Problem with matchmaking in Restructure - incentive to not play

[ChrisWhitey.9076]

I am already starting to wonder if there will be issues with the match making going forward. If groups are not doing well the best thing to do is quit or not play. Less hours means you are more likely to get added to a carry group to "balance numbers" now people could just say they are not playing but if this is what WvW turns into I am concerned.

[TheGrimm.5624]

13 minutes ago, ChrisWhitey.9076 said:

I am already starting to wonder if there will be issues with the match making going forward. If groups are not doing well the best thing to do is quit or not play. Less hours means you are more likely to get added to a carry group to "balance numbers" now people could just say they are not playing but if this is what WvW turns into I am concerned.

Not sure if I follow. Players will play if they are having fun. If they aren't having fun then they won't. Now I think the crux of your question comes down to, what makes it fun for them to play. Another is, how much of that fun factor is from active or passive actions that they take. 

Now if groups aren't doing well, well that happens all the time and what they do to address that is ongoing.

[Chaba.5410]

36 minutes ago, ChrisWhitey.9076 said:

I am already starting to wonder if there will be issues with the match making going forward. If groups are not doing well the best thing to do is quit or not play. Less hours means you are more likely to get added to a carry group to "balance numbers" now people could just say they are not playing but if this is what WvW turns into I am concerned.

Theoretically, if you play less you are considered to have less of an impact on the team's "performance" and aren't considered part of the "carry group".  You would then get matched onto a team with other players who actually doing the carrying.  Then you would end up playing more probably because of that.  Then the matchmaker would place you on a team with less players who do the carrying and then you quit playing again...

[ChrisWhitey.9076]

8 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Theoretically, if you play less you are considered to have less of an impact on the team's "performance" and aren't considered part of the "carry group".  You would then get matched onto a team with other players who actually doing the carrying.  Then you would end up playing more probably because of that.  Then the matchmaker would place you on a team with less players who do the carrying and then you quit playing again...

Thanks I think this sums up the concern making it a roller coaster but with a bit of meta humor XD

[ArchonWing.9480]

This also existed in the past with tanking; that's basically what every t1 server tried to do at some point  but why bother in this state in the game? There's nothing to win, and not everyone wants to be carried. If you do want to be carried just join a blob guild/alliance and blob to your heart's content instead of rolling dice and hoping you magically cross paths (and they may run invisible anyways) especially when servers get blown up in a month anyways.

But it is also fine to not play if you don't want to. There's other games after all.

 

Edited June 18 by ArchonWing.9480

[Zephyrus.9680]

2 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

This also existed in the past with tanking; that's basically what every t1 server tried to do at some point  but why bother in this state in the game? There's nothing to win, and not everyone wants to be carried. If you do want to be carried just join a blob guild/alliance and blob to your heart's content instead of rolling dice and hoping you magically cross paths (and they may run invisible anyways) especially when servers get blown up in a month anyways.

But it is also fine to not play if you don't want to. There's other games after all.

 

The irony is that a lot of "top" guilds preferred to transfer to lower (easier) tiers, while the OC seems to be concerned about individuals or smaller groups trying to manipulate the algorithm (by not playing?) to get to higher tiers. 

Most likely the 'recent WvW activity' is a purely quantitative comparison anyway, so it will remain purely random and impossible to manipulate by playing more or less. But like you said, no one should care anyway. It all resets with the next matchup. 

[ChrisWhitey.9076]

1 hour ago, Zephyrus.9680 said:

Most likely the 'recent WvW activity' is a purely quantitative comparison anyway, so it will remain purely random and impossible to manipulate by playing more or less. But like you said, no one should care anyway. It all resets with the next matchup. 

We know hours played was a big reason that this was created to balance playtime to make wvw better for a 24 hour dynamic. I don't think it is a big problem or a reason to stop but it should be a concern if it does impact balance.

[joneirikb.7506]

This is why I've always said the 3 biggest problems with the game-mode has been: Population, Coverage, Fair-weather.

Fair-weather being the relevant one here, no matter how well you try to balance a 24/7 game mode, the moment one side starts losing, half their players disappears, and they lose more and can't turn it around. Thus you're stuck in a self-fulfilling prophecy. This has applied from the start of the game to present, no matter which system (mono-server, links, WR).

WR is a system that is trying to fix the "Population" aspect (rough same total players/hours, and stop/restrict the bandwagon). If they get to keep iterating on it, it might later down the road be able to compensate somewhat for "Coverage", but I wouldn't bet on it doing as much as most people want to.

But there's just no way to fix "Fair-Weather", at least not by systematic changes or rewards etc.

----

If you want to "fix" Fair-weather, there's really only one way, and that's the craziest magic bullet ever, that no game developer has ever figured out: You got to make players actually have FUN losing. Good luck with that.

[Ronin.4501]

10 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

This also existed in the past with tanking; that's basically what every t1 server tried to do at some point  but why bother in this state in the game? There's nothing to win, and not everyone wants to be carried. If you do want to be carried just join a blob guild/alliance and blob to your heart's content instead of rolling dice and hoping you magically cross paths (and they may run invisible anyways) especially when servers get blown up in a month anyways.

But it is also fine to not play if you don't want to. There's other games after all.

 

That only works up to a point. I know in my alliance we actually review after every fight to see who's doing the carrying and who's being carried. Who's running comp and who isn't. And those who aren't and those who are being carried will eventually be locked out.

[TheGrimm.5624]

32 minutes ago, Ronin.4501 said:

That only works up to a point. I know in my alliance we actually review after every fight to see who's doing the carrying and who's being carried. Who's running comp and who isn't. And those who aren't and those who are being carried will eventually be locked out.

Not saying wrong per say but ouch!

I told my havoc we float since I want to see what it looks like. Created a comm guild in case needed but not used yet. Trying to see what, who, when and what this all looks like. Kind of like a mini-vacation. Been interesting. Likewise been adding more havocs and roamers to friends. Pugmanding is the same, matter of getting players to ID tags and get used to moving together. In any case it adds variety to the normal day in and day out minus peeps you know what they would do.

[Mistwraithe.3106]

1 hour ago, joneirikb.7506 said:

Fair-weather being the relevant one here, no matter how well you try to balance a 24/7 game mode, the moment one side starts losing, half their players disappears, and they lose more and can't turn it around. Thus you're stuck in a self-fulfilling prophecy. This has applied from the start of the game to present, no matter which system (mono-server, links, WR).

But there's just no way to fix "Fair-Weather", at least not by systematic changes or rewards etc.

If you want to "fix" Fair-weather, there's really only one way, and that's the craziest magic bullet ever, that no game developer has ever figured out: You got to make players actually have FUN losing. Good luck with that.

It's a fair point and definitely a factor.

But it's also overly simplistic. There is a middle ground where players are losing but it's close enough that they are winning some encounters and even on the ones they lost it felt like they could have won, or if they keep at it (whether attacking or defending) then they could still win.

That middle ground is where the sweet spot is where you have a good competition and "content" for both sides. How wide the sweet spot is depends on personality and also camaraderie - people will persist a lot longer in a losing cause if they are doing it as part of a team who are striving together.

For many people WR has broken the team part (by splitting their server into many pieces), but as people focus more on picking guilds to play with maybe this part will improve a bit again.

The rest of it comes down to the team and match making algorithm doing a good job of making contests close. A quick look at gw2mists.com suggests that hasn't gone particularly well in many tiers this time around, particularly when looking at K/D (and the graphs show this isn't a result of one or two teams giving up over time, the K/D ratios went to roughly where they are very quickly in most cases). Hopefully the one up / one down weekly changes will improve that and their algorithm will do better next time.

[Mabi black.1824]

9 hours ago, Zephyrus.9680 said:

no one should care anyway. It all resets with the next matchup. 

And that's one of the problems with this new mechanic. You know, if I don't care about anything, if I'm not involved, I'm very likely to get bored quickly.

 

22 minutes ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

camaraderie - people will persist a lot longer in a losing cause if they are doing it as part of a team who are striving together.

And that is the other side of the problem. A flag is needed to carry people even when all seems lost. The design of this game mode is based on teams/servers, not guilds or alliances. Making the concept of servers useless definitely doesn't help keep players online, much less if you want to engage them when things go wrong.

[joneirikb.7506]

4 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

But it's also overly simplistic. There is a middle ground where players are losing but it's close enough that they are winning some encounters and even on the ones they lost it felt like they could have won, or if they keep at it (whether attacking or defending) then they could still win.

If you actually have two (or three) teams close enough that both (all) sides feel they have a chance, then honestly I wouldn't call that "losing". That sounds like the general "perfect state" that (almost) everyone hopes for.

Which brings us to the point that WR isn't really meant to give that "perfect state" all time time, like some players seem to think it should have done. That would be impossible (unless ANet could dictate who played when and how much/long).

If a smaller group is playing very organized (for example the boonball or oldschool zerg-busting), then a small(er) group can actually make an entire full map from the enemy feel like they're losing, and thus go "Fair-weather" and quit. The whole thing is based on "feeling" like you have no chance. Heck, some just see no commander and give up right away and quit. So there's a lot of different ways that can trigger this.

 

[Stone.6751]

8 hours ago, joneirikb.7506 said:

Fair-weather being the relevant one here, no matter how well you try to balance a 24/7 game mode, the moment one side starts losing, half their players disappears, and they lose more and can't turn it around. Thus you're stuck in a self-fulfilling prophecy. This has applied from the start of the game to present, no matter which system (mono-server, links, WR).
----
If you want to "fix" Fair-weather, there's really only one way, and that's the craziest magic bullet ever, that no game developer has ever figured out: You got to make players actually have FUN losing. Good luck with that.

I would call it "morale" rather than "fair-weather." Players lose morale when their server is losing and log off, or they see that they are losing and don't want to log in because they know there is a high chance they will get steamrolled, which isn't fun. 

It's why PPT matters. PPT draws in players. PPT boosts player morale and keeps them playing.

You can see it in action. Lose garrison or EBG keep and watch how often your server falls to Outnumbered as morale sinks and players decide PvE content sounds more fun.

[TheGrimm.5624]

7 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

And that's one of the problems with this new mechanic. You know, if I don't care about anything, if I'm not involved, I'm very likely to get bored quickly.

 

This is a big factor. Right now this has the feel of the end of the tourney days where it was all about stacking. Or defying that taking actions against it when lopsided and going Havoc/Roamer.

7 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

And that is the other side of the problem. A flag is needed to carry people even when all seems lost. The design of this game mode is based on teams/servers, not guilds or alliances. Making the concept of servers useless definitely doesn't help keep players online, much less if you want to engage them when things go wrong.

For me agree, but I think for most it will be what did they encounter while they were on. Even if they move to 8 week sorts that won't matter. So for now it is down to Guilds.

[TheGrimm.5624]

43 minutes ago, Stone.6751 said:

I would call it "morale" rather than "fair-weather." Players lose morale when their server is losing and log off, or they see that they are losing and don't want to log in because they know there is a high chance they will get steamrolled, which isn't fun. 

Morale is huge. Keeping people motivated when facing larger groups, more organized ones or just plan full map zergs not concerned with holding but just trying to steam roll. It's like prior server complaints. If they are being a kitten, don't give them content. But take their stuff.

43 minutes ago, Stone.6751 said:

It's why PPT matters. PPT draws in players. PPT boosts player morale and keeps them playing.

PPK and PPT need to stay in balance to handle stacking. Also so we might get to reasons to win. If a side is not managing various issues like offense, defense and coverage, that's on them. If they choose not to make sure they are covering all of the game mode in favor of stacking and running around in a mass, that's on them if they lose content and the week, though there is still no reason to win the week. 

Edited June 19 by TheGrimm.5624
Edit: Missed a line.

[Voegelin.5642]

8 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

And that's one of the problems with this new mechanic. You know, if I don't care about anything, if I'm not involved, I'm very likely to get bored quickly.

 

And that is the other side of the problem. A flag is needed to carry people even when all seems lost. The design of this game mode is based on teams/servers, not guilds or alliances. Making the concept of servers useless definitely doesn't help keep players online, much less if you want to engage them when things go wrong.

I don't get this. Can I join a guild now that is on a different server?

[TheGrimm.5624]

5 minutes ago, Voegelin.5642 said:

I don't get this. Can I join a guild now that is on a different server?

Yes, but it won't take effect till the next resort.

[Johje Holan.4607]

This is a very good conversation about population, morale, the fair weather effect.  I believe that it’s impossible to balance population across a 24/7 game mode, completely and utterly impossible.   That’s why, since 2013 (because these same issues we’re talking about now, we were talking about back at the beginning of the game) I and others have advocated for game mechanics that mitigate the natural population imbalance that is bound to exist. But for some reason Anet never wanted to do that. It’s unfortunate because any attempt at balancing population without mechanisms to encourage people to keep playing even when things aren’t going well is bound to fail. Because as soon as players lose morale population becomes unbalanced again. 

[Zok.4956]

25 minutes ago, Johje Holan.4607 said:

Because as soon as players lose morale population becomes unbalanced again. 

True. But that also happens when players try to game the game to gain some kind of advantage. This should also be taken into account.

[DeathPanel.8362]

22 hours ago, ChrisWhitey.9076 said:

I am already starting to wonder if there will be issues with the match making going forward. If groups are not doing well the best thing to do is quit or not play. Less hours means you are more likely to get added to a carry group to "balance numbers" now people could just say they are not playing but if this is what WvW turns into I am concerned.

You're incentivized to play with the dailies, weekly achievements, reward track boxes, and tick rewards.  To complete those things alone would keep you in WvW for at least 1-2 hours daily.

[ChrisWhitey.9076]

17 minutes ago, DeathPanel.8362 said:

You're incentivized to play with the dailies, weekly achievements, reward track boxes, and tick rewards.  To complete those things alone would keep you in WvW for at least 1-2 hours daily.

I am playing WvW to have fun. If I want to be rewarded for my time PvE farm trains pay out way more than WvW and I have enough GoB already for all my needs.

[TheGrimm.5624]

44 minutes ago, Johje Holan.4607 said:

This is a very good conversation about population, morale, the fair weather effect.  I believe that it’s impossible to balance population across a 24/7 game mode, completely and utterly impossible.   That’s why, since 2013 (because these same issues we’re talking about now, we were talking about back at the beginning of the game) I and others have advocated for game mechanics that mitigate the natural population imbalance that is bound to exist. But for some reason Anet never wanted to do that. It’s unfortunate because any attempt at balancing population without mechanisms to encourage people to keep playing even when things aren’t going well is bound to fail. Because as soon as players lose morale population becomes unbalanced again. 

Agree for the most part. What makes it even more murky is having no detailed aspect of what would be defined as balanced. Using the forums alone balanced would be defined in a thousand of different ways but without Anet stating as what they see that is, who knows. Now could they keep attributing aspects of game play to help in their sorts, yes. What they ended up with so far we don't know since they did a vague blog before launch versus previous more detailed postings...I think the last published one was number of players, average play hours, time of play and tags. Would have to dig out the references for quotes. They also mentioned language support in the future and further back there was talks about adding in attributes to rank people so they could do better initial placements. But players will remain the wildcards and how the system impacts the way they play overtime so it will be a moving target.

Example: Lets say a player has various hours they can play. They might have been playing from 8PM to midnight in their timezone which were open for them. Now they get resorted and have a large guild move into that window and fill that queue time, so the player may move to just playing from 8-9. Or likewise they used to have decent matchups in that time frame and now find that the other side is just running a map wide zerg with no one trying to counter, so they move their play to 6-8 PM to avoid an overstacked side in that time zone. Ideally the player would adapt their play style to counter that but they may not and just decide to come back later or play earlier if they have that option.

In the end players need to feel like the time was well spent on a number of different levels in order for them to consider spending more time in the game mode. WR will have had positive and negative effects for different players for different reasons and since players are involved there will be new positive and negative ones as we move forward and the sandbox changes.

All that said, I am hoping they have a more detailed notice about scoring changes and are welcome to feedback.

 

[Mistwraithe.3106]

7 hours ago, joneirikb.7506 said:

Which brings us to the point that WR isn't really meant to give that "perfect state" all time time, like some players seem to think it should have done. That would be impossible (unless ANet could dictate who played when and how much/long).
 

While I agree that it's very unlikely (near impossible) we can have good balance all the time, from looking at gw2mists it seems like the WR system has done pretty badly on many matchups this time.

Looking at my own team, Throne of Balthazar T5 NA, we've only had K/D > 1 for two skirmishes out of the first 58. That's actually two more than I expected, there must be one or two decent guilds that play occasionally and give us very brief periods of dominance, perhaps SEA time or Europe time? But our overall K/D is 0.53 and it feels like it the half dozen times I've tried playing. We've been outnumbered all the time (not necessarily badly enough to have the outnumbered modifier, tho I've seen that on all maps too, including EBG) and I've yet to see a successful defence of a keep when an enemy zerg attacks.

Edited June 19 by Mistwraithe.3106

[ArchonWing.9480]

13 hours ago, joneirikb.7506 said:

This is why I've always said the 3 biggest problems with the game-mode has been: Population, Coverage, Fair-weather.

Fair-weather being the relevant one here, no matter how well you try to balance a 24/7 game mode, the moment one side starts losing, half their players disappears, and they lose more and can't turn it around. Thus you're stuck in a self-fulfilling prophecy. This has applied from the start of the game to present, no matter which system (mono-server, links, WR).

WR is a system that is trying to fix the "Population" aspect (rough same total players/hours, and stop/restrict the bandwagon). If they get to keep iterating on it, it might later down the road be able to compensate somewhat for "Coverage", but I wouldn't bet on it doing as much as most people want to.

But there's just no way to fix "Fair-Weather", at least not by systematic changes or rewards etc.

----

If you want to "fix" Fair-weather, there's really only one way, and that's the craziest magic bullet ever, that no game developer has ever figured out: You got to make players actually have FUN losing. Good luck with that.

Yea you can't exactly be like "You must wake up to PPT or else we'll sue you". This isn't Blizzard after all.

We kinda had that with the old outnumbered buff, but then people started gaming it and even started scolding people for coming to the map and getting rid of it lol, so kitten's tough.

I suppose they thought of the volunteer mechnaic but that still just led to stacking.

Maybe the game should give you a pity system if you've been on a losing server for too long lol. Problem is that WvWers want content and they have a sense of pride so rewards only helps a little bit.

13 hours ago, Ronin.4501 said:

That only works up to a point. I know in my alliance we actually review after every fight to see who's doing the carrying and who's being carried. Who's running comp and who isn't. And those who aren't and those who are being carried will eventually be locked out.

I mean, sure you do want to enforce comp and stuff, but I am not sure how you are evaluating the other side of the performance (arcdps logs maybe?). There's a lot of variance.

Also I suppose people should be given an easier role if they can't do well in one.