Fear not, for each Alliance matchup will be better than the previous

[Dawdler.8521]

7 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

What's weird is the EU T5 (71 hour lead) and NA T4 (46 hour lead). So 2 links that were just placed in the wrong tier and facing those coming down making the numbers worse? Or what? 

But "placed" in the wrong tier isnt a thing. The tiers was random last week. We still refer to it as "T1 and "T5" but it's not that at all.

If by chance an actual T1 team - by our definition of T1 as in absolutely top notch there are no challengers out of all the teams - ended up in T6 on random, isnt this exactly what is expected?

Nuances in teams even at similar population levels can still be immense. Just today there was a mini boonball 5 man guild running around resetting the entire border and we where probably 15+ present but of course couldnt counter that. 5 wont listen to a word in chat, 5 couldnt tell the end of a donkey from a doorknob and the remaining 5 that manage to meet that guild gets destroyed because it's actually a 5v1+1+1+1+1 and 2 already ran away the moment 1 downed.

And of course yesterday we fought that same guild just fine and took them out, because people took the initiative and called them out in chat.

Not to mention the psychological snowball effect. People see the first scenario and then will go "well that's the matchup lost might as well not play this team sucks" while ignoring that the second happened.

[Zok.4956]

19 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

But "placed" in the wrong tier isnt a thing. The tiers was random last week. We still refer to it as "T1 and "T5" but it's not that at all.

If by chance an actual T1 team - by our definition of T1 as in absolutely top notch there are no challengers out of all the teams - ended up in T6 on random, isnt this exactly what is expected?

If that were a typical expectation of WR, the new system (WR) would be worse than the old one (server links).

Because then, statistically speaking, WR teams would play outside their own tier much more often and for longer than with the old system. And when it has settled down now, it is reshuffled and it starts again unbalanced regarding the tiers.

With the old system, the "strength/activity" of the individual servers was known and from this the strength of the entire link could be deduced and classified accordingly. The only disruptive factor was the mass transfers (which could have been prevented if Anet had wanted to).

[Dawdler.8521]

5 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

With the old system, the "strength/activity" of the individual servers was known and from this the strength of the entire link could be deduced and classified accordingly. The only disruptive factor was the mass transfers (which could have been prevented if Anet had wanted to).

Without the transfers people would just have gotten bored and left anyway (or played on other accounts). 

Being able to judge the strength of a server that ends up in T6 on random with a new link and notice it's actually T1 from last month... does anything really change?

[Zok.4956]

12 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Without the transfers people would just have gotten bored and left anyway (or played on other accounts). 

The fact that you always play against the same 2-3 servers (when everyone is finally in their tier) and that it gets boring is of course also due to the fact that there are far too many tiers for far too few servers/teams and the coverage/skill/population differences between the servers are too big. Usually in a swiss-system tournament (one up, one down system) players do not face each other twice.

The guild transfers don't change that much, because when you eventually recognize the guilds and their playing style, you also know how the servers change after their transfers.

And that brings us back to the starting point: If WR can't really significantly improve the imbalances (and some claim that this isn't possible in principle):  What's the point of WR?

[TheGrimm.5624]

13 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Without the transfers people would just have gotten bored and left anyway (or played on other accounts). 

Being able to judge the strength of a server that ends up in T6 on random with a new link and notice it's actually T1 from last month... does anything really change?

This is one of the open topics of the WR. Did transfers help more or hurt more in 2012-2014. 

With Glicko there was some weighting, without...random doesn't leave a good feel to initial placements. Mind you I am going to play the hand I get but, I don't blame others to ask WTW is this and see that as a WR issue. To me that is a fair ball. Just means I will adjust and counter what the environment looks like from there. 🙂 

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Zok.4956 said:

And that brings us back to the starting point: If WR can't really significantly improve the imbalances (and some claim that this isn't possible in principle):  What's the point of WR?

And as has been said a million times before - the point of WR was to periodically shift people around to even out the populations instead of having the largest world be like 4x larger than the smallest world.

On the forums, that's been twisted into a fantasy of team vs team balance for fighting and PPT in every tier.

[Zok.4956]

5 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

the point of WR was to periodically shift people around to even out the populations instead of having the largest world be like 4x larger than the smallest world.

Well, the goal of "periodically shifting people around" has been achieved. But "to even out the populations" obviously hasn't (yet).  And that means the discussion goes in circles because that was the starting point.

7 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

On the forums, that's been twisted into a fantasy of team vs team balance for fighting and PPT in every tier.

Your reply looks like a strawman. I wouldn't dismiss it as a twisted fantasy if players don't see any significant improvements (yet) and debate whether the new system is really better than the old one, or just different.

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Zok.4956 said:

Your reply looks like a strawman. I wouldn't dismiss it as a twisted fantasy if players don't see any significant improvements (yet) and debate whether the new system is really better than the old one, or just different.

Whether we want to see such an improvement and judge it by an arbitrary measure of success (which by the average players standard would probably be “I am winning therefor it is balanced”) well that a whole other matter.

It doesn’t change what WR was meant to do. It’s even in the name.

Edited June 27 by Dawdler.8521

[Mabi black.1824]

On 6/24/2024 at 11:58 PM, One more for the road.8950 said:

So... what people have always done when meeting too hard opposition.

in fact wr is really changing things here. it's the right choice. please make it permanent forever. Thank you 🤭

[Mabi black.1824]

17 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Nuances in teams even at similar population levels can still be immense

similar numbers where? please don't kid yourself. eu t5 prime time single tag in eb on voice manages to gather 25 people? and on the other side you count 60+. do me a favor don't justify something that can't be justified. if we want to talk about epic battles. if we're talking about one-sided battles then your chatter is fine.

[XenesisII.1540]

9 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

This is one of the open topics of the WR. Did transfers help more or hurt more in 2012-2014. 

With Glicko there was some weighting, without...random doesn't leave a good feel to initial placements. Mind you I am going to play the hand I get but, I don't blame others to ask WTW is this and see that as a WR issue. To me that is a fair ball. Just means I will adjust and counter what the environment looks like from there. 🙂 

Transfers hurt the game immensely.

The first 6 months of the game had free transfers for everyone. Servers like SoS and SoR that were mid tier ranked 10-12 servers got stacked. 

The 2012-14 era also had players sneaking through lock outs to stack servers like Blackgate to super stack them for near a decade. And anet offering free transfers to certain servers right before tournaments, a ridiculous(to put it mildly) offer to make.

The 2014-2016 era had glicko walls and population measurement change, being locked to certain tiers started to suck eventually.

2016-2024 was the links era that went on way too long, transfer cost that were changed in order to promote players to move to smaller servers to try and balance things out, instead it was left in for years so it just encouraged constant mass migration of guilds.

On the other hand, maybe it did keep things "fresh" for some players, as wvw basically got no real content after 2015-2017 era of changes, we got the mount and a few geographical changes, but really nothing to shake wvw up to keep it fresh like a new map or mechanics.

Now we get the lock to your guild era while still playing in the same kitten unbalanced stacked environment as before, where everyone and anet selfishly only care about their blob and not the entirety of wvw. 🤷‍♂️

BTW the expansion are on sale, everyone be sure to reward them for this great effort and awesome balance patches. 🙄

Edited June 27 by XenesisII.1540

[Voegelin.5642]

On 6/24/2024 at 1:23 AM, T G.7496 said:

No.

They're stacked because Anet's match making was very poor, putting several of the largest, very active guilds on the same Teams.

Anet did this, not the players or guilds.

Mirrors of Lyssa is the most egregious example of very poor Team-making.

I am in a guild on that team.

There has been practically zero content. We hoped it might improve in this second week. It's worse. MoL is incredibly active.  So many commanders and squads, from many, many different guilds, all looking to create and find content. But, seemingly, there are very few people to play with on the other Teams.

This is not a choice all the players on MoL made. This is simply the Team we all found ourselves on. It's miserable for us, too. 

I was part of a guild that left a server because the queu was too long. Went to a lower tier server.

[Grave.5683]

New accounts get to choose which world to join.

Guess how easy it makes to spy harass and grief people now.

[Reztek.7805]

On 6/27/2024 at 2:23 PM, Mabi black.1824 said:

similar numbers where? please don't kid yourself. eu t5 prime time single tag in eb on voice manages to gather 25 people? and on the other side you count 60+. do me a favor don't justify something that can't be justified. if we want to talk about epic battles. if we're talking about one-sided battles then your chatter is fine.

Yeah, it's pretty obvious (on every stat site) that there's at least a massively overstacked "team", beginning in EU T6. And after they moved up T5 looked almost as bad last week. So far T4 starts bad too, but well, it's only been a night. But there'll always be people on our beloved disc world telling you the opposite (a million times). 😄

So for the next relink, make your own alt account alliance and don't use those accounts before the relink. 😉

On the other hand, so far EU T3 has been quite acceptable. Still the same issues as before WR, but well, everyone knew WR wouldn't fix anything.

[Mabi black.1824]

4 hours ago, Reztek.7805 said:

Yeah, it's pretty obvious (on every stat site) that there's at least a massively overstacked "team", beginning in EU T6. And after they moved up T5 looked almost as bad last week. So far T4 starts bad too, but well, it's only been a night. But there'll always be people on our beloved disc world telling you the opposite (a million times). 😄

So for the next relink, make your own alt account alliance and don't use those accounts before the relink. 😉

On the other hand, so far EU T3 has been quite acceptable. Still the same issues as before WR, but well, everyone knew WR wouldn't fix anything.

Dear Reztek, I'm sorry but now my problem is to have a reason/purpose to be involved in this game mode. And to say that prior to June 14th I have stated that WVW had something ''special'' about involving the player in a collective action of competition in a team/server format. I'm not even looking for an alliance. To do what?

If I told this joke to someone who doesn't know anything about WVW, they would tell me that it's not possible, that it's absurd. But that's exactly how it is. We make servers useless and still have server-based game design. crazy. On top of that, with the pretense of getting epic battles. I don't want to think about it.

[Tralala.4291]

On 6/27/2024 at 1:23 PM, Mabi black.1824 said:

similar numbers where? please don't kid yourself. eu t5 prime time single tag in eb on voice manages to gather 25 people? and on the other side you count 60+. do me a favor don't justify something that can't be justified. if we want to talk about epic battles. if we're talking about one-sided battles then your chatter is fine.

I agree with most of what you said but voice only squad? no. Maybe if commanders were not trying to turn WvW into some sort of raid style 'progression' squad people would not be put off.

[Johje Holan.4607]

So has this turned out to be true yet?  We’re in the 3rd week right?  Has it gotten better each week?