Guild Wars 2

show Que- times for wvw in prime and offtime from the server in server selection would be a start

change outmanned buff to outmanners debuff

give reasons to go to a low pop server like
*waypoints for free on low server and +25% on high servers

this alone would change alot

Yes there are four maps.
But if my guild want to do an event the usually want to do it, you know, together with the guild. Not spread out on four different maps.

I’ll take this from a NA perspective. We currently have 24 servers. The end goal should be 24 evenly matched servers. There are multiple ways to handle this:

1. Make transfer price be dynamic based on a server’s current rank. If someone wants to go to T1, make it 3000 gems. If they want to go to T8, make it free. The other tiers would adjust accordingly.
2. Change scoring to reflect map presence. If you outnumber the opponent, you get fewer points.

Ok, so those are the boring two. Here is the much more exciting idea:

1. Create a season 2 league in early 2014.
2. Create 24 open servers with an even number of max players
3. On a particular day, let people sign up for any of those 24 servers (this way guilds can coordinate which one to join)
4. Once all 24 servers reach their max capacity, increase the capacity on all servers by a certain number.
5. This would essentially start us with a league with even numbers. People can still sign up any any point during the league following the same approach.
6. Have one schedule with all 24 teams that would run for 8 weeks. Teams would earn points similar to season 1
7. At the end of the season, there would be one week where 1-3, 4-6, etc could play each other for the final rankings.

I want to start with comparing a top server to a bottom ranker server as I recently transfered from blackgate to fergs crossing. On blackgate wvw was packed, too crowded for me. we took and then defended objectives and players worked together. On fergs crossing its door hammer. you dodge the enemy zerg and knock down undefended doors as they do the same thing. the exception is eternal battlegrounds but on borderlands you avoid fights and cap undefended towers all night.

I believe the core problem with wvw population balance ties in to the fact that as players we try to find the simplest way to meet a goal or gain a reward for our actions. What motivates the player. Loot, look how many people grind away hours farming for loot. You cannot argue the level of control you have over how a player plays simply adjusting loot tables.
I have a few ideas.

First I would love to see opposing players names in 2 different colors representing what server they are on, so I can quickly prioritize my targets in a 3 sided fight. Change wvw colors from red, blue, green to 3 colors NOT used in pve like yellow, purple, orange. This should be simple enough to do, and a long time ago I used to pvp in EQ1 we had 4 teams and being able to see each side in a battle was awesome, made for some interesting fights.

Next, the team with the top current population on the map should have a bonus to the loot dropped by the players of that world. Want players to team up on the big team, reward them for it. We follow the loot. You will of course have to tell us who this bonus is on at any given moment.

Without a defending force a tower can fall in minutes, this is a major problem as no one enjoys standing guard. What happens is no one stands guard at all so no one makes it to the tower to defend in time. Gates (and walls so thiefs can stop perma stealthing inside) should only take damage from siege and not from players as zergs just mow them down. guards should stand inside the keep and man siege until a player kicks them off of it, bad ai using siege is better than no one using it. Players should be able to purchase additional guards to man siege as well as the current upgrades. Maybe even a system to allow the claiming guild to dictate a priority system of what siege to man, a simple priority list so they stay off the treb and use an arrow card when theres a group at the gate. I honestly feel an undefended tower falls so fast that we are overly rewarded for avoiding the enemy and trading towers back and forth. You gain karma and wxp faster trading towers than fighting to defend them. Also a greater variety of guards for the additional purchased ones would be interesting, allow the purchasing guild to pick between the types.

Overall I feel that if you reward the player more for attacking the top world on a given map, and defending rather than going on the offensive you will see wvw change. It will be more balanced and fun. Fun is what is going to draw more players on lower servers to play it, and in the end make them servers worth transferring to when your tired of ques in higher tiers. And that is the only way to balance the population without restrictions, give the players a reason to go and a place they will want to go to on a lower tier server. I hate my new servers wvw population, I truly miss players who had winning in mind as team mates but it was too zergy for me in kitten

take this a little further and provide some balance I would even suggest reducing the rewards for capping towers and keeps as well would be getting rewards for defending them now too.

One potential problem is that increasing the defense of towers and keeps will make it easier for a big server to hold them, that is why it is key to this to make sure that the big server has bonuses attached to killing them and capping their towers. Give me bonus wxp, karma, and better loot rolls against the top server and thats who I am going after.

Imagine a group of players with yellow tags, and a group with purple tags besieging a keep belonging to the orange team. Then fighting each other over the cap after we take out the walls, guards, and players. Now that would be fun. But it rarely happens with all red name tags.

lordkrall.7241:

Yes there are four maps.
But if my guild want to do an event the usually want to do it, you know, together with the guild. Not spread out on four different maps.

Truthfully, how often do you get more than 60 guildmates out in WvW in a given month? I don’t know many guilds that get those kind of numbers out. Most tend to run in the 30-35 range.

I see your concern, you want to do an event with your entire guild. But is that happening more than once or twice a month where you get more than 60 out? Or is that every single raid night you WvW? I think 60 is a realistic number for most.

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.

Has this been confirmed by devs? My server has had issues where many say our ‘queued map’ seemed to let far less in than the enemies forces. While there’s no physical proof people stated there were no hidden ghost zergs in the puzzle/npc camps, and because the much if the map was capped by the enemy there were no ghost zergs in keep either…

On topic, I really like nutz idea. Seems kinda complicated at first but it looks like it could work at least for NA.

Server Population Imbalance can be split into 2 categories:

1. Overall WvW population imbalance
2. Coverage gaps

There have been many good ideas posted on these forums about how to deal with these, if I was in the devs shoes I would do the following:

1. Drastically adjust transfer prices based on a server’s WvW standing, overall population, and coverage to the point where it would cost maybe 6k to10k gems to transfer to T1 while it would be free to go to the bottom 3 servers, scale others in between as appropriate.

In addition, adjust this further based on average timeframe the transferring account has been logged in. For example, if the account has been logged in for 3-4 hour periods, 3 times a week in WvW, and it happens to be an off-hours (coverage gap) hours for target server, then the transfer price would be further discounted.

If account has been logged in during transfer target servers prime time, the transfer costs should be increased.

2. To deal with coverage gap, I would compeltely overhaul the outmanned and bloodlust buffs as follows:

Give outmanned buff a 1% stat increase per each 10 or 20 people that the outmanned players are outmanned by. This will give some but not overwhelming stat advantage.

Give bloodlust buffs additional 1% stat bonus per 10 or 20 people that the team is outmanned by. This would result in some very interesting new tactics / strategies by lower pop servers as well as provide some bonus to the outmanned side.

3. I would adjust the scoring system (PPT) so that any objectives capped / held on an outmanned map by a superior number of players gives less points per the said cap / hold.

This would go towards both simply being unable to cover all maps as well as address the coverage gaps.

Changing the cap is a ridiculous idea. To make it “balanced” the cap would need to be dynamic based on the lowest pop server. Are you going penalize servers with a guild that plays in NA mornings due to the fact that their opponent can only field 10 people on a map?

I think the best way to at least kitten (and continue to monitor) the WvW population, is to add in some sort of ticker or tracker to each players profile.

This could tell you, and Anet:

• How many days per week, what days, & how many times per day you log on
• How long (on average) do you spend in WvW per session
• Most importantly, what time frame do you spend most of your time in

Given these, if Anet doesn’t already have them, they now have a tool to continually gauge where the population sits. I think it’d also be interesting for the players to see if they are at all curious just how much time they spend in WvW, vs the kills/achievements they’ve accumulated.

Other perks which I think would help lure people into WvW would be to give extra rewards for the servers who are lower in ranking. For instance, rank 3 would get a bonus in loot when capturing ranked 2’s objectives or killing their players. Likewise, they get even a bigger bonus when attacking rank 1. Vice versa, if your server’s a higher rank, you get reduced rewards.

Now in the lucky event where there is an “uneven” match like a rank 14 taking on a rank 4.. well the rewards are considerably more due to the big difference in rank. This could lure more people into WvW for those rewards.. and to even the odds of course. This could also greatly help given the big costs to crafting ascended weapons now (and soon to be armor sets).

I don’t think buffing anyone stat wise or nerfing the wining side in any way is a good idea to fix population imbalance.

I think the best solutions are:
- Make WvW recruitment easyer(good sugestion i red is to lower gem prices to transfer to a lower tier server)
- Give more incentives to play WvW(season 1 and the new ach’s are a good start)

Population imbalances are certainly the biggest issue facing WvW today, but I don’t really like most of the solutions posted so far. Many people seem to favor some sort of messing with the population cap to artificially enforce population parity, but there’s major downsides to this approach. The primary problem is that this approach requires a lowering of the cap, in some manner or other. The first problem with this is that it makes it even more miserable to be on a high population server, as it’ll only exacerbate queue length issues. Second, WvW is just plain more fun on well populated maps(unless your thing is really 1v1’s, but that’s not really what the game mode is designed around). At this point, any solution that results in WvW being LESS accessible for significant numbers of people should probably not be the long-term strategy for improving the game.

A better, but still flawed, approach I see mentioned a lot is that PPT should be scaled according to population. This doesn’t suffer from accessibility issues, but it is going to be hard to avoid some toxic meta-strategies. In particular, it could easily create cases where joining in on your team’s side actually is a net negative for your team, since now accomplishing the same thing but with less people becomes more profitable to your team. I know WvW communities can already have issues with tension between the hard core and newer players, derisively termed “rally fodder”. I don’t really look forward to having commander’s yelling at PUGs to get off the map, since they’re trying to suppress the other side’s PPT through low population.

I think there’s another method that hasn’t been discussed much, but has already been implemented on a small scale somewhat successfully: “comeback” mechanics. This class of solution would involve some kind of advantage that could be given out to badly losing teams to create a rubber-band effect, making it harder to keep pulling ahead and easier to catch up. The main benefit I see with this strategy is that you can divorce it completely from current population totals on a map by basing it on cumulative score instead.

The easiest, most boring implementation of this could be a stat-boost that losing teams get once they’re losing sufficiently. Much more interesting, I think, would be expanding on the idea of the Siegerazer event. Just to throw out a few possible expansions that shouldn’t be too hard: If a server is losing by 50k+ to a server that takes one of the towers flanking Garrison, allow Siegerazer to start for that tower regardless of the rest of the map state. Losing by 100k+? Have a larger version of Siegerazer event that helps retake Garrison should it fall. 150k+? Have that event start on that enemy borderlands, targeting the keep on your third of the map. 200k+? Have Seigerazer stay and help you defend if you take it.

The benefits of this are pretty clear to me: First, it doesn’t make the game inaccessible to anyone artificially. Second, it’s easily scalable/tweakable for balance. Third, the most competitive times of the week(thus least needing balance help) are right after reset, which is conveniently also when large point differentials haven’t accrued. The least balanced part of the week is Wed/Thurs, when unbalanced matchups lead to low morale, which only worsens the problem. This type of solution would mostly be applicable during this time period, and would serve to give the losing servers a fun reason to play, while giving winning servers someone to fight. Lastly, as we’ve seen with the Siegerazer event, the “victim” server still has an opportunity to fight back and win, it’s just a more balanced fight.

This won’t please everybody. Many of the hardcore advocate for eliminating PvE aspects of WvW, not adding more. However, I don’t think making WvW strictly PvP is the way to go with the game mode. WvW should use PvP elements to keep the fights always fresh and interesting, while using the “PvE” elements like castles and camps to make it feel more epic and adding scale that is otherwise technologically impossible.

I like the idea of incrementally greater rewards for capturing objectives that belong to the server above you in second or first place.

Change PPT to a points per capture system and a points per kill system, bonus points for kills with bloodlust. This will keep scores from being overly inflated when one server has a large population on during off peak times compared to its enemies.

split servers like you have them now into brackets with suggested time zones, this way people can move to servers that will see more activity during the time they play. With the changes to scoring this will help to move people around.

with major changes like this it may be a good idea to also make server transfers free for a short time.

Jharkin.9357:

Changing the cap is a ridiculous idea. To make it “balanced” the cap would need to be dynamic based on the lowest pop server. Are you going penalize servers with a guild that plays in NA mornings due to the fact that their opponent can only field 10 people on a map?

That’s a very good point. There are definitely problems with the idea.

Add a counter showing how many people from your server are on a borderland and EB and have it update in real time or close to real time – AFK and non AFK alike. The people that really care about determining how much coverage they have at a given time will do the work from there.

1. PvE bonuses based on server rank. Example: rank 1 server has +0% magic find, rank 24 server has +500% magic find, everyone else is inbetween. This is for all zones both PvE and WvW. This fixes fairweather PvE hero population.

2. WvW rewards based on rating gain, not score. Example: server with most rating gain gets chest with guaranteed exotic + random gem shop item, second most gets guaranteed exotic, third gets guaranteed 3 rares. This fixes try-hard WvW hero population.

Regarding Siegerazor. In the current state the event is rather useless. The bubble on siege is too short and the player is not protected against AC or other ground-targeted skills. Siegerazor is in the vast majority of cases successful when you would capture the tower anyway. Maybe after an overhaul it could work as “coming back”.

I ways thinking about to remove ppt completely and add more points for conquering and successfully defending objects. But this would cause other problems too.

I’m pretty confused as to what we are supposed to discuss. World population could mean WvW population since this is in the WvW forum, or it could mean server population. It could also refer to just imbalanced population in activity which we don’t know any solid numbers of. Should we post suggestions or complaints on these topics? A discussion would warrant better feedback if it had some survey questions or a synopsis of what the goal of the discussion is.

That being said, my problems with the unbalanced populations is that many realms have enough people to field huge WvW forces, but there is little communication or incentive to push players into WvW besides some achievements (which do not reward players for helping their server).

The WvW leaderboards are a good example of where communication goes wrong in that if you want to know how good your server is, you have to alt tab out of the game itself just to see- and even then, you cannot see what guilds are good or bad or what happened or why. There is little to no context for new players, so it’s easier to play in dungeons or living story elements that are more integrated and introduced through the world than WvW.

With the current system, new players are encouraged to tick off some achievements in WvW and then get hooked into the gameplay enough so that they stay. However, this system doesn’t encourage players to help their server in dire times when they are getting golem rushed on every keep or when they are getting pushed hard in a 2v1. The game is counting on players to help because helping others is fun, but when we get achievements that reward players for doing jumping puzzles- then it looks like the core concept is going against the game design. I think there needs to be a greater chain of communication between players, maps, and most importantly- a line of communication between players in WvW and players outside of WvW.

On the idea of scaling points, another metric could be the time since last possession to scale rewards. For example, let’s say that Green has had Anz for 4 hours. If Blue takes it, they get full rewards (WEXP/PPT). Let’s suppose that Blue then holds it for 24 hours, then if Red takes it, they get 4xWEXP and better chest drops plus for 4 hours they get 4xPPT for it. However, if Blue quickly retakes it within an hour. Because of the penalty, they get 10% of the normal WEXP/worse chest drops and their PPT for it are 10% of the normal for the next 4 hours.

This bonus/penalty could be further scaled based on current point totals and/or server rankings so that if a dominating server has to decide between letting the tower sit and build longer (making it harder to take) which gives them more rewards overall when they take it or taking it quickly over and over which nets them little reward but maintains little threat.

Thanks for adding this topic. I hope the Arena.Net team gets some good feedback in this thread and we make swift progress on important issues like this one. So – addressing world population imbalance. A wide topic, so subject to a great deal of interpretation. Here’s mine:

Fix guilds. This is Guild Wars 2, not Server Wars 2. Encourage one of the highlights of the game – joining and maintaining a presence in a guild, rather than encouraging the creation of an overwhelming biomass pressing “1” to skill lag their way to victory.

How would you do it, while keeping the amount of code changes to a minimum?

• Whenever a group of players in the same guild of 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, or 40+ players get within a certain proximity of another guild of similar size (10-19, 20-29, 30-39, or 40+ players), an event is triggered (orange circle event on bl/eb map) – can be anywhere – open field, camp, keep, etc
• If both guilds keep their numbers within the orange circle event for 10 seconds, an event triggers stating a Guild Battle between Guild A and Guild B is taking place, this includes a map announcement
• The event is active while one member of each opposing guild is in the event. The event is bordered by a standard “glowing circle”
• During the event:
  # As a fighting guild member, you do 1x damage to members of the enemy guild with which you are engaged
  # As a fighting guild member, you do 2x damage to members of the opposing server which are not members of the enemy guild, who are in the event radius
  # As a fighting guild member, you do 0.5x damage to members of the same server which are not members of your guild who are in the event radius (which get caught up in your melee train, are in AEs, etc)
  # Non-members of the fighting guilds maintain normal wvw rulesets (e.g. 1.0x damage to opposing server members)
  # Once all of one guild members are slain or leave the event area, the other guild wins (fast capture point)
• After the event:
  # The guild’s server who was victorious obtains server points (example: 100, 200, 300, 400)
  # The guild’s server who was defeated obtains server points (example: 30, 60, 90, 120)
  # The guild’s members who were victorious and present get 3 Guild Loot Bags
  # The guild’s members who were defeated and present get 1 Guild Loot Bag
  # Guild victory/losses are recorded on a public leaderboard with date/time stamp including number of players in engagement, create metrics for win/loss ratio published on the public website
  # XX minute cooldown for either guild to be eligible for another Guild Battle event
• Guild loot bags include money, random chance for drops like WvW chests or heavy loot bags, and 1 Guild Token per bag
• Allow use of Guild Tokens as a ratio trade for dungeon tokens (1:5), laurels (12:1), gold (1:1), Black Lion Chest keys (2:1), etc

What I believe this goes a good ways to solving:

• Zerging. Because you get an organized group of players, they are going to kill even their own server mates who get in the way of melee trains and ae smackdown when an event is going on. Non-guild members can head to the event to try to help their team win, knowing the danger if they get too close, or head towards a different objective to spread the battles out further.
• Inclusiveness. There are multiple incentives for guilds to form, add members, or even return to the game.
• Rewards for organized and skillful play. Rather than it be soley based on objectives, you add a new wrinkle into timing of organized groups pursuing capture points and encountering similar numbers.

Thanks again for organizing this topic, and look forward to seeing you out there on the battlefield.

Allow an entire guild to transfer to a lower WvW ranked server .. AND .. retain the guild’s experience and all accumulated benefits they have acquired on their original home server. There is zero incentive for an established guild to move to a new home if they have to start over from scratch with their guild XP/bonuses.. I know this is one of the things thats preventing my guild from moving. We really dont want to start over from scratch loosing all our hard work from launch.

Keeping the same color every week, while still swapping borderlands would be nice.

Discussing this thinking strictly in WvW doesn’t help. Some servers have more WvW community, others have more PvE

Since WvW is “part of PvE”, there’s no way to merge servers without hitting both. So to keep the 3-servers matchups, the only way out is merging servers to have a multiple of 3.

My suggestion is analising numbers before doing something. Server X has a lot of people doing WvW, and Server Y has more PvE, so you can merge both. The new Server Z will have a bigger community on both game modes, what is healthy imo.
Don’t forget that some servers are like ghost towns – Devona’s Rest is an example. Played there since the beginning of the year, but changed servers because it doesn’t have people doing either PvE, or WvW, or PvP

A second suggestion would be getting rid of servers for PvE, and use the “district” from GW1 (I think that’s the name), and then change WvW. But as I said, WvW and PvE are linked

HELLruler.4820:

Discussing this thinking strictly in WvW doesn’t help. Some servers have more WvW community, others have more PvE

Since WvW is “part of PvE”, there’s no way to merge servers without hitting both. So to keep the 3-servers matchups, the only way out is merging servers to have a multiple of 3.

My suggestion is analising numbers before doing something. Server X has a lot of people doing WvW, and Server Y has more PvE, so you can merge both. The new Server Z will have a bigger community on both game modes, what is healthy imo.
Don’t forget that some servers are like ghost towns – Devona’s Rest is an example. Played there since the beginning of the year, but changed servers because it doesn’t have people doing either PvE, or WvW, or PvP

A second suggestion would be getting rid of servers for PvE, and use the “district” from GW1 (I think that’s the name), and then change WvW. But as I said, WvW and PvE are linked

They were requested by players who took the time to read and input in the original thread to break it into sections such as WvW, PvE, and SPvP. This thread could be found in the General Forum a week before the WvW thread was presented.

Free Transfers off of T1 super stacked servers might go a long way.

Estimated Q times aswell.

I think a small fix can really help in this regard.

The leading server is usually winning because they have the most coverage, and the most numbers. Attacking them invites their zerg to respond to your map, and they usually have more upgrades, more siege, and more defenders. Why attack the leading server, when the 2nd or 3rd place server’s keeps and towers are worth just as much, but are much easier to take? It only results in more picking on the losing servers, instead of standing up to the winning server.

Only in very close matchups is there really any reason to attack the first place server.

Capture points need to have a gradient of points AND rewards, much like there is already a gradient for events in gold, silver and bronze. Things that should be included in a the point/reward gradient:
- How much the target point is upgraded
- How many points the target point’s current server has earned
(possibly) how many defenders are on the map

These quick changes to scoring AND rewards can motivate a player or zerg to attack bigger numbers and take what they can. That way it really could encourage 2v1s against the biggest server, instead of cannabalizing another losing server in a quest for points and loot.

One other idea: perhaps the outmanned buff should reduce the supply needed to build siege, and potentially improve siege HP and/or damage. I would love to see a huge “zerg trap,” that explodes when so many invaders enter a certain radius. If it went off with X number (30, 40?) invaders in a certain radius, it could deal big damage and maybe CC or inflict conditions, or a combo field, or anything. Any advantage it could give to defending against large numbers could encourage more defense against large zergs by smaller groups. Perhaps this could be sold from an “Outmanned” vendor, and only allowed to be placed when a sever is outmanned? I know there is a resistance to changing outmanned to be more beneficial, but the opposite seems to be allowing numbers to rule the day.

I like the idea of basing rewards on population/coverage. If there’s no “enemy” force present on the map for a certain time, then points stop ticking. So while re-taking everything when primary coverage ends would still be “viable” (for short PPT gain), having someone cover night time when opponents have no presence outside of the spawn area, wouldn’t give that much of a gain.
If there is fighting, then points would continue to tick. Of course, this would have to be time-gated (i.e. 30 minutes, to prevent zerg from intentionally jumping map to map to “stop” progression)

Nice to have: some sort of an estimation of wait time when opening WvW menu, so you can see that map A is currently queued (at least, and with “average wait time” somewhere if there’s a chance of calculating it). For commanders, it would be useful to see if map could accommodate 10/30/50 people, to avoid fracturing the force constantly (right now you have to “try” to go to a map and then come back if half of your group suddenly becomes queued).

To me, World Population is only an issue for WvW. I’m a proud Henge (NA) WVWer and unforetunately we just cannot keep up with the larger population servers. Is this a bad thing?

no

I don’t think so as different tiers has matched us up better. I also feel that like in many competitive sports, there are other teams with more money, more backing, and therefore a greater advantage to winning (the NY Yankees versus the Tampabay Rays for example.) However, we do have Outnumbered that works in our favor.

I do feel that:
- Combining low population servers with each other could help (a sever for just 1-5% of the global population could combine with another; especially if larger servers represent 20%+ or more.)
- Tiers help (I believe, still figuring it out)
- Incentives to join lower populations could be useful (free to Transfer, I think this already exist?)

If a server is kicking kitten because they’re highly populated and just that good, who are we to knock them down for being good?

as per the server imbalance and to make the game more competitive there are times where your server is outmanned. we’ve all been there. the perks of outmanned no armor damage and an increase in damage and other perks. the con – your more likely to die and lose ground in the map your playing on. how can the game be made more competitive after a server countdown ends if the numbers are low enough for outmanned to pop?

One thing that I think would help would be to consider accounts that have been inactive for a long period of time. It is my understanding that someone who stops playing gw2 still counts towards that server’s population.

My solution is to boot inactives from the server. In this scenario, the account would still exist, but they would just have to re-select their home server if they hadn’t logged on in, let’s say somewhere between 2 and 6 months (Anet devs decide exactly when the cutoff should be). This would make server population information more accurate so we could make better decisions in the future on the population issue.

I don’t know what cutoffs for the server population indicators are, but I’ll make some up for argument’s sake:
Full: >10,000
Very High: >8,000
High: >6,000
Medium: >4,000
Low: >2,000
Very Low: >0

I’m in Gate of Madness, which is currently classified Very High, so let’s say we have 9,000 accounts on it. From looking at multiple guilds, and not accounting for inactives the guilds have kicked, I think it is safe to say at least half of the people don’t play anymore (probably more). If this was accounted for, that would bring our population to 4,500, or our indicator from Very High to Medium: a significant change. This would change world transfer fees, theoretically allowing more people to transfer over and balancing population as a whole (WvW and PvE combined).

I do realize that this would open up space in the more popular worlds as well, and the problem might not be fixed, however I think the key to solving any problem is collecting accurate data and the current system of indicating server population is not providing that.

Feydiir.2609:

Allow an entire guild to transfer to a lower WvW ranked server .. AND .. retain the guild’s experience and all accumulated benefits they have acquired on their original home server. There is zero incentive for an established guild to move to a new home if they have to start over from scratch with their guild XP/bonuses.. I know this is one of the things thats preventing my guild from moving. We really dont want to start over from scratch loosing all our hard work from launch.

I think that’s pretty fair. The whole grinding up the guild on a new server is a time sink anyhow and for some WvW-oriented guilds it’s a factor in whether to move or not.

Maybe split the servers between pve and wvw. People could join a normal server, in addition to one WvW server.

Example:
I could be part of Blackgate PvE server, but ALSO Blackgate WvW server.
Or if I wanted to, I could join Tarnished Coast PvE server, and Blackgate WvW server.

This could give a more accurate representation of WvW population. It could also have something built into the WvW servers that if you don’t play WvW for a certain amount of time, you get removed from that WvW server to make room for active players to transfer to it.

You can do that now with guesting can’t you?

The key thing is making the masses happy. Anet will not do something to appease the minority, its just bad business. So the trick will be to apply a change that will appease both sides. Currently there seem to be only a few major types of WvW players. Zergs, Havoc, and Roaming. I must assume you are in one of these categories.

1. ZERGS: Zergs can be fun and basically are the big one for the population numbers problem. Generally bigger zergs beat smaller zergs. But really its the fact nothing can stop a zerg except another group in large numbers. This is due to a failure in the game design. Reality is not an option I guess. The fact that the defenses were not adjusted to counter this tactic has left a major imbalance. So the answer would naturally be a balance to the problem. The large population server with its giant 50+ manned zergs melting a smaller population server’s holdings can be fix.
-NPC scaling. This would balance the time it takes to do things rather than the 1 sec to melt the guards, creating a farm, and benefit the members in the zerg by allowing everyone to participate and get credit who’s in zerg. This may not be enough to balance but it should at least be a 1st step.
-Anti-stacking balancing changes. Staking is not a tactic, its a failure in the system players exploit. And it feeds the zerg system. I find it hard to believe this was intended. with the clear limitations on the servers to allow most changes people may put forth, there are some things that can be tweaked. AoE target limits are a big one. Its a fact they cant add to the total targets with current system. However a change on how the AoE targets can be made to allow for more targets to be “tagged.” Best idea I can come up with is using the same system that non-circle Field Effects use but place it on the circles like the hand of a clock. The hand makes a 360 degree rotation every click. This would be as the same as someone running thru the line shaped field effect. In result you wouldn’t be simultaneously targeting over 5 at a time.

2. HAVOC: Havoc groups tend to be smaller than zergs but larger than a roaming party. Currently IMO balance tends to good enough and can be put on the back burner for population issues. The Ruins update and soon to come new map will solve most players concerns.

3. ROAMING: Roaming teams tend to be the smallest and have little to no effect from population problems. That I’m aware of.

Missing groups forced into a minority that I find are only a minority because of population issues. Defenders, and supply runners.

1. DEFENDERS & RUNNERS: Basically the guys that like to own a keep and upgrade it and hold the fort so to speak. This is something that can be much more popular IF the balance of the zerg issues can be established. A small group + NPCs (scaled) should be able to defend camps and get lots of experience and help with the dolyak runs. Havoc sized groups should be able to defend a tower, and small zerg sized groups to cover Keeps. Pretty basic. Defense should be 50% of WvW tactics. holding what you got needs to balanced with taking what they have.

Core adjustments as stated above can change the aspect of WvW into more advance tactical play. Which WvW is really all about. Keep this in mind with all changes and focus on the balance. The populations will spread naturally as a result and help displace the problem, making the proverbial “Mountain into an anthill.”

@fluffy, I noticed the same thing on my server also – some of our best wvw players I’ve seen in game were in one guild I joined – they never transferred to another server – but out of a guild of over 300 – i only see like 3-5 people on at any given time – so while we also have very high population status – most people just hardly play anymore. I wouldn’t want those accounts kicked though – these guys are serious strategists and definitely want them on my team should they come back! – but all the same being considered high population isn’t exactly accurate. maybe during the holidays we’ll have plenty of overflow on lions arch – but it’s not long lasting.

I haven’t put a ton of thought into this and its completely not thought out but what about time framed objectives…during time x to y we have objective 1, during time y to z we have objective 2 and link them together. This way you preserve the feeling of progress for your day time hours and night time hours, you de-link the two periods and don’t lose progress in each but have each contributory to the next and swap on a cycle. Maybe one is stronger then the other but that’s fine, you work with what you have or you don’t.

You can even have common objectives like towers that are done at any time and uncommon objectives that are time based that will contribute to the morning if done.
It may become more advantageous to not take a tower because you only have the night time to do whatever the uncommon objective is and put focus there so the daytime folks can’t get the advantage of getting what the nighttime objectives provide and vice versa.

Jayne.9251:

You can do that now with guesting can’t you?

Yes but, I think what he/she is trying to say is, I’ll use GoM as an example. Their server as far as WvW participation/population is down near the bottom however, they have a fairly large PvE community so if everyone transfered to GoM to help out the WvW Population issues the over all server load may put stress on the server because of the large PvE population. If PvE and WvW were seperated the server load would account for just one or the other, not both.

Nuzt.7894:

Jayne.9251:

You can do that now with guesting can’t you?

Yes but, I think what he/she is trying to say is, I’ll use GoM as an example. Their server as far as WvW participation/population is down near the bottom however, they have a fairly large PvE community so if everyone transfered to GoM to help out the WvW Population issues the over all server load may put stress on the server because of the large PvE population. If PvE and WvW were seperated the server load would account for just one or the other, not both.

Ah so instead of like 24 NA servers, there would be 48? Separating WvW and PVE?

Sounds a bit complicated .. and expensive?

Problems as I see it

1. No incentives to join lower population servers. If you are on a high population server or new to the game there is no real incentive to move to one of the lower pop server. There are more benefits to drawbacks on being on a high pop server. Even if you have longer ques for WvW you still typically get better bonuses for being there.
1A. I’d like to see free transfers to lower population servers, and boosts to leveling like XP, Karma, Magic Find boosts. So If you are a new player or a player on a high pop server, moving to a lower “destination” server could give you a 20% boost for lets say 80 hours of play time.

2. Need to Increase Server & Zone Capacity. Tequatl has made it somewhat obvious to me that zone capacity is not high enough especially for large scale events like tequatl. Overflow is great, but when you need 50+ people for an event overflow becomes an automatic fail. Which results in people camping zones and having large number of nonparticipating players when the event does pop.

3. Need to merge servers. I just don’t think we need the huge number of servers we currently have, I’d like to see the mid pop servers merged with the low pop servers.

4. Refocus of Overflow technology to reduce “empty” zones. When Gw2 first launched all the zones were full, but now the zone population on almost all zones is practically non-existent. I’d like to see players from all servers or perhaps groups of servers go to a shared zone similar to overflow. So lets say people from several (or all) servers share common PVE zone what does this mean? In example say people from the servers Stormbluff Island, Fort Aspenwood, and Far Shiverpeaks all share a PVE world, so whenever you enter Kessex Hills it will be populated by people from all 3 of those servers.

Personally I’d just love to see a concerted effort to implement or improve a feature to help offset the tremendous advantage sheer numbers provides in WvW right now. I understand this isn’t such an issue in the higher tier WvW matches where all 3 servers can field a fair amount of players but in the lower ones it’s a massive problem. While skill, strategy and execution can certainly help offset the players organized enough to pull these things off are few and far between so inevitably it just comes down to zerg vs zerg and whom ever has the larger one wins.

I have to admit it can quickly become very discouraging when your server is constantly rolled because you simply don’t have the numbers others do.

My suggestion would be that, once the overflow WvW map has been implemented, reduce the per map cap (by around 15 players, +/- some depending on many factors).
Ideally, the existing WvW maps would undergo some changes (as well as some other components) in order to accomodate for the lesser number of players. However, seeing as how WvW already functions for a varying amount of players (i.e. when there are few players for each server), the necessity for those changes is low.

The idea is that the lesser number of players would help limit the severity of server imbalances. (Using hypothetical numbers here). Fighting 50 vs 125 will always be hard, but it will still be easier than 50 vs 140. The absence of those extra 15 players could mean less players are in the zerg since their roles need to be filled. Reducing the zerg size would reduce the rate at which objectives are captured, thus reducing the rate at which the score imbalance is accumulated. It would also make it easier for the outnumbered server to fight back and slow down the enemy zerg. And if those 15 players don’t leave the zerg, they may a price by losing a tower due to poor scouting. A change like this could also encourage players to spread out across other servers, could reduce the occurrences of map lag due to less players in the zerg, and increase the importance of each individual’s effort.

Finally, don’t bother disclosing the per map cap, because it would become very difficult to change it even slightly without massive amounts of complaining and would hinder experimentation to find the right number. Plus, it’s more of a curiosity thing than necessary information. Knowing the map cap isn’t going to change how players will play the game; we already have guestimations if it were indeed important, and I’ve never experienced a situation where knowing the map cap would change anything other than the amount of complaining.

Edited for clarity.

I see two problem in WvW balance :

1. Population
2. Coverage

How to adress both ?

Roy.7405:

My suggestion would be that, once the overflow WvW map has been implemented, reduce the per map cap (by around 15 players, +/- some depending on many factors).
Ideally, the existing WvW maps would undergo some changes (as well as some other components) in order to accomodate for the lesser number of players. However, seeing as how WvW already functions for a varying amount of players (i.e. when there are few players for each server), the necessity for those changes is low.

The idea is that the lesser number of players would help limit the severity of server imbalances. (Using hypothetical numbers here). Fighting 50 vs 125 will always be hard, but it will still be easier than 50 vs 140. The absence of those extra 15 players could mean less players are in the zerg since their roles need to be filled. Reducing the zerg size would reduce the rate at which objectives are captured, thus reducing the rate at which the score imbalance is accumulated. It would also make it easier for the outnumbered server to fight back and slow down the enemy zerg. And if those 15 players don’t leave the zerg, they may a price by losing a tower due to poor scouting. A change like this could also encourage players to spread out across other servers, could reduce the occurrences of map lag due to less players in the zerg, and increase the importance of each individual’s effort.

Finally, don’t bother disclosing the per map cap, because it would become very difficult to change it even slightly without massive amounts of complaining and would hinder experimentation to find the right number. Plus, it’s more of a curiosity thing than necessary information. Knowing the map cap isn’t going to change how players will play the game; we already have guestimations if it were indeed important, and I’ve never experienced a situation where knowing the map cap would change anything other than the amount of complaining.

Edited for clarity.

i think this is a great idea but maybe only make the decrease temporary until the queue forces the population to spread out more

Giving an incentive that is irresistible to players for playing in wvw may up the lower pop servers activities. Forcing a pve person into wvw has already been done for the map completion aspect which all pve people dread especially in lower level areas. Get rid of wvw maps being a requirement for map completion. Most those players are pve people who don’t participate in wvw and are just taking space from others that want to participate. Removing this aspect the Q would be freed up to people who want it for what it is. Have it be a separate achievement of some sort for finishing the map anyways.

Forcing changes on anyone will make more of a retaliation. In SoR the Q sucks, badly. On the weekends it’s over 3-4 hours during prime time. And once you get into the maps it’s still spotty. To me the maps feel too big for the amount of people at any given time. The maps should get shrunk or spread the battle between more then three servers. I think battles would be more diverse and dynamic if it were 4-5 servers at once.

Nuzt.7894:

They were requested by players who took the time to read and input in the original thread to break it into sections such as WvW, PvE, and SPvP. This thread could be found in the General Forum a week before the WvW thread was presented.

Let me say it again, since you skipped the first part: Since WvW is “part of PvE”, there’s no way to merge servers without hitting both

PvE topic is about Living Story, and WvW is about World Population. World population is related to PvE too

Let green server’s guest to green server’s, let blue server’s guest to blue, and red to red. Problem solved, there is alot of guilds out there that would jump to another server just for fights, and while this may seem like they are not there to help 1 zerg busting guild could make an enormous impact on a low rank server facing a higher ranked server. Aside from those guilds players stuck in Que might be willing to guest somewhere else for some change.

I don’t understand why everyone want to punish NA/Oceanic players playing in EU or vice versa. Why should they suffer for playing WvW when EU players sleep?

I think that lag is the main reason zergs exist(you can’t kill 50 people with your 20 man team if all you can press is 1) and the way PPT works is the reason we have the “coverage” problem people are talking about. Fixing those would help spreading the players.

People don’t even CONSIDER moving from their server, a lot probably aren’t even aware of it as an option. For this reason, I propose the following;

1. full means full. No more transfers to full servers.
2. when a queue is x people long, the “there is a queue, would you like to wait?” popup should suggest a server transfer, with a list of which servers cost nothing to transfer to at that time. In order to encourage long-term transfers, offer a reward if an account remains on the new server for six months or more.
3. cancel Edge of the Mist in it’s current form. The plan as it stands will simply encourage people to remain on servers with large queues.

Here is a place to start: loot bags need to have better loot. I’m tired of getting junk items from zergs while running 200% MF.

Ntranced.7415:

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…

ALL of this. Seriously. I am astounded that Anet added leagues with server population in an already hideous state… not only did they not even consider that maybe overflow or queue system update would be needed, they actually reduced the gem cost for server transfers… ENCOURAGING this imbalance.

My guild is on SFR, we have been since beta (mostly cos we liked the name being old Luxon fans)) so we find ourselves in tier1 mostly by luck. The fluidity of server transfers, and the new league meant that people swarmed to this server…and as a result the community of the server has been completely lost under a homogeneous pug zerg. People haven’t integrated, they have made no attempt to bond, and that is because server loyalty DOES NOT EXIST…at least not in the big servers. At times I have considered moving us to a med to pop server with a decent community.

Having prizes that are influenced by position in the league will only make these problems worse, people will flock to the server they think will win, do nothing, not join TS, not contribute to wvw, but they just assume that they can faceroll and we will auto win… week 1 showed just how wrong they were.

Don’t even get me started on the kitten meta achievements… so you create a series of achievements with awesome reward (mini dolly <33) make it tough, and pretty grindy, to be stretched out over 7 weeks….that’s fine. Give it to everyone on all servers to work towards…. then make a system so that only 200 people from each server can be working on it at once. Brilliant. Bit like Teq, only much worse because these achievements take a long time. They are grinding as hell. I just spent 5 hours circle capping ruins, because of the kitten queues I had no idea when I would get back in.

I am moving more and more into wvw as the “endgame” but seriously things need to improve, because people are losing patience really quick :/