Alliances will kill WvW. A nail in the coffin for GW2 PvP.

[MedievalThings.5417]

20 hours ago, tangible.8765 said:

You are making out these hardcore gvg people are people to be feared and that they are going to 'farm' everyone they come across and using that as a reason to reject alliances. At the end of the day anet need to make sure they get their world sorting algorithms as accurate as possible to ensure balanced world populations. 

And when one alliance realizes they are going to be facing another specific alliance, they will transfer at first opportunity so they can avoid the other alliance, so their ktrain for easy loot isn't interrupted.  Unless they remove transfers, a source of anet income from the game, which is unlikely, a bunch of the playerbase will continue to stack and transfer to avoid real competition so they can win 90% of their fights by pressing 1.

 

On a side note, I find it interesting people just keep making the assumption that anet will limit alliances to the size of 1 guild or 20% of a world, because they "think" that makes sense.  It's just guessing, but regardless, players will continue to exploit the system, whatever it's limits.

[aiinseinn.5914]

remember DAoC Underwaterworld will change your gaming Experience so much - then couple month later .. DAoC was dead.

[Diku.2546]

8 hours ago, Ubi.4136 said:

And when one alliance realizes they are going to be facing another specific alliance, they will transfer at first opportunity so they can avoid the other alliance, so their ktrain for easy loot isn't interrupted.  Unless they remove transfers, a source of anet income from the game, which is unlikely, a bunch of the playerbase will continue to stack and transfer to avoid real competition so they can win 90% of their fights by pressing 1.

 

On a side note, I find it interesting people just keep making the assumption that anet will limit alliances to the size of 1 guild or 20% of a world, because they "think" that makes sense.  It's just guessing, but regardless, players will continue to exploit the system, whatever it's limits.

 

After seeing your post.  Six words are needed to create Healthy & Competitive WvW Match-Ups...imho

 

[ Server Based Unrestricted King of Hill ]

 

There can only be 1 Top Server in a region with ALL others trying to take it down.

 

----------

 

Design naturally Self-Balances itself when the Top Server is replaced by another Server to become the next Target of All other Servers competing to be the #1 Ranked Server.

 

The key is to Allow Unrestricted Attacks From ALL Lower Ranked Servers against the Single Top Server for a region.

 

Only Map Limit Capacity will function to slow & queue attacks against the Single Top Server for a region.

 

----------

 

Critical Insight:

 

Alliances is Guild Based & WILL FAIL to create both Healthy & Competitive WvW Match-Ups for the reasons you critically pointed out above.

 

Server Linking with Restricted 3-Way Match-Ups already proved this, but let me say this now:

 

Alliances will further solidify ANet's primary WvW role at being  a professional cat herder.

 

So I can later say...

 

Told you so.

 

Yours truly,
Diku

 

Credibility requires critical insight & time.

Edited July 16, 2021 by Diku.2546

[LetoII.3782]

1 hour ago, displayname.8315 said:

Nice seeing you and HUNT when I'm playing on MAG.  Also nice fighting against you guys so I don't really care about servers.  There will be a mag alliance I'm assuming so the concept will still be there kinda.

 

Well, thank you for the thumbs up. Wish I could reciprocate as I know you're a frequent poster, but not who you are in game.. Though I've just realized I didn't retag after the last reforuming myself <,<

 

Problem for me is, there probably won't be a Magumma alliance.. You're likely used to seeing 2-3 of HUNT, but we're near 30 players spread throughout the day/week that appear as just a few to someone who occasionally notices us. Multiply that by all the guilds of similar sort on Mag and an alliance fills up long before a significant part of the community gets in. Or, if all of Mag CAN form one alliance, what's the point of this whole redo? It'd just be servers but with the alliance leader deciding whos in and out.. Doesn't seem likely.

 

And that's not even the real holdback about alliances for us in particular. Cel wont declare where we go. She'll put it to a vote and it's unlikely to be unanimous.. Heck, I may vote to hitch onto Indo's tookus again and help this sucker burn out a bit faster xD. If it's gonna be a kittenshow for everyone but the biggest blobs it may just be time to PlAy t3h GaeM r1Ght again.

 

 

[XenesisII.1540]

Pfft the whole point of the redo was to destroy the BG schnauzers. 🤭

 

Server communities wouldn't need an alliance anyways, just everyone under one guild with space for 500 to mark for wvw to get on the same world, then go back to their usual tags.

 

Edited July 16, 2021 by XenesisII.1540

[enkidu.5937]

8 hours ago, anduriell.6280 said:

What you are describing is what is currently happening in WvW with the server links and it is very uninformed from what has been provided until now. 

 

Alliances will only  improve the situation. 

* Spared guilds not in the alliance will be switched around in each link. 

* Random players will be switched around too. 

* Because the parts are more and smaller, forecasting the next link results will be not possible, as new WvW can be formed at any time. 

 

The control the guilds will have to game the system is actually less than the current system, so i would say it will be better as staking will be more difficult to achieve. 

The problem we are having now is players can switch links very fast and accurately to a cheap linked server , while Alliances will not allow that as changes to the WvW guild is only effective from the next link. And the next link will change the whole of the alliances landscape. 

 

I can't wait for alliances to be implemented.

I highly doubt this. Atm it’s ridiculous that a server can dominate even at tier 1, and another server loses hard even in the bottom tier. I can see a potential improvement there with the new alliance system . . .

 

. . . but to have more even matches is just a nice bonus. Ppl want to dominate when they log in. Winning fights and objects is more fun than losing. An even match is irrelevant if you lose every fight and object during the time you are logged in.

 

With the new system, temporary domination will be very easy to achieve for organized highly-active players. You don’t have to organize mass transfers anymore, you don’t have to pay for transfers, just click some buttons and join an alliance whose prime time of activity overlaps with yours. You don’t have to care about servers closing when the total playtime volume reaches the cap. Cause you will be able to stack 500 ppl, no matter what, even if they all play 30 hours per week, even if they all play those hours from 9-12 am every day.

 

It will be so easy to manipulate the matchmaking in your favor. And it will be so much harder to counter this, because the big semi-organized server communities that were built over many years will stop to exist.

[displayname.8315]

2 hours ago, LetoII.3782 said:

if all of Mag CAN form one alliance, what's the point of this whole redo?

 

1 hour ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Pfft the whole point of the redo was to destroy the BG schnauzers. 🤭

Yeah maybe with set alliances beforehand you wont see the whole "titan" alliances thing with people running overnight mouse click programs on the transfer screen trying to get through the (BG) server lock.  And some sort of guild groupings that aren't ridiculous like you see with the current link system.

[Zikory.6871]

All Anet can do is try to balance out time zones with relatively equal numbers, which is what Alliances is supposed to do. Even then, it can't account for players not playing. 

They have no real power over server strength. That has always been community driven. Alliances won't change that. 

[MedievalThings.5417]

18 minutes ago, Zikory.6871 said:

All Anet can do is try to balance out time zones with relatively equal numbers, which is what Alliances is supposed to do. Even then, it can't account for players not playing. 

They have no real power over server strength. That has always been community driven. Alliances won't change that. 

Anet actually said the first couple times they talked about alliances, that it would not address coverage or play time disparities.  They literally admitted it would not address one of the biggest problems of wvw, which is, you go to bed with all your stuff, and wake to everything paper because no one played overnight.  Alliances will NOT fix or change that.

[XenesisII.1540]

Well.. first they said it would be part of the meta sorting and actually asked us what other meta tags they should use for the sorting, and then they stated they wouldn't use time zones at the start of it, not until the system was fully functioning basically, so it's not totally off the table. Ray seemed like he was one man deving it at the time too. So this may have been one of the things to change as well if they've thrown some more devs at it, we'll just have to wait and see when they release the new info next month.

 

 

Quote

 

Player Play Hours

In the original post and discussion, we talked about using player hours (the current method we use for calculating world sizes for links and “full” status) and then adjusting those hours by other metrics like command hours, etc. We subsequently have decided to, at least at the start, use only play hours and not adjust using other metrics. This will allow us to compare apples to apples so to speak once the system is in place. From there we can simulate how certain adjustments would change the matchups. This will make it easier to determine if an adjustment will have a positive impact.

 

 

 

Quote

 

Will time zone imbalance still be an issue

It is true that in the initial release of World Restructuring we are not planning to consider time zone distribution when creating worlds. Part of that is so we can get the primary aspects of the system in and gather data about how the system works given the metrics we are using for balance. We want to compare apples to apples to give us the clearest information. This also will allow us to have a new baseline to compare against modifications to the metrics used for balancing the teams. We also are discussing some other ways to address “off hours” play, so stay tuned for more info as we can share it.

 

 

 

[Cuks.8241]

On 7/14/2021 at 2:44 AM, jul.7602 said:

Alliance Stacking will create the most lopsided match ups in history.

I fully agree with initial post. I have been playing mmorpgs for more then 15 years, I've seen and played in similar systems in the past. In short what usually happens: the strongest guilds form the strongest alliances. Those are fully stacked. Everyone outside of those becomes cannon fodder.

I have some hope though due to the fact that winning in WvW is irrelevant, which is actually a good thing here. Usually rewards in other games give a big incentive to win. Here no one really cares about winning.

Those who whine about stacked monster links in T1 with all the band wagoners. Prepare to meet a completely next lvl monsters of a fully stacked organised alliance. And all was green forever.

 

I've played a korean mmorpg with alliance system (6 guilds form alliance, wage war against other alliances, gain territory). We were the top alliance winning every match for 3 years straight (people say current bad links are long now :P). After us a new alliance took over for years. 

Edited July 16, 2021 by Cuks.8241
addition

[Zikory.6871]

1 hour ago, Ubi.4136 said:

Anet actually said the first couple times they talked about alliances, that it would not address coverage or play time disparities.  They literally admitted it would not address one of the biggest problems of wvw, which is, you go to bed with all your stuff, and wake to everything paper because no one played overnight.  Alliances will NOT fix or change that.

"Even though world linking has brought world populations closer together, it is impossible for us to get populations and coverage any closer because the current worlds do not give us the granularity needed to do that. For example in NA, Blackgate has decent coverage across all time zones whereas worlds like Crystal Desert have higher peak times and lower off-hour times. Because world linking isn't granular enough, we don't have the ideal link that allows Crystal Desert to have coverage that is similar to Blackgate."

From the original Alliances post. So at least the original idea of Alliances was to somewhat address coverage. 

But even since release, there just isn't enough OCX, SEA, EU (On NA) players to give coverage to every server. 

[reddie.5861]

On 7/14/2021 at 3:54 AM, Stand The Wall.6987 said:

if anet always pairs up the biggest alliances with each other then it will work. this needs manual adjustment and insight into the average skill levels of each alliance.

u cant stop this anyway, only way to stop this is by people waking up them self.

you play this game for fun, in order to get fun ur looking for equally skilled people/fights

in general all equally skilled people/guilds know each other. most of these people complain and cry for content but they already pair up on same server as their buddies and then wonder why theres no content ;).

u see every1 likes to win but when u win to much the game is not fun anymore.

but theres only a few big brain gamers out there to go against their "friends" so he actually gets the joy and the content hes looking for. he can entertain the other people also, but moment these few players logoff cus they dont wanna play anymore the majority (the bigger group that paired up) is again staring at the screen looking for content..

 

 

 

at the end of the day, if people dont split up u kill your own game simple as that.

i have guild in other game and we dominated the server big time (ffa open world pvp), i have send off good players who wanted to join my guild to enemy guild not because i didnt want them but because our guild was smashing every competition out there and we where already smaller then the enemy guilds they just didnt have quality players so i could soak up all off them and keep winning all pvps out there but its not fun for anyone.
the losing side gives up

the winning side gives up cus whats the point when u know ur gonna win already before it started.

Yes at the end of the story my guild mass quitted and so did enemy guild we killed our own kitten even tho i tried to solve the problem but was to late.

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Cuks.8241 said:

I fully agree with initial post. I have been playing mmorpgs for more then 15 years, I've seen and played in similar systems in the past. In short what usually happens: the strongest guilds form the strongest alliances. Those are fully stacked. Everyone outside of those becomes cannon fodder.

I have some hope though due to the fact that winning in WvW is irrelevant, which is actually a good thing here. Usually rewards in other games give a big incentive to win. Here no one really cares about winning.

Those who whine about stacked monster links in T1 with all the band wagoners. Prepare to meet a completely next lvl monsters of a fully stacked organised alliance. And all was green forever.

 

I've played a korean mmorpg with alliance system (6 guilds form alliance, wage war against other alliances, gain territory). We were the top alliance winning every match for 3 years straight (people say current bad links are long now :P). After us a new alliance took over for years. 

And with all that MMO knowledge, could you describe how exactly this is in any way different from guilds stacking current worlds?

[jul.7602]

3 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

And with all that MMO knowledge, could you describe how exactly this is in any way different from guilds stacking current worlds?

Mostly the severity. Server stacking is at least partially mitigated by (1) tens of thousands of gold worth of transfer fees. Alliance system will make it free of charge to stack an alliance. (2) Hard server population caps. (3) It takes time and effort to reach out to server leads, and other guilds to organize a stack. This current system will probably some drag and drop system that makes it incredibly easy to stack a server.

[Spartacus.3192]

i agree with your assessment. Sadly i was under the belief that ANET was too greedy and would never implement alliances because it would kill the cash cow that is server transfer costs. 

[kash.9213]

25 minutes ago, jul.7602 said:

Mostly the severity. Server stacking is at least partially mitigated by (1) tens of thousands of gold worth of transfer fees. Alliance system will make it free of charge to stack an alliance. (2) Hard server population caps. (3) It takes time and effort to reach out to server leads, and other guilds to organize a stack. This current system will probably some drag and drop system that makes it incredibly easy to stack a server.

It sounds like it will be the same, being less complicated for large guilds to coordinate a stack, but players who like to float around are going to be forced to vie for a spot on a guild or be shifted around aimlessly each campaign. I spend a good deal of time reading the maps, watching movement, and positioning to support other players. I'm not sure how much of that will factor into my participation level that decides where I'd end up. Hopefully having to set my WvW designated guild won't mean I have to rep that guild throughout the campaign, I missed that part if they talked about it. 

[joneirikb.7506]

One major difference is that a single alliance will most likely max out at 500 players.

A server max out at what ? Let's just say 2500 to take a number. And could be stacked quite a lot with sleeper accounts and black-outs. Since we don't have the numbers no one can say for certain, but I'm fairly certain we've had a few servers that probably went over that number at times in the games history.

 

Alliances makes stacking easier, but also greatly limits the scope of it. A hard limit, that you can't really work around. After all there is no way to guarantee 2 Alliances to get into the same World.

Now we just have to start petition (read: pull out the torches and pitchforks) to get ANet to completely murder the transfer mechanic for good.

[Dawdler.8521]

4 hours ago, jul.7602 said:

Mostly the severity. Server stacking is at least partially mitigated by (1) tens of thousands of gold worth of transfer fees. Alliance system will make it free of charge to stack an alliance. (2) Hard server population caps. (3) It takes time and effort to reach out to server leads, and other guilds to organize a stack. This current system will probably some drag and drop system that makes it incredibly easy to stack a server.

Because transfer fees is something we all want... the server pop caps would be the same type as alliance cap, which is the same as guild cap. And since when is it bad to engage WvW players in trying to organize?

 

Server (world) stacking under the alliance matchup system is 100% mitigated by the fact you wouldnt know which world your "stacked" alliance end up on. And once you are there, you cant transfer alliance until the next matchup.

 

Its like saying today that you can stack a link. Ok, stack it then. Go ahead. Stack it to the max. What happens in 2 weeks? It get relinked. And if it has 2500 players, its not going to get linked with another stacked link of 2500 players, is it? No, because just like alliances, you wouldnt know what other server is linked it. Because thats Anets job to at least try to balance against similar worlds.

 

And the alliance matchup system would be exactly the same but instead of 2500, they use 500 for increased resolution. Thats it. Thats literally what the alliance matchup theory is. Reduction of a number.

[SweetPotato.7456]

Pretty sure Restructuring (i don't call it alliances still, because as a solo players in WvW i don't believe in alliances)

But your worry is legit (it is not death to WvW, it is death to SERVERS), that is why, when I suggested a new WvW thingy waaaaaaaaay back, probably few years ago, I asked Anet to Use the Existing PvP matching system. 

Don't give liberty to the players to choose, instead, match them against each other according to their ratings (this way it will be fair)
Sign up your guild as a WvW guild. 
Play to get ratings
Get Match up randomly every match up (link) and go up against others that were match up (link) together.  those match up with you are your allies for the duration of the battle.

(P: If you give liberty to players to choose, it will always be the same. )

In pvp, you put 5 players in a match against another group of 5 players. 
In wvw , tweak that and use it on guild/squad/roamers. 

As we come to see this more clearly - probably need to have a data collection system for wvw. 

The match will be structured like this:

Pre - match to get ratings for to get allied/team up and match against (this is when the squad/guild is lock down, after which you cannot switch until the next round we can't switch anyway if the matching system is thus) - alliances done/ match start -->> fight to the death!  Rince and repeat.  (Keep in mind this is no longer a one week long match,  which ever side can hold the most objectives in a given time wins and this makes Allies make sense,  allies comes in, take over at different time zones. - Read my other suggestion)  you know like Eve Online when players fight for over 10+ hours non stop with 5k players - to the death style.

BTW 
EU and NA population needs to be mix up for better spread of time zone coverage. 

To make it more interesting
At a certain point, the top 3 emerging Guilds  get to go to the final show down, which is the most sought after match - the true Guild Vs Guild. (Note this is entire separated match all together) The winner will be crown and their alliance during the match up that help them to the final gets rewards too/accordingly.  

It's all in my head, I wish I can put it down better on text. But that's how I envision a better restructured WvW.  Might want to start calling it Guild Vs Guild,  GvG , because if you still use WvW it is a totally different game mode. 

Note:
Reserve the right to come back and make post better at a later date when and if I have time to think more on it.
 

Edited July 17, 2021 by SweetPotato.7456

[reddie.5861]

7 hours ago, joneirikb.7506 said:

One major difference is that a single alliance will most likely max out at 500 players.

A server max out at what ? Let's just say 2500 to take a number. And could be stacked quite a lot with sleeper accounts and black-outs. Since we don't have the numbers no one can say for certain, but I'm fairly certain we've had a few servers that probably went over that number at times in the games history.

 

Alliances makes stacking easier, but also greatly limits the scope of it. A hard limit, that you can't really work around. After all there is no way to guarantee 2 Alliances to get into the same World.

Now we just have to start petition (read: pull out the torches and pitchforks) to get ANet to completely murder the transfer mechanic for good.

map limit is 80? * 4 =320 and u can fill every map on WvW..

[joneirikb.7506]

4 minutes ago, reddie.5861 said:

map limit is 80? * 4 =320 and u can fill every map on WvW..

Which is no different from what you can do now, with a single guild of 500 members, or several guilds on the same server.

Which you can stack even higher btw, to increase the odds of having more people available to try to block out the map queue if that is your desire. Though I can't imagine most would try to specifically stack so high that they can't even play with themselves.

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

@SweetPotato.7456 what u fail to see. if ppt would be competitive or will ever be, the best ppt groups would stack around the strongest fighting guilds... this is not directly the case, since figthing groups avoid them on the long term, bc ppt tends to be uncontrollable. once u carry them to t1, u can be 1000% sure, they make u stuck in there. no matter if u barely log in for dailies even.

 

and theres 0,.000000000% rewards for t1. similarily 0% for beeing #1 in tier 1. the only reward is, you damage "you server" forever. many people will not wait out a whole month of tier 1 pointlessness and leave the server. ppl continue ppting as crazy, but dmg is done.

 

alliances CAN, however they finally will look, only improve things. Wvw is at probably the worst possible stance currently. no wonder, since the work gone into it for years now been... very small.

______________

 

about the "alliance-world number cap"... ofc that should be existing. would be nice if we finally would know exactly how full a server is.

 

map caps are sth a bit over 70. no way they are 80, think someone said 74 roughly. sometimes u see barely people on the whole map and have a Q, justsaying.

 

people heavily underestimate how huge 70 ppl alone are - biggest numbers of one color i ever saw on one place are like roughly 60. many people mis-report 20-30 people groups as BLOB yet lmfao. or 10ish groups as ZERG. like, oh boy, that's so far from the sense making usage of these terms. 25+ starting becoming a zerg if on voice, 40-45+ a blob... the 60ish are sometimes called "zoneblobs", as its nearly a full capped out borders' numbers. still, can be farmed by half of their size. 😜

[joneirikb.7506]

Personally I fear that the biggest negative of "World Restructuring" won't be the alliance part, but something else entirely: Multiple accounts.

 

An entire guild/alliance could have organised a set of extra accounts in another guild/alliance, so when a new world is made, they can see who else is on which world and play on that.

Or even worse, alternate between the two every 2 months. Since that would be enough to tank the other accounts/guild/alliance play-hours, perhaps enough to game the system to think it's now a small alliance with very few hours. (Thus putting them with other bigger guilds/alliances)

[SweetPotato.7456]

4 hours ago, joneirikb.7506 said:

Personally I fear that the biggest negative of "World Restructuring" won't be the alliance part, but something else entirely: Multiple accounts.

 

An entire guild/alliance could have organised a set of extra accounts in another guild/alliance, so when a new world is made, they can see who else is on which world and play on that.

Or even worse, alternate between the two every 2 months. Since that would be enough to tank the other accounts/guild/alliance play-hours, perhaps enough to game the system to think it's now a small alliance with very few hours. (Thus putting them with other bigger guilds/alliances)

this is already happening .