World Restructuring

[JayAction.9056]

Seems to be a great change. This is supposed to even out coverage and numbers between realms yeah?

Hopefully the community adapts well to it. It seems a large amount of players who spend most of their time in the current WvW are sore losers with big egos. Hopefully this does not push away all those people who like to constantly play fights where they outnumber the enemy.

It would be great seeing WvW become a chaotic battle field with random fights all over the place again rather than one large group chasing some smaller group across the map.

[Eramonster.2718]

I know what WvW guild(s) is running during my playtime. I'm not part of their guild but I do roam and jump into the fray from time to time. Had it planned roughly since I know which guild/community to associates with to suit my playtime. That said, its still unclear if we need be part of the guild for the alliance? Or its sufficient to just select the guild/server I want to be linked with to be part if the alliance.

Question for the players disagreeing to the idea of coverage are WvW players? Or WvW dailies runner? For those who plays WvW, I don't see the reason why reject the idea of getting "free transfer players" to form an alliance to strenghten numbers and better coverage for a competative gameplay. WvW is going to be World War.

Spare me server etc. especially those who transfered, my condolences. As long as the reward for winning is worthwhile, no matter what server or difference is in the alliance, everyone will fight to the bitter last. Example but don't need to be, say a legendary part and trophy parts for a guild monument to the victor, even friends will be foe if they're part of the enemy's alliance.

And untill the system is up and ready, everything will just be speculations and more speculations trying to reach a conjecture. Wasn't announced or given an estimation date which could me months for it to be ready.

[Blodeuyn.2751]

@Kalaina.8245 said:-snip-And a couple of broader questions:

A significant portion of the WvW community doesn't find a defensive ppt-oriented playstyle enjoyable, and accordingly prefer being in lower tiers where they're more likely to be matched up against others who similarly don't care about points or winning. Likewise, a number of people prefer being in lower population matchups where they can feel more impactful and be involved in smaller scale fights. Will this algorithm be working off a base assumption that all players want to be in high-population matchups that care about winning through score?

This is my concern. I moved to a T4ish server to fit my playing preference. Will the new system take that choice away and force me to be on blobby worlds? Also, there are guilds I do NOT want to end up with, along with certain individuals. Will we be forced to play with those we have paid to get away from?

[Eramonster.2718]

Need a clearer picture imo. Will it still be a three sided war? Do we need to join the guild/just declare associated with the particular guild/server? Rewards that is good enough make players raise their blades against same server/friendly guilds but under different alliance? Will the alliance continue every matchup? Will the enemy alliance be drafted randomly or matched? Etc. So many more questions

[DeKong.6203]

Having rewards in the end of the season like PvP AT or Monthly Tourneys have for the party that wins, would be nice to give us a reason to win and go t1 till the end of the matcup

[pombear.1058]

@Loosmaster.8263 said:

@pombear.1058 said:

@Chaba.5410 said:

@Richard.8207 said:I don’t want another guild or alliance....I want to be able to get familiar with the community. That community aspect is the important part of the game to me. If not for community, I’d be playing a different game.

Do you not see what you are saying? You say that community is important but you don't want to join a community. It makes no sense. Elitism of others has nothing to do with that.

I see what you are saying, but guilds/alliances have limited spaces, which leads to those who have invitation rights being picky in who they invite...Communities should not discriminate in such a way... The more limited the spaces, the more elitest people become, in order to highten their chances of winning/having fun.These 'communities' are not what a lot of people want to be a part of.

When was the last time you saw 500-1000 players in WvW?

Edit: ON ONE SIDE!!!

I think you are getting confused... The 500-1000 cap is for the alliance as a whole, much like the current guild cap is 500 regardless of players are online or not....

[XenesisII.1540]

Think some of you are confused about the building of the worlds.

• "Servers" will still be around as it is now, they are just going to have random names every season, worlds is just another name for it.
• There will still be 3 sides fighting, hence eotm will stay the same when pulling players for blue green red sides.
• Assignment to one wvw guild and alliances are only needed at the start of a new season when building the worlds, after that you can change your tags as usual, you can change guilds but you won't officially be able to play with players of that guild if on another server until the next season starts.
• This is not an eotm system, they are building the new world populations every 8 weeks by adding alliances(which are basically party groups of guilds), random guilds who are not part of alliances, and random players who are not part of either of those.
• When you are assigned a server at reset of the season you stay on that same world for 8 weeks unless you transfer, no different than it is today.
• It's difficult for them to balance servers as a whole even through links because there isn't enough pieces to provide balanced links through all the tiers, they are taking this to the next step and balancing by players and groups instead of servers. They will have the ability to better spread out the players using data on play times and time of day.

All this system does is reshuffles everyone every 8 weeks using the different groups as priority to keep players together. Once you are assigned a world everything is still the same as it is today. All players need to do is get into guilds or guild alliances to stick with players they want to play with before the next season reset.

[Zephyr.8015]

@"Raymond Lukes.6305" said:There has been some talk about using Blackgate as an example in the post. Blackgate has been at the top of player activity hours in WvW for a very long time in NA. BG's numbers are twice as big as the average world on NA (without world linking) and 30% larger then the average NA host world. I'm not saying Blackgate hasn't suffered losses of players and coverage but BG is still on top for activity. IT'S NOT JUST BLACKGATE though.Here are all the worlds in NA and EU ordered by size names have been omitted to protect the innocent:

So you're are saying that BG has the most WvW hours played, you are not saying that BG has the most players. Played hours does NOT equal population. It is unfair to say that in general. Like tonight we have scouts, commanders, and players in general that spend hours or most of their day in WvW. BG players have stated numerous times that we have dedicated players and guilds who care about our standing in WvW. I'd love to see a statistic for average played hours per person/per server in WvW.

[Dawdler.8521]

@Blodeuyn.2751 said:

@"Kalaina.8245" said:-snip-And a couple of broader questions:

A significant portion of the WvW community doesn't find a defensive ppt-oriented playstyle enjoyable, and accordingly prefer being in lower tiers where they're more likely to be matched up against others who similarly don't care about points or winning. Likewise, a number of people prefer being in lower population matchups where they can feel more impactful and be involved in smaller scale fights. Will this algorithm be working off a base assumption that all players want to be in high-population matchups that care about winning through score?

This is my concern. I moved to a T4ish server to fit my playing preference. Will the new system take that choice away and force me to be on blobby worlds? Also, there are guilds I do NOT want to end up with, along with certain individuals. Will we be forced to play with those we have paid to get away from?Yes. Isnt that the point?

Instead of huge vs big vs small server in matchups you will now be "forced" to play big vs roughly as big vs maybe slightly less big. Even if you previously joined a small server for that playstyle.

Thats the cost of "balance". Its one that you are going to have to pay whether you like it or not. Sorry.

Most will argue its worth it.

[Blodeuyn.2751]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Blodeuyn.2751 said:

@"Kalaina.8245" said:-snip-And a couple of broader questions:

A significant portion of the WvW community doesn't find a defensive ppt-oriented playstyle enjoyable, and accordingly prefer being in lower tiers where they're more likely to be matched up against others who similarly don't care about points or winning. Likewise, a number of people prefer being in lower population matchups where they can feel more impactful and be involved in smaller scale fights. Will this algorithm be working off a base assumption that all players want to be in high-population matchups that care about winning through score?

This is my concern. I moved to a T4ish server to fit my playing preference. Will the new system take that choice away and force me to be on blobby worlds? Also, there are guilds I do NOT want to end up with, along with certain individuals. Will we be forced to play with those we have paid to get away from?Yes. Isnt that the point?

Instead of huge vs big vs small server in matchups you will now be "forced" to play big vs roughly as big vs maybe slightly less big. Even if you previously joined a small server for that playstyle.

Thats the cost of "balance". Its one that you are going to have to pay whether you like it or not. Sorry.

Most will argue its worth it.

I'll have to wait and see how it works out, but I don't like the idea of being forced to play "big". It could be fun or it could be a disaster overall for Anet. As the saying goes, better is not better for everyone.

[binidj.5734]

For me world pride is quite important, Piken Square has an active WvW community drawn from a number of guilds. Sure there are the big WvW guilds (eg. Stomp for Piken) and they could join up to form an alliance but with the limits on guild membership, and the proposed limits on alliance size, it won't be possible to maintain the PS community for those of us for whom that community is the primary draw. Competition for places on the main guilds will be fiercer now than ever before and casual players like me will almost certainly not get a look in. I am not interested in WvW for its own sake, I want to be part of a community when I decide to dip my toe in ... with these changes I no longer have a community to call my own, I no longer have any motivation at all to participate.

I had a huge amount of world pride before megaservers were introduced, then to connect with my community I had to go into WvW, which I did very casually but always felt at home when I did so. If this goes through then if I go into WvW then I'll be doing so amongst strangers and that doesn't interest me at all.

Remove guild and alliance membership limits and I might be a little more enthusiastic about these changes, as it is I can't see myself bothering with WvW again.

[MaLeVoLenT.8129]

@Zephyr.8015 said:

@"Raymond Lukes.6305" said:There has been some talk about using Blackgate as an example in the post. Blackgate has been at the top of player activity hours in WvW for a very long time in NA. BG's numbers are twice as big as the average world on NA (without world linking) and 30% larger then the average NA host world. I'm not saying Blackgate hasn't suffered losses of players and coverage but BG is still on top for activity. IT'S NOT JUST BLACKGATE though.Here are all the worlds in NA and EU ordered by size names have been omitted to protect the innocent:

So you're are saying that BG has the most WvW hours played, you are not saying that BG has the most players. Played hours does NOT equal population. It is unfair to say that in general. Like tonight we have scouts, commanders, and players in general that spend hours or most of their day in WvW. BG players have stated numerous times that we have dedicated players and guilds who care about our standing in WvW.

Server status and WvW population takes into account play time hours. This is showing playtime hours. which depicts your WvW population. Its perfectly fair to make this assessment and its accurate. This is why in Tier 1 to compete you need a link and the server trapped below BG have enough to be locked but not enough to compete. It literally explains everything we've been experiencing and the reasons as to why Tier 1 is avoided. Because giving servers a link to compete against something that's taken the last 5 years to organize in a 2 month time frame is damaging to those around it. The linked pairs are servers that can equal or even out pace BG in terms of player activity but not the ability to organize and coordinate given the time frame. There is never an even playing field and thus the sense of competitiveness breaks down completely.

BG should not take this as an attack and Arena Net does not intend it to be that. BG is the product of a system design that's no longer present and a system that was indeed flawed. Servers like BG are the last of its kind when the game has broken down and many have left.

[SwankyMutt.9521]

I'm nervous with a hint of excitement? Maybe more reserved excitement I think? Something needed to be done for the WvW scene and this is definitely something.

I guess for me the biggest concern I have is more on the balance of the populations, more specifically where smaller guilds will wind up in the grand scheme amongst the larger Alliances. Our guild is very small and casualish, we end up in WvW every night and run some small scale havoc but we don't have set raid times. We start roaming, people log on, we group up and bam we have a guild run. Despite the lack of a schedule, we do take our WvW shenanigans semi serious. We just aren't keen on joining a huge guild/alliance that might compromise who we are just to make sure we stay seeing decent activity. We like and rather enjoy running together in our small group.

It makes me nervous I guess on how much weight larger guilds will be able/willing to throw around when it comes to allowing people to join their Alliance (thought I am aware most of the ones I am worried about will form will end up imploding due to infighting/egos). Some of them can be quite nasty at times (one of the reasons we left our original server and created our own small guild and moved on) and I worry that those groups can create a monopoly on upper tier (for lack of better word) fighting. Will we have to deal with their behaviors to see decent action? How much competition are we going to face when trying to find an Alliance to avoid those ill behaved groups? Or will we be stuck in no mans land activity wise with groups that don't share our focus or stuck in a toxic world for eight weeks because we can't find an Alliance that has room for us? Will those adults ever board up that stupid well so Lassie has to keep telling them Timmy fell in it again? Will I ever find a pecan pie that rivals my Grandma's cause it just never seems to cut it when I bake it? I just don't want us to end up losing our identity as a guild (as small as it is) or find ourselves at the mercy of larger Alliances just to see good, solid action.

As for server identity, I do feel for those that still holding to theirs and I can understand their points. I do. My loyalties however changed to my small group of friends after our original server saw an influx of toxic guilds because they wanted to be more 'competitive' in coverage. When Guild Leaders and Council Members are screaming at each other in meetings and Team Chat is filled with bickering because Mary doesn't like Bobby it kind of ruins it for you I think. That is what we want to avoid, I don't want to be grouped with those types of people again. Just I guess the idea of competing for spots with decent (not toxic) Alliances with our focus is daunting.

This change does allow us to possibly hook back up with old friends (though they have all branched off into smaller guilds of their own and yes we have been talking with them a bit already :p ) and one thing I am most excited about. I am looking forward to that for sure.

And the pie thing. Seriously, I need help with that. It might be our leg up into a decent Alliance. I mean I could fall back on the cookies. I can make some gnarly spiced rum cookies.

I expect the first round of matchups to be chaotic, that's a given. Here though is me being hopeful that positive (and the ramblings of our concerns from 'hopped up on Mountain Dew' brain) can come from such a huge change and fingers crossed the balance is really looked at in depth. Just don't forget about us little guys when you are looking into it, I rather dislike getting lost.

Seriously, spiced rum cookies. Just saying, they are pretty awesome.

[glass.3245]

@Raymond Lukes.6305 said:

@"Tolmos.8395" said:I would like to reiterate the previous questions posed, and not yet answered, about how this will affect Roleplayers.This is something we hadn’t fully considered and we’ll start looking into possible solutions.

It would be nice if you roleplayers could enter WvW in "guest mode" and be seen as NPCs by the other players. More than once I've gone into a group full burst before noticing say chat and trying to disengage. The tone of frustration suggested that this was pretty common.

[Rasimir.6239]

One of the things I feel GW2 has always been great at is providing an environment where people of different interests and skills play and cooperate together. Over the years it's become even better at doing this, from megaservers to lfg to multi guild guildchat and so on. This had led to me dipping my toes into a lot of different content, including wvw and pvp, something I've rarely done in previous games.

In WvW especially I enjoy the fact that I can come in and play at my own schedule, but there are a lot of people around I've gotten to know over the last 5 or so years that I very much enjoy playing with or alongside. We've got a server-wide voice comm installed that I like to use whenever I want to play with others in WvW, and active admins that make it possible for players from linked servers to get on there, too. I know which public commanders I like running with and which ones I'd rather stay away from.

I never saw the need to join a wvw guild, since the way I play wvw doesn't really mesh with the more rigid requirements many of the wvw guilds have. Instead I have a lot of friends, some in my main guild (which can't really be classified as PvAnything as its main point is being a community of individuals who like to play their own way, including those that don't dare set foot in wvw as well as those that practically live there and have several thousands of wvw ranks to show for it), some in other guilds that I like to join when playing wvw.

Being "forced" to choose one main wvw guild/alliance doesn't really sit well with me. It is in a way just a smaller pool of people to regularly play with (where our current server, despite the linking, was and is a decently larger pool), but it also forces a choice not only on me but also on a lot of those I like to play with. Some of my friends are in more "serious" wvw groups that play guild raids several times a week. They'll be forced to choose between guild raids and wvw with their more casual friends. Some of my friends tend to avoid each other. Right now I can jump onto this or that borderland depending on who I want to play with. If this proposal is put into action, then they will definitely not be associating with each other through guild or alliance, so I will have to choose one over the other.

I am not playing this game for loot, or for fights, or for ap, or for being competitive in any aspect. I am playing this game for fun, and the large, diverse community as well as the ease to choose at any moment to play with this or that part of the large pool is a major part of that fun. This proposal will very likely limit the pool of familiar faces I will be able to casually roam or zerg around in wvw with in the future. Being not in a large guild nor in any guild that is primarily wvw focussed, I will have to choose a few faces out of the many I like to play with as guaranteed team members, while most of the rest of the team/world/whatever has a very real chance to be total (or mostly) strangers.

Besides affecting me and other wvw casuals that don't want to or can't commit to a serious wvw guild (since most of those guilds expect much higher commitment than the more casual pvx players are willing to give to any one game mode), what effect will this change have on communication and conflict within the future worlds? Right now people have a chance to switch servers if the general communication or the kind of play the server generally enjoys isn't to their liking. In the future more casual communities will be mixed right in with the more competitive ones, opening a whole bag of possible conflicts.

While I see this concept has got a lot of thought behind it, I've got a very uneasy feeling. I rarely enjoy sPvP because of the random teams and the different levels of expectation and cooperation you are forced to deal with unless you go in with a full team (which, considering my pool of friends, I rarely get the chance to do). Will wvw be similarly "mixed up" once this change goes through, simply because I am not part of a large alliance of familar faces, seeing how wvw is not my primary game mode?

[FrizzFreston.5290]

@McKenna Berdrow.2759 said:

@Draeyon.4392 said:

Question:

How will inactive players becoming active again affect alliances. E.g. An alliance is close to the max capacity and a few inactive guildies return, mark their guild as their WvW guild and put the alliance over the population cap.

Obviously a situation that will not affect a whole lot of people but information to work with when setting these things up is always appreciated.

If the alliance is capped no more players can join. It would be up to the guild on how they want to handle having those guildies play with them. Leaving the alliance and creating a new one, is what I expect most guilds would try and do. They could also leave the alliance and decide to just be sorted as a guild in the next season.

Coming to understand why alliances are structured this way rather than also PvE focused. There's still the question as to why a guild would need a switch to be set as WvWguild or activate the possibility to be repped for WvW.

And also mostly useful if an alliance reaches the cap, will there be some sort of control for guild/alliance leaders to make sure active/serious/skilled WvW players are repping? Although it would only be of importance once every 8 weeks ofcourse, it would be strange to set the guild as non-Wvw guild just so the WvW guild roster gets cleared of inactive (but also more active) Wvw members. Which also would break alliances which then would need to be reformed.Its something that I can see being interesting for bigger PvX or WvW alliances. But could be toxic for those leader who decide they want to play with one half/elite team of the guild (though one should perhaps reconsider being part of such a guild)

Edit: like a guild member rank option: Is able to set this guild as their WvW-guild.

For bigger alliances... which wont be uncommon with server communities and all I imagine such options seem needed.

[Cyczer.7834]

Im failing to understand the issue with "randoms" or "people that doesnt want to commit in a wvw guild"

As I understood, its basically world vs world is transferring into alliance vs alliance and even if you are a casual player for wvw, you can just join a community guild that doesnt require any heavy commitments. You just have to join them and choose them as your wvw guild and you can keep playing with your friends. ( I also want to remind all of you that we have a glorious system that lets us join 5 guilds at once because why not?) A few main servers already started preparing for this suggestion, there are some new community guilds that invites those "randoms" or "casuals" , whatever name you wanna give them.

Remember that this is still an idea in discussion, this is not its final form, means that there might be multiple drastical changes in the system . Because in theory, you may not even need an alliance, you can just gather entire Blackgate in same server again.( Lets say its 500 players since lower cap for alliance system was proposed as 500 and guilds can hold that many) ,

On the other hand, this system will end bandwagoning to good servers and bring a balance to the numbers

[DBZVelena.5186]

@Raymond Lukes.6305 said:

@Tolmos.8395 said:I would like to reiterate the previous questions posed, and not yet answered, about how this will affect Roleplayers.This is something we hadn’t fully considered and we’ll start looking into possible solutions.

A possible solution would be to let guilds and Alliances designate them selves as Roleplay guild or Alliance. This tag could then be used for the mega-server to keep everybody on the same maps in pve. Since you're so determined to replace the servers with Alliances.

[Dawdler.8521]

@Cyczer.7834 said:You just have to join them and choose them as your wvw guild and you can keep playing with your friends.

Did Anet say you have to?

Guilds is only for sorting players on the world. In the extreme example of someone having 0 guilds joining WvW, I'm assuming he will just join a random world thats not full, for the duration of being logged on. Another random world the next time he logs etc. Alternativly setting that random world as the home world until reset.

At least that would be the logical method.

[LordOtto.2650]

So who don;'t have guild, like me or the majority on Desolation, will end up on a loosing server?! Ok I got it! This change will lover the population, and eventually bye bye WvW! Who taught about this is an idiot! I won't play as a Pug against full guild servers, fuck you all!

[Dawdler.8521]

@LordOtto.2650 said:So who don;'t have guild, like me or the majority on Desolation, will end up on a loosing server?! Ok I got it! This change will lover the population, and eventually bye bye WvW! Who taught about this is an idiot! I won't play as a Pug against full guild servers, kitten you all!The point was to put guild worlds (and alliances) vs eqvivalent guild worlds with random pugs floating around to fill the gaps. Thats the image in the first post, the one with the fluffy cloud in case you missed it.

[Namer.9750]

@LordOtto.2650 said:So who don;'t have guild, like me or the majority on Desolation, will end up on a loosing server?! Ok I got it! This change will lover the population, and eventually bye bye WvW! Who taught about this is an idiot! I won't play as a Pug against full guild servers, kitten you all!

There won't be full guild servers lmao. All servers will be made up of Guild Alliances+Guilds+Pugs.

Alternatively, join a guild instead of sitting on your ranger all night. Or form a casual 'server community' guild with you and most of your friends and other pugs

[Cyczer.7834]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Cyczer.7834 said:You just have to join them and choose them as your wvw guild and you can keep playing with your friends.

Did Anet say you

have to

?

Guilds is only for sorting players on the world. In the extreme example of someone having 0 guilds joining WvW, I'm assuming he will just join a random world thats not full, for the duration of being logged on. Another random world the next time he logs etc. Alternativly setting that random world as the home world until reset.

At least that would be the logical method.

Thats exactly what it is, you have to join guilds if you dont wanna rely on your luck to being put in same server. Otherwise you'll be placed randomly.

[MaLeVoLenT.8129]

@Cyczer.7834 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Cyczer.7834 said:You just have to join them and choose them as your wvw guild and you can keep playing with your friends.

Did Anet say you

have to

?

Guilds is only for sorting players on the world. In the extreme example of someone having 0 guilds joining WvW, I'm assuming he will just join a random world thats not full, for the duration of being logged on. Another random world the next time he logs etc. Alternativly setting that random world as the home world until reset.

At least that would be the logical method.

Thats exactly what it is, you have to join guilds if you dont wanna rely on your luck to being put in same server. Otherwise you'll be placed randomly.

Its not by random. Its based off you contacts and what guilds you are in. who you party with. So if you choose to not have any guild claimed as your WvW guild, it will STILL take into account what guilds you're in when it places you. Furthermore Arena Net has alluded to the fact, that it is still able for such an individual to Transfer during the 8 week Season so you are indeed never trapped.

[LordOtto.2650]

You know that WvW has more pug players then guilds?! This can ez destroy WvW, you will see!