Guild Wars 2

Please provide accurate numbers about actual WvW population and not just server population and base transfers on that. I believe that would already go a long way.

Caliban.3176:

Please provide accurate numbers about actual WvW population and not just server population and base transfers on that. I believe that would already go a long way.

But how would they actually do that?
What would be considered WvW-population?
Someone that logged in for 5 minutes one day?
Someone that is logging in daily but only does it for crafting?

I often hear people wanting stuff based on WvW-population, but I have never actually seen anyone come up with a good way to actually get an accurate number for WvW.

lordkrall.7241:

Caliban.3176:

Please provide accurate numbers about actual WvW population and not just server population and base transfers on that. I believe that would already go a long way.

But how would they actually do that?
What would be considered WvW-population?
Someone that logged in for 5 minutes one day?
Someone that is logging in daily but only does it for crafting?

I often hear people wanting stuff based on WvW-population, but I have never actually seen anyone come up with a good way to actually get an accurate number for WvW.

That’s a good point. It would not be 1 number indeed. It would consist of the total amount of hours spend outside the spawn areas (afk’ing shouldn’t count). As well as the number of people in queue and how much time is spent in the queue. Another thing to consider is the amount of unique people and the difference in populations between the peak and the ‘off hours’. All of this should be part of a difficult equation that results in a score for WvW population. I believe Anet to be capable of working this out.

I would think it is easy to determine how many players are logged onto WvW maps from a server at any given time. AFK would not seem to be a major issue either because you get logged off so quickly in WvW. It is too much of a hassle to try to keep an inactive character logged into WvW for most people to bother with it.

But once you know how many people on average log on from a particular server, what can you do about imbalanced numbers? If more people from one server want to play WvW than from another server, what can you do about it?

I suppose it would be nice to know what the cap is at now and then compare the average attendance of the servers. Even if you did balance out the population, there is the issue of non stop coverage that a server recruited for, vs a server of exclusive na or eu players.

One possible solution would be to color code the matches as opposed to direct server vs server. Then rotate the servers assigned to the colors – this way eu servers and na servers can join 1 common match to have that round the clock coverage without the need to transfer.

The individual servers would then be ranked based on their participation of the match along with servers on the most winning colors. This would eliminate 1 server winning because it has all the people. so if x server capped the most points in their color – they get ranked based on that number. Then the top score would simply represent the most active wvw server – as opposed to “the best pvp’rs”

there could be 3 matches going on with 17 servers per color – which brings it to an average of 4.25 servers per color per match.

Each color would be a mix of bronze, platinum and gold servers. That can join any of 3 matches ( or 4 – which would probably compliment the overflow system you are working on now )

there would be no ques for any of the servers – because a new match would spring up as each map got full.

and if a guild wanted to join and play together – then they could have a choice to que up for the map the rest of their members are on …or just join a new map while they wait.

each characters age is stored in a database somewhere. further divide the hours into hours spent in wvw and hours not. anet wouldnt have to show us this, just for internal metrics… although we would really like to see some kind of end numbers for a new metric: total manhours spent in wvw per server per match.

this is a number you could base server transfer fees off of legitimately. smoothing out this number across servers could lead to ratings being a more effective measure of skill instead of being drowned out by the overwhelming effects of have a greater population. however, when you have those manhours being put in could become drastically more important and i dont really have a suggestion for how we would go about fixing coverage issues. but for the most part, right now, the issues with coverage are that servers can be competitive in prime time… and then 1 server has population during an off period… which is the very definition of having a ridiculous population advantage.

While I understand Server population has an impact on just how many you can squeeze into anyone server, your transfer fee’s should not be based on over all population.

The only reason to transfer currently is because of WvW.

PvE has guesting, SPvP is cross server so the only real impact transfer have, again is WvW. These costs should be based on server rank, currently you have servers such as Anvil Rock who are rank 24, not because of lack of skill it is because of WvW participation, the server is considered Very High and thus costs the same amount as it would to transfer to one of the Big three (JQ, BG, SoR). Why would someone transfer down to the bottom when they can transfer to the top or middle for the same fee ? It makes no sense at all.

As for Anvil Rock being very high population, I dispute this, I played on AR from release up until recently, after guesting to other servers AR even in PvE is not remotely close to the server population as many other very high server’s.

There has been solutions a plenty suggested here on these forums on how to fix this. A personal Favorite was Teambattleaxe’s suggestion on how to work Leagues, he adressed many if not all of the issues regarding balancing, blowouts, population, and fun factor. I think the WvW team would be wiise to take a look at his purposal and take it into serious consideration.

I understand you may not want to do this exact solution, there is many good ideas in the video, that allows for alot of our concerns, and the best part of all, with three colors everyone is a winner, 1st, 2nd, 3rd.

Even if you only take the how to blanace servers from this, it will be a step in the right direction.

If you choose to ignore the video, thats your choice howeve I then ask you start basing transfer’s off of Server Ranking instead of Overall population which means nothing when it comes to WvW.

*Base transfer prices on average queue length
*Add queue length on your current server and on 5 different servers to the queue popup:

“You queue will pop in 5 minutes
Queues on other servers:
JQ 4hrs
SBI 2hrs
[…]
Vabbi 0min”
You could even add a direct transfer option

It seems that nearly every bracket in the game ends up with having a lopsided result. With the exception of NA T1, each bracket has 1 distinct winner and the match-up can easily be decided by the end of the weekend.

One of the major reasons why you have these huge point spreads is that one server has much better coverage than the others.

For example, for arguments sake, let’s say Sos, Mag and TC all have even numbers during NA prime. You could theoretically have a close, even match-up during this time. However, SoS and Mag may have zero presence during Oceanic, while TC may have 1 or 2 oceanic guilds. These 1-2 oceanic guilds alone can easily clear out all of WvW without contest and contribute more to PPT by PvDooring than the close, awesome fights that occured during NA prime.

This stinks because all the hard work and stressful fights engaged by NA guilds will easily be wiped clean by the effortless zerg train of Oceanic. It’s not exactly a worthy rewarding system.

So how exactly can we prevent this? I haven’t given too much thought about this and it’s implications, so I invite others to critique.

How about we implement a system that reduces the amount of points gained by each server in WvW in proportion to the current WvW population on the map?

For example, during low population levels, points are worth less and during high population levels, points are worth more.

What this will result in is smaller point spreads being gained when one server completely overwhelms the other two due to coverage, while at the same time, not punishing the progression rewards for players in these time zones.

TLDR: Adjust PPT to be higher/lower depending on total WvW population

What would be really nice is to:
1) Know what the map cap actually is. This has never disclosed officially and it seems like this is pretty important information to the community
2) Information on the monthly WvW population average in various time bins (i.e. the average number of people in WvW on a given server between 2 am to 4 am). This would also be VERY helpful it people are looking to find a server to transfer to. Right now the only way to really judge these kinds of things is talking to people on the server
3) Add a utility showing the current average queue time (and maybe even make the queue work LIKE A QUEUE!). It definitely isn’t the case where it is first in the queue gets in the server first.

The issue I see with making transfers to less populated WvW servers is that the server population is set by the server limits, and it includes both PvE and WvW and sPvp people. For instance, TC is always one of the top populated servers in NA, but we don’t have the largest WvW population (~ 4th). Lower teir servers as well can be at “very high” in population. I believe even the T1 servers have a lower (Maybe BG is on par with TC) total population than TC. So allowing free transfers/cheap transfers based purely on WvW would not work the way that they do the servers.

Honestly, I think the fact that there are long queues now, mostly because of stacking, on T1 and a lot of T2 servers will start to balance out the population. People won’t stick around on a T1 server for WvW if they can never actually WvW! However, some things really should be added to give the community some more info so they can make the best decisions now for WHERE they want to go. Leagues will cause guild migration, and it would be fantastic if anet helped give as much useful information as possible to guide large transfers to places where they will have more of an impact.

Thanks for doing this.

Looking at numbers, I think you need to separate a matchup in reset, weekend, day of week sections. Also, you have to take into account whether a server is losing / winning (or 2nd).

WvW population imbalance is really, really weird to me for a couple of reasons as an MMO vet:

1. The game mode is completely incentivized. It’s probably one of the best ways to get EXP and Karma in the game, and provides access to a lot of exotic gearsets through its own currency. Additionally, it drops an abundance of T7 mats and I’ve personally received a couple of Ascended Rings from the rank chests.

2. It doesn’t correlate completely with overall world population. Though the Server list is notoriously nondescriptive of the actual activity of the servers, I have seen T2 servers like FA be a whole descriptor lower than a server like Kaineng.

These lead me to the conclusion that some servers just lack a WvW-focused group, and for whatever reason the majority have no interest in participating in the game mode. Thus, I feel we should avoid making any sort of conclusion like “low wvw pop -> game is dying” because I don’t believe they are linked in any discernible way.

If I had to spitball a direction for how to tackle the imbalance, it can either fall in one of three ways:

1. Force PvE’ers against their will into WvW. Tying it to the living story, or making it better than FGS or CS for farming, will force a number of players into WvW that may not want to be in there. Other MMO’s have done similar things with large quest hubs tied to a pvp zone.

2. Shift the majority of changes to the game mode to accessibility for casual and non-pvp’ers. Listen to their complaints first and foremost, and have them direct the development of the WvW area. This would likely lead to a reduction of the value of the strict “control the most nodes” game we have now, and shift the points to things like pvp dungeons and other semi-competitive pve encounters.

3. Continue on course, addressing the concerns according to the prioritization Anet had already concluded, and hope that a “better” yet same game mode will naturally attract more players as the gameplay becomes increasingly compelling.

I probably missed things, but that’s my conclusions on pop imbalance off the top of my head.

Dear Devs,

What are we suppose to discuss about?

We dont even know how many players there are per map and how queues are working.

All we we know is this game is about coverage.

So what?

Change the potential tick on any given map based on population ratios on that map.
There is no need for the curve to be linear or a function of only one parameter.

Make the ticks much more frequent to avoid map hopping shenanigans.

Implement a minimum lower cap to avoid undermanned server to try and completely empty a map to deny points to the enemy.

I think we need a dynamic cap for the population on each map and for each match-up. The static cap causes too much problems.
The server with the lowest population should define the caps on the maps all the time. If possible the cap should be adjusted each hour or each half an hour in that way that the lowest population server is on the edge for a queue on the map. We also would need a lowest level for the cap.
With the coming Map Edge of the Mists the excess of players from other server would be send to an overflow where they still can fight and earn WEP. After a short time servers would start to balance out their WvW populations to minimise their time in queues. Free transfers/reduced costs for a certain time would accelerate this.

I know this project would take some time to realise, but it would solve so many problems.

Chris,

I believe you may need to be more specific when posting these topics for discussion (that is, unless the purpose is to cast as wide a net as possible). In this instance, it’s not overly clear exactly what flavour of population imbalance we are supposed to be discussing, as I’m reasonably sure there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.

There is the global population imbalance (i.e. total WvWvW population on server X is greater than that on server Y), there’s the timezone imbalance (i.e. the Oceanic population on server B is way higher than any other server in that timezone), and then there’s the hour-by-hour population imbalance (i.e. it’s no fun to play WvW on Wednesdays at 3pm because we’re always outnumbered twenty to one).

I’m guessing the overall flavour is the gross imbalances, but at times they’ve all been hot-button issues.

Jgr.8765:

Thanks for doing this.

Looking at numbers, I think you need to separate a matchup in reset, weekend, day of week sections. Also, you have to take into account whether a server is losing / winning (or 2nd).

I like this idea and really thought this is what they would have implemented back when they rolled out WXP when they were talking about giving WVW players short term objectives.

As for population imbalance, there is no quick fix. The problem was created over months of neglect and will take some time to fix if it is at all possible. I would start by not fixing the queues. This will force people to migrate to lower tiers, I know many will hate me for saying this but that is the price you pay for stacking (sorry for those that have been there since the beginning, it really sucks to be you). I’m sure you have all the info on average WvW daily and weekly population. Make that available information to us and give free transfers to those with the lowest percentages.

The bloodlust buff might have been a great idea on paper to help lower servers make up points and turn the battle around but in practice has only made the stronger server with the biggest numbers have an even greater advantage over the weaker ones. When your server is getting zergged and you can’t even hold a tower in your borderlands, how are you supposed to use that buff to your advantage.

The outnumbered buff is utterly useless except for the free armor repair. Why not having it buff up your guards and lord and mercs (scale them to the size of the enemy blob) so that those NPCs can actually help instead of being free WXP. Do the same for siege.

Don’t know how much work it would be but remove the separation between EU and NA. That way people from both sides can migrate and everyone could have a decent around the clock coverage.

Make ascended weapons and armor available through laurels and badges.

Belenwyn.8674:

I think we need a dynamic cap for the population on each map and for each match-up. The static cap causes too much problems.
The server with the lowest population should define the caps on the maps all the time. If possible the cap should be adjusted each hour or each half an hour in that way that the lowest population server is on the edge for a queue on the map. We also would need a lowest level for the cap.
With the coming Map Edge of the Mists the excess of players from other server would be send to an overflow where they still can fight and earn WEP. After a short time servers would start to balance out their WvW populations to minimise their time in queues. Free transfers/reduced costs for a certain time would accelerate this.

I know this project would take some time to realise, but it would solve so many problems.

This dynamic cap that is set by the least populated server pops up every now and then but I don’t think it is a good idea. The least populated server shouldn’t get to dictate the caps. A better fix would be to get people to play on that server. The hard part is how you can make that happen.

Bring back these graphs please

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Queue-size-data-from-9-14-to-9-18-NA/first

Vol.5241:

TLDR: Adjust PPT to be higher/lower depending on total WvW population

I’ve thought about this as well and think that Coverage is the main concern. It seems unfair that a server can have one guild or a decent player base at a certain time of day and that can influence the result of a win or not.

IMO, PPT should only tick if the WvW population is equal on all 3 servers.

In other games (WoW comes to mind) PvP instanced games (like Alterac Valley) Were balanced in numbers via Gating.

How gating works:

The system sets a base number of players lets say 20 spots, and the amount of slots would increase incrementally based on flagging certain events. Side A hits 15/20, the gate is raised to allow 30 people total- But Side B and C fill out the 30 already. The gate will not raise again until the lowest sides population hit the next gate. This was done in games to prevent 5 on 40’s, the game would not even start until the minimum gate was filled (10 people in the case of AV)

The Pros of gating- curbs victories soley dependent on number of forces. Balances out numbers incrementally, the cap can be raised based off of demand to get into the game.

Gating calculations could provide functional data to set up future match ups- It would provide average players based on the time of the day.

Cons of gating: Would cause strife for WvW players of non NA times, If ET has no oceanics then very few of the opposing sides would get to play against them.

Gating does not push out players if the other side’s dwindle- It simply won’t let more join until enough leave to be under the gate. So if nobody left on one side you could be left with a 90 on 20.

Gating isn’t easy to program, and takes a constant stream of code to function. (I don’t have a lot of confidence Anet can pull it off without adding a bunch of lag, and bugs they wouldn’t bother fixing for months.)

lordkrall.7241:

Caliban.3176:

Please provide accurate numbers about actual WvW population and not just server population and base transfers on that. I believe that would already go a long way.

But how would they actually do that?
What would be considered WvW-population?
Someone that logged in for 5 minutes one day?
Someone that is logging in daily but only does it for crafting?

I often hear people wanting stuff based on WvW-population, but I have never actually seen anyone come up with a good way to actually get an accurate number for WvW.

You could base it off the tally of concurrent WvW connection at any given time and average it off of that.

Server population, if the server is mostly PVE doesn’t really matter in WvW. You can join a Very high populated server that only has mediocre participation in WvW, and those are the servers you want people to migrate too, especially for a lot of people that consider WvW end-game.

Why would anyone think the score should be adjusted for population? It seems obvious to me that it shouldn’t. Population being put into the battle matters. What doesn’t matter is the score. I’m not even sure what the point of showing a score really is.

I get that there’s a lot of behind the scenes stuff rewarded based on the score and matchups also factor it in, but overall it would seem better off gone. It’s not as though a world couldn’t generally tell if they were winning or losing without it. And if a couple teams thought they were winning when one actually wasn’t, so what?

The question would be, would not having a score help or hurt world population and WvW participation. My initial thought is that it actually help participation on the lower scoring servers and lower it on the higher servers. While this would not be a bad thing, what would it do to overall WvW participation?

Determine WvW population
Well, I made earlier already a proposal, that could be used for that. It is not actually WvW population, but more WvW emphasies combined with over all population.
The game could record, how much time people spend in WvW, in PvE and in PvP in percentage of their play time. Staying in spawn or in the cities wouldn’t count. You will get an average percentage of time spend. This you can multiply with the server population. With this formula you will get an idea of how heavily WvW is played on that server. It is not exactly WvW population per ce, but it could give you an idea about it.

Edgar Doiron.2804:

You could base it off the tally of concurrent WvW connection at any given time and average it off of that.

But that could change quite a bit from day to day, so it would be more or less impossible to get a good and correct number.

Day 1: 80 people running around in Homeborder of Server A
Day 2: 20 people running around…
Day 3 (patch day): 5 people running around…
Day 4: 100 people running around…

An average in this case would be quite useless, since it doesn’t really give a good look at the actual population of the server in WvW.

Specifically on the topic of gross server population differences. The solution (as much as there could be one) was already in place back at launch. The Glicko system (with a few procedural tweaks to keep the ratings within shouting distance between tiers) was reasonably good about generating matchups that were “competitive” relative to the established scoring system. The whole point of the Glicko system was to ensure that servers were matched which could gain roughly similar average PPT over the course of the week.

Of course, because server populations don’t shift wildly from week to week, we ended up playing the same servers (the most ideal populations relative to our home servers) week after week. That was the whole point of the system, but some players interpreted the ranking as a measure of “best” and other players complained of boring matches if the opponents were always the same, so the system was changed and we wound up with wildly imbalanced matchups in every tier. It may be too late to return to that system now, but that was the most “balanced” time we ever had in WvW.

Overall though, main problem that I see with relation to population balance is that the whole system of WvW suffers from a fuzzy objective.

It seems to want to play as a league-type sporting event, but then makes no effort to enforce balanced teams and match-ups.

In some ways it seems to want to simulate open warfare, where a balanced fight is usually the result of a tactical mistake, but then the system intervenes with periodic resets and points accumulation, and on top of that there is no tactical or strategic reasoning behind fighting this fight at all.

If WvW is to be a sporting-event, then world populations need to be balanced the same way that sports league teams are. Somehow teams will need to be picked in a reasonably even fashion and assigned to a given “side”. As pointed out previously, WvW is the only server restricted element of GW2, so it doesn’t really matter what servers are played for – WvW players could be shunted around the servers as needed. I’d imagine that metrics could be generated to give each player or guild a possible home based on WvW activity and timezone – but it would honestly be a lot of work and of uncertain success at the end.

If WvW is instead supposed to be a wargame, then there needs to be an elimination of the “gamey” aspects of points-per-turn and weekly resets, and installation of hard and fast strategic reasons for holding the keeps and towers on each map. The problem would then be engineering it such that the eventual victor has great difficulty holding their gains and the system naturally falls back to a more balanced state. A mercenary system would probably go a long way to help in such a vision as well.

It might seem trite, but I think that the population balance problems are really secondary to much more fundamental issues in the WvW game-type, and without solving those issues the specific problem of pop balance is grabbing for the tail of the problem rather than the head.

So, first two comments on ideas that were mentioned earlier:

Adjusting the map cap according to the lowest population server.

As an Underworld player, I am on a very high population server with a relatively low WvW population. So this wouldn’t help us much.

If it were based on the amount of players online in WvW at that time, I think there would be a lot of screaming and shouting going on to keep players out of WvW to make sure that we limited the cap only to self-proclaimed ‘good’ players.

Gating

This could be cool if there is a way to tackle the queues and give WvW players something to do. It would be awful for active WvW servers to be in a matchup to a very poorly represented server. Then many would be missing out on WvW for a week. (Or more, if the next matchup is similarly uneven)

And now two ideas of my own:

What if there was a mechanic that encouraged attacking the strongest server?

Better world xp/some points to the score for capping a strong server keep/higher droprates on taking down players from the leading server at that time. Of course there would have to be a benefit to being in the lead aswell. Otherwise servers might do awful strategies that encourage playing bad… leading to arguments between those that want to win the matchup and those that just want to take that keep.

Something that makes losing not that bad

• What if, after losing for half a week, you would suddenly gain access to plan B? This plan B would be an attack that can only be activated by a server that is far below on points and it allows for an amazing comeback. Maybe it is a massive siege engine, perhaps it is a more powerful NPC commander or a ‘play dirty’ kind of buff that allows you to bribe guards? (Thinking outside the box here)

• Or it could be this new map they’re talking about, offering a place to fight where the score doesn’t count and perhaps the map cap is lower, so even weakly populated servers have a place to fight for a few hours to make a change. So they can have a feeling of victory somewhere halfway through a week where they have been the lowest on points all the time.

The obvious downside to this would be that the main WvW maps may not see action from this server at all… Then again, if players are having fun playing WvW, does that matter?

Adressing imbalace caused by different server population
I don’t think the score should be balanced on WvW population. In the worst case scenario that could lead to a highly unpopulated server to meet a highly populated server (cuz they could have the same points now). In such a matchup nobody would have fun, whan 50 ppl Zerg spawncamps Vabbi, while 1 guy in 2 hours wants to step out of the spawn (a bit overstated^^).

Important should be, that the server with a lower population and the server with a higher population will still be able to do stuff. This could be achieved by making it exponentially harder for the attacking server to get stuff, the further they are away from their spawn. So they for example would need to split up, in order to march further.

I can imagine lawa streams or other obsticles have to be crossed by teleporters, that can only transport a few and then need to recharge for a long time. Or buildable bridges to overcome that obstacle, who can be destroyed by siege weapons. Cap points, that have to be hold simotaniosly, to allow passage deeper in the enemies terretory. There are many obstacles, one can think of, to make it harder for the higher populated server to capture the last parts of the map deep in enemy terretory, while the defenders would have it easier to disrupt those efforts. This way, a population imbalance could still lead to interesting fights and to challanges for both sides, that actually make sense to engage in.

This is probably the hardest topic to discuss as the only time there will never be true balance without drastically limiting the number of people playing per side, which shouldn’t happen. The only thing you can really do here is to create additional artificial controls which shape the way people play the game. The only control currently is outnumbered, 3 factions and siegerazer which are not up to snuff as a method to help with population imbalance.

1. Boost incentive for 2v1 to aid with imbalances

Currently 2nd and 3rd place tend to concentrate on one another rather than both attempting to knock 1st place down when it’s a runaway/imbalanced match. Most of their decision process comes from wxp farming and the easiest points are from the most picked on (paper), which tends to be the last placed team.

There is a pretty easy fix here. Make it so that the rewards for wxp is greater the tougher the tower. A paper tower should be worth a x1 muliple, t2 a x4 multiple and a t3 a x8 multiple. The same with keeps. Rewards in general should be higher the harder the task. This idea should be extended when facing the server that is “stacked” by having a general multiple when killing or taking land from the server in the lead.

This will help with fulfilling DAOC’s old idea that the two weaker groups will gang up on the strongest group. It’s currently failing in gw2 as it’s more about wxp then winning.

2. Artificially strengthen and weaken servers via NPCs

As a server gets pushed back to next to nothing it causes the weaker server to lose even more players and the stronger server to gain players due to pvers jumping on the “karma train”. As a side is pushed back add more and better defenses that potentially scale to what they have left, and possibly spawn attackers to help take back what is lost. Make reducing a server to nothing an incredible undertaking and give those that are outnumbered hope that as they are pushed back they will eventually see those legendary defenders out in the field and in action.

I doubt there’s much significant difference between WvW population trends and overall population trends except on the top servers where people intentionally stacked.

I think it’s a psychological trick and mostly a waste of time, although I’m sure Arenanet already has some way of measuring this so possibly not a waste of significant amount of time.

Maybe they can reveal overall population score and WvW score and we can stop talking about this.

First of all! Thank you for identifying the top issues and putting forth a plan that is conveyed to us that you understand the issues and are now working towards fixing them! This such a huge step forward at least getting acknowledgement. So thank you guys!

That being said. I know right now its a rather open topic but I will take a stab high level and try to keep it short.

Let’s start with WHY the population balance matters….simply put…

It only matters right now because of how the scoring is done between the 3 servers. If discussing changing the way scores are calculated is on the table, then you may be able to come up with solutions that don’t necessarily involve balancing the populations of the servers.

If you do not want to change the way the scoring system is…then you simply must address the population imbalance issue….if you go this route here are some suggestions (some good prolly some not so good lol)

1.) Revisit the outmanned buff (im not a fan but its an option)
2.) Add NPC’s the outmanned server (im not a fan but its an option)
3.) Incentivize server transfers to lower ranked servers (I use the ranking vs WvW population since WvW pop is probably an unknown variable for you guys right now )
4.) Consolidate lower ranked WvW servers together for WvW purposes

I personally would like to revisit the scoring system. I also like the idea of using the glicko rating difference to determine the winner of the week and not just the points. The reason I sort of like that is because it means that you’re server performed better than it was expected to…it will def have issues if you keep random matchups and a high ranked server fights a low ranked server (Because almost always the lower ranked server will gain rating), but it’s something that could be adjusted and worked on.

Anyways there are a ton more ideas, but I think first we should figure out whether the scoring system should change (best option IMO) or you want to keep the scoring system and fix the imbalance pop.

There are two main issues which need addressing as I see it, and personally I see it in this order:

1. Fix Queues

There is nothing more frustrating than sitting in a WvWvW queue. It has multiple problems – specificallly:

• those that do it most only want to WvWvW
• we can’t level up other characters while we wait because we want to go in on our main WvWvW character (alts and WXP another topic, right?)
• the queues don’t work so sometimes I get in within seconds while a guild mate has been queued for hours
• we can only queue for one BL at a time
• we have no idea what the queues are like

So I would like to see:

• Priority: The queues fixed so it takes people in the order they queued
• Priority: The ability to see a breakdown per BL of how busy each queue is and an estimated wait time (done so well in other games)
• Wish list – ability to queue for multiple BLs
• Wish list – ability to swap chars without leaving WvWvW (it is so alt unfriendly with WXP already, long queues just make it more so)

2. Fix Population/Server Imbalance

OK so we now how this goes now, there is nothing new here and nothing hinted at that would solve this. I don’t feel I need to write out what the problems are because everyone knows them. Possible solutions:

• Server Alliances. Ally servers (as many as six) to colors dramatically reducing the number of WvWvW servers. Allows lower tiered servers to group up and compete against (for example) the top 3 in NA. Could also help with night coverage as well if done right and can be varied whenever required to take account of population shifts.
• Make server transfer costs dependant on WvWvW rank, quite frankly I don’t know why a PvE only player would transfer anyway – just quest.
• Encourage guilds to move to lower rank WvWvW servers (less gold or no cost at all, add feature to lower tiered servers only where they can retain guild bank and status etc).
• Get rid of leagues until you have a proper system implemented, the leagues are just making an already severe problem worse.
• Increase rewards for WvWvW, I don’t believe lower tier servers have a lower population in total just that WvWvW is not their game type or WvWvW is far less profitable (and has less access to mats, ascended items and is far less lucrative for gold than a champ run).
• Introduce unique items for WvWvW like skins (yup, dungeons have them) and other goodies that people will want to get and these items should not be linked to “winning” or dominating the tier.

See, not a single kitten in there. Oh wait…

cut the amount of people allowed per map by alot temporarily and make the transfer cost based on wvw population and the queue should force everyone to spread out

I may have missed this in a previous post, but do we know if the map slots are evenly divided among the three servers?

bretk.6019:

I may have missed this in a previous post, but do we know if the map slots are evenly divided among the three servers?

Of course they are.
Anything else would be extremely idiotic.

This has been mentioned before, but I don’t know who to credit:

Give a set reward to each server at week’s end that is of equal scaling for each server (maybe even by place they finished, or total # of points scored), but divided evenly amongst all wvw participants that week (people who gained a certain # of wvw rank points). As an example:

Every server gets 500g at week’s end divided amongst wvw players if they get first.

Blackgate, SOR, or JQ players would then be getting ~20s – a nominal amount
Anvil Rock or Kaening players would be getting ~5g each (a nice chunk of change)

You could even make it like: total server gold = (points scored)/1000 + 200/(final server rank).

Now you have an incentive for people to get their easy gold at smaller servers, and help even-out the populations. It would also give servers a reason to keep fighting to get their larger raid-reward at week’s end for more points.

You could even do it with wvw exp. or something if they are worried about gold economy. People will want the easy reward, and the system has built-in negative feedback (so there is less snowballing, like we have today).

Not going to be popular but one solution to the WvW imbalance is to cap the number of players who can enter WvW so that WvW is always balanced. With a minimum of say 20% of the maximum population, just to get things started.

No one can leave the queue until a slot is available. The number of slots would be the number of people active in the least active server + 10 (subject to the above described 20% minimum).

This ensures that the population in WvW is more or less balanced while encouraging people to move to less populated servers. Make transfer cost proportional to normal WvW activity.

lordkrall.7241:

bretk.6019:

I may have missed this in a previous post, but do we know if the map slots are evenly divided among the three servers?

Of course they are.
Anything else would be extremely idiotic.

I would agree. There was a post in another thread about a server being out-manned and having a queue. Hence the question.

Grimthagen.6019:

[snip]

If WvW is to be a sporting-event, then…

If WvW is instead supposed to be a wargame, then there needs to be an elimination of the “gamey” aspects of points-per-turn and weekly resets, and installation of hard and fast strategic reasons for holding the keeps and towers on each map. The problem would then be engineering it such that the eventual victor has great difficulty holding their gains and the system naturally falls back to a more balanced state. A mercenary system would probably go a long way to help in such a vision as well.

[snip]

I like your analogies. I don’t see how it can be gotten to work as sporting-event scenario. And besides, sPvP exists for this already, except on a smaller scale which is also a large part of the reason for that.

I think that a lot of what was included with season 1 recently works well with bringing in meaning to the wargame. Individual rewards for team/world accomplishments.

I didn’t follow, but I know there was an argument prior to season 1 that led to more tiers of matchups. Was this related to score and worlds not wanting to have a blown up score, or was it more a worry about not being able to accomplish anything against a much higher scoring opponent?

how about let each account select 2 homeworld, one for pve and one for wvw?

Transfer prices need to be based somehow on WvW population

I would also like to see a clean split between PVE and WvW world commitment. Freedom to participate on any PVE world and perhaps have two WvW worlds you can participate in so long as they are not matched against each other.

SnowflakeJake.1645:

stuffz

Wrong thread, this is the WvW-thread, the one you want is this one:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Collaborative-Development-Topic-Living-World

SnowflakeJake.1645:

As far as I know, Living story was supposed to like the next episode of a TV show. Right now the story as it is, I don’t know what to compare it to but its definitely not Game of Thrones quality. Gw1 in comparison had expansions that bought the story forward in a much better way . I know its very hard for a company with no additional resources to bring up the production quality like this. It might be better to sell expansions in that case. For living story to be really good, there has to be many things happening all over the place and most of them should be part of a story that is novel quality for example. If you were to write a chapter in a book for what happened this last two weeks, would people read it or would it be considered boring? You need to employ writers like for a show (not just two) and our money should be going to them for bringing a good quality show/world then to the graphics people/implementers.
On the good side, fractals seem like a good beginning to a separate story. About Tequatl, there is something about zerging that allows people who don’t know much about a fight to participate and win still not knowing much about the fight (this applies to events as well). The reason zerging in WvW works is because zergs fight with other zergs that are made up of people, not AI. People can react and counter play and keep things interesting and challenging. Now lets see what Tequatl has against mindless zerging:
1. Poison AOE: The turrets counters this, so like 6 people and the commander needs to know this.
2. Stack on Tequatl: Again just turrets need to know this.
3. Battery stage: The entire zerg goes ‘kill everything fast’ mode. Also, more people = more damage. So get more people. No one cares about the ad attacks because there are enough people to ress. So Tequatl never Tsunami wipes them.

So what’s new about this fight? The average guy stacks on the commander, dpses during the side event and stacks on the commander. Tequatl down.

Please post in your section, this is for WvW issues, PvE has its own thread in another section.

Cap the maps at 60 per team per map. Let people decide if they want to wait out the queue or transfer. If they transfer (hopefully, maybe Anet might want to include some kind of incentive for a week or so) it will help even out the worlds and make some, not all, more competitive.

It will also eliminate a ton of issues like lag/latency/skill delay/to cull or not to cull … etc …

Jayne.9251:

Cap the maps at 60 per team per map. Let people decide if they want to wait out the queue or transfer. If they transfer (hopefully, maybe Anet might want to include some kind of incentive for a week or so) it will help even out the worlds and make some, not all, more competitive.

It will also eliminate a ton of issues like lag/latency/skill delay/to cull or not to cull … etc …

60 people per map?
That would make it completely impossible to have organized Community (or even guild) events since those often have more than 60 people wanting to join.

Sixty per map would force the population to spread out. Or the community to organize and schedule. It’s about the tipping point for culling/lag in three way battles too.

Remember, there are four maps, too.

So if lets say my guild wanted to do an WvW event together one evening, and we managed to get more than 60 people online, we should not be able to do the event together?

If you can get more than 60 onto a map you’re pretty much control it entirely, and that goes for how it is presently, too.

Remember, there are four maps out there as well.

Based on everything I’ve seen from high tier servers to low tier, the tipping point for the game becoming unplayable is at the 60 man mark per team — or 180 players converging at one spot. If you go over that amount, you start to see the massive skill lags that everyone complains about.

Likewise, if 60 fills each map every night, so there’s a queue, there’s going to become a point where you start to look at options — one I’m hoping will result in people spreading out instead of the lopsided stacking we’re seeing now.