World Restructuring Status Update

[Cuks.8241]

1 minute ago, One more for the road.8950 said:

But with WR, even if a guild did that, you wouldn't have the entire reaction chain happening that did before, there is no way for that to happen. Not to mention that  the different guilds might even end up on the same team. Talked to someone that has three accounts on the same team the other day.

Agreed, I like WR. But its still detrimental for balance. Also while we wont probably see such huge migrations you can do it easier, on a whim.

[Odrson.1463]

Please don't make us wait another 18 days for the teams to be re- made.
It would be 18 days of not playing on (Skrittsburg) EU T6, the permanent loser.

[lindstroem.3601]

Anet doesnt care, so should you and just quit. And by playing less you got a good chance to be shuffled onto a stacked alliance server as a low activity filler to even out "balance" on the next reshuffle. Good new system. 👍

Edited July 6 by lindstroem.3601

[RlyOsim.2497]

Between the current meta and this new system it's really worrisome the direction the gamemode is being taken.

Direct feedback, you really need this system to be a lot better in terms of the quality of the matches. Currently all of the matchups I've played in have felt generally very underpopulated and more importantly not fun.

Beyond that, you removed a massive infrastructure for new players in the form of community guilds and discords. I do understand the vision of 'let the guild do it', but it's not 2015, there are only a fraction of the players and more importantly, guilds, still playing. Guilds in their current state generally cannot act as a support structure for new people, and besides, most guilds want people who can already play the game to some degree, they don't even want the new people, let alone train them. Without the on-ramp infrastructure servers offered new players the gamemode will suffer greatly: if new people cannot easily gain information/supports needed to learn/play the gamemode they simply won't.

This all looks and feels so shortsighted from the developers. Frankly, I cannot believe this is their vision for WvW population. This has been on the table for years and in all that time this is the result. It's a failure tbh and if the lack of new player infrastructure isn't addressed as a very high priority the gamemode will see massive decline when the current crop of people enduring this slop reach their tipping point.

Noone reads this anyway but it's nice to vent!

Edited July 6 by RlyOsim.2497

[MercurialKuroSludge.8974]

4 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

I love this so I had to highlight it:

You are literally a player complaining about content who actively undermines the WR system. Yes, I know it's common to have alt accounts to go to where there is content in WvW and there was/is hope that the WR system made this more difficult to achieve, aka reduce the effectiveness of alt accounts and create pressure from guilds to demand players stick to their main account.

It is a great example of players directly undermining a system, then in the same moment coming back and complaining about said system. Your self-serving behavior is part of the problem, no matter how justified it might be for personal enjoyment.

Now does that absolve the issues with the WR system? Absolutely not, but it does shed a nice light on how self centered some players are in regards to THEIR enjoyment (which is fine, everyone is out for themselves mostly) while pretending it's about the game mode as a whole.

The WR system needs some heavy tweaking (and while it is nice that CS moves players and entire guilds around freely atm, it does undermine the distribution and shard creation) mostly in regards to:

- adjust not only for play hours but also for type of activity (and this would be far more difficult to achieve, but could be tracked via ppt, k/d, etc stats)

- Stacking multiple large fight guilds on 1 shard or few shards is counter productive

- placing such an active shard in T6 for it to ruin every single tier while moving up is similar to the over-stacked servers from the past

- time zone coverage would be nice to also get implemented

The entirety of WvW failing and dying is because of players like these, bandwagoning and destroying the system ,while crying for papa/mama Anet to fix it, taking absolutely 0 responsibility.

They get what they Fing deserve, a game mode thats dead, murdered by their very machinatons.

[Chaba.5410]

6 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

You're answering your own questions. Different guilds/alliance with their players are distributed over different worlds for a reason. 

The more players do it, the more skewed the match making becomes. The intention is really irrelevant. I'm pretty sure that players that have this option will generally gravitate away from worlds that got shafted for the matchup. Away from servers that would need them most. I mean it's been stated in this forum by users that do it.

If I'm saying that there's a difference between bandwagoning and what joneirikb more accurately described as "advanced fair-weathering" and you don't really acknowledge that nuance, then I can see how it looks like I'm answering my own question.  Users in this forum here have already written that they play their alts for content or to play with split guilds, not to all dogpile onto the winning server.  There already is a mass of players and they are diffused across teams, not all bandwagoned to the winning team.  Your hypothetical scenario should have happened already by now.  Where is it?  WR is designed to handle player fluctuations in ways that the old system never did.  Teams will get blown up and reformed, including all those alts, just like any other account that fairweathers.

[Chaba.5410]

7 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

I just highlighted the symptom, I didn't explain anything because I thought it was obvious. But let's go deeper to share this.

In this genre of PvP game mode, you need to have one side that wins and one side that loses. It's impossible to do without it. Having an alternate account is the way the player uses to circumvent the game that the system (ANET) has built for him. It's a clear method to 'not play' when you're on the more complicated side. Everything else like ''I'm looking for content'' is just talk. The truth is that you go online, you see your team struggling, losing, outnumbered, no tags, so you switch to an alternate account for the whole week. So you'll always be on the right side. the winning one. This should not be allowed, because with a knock-on effect, it discriminates the game against other players as well. You're just breaking the game even more. 

Then there are those who purposely organize themselves to break games. I'll give you an example by taking the numbers to the limit just to understand better. Let's say my guild of 500 players has organized itself with a second WVW guild of the same 500 players on an alternate account. or rather 5 other WVW guilds on 5 alternative accounts. So when WR works we can choose between 5 different games. check the one we like the most. Maybe the one that distributed the guilds/alliances that we like the most. And we play all week where we choose, and of course it's going to be a great week on the right side. the winning one. With the result (once again) of breaking even more the matches that Anet proposed. 

and when we do this. We're not just overloading our chosen team with 500 players, who until last month were ghosts, so the mechanics didn't even consider them. But we're also hollowing out another side of 500 players, who have been playing regularly for 1 month, and suddenly disappear. So, that poor pug that Anet has chosen to use as a 'filler'', who comes in a couple of nights a week, or the new player who comes to WVW just by chance, will find himself in a heavily outnumbered game. few players no tags. Fantastic experience, surely you will be stimulated to spend more hours in this game mode.

1- What happened to your community and motivation talk?  Now a player that gets an alt to continue playing with different parts of his community from before WR is breaking the game?

2- Run the numbers more.  How many alt accounts would each individual in a 500 man group need to level up and gear to truly break the game?  If we assume 4 tiers (which as you know the number of tiers can fluctuate too), 12 is the minimum.  But there's no guarantee that those accounts will be placed all on different teams.  Some can be placed on the same team.  So how many more accounts would be needed in order to circumvent the periodic reshuffling and get an ideal spread of alts across worlds?  Would have to figure out the probabilities of placement first.  Or maybe have a set of alts rotated to inactive status where you don't play them for at least 2 months just to be safe so a single team can be mass-picked?  To truly do this game breaking right, you'd need at least 12 inactive alts so all the teams can be picked because you don't know at first how matches are going to go.  Maybe the minimum number of alts would be 24 or 36 then?  One inactive alt for each team, one active, and one on "cooldown" to return back to inactive state within 2 months?  No way is only 5 alts enough.  Have you ever tried organizing 500 players in such a way?  What do you think is the tolerance level a single player would have for this burn-out inducing activity?

3- The mechanics of WR do consider players coming and going over time.  That's the whole point of WR and always has been.  It mitigates player fluctuations.

Edited July 6 by Chaba.5410

[Chaba.5410]

6 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

I love this so I had to highlight it:

You are literally a player complaining about content who actively undermines the WR system. Yes, I know it's common to have alt accounts to go to where there is content in WvW and there was/is hope that the WR system made this more difficult to achieve, aka reduce the effectiveness of alt accounts and create pressure from guilds to demand players stick to their main account.

Yea one guy who didn't have a choice on where the WR system placed his 5 alts is somehow undermining that system.  /sarcasm

I don't think you really understood what WR was meant to do.  It adjusts teams for fluctuations in the playerbase over time.  The playerbase is the totality of accounts active in WvW.

Edited July 6 by Chaba.5410

[Palikka.8249]

3 hours ago, RlyOsim.2497 said:

Between the current meta and this new system it's really worrisome the direction the gamemode is being taken.

Direct feedback, you really need this system to be a lot better in terms of the quality of the matches. Currently all of the matchups I've played in have felt generally very underpopulated and more importantly not fun.

Beyond that, you removed a massive infrastructure for new players in the form of community guilds and discords. I do understand the vision of 'let the guild do it', but it's not 2015, there are only a fraction of the players and more importantly, guilds, still playing. Guilds in their current state generally cannot act as a support structure for new people, and besides, most guilds want people who can already play the game to some degree, they don't even want the new people, let alone train them. Without the on-ramp infrastructure servers offered new players the gamemode will suffer greatly: if new people cannot easily gain information/supports needed to learn/play the gamemode they simply won't.

This all looks and feels so shortsighted from the developers. Frankly, I cannot believe this is their vision for WvW population. This has been on the table for years and in all that time this is the result. It's a failure tbh and if the lack of new player infrastructure isn't addressed as a very high priority the gamemode will see massive decline when the current crop of people enduring this slop reach their tipping point.

Noone reads this anyway but it's nice to vent!

I didnt read, but saw many hearts so i gave one too... jk, good vent 👌

[Cyninja.2954]

1 hour ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Yea one guy who didn't have a choice on where the WR system placed his 5 alts is somehow undermining that system.  /sarcasm
 

It's not about the 1 guy. If this was a singular event it would not be an issue.

If a fraction of the player base does this though, it becomes an issue. Let's run with this specific example though: 3 alt accounts, 1 on each side in the match-up, which side will said player play on most often (and I mean most likely when looking at how players in general behave)? The side which does not get dominated.

Quote

I don't think you really understood what WR was meant to do.  It adjusts teams for fluctuations in the playerbase over time.  The playerbase is the totality of accounts active in WvW.

It does more than that, but yes that is ONE of its functions.

It is also supposed to spread out play hours (and hopefully other factors eventually) over different shards. A player who has multiple alt accounts directly circumvents this re-distribution algorithm while looking to maximize his own enjoyment.

Feel as though your side is getting dominated or outnumbered in the current fight/time zone/match-up? Just move to that one alt account where your side is better off further amplifying the issue both by siding with the stronger side and leaving the undermanned shard.

So while yes, the re-distribution of the player base over custom amounts of shards is a central beneficial element, it's not the sole element which the WR is deisgned for, nor is it the sole element which it needs to address or be designed around (which is what we are seeing now with issues between shard amount, play hours and player allocation).

Edited July 6 by Cyninja.2954

[Chaba.5410]

31 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

It is also supposed to spread out play hours (and hopefully other factors eventually) over different shards. A player who has multiple alt accounts directly circumvents this re-distribution algorithm while looking to maximize his own enjoyment.

A player who plays multiple accounts has their playhours on those accounts spread out no different from any other account.

[Chaba.5410]

35 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

It's not about the 1 guy. If this was a singular event it would not be an issue.

It's still not an issue.  Players are already playing on alt accounts.  You continue to say players with alts only play on the dominating side.  Your example only works if that's the case a rather large percentage of the time.  So where is the evidence of that happening?  The truly imbalanced matches have been a result of the algorithm.

Edited July 6 by Chaba.5410

[Cyninja.2954]

4 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

It's still not an issue.  Players are already playing on alt accounts.  You continue to say players with alts only play on the dominating side.  Your example only works if that's the case a rather large percentage of the time.  So where is the evidence of that happening?  The truly imbalanced matches have been a result of the algorithm.

I never said it wasn't due to the algorithm. I was pointing out the hypocrisy of someone complaining about the system while undermining it. I even went further and gave issues with the WR system which need addressing.

There can be multiple issues which affect poor WvW match-ups and pretending like alt accounts are not one of the issues is, even if a minor one, does not help.

Alt accounts were always an issue and I explained how the WR system had/has the ability to alleviate this by creating more pressure to play the main account (unlike fixed servers where placing alt accounts strategically made it easier to have them on select places).

To summarize: alt accounts have ALWAYS been an issue, even if the current algorithm is a larger one. There is no reason to start pretending otherwise.

Edited July 6 by Cyninja.2954

[Cyninja.2954]

8 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

A player who plays multiple accounts has their playhours on those accounts spread out no different from any other account.

Which is objectively worse for the algorithm because as his more played accounts get placed in shards which will now depend on him playing those accounts, his less played accounts will be placed on shards which rely on him playing less. If the player now decides to switch to his less played accounts....

This should not be hard to grasp.

[Chaba.5410]

3 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

There can be multiple issues which affect poor WvW match-ups and pretending like alt accounts are not one of the issues is, even if a minor one, does not help.

Dev created this thread to tell us what the issues are that need to get fixed.  Even if you see alt accounts as a minor issue (I don't), it isn't an issue that needs solving, especially in a system that adjusts for playtime fluctuations.

 

Just now, Cyninja.2954 said:

Which is objectively worse for the algorithm because as his more played accounts get placed in shards which will now depend on him playing those accounts, his less played accounts will be placed on shards which rely on him playing less. If the player now decides to switch to his less played accounts....

This should not be hard to grasp.

Nor should it be hard to grasp that the algorithm places accounts on shards according to their individual "evaluation" which is averaged out over a long period of time.  You'd need a massive number of players with a large number of alts sitting idle and never being played to simulate what a bandwagon transfer used to do.

[Cyninja.2954]

14 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Dev created this thread to tell us what the issues are that need to get fixed.  Even if you see alt accounts as a minor issue (I don't), it isn't an issue that needs solving, especially in a system that adjusts for playtime fluctuations.

I never said it needs fixing (though that depends on how big this issue might be and given a lot of WvW highly active players have alt accounts by now, it might be larger than I assume). That does not prevent me from calling out the hypocrisy though.

A system that adjusts for playtime fluctuations can only do so with correct play times. Activities which alter the play times after players have been sorted undermine this.

Quote

Nor should it be hard to grasp that the algorithm places accounts on shards according to their individual "evaluation" which is averaged out over a long period of time.  You'd need a massive number of players with a large number of alts sitting idle and never being played to simulate what a bandwagon transfer used to do.

Oh please, you don't even believe this yourself. If this was the case we would not have seen servers tanking play times within a week so we know that the "long period" was never that long in the past (though it might be in the future).

Sometimes missing 5-10 players, especially from the more active crowd, is all it takes to make a fight spiral into 1 direction.

Edited July 6 by Cyninja.2954

[joneirikb.7506]

I'd agree that Alt-Accounts is a small issue. One worth looking at, but not a priority. Though I'm unsure how they really are going to be able to do anything about it, they'd need some way to identify and link together all Alt Accounts from a single person in some way? And they can't just do that off IP numbers, since multiple people can play in the same house etc.

[Cuks.8241]

3 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

If I'm saying that there's a difference between bandwagoning and what joneirikb more accurately described as "advanced fair-weathering" and you don't really acknowledge that nuance, then I can see how it looks like I'm answering my own question.  Users in this forum here have already written that they play their alts for content or to play with split guilds, not to all dogpile onto the winning server.  There already is a mass of players and they are diffused across teams, not all bandwagoned to the winning team.  Your hypothetical scenario should have happened already by now.  Where is it?  WR is designed to handle player fluctuations in ways that the old system never did.  Teams will get blown up and reformed, including all those alts, just like any other account that fairweathers.

Bandwagoning, fair-weathering I'm not going to go into this discussion because I'm not a native English speaker so my knowledge here is limited and it's all pretty much just misdirection. I would say going where the grass is greener.

In the end it's reactively manipulating the system to get a more favourable match up for yourself. Yeah it is not exactly the same as it was with servers, you can't be as precise where to go but this is again just arguing semantics.

Someone said it well. For the system to work you have to sometimes win and sometimes lose. Sometimes you have to play in unfavourable conditions, losing, being undermanned, low content whatever. Everyone can't be always a winner. Alt accounts are means to circumvent this and they degrade the system. The more people do it, the worse the matchmaking will be. And no, the system can't compensate for that, because you can always react to the system to an extent.

And personally I don't even care. I mostly play with my guild and we are strong enough to make content for ourselves and if it's not on wvw maps, it's in guild halls. But I never like people that complain (and I'm not here talking about you) while also "cheating" (it's not really cheating, don't get me wrong) the system.

[Strutter.2719]

For us EU players, can we please just get grouping by language added? 

I feel like it would be much easier to coordinate if we could actually understand our teammates.

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

On 7/3/2024 at 6:51 PM, Cecil.4536 said:

The team-creation algorithm is performing as expected, and most teams are showing reasonably similar performance in terms of player hours

I’m literally playing against the scum that turned MAG into a literal kitten. All of EBG is red, and they’re just farming the noobs who refuse to leave spawn. So, what was the point of all this again?

Regarding the previous weeks, they were the same, but without the spawn farming. It seems your bloated servers are misleading you. There is no balance, but of course, for them, it’s perfect.

[Majstk.7986]

NO this new structure sucks want it go back to the old WVW.  I can't roam with alot of my casual player friends, fighting to many of  current guildies because they are now not able to be on the same team due to they didn't make the guild cut or weren't able to pick the right guild to end up on the same team as fellow guildies. Just for the LOVE of God get rid of this new structure. Most of us are looking to leave WVW because of this new structure. Already lost are first home land of Anvil Rock and now this crappy restructuring isn't making WVW any better. 

[Safty.7326]

"you might be able to improve your matchup experience in your preferred time zone by selecting a smaller guild" Kind of implies the big alliances that thought about time zone coverage screwed over content for their outside prime time peeps ; Who could of got better content if they had gone on their own? 

[ChrisWhitey.9076]

37 minutes ago, Safty.7326 said:

"you might be able to improve your matchup experience in your preferred time zone by selecting a smaller guild" Kind of implies the big alliances that thought about time zone coverage screwed over content for their outside prime time peeps ; Who could of got better content if they had gone on their own? 

Doesn't seem like there is a fix planned either, from the sound of it so if there is no change I expect that off hour coverage to be a mess. For the time being because I don't see alliances imploding yet so I wonder how imbalance will be taken. Almost feels like staking NA guild with off hour coverage will have a massive advantage which if is the case this should not have been said buy the devs imo.

[Driger.5084]

Most of the issues I've seen as Moo has moved up is the fact that the "alliance guilds" are breaking the system. Out of all the tiers 3 seemed the best, as it had the most "balanced" groups of solo's, smaller guilds, and larger public tagging guilds. Now in T1 it's blatantly stacked, and very obvious that the algorithm used isn't working properly when it's faced with that large of a bloc of players all trying to be sorted. This was already an issue when we were in T2, it just wasn't as blatant as it is sitting in T1.

The suggestions to cap the total number of players in a "WvW" guild should be implemented as that seems like a really easy way to break up the blob guilds and allow the system to properly sort people into more balanced match ups. Something like [OSHA] should not exist with as many guilds are crammed inside of it.

[Chaba.5410]

8 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

A system that adjusts for playtime fluctuations can only do so with correct play times

Please do go on and explain what "correct play times" are.  You're almost there...