World Restructuring

[Farnion.6543]

My first reaction after seeing this system was that I strongly disliked it. I have identified with my home server and grown fond of playing with the same people there over the years. I think that having changing groups of people to play with would reduce my enthusiasm in participating in WvW, especially doing things that may be boring for me (like scouting) but help the server.

 

Problems I see with the new system:

* Organizing over teamspeak will have to be essentially privatized in the sense that there will be ts for each guild, since the fluctuations make it impossible to have consistent ts servers. I had the feeling that for commanders trying to lead public zergs it was one of the main hurdles to get casual players to download ts, register on the server and listen to the commander there. Now someone who wants to casually play would need to register to a new server every 9 weeks (if guilds allow them on there), so will basically be left out of organized large-group play.

* Matching players according to their skill level would result in one server containing the majority of people who regularly do a commander for large groups, one tier of groups containing experienced players without commanders and one tier of people who never/rarely played wvw and have no idea what to do.

* There have been surveys concerning wvw for all kinds of things (alpine vs. desert, repair hammers etc) but to me it seems that this system overhaul is starting to be implemented without such a survey. The reactions in the forums seemed positive, but this may be a biased reaction and a survey would offer more quantitative feedback.

 

Let me finally sketch an alternative to this new system, that may be able to avoid certain downfalls of this alliance thing:

**The mercenary system**

Each player can switch between being a loyalist (staying on their current server) or a mercenary. Mercenaries get assigned to a new server every 9 weeks and are a tool for ANet to balance populations. As a reward for their services, they get 1 (additional) gold for each tier of wvw rewards (wood, bronze, etc) that they complete. A guild can select to be a mercenary guild and players can select one of their guilds which is a mercenary guild if they want to be a merc and transfer with them (a bit like in the new system). These guilds will remain intact and are at ANets disposition to balance strengths. Perhaps such mercenary guilds could additionally receive tactics/guild weapons as a reward for their participation.

If a mercenary switches back to loyalist, they will end up in their original server again.

 

This system leaves people who identify with their home servers a chance to forego the money reward for being a merc. At the same time this money should ensure that ANet has enough mercenaries to balance out things. Since servers remain intact, ANet can still earn money from transfers. On the implementation side, this system would likely require to establish most of the functionalities of the new proposed system with alliances but without destroying the server identities. This abolishment of server identities is an action that cannot be taken back in a meaningful way, so why not try an intermediate step first and see how it plays out?

[rapthorne.7345]

These are great steps in the right direction, but a massive contributing factor to WvW sucking right now is the ability to just swap worlds if you are on one not doing so well.

 

Eliminating that feature is the only way to stimulate proper competition

[Zionka.6897]

wow, this popped up when I was having a few days off, and got really long. I can't read the whole thread, but I'm kinda sad about this, initially. To completely lose the last thing in the game that had a sense of community, after the mega server thing. What I am particularly unsure about, is the guild being a "WvW guild" I am, and will continue to be, in a tiny little guild of close friends, and no other. We will ocasionally go to WvW together, but most often, we'll just go alone, since only 2 of us are on the "home" server. By and large. we're just PvE with the occasional WvW. It doesn't seem very clear if it has to be a black and white thing, all or nothing. Also not clear on if it will no longer matter if guild members are (for now?) on other servers. Ugh.. I'm just so confused. I'll try to keep up with it as it draws closer to actually being implemented.

[Torolan.5816]

So if I undestand this right:

*You get assigned to a newly created world every 8 weeks.

*You can mark one of your guilds as wvw guild, and guilds can form alliances who are then preferably grouped on a new world together.

*Guildless randoms are thrown in where statistics say they fit in best.

 

So far, so good. Sadly it is still pointless to make wvw memorable, even more so than before. If my guild is disbanded today, nobody will ever see how good we fared in wvw. Guilds stay faceless and meaningless beside the idea of grouping on the level of guilds instead on the level of servers.

 

From a technical and coverage wise point of view, maybe this will indeed help. On the emotional side probably not.

[Dawdler.8521]

> @"Farnion.6543" said:

> Problems I see with the new system:

> * Organizing over teamspeak will have to be essentially privatized in the sense that there will be ts for each guild, since the fluctuations make it impossible to have consistent ts servers. I had the feeling that for commanders trying to lead public zergs it was one of the main hurdles to get casual players to download ts, register on the server and listen to the commander there. Now someone who wants to casually play would need to register to a new server every 9 weeks (if guilds allow them on there), so will basically be left out of organized large-group play.

> * Matching players according to their skill level would result in one server containing the majority of people who regularly do a commander for large groups, one tier of groups containing experienced players without commanders and one tier of people who never/rarely played wvw and have no idea what to do.

> * There have been surveys concerning wvw for all kinds of things (alpine vs. desert, repair hammers etc) but to me it seems that this system overhaul is starting to be implemented without such a survey. The reactions in the forums seemed positive, but this may be a biased reaction and a survey would offer more quantitative feedback.

 

For point 1, that's the idea of alliances - to replace server communities. Most will probably be smaller yes but if you read between the lines, it looks like we might get more tiers/smaller worlds compared to now. Meaning a large sized alliance would probably equal the "active" part of a community using ts today. With some help from Anet to add alliances to the API, automatic ts rules would help immensly (ie only people from the world your alliance is in get let in). I am certain it will be confusing at first as we've all seen what happen on link reset, but after a while you wouldnt need to register a new server - you'd just have links to specific alliance ts/discords rather than servers.

 

For point 2, they said they would track commander hours too. All alliances will hopefully try to get a healthy complement of commanders too so that they get matched against equal alliances. The only way this would fail is if... well, there are no commanders period. Which would be sad.

 

For point 3, a survey wouldnt really change anything without us having tried it first. It would just be rants of hypothetical scenarios and theories and people saying "I dont like your idea, my idea is better" or "I like this idea cause WvW ded". Sort of like this thread haha. This is the survey.

[SlateSloan.3654]

i think the idea of alliances is great. but please let the alliances choose the name of the alliance on their own. i think this is very very very important for a long term ladder and competition system. as the alliances have their own responsibility regarding day/nighttime coverage the alliances may want to have the possibility to create their own identity for competition purposes and it will help to create tournaments as well. if that will be considered we are about to see a real guild wars to arrive which can be pushed towards e-sports. gw2 will be the market leader for that as theres nothing like that elsewhere.

[hypehype.9047]

So it will go from stacking servers to stacking guilds.

[Santos Arezes.5310]

Woah good news :D

Honestly you gonna make me going back to play GW2 more often if this is well implemented and bring me old memories of the old Alliance system in GW1 and AB, FA, JQ and Kurzick/Luxon control over territory ^^

However i got a couple of questions/concerns that you may have answered a long this thread but honestly TL:DR, if you did answered please disregard those points.

 

1. How you gonna calculate the participation from a player that was an WvW hardcore but quit or just put a few hours a week/month in the WvW/Game because lost interest? However the reason was Real Life or just got disappointed in the game or with WvW situation until this point?

2. With this system maybe you guys could to a special Season for WvW as NA vs EU to just rise pride for belonging in an Alliance and be part of the region NA/EU.

* this would be fun if it could be implemented plus could give a extra incentive for a player/guild/Alliance to stay on top or surpass their last "special season" results.

[Archomeda.6472]

This new system looks like something WvW really needs and I fully support it. The idea looks well designed right now, and I can only imagine there are just a few tweaks to be done before it can be developed.

 

If the matchmaking is designed well, it would mean that the population will be spread out way better than it is right now. This system also disallows stacking with very large communities/guilds with the alliance cap. This is a huge deal. Yes, it might mean that your current world community will be torn apart. But on the other hand:

- It now means that you can be immensely competitive against players you know well. And I can only imagine that WvW guilds looking for fights will get more diverse fights overall as well, instead of only fighting the same groups over and over again in the current stale match-ups. Being competitive is what WvW is all about.

- It's refreshing to see new players every time. You'll meet so many new people and make new guilds or even alliances for that matter. It makes WvW less stale and more interactive.

- Not many players like fighting against stacked worlds. It can really demotivate a world, guild, or individual players from keeping playing.

- It can promote roaming, because the generated worlds are made out of a group of random people, guilds and/or alliances. Upon a new world generation, people either need to communicate well with their world-mates, or they can just do whatever they want themselves on their own. This turns into more, but smaller groups in general. Right now, it doesn't happen that much because the pool of worlds to be linked is scarce and world links are generally the same anyway. Of course, how this plays out in practice is to be seen.

- New players aren't bound by their world they initially choose. They don't have to pay gems in order to transfer. Instead, they'll get matched with their friends immediately without them having to do look into what worlds actually are. And if they don't have any friends, they'll get matched in a random world like they are already now, except in this case, that world is probably way more active than the world they can pick right now. Because with the current system, the most active worlds are full, which won't be the case with the new system as it will spread out the population. This results into more potential players that are looking to see if WvW is something they'll enjoy.

- Veteran players that can't join the world their guild is in, benefit from this system as well. With the current linking system, they have to keep transferring which is a hassle and costs gems. With the new system, they'll just have to set their WvW guild and they're guaranteed to be in the same world next time the worlds get restructured.

 

I'm afraid that, once again, the WvW community can't reach a consensus. I hope that this system will be implemented in order to revitalize WvW. Because as mentioned before, world linking is the only other alternative they are willing to have implemented in WvW. And in my opinion, world linking hasn't done much in regards of population balance, because of world stacking. This system will mean that I might invest some time in WvW again. Right now I've left WvW alone for months.

[dawn.8406]

this sounds like a great idea. finally i can try out WvW. SFR is pretty dead in WvW IMO.

[Ben K.6238]

> @"Xelonir.5921" 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:

> > 

> >

>

> Not showing server names is fine, but I think you should at least use different colors for EU and NA.

> If, as some claim, it is only an NA problem, your solution is wrong.

 

More than half of those servers are EU. You cannot have any arrangement of EU servers in that lineup that isn't massively top-heavy as well.

[Bezerker.2379]

> @"Grim West.3194" said:

> > @"Bezerker.2379" said:

> > Really not a fan of this. One of the things that is awesome as poor as it is designed is "world identity". Dynamic worlds where people shift between them instead of worlds shifting will remove the world identity. We have gotten to know the guilds, the roamers, etc of our worlds. Some of our most infamous commanders have been doing it on our world for years. This removes that.

> >

> > Now, it will feel like another pvp queue except longer.

> >

> > Also, what will this do to roaming/small havoc guilds? We will not be partaking in the massive battles (and likely not even commanding) so where will we fall?

> >

> > Do not want. Keep the existing worlds. Everyone whines about fighting blackgate but fighting QQ members was one of my favorite small group things to do. :)

>

> Alliance identity will take over.

>

> WvW needs this. The current system is garbage for the vast majority of players. Many of whom gave up on GW2 years ago because of how bad it is. This will bring some of them back and help keep the current players who were about to give up on GW2.

 

Eh, wvw is not that bad. It's bad if you are one of the zerg following ktrainers looking for a glorified EOTM. Been playing it for years and I'm not done with it.

 

Alliance identity will indeed take over, but that is nothing like a static server identity.

 

Again, this will injure small group roaming as well, which is what makes wvw a popularized thing. (Very few watch zerg videos for example.) which further attracts players.

 

Dunno, I feel there are better ways to deal with it.

[atheria.2837]

This is a horrid idea.

 

Why?

 

No loyalty.

 

Where will our friends be? Oh, this is SO not right.

 

No identity.

 

Morale destroying.

 

Guild-centric leaving the solo player and the small guilds without any cohesion?

 

EOTM 2.0 is not going to 'fix' WvW.

 

Putting it back to the beginning where we had tournaments and people 'settled' in their servers for their preferred WvW experience would have

been so much better.

 

My server matters to me.

 

Our servers made us who we are.

 

Now we will be nobodies on ever-changing masses of people we can't get to know at all.

[Litatus.4679]

Great idea, great opportunity. A new chance without me betraying my long-time home server ! :)

 

A few serious suggestions for your team discussion:

1) Role-Player-Problem: Use the "assign your wvw guild" menu and add the option "Non-Participant". Should get an own **non-competitive** WvW Server to explore the map without enemys, do some RP or force yourself to stay out of WvW for a season. [As there would be no fights, you might even ignore the max player on the maps and or this special server.] Remember that bug, where no one in WvW could fight each other? Perfect feature!

2) Add another choice in the player / guild / alliance menu for "kind of communication": a) "Teamspeak", b) "Discord" c) "Mapchat only" and d) "I don´t care" and include it in the player evaluation or server distribution.

3) Alliance-menu: Add the choice of "conquer and drop" versus "conquer and defend" and try not to put them on the same server.

4) Don´t let yourself get disencouraged after the launch. There HAVE to be problems, bugs and failures no one can foresee and which you will be solving in the first couple of seasons. :)

 

Have fun thinking about it,

Litatus

[Nikon.3921]

My only concern is this, what if all the zerg/blob guilds have an alliance, paring them up in one world. Leaving the other worlds full of roaming guilds only.

[Eramonster.2718]

> @"Nikon.3921" said:

> My only concern is this, what if all the zerg/blob guilds have an alliance, paring them up in one world. Leaving the other worlds full of roaming guilds only.

 

There's still the map que. From how I view, the system works as a free transfer for coverage (plans for getting guilds for dead timezones). A smaller scale guild merging(alliance) to strengthen numbers and coverage, instead of mounting an entire server.

[Ferdoc.6429]

Well to toss out an idea I was hoping to see . What about some asymmetrical maps? for example, a map where one group can only defend and the other must attack. the defenders start out with high tier defenses and large quantity, but non replenishing, supplies at successive defensive locations. IE outlaying ring of towers that can cover one another with siege fire. further back is a stone-mist style fortress with multiple successive rings. with a main control point in the keep. Should the defenders want to, they can bring out dolyacks to move the supplies around, or just bring it all back to their main base and not leave any in the towers. The players have a set number of quality siege equipment and once those are built and used up only standard equipment remains. The siege equipment does not replenish for the defenders. Player siege equipment can not be placed / used in this map type.

 

The attackers have a small cap of supplies but these replenish over time. The cap can increase and replenishment rate increase as more defensive structures are taken and/or defensive lines are broken. There are set number of high quality siege equipment that will replenish very slowly, and a set number of standard equipment equipment that will replenish over time. New waypoints will pop up closer to the main line for the attackers as they push forward.

 

As I said before I would suggest asymmetry for this map. put the final control point off center, perhaps closer to a corner of a square map. Do not allow defenders to reclaim towers at all. Should the attackers destroy certain very hard to destroy points prevent the defenders from reclaiming some parts of the keep. reclaimed portions of the keep would require supply to rebuild certain aspects of it.

 

as a bit of final preference for this, include some mechanics that small raid teams from defenders can do to slow down the attackers. have some way of the attackers slipping in a small group of people and have them sabotage supplies or defensive structures, weak walls for a period of time what have you. Bring into this unique mechanics for us to use.

[Donari.5237]

> @"Litatus.4679" said:

> A few serious suggestions for your team discussion:

> 1) Role-Player-Problem: Use the "assign your wvw guild" menu and add the option "Non-Participant". Should get an own **non-competitive** WvW Server to explore the map without enemys, do some RP or force yourself to stay out of WvW for a season. [As there would be no fights, you might even ignore the max player on the maps and or this special server.] Remember that bug, where no one in WvW could fight each other? Perfect feature!

 

I believe you have misunderstood the RP concern. Though there have been scattered RP events in WvW servers, RPers are not fretting over losing WvW map RP. It's not a regular thing. We are fretting over the loss of server assignments meaning we have a reduced chance of randomly meeting other RPers in PvE maps, since RPers tend to cluster on a couple of servers and thus see each other a lot despite the megaserver. So the solution you propose here isn't needed. Though thank you for offering one!

[Tiawal.2351]

> @"Litatus.4679" said:

> Great idea, great opportunity. A new chance without me betraying my long-time home server ! :)

>

> A few serious suggestions for your team discussion:

> 1) Role-Player-Problem: Use the "assign your wvw guild" menu and add the option "Non-Participant". Should get an own **non-competitive** WvW Server to explore the map without enemys, do some RP or force yourself to stay out of WvW for a season. [As there would be no fights, you might even ignore the max player on the maps and or this special server.] Remember that bug, where no one in WvW could fight each other? Perfect feature!

> 2) Add another choice in the player / guild / alliance menu for "kind of communication": a) "Teamspeak", b) "Discord" c) "Mapchat only" and d) "I don´t care" and include it in the player evaluation or server distribution.

> 3) Alliance-menu: Add the choice of "conquer and drop" versus "conquer and defend" and try not to put them on the same server.

> 4) Don´t let yourself get disencouraged after the launch. There HAVE to be problems, bugs and failures no one can foresee and which you will be solving in the first couple of seasons. :)

>

> Have fun thinking about it,

> Litatus

 

Maybe all that can't be an option, just think about I pick Discord only and never want to use an AC (I guess that's "defending", but it's just example), and there can't be so many world variants. But what can be done is an evaluation of players, beyond the stats already gathered, with preferences set, would be best if done in our account options, on this forum. We could have checkboxes to pick among these:

1. I prefer fighting other players, over capturing objectives and taking care of them, or like both, or have no preferences

2. I like solo, small, mid, or large scale fights

3. I can't use any voice chat, I would use Discord only, Teamspeak only, or both

4. I want a very competitive environment, or less competitive

5. many others

 

Also each of these answers to have an extra specification, where the player can set how important is that issue: rated from 5 to 1, most important to least important.

[Dawdler.8521]

> @"Tiawal.2351" said:

> > @"Litatus.4679" said:

> > Great idea, great opportunity. A new chance without me betraying my long-time home server ! :)

> >

> > A few serious suggestions for your team discussion:

> > 1) Role-Player-Problem: Use the "assign your wvw guild" menu and add the option "Non-Participant". Should get an own **non-competitive** WvW Server to explore the map without enemys, do some RP or force yourself to stay out of WvW for a season. [As there would be no fights, you might even ignore the max player on the maps and or this special server.] Remember that bug, where no one in WvW could fight each other? Perfect feature!

> > 2) Add another choice in the player / guild / alliance menu for "kind of communication": a) "Teamspeak", b) "Discord" c) "Mapchat only" and d) "I don´t care" and include it in the player evaluation or server distribution.

> > 3) Alliance-menu: Add the choice of "conquer and drop" versus "conquer and defend" and try not to put them on the same server.

> > 4) Don´t let yourself get disencouraged after the launch. There HAVE to be problems, bugs and failures no one can foresee and which you will be solving in the first couple of seasons. :)

> >

> > Have fun thinking about it,

> > Litatus

>

> Maybe all that can't be an option, just think about I pick Discord only and never want to use an AC (I guess that's "defending", but it's just example), and there can't be so many world variants. But what can be done is an evaluation of players, beyond the stats already gathered, with preferences set, would be best if done in our account options, on this forum. We could have checkboxes to pick among these:

> 1. I prefer fighting other players, over capturing objectives and taking care of them, or like both, or have no preferences

> 2. I like solo, small, mid, or large scale fights

> 3. I can't use any voice chat, I would use Discord only, Teamspeak only, or both

> 4. I want a very competitive environment, or less competitive

> 5. many others

>

> Also each of these answers to have an extra specification, where the player can set how important is that issue: rated from 5 to 1, most important to least important.

Counter intuitive and over the top complicated.

 

This goes against the principle of WvW being what you make of it after clicking join. Its random, its exciting. Not a love site matchmaker to find partners for your specific fetishes.

 

[Tiawal.2351]

> @"Dawdler.8521" said:

 

> Counter intuitive and over the top complicated.

>

> This goes against the principle of WvW being what you make of it after clicking join. Its random, its exciting. Not a love site matchmaker to find partners for your specific fetishes.

>

 

Useful data helps creating a better player profile, and that can help making better realms & matchups. While most of those preferences can't be considered when one is placed into a world, some could come handy at times.

[sablephoenix.1593]

And how will this affect RPers? I can only see problems in this approach. How many RP guilds who interact regularly on the current server setup are going to get separated, probably permanently? How many solo or PvE focused players will no longer run into their friends while adventuring?

 

I can see advantages to this approach, admittedly... but only and exclusively for WvW, which is not even the main focus of the game as far as I can tell. Before anything like this is implemented, you had better heavily consider the impact it will have on the (majority of the) player community that doesn't WvW. This is a death knell to RP, in a game which already makes RP difficult.

[Threather.9354]

> @"sablephoenix.1593" said:

> And how will this affect RPers? I can only see problems in this approach. How many RP guilds who interact regularly on the current server setup are going to get separated, probably permanently? How many solo or PvE focused players will no longer run into their friends while adventuring?

>

> I can see advantages to this approach, admittedly... but only and exclusively for WvW, which is not even the main focus of the game as far as I can tell. Before anything like this is implemented, you had better heavily consider the impact it will have on the (majority of the) player community that doesn't WvW. This is a death knell to RP, in a game which already makes RP difficult.

 

PvE servers are megaservers now and will stay as such. Only lions arch and meta events have enough instances to split the RP server players apart. This will have almost 0 impact to PvE.

 

For WvW, it is more like it will help you RP players to make an alliance together and get to same server for free. You just need to set your rp guild to WvW guild and you will get transferred to same server. Then you can invite random RPers you meet from other servers/alliances in PvE/WvW and they get transfer with your guild for free every 8 weeks..

 

Dont forget you have at least 3 months, most likely half a year, before this thing will come live so you just need to make some kind of RP community guild and invite every RPer in it with no rules... Just in case..

 

[FrizzFreston.5290]

> @"Threather.9354" said:

> > @"sablephoenix.1593" said:

> > And how will this affect RPers? I can only see problems in this approach. How many RP guilds who interact regularly on the current server setup are going to get separated, probably permanently? How many solo or PvE focused players will no longer run into their friends while adventuring?

> >

> > I can see advantages to this approach, admittedly... but only and exclusively for WvW, which is not even the main focus of the game as far as I can tell. Before anything like this is implemented, you had better heavily consider the impact it will have on the (majority of the) player community that doesn't WvW. This is a death knell to RP, in a game which already makes RP difficult.

>

> PvE servers are megaservers now and will stay as such. Only lions arch and meta events have enough instances to split the RP server players apart. This will have almost 0 impact to PvE.

>

 

It does have impact on the RP community and PvE communities. Previous Dev quotes even said they are looking into this specific issue. Megaservers are sorted/made with server as one of the parameters.

 

Also, for these serverwide communities, like RP. It doesnt at all help making a alliance.

First because for RP stumbling upon other players outside of your small circle is probably what they like. And second, if you would need to make an alliance to get on the same server for RP but youre also interested in WvW then youre in tough luck. It basically means that RP and WvW become mutually exclusive.

 

[Roxanne.6140]

Frankly speaking and I don't care if I get infracted for this, world restructuring does not address the core of balance problems, how the fuck do you gauge a world's population. If we are relying on the same metrics meter as what it is now where Jade Quarry can be considered full for having many dead hours, then tell me how does granularizing the population help determine what is full and what is not