

20 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Basically, there is potentially a large problem with interpersonal issues.  Alliances in full avoids this--as you can break up an alliance each 'season'--but here there is no way not to get paired with bad apples without becoming very exclusive and we know how that ends with private tagging.

I think the risk here is the same in both models since both Alliances and WR still have a Lead so you may be grouped with players you may not want to be and may risk losing players you game with. In this case, its actually a larger risk then the EoTM system since you would be paired with your server when in an overflow.

20 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

That is, from my experience, guilds can get VERY catty in WvW; I've seen so many splinter guilds of pre-existing guilds named in mocking ways and BM'ing all over the place.  The problem is subsets of the pre-existing and splinter all get along with various other subsets and can continue to play with eachother because of server/shard--now it's going to be super difficult to peace keep / organize.

 

Not sure I translate this right, but yes, in all cases and versions of the WR, I would assume drama incoming, and if wrong be pleasantly surprised.

[Mabi black.1824]

1 hour ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Say a guild is created called 'Darkhaven' just to mimic current server identity--who controls this guild? If the roster fills up, how will this guild be managed?

It is no coincidence that on this section of the forum we have spent pages and pages indicating what you have written here. The server container is controlled only by Anet, it's not anyone's property, you don't have to ask anyone's permission, and no one has the power to kick you out.  

The difference is clearly substantial, and many pretend not to understand, because ''just get something new in WVW'' (even when it leads you to a new problem) The answer was usually ''just create your own alliance'' pretending to ignore and not understand everything else.

If it helps, Anet is pretty much changing the design of this game mode. It will no longer be a server/team-based game mode. I personally asked Anet for info to understand what is in mind, what will be the new design of this mode, how players will be able to confront each other, in the long or medium term, on what basis do you want to involve players, what do we do with the points system in relation to the servers, how do you want to promote identity on a large scale and avoid EOTM 2.0 and everything we've seen, etc. etc.  If you want to join in this request to Anet you are welcome, or if you have any good ideas about it if even more welcome. ✌️

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Say a guild is created called 'Darkhaven' just to mimic current server identity--who controls this guild? If the roster fills up, how will this guild be managed? If you are stuck with one or more people you dislike but like a different subset of people--you are stuck with half the surrogate guild on ignore / block?

This isnt magic. WR without alliances is just WvW with community guilds - everything else in terms of limitations and how it would be balanced is identical. The answer is players controls this guild. We have lots of them.

So what If you dont like it? If it changes over time? If a subset of members find themselves more and more separated from the community guild as a whole?

Create your own new kitten community guild. Join another guild. Do *something* about it.

That's how guilds have worked since the dawn of time. Yes I've also seen this happen over and over again. I've been in guilds that started as a casual guilds only to have a few rise above the rest commanding, gathering a following and then leave forming their own "hardcore" fight guild. Sometimes the old guild will survive. Other times it wont. 

Even if better organisation tools would be good, is this really a problem? Alliances most definetly WILL NOT avoid any of the problems you pose and I have no idea why you make that claim. It's going to be similar problems. Who controls the alliance? Did you think it was Anet? Hahaha no. It's players. Assuming alliance organisation is still similar to guilds, an alliance leader could technically kick an ENTIRE guild of 50 people just because he doesnt like 1 of them. And a guild leader can still kick a guild member out of the guild, which will most likely make him get kicked from the alliance as well since it's guilds that join alliances, not individual players.

[Dayra.7405]

2 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

If the roster fills up, how will this guild be managed?

Guilds are quite versatile in that respect.

• You can theoretically make any member a leader. Then the guild belong to everyone. No one can kick or demote anyone (beside himself).
• ...
• You have 1 leader, who decides everythng.

Edited November 25, 2023 by Dayra.7405

[Cuks.8241]

Its called drama and it's something I miss in gw2. If they add some more incentive to actually win in wvw, the drama would get even spicier. 

What I will probably miss with WR is that server discords will become obsolete. Maybe some will transform into community guilds but I think most notable community contributors will stick with their primary guild and these server communities will die, fast. Server discords are a nice place to get some organisation going when your guild is not playing. Alliances could be that larger community but maybe not even that if its capped at the same amount of players as guilds.

It would be nice if Anet had static worlds that would be populated each reset with guilds and solo players and they would run a world discord or even ingame tool so everyone can connect beyond ingame chat. But that's not going to happen. 

[Dawdler.8521]

4 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

It would be nice if Anet had static worlds that would be populated each reset with guilds and solo players

That's literally what WR is. Well except it's populated every 4 weeks.

[Cuks.8241]

Just now, Dawdler.8521 said:

That's literally what WR is. Well except it's populated every 4 weeks.

Yeah I know but the point was in the second part of the sentence. Now pretty much every server has a community discord. You get linked to a new server, you're a new player, you transfer to a new server because reason, your guild dies... you have a point of community entrance which is server discord. You can look for a guild there, for a late night drunk raid, or just chat with players.

Now you will be a part of this world that dissolves after 4 weeks. There will be no community beyond your guild and no one will set up a world community for 4 weeks. It would be nice if there was a tool where you can connect with other players and guilds in the world  beyond guild chat. And yeah in the end everything will be going on in guild discords but these are much less available to general player base than server discords.

[Dawdler.8521]

1 minute ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Yeah I know but the point was in the second part of the sentence. Now pretty much every server has a community discord. You get linked to a new server, you're a new player, you transfer to a new server because reason, your guild dies... you have a point of community entrance which is server discord. You can look for a guild there, for a late night drunk raid, or just chat with players.

Now you will be a part of this world that dissolves after 4 weeks. There will be no community beyond your guild and no one will set up a world community for 4 weeks. It would be nice if there was a tool where you can connect with other players and guilds in the world  beyond guild chat. And yeah in the end everything will be going on in guild discords but these are much less available to general player base than server discords.

Well there is a community beyond your guild - other guilds. 

Since the API allow you to verify players all the community guilds/alliances can have discords that only allow in people on their teams. Many already do and demand you join their discord when commanding, not the server one. Will it be MORE discords to keep track of? For sure. Unfortunetly how communities work. It would be nice if Anet added some kind of helper functions so that commanders can automatically have a discord link people can click on ingame. But Anet will probably never have any "official" discord channel per team, you can forget about that. Technically they could do it, but come on it's a wonder even tiny WvW bugs get fixed sometime.

[Chaba.5410]

I thought this was going to be a thread about World Linking...

[Gotejjeken.1267]

8 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Now you will be a part of this world that dissolves after 4 weeks. There will be no community beyond your guild and no one will set up a world community for 4 weeks.

That's another point I hadn't considered is that there are discords around WvW--my guild doesn't use one and I usually solo roam otherwise, but that is a very good point about actual organized WvW.

4 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

I thought this was going to be a thread about World Linking...

Who knows, it may yet be.  If anet linked random guilds into bigger anonymous groups in the exact same way they do world linking, would it really be surprising? In fact, the full 'alliance' version of this, would it be surprising to have a big 'host' guild and a bunch of smaller 'link' guilds?

These are reasons I hate to use 'restructuring' as it isn't restructuring anything, it's the same thing under a far more chaotic set of paint.

[TheGrimm.5624]

Love all the confused emoji. I fear we broke someone's happy fun ball along the discussion path.

[TheGrimm.5624]

10 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Who knows, it may yet be.  If anet linked random guilds into bigger anonymous groups in the exact same way they do world linking, would it really be surprising?

That's what they are doing with the Restructure part. Guilds ranked, are set and sorted based on factors into the new servers. For sake of ease round robin style. Once all the guilds are spread out in a targeted balanced way then non-guilded players are sorted out to fill in the gaps and balance out the guild sortings.

10 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

In fact, the full 'alliance' version of this, would it be surprising to have a big 'host' guild and a bunch of smaller 'link' guilds?

That is the way that Alliances were framed. One guild invites other guilds to join their Alliance and they set parameters on how many from that guild can join allowing for up to 500 spots.

10 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

These are reasons I hate to use 'restructuring' as it isn't restructuring anything, it's the same thing under a far more chaotic set of paint.

It is restructuring if you think of it in terms that everyone is kicked out and then dropped back into different boxes (servers) every 4 weeks based on player count, play hours and other factors.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

1 minute ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

That's what they are doing with the Restructure part. Guilds ranked, are set and sorted based on factors into the new servers.

True, but isn't that exactly what linking does now under the guise of a 'world'?

They even internally refer to 'world' as a 'shard', presumably because they are taking pieces of the entire set and linking various parts together to try and create population balance?

They've also used things like play time as reasons for why servers are 'full', 'high', 'low', etc. and no one could figure out what that actually means.  With this new system, does AFK wall running count as play time? 

Regardless of semantics, this all points to absolute chaos in WvW in my book.  

[TheGrimm.5624]

1 minute ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

True, but isn't that exactly what linking does now under the guise of a 'world'?

They even internally refer to 'world' as a 'shard', presumably because they are taking pieces of the entire set and linking various parts together to try and create population balance?

They've also used things like play time as reasons for why servers are 'full', 'high', 'low', etc. and no one could figure out what that actually means.  With this new system, does AFK wall running count as play time? 

Regardless of semantics, this all points to absolute chaos in WvW in my book.  

That's what they tried and found that the existing world/shards were just too big. They also didn't stop people from transferring so as they tried to shift people to more equal numbers, players were just moving and again unbalancing things compounding the problems. So yes relinking was the first attempts at trying to get more distributed player balances. I think the the other things that they couldn't account for were accounts that were dormant waking back up from time to time which throws off the calculations of how full worlds are allowing for players to game those switches allowing more players into worlds that already have a large number of accounts assigned to them. This potentially does something with on/off dormant accounts. Translation in NA we might end up with more Tiers and those lower ones might be ghost towns of low played or seasonal players or with new accounts that haven't much WvW. Which is also why more detail on transfers might be a good idea to prevent those areas from becoming the new bandwagons for just bag farmers else all the sorting and balance logic has no point to it.

[joneirikb.7506]

15 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Reading through the blog post again, it appears they are going with an EoTM style system with nameless teams (like Quaggan Boogaloo, Water Bottle Mayhem, etc.) and the actual manual guild grouping (i.e. alliances) is left until later.

The underlying systems and structure for EotM is very different from WR. About the only things they have in common is that they don't use the normal WvW-server names.

Quote

   The post mentions guilds being used as a surrogate since both an alliance and a guild are capped at 500.

Because they work almost identical, or was planned to. An alliance is just a "guild of guilds". People keep imaging lots of fancy stuff for it, but that's all it really was meant to be.

Quote

    Say a guild is created called 'Darkhaven' just to mimic current server identity--who controls this guild? If the roster fills up, how will this guild be managed? If you are stuck with one or more people you dislike but like a different subset of people--you are stuck with half the surrogate guild on ignore / block?

A guild is a guild, if someone make a "Darkhaven" guild, the guild-leader has all the rights as usual. And can setup the guild to work however they wish. Including setting the basic rank to have full admin rights so everyone can do whatever.

Quote

    Basically, there is potentially a large problem with interpersonal issues.  Alliances in full avoids this--as you can break up an alliance each 'season'--but here there is no way not to get paired with bad apples without becoming very exclusive and we know how that ends with private tagging.

Afaik, ANet didn't reveal exactly how that work, but it's generally expected:
* 1 guild leader starts an alliance by inviting 1 or more guilds.
* That guild leader then works as alliance leader, and can invite, kick, and set the number of WvW slots for each guild in the alliance.
* Any guild-leader can always quit their guild from the alliance.

You can leave an alliance with your guild, same way you can leave a guild you don't like.

You're going to be paired with bad-apples no matter what in wvw, there's just no way to avoid that.
* Server: you can't stop them from joining your server.
* Guild: You don't invite them or kick them, but you'll have no control over rest of "Team"
* Alliance: Same as Guild.

Quote

    That is, from my experience, guilds can get VERY catty in WvW; I've seen so many splinter guilds of pre-existing guilds named in mocking ways and BM'ing all over the place.  The problem is subsets of the pre-existing and splinter all get along with various other subsets and can continue to play with each other because of server/shard--now it's going to be super difficult to peace keep / organize.

What.... WvW guilds drama?! Never!

But yes, it's going to be much harder to have "server organisation", obviously. Depending on your perspective that might be a good or a bad thing. Everything from knowing/familiar with all the guilds on a server, to having a server council, to having a discord/other out of game communication, etc. On the other hand, I'd also assume a lot of the less serious players might enjoy the less focus on organisation (and thus that they might not get road-killed quite as often).

Quote

    True, but isn't that exactly what linking does now under the guise of a 'world'?

The main difference is one of scale. Worlds are just too big to link together and get balanced matches. So by reducing the base "container" from "world" and down to "guild", they get much smaller pieces to try to puzzle together. There is also a difference in background structure, they're trying to frankenstein a system and graft it onto a 20 year old engine known for rejecting changes and throwing spaghetti code and occasional meatballs out when they make changes.

Also a very important note here, one aim is to remove "transfers" as we know it now, to avoid movement between "Teams" between the restructures. Transfers has been one of the major problems/negatives with the mode since launch (heck even Beta from what I've heard).

Quote

    They even internally refer to 'world' as a 'shard', presumably because they are taking pieces of the entire set and linking various parts together to try and create population balance?

"Shard" is actually a reference from old Ultima Online, that's what they called "servers" there. Many MMO veterans, especially on the dev side of things, still refers to things that way out of habit and having learned from a lot of the guys that made UO.

Quote

    They've also used things like play time as reasons for why servers are 'full', 'high', 'low', etc. and no one could figure out what that actually means.  With this new system, does AFK wall running count as play time?

As always ANet never gives details/numbers/formulas/etc, so players can't game it (they would).

But they've explained the basics: Which is mainly total player-hours, with some other considerations to affect that. So we don't know if they have a system to detect/ignore players wall-running in spawn or not, since they've never told. But generally we assume that wall-runners and afk'ers counts.

Quote

    Regardless of semantics, this all points to absolute chaos in WvW in my book.

Everything new and unknown will feel like chaos. Humans are hardwired to dislike change. But basically if you are able to organise things with your guild things will generally be business as usual. If you're not used to organise around your guild but instead other grouping systems then it is going to feel very chaotic.

Edited November 25, 2023 by joneirikb.7506

[SweetPotato.7456]

I think from the latest WR update this is the most important, the rest are just confusing me. 
 

"Team Transfers: Once a match has started, there will not be a way for a player to initiate a transfer between teams. Players will need to wait until the next team-creation event or season to be placed with a different guild. To help mitigate this in the short term, we’ll be reducing the duration of a season from eight weeks to four weeks."

players will not be able to transfer and even if they wanted to transfer, 4 weeks is too short a time frame worth transferring. 
ideally it is good for preventing plyers from messing up the "world server team shard" that they put together or players will just stop playing during the 4 weeks where they do not like the "world server team shard" they are assigned to and the "world server team shard" will be empty again.

this is why reshuffling "world server team shard" should be a weekly process.

[Chaba.5410]

They are restructuring how worlds/teams are made.

They're going from "world is made up of players who picked a server" to "world is made up of players who have been automatically placed by the system".

Everything else is incidental to that.

[Arya Whitefire.8423]

15 hours ago, Dayra.7405 said:

Guilds are quite versatile in that respect.

• You can theoretically make any member a leader. Then the guild belong to everyone. No one can kick or demote anyone (beside himself).
• ...
• You have 1 leader, who decides everythng.

It doesn't work that way.  I just tested it in my personal guild.  Anyone who is at max rank, can demote anyone else at max rank.

 

[Chaba.5410]

1 hour ago, Arya Whitefire.8423 said:

It doesn't work that way.  I just tested it in my personal guild.  Anyone who is at max rank, can demote anyone else at max rank.

 

That'll be your guild perms, mate.  Unless you're referring to guild leader rank.

Edit: Oh yea I see.  The guy was asserting that leaders can't kick each other.  Not true.  That's why you don't give that rank to anyone but yourself.

Edited November 26, 2023 by Chaba.5410

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

I have a question:

how can ANET be stopped from going forward?

Because alliances was a bad idea and WR is a bad idea. If you are only into nameless blobbing, then it might be fine. But servers do have identities. They have a core of players. They have styles. Yes, there are bandwagoners. And people make fun of them. Yes, guilds come and go. But the core players stay. They might switch guilds or leave guilds behind entirely. But they are still part of the server.

And this community building will be all kicked out of the window. For what? Nothing! Just to satisfy a very few who are very vocal in the forums.

 

I have a great idea how to make wvw better:

improve rewards (so it is actually rewarding to spend your time in wvw)

remove stealth (because THAT is really frustrating a lot of players)

nuke EOD specs (because they are all and utterly broken and created a very unfun meta).

 

AND DONT TOUCH THE SERVERS.

[Dawdler.8521]

3 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

That'll be your guild perms, mate.  Unless you're referring to guild leader rank.

Edit: Oh yea I see.  The guy was asserting that leaders can't kick each other.  Not true.  That's why you don't give that rank to anyone but yourself.

Yeah that’s why one use custom ranks for “leaders” rather than putting them all on the same rank. Multiple guild leaders would only be used in rare exceptions and probably very small guilds.

[Mabi black.1824]

11 hours ago, joneirikb.7506 said:

Everything new and unknown will feel like chaos. Humans are hardwired to dislike change. But basically if you are able to organise things with your guild things will generally be business as usual. If you're not used to organise around your guild but instead other grouping systems then it is going to feel very chaotic.

You made some nice observations on the merits, so I thank you. however, compared to what you wrote in the quote, some players report possible and in my opinion obvious problems that this change is bringing. basically because we are not updating wvw, we are redoing another wvw.

the design of this mode changes completely. it was a server based game mode, and after wr it won't be anymore. let's be clear we all want new things for wvw, because here we are all passionate about wvw.

can we play wvw completely randomly? without trace of score/ranking/comparison? certainly but we will take a big step back in this mode.or in any case we lose the opportunity to make him take a step forward

my personal feeling is that anet has some ideas in his head, but wants to deal with them after he launches wr. while I believe it is a mistake, a missed opportunity. the communities' expectations are high, and this change should consider many of the aspects that I have indicated a few times above in this post. '' what will be the new design of this mode, how players will be able to confront each other, in the long or medium term, on what basis do you want to involve players, what do we do with the points system in relation to the servers, how do you want to promote identity on a large scale and avoid EOTM 2.0 and everything we've seen, etc. etc''

and consider that we are just reasoning here, and suggesting something to anet, because we all want things to always work better for our favorite game mode.

Edited November 26, 2023 by Mabi black.1824

[Mabi black.1824]

38 minutes ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

passionate

notes: exclusive inclination towards an object, intense and violent feeling (of attraction or repulsion) which can disturb the psychic balance and the ability to discern and control.

so I recommend that you make sure it isn't too violent and above all avoid any form of disturbance. 🤭

[blp.3489]

9 hours ago, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

Because alliances was a bad idea and WR is a bad idea. If you are only into nameless blobbing, then it might be fine. But servers do have identities. They have a core of players. They have styles. Yes, there are bandwagoners. And people make fun of them. Yes, guilds come and go. But the core players stay. They might switch guilds or leave guilds behind entirely. But they are still part of the server.

"But servers do have identities."  In the future community guilds will have identities, and core players, etc.  We have to realize that guilds will have an additional role to play under WR, some of the new guilds will be different from typical current guilds in that their main purpose will be to establish groups that want to play together.  A lot of people will continue to play with/represent their current guild but will set a community guild as their wvw guild in the guild interface.  That community guild isn't that different from the planned alliances, two or more guilds that want to ally themselves and play together will have all of their members set one guild as their wvw guild.  The biggest difference will be that the individual members of each guild will all have to set their own wvw guild instead of the guild leader moving the whole guild into an alliance.  A second difference is that there isn't necessarily a single Alliance Leader determining how many players from a guild can join the alliance, when two guilds want to play together they can create a guild and give both guild leaders, and possibly others as well, the ability to add players.  Until the guild reaches 500, which is a lot of players, the participating guilds can handle their own adds and removes.

I suspect the players that will be most affected by WR are the individual players without a wvw guild who may be placed in a completely different team with no overlap in players at all and hence no familiar faces or the faces they are familiar with being on opposing teams.

Guilds, of various sizes and compositions are going to play a much more central role in WR, and we are all going to have to adjust.  I very much doubt it will be the end of wvw though.