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Guild Wars 2: WvW Match Up Variance Detailed
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
According to a new blog on the Guild Wars 2 site, the team has been looking at the way WvW matches have been playing and have discovered that the same realms were battling week after week. In an effort to shake things up and provide more variety in challenge, the team is introducing a brand new 'variance' formula.
The first values for this allowed your world’s matchup rating to be adjusted by as much as (deviation + 40), capped at 200. This fixed the staleness, and introduced a great deal more movement between ranks. We even saw some lower-rated worlds jump up the ranks now that they weren’t tied into the same matches week after week. For a good look at the history of world ranks, see Millenium’s charts for NA or EU (variance first began on June 7, or Week 23).
The new values allow for adjustments as much as (devation * 0.45 + 10), capped at 100. In both cases, the roll is plus-or-minus these values multiplied by a random real value in the range (-1,1).
Below, you’ll find four images showing estimated chances of each world facing the others under both the old and new values. Chances were calculated by matching up the various worlds 10,000 times, using current Glicko ratings. Chances were rounded and those under 1% omitted for readability.
Read the entire blog on the Guild Wars 2 site.
Comments
Yeah shuffling around matches does not really do much. Servers have huge population imbalances which is a major issue. In WvW coverage wins and numbers win, therefore population will be the prime issue.
I appreciate them trying to add some variety playing the same team, again and again for months, doing the same fights the same times in the same places is very boring. However without equalizing the populations severs cannot really fight different servers due to huge advantages or disadvantages. The reality is there are just not enough people playing WvW to keep variety through opponents alone. Also the maps are copy and paste, boring and they have been used since launch (same for siege, objectives, and so on), there is only so much variety you can add in that situation.
That's pretty much the point. WvW - as so much in this game - is basically a zergfest, and if you have two zergs with remotely equally capable commanders and players, the bigger zerg will always win. Server population and/or interest of that population in WvW is decisive.
Futhermore some servers, like the German ones, have the sever problem that (nowadays, was different in the months after launch) almost nobody plays in the small hours, People have a RL mostly, they have to get up to go to work/school/university whatever... the can't possibly play at 4 a. m. all week, whereas e. g. the Franco-Canadians on some of the French servers are notorious for giving them a big edge over their opponents.
Playing on a German server can be frustrating. You can squeeze your enemies to pulp the entire day, tramling triple sized zergs into the dust time after time,only to see all the towers and fortresses gone when you log back in 12 h later.
So does your server get PvE bonuses when you win WvW? I remember Anet saying something about that pre-launch.
I'm trying to say this next sentence as peacefully and level-headed as I can.
"the team has been looking at the way WvW matches have been playing and have discovered that the same realms were battling week after week."
So uhm, slow bunch?
I don't mean any hostility, I just over-hoped on GW2.
Discuss. Reason. Society.
Become a Dragon. Take your world back.
It was a good attempt, that's all Ill say about that.
I enjoy gw2. I took a break, and then recently came back for the new WvW season.
What I saw when I came back was a huge shift in coverage times on certain servers.
First thing I did when I got back was look for my original spvp guild, they all had moved to a tier 1 server after being recruited with legendary precursors for the two remaining officers, and gems to cover transfer costs for the rest of the guild. Being late to the resurgence I had to pay for my own transfer, which I didn't mind because I had a free transfer left on my account.
Then it dawned on me: If a server is paying militia guilds to move to their server with gems and legendary precursors bought with RL$, isn't that technically p2w? I mean the tier 1 server now has more oceanic time coverage and 2 new commanders from my spvp guild during the 1am - 6am EST time. It just took away the fun out of it for me, not to mention the ridiculous long queue times. Needless to say I transferred to a tier 2 server in order to have fun, lesser WvW queue times, and play WvW without feeling like it was a JOB. Seriously I had to leave, the final straw was when I was told NOT to queue up on my mesmer and instead roll a Warrior for their guild tactic runs in WvW. Not because we had a lot of mesmers, but because the "meta" dictated wars/guards/necros for the strategy this new mega guild was using in WvW.
@Nevulus
Yes the meta gaming aspect of WvW at this point is huge. I assume the server your mentioning is Black Gate, they are famous for their 'war chest' and paying guilds to transfer over (and yes since numbers = win, it is basically P2W, though winning in WvW has no real value). A handful of professions are valued the rest are in general not (Hammer trains, Necro well trains) because the games very poorly balanced between professions. Some servers will wait to do golem rushes till the main guild on that time slot is doing guild events, so they face little to no opposition. There is much spying on maps for commanders, on public mumble, on twitch streams. There is often sabotage (buying wrong upgrades, wasting supply before a keep gets hit over placing of bad siege). Even on the most populated servers there is much Karma training and PvD (player vs door). Honestly it is a mess. All of which ruins it for someone who just wants to enjoy the fight, or enjoy the tactics. There really should be active GM's in place. Developers should not be playing on servers (hence picking sides) it is unprofessional or should do so anonymously. And on and on for complaints, but over the past year+ there has been very little love/care/development for these problems and I see no reason why that would change in the future. WvW as it stands is for Karma training, time/gold sink, and to try keep people busy between PvE events.
That aside looked more into this specific variance, and basically before you would play the same 3-4 servers for months/infinity. Now this will change it up to be the same 4-5 servers for months/infinity. Great improvement.
Actually JQ
It's pretty funny how much on the forums they complain about BG buying guilds, yet do the same thing. Or maybe they were just tired of BG doing it and decided "if you can't beat em, join em" and went about recruiting, who knows.
I came back to gw2 and was on Fort Aspenwood, transferred to JQ to be with my old spvp guild. Then I was offered to spy on another server and they would pay for the transfer.
That's how I got my transfer away from JQ, they paid for my transfer to spy on another server. I ended up cutting all ties and stayed on the new server because it has a great community. My few friends in JQ fully understand my decision since they are now part of a mega WvW guild on JQ and that's not my style of play.
As for fotm tactics, I understand balance is a tough issue, and there will always be fotm tactics. So now instead of a small variance of server opposition, we now have a slightly larger variance, heheh.
Another weird tactic I saw was spy account taking control of siege gear and going semi-afk so a server couldn't use it to defend. People tried to report it, but there is no system in place to do it. One server was blatant about it when their spy account forgot to de-tag their guild from their original server while going semi-afk on siege gear.
I hate to be a conspiracy theorist, but I guess Anet makes a nice amount of money from server transfers, else they would've removed server transfers while the WvW season was in play to make it semi-fair.