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

[wolfsblut.9435]

All our information are 3 years old.

I look forward to learn what they will bring up to solve the actual problems and would not speculate at all.

[Zikory.6871]

I'd agree Alliances is going to kill WvW, as we currently know it. We should welcome this change and be more constructive so anet doesn't go back on communication hiatus until its released. 

[kash.9213]

33 minutes ago, Stand The Wall.6987 said:

i'm pretty sure the alliances structure accounts for pugs. there will be plenty of pugs assigned to each alliance, and no they will not get kicked out of maps to make room for guild members. that doesn't make any sense.

I should read up more on alliances, how easy will it be for pug players to control where they end up and where they stick around to try to be a part of a community? I feel like people are talking about pugs like they're droids who don't mind being shifted around to balance numbers. The way alliances was explained it seems like if you're a pug player, your existence and who you'll be playing with will be entirely on the whim of lead guilds deciding how they'll balance things and that will be compounded if you're a pug player who is only casually in a guild. 

 

Also how much control do alliance leaders have on rosters both in guild and alliance wide? Currently a guild can take up map slots and sit on it if people don't hop maps to make room for them. The concern does make sense. 

[enkidu.5937]

Totally agree, to my regret. Just want to add:

 

Most highly active + highly coordinated alliances will play their own thing more than before (separate voice chat, separate community, separate raids, hidden tags etc.). So, even if you log in at a time where your "team" also has an alliance online that can counter the enemy's one, you will just be left out, most likely not even noticing the clash.

 

On the other hand, if you are a highly active player and love to be coordinated, and you get into one of those big alliances, you will usually not get adequate enemies, not even pug zergs to farm. When the server communities will be dispelled, the amount of semi-coordinated pugmander zergs will drop significantly imo.

 

 

Edited July 14, 2021 by enkidu.5937

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, Phantom.8130 said:

No, look.  Unless they're able to queue up all 4 maps, pugs can still enter WvW as part of the server. The meta zergs on server discord may exclude pugs and be a turn off to pugs, but it's not stopping them from from entering WvW.  Full guild alliances will. It'll take the problem that current exists, and accelerate it dramatically.  What will happen is there'll be an initial bump in activity, then a snowballing dropoff into an avalanche.

Which has what to do with alliances? There will be nothing stopping them from entering WvW as part of the world they are on because they will always be on a regular WvW world no matter what. Alliances only change how that world is created.

We've already had recaps on what alliances is many times, as per above too. 

[Stand The Wall.6987]

5 hours ago, kash.9213 said:

I should read up more on alliances, how easy will it be for pug players to control where they end up and where they stick around to try to be a part of a community? I feel like people are talking about pugs like they're droids who don't mind being shifted around to balance numbers. The way alliances was explained it seems like if you're a pug player, your existence and who you'll be playing with will be entirely on the whim of lead guilds deciding how they'll balance things and that will be compounded if you're a pug player who is only casually in a guild. 

 

Also how much control do alliance leaders have on rosters both in guild and alliance wide? Currently a guild can take up map slots and sit on it if people don't hop maps to make room for them. The concern does make sense. 

i'm not entirely sure either but i think anet just assigns a certain amount of pugs to each world just like they assign standalone guilds. if pugs wanna stick around then they gotta join an alliance or guild, same with guilds. there are no alliance leaders its a collection of guild leaders, they can't effect guilds other then their own. i mean sure any guild can sit on a map now but they can't kick off solo players from a map if an alliance/ guild player wants to join the map where there are other alliance/ guild members. there is zero chance of that happening with alliances.

Edited July 14, 2021 by Stand The Wall.6987

[kash.9213]

16 minutes ago, Stand The Wall.6987 said:

i'm not entirely sure either but i think anet just assigns a certain amount of pugs to each alliance just like they assign standalone guilds. if pugs wanna stick around then they gotta join an alliance, same with guilds. there are no alliance leaders its a collection of guild leaders, they can't effect guilds other then their own. i mean sure any guild can sit on a map now but they can't kick off solo players from a map if an alliance/ guild player wants to join the map where there are other alliance/ guild members. there is zero chance of that happening with alliances.

There's technically zero chance of forced balancing now but it still happens in a sense. It sounds like pugs who want to try to keep up with the action won't have the same people often or for long to gel with and everyone else who doesn't want a second job in a raid guild will filter down to a matchup where there might not even be fights. Hopefully by habit a lot of people can hover around the middle and get to know people and have stuff to do without having to be on a schedule. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Maybe... the alliances will all be on a new set of maps with Core WvW left alone?

[XenesisII.1540]

Heh, all this sudden panic over guilds and alliances. It's like people don't know it's already been happening unofficially for years, like when all the fight guilds went and made t3 their tier, the super stacking of bg, jq, tc, mag, yb, plenty of times when 2-3 guilds move together to new servers, and like after alliances was announced we had like 3 big alliances formed, none of which runs today I believe, they all got bored and broke up.

 

Heck the game started with the Titan alliance ruling over matches for two weeks before they declared they were done with nothing left to conquer. They will get bored if there's nothing for them to fight, super stacking together will dwindle the fight pool that's already in shallow depth as it is. The only concern is the rewards that come after, whether they're tempting enough to make players super stack for winning.

 

The pug community has already been weakened anyways, with no server communities like the old days, more demands of those players to be organized and get in discord, run this build, stay on tag and if not then get off the map, guildmembers trying to get in so get off the map!

 

But nothing really changes for the pug and roamers, you're not being kicked out, you're not being excluded from vip worlds, and if your real concern is not being able to play on a "bg" type server to coast to wins, well, hey, join a wvw guild then. I'm sure there will also be community guilds created as well to preserve the old server ways, I'm expecting this will happen with bg and mag maybe even fa and tc.

 

I fully expect there will be a couple new "Titan" alliances at the start of alliances, but I hope anet has enough sense to have some good caps in place so that we don't get 10+ guilds stacking like titan did. 500 members and max 3 guilds sounds just about right, to make sure guilds stay spread out. Because it would be a shame if we spent over 3 years waiting on this only to have a loophole that dives right back into the problem it was trying to fix in the first place.

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Stand The Wall.6987 said:

i'm not entirely sure either but i think anet just assigns a certain amount of pugs to each alliance just like they assign standalone guilds.

Gah! World!

You're just confusing people further by interchanging world and alliance. Anet doesnt assign anything to alliances. Guilds join alliances. So again:

Random player - assigned to random world
WvW selected guild - all guild members assigned to the same world

Alliance - a group of WvW selected guilds assigned to the same world

World - the server

 

The point is to mix these 3 things for balanced worlds.

Edited July 14, 2021 by Dawdler.8521

[Svarty.8019]

18 hours ago, jul.7602 said:

A very unpopular and controversial opinion, [..]

 

Alliance stacking is the natural and inevitable outcome of this newly proposed system. People will stack alliances. 

I don't think it's a controversial opinion. We've known for ages that there are going to be huge problems if the system is implemented as-advertised.
For one, they'll be handing the keys to what will be the equivalent of your server to a potentially temperamental guild leader. 
 

18 hours ago, jul.7602 said:

As it stands, alliances cannot be allowed to proceed unless their design is completely redone.

Why not? I say bring them on. I'm not even playing the game in it's current state.

 

[Stand The Wall.6987]

4 hours ago, kash.9213 said:

There's technically zero chance of forced balancing now but it still happens in a sense. It sounds like pugs who want to try to keep up with the action won't have the same people often or for long to gel with and everyone else who doesn't want a second job in a raid guild will filter down to a matchup where there might not even be fights. Hopefully by habit a lot of people can hover around the middle and get to know people and have stuff to do without having to be on a schedule. 

its possible anet will keep most of the same pugs in the same world with no shuffling, i would have to reread. that would make the most sense. if they don't do that, then it would make sense for each server now to make their own community guild simply for repping purposes so pugs can stick together.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

3 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Gah! World!

you're right i edited my post.

[MedievalThings.5417]

6 hours ago, joneirikb.7506 said:

 

 

The new "Worlds" under the alliance system will contain a mix of:

 

* Alliances
* Guilds
* Non Guild Players

 

If we assume that there is 1/3 of each, then all worlds will on average consist of 1/3 non-guild-players. Something that no guilds nor alliances can stop in any way. There will not be any worlds without pugs. In-fact if half the wvw players are pugs, then indeed 50% of the worlds would be pugs.

 

And Guilds will have a much better recruitment options, as they will get new pugs each time the servers gets shuffled. In terms of pugs, there is really little to no disadvantage with the World Restructuring system. (The main drawback there is those that lean more toward server loyalty, than pug-life.)

The main difference for pugs, is that those on big stacked servers can no longer coast on that. While those still on small servers that routinely gets beaten will now have more variety, as the Worlds gets blown up and re-made every 2 months. So you never know what kind of guilds and alliances you'll get to work with. And if you find some you enjoy, you can join them to stay with them.
 

All of this was explained in detail in the original thread:

 

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/19480-world-restructuring/

Stacked alliances will remain.  The OP is correct in what will almost certainly happen to wvw.

[joneirikb.7506]

1 hour ago, Ubi.4136 said:

Stacked alliances will remain.  The OP is correct in what will almost certainly happen to wvw.

Stacked alliances will remain. But depending on the size of a World, it can vary extremely much just how big an impact that has. And as subversiontwo also pointed out, all of the things possible with alliances are already possible with servers, just on larger scale.

If a single alliance counts for: 50%, 20%, 10% or 5% of a World makes for a very large difference. So until we have an idea of what sort of numbers we will end up with, it's really hard to predict the outcome of this. And at this point, I think ANet would have to be insane (plausible, but I sure hope not) to put Alliance size cap to 1000 players, and instead go with the 500 same as max guild size. For just this reason.

And the post you quoted was in response to someone asking what would happen to pugs, not to the original post. Wasn't sure if you quoted the right post or not.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

1 hour ago, joneirikb.7506 said:

If a single alliance counts for: 50%, 20%, 10% or 5% of a World makes for a very large difference. So until we have an idea of what sort of numbers we will end up with, it's really hard to predict the outcome of this.

anet said somewhere that worlds will be 2500 players so an alliance will be 20%

[Dawdler.8521]

4 hours ago, joneirikb.7506 said:

And at this point, I think ANet would have to be insane (plausible, but I sure hope not) to put Alliance size cap to 1000 players, and instead go with the 500 same as max guild size. For just this reason.

As I mentioned in another post, 500 is the only reasonable value yes. 

 

With an alliance capped like a guild, its just better management of multiple guilds to avoid "forcing" everyone to join the same guild. We know for a fact people want their smaller guilds, not everyone want to be in a 500 man behemoth as their main guild. They want to create their own, lead their own. The alliance matchup system doesnt actually need alliance to even function.  People that think it will change WvW need to realize something.... Its what people have been crying for since forever:

 

Guild. Wars.

 

I am more interested in how the alliance management work and how much it is integrated in every day WvW. Will we see alliance names in addition to guild? Them being hidden would be boring. Will we see alliance reflected on objectives owned? Boring again if not. Will alliance members somehow recognize their own like guilds are different colors? Will we be able to see in the WvW window the world alliance/guild composition? How will the player cap actually work for joining guilds, will they have reserved slots for new members or be fixed and can only be equal or smaller (ie a 75 man guild join but its joined as a "100 man guild" and can add members up to 100)? Will alliances in any way have a part outside WvW (ie recognizing members again). Etc and so on.

Edited July 15, 2021 by Dawdler.8521

[subversiontwo.7501]

On 7/14/2021 at 2:04 PM, Phantom.8130 said:

There's one point that hasn't been brought up.  Player attrition.  Players come, players go, that's the way of all MMOs.  However, if Alliances are based around guilds, pugs are left out in the cold.  If there's limited spots, pugs will get excluded, and even forced out if necessary to ensure a guild can get their numbers in.  We already see this happen on the maps dating back to launch.  Some may not see a problem with this.

Well, this is exactly why systems like Alliances are good and why ArenaNet should explore more options to break open their systems and make them more flexible.

 

If you look at your own post you'll realize that the real problem here is "limited spots". A developer should seek to avoid situations of limited spots as much as possible rather than strangling their own games to death. If systems can be built that open up "spots" in various ways then I'm sure guilds and players in them will be more accomodating to players on the outside. I think WvW as a game mode is a historical testament to that, content has always been shared in pickup groups.

 

Whatever else you describe is only natural. If a commander (from a guild) is forced to choose between a friend (or guildmate) over someone they are only loosely aquainted with, do not know at all or who may be completely anonymous (not interacting with the commander what so ever) then they are obviously going to do everything they can to prioritize their friend. Expecting anything else is egoistic and unreasonable. It's not your content unless you help to create it.

 

If you have systems in place that makes it difficult for friends to stay together or for them to support each other and provide each other content, then you will only make them resort to more desperate and destructive measures or you will simply make them stop trying. In fact, that has been the biggest problem for WvW on a macro level for years now. Players who do instigate and enable content feel counteracted and stop, quit or tries less.

 

That is why we just have more and more anonymous players per tag and why in many pickup groups these days you can see less than 10% of the people in squad even using their mics; helping or socialising with whoever has tagged publically to provide everyone content. I'm not even kidding, I've seen commanders quit squads because no one talks or responds to them. Systems should be used to encourage initatives and support the players who try to create content so it is shared.

 

At the end of the day, pugs don't exist without commanders but commanders can exist without pugs. No system should look to exclude anyone but when forced to choose the systems should obviously premier what's productive over what's consumptive and that ArenaNet has approached WvW the other way around in various ways over the years has been to the detriment of the game mode and its content. That is tantamount to destroying your own game. Today they know it.

Edited July 15, 2021 by subversiontwo.7501

[XenesisII.1540]

3 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

I'm not even kidding, I've seen commanders quit squads because no one talks or responds to them. Systems should be used to encourage initatives and support the players who try to create content so it is shared.

 

 

But but but, I thought only being able to listen was required to join, now we have to talk too?!

Gosh, they keep upping the requirements.

 

[kash.9213]

3 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

Well, this is exactly why systems like Alliances are good and why ArenaNet should explore more options to break open their systems and make them more flexible.

 

If you look at your own post you'll realize that the real problem here is "limited spots". A developer should seek to avoid situations of limited spots as much as possible rather than strangling their own games to death. If systems can be built that open up "spots" in various ways then I'm sure guilds and players in them will be more accomodating to players on the outside. I think WvW as a game mode is a historical testament to that, content has always been shared in pickup groups.

 

Whatever else you describe is only natural. If a commander (from a guild) is forced to choose between a friend (or guildmate) over someone they are only loosely aquainted with, do not know at all or who may be completely anonymous (not interacting with the commander what so ever) then they are obviously going to do everything they can to prioritize their friend. Expecting anything else is egoistic and unreasonable. It's not your content unless you help to create it.

 

If you have systems in place that makes it difficult for friends to stay together or for them to support each other and provide each other content, then you will only make them resort to more desperate and destructive measures or you will simply make them stop trying. In fact, that has been the biggest problem for WvW on a macro level for years now. Players who do instigate and enable content feel counteracted and stop, quit or tries less.

 

That is why we just have more and more anonymous players per tag and why in many pickup groups these days you can see less than 10% of the people in squad even using their mics; helping or socialising with whoever has tagged publically to provide everyone content. I'm not even kidding, I've seen commanders quit squads because no one talks or responds to them. Systems should be used to encourage initatives and support the players who try to create content so it is shared.

 

At the end of the day, pugs don't exist without commanders but commanders can exist without pugs. No system should look to exclude anyone but when forced to choose the systems should obviously premier what's productive over what's consumptive and that ArenaNet has approached WvW the other way around in various ways over the years has been to the detriment of the game mode and its content. That is tantamount to destroying your own game. Today they know it.

Everyone there is "creating content". Claiming that a player is useless and detracting at all from "content" because they don't entertain someone with a commander tag is a ridiculous statement. Most people in the action are there for the action, not because a tag showed up there and any one who thinks WvW only happens because they showed up with a tag are up their own kitten and have a skewed observation of current WvW. Most people who are still playing WvW and are not on voice comms are not on there for a reason, doesn't mean they wont get on comms, it means they wont get on that tags comms. They're not leeching off a tag any more than a tag mooches off of pugs and roamers who have already gotten things going. 

[tangible.8765]

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. 

[subversiontwo.7501]

3 hours ago, kash.9213 said:

Everyone there is "creating content". Claiming that a player is useless and detracting at all from "content" because they don't entertain someone with a commander tag is a ridiculous statement.

Then you don't understand what a "pug" is and/or you misunderstand the context of the post you qouted.. It is literally someone who joins a commander's pickup group. By definition, you can not be a pug without a commander. You become a "pug" when you join the tag.

 

Ed. Just to underline that: Since a pug doesn't exist without a tag it also creates no content without a tag. Players may create content in other ways than with pickup groups or in ways that require no commander, but that is not what the post you qouted was about.

Ed2. If we do talk about players in general: The context is Alliances and it is important because if players are doing their own thing and producing their own content, why would they care if a guild/tag transfers off or is transfered off every 8 weeks? They have no reason to care if they have no relation to guild/tag in question. Alliances will create that opportunity for both sides. People who care about tags, coms, guilds or whatever can join such a Guild/Alliance and those who do not can join another Guild/Alliance or opt to join no Guild/Alliance at all and do what they prefer.

Edited July 15, 2021 by subversiontwo.7501

[LetoII.3782]

9 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

Then you don't understand what a "pug" is. It is literally someone who joins a commander's pickup group.

By definition, you can not be a pug without a commander. You become a "pug" when you join the tag.

Let's not play the definition game.

You know very well the word Pug describes independent players in this game.

 

[XenesisII.1540]

But what if they're called militia instead?

[subversiontwo.7501]

16 minutes ago, LetoII.3782 said:

Let's not play the definition game.

You know very well the word Pug describes independent players in this game.

 

I am getting firmly reminded why I stopped logging in here.

The word pug stands for pickup group. It doesn't stand for anything else. It is its name. It should be perfectly fair to use.
Now, if you want to have your own definition of it, have at it.

However, does it escape you how ridiculous it is when you dress my post in your definition and cry about it?

You are getting yourself riled up over some perceived slight that was never there.

Edited July 15, 2021 by subversiontwo.7501