The Golden Shackles: Why Rewards Still Suck in GW2

TL;DR, Rewards suck, and cannot improve, because of the Gold Standard. The Gold Standard must be broken.

Heart of Thorns has finally released, after months of anticipation and a seeming promise to provide increased rewards across multiple sections of the game, while demanding more skill from the player base to acquire those rewards.

Only, rewards are less than they were before release. Far less. Amidst all the changes a consistent trend is emerging: loot still sucks.

This begs the question “why?” Why, after an expansion marketed, pitched, and executed (at least on the skill side) as “building a foundation for endgame progression,” does loot that rewards beating difficult content functionally not exist?

It all chains back to gold, and its lockstep relationship with gems and the money that buys them.

Unrewarding Rewards

Several forms of content in Heart of Thorns have been intentionally re-tuned to retain scarcity and the resulting value (read: cost) of particular items. Ultimately, it all boils down to nerfs to the rate of gained value*. Of the types I’ve seen, there are three ways that rewards have been reduced in actual value:

1. Direct Nerfs (e.g., dungeons)
2. Convoluted RNG-esque mechanisms (e.g., fractals)
3. Lack reward for success in the first place (e.g., new open world events)

*Getting all economic here, but the gist is that while gold is the main currency, items of value that a player acquires (T5/T6 crafting materials, rares, ectos, etc.) can be turned into gold by using the Trading Post. It’s all ultimately gold, and it’s all much less valuable than it was.

However, there has been a good case of reward utilized several times in the expansion: account binding the reward. Let’s go over each in turn.

Dungeons

ArenaNet was upfront about this: dungeon gold and experience, the most liquid forms of reward in dungeons (and what made them popular with a large section of the player base) was getting nerfed. Per the wiki, it’s an average 50% nerf those rewards.

It can be argued that dungeons were extremely easy for the gold reward they provided, and to an extent that was true. Which wouldn’t be that big a deal to the player base, economically speaking, were this statement not in the same paragraph announcing the nerf:

The shift in rewards is a direct representation of our focus on raids and fractals and our commitment to make them the best they can be. – John Smith

Fractals

Fractals are viewed “as our infinitely expandable, endgame version of 5-man dungeon content” by the developers. Coupled with the quote above, there is a reasonable expectation that Fractals should have gained a lot of the value that dungeons deliberately lost, with the best rewards gated around increasing difficulty.

But they didn’t. They got worse. Ascended gear drops of all flavors are massively down, and the gold reward, such that it is, all but requires a convoluted approach. And due to 10-level tiers being replaced by 3 expanding tiers of casual, core, and master, the “increasing difficulty” expectation is completely gone.

The Open World

The new zones of Heart of Thorns are maps with purpose and constant activity. While interlocked metas occur, the skill required to accomplish most events has drastically increased over the majority of original Tyria.

Just like Fractals, this builds the expectation that rewards will match the skill required. An expectation that isn’t reflected in the rewards. Instead of genuinely rare loot to align with the difficulty of organization and execution, it’s a slightly higher number of bags that may or may not provide anything noteworthy.

Of special note, if poorly represented*, is the generosity of the account bound rewards in Heart of Thorns. Success at the difficult events carries with it a proper reward. It is faster, and more worthwhile, to attempt and succeed at the hard parts than to repeat the easy things over and over. But only for account bound rewards.

*Poorly in that the number of ley line crystals awarded does not change between success and failure (Or at least didn’t when I read this post). From a crystal standpoint, it’s more intelligent to deliberately fail the event and start the meta over again then to spend a lot of time possibly failing.

Account-Bound Collections

The common thread of most of these poor rewards is their connection to the economy. Bags or not, the vast majority of bag contents dumps into the economy in the form of materials, or valuable gear.

This thread breaks down, in a positive way, the instant rewards are account bound. Take the specialization collections, where a bunch of account-bound things (and a couple of unbound) are combined to give the achieving player a cool weapon skin of the type the elite specialization unlocks*.

*This is also generally true of the legendary backpack track, the merchant rewards from mastery tracks, and other account-bound-on-acquire elements littering the expansion.

With these, a player has set in stone, but relatively simple guideposts. Acquire some items by completing specific content that’s related to the end item, and it’s yours. Minimal grind*, specified reward, and no need (nay, the inability) to jump onto the Trading Post and buy all the elements for completion.

*Can’t discount the possibility of extremely bad RNG.

Though I can’t reference any specific feedback, this is an approach much more in line with expected progression and reward systems. Put in the time to check off a few items that individually don’t take that long, and a good reward comes out the other side.

A Look Back

My first post as the Tough Love Critic was The Gold Standard. In it, I noted the problem of having total gold equivalency. In other words, balancing rewards and loot around gold’s ability to functionally buy everything.

This gold standard makes the most efficient farm the driver of the overall economy. If a player does not use the most efficient farm, or put in more time than those who do use it, they lose pace getting to the reward they want.

At the time, I said that account binding is the only way to remove the “most efficient farm” as the gatekeeper of a player’s rewards. As shown above, that is still very much true in Heart of Thorns. And it still has the negative reaction from a sizable portion of the player base that there is no sense of reward in the game.

The Unmentioned Wrench

If the gold standard removes the sense of achievement in favor of homogeneous “farm enough gold,” why is it still being held to in the “new foundation to build upon” expansion? Because as I didn’t mention in that post, gold is itself driven by gems and the money that buys them.

NOTE: The following data was pulled off of gw2spidy, using the moving average of all data, and for items only tracking sell listings. Missed dates are a result of missing data on gw2spidy that occurred for some of the gems to gold conversion data. It is not presented as a complete set of data, but as an illustrative sample. I do not have the means to scrape the data en masse, and realize that the data is not as strong as a result. I excluded data prior to January 2013 from the graphs because the economy had not settled yet. My source spreadsheet is available here.

The Weakening Gold Coin

Gold within Guild Wars 2 has been increasing since release. Generally speaking, that’s a necessity to prevent rare items from retaining practically no premium value over simply uncommon ones. Sinks to remove gold from the economy have been known to be too few for a very long time. Even the hefty 15% “TP Tax” hasn’t stopped the increase in gold cost of most high-end items in the game.

Aiming to slow down or stop inflation is a worthy goal, and if the economy was self-contained to just the game, pushing deflation, as stated by John Smith*, is just as good. This push is most clear with dungeons, but shades of it are in the various reward systems mentioned earlier.

*Stating an intent to reduce demand points to a deflation mindset. As do the phrases “adding scarcity to items that have none (and therefore no value), those items will now gain value” and “less often, but they’ll be worth much more.” Shifting the actual value proposition to the item, rather than the resource that can purchase the item (gold), is what points to deflation most clearly.

Based on a selected set of precursors (see graph), deflation is already in progress. While pre-expansion release reduction in value can be attributed to fewer people playing (no new content), the net reduction in the value of precursors is sizable over the previous year.

This deflation aspect is less clear when legendaries are considered, due to the vast number of materials, all separate “markets,” that are required for their creation:

More telling is the fact that legendary value, despite the ever-increasing amount of gold in the game and unchanging desirability of legendaries, has more or less stabilized. Some of the highest-value items in the game, driven by dozens of items, are at about the same price today as they were 4 months ago. A trend that hasn’t been replicated on the exact same items previously in Guild Wars 2‘s history.

The Strengthening Dollar

Guild Wars 2‘s economy is not self-contained. The currency exchange between gems and gold functions both as a large sink* and an interface between real money and game currency. Because it is an interface, it reflects the overall size of the in-game economy based on the value of the exchange itself:

*Gold exchanged for gems always takes money permanently out of the economy, on the order of 35% of the transaction, based on the current exchange rate.

It’s not a perfect reflection, as is visible in the massive spike at the start of September, at the tail end of the 3^rd anniversary sale. But the overall trend is up.

In other words, real money turned into gold is worth a lot more today than it was 3 years ago. At first glance, this is fine, as the in-game economy has likewise gained value at more or less the same rate.

Exchanging (Too) Favorably

Except it hasn’t:

Compared to the existing, “inflated” economy, it’s cheaper than ever to buy a legendary or precursor, and by extension any other high-cost or rare item. Gold has lost its value already against real money, on the order of 3 to 4 times today compared to January 2013.

Pair the intended deflation of the economy with the increasing value of real money, and a perverse incentive emerges: it’s easier to pay cash than farm the gold from the game itself. An equation that is swinging more and more in favor of cash.

It’s perverse because making cash more valuable is a terrific method of monetizing the game. At the same time, reducing the in-game reward rate drains a sense of progression and accomplishment. To keep the game running players have to literally get less from it.

Aye, There’s the Rub

This incentive has existed since release day, always phrased as the choice between spending time or money to acquire desired rewards.

And it works fine when gold generation stays roughly in step with the increasing value of gems. Purchasing power is functionally constant, and a player can vote with their wallet whether time or money is more important to them.

But deflating gold flips that on its head. Gems never lose their value relative to the economy, because they always cost the exact same in real money. And due to the exchange, they also hold the previous value of gold in the economy.

The worst part of this approach is that it disproportionately affects the majority of the player base, while functionally exempting a small portion.

Market Magnates and Industrial Farmers

There are two types of people who, while few, through sheer force of effort, exempt themselves from all effects of less gold available.

On the one hand are those who take the time to patiently and steadily gain money on the Trading Post, extracting money from players who are uncaring of their profit (those who fill buy orders) and impatient to receive an item now (those who fill sell orders).

Due to the percentage-based nature of Trading Post profit, “gold per hour,” a reasonably fixed metric for all types of content, doesn’t apply. With enough time, a person willing to play the economy rather than the game can have more money than they could reasonably spend.

On the other hand are those that find the most efficient farm in the game at a given point in time, and farm it up until another farm replaces it. Rather than the farming necessarily being toward the typical goal of an item, it’s for the goal of having as much gold as possible. For some, that is enough.

Because of this, these “industrial farmers” outpace the rate of gold gain of all but market magnates. When the economy rebalances around the gold gain of the median, everything is cheaper for them. And the longer they don’t “cash in” to an item, the greater the gap between their raw wealth and the items they may want.

Playing (Only) for Fun

High-end rewards don’t interest everybody. Some people are happy with their “cheap but close” skins, and still others play for the enjoyment of playing the game, no reward required. Their playtime might be short, their “efficiency” nonexistent, but they don’t care. If they end up with a high-end reward as a goal, they’ll be more than happy to stick it out for the extreme long term.

These people will almost never be affected by major changes to the overall economy, damaging or otherwise. If it takes longer to get something, they might not even notice.

The Majority Middle

Between these two extremes is everyone else. This includes those who like investing time, want rewards, enjoy playing the content, and all manner of other descriptors. This is the majority of players that not just play the game, but are interested in spending money on it.

And these are the people who are always affected by economic changes, who have to constantly weigh the time and money choice. They also notice when the economy shifts the goalposts on them, moving a previously difficult reward further away. They are simultaneously the hardest to please, and the most lucrative to do so.

The reliance on gold for nearly all rewards, and the intended decreased rate of getting said gold, combines to shackle the majority of the player base to boring rewards that take far too long to turn into something they want.

Breaking the Shackles

The Gold Standard cannot continue to be the way that rewards, the economy, and most importantly, the exchange interact. It reduces the sense of reward to a gold grind, a fact all the more evident (and grating) in a deflating economy where gold now is harder to get than gold acquired previously*. Furthermore, it makes the choice between time or money a false one for many, as money is far more efficient.

*This is its own problem that I could go on at length for, but this post is long enough.

At the same time, simply ending the Gold Standard, when it undergirds the entire economic foundation of the game, will not work. There are three ways to go about it, two with disadvantages for either players or developers. The third I believe strikes a center balance that most people can be satisfied with.

Bind it All Up

My original solution to the Gold Standard was to increase the amount of account-bound options for similar, high-value items. The example I gave of precursor crafting released…with all old precursors sellable. This removes any possibility of it breaking the Gold Standard, especially since it required making sure the collection-gained precursors had equivalent cost to avoid crashing the RNG-gained precursor market.

This solution can be extended, rather than avoided: account bind everything that’s not simply high value for high value (e.g., Black Lion weapon skins), but has a value. This would include legendaries and precursors, but also prestige skins acquired by doing specific content*, like Aetherpath weapons.

*Or having lots of money to afford the exorbitant costs.

To an extent, this approach is already coming into the game en masse, with new precursors (and legendaries) account bound from the start, and most of the weapon and armor sets within Heart of Thorns attached to specific achievements. Not to mention the Ambrite weapons of Dry Top and Carapace/Luminescent armor of the Silverwastes.

However, saying the “old content,” which is still a large part of the game, has to stay under a bad reward scheme because it’s always been that way, continues to keep the player base shackled. The long term health of the game can’t wait until enough new, better-crafted content is around to offset the original, poorly rewarding content. The original game needs a fresh start as well.

This approach favors players. Sure, many people will get a raw deal by having to have gotten something “when it was harder,” but never changing anything because people might get angry is a recipe to satisfying nobody at all.

On the other hand, it reduces a major incentive to buy gold for some of the well-off among us: you can’t buy pretty much everything with a sufficient deposit of dinero. This could reduce the amount of money the gemstore generates, but it could also not affect it as much if players continue to want Black Lion skins and other gemstore-based cosmetics.

Unbound Generation

The Gold Standard relies on gold maintaining essential parity to the real money that can purchase it. As previously covered, switching to a deflation approach to the economy prevents that from happening, and actively amplifies a growing disparity already present before deflation became a priority.

In this approach, simply reverse the intent to deflate. Shift rewards where they are desired by ArenaNet, which based on communication is Fractals, raids, and open-world challenging content like Heart of Thorns has in spades.

This keeps things reasonably balanced between gems and gold, and since the mentioned forms of content are major priorities, won’t create a disconnect between the most rewarding content and what’s getting development love.

The downside is on the players’ end. Over time, the inflation inherent in this will make players who aren’t willing to jump on the “new content” bandwagon unable to catch up. Real money turned into gold will always retain its value, so ArenaNet doesn’t “lose” income with this approach. This isn’t “solving” the Gold Standard so much as mitigating its effects.

Data-Driven Economic Honesty

NOTE: This is a greater scope, but shorter version of Data-Driven Dungeon Rewards.

Rewards are more or less static for all forms of content. The only difference is how favorable RNG is. This stands in marked contrast to the rest of the game, where everything scales to match the number of people participating.

If the point of economic control is to balance gold vs. real money, static rewards will not work. A couple years of badly-balanced dungeon gold rewards is proof enough. Static rewards mean there’s a most efficient farm that isn’t going anywhere short of specific, patched changes to nerf that farm, or buff another. The update history of Guild Wars 2 is littered with such changes.

Instead, convert all forms of direct reward (e.g., event credit, dungeon completion) to a dynamic system, based on two forms of data: average time required to complete (difficulty), and number of times completed (popularity). These work together as two axes on a graph, with the line between being reward gained. A highly popular, fast event will reward much less than a rarely completed, slow event.

For each type of content, minimum and maximum ranges of reward should be defined. Then, using the data generated from the previous time period (I suggest weekly), adjust specific rewards to be a percentage of the range between minimum and maximum. So something at 90% reward when the event can reward between 1s and 5s would render 4.6s at completion*.

*Ideally, all results from completing content, to include karma, experience, gold, special currency, and quality and number of items, would be affected by the dynamic system.

A data-driven system like this is self-balancing. As players figure out the most efficient farm for a particular kind of content, they’ll mob it, increasing the popularity, decreasing its average time to complete, and dropping its reward next week. Then the cycle repeats on something different. With modest data analysis, what’s rewarding from week to week can be something different, with difficult-by-design events always getting top billing.

Further, it rewards explorers who find that out of the way event, or that rarely-completed mini dungeon. Because almost nobody does it, their payoff for finding the outer edges is way higher. It fixes Fractals because higher scales will take longer to complete and be done by fewer people, rendering a higher reward on its own.

It’s also easy to modify. To adjust how much the economy is growing, or shrinking, all that needs to be done is adjust the minimum and maximum reward ranges. Data analysis will readily create a picture of where the average reward is, and whether it’s above or below where the ultimate goals are.

A system like this is a win for developers and players alike. The out-of-whack reward curve gets dynamically fixed, and “problem child” farms either get balanced by the system itself, or softly nerfed while keeping other areas in line. Players get to experience the vast majority of the world ArenaNet has created, and developers have near-assurance that few parts of the world will be completely ignored because they “aren’t rewarding.”

Conclusion

Heart of Thorns was intended as a new foundation for Guild Wars 2. Most systems got updates or outright overhauls because of the expansion. The lone exception is the Gold Standard-based economy and the poor rewards that come along with it. This won’t work for a long-term foundation.

Instead, shifting off of the Gold Standard is desperately needed. Rewards still aren’t rewarding, and by intention are supposed to be less rewarding post-release. While those with tons of gold, or no care for it, aren’t being affected, the majority of the player base is.

The shackles need to be thrown off, and the lack of reward replaced. This can be done by account-binding high-value items, by reversing the deflation approach, or most ideally, dynamically adjusting the entire game’s rewards based on how people complete the content.

Implementing Alliances (Part 8)

The alliance system that I have proposed over the past week is a massive change from the existing server system. This begs the obvious question: how to move from servers to alliances? To tie this series up, here’s what I suggest.

NOTE: The following order presumes that the infrastructure and back-end to implement alliances has been built, and all that remains is to transition.

Step 1: Servers into Mercenaries

At the start of a week’s match, a switch is flipped that turns all existing server matches (tiers 1-8/9) into mercenary-based matches. For sake of understanding, each of these matches is named based on the old servers that were a part of it. Players are all considered mercenaries, and can freely join any match with the same restrictions as outlined in Part 4.

Advantage

Having a “match selection” mechanic in place before alliance matches even happen removes a technical hurdle early on in the process, and gets players used to the new way of entering matches before the ladder activates.

Step 2: Open Alliance Registration

Ideally happening at the same time everyone becomes mercenaries, either an in-game interface (more convenient) or official website (could be faster to develop) launches, allowing guild leaders to register an alliance. This should have a few simple administration functions:

1. Can start a new alliance, including name and description
2. Can invite other guilds
3. Can kick other guilds

The ability to kick can be implemented several ways, perhaps the alliance leader gets to do so, majority vote chooses, or the alliance leader can delegate kick authority.

The website should also have a list of registered alliances and their member guilds, allowing anyone to see who’s out there.

Requirement

Alliances can’t work unless there’s someplace to sign up, as well as somewhere to see who’s organized together. Opening registration is a mandatory part of making that a reality.

Step 3: Start the Alliance Ladder

After a couple of weeks of signups, or an adequate number of alliances has signed up (I suggest 12 or more), alliances are pitted against each other based on raw membership count. For each alliance match that starts, one of the 8-9 mercenary matches deactivates until there are none. Mercenary matches after that point are based on the demand of WvW beyond the alliance matches (see again Part 4).

These initial ladder matchups should run on a fresh algorithm (similar to the Glicko resets that happened early in Guild Wars 2‘s release), with minor weighting given to ratings to account for population differences. This reduces the likelihood of a big fights-focused, 3,000-man alliance from losing to two other similar ones, and facing a roaming-focused, 200-man alliance the next week.

Perhaps to help with settling ratings out quicker, matches could be 2-3 days long each, rather than a single week. If so, 3 day matches should be on the weekends, with two 2-day matches during the week to reflect similar population conditions.

Advantage

Population is a loose determiner of alliance strength, and with the flexibility of alliance size inherent in the setup (1-5000 people), can also be used by alliance members to “tilt the scale” toward a matchup they’re more interested in playing.

Step 4: The First Season

Once ratings have settled down (low volatility on the alliances), kick off the first season, pulling together groups of 6 and 9 alliances into leagues and organizing a format around them. This is virtually identical to how the previous 3 tournaments functioned, but takes into account the dynamic nature of alliances.

Step 5: Maintain

And that’s it. In four steps, WvW has fully transitioned from a server-based system to the new alliance-based system, with a consistent ladder and regular seasons.

Conclusion

Alliances are the best way to move forward with World vs. World. They’re not perfect, and they won’t satisfy everyone, but giving players the tools to self-organize and letting them compete on their terms best fits the competitive community that the mode has always fostered.

Further, by implementing alliances, mercenaries, and updated and prestigious rewards, ArenaNet can take a step back from WvW entirely. With minor course corrections and adjustments, an alliance system can be self-regulating and self-sustaining. It can reduce developer overhead (and player rage at WvW being ignored) tremendously.

On one level, alliances as I’ve proposed are a terrible idea. It relinquishes structural control over what players do, and if they destroy the game mode by their actions, the blame will still fall on the developer.

But any such destruction will be sudden and abrupt. WvW has been dying for years now, with activity dropping lower and lower, and its veterans getting more and more bitter over what they love being so utterly ignored.

It’s pretty much at the point of ArenaNet having nothing to lose by attempting something as radical as alliances, even if it fails. Players have been asking for it for years, guilds have left for other games over its lack, and it is far stronger than the server system ever can be. Take the chance, and make something amazing.

The Alliances Series

1. Putting Guilds Back into Guild Wars: WvW Alliances
2. Unbalanceable Problems: Why the Server System Cannot Work
3. Heart and Soul: The Guilds of World vs. World
4. The Case for WvW Alliances
5. The Alliance Structure: Sidestepping the Problems
6. The Pros and Cons of WvW Alliances
7. Rewarding the Competition
8. Implementing Alliances

Rewarding the Competition (Part 7)

World vs. World rewards suck. While changing elements of the game mode (like defense and extended siege) to incorporate rewards will help, rewards across the board need a serious overhaul. With the formalized structure of alliances, providing rewards that are both prestigious and useful should be much easier to accomplish than in the old server system.

This can be accomplished by providing different rewards for three sets of players: individual WvW players, alliance members, and tournament winners. In concert, WvW can be rewarding for many more than simply those who enjoy the experience alone.

Individual Rewards

Individual rewards are the trickiest ones to execute on, because loot rewards have to weigh exploitation against proper reward. Karma trains and other forms of farming are already common, so all of the rewards below function outside of the Gold Standard as much as possible.

Also important in the alliance system is keeping individual reward as similar as possible between mercenaries and alliance members. Picking an alliance (or not) is a choice, and individual rewards should not bias toward either side of that choice. The rewards below work for both mercenaries and alliance members.

Ditch WvW Rank-Up and Bonus Chests

These chests are terrible loot. While the small possibility of exotic and ascended drops exists, it functions as a fancy reminder of how much the Gold Standard makes the average loot complete garbage. It doesn’t help that they were added to bring more loot to WvW, and the mode still pales in comparison to a few minutes in PvE.

Adopt a system similar to Fractals, where some amount of tokens (relative to level attained) is dispensed in addition to account-bound valuable extras. Tokens can be accrued for acquiring WvW-exclusive skins, armor, infusions, etc., or there’s a small chance (player-based small, not community-based small) of getting any of those with the rank-up.

Skins in this case don’t necessarily have to be weapons and armor, but can be special siege skins, or reskinning the NPCs of an owned objective, or altering the looks of projectiles fired from manned siege. The key with skins is offering power-agnostic ways of letting players show off that they’ve been out on the fields of war.

Add Weekly Rewards

One of the persistent issues with rewards is the difficulty of measuring participation. In an alliance-based system, simply saying “they spent time in the current match” doesn’t work for participation. Mercenaries can be anywhere, contributing in a dozen different matches in small, but helpful ways.

Another problem with “they zoned into WvW” is that it requires no actual participation by a player*. As a result, rewards have to be mediocre or people doing practically nothing can net something awesome.

*This is based on my anecdotal evidence of times where I only logged in for maybe a few minutes, and still picked up a bonus chest at the end of the match. I looked on the wiki but didn’t see any mention of how much participation is actually required. Still, the bar is far too low.

Instead, implement weekly rewards similar to the existing dailies (dolyaks slapped, towers captured, players killed, etc.), with 3 tiers of each type. Achieving a tier gives a small reward, and capping a type out (all 3 tiers) gives a larger reward.

With a weekly, tiered reward system, participation can be readily measured. Someone with 3 total tiers achieved (of 21, to give an example) has minorly participated in WvW. Someone with 15 has heavily participated.

When a match ends, individuals can be given rewards that line up with their level of participation. Rather than having to go with the lowest common (unabuseable) denominator, players get an extra bonus that matches how much they dedicated.

Build Rewards into Achievement Tiers

While WvW achievements are getting a long-overdue overhaul with the launch of Heart of Thorns, they could also benefit from additional rewards when each tier is achieved. This gives the feeling of progress while working toward intentionally long-term goals beyond “more AP.”

Add Exclusive Rewards to WvW Rank

Right now, any WvW Rank past 1,390, when all abilities are maxed out, is immaterial. With Heart of Thorns, the points required to max is going down. Allies can’t see ranks, and enemies end up using high-rank titles as an excuse to single out and remove specific players from the fight (typically the enemy commander).

While I’m sure the original intent with ranks was to avoid elitism (“you’re just an Assaulter, you don’t know squat”), making ranks purely a way for enemies to see more than “<Enemy Server> Invader” isn’t a good solution either.

Instead, give players the option to show their title, similar to the dozens of other ones PvE has been showered with through Living World. They can only show their currently attained rank, and not any ones below it.

Also, rank should unlock the ability to pick up different, special rewards. While a Soldier might only have the stock skins to pick from, a Silver General could pick up silver-plated siege. This gives prestige to the rank beyond simply the title of it, and allows players to show it off in ways that don’t affect power balance.

Alliance Rewards

Alliances are designed around competition and hardcore players pulling out all the stops to achieve victory. As such, all alliance rewards should focus on the prestige and glory of victory. And only victory.

For Alliance Members

Winning a match gives a small amount of a unique currency to alliance members. Similar to WvW Tournament Tokens, the rewards available can vary from simple, but unique trinkets, to exclusive siege skins, weapons, and armor. They could also work toward buying a Victor finisher as a capstone goal.

For Alliance Guilds

Guilds gain the ability to display a victory banner in their halls with their alliance’s first win. The banner gets more and more exquisite (or perhaps splits into multiple decorations) with each victory. Accruing enough wins could unlock new decoration sets and special guild siege skins based on their prestige.

Tournament Victory

Finally, seasons and the tournaments thereof need to have even higher prestige. Victors have consistently proven they’re better than their opponents, and should be recognized on that level.

For alliance members, the existing tournament token system is fairly close to ideal, and should be co-opted for the alliance system*.

*Though I’d argue that Hero’s and Mistforged Hero’s weapons should be converted to ladder victory rewards and new skins crafted for tournaments.

For the alliance itself, unique guild hall victory banners are crafted for each tournament, and awarded to the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd of each league, with a mention of which league they were in. Tournament placement can also apply a sizable amount of wins to each guild’s victory tally when it comes to additional decorations.

Conclusion

Combining all of these ideas creates a more rewarding system that can be tailored to match participation against rewards without having to fight with the Gold Standard. More importantly, it creates a place where prestige and straight-up bragging rights are achievable, without providing one iota of power advantage to the victors.

Now that I’ve addressed rewards, one thing remains: how could ArenaNet move from the existing server system to an alliance system? How can that transition be kept as smooth as possible? I’ll conclude the series by answering both of these questions.

The Alliances Series

1. Putting Guilds Back into Guild Wars: WvW Alliances
2. Unbalanceable Problems: Why the Server System Cannot Work
3. Heart and Soul: The Guilds of World vs. World
4. The Case for WvW Alliances
5. The Alliance Structure: Sidestepping the Problems
6. The Pros and Cons of WvW Alliances
7. Rewarding the Competition
8. Implementing Alliances

The Pros and Cons of WvW Alliances (Part 6)

An alliance system for World vs. World is a massive overhaul of the existing server system. But what it provides to the longevity and stability of the mode cannot be understated. For every disadvantage, far stronger advantages are present.

Advantages for the Playerbase

The alliance system strikes a balance between giving hardcore players something to fight for, amongst like-minded people, and allowing more casual players the flexibility to find what they enjoy.

Caters to the Hardcore

First and foremost, alliances provide a simple structure for consistent competition. Hardcore players want the excitement of facing off against a difficult foe, and proving victorious. While karma-training might provide lots of loot, it’s a pale shadow of the joy of beating an equal.

Second, they create asymmetric balance by reducing the amount of imbalance present in the existing, tier-constrained system. Add in mercenaries, and being provided with an equal amount of players to prosecute the war effort is much closer to a reality.

Third, hardcore players get to pick their overall meta. Alliances are flexible, allowing players to organize into whatever size and philosophy they want. Then like-minded alliances end up fighting each other, creating competition at multiple levels, far more than the current “only in the high tiers” server system.

Does not exclude Casuals

Mercenaries, those unaffiliated with an alliance, get to pick their match each and every week. They even get to change matches within a week, dabbling in a siege-based meta one night, and a fight-focused one the next. And if the alliance-based matches are of no interest, they can queue into the free-for-all of a mercenary-only matchup.

And since mercenaries augment existing matches, while giving priority to alliance members, their presence is more often helpful than harmful. No more “randoms clogging the queues” or “the fairweathers went home” complaints on map chat*.

*And if an alliance has fairweathering issues, that can be solved by restructuring the guilds within. No more blaming people who have no stake in the matter.

Creates a Smooth Transition from one to the other

The major advantage of registered alliances is that all member guilds and alliances are known by the player base at large. This allows alliance members to know who the competition is, and gives mercenaries the ability to know who they are fighting with.

Any given mercenary can spend time over the course of a match alongside a guild, learning from them and seeing how they operate. And if said mercenary is so inclined, join that guild and enter the meta and community he prefers.

Mercenaries can also never commit to an alliance, reaping the reward of playing whatever meta interests them at the time, all while not getting in the way of those who know what they like. Mercenaries and alliance members alike get to spend time surrounded by those who enjoy the same things.

Advantages for Developers

Removes the overhead of servers

Named servers only exist, and only matter, because of WvW. Ever since April 2014 when megaserver rolled out to PvE and structured PvP, WvW has come off as the oddball. While elsewhere players can enjoy the game with whoever they want to, in WvW it matters where specifically you are from.

Alliances remove the last reason to keep named, specific servers around. Playing with people is either a simple matter of partying up and joining the same match, or joining the same guild they’re in. Rather than suddenly being unable to play with each other, WvW will act very much like the rest of the game.

Enables easy adjustments based on demand

The alliance system avoids the square peg that server tiers have been compared to the round hole of WvW player interest. Rather than having to weigh server mergers to create “the right amount” of people against a sudden influx of players, alliances make it dynamic.

However many alliances there are determines the amount of WvW going on. While mercenary matches could potentially be a large overhead over the number of alliances, the hardcore player base has always put in the lion’s share of time in WvW. The amount of activity they have is a solid barometer for how many servers should be apportioned for WvW*.

*Before you all skewer me with pitchforks, I mean hardcore in the time spent sense. Those who spend more time in WvW will be more affected by large changes than those who spend less, by definition. Also, the amount of effort and time that the hardcore want to spend on an alliance system will likely reflect the amount of time casual players will want to spend.

Stronger, More Useful Metrics

Alliances also create a much better situation for using metrics. Rather than having to extrapolate hardcore, casual, and other types of players based on overall population numbers, the alliance member/mercenary distinction creates much better data.

Also, the differing metas among matches can show the popularity of certain styles of play. Players can choose what they want to play, and the data will show that.

Simpler ground for experimentation

Alliances are known quantities. Rather than having to push a change or event to every server, whether or not it’s good for them, ArenaNet gets the flexibility to pick specific alliances for test-driving a change, or activating an event designed to switch up a given meta.

Taking it a step further, the developers can straight-up ask alliances “hey, we’re considering doing this, would you mind testing it in your next match?” Put it to a poll, using the guild membership rosters to limit who votes. Add in a minor reward as a “thank you” for testing, like additional wXP gain or a nice piece of gear.

Mercenary matches could also be used explicitly as test servers. One match could be a “beta” server that anyone could join, providing a test within the live environment without forcing those uninterested in testing to participate as well.

Finally, having changed matches occurring in tandem with unchanged matches provides terrific grounds for comparison. WvW changes based on a host of different factors, and seeing both match types at the same time controls for many of them, making the effect of the changes much clearer.

Creates the means to be “hands-off”

Above all, an alliance-based system, despite its upfront effort, drastically reduces the amount of upkeep ArenaNet has to do to keep WvW going. Rather than screaming for “new content” every single day, players will have the power to create new situations and new approaches with alliances.

“New content” has always been a bandage seeking to make up for the lack of balance and competition in WvW. Alliances patch up a lot of the balance and competition, reducing the need for something new*.

*Though no one is opposed to new content. It just doesn’t have to happen every single month for WvW players to be happy.

WvW has always been about communities competing against each other in a structured environment. Alliances allow communities to do that, on their own terms. No longer does ArenaNet have to spend time trying to change up all of WvW to fix issues that only happen in certain parts of it.

The Prime Disadvantage

Before I get to any other disadvantages, alliances are player-created, player-managed, player-driven. As such, it can go terribly, terribly wrong. Consider these two examples of alliances going poorly:

Too Few Alliances

If there are too few alliances for the styles of play, hardcore players continue to have unavoidable mentality conflicts. Far from allowing alliance members the flexibility to pick their own meta, it will replicate the existing problems in the middle tiers of some people wanting much different things than others.

Likewise, there won’t be enough alliance matches to allow mercenaries to augment. They could very well overwhelm the alliance itself, purely because there aren’t enough alliance members to set the tone.

Stacking Servers Alliances

And if players stack a single alliance, or very few, trying to create an unstoppable juggernaut, competition vanishes. The existing situation of the vast majority of hardcore players concentrated on a few servers, all battling with queues amongst each other, will return.

Mercenary players will constantly be added to massively underdog alliances, keeping them on the back foot each and every time they load in and lowering their interest. Nobody likes always losing, so they will stop queueing into alliance matches, perhaps favoring ultimately meaningless, but even, mercenary matches.

Disadvantages

Removes the Ease of Servers

Servers are simple, almost foolproof, from a “loading in and fighting now” approach. A player, no matter what server he is on, can pull up the WvW panel, click a map, and be fighting instantly. It’s delightfully uncomplicated.

With alliances, either the player is loading into a specific match as before (happens to be in an alliance guild), or has to pick what match to be in. For a newcomer, that’s a fairly tall order and can stop people before they even start.

To alleviate this side of things, match selection for new players should be automatic for the first few times. Put them where most of their guildmates are, or where their friends or party is, with no prompting. This keeps things simple for newcomers, but retains the flexibility for those with more experience.

Separates Players into Two Explicit Classes

In the server system, players are in the system’s eyes perfectly equal. No one is more important than another; only server choice matters.

Alliances separate players into alliance members and mercenaries, giving specific advantages to each, but not treating them the same. The “bump” aspect of alliance matches, explicitly places alliance members above mercenaries.

This stings, especially when it’s a systemically required difference. For all the advantages of competition, dynamic balancing, and mercenary flexibility, knowing that an alliance member can give a mercenary the boot doesn’t feel good.

The “bump” could be completely removed in implementation. This keeps two classes, but once they’re in a match they’re equal. My concept with bringing in a “bump” aspect is to avoid the opposite of the advantage above: alliance members kept from their only match griping about having to wait for randoms.

Removes Server Culture

Even if server culture isn’t as strong as it could be, it still exists. Switching to an alliance-based system removes name-based culture in one fell swoop, forcing members of those servers to reorganize into an alliance to maintain the culture they have.

This is unavoidable, and while a change to alliances could be broadcasted well in advance, people will still be caught offguard, and very unhappy about losing their server that they’ve been a part of for a long time*.

*I would argue that to make an omelette you’ve gotta break a few eggs, but that doesn’t change the fact that someone’s egg can be very precious to them, unbroken.

Conclusion

Alliances cannot work without the conscious, direct, and intentional effort by the hardcore WvW player base to make it happen. It’s taking all of the tools of community creation and creating competition and giving them squarely to players. It’s a big challenge, and it can very well backfire and kill WvW forever, but if players rise to it, the result will be amazing.

And while alliances do have their downsides, what they provide to both players and ArenaNet is much better than what the existing server system can provide.

As stated earlier, switching to an alliance-based system provides an ideal opportunity to update and enhance rewards. Rather than matches being meaningless, tomorrow I will lay out a possible way to adjust rewards based on the new system.

The Alliances Series

1. Putting Guilds Back into Guild Wars: WvW Alliances
2. Unbalanceable Problems: Why the Server System Cannot Work
3. Heart and Soul: The Guilds of World vs. World
4. The Case for WvW Alliances
5. The Alliance Structure: Sidestepping the Problems
6. The Pros and Cons of WvW Alliances
7. Rewarding the Competition
8. Implementing Alliances

The Alliance Structure: Sidestepping the Problems (Part 5)

Alliances neatly sidestep the problems that have plagued World vs. World since its inception, either eliminating them or reducing their effects. Consider the following problems highlighted in parts two and three.

Population Shifts

In an alliance-based system, drastic population shifts are less catastrophic due to alliances and players being locked to the match they started the week within. Any shifts have to wait until the match is over.

Fairweathering is by nature less likely because many alliances are the hardcore backbone that wants to play WvW. Alliance size determines initial place within the ladder, with roughly equal alliances facing each other*.

*More on this in Part 8.

There is still the possibility of alliances of equal power that don’t evenly divide by 3. This is where mercenaries come in. While they can possibly imbalance, or “overload” a given matchup, decent load balancing will funnel extra players to the alliance(s) at a disadvantage. Population will be dynamically shifted into a balance, even if alliances themselves aren’t.

Within seasons, designated victor situations will be harder to create. For one, no one can bandwagon the frontrunner after the season starts due to match lock. For two, alliances can only have 10 guilds. There is an upper bound limit for how much dogpiling people can do, and shuffling players and guilds around makes bandwagoning much more difficult.

Finally, the transfer meta disappears over time. Alliances provide players the choice of who they fight alongside, and the resulting style of play. Creating the “ideal team” is within a group’s grasp from day one. And of course the inevitable spike of activity in WvW due to the large overhaul that an alliance system would create.

Differences in Mentality

As stated above, alliances pick their style of play. Those who want to play “for the fights” can self-organize into alliances designed to beat the snot out of each other week in and week out. Likewise, PPTers stack the strength of their strategy up against each other.

However, an alliance-based system does not address the scoring system weakness of nightcapping. While alliances and mercenaries in concert can greatly reduce imbalances, players online during off-peak time remain more important to the score than those online during primetime.

Pride Issues

Alliances replace servers, in their entirety. Thus, the disconnect among “server pride,” “guild pride,” and rewards vanishes. Anyone within an alliance knows exactly who they fight with. While guilds and guild members might shift, alliances are deliberately formed as a team that servers only occasionally pulled off.

And while this system’s structure doesn’t address the meaninglessness of victory and defending, the sea change it ushers in provides an ideal opportunity to shift the rewards scheme completely*.

*I’ll go into more detail on this in part 7.

The Unimportance of Guilds

Solved. Alliances are explicitly made up of guilds, and a fixed number of them. The core structure of WvW is based around what was its heart and soul in the first place. Mercenaries may come and go night by night, but alliances and the guilds within them stand at the very center.

Conclusion

But alliances provide much more than simply sidestepping the old server system’s problems. While there is the possibility of things not working out as well, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. Which I’ll delve into in the next post.

The Alliances Series

1. Putting Guilds Back into Guild Wars: WvW Alliances
2. Unbalanceable Problems: Why the Server System Cannot Work
3. Heart and Soul: The Guilds of World vs. World
4. The Case for WvW Alliances
5. The Alliance Structure: Sidestepping the Problems
6. The Pros and Cons of WvW Alliances
7. Rewarding the Competition
8. Implementing Alliances

The Case for WvW Alliances (Part 4)

World vs. World needs major changes, and while the recent announcement of WvW upgrade changes (and associated guild upgrades) could be a part of that, it doesn’t address the structural issues of WvW as a whole.

To recap on why, consider the unbalanceable problems already present in the mode. They’re the same problems that have existed for years, and no number of upgrades, maps, or similar feature changes are going to fix them.

Ultimately, the problems are present due to the focus on servers, a fluid collection of guilds and players, rather than the actual core of the mode, guilds themselves. For all the advantages guilds provide, including WvW’s very lifeblood, they have far too little focus.

Enter: The Alliance

Alliances, as I will present them, aim to reduce (or outright eliminate) the structural problems that WvW suffers from, and provide a system that caters to both the hardcore and the casual player of WvW.

Alliances have three facets: a maximum of 10 guilds, a consistent ladder, and regular seasons.

Maximum of 10 Guilds

Alliances can be of any size, up to a limit of 10 guilds. Guild membership limits functionally set the maximum size of an alliance. In other words, an alliance can have anywhere between 1 and 5000 people in it. While on the face of it, this sounds hopelessly imbalanced, hold that thought.

Every alliance needs to register, with any member guild starting the alliance and inviting the other guilds into it. This could either be done on a website (easier to implement), or in game (easier to utilize).

Guilds not within a registered alliance are considered mercenary guilds. More on that later.

Consistent Ladder

The existing server-based system shows a consistent ladder, but limited to only 8 (or 9, in EU) tiers. Simply put, matches will always pit 3 alliances against each other. However, the number of matches dynamically changes based on the number of alliances present. For example, if there are only 9 alliances, only 3 matches are available, but if there are 42 alliances, 14 matches will happen.

This dynamic expansion allows for alliances to create their own experiences. Smaller alliances that want to do small-group tactics, roaming, and the like, will be able to exist, without being pressured by the fixed number of matches into zerg tactics. And of course, Tier 1-type matches with masses of players capping out every map will also exist.

If there isn’t an evenly divisible number of alliances, the 1 or 2 “extra” are considered mercenaries as well. “Extra” is determined by age of alliance; the newest alliances are mercenaries.

The ladder itself can retain a Glicko-based rating system, with specific adjustments made for the possibility of alliances collapsing, or several alliances forming from match to match.

Once a match starts, an alliance and all its member guilds are locked to that match until it ends. Even if a guild moves to another alliance, it won’t move to the new alliance until the next match begins. This is critical for balance and reducing population-jumping exploit scenarios.

Likewise, the players in each guild are match-locked. If they move guilds during the week, they don’t change who they fight for until the next match.

EDIT: Multiple Memberships and Alliances

Since players can have as many as 5 different guild memberships, there is the possibility of being a member of multiple alliance-affiliated guilds. For balance, a player can only participate in one alliance match. As such, a player with multiple guild memberships has to note which one they fight for week to week.

Similar to the match lock, if a player changes their fighting guild during the week, it doesn’t change their match until the start of the next one.

This could be implemented as either the guild they are representing at the time of reset, or a specific checkbox added to the guild UI.

Regular Seasons

Seasons are a great idea at their core, but they have always stung due to population imbalances that trump competition. Overall, the point of having regular seasons (perhaps, twice a year in spring and fall) is to create competition beyond the typical ladder matches. League size should adjust based on the number of alliances present, with overall 6-9 alliances being in each league.

Season-based rewards should be a mix of goodies for all players of WvW, and prestige-based rewards exclusively available to alliances and their members. To steal an example from the previous seasons, Mistborn Hero’s weapons for all players, and finishers and guild hall decorations for alliances.

Once a season starts, all alliance guilds are locked to that particular alliance (and their matches) for the duration. Members, however, retain a match-based lock.

All three of these aspects create a solid environment for hardcore, organized WvW play. Further, it’s play not just for maximum-population alliances, but also deliberately smaller ones.

But what about people who like dabbling in WvW, or don’t want the commitment of signing up for an alliance?

Mercenaries: The Fighting Reserve

Mercenaries augment alliance matches. They also provide a system for non-hardcore players to enjoy WvW without forcing them into Edge of the Mists. Anyone not in an alliance at the beginning of the match is considered a mercenary*.

*As noted above, guilds not within alliances, and alliances that are “extra” are also considered mercenaries.

Whenever a mercenary player queues into WvW, they are given an option of which match to play. Upon picking a match, the server compares population numbers for each alliance and slots that player into the least-populated alliance. Once selected, that player stays with that alliance for the remainder of the match.

This sounds restrictive, but a mercenary has the choice of every match being played. Potentially, this can include “free for all” sorts of matches similar to Edge of the Mists where mercenaries are fighting against each other*.

*One aspect to consider is how mercenary match locking will work with guilds and parties. One possibility is having the first person in a guild to queue in to a match locking all other guildmates, whether or not they queue into WvW. Another is less ideal, but maybe unavoidable: each person gets slotted by the balancing algorithm, regardless of affiliation. This leads to players getting separated from their friends, but is simpler to balance.

However, alliance members hold priority to queue into their matches. This means that if a map is capped and there are mercenaries within that map, an alliance member queueing in “bumps” a mercenary out.

Bumping should not be instantaneous. Rather, all mercenaries not in combat with enemy players when a “bump” signal is sent will get an option to switch map voluntarily for 30 seconds (perhaps with a minor wXP bonus for doing so). If no one volunteers, one is selected at random and given a 5 minute timer before they are removed from the map. If the selected mercenary dies, they are kept from reviving or waypointing, and told to switch.*

*Also, if more than one volunteers, they all get the bonus.

This gives priority to alliance members to decide their own match, but prevents mercenaries actively engaged in fighting from getting an unwelcome zone back to Lion’s Arch.

Mercenary Matches

Mercenary matches function similarly to the existing Edge of the Mists: a free-for-all set of maps that have no bearing on an alliance’s score. The difference is that while Edge of the Mists can create (and destroy) infinite copies, mercenary matches should be restricted to a small percentage of active alliance matches and persist throughout the week. This provides an incentive to seek alliance matches, as well as prevents ghost maps from happening.

Aside: Population Balancing Data Analysis

Mercenaries present a unique challenge and opportunity. Ideally, they function as population balancers, filling in minor gaps in coverage or capability, while still leaving the onus on each alliance to show up and win over their opponents.

But to do that well requires capturing and analyzing data of both alliance and mercenary activity. Which mercenaries go to which alliance is a very important question, because done poorly it uses data that bolsters imbalances, rather than smooths them out. At minimum, I think the following data should be used to decide where mercenaries go:

1. Average alliance population per hour, per day (establishes the baseline of possible imbalance)
2. Average mercenary population per hour, per day (establishes how much is available to balance from)
3. Historical scores and PPT per hour, per day (counterbalances, using cases where fewer, more skilled players outplay more, less skilled players)

Using these three factors, with statistical analysis and data over time, should provide a solid basis for balancing mercenaries into alliance matches.

Conclusion

Alliances, in concert with the mercenary system, provide opportunities for both the hardcore and the non-hardcore. It gives those who know exactly what they want out of WvW the freedom to do just that, while offering those who aren’t sure yet the ability to dabble.

Furthermore, as I’ll explore tomorrow, alliances address all of the problems that the server system has suffered from, either eliminating or reducing each and every one.

The Alliances Series

1. Putting Guilds Back into Guild Wars: WvW Alliances
2. Unbalanceable Problems: Why the Server System Cannot Work
3. Heart and Soul: The Guilds of World vs. World
4. The Case for WvW Alliances
5. The Alliance Structure: Sidestepping the Problems
6. The Pros and Cons of WvW Alliances
7. Rewarding the Competition
8. Implementing Alliances

Heart and Soul: The Guilds of World vs. World (Part 3)

For a game called Guild Wars 2, there is very little emphasis on guilds within the game. While guild missions exist, and there are dozens of perks to being in a guild, very few things are a reason to be together as a guild beyond a bigger friends list.

WvW didn’t get that memo. Guilds based around WvW get together for “raids” all the time, picking fights and achieving glory in dozens of different ways every night. How they raid can be anything from havocing the countryside, to simple duos and trios of roamers, to a few dozen people ready to find the enemy’s massed force and break it into bits.

Guilds provide so much to WvW that the mode is reliant on them for its success. Despite the lack of updates, the miserable state of balance, and the constant movement of players among servers, WvW continues. Guilds are the reason.

DISCLAIMER: All mentions of guilds in this post presume a WvW-focused (or at least, groups for WvW regularly) guild.

The Rallying Flag on the Battlefield

Guilds are known names in WvW, a group of players with the same tag prosecuting the war against the enemy. And just like actual military units with uniforms, a pile of similar guild tags following a commander becomes a place for anyone not in the guild to rally.

When a guild (or guilds) is actively fighting on a map, players who would have logged off for lack of anything to do stick around. And over time, especially if a guild is consistent, that consistent presence alone will increase the number of people playing at the same times, because players know that the guild will be there.

Commander Training Ground

Commanding takes practice. A lot of it. While some people have a natural talent for tactics, or strategy (or even both), fine-tuning it requires not just consistent practice by the commander, but a consistent group of people to practice with. Guilds provide exactly this. They are also a number of people that the commander can rely on in each and every fight.

Additionally, “PUGmanding” is a hard, demanding, and very difficult job to start. Rather than the presumed group of guildies who will raid alongside all but the most inept commander, a player attempting to command PUGs has to contend with people joining or leaving based on the outcome of each and every fight*.

*Granted, if a player can persevere past being an unknown name, they will have the same “pull” as a guild commander. But it takes far longer, and rarely happens.

Player Training Ground

Guilds also provide lesser-experienced players an ideal opportunity to learn alongside more experienced ones. Just like commanders, players themselves are able to learn and grow amongst a consistent group of people.

This also highlights the role of guilds as a trove of massed knowledge about WvW. Players who know what’s going on group together, and someone newer that gets in the same guild as them gain the benefit of their knowledge, no guides required.

A Reason to Stay

Guilds provide one of the most solid reasons to continue playing WvW: a like-minded community. Servers ebb and flow as transfers take their toll, a zerg of players one night likely won’t all be there the next. But a guild provides people to play with, to enjoy the game with.

“Succeeding” takes an immediate back seat to “enjoying.” Players spend less time comparing things like “rewards” to “time spent,” and cherish the time spent laughing, joking, losing, and winning amongst friends. And social interaction with friends is the core draw of MMOs as a concept. All other features are reasons to bring together friends*.

*This is rabid idealism speaking. The original core draw of MMOs was exactly that, but many features and systems in modern MMOs focus on providing individual enjoyment, rather than giving groups a reason to get together.

Further, server names are almost always followed by the major guilds currently on them. And as a group of guilds stays on the same server for an extended period of time, the server picks up their identity. While some server communities still hold their own identity, as more transfers have occurred, guilds have replaced that general server identity.

The Backbone of Activity

Piling onto all of these is the simple fact that guilds are the basis of WvW activity. They spend more time in WvW, bringing all of their advantages to other players along with them. Generally, the more active guilds on a server, the stronger that server is on the battlefield.

Likewise, a server without guilds, or one that abruptly loses a lot of guilds, though it may have WvW activity, has far less, to the point that many servers are declared “dead” by the WvW community.

Guilds are the Core of WvW

With all of these advantages, the importance of WvW-based guilds should be without question. They function as the very center of everything that happens, with other players, guilds, and even servers steadily bending to their movements.

The current system presumes that servers function as the center, but that has never been true. The structural problems that WvW suffers will not be fixed by focusing on servers, because they aren’t guilds.

With this in mind, any new system that seeks to solve the problems plaguing servers should be based not on servers, but on guilds. The proper foundation isn’t new, and dates back to the original Guild Wars: alliances.

The Alliances Series

1. Putting Guilds Back into Guild Wars: WvW Alliances
2. Unbalanceable Problems: Why the Server System Cannot Work
3. Heart and Soul: The Guilds of World vs. World
4. The Case for WvW Alliances
5. The Alliance Structure: Sidestepping the Problems
6. The Pros and Cons of WvW Alliances
7. Rewarding the Competition
8. Implementing Alliances

Unbalanceable Problems: Why The Server System Cannot Work (Part 2)

World vs. World has rarely, if ever, been balanced. At present, the only exception to the rules is Tier 1 of North America, where a consistent detente of sorts has reigned for years. This lack of balance is the result of the server system.

Servers are an approximation of a massed fighting force, with the ability for any number of timezones to be represented by people. And while this approximation was very useful early in the life of Guild Wars 2, its use has been outlasted by its weaknesses.

Population Shifts

The core weakness of servers is how prone they are to wild, inconsistent changes in population. This manifests in three, interrelated ways.

Fairweathering

MMO players like to be rewarded for their effort. They really like to be extremely rewarded for their effort. For some, that means that when their server is winning, they show up in droves to secure the victory.

Conversely, if their server is losing, other things become more worth a player’s time. Put simply, if the match is going badly, it is near-assured to stay going badly as fairweathering takes hold on both winning and losing sides.

This is most clearly seen in the extreme rarity of last-second comeback victories. Oftentimes, the weekend alone decides the victor, because fairweathering cements the population and strategic advantages even further.

Designated Victor

DISCLAIMER: I did not participate in the third tournament. I was on hiatus from the game at the time.

For both the first and second WvW tournaments, silver and bronze leagues’ winners were known before the season began. When the lockdown period neared, players wanting to win evaluated the strongest-looking servers, and transferred to the best one.

With piles of additional bodies at all hours willing to overwhelm the lesser-populated opponents, victory went from “good chance” to “absolutely guaranteed.”

This was made even worse for the second tournament, when in an effort to “balance out” the various tiers, servers ranked 13-15 were made free transfer just before it. The 13^th place server, Henge of Denravi, got dogpiled by so many people that those already on the server ended up complaining about how little WvW they got to do on account of queues. Spoiler alert: Henge of Denravi won silver league by a monumental landslide.

The Transfer Meta

Because of the relative ease of transferring, the most common answer to the question “my server’s WvW is dying, what can I do?” is “transfer to another server.”

And players and guilds do, with regularity. Server movements among the tiers are rarely because of vast improvements in strategy, or tactical skill. More typically, one server gets a lot of transfers at the expense of other servers, and moves up with stronger coverage.

The transfer meta has become more and more ingrained over time. At launch, free transfers caused ludicrous mass bandwagons, but now, players and guilds will build up a warchest of gold to transfer over to somewhere else whenever the fights become less appealing, or the server starts to look dead.

Combine all three of these, and servers aren’t working as semi-stable communities to gather together in the valiant cause of server glory. They are a gems-gated place where players and guilds happen to be at the time. Even the “ideal WvW” North American Tier 1 took 2 years to reach enough stability, most of it based around the idea of simply being how WvW is meant to be played*.

*I’m not commenting one way or the other about if they’re right, but that is their intent. Also, this stability recently changed by, you guessed it, guilds transferring off of Blackgate and onto Yaks’ Bend.

PPT vs. Fights

Another spanner thrown into the works is the chief division in strategic approach. On the one hand, some players who want to win in world score focus on Points Per Tick, the lion’s share of points gained. On the other, some players want to pit themselves against all manner of situations and see if they can succeed against all odds.

And they rarely, if ever, agree on the right way to WvW*. But one thing they have in common is this:

*Necessary caveat: some players PPT (as in, defend and attack objectives) purely to create fight situations, but both hardcore PPTers and hardcore fighters would say they’re “not playing the best way.”

The Nightcap Nightmare

In a 24/7, weeklong war, it’s a given that “nightcapping” is going to happen. People play at all hours, but not the same number of people play at every timezone. Thus, in non-peak times, whoever has more people gets a disproportionately larger slice of the pie.

While it can be argued* that the scoring system could do with some tweaking to better match player effort to their score impact, the strength of off-peak population drives a need to consider PPT at all times. Sometimes, this is to “make up for” a weak coverage area, and others it’s to beef up the lead even harder just in case coverage fails.

*And I and many others have in the past.

This grates on PPT players because in a very real sense, some players are more important than others purely because of what time they play, not because of any strategic or tactical skill they possess. It especially grates on people who want to win on score, as their efforts to siege, defend, and upgrade are more or less erased if they don’t also have a coverage advantage.

This also grates on players who want to pick a good, fun fight because over time, the coverage advantage becomes a stacked deck. Enemy structures are always fortified, and siege lines are always better developed on the opposing side. And oftentimes the joy of victory is erased by the fact that nothing comes of it.

“Just for the Fights”

Taking advantage of the massive combat that WvW regularly provides by seeking great fights seems like a good thing. But with the importance that scoring places on PPT, and thus on ranking, pursuing a “just for the fights” mentality alienates those who feel like they do the drudgework of defending, upgrading, and scouting.

Ultimately, this breaks the server, as people there “for the fights” eventually tire of others raining on their parade, and leave for elsewhere*.

*Consider both Sanctum of Rall before the Season 1 tournament, and Maguuma before Season 3’s.

In the present server-based system, both PPTers and fighters have to attempt to coexist, even when their approach to the game mode drastically differs. The tension of those aiming for a good brawl against those wanting victory in score never stops. And either people quit playing WvW, or transfer elsewhere.

Failing Pride

Despite all these problems, the myth of “server pride” persists. That the massive changes in population caused by transfers, fairweathers, disagreements in how the mode should be played, etc., are somehow staved off by a name. But discarding these, server pride has its own problems.

Servers are Meaningless

First and foremost, megaservers erased the backbone of PvX players who could potentially be recruited to “the war effort.” Add in the transfer meta, and servers as a fixed identity to take pride in doesn’t make sense.

When a player logs out of WvW, they go back to a hodgepodge of everyone, not only their server. Beyond WvW alone, the server is meaningless to the player. Often, servers are chosen not because of their history, but because of their position on the ladder.

Victory is Meaningless

Rewards for winning in WvW are terrible. They’ve never been good, even when unbridled karma training is encouraged*. And while it could be argued that mediocre rewards are to prevent people abusing the system for their own gain, that in no way justifies a terrible reward system that almost ignores who won and who lost.

*Here’s looking at you, Golem Event.

Knowing that the only reward is the temporary bragging rights of “we won” excludes a lot of people who would otherwise enjoy the game mode. Rewards matter, recognition matters, having something to show for the effort matters. And at present, none of those really exist for WvW.

Defending is Meaningless

Rewards for defending is even more nonexistent than capturing objectives. So at the very start, players have to weigh “pride” and intrinsic reward against the absolute lack of anything tangible. This is already a tough bar to meet for most players.

Because of the sheer strength of coverage, and the relative ease of doing Player vs. Door in off-peak times, the equation slips even further into the “don’t bother defending” side of things. Knowing that all of the hard work and effort will be removed as soon as people log off all but assures people won’t care at all.

Weigh all of these problems, and how they are closely tied with the server system*, and it’s a huge, unbalanceable mess. Servers are at once too fluid and too fixed, with the overwhelming option when things get rough to leave for greener pastures. Philosophies on how to fight beat out the actual act of fighting. And what little remains of the server definition is undone by terrible rewards and the fact they mean nothing anywhere outside of WvW.

*Honorable mention to the scoring system, but fixing an algorithm isn’t going to change how crummy massive population shifts are for the players, nor the core disagreement on how to fight.

The Myth of Self-Balancing

Many times when server imbalances are brought up, the “solution” offered has been that players need to move around to balance out the tiers and increase competition.

On paper, this sounds great. But players tend to be selfish, even in their altruism. Consider the example of Season 2 Henge of Denravi. Three servers were made free to transfer as an incentive, but only one got stacked, and ended up in the same place post-season as it had been pre-season. People came for their rewards, and left upon acquiring them.

Self-balancing is a chicken and egg problem of wanting competition, but also not wanting to be outmanned by transferring to a less powerful server. Short of a cold reset, there is no way to offer the right incentives to shift people around on servers until most matches are balanced. Again, NA Tier 1 took 2 years to become reasonably stable, and even that changed recently.

Conclusion

Looking back at asymmetric balance, it’s clear that servers fail at both major aspects of it. Resources for some servers are very limited, while for others available in excess. And rather than there being many different options for everyone, the server with more resources dictates what options the other servers get with fully upgraded structures to defend and paper ones to attack.

Servers are not the heart of WvW, and never have been. Focusing all efforts to building a structure around servers, with all their myriad problems, is not the right answer. What should be looked at instead is what has always been the backbone of the game mode: guilds.

The Alliances Series

1. Putting Guilds Back into Guild Wars: WvW Alliances
2. Unbalanceable Problems: Why the Server System Cannot Work
3. Heart and Soul: The Guilds of World vs. World
4. The Case for WvW Alliances
5. The Alliance Structure: Sidestepping the Problems
6. The Pros and Cons of WvW Alliances
7. Rewarding the Competition
8. Implementing Alliances

Putting Guilds Back into Guild Wars: WvW Alliances (Part 1)

World vs. World is a stale, buggy, unbalanced mess. Which is exactly how the game mode launched back in September 2012, minus the stale. Regardless of some minor changes to the format and a trio of tournaments, the only major change slated for the game mode is in the indeterminate Heart of Thorns future. And while that might fix the “stale” and “buggy” aspects, it’s very unlikely to do much about the balance.

WvW is also a ton of fun, with endless potential for unpredictable and challenging encounters each and every time players log in. This is why despite almost no attention, WvW hasn’t collapsed utterly. It offers something that structured PvP and PvE can only dream of at present: consistent spontaneity*.

*Not to mention mass combat, duels, open-field fights, extreme build customization, and straight-up siege warfare.

Yet the primary draw of WvW has been whittled away over time by problems in its very structure, a structure that by definition cannot be balanced. Slapping a new coat of paint on the mechanics via the new borderland map and a few other shifts will not solve the biggest weakness of the mode: the server system.

Over the next week (plus a day), I will lay out why the server system is broken, and what to do to create a better, longer-lasting system that WvW can thrive on far into the future. As a spoiler, it involves guilds and alliances.

But before I do that, I would like to write a quick aside about the concept of Asymmetric Balance, which is key to my entire argument about the server system being unbalanceable.

What is Asymmetric Balance?

Asymmetric balance is providing each team with a limited, but identical set of resources, and requiring the teams to decide how to use them across many different options. This is typically expressed with people, but also includes things like siege, supply, and upgrades.

Realm vs. Realm, World vs. World, whatever the term, thrives on asymmetric balance. It means that victory is determined by who deploys their resources best, either in defense or offense, distraction or brute force.

It does not mean that every fight that occurs on the battlefield will be “fair” in the sense of the same number of people on each side. Asymmetric balance is all about trying one’s best to make it unfair to the enemy team, pulling a fast one around their decisions and outplaying them on the strategic level.

But That’s Impossible!

Yes, it is. However, it is an ideal to aim for. Asymmetric balance can be reduced to two phrases:

1. Limited resources
2. Tons of options for using those resources

And these phrases will help illustrate exactly why the server system cannot create an approximation of asymmetric balance, but alliances can.

A look at all the problems that the server system has, and why they are impossible to fix is here.

The Alliances Series

1. Putting Guilds Back into Guild Wars: WvW Alliances
2. Unbalanceable Problems: Why the Server System Cannot Work
3. Heart and Soul: The Guilds of World vs. World
4. The Case for WvW Alliances
5. The Alliance Structure: Sidestepping the Problems
6. The Pros and Cons of WvW Alliances
7. Rewarding the Competition
8. Implementing Alliances

One Step From Death: This Should Not Be the End

As the recent specializations update and subsequent balancing pass have shown, the necromancer still needs a lot of help. Over the course of May, I released six posts that comprehensively looked at the necromancer.

The Necromancer’s Curse

Part 1 of the series took an overview of what makes the necromancer the necromancer, and the various ways that they’re quite frankly underperforming compared to every other profession.

And at its core, the necromancer is currently identified by three things:

1. Attrition
2. A Tank Tendency
3. Afflicted, but Not Crippled

Shrouded in Black and White

Part 2 turned its attention to the unique profession mechanic of the necromancer: death shroud. More specifically, the binary, extremely limiting choice that death shroud forces necromancers into.

Worse still, this is a choice that by construction the balance team has to force on necromancers, because death shroud lacks counterplay. The entire mechanic needs a redesign to give enemy players counterplay, and necromancers options.

The Dwarf and the Demon

Part 3 surprised me. I sought to draw parallels to the upcoming revenant, but ended up in a different direction. Revenant has focus, self-synergy, and a concept I’ve termed burst attrition. They hit hard, but only ever so often.

All things that the necromancer lacks, but should have. And it’s a core identity issue. Necromancer as it is implemented cannot have these positive characteristics.  It needs a redesign from the ground up.

The Dance of (Self-Countering) Death

Part 4 began my look at each of the three game modes that necromancers see play, starting with structured PvP. Because of the various woes of the profession’s structure, necromancers lack both skillful play and counterplay.

Ironically, this is a result of design decisions meant to reinforce the necromancer’s core identity. Design decisions that in practice mean that necromancers must completely outclass their enemies to win.

To offer a way around these decisions, I suggested recrafting death shroud around the break bar mechanic to reinforce the necromancer identity as a tanky opponent who must be either locked down, or burst down, but actually has the tools to still be effective in the face of competent players.

Designed Inefficiency

Part 5 is a look at the clear loser for necromancers: PvE. Everything unique a necromancer brings to the fight isn’t needed, and what they have in common they do worse than every other profession.

But unlike the core balance problems in PvP, the solution does not lie in recrafting their mechanics (though that would doubtless help). Necromancers (and all other professions) need unique mechanical encounters that require more than simply damage.

At Home in War

Part 6 should be a triumphant win for the necromancer, because they are gods in WvW. Necromancers are the staple of zergs and single roaming everywhere.

But that staple status is very tenuous because either the weaknesses of the profession need to be built around by the team (almost to the exception of all else), or the dynamic way fights develop across the borderlands can null their advantage immediately.

Even in their best mode, necromancers are on the edge of irrelevance.

This Should Not Be The End

In the process of writing these posts, I came to several conclusions, stated above. But to conclude further on them (Concluception), here’s my condensed list of what the necromancer needs:

1. Recrafting design decisions to retain the core identity of the profession, but built better
2. Death Shroud needs more options, and more counterplay
3. A from-scratch approach to skills and traits
4. Creating skillful play and counterplay for the profession as a whole (e.g., adding a break bar to Death Shroud)
5. Crafting more varied encounters that can play to a necromancer’s unique strengths (and also other professions’)
6. Not using the profession’s position in the WvW meta as a reason that other changes aren’t necessary

Having one profession condemned to irrelevance purely because of a broken foundation is not okay. If it can’t be fixed with the current setup of the profession, then Question Everything should go into full effect and a foundation that can be fixed should be put in place.

This should not be the end of the necromancer, where it is stuck being crud forever. It’s time to look critically at all of the problems, and generate a solution that in time can bring it up to the same standard as the other 7 (soon to be 8).