World Restructuring Status Update

[trezen.9687]

1 hour ago, latlat.4516 said:

The fact that lower tiers are impacted shows some information : 

lower tier team seem to be leftovers. My team has 1 mid size guild of 200 (total, not active), 2 smaller guilds and the rest are pugs. And we are put against teams that seem to be comprised 99% of one 'alliance' (whatever they call it now). MoL is an ugly example of that, we now barely have enough people to make a squad on one map because people just stopped playing waiting for a better matchup, and we were the biggest wvw guild on our server. I don't have anything against guildless people, but it would seem fair to distribute them evenly over all the teams, because it's not rocket science ('the algorithm') to understand that a highly organized voice-com-guild squad will wipe the floor with any lesser/smaller enemy, and that's the thing that happens to us second week in a row. And since most of the population seem to be random players, they don't have any incentive to stick around and, you know, play. Which means that even in peak hours the numbers are slowly dwindling. We've gotten down to T6 and we are still heavily losing, which I also don't remember happening in the last 2 years, ever.

Basically the stance on WR comes down to either you were put in a good strong team or not.

But it's really cool to know that Anet thinks everything works fine as intended.

[latlat.4516]

2 minutes ago, Charybdis.9042 said:

I suspect your analysis is little off because you're not taking into account the history over the week. You can't get an undestanding of a matchup by analysing a single 2 hour skirmish: attendance in WvW is not the same as forming a squad, or even a boon-ball meta-squad led by a fight commander.

The reason I took that specific skirmish for my analysis is to nuance the fact that player activity is the single most defining factor of how a specific skirmish will turn out -- and enventually the MU.

But as a matter of fact, for that specific MU, our comparative activity (I'm in one of the big guilds of MoL) has been higher than blue and green on the 4:00-6:00 CET(2 times this week)  and 16-18 CET skirmishes (3 times this week). For all other cases, we were second or lowest.

 

8 minutes ago, Charybdis.9042 said:

Red strategy now seems to be pushing greens and blues together to create a fight over who goes down.

honestly red strategy currently is "where is content ?". The objective clearly is to go and get fights against gOOd, vF, BiG etc.

[deedeechan.8103]

This is atrocious and I'm not going to sugar-coat stuff. 

Just out of curiosity - are you still stuck in your American bubble or are you at least slightly aware of how European servers work? How we worked before?

Are you aware that French-only-speaking, Deutch-only-speaking etc. players have all been thrown together into the same Team? Have you got any idea what this has done for communication? It's become impossible to follow Tags because you have no idea what they want from you.

Tags have been singling out players who don't speak the tag's language and are refusing to squad-invite us.

This is a major issue. How are you planning on addressing this??

Edited July 4 by deedeechan.8103

[TheGrimm.5624]

8 hours ago, Cecil.4536 said:

Hello, WvW players,

I want to give a brief status update on World Restructuring now that we've wrapped up our second week of the team period (the time between team creations).

Launch

World Restructuring had a relatively smooth launch thanks to some awesome work by our gameplay platform engineers. At reset, we ran into a couple of issues with teams in the newly created tiers that prevented players from accessing WvW maps. Our team identified the issue and unblocked the maps relatively quickly, and we have a fix in place for the future.

The good news is that most players got placed where they intended to be! For those who didn't, our support team has been actively assisting players who missed the deadline or selected the wrong guild. At the time of writing, we have resolved one team placement bug that could have negatively impacted inactive guilds and players.

Team Creation

The team-creation algorithm is performing as expected, and most teams are showing reasonably similar performance in terms of player hours, average war scores, and victory points. But things aren't perfect; there are a couple of teams that stand out as unbalanced, and even on well-balanced matchups we have noticed some performance gaps at specific times of day. We'll be adjusting the algorithm to better address this for the next team creation at the end of July.

We have also observed an issue related to time zone population balance that is specifically affecting large guilds. Our algorithm is trying to build a representative profile of guilds for the purposes of team creation. The larger your guild becomes, the more relevant the "averages" are in your data, and the less specific the profile becomes. This creates a situation in which off-hours groups that are part of large prime-time guilds are having their data nullified by the larger group.

We are looking into adjustments to improve on this specific function of the algorithm. In the meantime, if you're in an off-hours guild that has joined a much larger prime-time guild for World Restructuring, you might be able to improve your matchup experience in your preferred time zone by selecting a smaller guild.

Thanks

We appreciate your feedback on the new system and are looking forward to the many improvements we can make to it. Please continue to share your experiences and feedback in the WvW forums!

Thanks,

Cecil and the WvW Team

Hi!!

Welcome to the forums. 

TY for info. Can you provide more introduction? Appreciate the feedback but context helps. 

 

[Charybdis.9042]

1 hour ago, latlat.4516 said:

The reason I took that specific skirmish for my analysis is to nuance the fact that player activity is the single most defining factor of how a specific skirmish will turn out -- and enventually the MU.

But as a matter of fact, for that specific MU, our comparative activity (I'm in one of the big guilds of MoL) has been higher than blue and green on the 4:00-6:00 CET(2 times this week)  and 16-18 CET skirmishes (3 times this week). For all other cases, we were second or lowest.

Which rather goes to show that player activity (meaning attendance) isn't such a clear indicator. Player activity (meaning composition of players) is better, but attendance graphs don't show that kind of information.

The composition would mean roamers, scouts, small squads working together to flip targets, large fight groups defending and flipping, groups of any size looking for fights/content. Graphs at gw2mists show a fairly good matching of activity/attendance (bearing in mind the limitations of who choses to register a key there). However a high PPT (derived from strong defense of owned targets) combined with high kills just keeps the skirmish points rolling in.

Your analysis does highlight the apparent contradiction of attendance vs composition however (I edited my own post to add this, probably while you were writing a response).

1 hour ago, latlat.4516 said:

honestly red strategy currently is "where is content ?". The objective clearly is to go and get fights against gOOd, vF, BiG etc.

You were not well served by starting in tier 6, so the content hasn't been what you've been looking for. A victim of your placement and success, it appears. Here's hoping that the matchup tuning works better in your favour next relink.

Edited July 4 by Charybdis.9042

[Mirae.5034]

I don't really know how it can be said that the algorithm is working as intended, or that anything is going well. I can't talk for other servers but, I'm in Mirror of Lyssa (EU) and we were put on t6 in the first week (HOW?). Since then, every single week we've won almost every single skirmish and completely annihilated every server on t6, t5 and now, t4. I guess the feelings of our enemies are completely horrible, but in my case, I can add that fighting a totally unbalanced matchup every week, even if we're the victors, isn't funny at all.

In order to add some kind feedback...maybe, while this system is in place, you'll have to erase the "the server that wins go up one tier, and the one that loses go down" and study where does every server belong on a week to week basis, because I can assure you, I'm pretty sure no one that have had a matchup against us in the last 3 weeks had fun at all, and like I said it before, personally, neither do I.

I want matchups to be balanced, I want to win and I want to lose fights, I don't want to destroy enemy servers 24/7 and end up camping their base because there's nothing more to do...

 

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, trezen.9687 said:

mate the numbers always beat 'skill' in wvw, that's literally the reason we have WR — some servers are way more emptier than other and so they get the short end of the stick. My server (Deso) *always* had the highest KDA in the matchup and yet we rarely won and rarely even got links because the server is one of the first and it's always 'full', so the 'algorithm' assumed we have enough people, and we could be casually put as solo server against 2+2 enemies.

It's not balance no matter how you put it. Small deviations like 48-52% winrate is expected in every game, but in WvW much higher KDA just means much higher population. No matter how 'skilled' you think you are, when every map is full for the enemy and you can barely scrape enough people for one squad on one map, you'll get destroyed. And since you think so high of yourself I assume you're from a winning team.

This is a bit contradictory. If you are on the loosing team in T1 NA then you have the highest KDR and the highest K+D activity (not sure what "KDA" is). By your own argument, your team have the highest population.

[Silerna.6194]

At least allow players to play wvw as well instead of locking them out just because they didn't select a team.
https://i.imgur.com/9vNLKIb.jpeg

I thought they would have been put in random teams instead but this is ridiculous.
-------------

And so far nothing changed on my main account. It's still dead during the day and prime time. Arenanet said it would be more balanced but absolutely nothing changed. And it's no longer fun to bother playing actually, since it's either a full squad full with boonbotting that are impossible to kill with only 10 people. Alliances won't change anything about this. Unless you plan to drastically change the wvw game mode. But I don't see that happening.
 

Edited July 4 by Silerna.6194
Forgot something.

[One more for the road.8950]

5 minutes ago, Silerna.6194 said:

At least allow players to play wvw as well instead of locking them out just because they didn't select a team.
https://i.imgur.com/9vNLKIb.jpeg

I thought they would have been put in random teams instead but this is ridiculous.
-------------

And so far nothing changed on my main account. It's still dead during the day and prime time. Arenanet said it would be more balanced but absolutely nothing changed.
 

Just go on the last tab and pick a team, and voila.

[Silerna.6194]

I did before the change already. Maybe next reset it will change.

Edited July 4 by Silerna.6194

[bambi.6214]

Balancing is a process, the system has to gather data, weights need to be manually adjusted... I wouldn't be surprised if it took 2-3 more "reshuffles" for matchups to be more balanced.

Also, it's marked as a beta system, for a reason.

 

[RisingDawn.5796]

I'm surprised this beta was even pushed out, before they could fix the queue bugs, because it get's very annoying.

At least most of the time there isn't massive queues, if you are lucky enough, but to reproduce the bug and for it to happen multiple times, is interesting.

Otherwise the beta has been very underwhelming, dead matchups, badly balanced in terms of population and how stacked some servers are with Alliances/Communities, compared to others filled with small guilds, pugs and Chatmanders. Then they decided to add another tier, to add to the misery.

Sure it could balance over time and it's early days, but we're locked in for 4 weeks (6 this time) every Team Matching, now we have to rely on second and maybe third accounts, if your matchup is dead, as it's difficult to have balanced matchups for weeks after, a new Matching?

The other option is to Alt+F4.

Edited July 4 by RisingDawn.5796

[One more for the road.8950]

14 minutes ago, Silerna.6194 said:

I did before the change already. Maybe next reset it will change.

Er, so did you have a look at the last tab? Does it have a team picked?

[Zok.4956]

9 hours ago, A Hamster.2580 said:

Can someone explain how having this sixth guild slot that is capped at 500 players is any different from having alliance that is also capped at 500 players? I feel there is a huge misunderstanding from this post.

Technically there is no difference.

Here is a theoretical example to illustrate how I understand the explanation: A guild has two groups of players: 300 players who only play in the evenings and 30 players who only play in the mornings. If the playing time of the entire guild is statistically determined, the 30 players are statistically irrelevant, the guild is assigned as if all players played in the evenings and the small group of 30 players are unhappy because they are unbalanced.

That is why they recommend that the 30 players who only play in the mornings create their own guild.

Of course, all of this could have been seen from the game data long before the WR...

Edited July 4 by Zok.4956

[Asur.2510]

While you're figuring out this whole balancing thing, maybe add a placement round for the first week of each team reset.

Single day matches during the first week for quick up/down adjustments so people get sorted into more appropriate tiers to make the following 4 weeks more playable/enjoyable.

[Zok.4956]

2 hours ago, bambi.6214 said:

Also, it's marked as a beta system, for a reason.

In a real beta, the customer can decide whether he wants to participate or continue to use the existing, stable non-beta production system. But permanently converting a production system to a new version for all paying customers is not a beta. 

[Serapis.7240]

Can we at least get Gift of Battle added to PvP reward tracks now? Legendary crafting is now essentially a dead game mode for casuals who aren't part of a WvW guild, and if you're still potentially months away from even being able to balance established guilds with an entrenched playerbase and consistent playtimes it's unreasonable to even say "Get a second job by joining a WvW guild" because that won't even get you somewhat fair matchups anymore.

[Llyweln.3078]

Ive noticed in this last week, even though we are outnumbered, have barely anything on home bl, we are que'd? How can we address the taking of home lands, when we cannot even get on the map? Other then that, its been a rocking time the last few weeks. :D

[catbus driver.4918]

It's actually crazy how out of touch Anet is with not only the majority of players, but clearly the entire game itself. 

[Lyssia.4637]

11 minutes ago, Llyweln.3078 said:

Ive noticed in this last week, even though we are outnumbered, have barely anything on home bl, we are que'd? 

I've seen this a lot as well.  Weird times, too; morning-midday weekdays, when I don't usually ever see either at all.

Edit: neither que's nor outnumbered.

Edited July 4 by Lyssia.4637

[Symbiosis.8729]

6 hours ago, deedeechan.8103 said:

This is atrocious and I'm not going to sugar-coat stuff. 

Agreed. I would say this is just classic gaslighting but hey, it's likely they have never set foot inside a EU match up for any decent period of time ( or at all) in prime, there is usually one tag that only allows discord sign ups from it's own guild. The rest of the time its nothing or small groups speaking a language I do not understand. I know enough to know where to stand without understanding them but how can the map co ordinate like this?

Edited July 4 by Symbiosis.8729

[One more for the road.8950]

1 hour ago, Asur.2510 said:

While you're figuring out this whole balancing thing, maybe add a placement round for the first week of each team reset.

Single day matches during the first week for quick up/down adjustments so people get sorted into more appropriate tiers to make the following 4 weeks more playable/enjoyable.

Single day matches doesn't at all allow for the fact that we have some guilds that are extremely active in the weekends and no activity in the weekdays, or the guilds that barely shows up during weekend but has a heavy presence during regular weekdays.

Not mention guilds that basicly logs on for their guild raids, so even if Monday and Wednesday are dead, Sunday, Tuesday or Thursday is packed.

[obastable.5231]

2 hours ago, Zok.4956 said:

Technically there is no difference.

Here is a theoretical example to illustrate how I understand the explanation: A guild has two groups of players: 300 players who only play in the evenings and 30 players who only play in the mornings. If the playing time of the entire guild is statistically determined, the 30 players are statistically irrelevant, the guild is assigned as if all players played in the evenings and the small group of 30 players are unhappy because they are unbalanced.

That is why they recommend that the 30 players who only play in the mornings create their own guild.

Of course, all of this could have been seen from the game data long before the WR...

Correct, this is how a normal distribution works. There are ways Anet could account for this but it requires a different type of distribution and different sampling measures. Maybe that's what they're going to work on, but in the meantime the easy fix is for groups to only alliance with other groups inside their own time zone - or to go solo for better dispersion against each other in the case of lower populated time zones. This sucks for groups and players who play across multiple times zones, many in our Alliance are such people, and the result will be having to choose between friend groups or go back to using alts. 

 

1 hour ago, Serapis.7240 said:

Can we at least get Gift of Battle added to PvP reward tracks now? Legendary crafting is now essentially a dead game mode for casuals who aren't part of a WvW guild, and if you're still potentially months away from even being able to balance established guilds with an entrenched playerbase and consistent playtimes it's unreasonable to even say "Get a second job by joining a WvW guild" because that won't even get you somewhat fair matchups anymore.

I do not think that's what you need to do to get a GoB, or to join a WvW guild. Are you on EU or NA? Can probably recommend a bunch of guilds that accept casual players (people without high time commitments and/or intense competitive mindsets), or put you in touch with a good resource to find something that fits your needs and play style. You can dm me if you'd like. 

1 hour ago, catbus driver.4918 said:

It's actually crazy how out of touch Anet is with not only the majority of players, but clearly the entire game itself. 

Currently a decent portion of the visible WvW dev team (the public facing people) do actually play WvW regularly, both on NA and EU. They spend a lot of free time reading, listening, and interacting with WvW communities both in game and on various discords as well, in both regions. Given that there's literally thousands of people in these discords I do not think they're out of touch at all. If anything the players who aren't in those communities may be more out of touch than the devs. 

Regardless of what they do or don't do for WvW people are going to be unhappy. There's literally no way to please everyone. I see WR as an opportunity to correct many mistakes in the old system, and the scoring changes they mentioned are being worked on should correct many more. It isn't flawless but it's a great start to something that has potential to be incredibly more adaptive to player habits and needs over time than the old system. I'm not happy with it as it is but I do believe the potential is here, and I'm glad to give constructive feedback that leads to improving it. 

[Palikka.8249]

6 hours ago, latlat.4516 said:

The reason I took that specific skirmish for my analysis is to nuance the fact that player activity is the single most defining factor of how a specific skirmish will turn out -- and enventually the MU.

But as a matter of fact, for that specific MU, our comparative activity (I'm in one of the big guilds of MoL) has been higher than blue and green on the 4:00-6:00 CET(2 times this week)  and 16-18 CET skirmishes (3 times this week). For all other cases, we were second or lowest.

 

honestly red strategy currently is "where is content ?". The objective clearly is to go and get fights against gOOd, vF, BiG etc.

For green side of view, its "Can we camp greens even harder" or "Oh noes 5v5, aah there come our cavalry".

[latlat.4516]

9 minutes ago, Palikka.8249 said:

For green side of view, its "Can we camp greens even harder" or "Oh noes 5v5, aah there come our cavalry".

saying that when we litterally had to take turns against ARMA on BBL yesterday so we don't blob them too hard for too long takes some balls.