Why are relinks still 2 months?

[Shinjiko.1352]

As in the title. Why? If I recall in the first place when we were polled by the developers years ago we were asked if we wanted 1, 2 or 3 months intervals. We voted 1 month and they were like hmmm lets not do that and give you 2 instead.

 

Fast forward to today with even less people playing. If you end up with a bad matchup or a bunch of people transfer off within the first 2 weeks then you're basically stuck for another month and a half with a terrible matchup and basically no fun. With the population changes recently opening all but one server a lot of people rushed to transfer to the bigger servers. As seen by Mag quickly becoming full.  At least on my server a bunch of guilds left from both the host and the link. Now we're stuck until the next relink with barely any coverage outside NA. I'm sure this has happened in other places too.

 

Please just give us what we voted for. 1 month reshuffles since alliances is either never coming or delayed til the expac. That way you address population shuffles much faster and don't leave a chunk of players suffering for 2 months at a time. That's a huge amount of time to make players wait.

[Ronin.4501]

Not gonna happen, and here's why:  If the linkings are reduced to a single month, then the awful link that you're forced to endure isn't so unbearable and you suffer through it, and Anet makes no money.  If the linkings remain 2 months as they are currently, maybe you decide that it's just too much and you transfer to a different server, and Anet makes money.  Anet wants to make money.

[MedievalThings.5417]

1 minute ago, Ronin.4501 said:

Not gonna happen, and here's why:  If the linkings are reduced to a single month, then the awful link that you're forced to endure isn't so unbearable and you suffer through it, and Anet makes no money.  If the linkings remain 2 months as they are currently, maybe you decide that it's just too much and you transfer to a different server, and Anet makes money.  Anet wants to make money.

This is also the reason why alliances never happened, and probably never will.

[Gorem.8104]

Essentially people would actually have to stop constantly x-fering and barons would have to stop paying other guilds to xfer for something to happen? haha

[joneirikb.7506]

Silly conspiracy theories about lots of people actually paying real cash for transfers aside....

 

• That vote was actually very close between 1 and 3 months, 1 won by a slight margin. So they compromised on 2, in order to actually let match-ups/Glicko have time enough to stabilise so it might actually work. (They later changed this to 1up1down)
• The main problem is honestly that players transfer around to game the system. There might be an argument that players would be less inclined to transfer if each link was only 1 month long, but tbh I don't really expect it to change all that much, as long as transfer is possible, server balance is impossible. (A 1 month link might make it slightly less desirable to transfer, but I wouldn't expect much change)
• One of the other reasons ANey kept it at 2 months, was so that links would have time to communicate with and get to know each others, organising voice chat etc, before being split up again. And they felt that at 1 month, it might be too short and links might not even try.
• A secondary problem is fair-weathers, once people see that they lose, they stop playing. And if it feels like they lose days or even couple of weeks in a row. They stop playing WvW, and go play something else (pve or other games). This includes the mentality that has grown "We didn't get a link, so we stand no chance against 2 full servers/links, so I'll just wait until next link." And leave. Once a bunch of people do that, others do the same, and the server basically shuts itself down. (A 1/2/3 month link wouldn't change this.)

TLDR: Linking doesn't work to create balanced match-up's, because players actively try to sabotage it by transferring around to stack servers. Changing the Linking periods won't change that. You'd be better off asking for WvW to work like EotM since it does fix that.

Edited June 25, 2021 by joneirikb.7506

[ArchonWing.9480]

Because it doesn't matter lol. Alliances aren't going to do crap either. Relinking is the same thing as reshuffling chairs on the Titanic. Someone's good link is someone else's bad link.

 

It won't matter if nobody wants to play the game, and this yearly balance change schedule doesn't help.  The lack of direction doesn't help either.

It's fair if you think some day in the far future they'll finally get around to World vs World, but I would say just try to get whatever you can out of this game before it goes out for good. Make friends, join guilds, form associations with other guilds. That way your experience is not server dependent, or even game dependent. Server means nothing, your only hope is to be proactive and form your own alliances, basically.

 

[Pacificterror.7805]

I don't think that lowering the link period from 2 months to 1 would necessarily alleviate any of the issues being highlighted in this thread - or at least not in a noticeable way.

 

People that are going to move around are going to do it regardless - especially if they already do it often - and people that are going to just flat out not play WvW for 2 months due to a "bad link" are IMO not big fans of the game mode to begin with and are going to be unhappy no matter what.

[Dawdler.8521]

6 hours ago, joneirikb.7506 said:

• That vote was actually very close between 1 and 3 months, 1 won by a slight margin. So they compromised on 2, in order to actually let match-ups/Glicko have time enough to stabilise so it might actually work. (They later changed this to 1up1down)

The vote wasnt between 1 and 3 months. Thats where the compromise comes from.

 

38.1% Reevaluate match-ups monthly.
28.9% Reevaluate match-ups quarterly.
15.9% Reevaluate match-ups every other month.
11.6% Reevaluate match-ups every 6 months.
5.5% Reevaluate match-ups every 4 months.

 

Meaning, 62% voted for 2 months or more.

[Sylvyn.4750]

I believe their original requirement was that one choice had to get more than 50 percent of the vote to win, but none did because they gave us so many choices, so they averaged the results. It was a poorly written poll.  

[Bristingr.5034]

15 hours ago, Gorem.8104 said:

Essentially people would actually have to stop constantly x-fering and barons would have to stop paying other guilds to xfer for something to happen? haha

Guilds who transfer servers are the biggest suckers for Anet.

[Dawdler.8521]

42 minutes ago, Sylvyn.4750 said:

I believe their original requirement was that one choice had to get more than 50 percent of the vote to win, but none did because they gave us so many choices, so they averaged the results. It was a poorly written poll.  

So where all the other polls. We nearly got 3 DBL for 3 months at a time. Luckily we avoided killing off WvW in the end.

 

Let me dig up what I actually said about the DBL poll in 2016:

 

Until we have the vote deciding how a possible implementation look like – since the vote where 70% in favor of mixed borders was disapproved by Anet – I stick by my statement:

I will vote for the border to be removed period, anything else is too risky for the overall wellbeing of the community.

Imagine if we have this vote, decide to keep desert. And then they make another kittened beyond belief poll with confused wording and the majority of the community once again get steamrolled by the minority on a default ruling? No. Just no.

Edited June 25, 2021 by Dawdler.8521

[Sylvyn.4750]

16 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

So where all the other polls. We nearly got 3 DBL for 3 months at a time. Luckily we avoided killing off WvW in the end.

 

Let me dig up what I actually said about the DBL poll in 2016:

 

Until we have the vote deciding how a possible implementation look like – since the vote where 70% in favor of mixed borders was disapproved by Anet – I stick by my statement:

I will vote for the border to be removed period, anything else is too risky for the overall wellbeing of the community.

Imagine if we have this vote, decide to keep desert. And then they make another kittened beyond belief poll with confused wording and the majority of the community once again get steamrolled by the minority on a default ruling? No. Just no.

 

Lol...spot on!  It's just they held the "no more maps" carrot over us, so some of us voted to keep DBL as a result.  However, years later and still no new map, so that ended up being the most dehydrated carrot ever...

[Chaba.5410]

In addition to the idea of letting the Glicko rating stabilize, I believe links are still assigned manually.  Less work to do that every 2 months rather than every month.

Edited June 25, 2021 by Chaba.5410