Zok.4956 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 6 minutes ago, Hellbound.5610 said: Also, I will certainly provide a status update with the list of players that get reported. ☺️ You meant it as a joke, but naming and shaming is against the forum TOS. However, I would be more interested in whether players are actually warned or (temporarily) banned because of this. Unfortunately, Anet no longer provides any information on this. In the past, they did it from time to time after the ban hammer was circling. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hellbound.5610 Posted June 4 Author Share Posted June 4 1 hour ago, Zok.4956 said: Anet has explained several times in the past that not the total number of accounts on a server is counted when calculating the server population, but rather the activity (play hours in WvW) of the accounts in WvW. Accounts that have not been in WvW for a while (how long is Anet's secret) are not counted when calculating the server population. This is the case with the current system and will be the case later with the WR. So if you have an alt account that you don't actually play WvW with, but just log in regularly in WvW, it will be counted towards the population of the server that the alt account is on. The population of that server is inflated by one. And if you have an alt account that you haven't been in WvW with for a while, it will be considered inactive and will not be used by Anet for the server's population calculation. And if you then play regularly with this alt account after a population calculation, the account's server will be overstacked by one account (of course "overstacked" is an exaggeration here, it's just to demonstrate the principle). Normally, both effects balance each other out with "normal" player behavior. So no problem here. But if, for example, a guild with, say, 50-500 players creates another shadow guild that only includes the INACTIVE alt accounts of the players in the main guild, this shadow guild would be counted with a maximum of a handful of players in the next WR calculation of the population, if at all. And if this guild then stops playing with the previous main accounts after a WR calculation/reassignment and only plays with the alt account, the previous server on which the main accounts are now located has too few players and the new server on which the alt accounts/shadow guild are located has too many players and is overstacked. It is currently completely unclear whether the effects will balance each other out or lead to significant population imbalances. But I am pretty sure that a few guilds will try something like this. You are right on the money with this comment! A very good example with this, a few months back FSP had 3 no links in a row with a "Full" population status, but the server never even had queues during prime time. You go to EBG and there are maybe 30 players running around. Throughout this time the population stayed "Full" despite a clear lack in coverage and overall activity. A reasonable number of core players got fed up with this and transferred away, but the population did not change until the alt account inflators stopped doing what they were doing by either to stop logging in or transfer somewhere else. In December the population changed from "Full" to "Very high" to "Medium" to "High" over the course of 3 weeks. There was a large outflow to Fort Ranik and Vabbi and a moderate inflow from Blacktide. I know some other servers have experienced the same problem - Gandara for instance, and Whiteside Ridge right now even though they still have a queue on EBG most of the time. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
One more for the road.8950 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 1 hour ago, Hellbound.5610 said: No, actually, I posted the issue here because I was instructed by CS to do so. Also, I will certainly provide a status update with the list of players that get reported. ☺️ I still have no idea what kind of problem you think you are addressing or solving and how these actions do that. Please explain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hellbound.5610 Posted June 4 Author Share Posted June 4 12 minutes ago, One more for the road.8950 said: I still have no idea what kind of problem you think you are addressing or solving and how these actions do that. Please explain. How do you handle a 60v30 when half your server members are rather on another server "playing with friends" or even in the opposing blob following some popular commander? With WR ArenaNet is introducing another tier with 3 more teams. Sure, there will be a temporary inflow of PvE players and casuals, but it also means that all alt account players artificially inflate WvW population numbers in general. You can only play on one account at a time, but when you have accounts on every server which you log into and join WvW with you are counted for those servers and when any of them need you for the big fight you are somewhere else, which leaves them with a population imbalance and an uneven contest. This issue is not going away with WR unless it is dealt with. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dawdler.8521 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 42 minutes ago, Hellbound.5610 said: How do you handle a 60v30 when half your server members are rather on another server "playing with friends" or even in the opposing blob following some popular commander? Ok so they all come back to your server and now you’re fighting 10v40 because they all buggered off to farm EBG instead and took more than half your members again with them. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
One more for the road.8950 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 (edited) 5 hours ago, Hellbound.5610 said: How do you handle a 60v30 when half your server members are rather on another server "playing with friends" or even in the opposing blob following some popular commander? With WR ArenaNet is introducing another tier with 3 more teams. Sure, there will be a temporary inflow of PvE players and casuals, but it also means that all alt account players artificially inflate WvW population numbers in general. You can only play on one account at a time, but when you have accounts on every server which you log into and join WvW with you are counted for those servers and when any of them need you for the big fight you are somewhere else, which leaves them with a population imbalance and an uneven contest. This issue is not going away with WR unless it is dealt with. Alright. Let's break this down should we? So you are asking people to report accounts just because they logged in to play. Nothing else. So that Anet can ban paid accounts (as the free ones would pretty moot in this setting) just because they did WvW. Because they played the game, not even doing anything dodgy, just gaming. Like a regular player. I am sure Anet would absolutely love to do that and would not get any problems because of that whatsoever. /s Actually, that's all the break down I am up to right now, this is too far out. Edited June 4 by One more for the road.8950 Should have added /s so I did now 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zok.4956 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 2 hours ago, Hellbound.5610 said: A reasonable number of core players got fed up with this and transferred away, but the population did not change until the alt account inflators stopped doing what they were doing by either to stop logging in or transfer somewhere else. In December the population changed from "Full" to "Very high" to "Medium" to "High" over the course of 3 weeks. There was a large outflow to Fort Ranik and Vabbi and a moderate inflow from Blacktide. I know some other servers have experienced the same problem - Gandara for instance, and Whiteside Ridge right now even though they still have a queue on EBG most of the time. I don't know how it was or is on your server. But I do know that on other servers, including those you mentioned, where players complained about being "full" even though they were empty, it was different from my observations. Because those apparently empty servers had (when I played against them on a server) more and larger zergs than my server at any time I played. How Anet really calculates "full", "very high" etc. is a mystery. What is clear, however, is that there don't seem to be any absolute numbers for the classification. Rather, Anet seems to use the player population of a large server as a reference and then sets it to "full". All other servers are then divided into their levels relative to the current population of this reference server. In order to balance out general fluctuations (holidays, vacation, etc.). This can also lead, with a time delay, to a "full" or "very high" server appearing to be empty - the other servers are then just emptier. Whether large numbers of alt accounts on your server really have distorted the population numbers cannot be proven from your descriptions. It could just as well be that you have recognized a pattern that did not exist or that you have drawn the wrong conclusions. And as a result, you may be trying to solve a problem that did not exist (until now). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arbriel.4397 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 All I want to do is keep my alt account with my main and that's all nothing more nothing less. With the new system I will want to keep my alt with same team so I can choose to play whichever account I want on the same team, just NOT at the sametime. That said my GF does login to my alt account via IPv6 Pinhole technique and plays my alt account on my second computer from time to time from wherever she is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zok.4956 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 5 minutes ago, Arbriel.4397 said: That said my GF does login to her alt account via IPv6 Pinhole technique and plays her alt account on my second computer from time to time from wherever she is. There. I fixed that for you. Because account sharing is against the TOS. 😉 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arbriel.4397 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 Yes thanks for that, dyslexia rules K.O Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaba.5410 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 (edited) 6 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said: You guys are making a little mess here. You're talking about 2 different things as if they were the same thing. Don't get confused. There is only one thing being discussed: the OP's reasoning for why alt account hopping is a violation: Quote Some of you may not understand why alt account hopping is an issue in WvW... WvW is a game mode that is based on numbers and having reasonably even numbers is very important for balanced matchups and encounters. If it is not balanced then it becomes a senseless waste of time which will only cause people to quit and not bother with it. WvW is an incredible game mode and deserves way more respect than that. ArenaNet makes a tremendous effort to keep track of server populations and have been performing regular relinks to ensure that worlds/teams remain balanced, but with players hopping from server to server this all becomes futile. These players who do this over-inflate server populations as they are now counted as several across servers instead of just being individual on one server. What is described here may be true of the game mode, but it is NOT a violation of the CoC especially since it doesn't meet the code's definition of match manipulation. And to illustrate the absurdity of the line of reasoning, we can list off all the ways teams are left unbalanced without alt account hopping. Like this: When you log off, you are unbalancing your team. You should get reported for match manipulation. /sarcasm Edited June 4 by Chaba.5410 1 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaba.5410 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 5 hours ago, Hellbound.5610 said: I posted the issue here because I was instructed by CS to do so. That's CS's way of telling you they can't or aren't going to do anything. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArchonWing.9480 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 (edited) 8 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said: Like this: When you log off, you are unbalancing your team. You should get reported for match manipulation. /sarcasm You're being sarcastic, but I've seen people try to argue this on the forums; people should be punished for "tanking", aka Anet should compel them to PPT. Anyhow, yea, basically the thread makes little sense. Playing to deliberately sabotage is against the rules regardless if it's an alt account or not, so the alt account is truly a red herring, and not to mention a lot of it is pretty fantastical, like entire groups of people make alts and play lots of hours to match manipulate something that barely matters in the first place. Yes there are entire guilds that do indeed have alts on multiple servers, but it's almost always because they are bored on their mains and trying to seek content elsewhere, not put in a full time job to influence the PPT. I mean at the end of the day people just get farmed and then come up with elaborate conspiracy theories on why; it's unfortunate the conspiracy theories themselves are boring and make little sense; probably reflects how their gameplay is too. I would recommend improving in at least one kitten. Edited June 4 by ArchonWing.9480 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaba.5410 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 4 hours ago, Hellbound.5610 said: when any of them need you for the big fight you are somewhere else, which leaves them with a population imbalance and an uneven contest. Please start reporting all the PvE players on your server for match manipulation. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaba.5410 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 (edited) 7 hours ago, Zok.4956 said: Anet has explained several times in the past that not the total number of accounts on a server is counted when calculating the server population, but rather the activity (play hours in WvW) of the accounts in WvW. Accounts that have not been in WvW for a while (how long is Anet's secret) are not counted when calculating the server population. This is the case with the current system and will be the case later with the WR. So if you have an alt account that you don't actually play WvW with, but just log in regularly in WvW, it will be counted towards the population of the server that the alt account is on. The population of that server is inflated by one. And if you have an alt account that you haven't been in WvW with for a while, it will be considered inactive and will not be used by Anet for the server's population calculation. And if you then play regularly with this alt account after a population calculation, the account's server will be overstacked by one account (of course "overstacked" is an exaggeration here, it's just to demonstrate the principle). Normally, both effects balance each other out with "normal" player behavior. So no problem here. But if, for example, a guild with, say, 50-500 players creates another shadow guild that only includes the INACTIVE alt accounts of the players in the main guild, this shadow guild would be counted with a maximum of a handful of players in the next WR calculation of the population, if at all. And if this guild then stops playing with the previous main accounts after a WR calculation/reassignment and only plays with the alt account, the previous server on which the main accounts are now located has too few players and the new server on which the alt accounts/shadow guild are located has too many players and is overstacked. It is currently completely unclear whether the effects will balance each other out or lead to significant population imbalances. But I am pretty sure that a few guilds will try something like this. That is something I could picture early on when WR was first proposed. Do you think an entire guild that is "chasing content" is going to have the discipline to not log into WvW for over a month or two to make their account inactive? And how would this be any different from players who quit playing for a few months like the handful of guilds where the driver plays seasonally due to irl obligations and so they are always reforming? I think it will balance itself out and the fact that teams will only last for 1 or 2 months is a significant difference that will help mitigate such behavior. Players won't be stuck for months on end with that. But then we have to go back to the idea that those players would be doing that for match manipulation purposes rather than "chasing content". Edited June 4 by Chaba.5410 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juular.4729 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 While participating in Player-vs-Player (PvP) gameplay in the Services, you will not participate in any form of match manipulation. Match manipulation is defined as any action taken to fix or manipulate the outcome of a match or alter or manipulate the rankings or ratings of the ladder. This also includes disrupting other users’ experiences in the Services by not actively participating in good faith (e.g., “griefing” or “leeching”). Please dont become a lawyer or a cop, or any public service sector. WvWvW is not in rule 23, which completey destroys your opinion, and no, support staff opinion doesnt count, you'll have to rewrite rule 23. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kumbaya.4689 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 This thread is full entertainment. Keep it up! 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HazyDaisy.4107 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 By this logic anyone thats on a server that's "winning" most of the week, then come Wednesday/Thursday everyone seems to miraculously stop playing so that the server that has no business advancing does, while the server that by all rights should have advanced doesn't and is instead free to PPT slaughter for another 3/4 of a week, we'll, by this logic everyone on that server is in violation of the TOS. 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisWhitey.9076 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 There already is a guild that is making alts a requirement where they are dead one month and active the other and rotate for better match ups. Unless this is stated as match manipulation it is probably going to become a problem of WvW and we just have to accept it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulGuardian.6203 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 On 6/3/2024 at 1:27 PM, Hellbound.5610 said: Splitting 3 teams into 6 parts actually makes it even - 1+1 v 1+1 v 1+1. The issue goes way beyond game design. For long WvW(vW) has suffered with players hopping from server to server. ArenaNet has been putting in a lot of time and effort with World Restructuring to resolve matchup imbalances and all of this work will be pointless when these players continue this behavior. I suggested a while back that they keep increasing the overall price of migration. This could be implemented now. Off course, as time goes by, if you don't migrate, let's say for the period of 6 months, the price would reset to the standard 1,000 gems. This is the perfect solution here, because eventually the price of migration would not justify the content gained. Either just stay put, or pay the price. ANet could open some exceptions, for those who genuinely want to change home, for various other reasons than wvw. But then, some sort of requirements had to be put in place, to know for certain . That could be anything, such as the request from their, friends, girlfriend. Or... an activity log from the player. If they foond out the player lied. Would be refused on the first place, or if after the change, be sent back to previous home, or something of the genre, and price increased significantly. 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devastoscz.9851 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 11 hours ago, Zok.4956 said: Anet has explained several times in the past that not the total number of accounts on a server is counted when calculating the server population, but rather the activity (play hours in WvW) of the accounts in WvW. Accounts that have not been in WvW for a while (how long is Anet's secret) are not counted when calculating the server population. This is the case with the current system and will be the case later with the WR. So if you have an alt account that you don't actually play WvW with, but just log in regularly in WvW, it will be counted towards the population of the server that the alt account is on. The population of that server is inflated by one. And if you have an alt account that you haven't been in WvW with for a while, it will be considered inactive and will not be used by Anet for the server's population calculation. And if you then play regularly with this alt account after a population calculation, the account's server will be overstacked by one account (of course "overstacked" is an exaggeration here, it's just to demonstrate the principle). Normally, both effects balance each other out with "normal" player behavior. So no problem here. But if, for example, a guild with, say, 50-500 players creates another shadow guild that only includes the INACTIVE alt accounts of the players in the main guild, this shadow guild would be counted with a maximum of a handful of players in the next WR calculation of the population, if at all. And if this guild then stops playing with the previous main accounts after a WR calculation/reassignment and only plays with the alt account, the previous server on which the main accounts are now located has too few players and the new server on which the alt accounts/shadow guild are located has too many players and is overstacked. It is currently completely unclear whether the effects will balance each other out or lead to significant population imbalances. But I am pretty sure that a few guilds will try something like this. I understand exactly what you mean. At the end of the day this is a symptom of having alt accounts as a whole, which Anet allows. That said, I sincerely doubt the 50-500 player scenario you point out actually occurs. There's the simple logistics of just creating an alt, leveling it up, gearing it, playing enough WvW to actually put points in the masteries there. The vast majority of players, I would put it in the 99%, will never do this. On top of that, most WvW guilds who would be dedicated enough to actually do this understand that this would also immediately hurt them; because of queues (overstacking comes with queues) and content denial. So while entirely plausible, I believe it's highly unlikely this happens with a frequency to be considered "an issue". 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devastoscz.9851 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 (edited) deleted; lag caused triple post. Edited June 4 by devastoscz.9851 deleted; lag caused triple post. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devastoscz.9851 Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 (edited) deleted; lag caused triple post. Edited June 4 by devastoscz.9851 deleted; lag caused triple post. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taki.2130 Posted June 5 Share Posted June 5 14 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said: Please start reporting all the PvE players on your server for match manipulation. When you do so, we beg you have them move the GoBs out of WvW... we don't actually want to be there either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulGuardian.6203 Posted June 5 Share Posted June 5 What I'm still surprised about... and that's why I understand OP's PoV perfectly well, is that Arena Net are working their behinds off to bring balance to WvW, yet, for some people that's not enough. They want more content on a massive scale, and they want it now. Keep changing home, or use alt accounts to log in where they are winning. Those actions destabilises exactly what the devs are trying to achieve, making it redundant. But what else can they do? Probably alternate accounts are a big source of income, and they can't just self sabotage by implementing something that's going to stop that imcome. Meanwhile, others continue to get the short end of the stick, and the problem will persist, no matter what. You can't just ask people nicely to please stop login in on alts. So solution: (And hear me oit ANet, cause this is good.) Implement a system which rewards players with a bonus X2, X4, 6X, so on so forth, the longer they stay on that team, and the more they participate on that team. So let's say, Mr Anthrax is playing for the Mountain Giants. The more hours and participation mr anthrax puts in for that team, yhe more the bonus for Wxp, Magic find, etc, will increase. But if you stop playing for that team, in 24 hours or so, that bonus will reset. I will post this segment in QoL too, to make sure it doesn't go unheard, because this may well be the solution, or at least help the wvw issue. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now