EU is a complete blowout.

[Sonderm.4639]

14 minutes ago, ascii.1369 said:

Maybe stop looking at an irrelevant metric like KDR and instead look at VP, since that's what WR is balancing for. The only notably uneven matchup on EU is T6. And that's in the first week, if we wait for teams to move up and down the ladder it will become even more balanced.

How is k/d irrelevant? Unless you don't care about being farmed and enjoy ppting empty maps (more power to you!), k/d is a very good indicator of fun. The team with a high k/d runs the risk of getting bored while the team with a low k/d gets frustrated.

[XenesisII.1540]

21 minutes ago, Sonderm.4639 said:

How is k/d irrelevant? Unless you don't care about being farmed and enjoy ppting empty maps (more power to you!), k/d is a very good indicator of fun. The team with a high k/d runs the risk of getting bored while the team with a low k/d gets frustrated.

I heard that some dev thinks that the outnumbered/farmed are also having just as much fun in those scenarios. 🤷‍♂️

[lindstroem.3601]

56 minutes ago, ascii.1369 said:

Maybe stop looking at an irrelevant metric like KDR and instead look at VP, since that's what WR is balancing for. The only notably uneven matchup on EU is T6. And that's in the first week, if we wait for teams to move up and down the ladder it will become even more balanced.

KDR is the only relevant factor to get a balance. If those servers would take ppt serious, you would see pretty much all maps in the same color. Which is a bit dissapointing that they dont do, caues this would show even more what a hot carbage their new system is.

Edited June 17 by lindstroem.3601

[Cuks.8241]

K/d has very little with war score I think. Why I think that? I've played for about 6 hours since the reset. All of it with my guild going against other guilds. My guild played much more than 6 hours. Ive accumulated close to 1000 bags in those 6 hours (no idea how many kills that is, more than 1k). I've taken almost no objectives in that time, made almost 0 impact on war score.

There has been lots of gvg these days, lots of kills and deaths that didnt impact score at all. You could balance around that but Im not sure the result would be what you expect.

[ChrisWhitey.9076]

2 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

K/d has very little with war score I think. Why I think that? I've played for about 6 hours since the reset. All of it with my guild going against other guilds. My guild played much more than 6 hours. Ive accumulated close to 1000 bags in those 6 hours (no idea how many kills that is, more than 1k). I've taken almost no objectives in that time, made almost 0 impact on war score.

Other than peak hours where +2s on kills run rampant I agree with this. It is too bad that points on kill is not dynamic based on active player numbers

[TheGrimm.5624]

11 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Don't worry guys the scoring changes coming up will totally make you feel good about getting steamrolled in wvw.

Yeah, I am worried about this one too. 

[ArchonWing.9480]

17 hours ago, Sviel.7493 said:

It's interesting that the top KDR team only leads in VP in half the matches.  Same story on NA--lead KDR isn't well correlated with VP.

Seems like this may be less about overwhelming numbers and more about player behavior.  If we have smaller total teams and a large portion of the team is dedicated to only chasing fights, then it follows that they may have a high KDR while being generally ineffective on the whole.  I don't think this is an issue--or at least, not the issue that WR was meant to solve.

Many alliances decided to recruit only bloobers and only in the time zones they play in. So a lot of them didn't care about score or making a well balanced team, or even comprehend the need for non-bloobers.

So in a sense that was bound to happen, though it really depends if people are happy about that or not.

As is this, my prediction is that people will probably care about that eventually, as they always do despite the posturing and a lot of alliances will probably fracture.

Edited June 17 by ArchonWing.9480

[Mistwraithe.3106]

NA is almost as bad as EU. Only one tier (2) is reasonably balanced. Tier 1 isn't too bad but tier 3 is a complete disaster, 4 isn't much better and in tier 5 Throne of Balthazar (which happens to be the alliance I got thrown in) is being farmed by the other two alliances (0.54 K/D ratio, I have yet to see organised WvW fight guilds in our alliance, certainly not at my timezone).

Those saying k/d ratio is irrelevant are so off the mark. If your alliance is regularly getting murdered then most people are going to reduce how often they play or stop playing for the rest of the link. Which is another 5.5 weeks.

FWIW I think the linking would have gone much better if the WvW fight guilds had NOT been allowed to group themselves into mega guilds for alliances. By doing that they have created a situation where many alliances won't have any WvW fight guilds on their side which is going to lead to very unbalanced K/D ratios. I can't see how it works for them either as surely it means they end up fighting very few other organised fight guilds? (since they are all grouped into probably 5 or 6 alliances, likely the same 6 alliances which have positive K/D ratios in NA).

Edited June 18 by Mistwraithe.3106

[Chaba.5410]

11 hours ago, Sonderm.4639 said:

How is k/d irrelevant?

It's like hiring a photographer for a wedding and then getting upset that they don't cater.  The WR system serves a specific function.  K/D doesn't evaluate that function.  Moreover, WR was never designed nor intended to solve K/D disparities just as a photographer is never hired with the intent that they will cater an event.  Expecting WR to "fix" anything K/D related is an exercise in futility.  Please, add up the kills + deaths instead.  That's always been a far better player-facing metric to use as a proxy for population disparities.

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

Quote

seasonal player population fluctuations and world transfers can result in some teams feeling very empty and others feeling unbearably full. To address this, we sometimes link worlds together as a single team, but the relatively small pool of worlds makes it difficult to create balanced matches from a player population standpoint.

World Restructuring is a feature that aims to address player population imbalances...

I don't intend to talk past you though.  Want to talk about fun disparities?  Let's talk about the new player "score" algorithm that is used for placing players on a team.  That's possibly the only feature of WR that might have an influence.  No longer will it be playhours alone.  The truth is we don't know exactly what metrics are now being used in addition to playhours.  For all we know it is still playhours although maybe they have started to include timezone and commander tags.  Given the last betas, we've been told they are "iterating" on that algorithm.  Now we're in an "always on beta" which means this algorithm is not yet set in stone.  If there were no more iterations done on it, that would be surprising.  Who knows, maybe Anet will use an individual's K/D someday as part of the player "score"?  Don't think it is there yet though.

Does the algorithm play into server-wide K/D results?  Maybe.  If the algorithm is taking into account commander tag usage, there's an assumption that means an organized group and they're going to win fights more often than not so the matchmaker is going to try to place such players and their guild against others.  Yet at EU reset I saw a tag running around with his guild squad of around 15-20 players and a handful of them would keep getting downed and killed by 3 roamers (I have the vod of this on my channel even).  The squad would rez their friends then start to trot off and the roamers would come make another hit.  It kept repeating this way for a few times until it became a bit absurd.  I can't imagine what fun was being had by the players who kept getting bombed despite having more numbers.  Those roamers were outnumbered.  Their individual K/D had to be pretty high.  My point is K/D isn't always a result of being outnumbered or population disparities.  Is WR supposed to balance entire teams for players who struggle with reacting to getting bombed by 3 roamers?  Probably not.

To review:

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/19675-world-restructuring-faq/

Quote

Q. What is the deal with this Player Score, Value, Evaluation etc?

Quote

There has been a lot of discussion about the player “evaluation.” We already use play hours to determine population status of a world and when we refer to player value or evaluation or score we are talking about play hours with some kind of scalar adjustment. With this system, moving people around every two months we would like to track a few more things that can help us distribute players more effectively. One thing we are looking at tracking is commanding. Commanders are a big part of WvW no matter if your prefer scouting, roaming, running with a havoc squad or the zerg. Commanders are not the only piece to the WvW puzzle but they are a big piece. We would use commander time and squad sizes to determine a scaler to that commander players play time. For example, these are not the real values but I am not even a full cup of coffee in so for my sake I am going to make the math easy, PlayerA, PlayerB and PlayerC all play for roughly 100 hours a week. PlayerA commands smaller havoc squads, PlayerB is a PUG zerg commander, and PlayerC does not command. For all the time a commander is commanding squads let us say of more than two and less than size ten we’ll count those hours at a one and a half times multiplier and higher than ten we’ll count it at two times. If Player A were always commanding, in the small squad range, while playing their time, adjusted hours would be 150 hours. If PlayerB were always commanding, in the large squad range, while playing, their adjusted hours would be 200. Since Player C did not command their hours, remain the same at 100. Doing this can help us get more even matches. WvW is not completely a number of bodies game. A hundred veteran players will always beat a hundred casual players.

Edited June 18 by Chaba.5410

[Sviel.7493]

7 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Many alliances decided to recruit only bloobers and only in the time zones they play in. So a lot of them didn't care about score or making a well balanced team, or even comprehend the need for non-bloobers.

So in a sense that was bound to happen, though it really depends if people are happy about that or not.

As is this, my prediction is that people will probably care about that eventually, as they always do despite the posturing and a lot of alliances will probably fracture.

So, in theory, if players have an incentive to care about the score then they may create guilds that are not solely focused around blobbing in a single time zone as that is not an effective way to win matches.

That could be progress, but we will very quickly run into the age-old issue of caring about the score not being a particularly fun way to play due to myriad issues.  Not least of which is the sorry state of defense (especially against blobs), or the boring and dated siege play, or the inequities between the borderlands.  The game has likely become more fair, but Anet is going to have to shift gears if they want it to become more fun when actually playing to win.

[Gud.6829]

5 minutes ago, Sviel.7493 said:

That could be progress, but we will very quickly run into the age-old issue of caring about the score not being a particularly fun way to play due to myriad issues.

you've summed up the issue with the entire system pretty succinctly here

[Chaba.5410]

21 minutes ago, Gud.6829 said:

the fact that they gave player groups any agency in this at all is hilarious, and is a clear indicator of their inability to design for PvP. 

I don't understand this point.  You were responding to Mistwraithe's comment about guilds being able to group up yet that's been a thing since launch.  WR limits them to a single guild size and they are not able to transfer now while before they were only limited by server population status.

Edited June 18 by Chaba.5410

[Mistwraithe.3106]

1 hour ago, Chaba.5410 said:

I don't understand this point.  You were responding to Mistwraithe's comment about guilds being able to group up yet that's been a thing since launch.  WR limits them to a single guild size and they are not able to transfer now while before they were only limited by server population status.

I presume there are no transfers between alliances until the next relink in 5.5 weeks which is good.

But in the new WR system it may not have a big impact. More important is likely to be that it's now completely free to stack multiple WvW guilds into a single mega guild when there is a relink up to the 500 player guild limit. I know for a fact that multiple guilds have done that, all of the WvW fight guilds I have run with semi-occasionally over the last 6 months are in mega guilds.

It's early days and we'll see who things play out but I'm speculating that their balancing system can't handle this because it concentrates that type of players into too few guilds. There are 15 alliances on NA so if you want each of them to have at least one mega guild then you need at least 15 mega guilds, and that's assuming they are all comparable in ability and coverage (which they won't be). If there are only 7 mega guilds then half the alliances will be short on WvW fight guilds and are likely to get smashed at peak times when they run.

[shrew.3059]

7 hours ago, Gud.6829 said:

the best part of all this is the people saying "just wait"; you think anyone will be left in 24 weeks when this has had a chance to filter just a tiny bit?  It's the same thought the moron who decided to implement this had... surely people won't just quit and play better games?

I think the “just wait” philosophy makes sense in terms of system design but it is a manifestly toxic way to think about a game played for fun. You don’t owe a game time or patience. It’s not a job or a marriage. Why would you keep getting steamrolled during your free time in order to give the game a chance to improve?

In other words, asking people who aren’t having fun to continue providing fun to others is just selfish and weird. If they aren’t having fun they’ll leave, they should leave, and it’s up to them whether they come back. Those currently enjoying the steamrolling will quickly find themselves out of content and they’ll leave too, but nobody will be left to tell them to be patient.

[Dayra.7405]

I don't see that all 6 matches in EU are blowouts. T6 is quite imbalanced.  But no one has a KD over 2.0 (which was usually the case in the old system).

Generally the problem is the random-placement of the teams in the 6 tiers after relink, and the slow adaptation with one-up, one-down, e.g. Mirror of Lyssa which was placed at T6 red, will need 6 weeks to play T1, where they likely belong to. So we will have now 1 imbalanced match every week, while they are going up slowly.
I think we need a faster adoption of the matches to strength of the teams, e.g. a Swiss-Tournament, as we had it during the WvW-Tournaments.

Another important change for the major server population (which is the majority of players): You don't know the (off-time) activity pattern of your team anymore. (E.g. the Breakfast raids on German servers). Even a 500 people guild cannot keep such a constant pattern, as they (in fact every fixed group) is now only a minority inside the team. That doesn't mean that your team never dominates, it just means, it does so at (for most of us) surprising times.

Edited June 18 by Dayra.7405

[shrew.3059]

13 minutes ago, Dayra.7405 said:

I think we need a faster adoption of the matches to strength of the teams, e.g. a Swiss-Tournament, as we had it during the WvW-Tournaments.

I think this is likely right, but it’s also hard to say without knowing more about the details of matchmaking. It’s possible that matchmaking is just not possible in the traditional manner because it’s not a game with balanced mechanics, it’s skill + organisation + numbers + coverage.

Ultimately, if the status quo persists, players will opt out and the situation will get worse before it has a chance to self-correct. This may cause dominant teams to also opt out (nobody left to farm) and then we’ll see what new status quo emerges, but attrition is a rather bad way to balance a game.

[T G.7496]

Adopting a Swiss Tournament-style approach to reshuffling the matches and Tiers after week 1 of a relink should definitely be something they consider.

I also hope, since they've now improved their smallest unit of potential 'balance' adjustment by three orders of magnitude (i.e. from the server, to individual), they should also allocate sufficient resources to developing their processes of data capture and analysis in pursuit of better educated team-making.

Perhaps then, a week-1 experience like this can be better avoided and hopefully is less likely to linger into week 2 and beyond.

Edited June 18 by T G.7496

[shrew.3059]

2 minutes ago, T G.7496 said:

Adopting a Swiss Tournament-style approach to reshuffling the matches and Tiers after week 1 of a relink should definitely be something they consider.

I also hope, since they've now adjusted their smallest unit of potential 'balance' adjustment by three orders of magnitude (i.e. from the server, to individual), they should also allocate sufficient resources to developing their processes of data capture and analysis in pursuit of better educated team-making.

Perhaps then, a week-1 experience like this can be better avoided and hopefully is less likely to linger into week 2 and beyond.

I think the issue is less “having a bad week” and more “this week will be every week”. Maybe the latter feeling is irrational, but it’s understandable since it’s people’s first impression.

Your suggestions may work, it depends on whether or not the imbalance can be fixed algorithmically or whether it’s simply inherent to the system design.

[T G.7496]

14 minutes ago, shrew.3059 said:

I think the issue is less “having a bad week” and more “this week will be every week”. Maybe the latter feeling is irrational, but it’s understandable since it’s people’s first impression.

Your suggestions may work, it depends on whether or not the imbalance can be fixed algorithmically or whether it’s simply inherent to the system design.

Peoples' feelings in this first week are just so complicated, varied and polarised - in some cases extremely so - based on what they've come from, what they're experiencing this week, what their expectations, hopes and fears were... I think a degree of irrationality is understandable. The losses that some people have experienced (especially in terms of longstanding communities) - even if that is simply subjective - make this an exceptionally emotional time in the modes history, for many many people. I acknowledge that.

And as you point out, first impressions are important, rightly or wrongly. I'm really not sure Anet have managed this whole process well. No, in fact - regardless of the fact that I'm one of the players who's welcomed this change, and is having a good time so far - I have to say that Anet have made this whole venture a very messy, confusing and unsatisfactory experience for everyone. There's no way I'd go into bat for them about the process that has led us here.

I just hope that they take a smart, conscientious approach to making this work going forward - including deploying the resources necessary to do so, and quickly.

I hope this works out.

Edited June 18 by T G.7496

[Chaba.5410]

7 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

I'm speculating that their balancing system can't handle this because it concentrates that type of players into too few guilds. There are 15 alliances on NA so if you want each of them to have at least one mega guild then you need at least 15 mega guilds, and that's assuming they are all comparable in ability and coverage (which they won't be). If there are only 7 mega guilds then half the alliances will be short on WvW fight guilds and are likely to get smashed at peak times when they run.

See my discussion above about the new matchmaking algorithm.  The one most recently used isn't the same as the one used in the first beta.  With this most recent one, we've already seen what players feel are mistakes in certain guilds being placed on the same team.  Yet there's no reason to believe that that will now always happen.  Adjustments are still being made.  Compare with under the old system, if two blobby boonball fight guilds transferred to the same server, nothing could be done about it at all.

Edited June 18 by Chaba.5410

[Chaba.5410]

4 hours ago, shrew.3059 said:

I think the “just wait” philosophy makes sense in terms of system design but it is a manifestly toxic way to think about a game played for fun. You don’t owe a game time or patience.

Matches have to be played against different teams to determine a "winner".  Yes, that takes time.  The Boston Celtics didn't become the NBA champs by playing a single game.

WvW, being a team-based game, is going to have some sort of tournament style structures.  It's a ranking system.  The first matches _should_ have blow outs as teams aren't yet rated against each other.  People aren't really saying "just wait".  They are saying the system is more than a casual "played for fun" design and it requires more than a single match to really test.

I agree that no one owes a game their time.  That's why it is important to know what you're getting into. 

Edited June 18 by Chaba.5410

[Nash.2681]

Serious question- I sticked to my main guild which has basicly just two active players (my wife and me). We play WvW occasionally, mostly for daily/monthly WV achievements, seldomly more. We got put in tier4 "Silent Woods" and (besides lot of new/unfamiliar names and guilds that we used to fight in the past) it didn't feel much different than before. Like people still running from fights even if we have the advantage, etc. 

But now to the question: are we stuck with this team forever (unless we tick another WvW guild for the next matchup that's on a different team) or will we get shuffled again in a few weeks?

[Chaba.5410]

1 minute ago, Nash.2681 said:

But now to the question: are we stuck with this team forever (unless we tick another WvW guild for the next matchup that's on a different team) or will we get shuffled again in a few weeks?

You're not stuck forever.  Check out your guild panel.  The new countdown timer for when teams will be reformed is showing.  You don't have to tick another guild.

This first time will be 6 weeks.  Future team formation events will be every 4 weeks.

[Jski.6180]

Here an example server community play in different ways they look for different objectives some are k/d aimed (more likely just fights base not realty looking at k/d) and some are ppt aimed and other are there for the loot trains. These community are been mixed together so your going to see a lot of variation of in game and shift in how match up play. FA did not ppt unless they aimed to do so but often there where no scouts and ppl did not go to objective call outs. It was an fight only community. The new group that the Core FA went to is with another group that seems to be more ppt aimed they do have scouts and will go to call outs. Its odd and different and it will change up how the numbers show.

In a lot of ways this mixing of different groups should keep the game very fresh as long as the numbers work out right and at time they will not that is simply part of working with groups of ppl who have different wants and needs. These are humans not ai and they are not there for your enjoyment.

[XenesisII.1540]

8 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

There are 15 alliances on NA so if you want each of them to have at least one mega guild then you need at least 15 mega guilds, and that's assuming they are all comparable in ability and coverage (which they won't be). If there are only 7 mega guilds then half the alliances will be short on WvW fight guilds and are likely to get smashed at peak times when they run.

Worlds not alliances.