Guild Wars 2

Server mergers are inevitable in the long run. It has happened in every MMO I have played. Populations are bound to dwindle as players get bored with the game system and move on to other games. Let’s not pretend that GW2 is going to be any different and just get on with shutting down low-population servers and migrating players without a minimum of angst and hand-wringing.

Address Zerg Momentum.

The current “limitation” of 5 AoE targets strongly encourages players forming tight zergs in order to get objectives completed quicker.

One of the hardest things right now in WvW is to get morale up if your server is facing a zerg from another server and you don’t have an equal population to counter it man for man.

I would like to see the AoE limitation made into a map wide status effect. While populations are low enough that the server can keep up with the calculations, AoEs attacks and buffs have full effectiveness. This allows lower population servers to afford to spread out and reduce a clumped zerg’s AoE effectiveness while having full effectiveness with their AoE skills on that zerg. Eventually if a fight seems approachable people stick around on both sides and map populations eventually balance out. Once populations reach the hardware threshold everybody on that map gets hit by the reduced AoE effectiveness that we currently experience at all times.

Ideally in the build up phase we would see more field combat and back and forth battles. Once the AoE limit kicks in we would see a shift to the current WvW zerg strategies. The key is to make sure the transitions sets up all participating sides for an even as possible battle. If your commander feels that your zerg still can’t stand toe to toe with the opposing zerg, your server should have a decent enough map presence to defend objectives using the AoE cap ignoring siege weapons. Close intense battles are more fun than rolling over other people or getting rolled.

Making it harder for a zerg to gain momentum against lower population servers would be a welcome change to WvW.

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.

If you have queues, YOU are the problem. Transfer!

SlappedYak.7489:

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.

Server loyalty is all well and good, but you state yourself that it doesn’t exist on your server. If you consider moving from a server with huge queues and no server loyalty but decide not to, YOU are the problem.

lollasaurus.1457:

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) ^ This for sure. It would also verify if Anet’s queue system is wonky (ie: server x has many more people in a borderland than server y but server y still has a long queue, etc.).

2) A simple queue counter: Just give me the number place i am in if you can’t estimate a time.

3) encourage server alliances between the two losing teams (only if its not close) or, in the long term, cluster some servers together for WvW to increase their coverage.

Population caps are bad!
As I’ve read this topic I’ve seen alot of posts about capping the numbers of a server for each borderland. In my opinion this is really bad practice for any game. You’re limiting the players to play the game at it’s full potency. Some people are not able to wait or queue up for that long as life aint giving them that much spare time. They do wanne hop in for half an hour or so, so waiting or queuing up to play at all will result in not be able to play WvW at all.

Like some people mentioned the Gate System. The problem with this, what if you get matched up with a PvE based server, you will be limited to their numbers and nobody likes to wait to play their game.

Rewards
Nevertheless there are some great thoughts about rewarding different ranked servers. For example the thought about rewarding more WXP/XP/Karma or loot, to the lower ranked servers.

1. Matchup multipliers:
   Matchup rank #3: Camps/Towers multiplier 2x, Keeps 3x and StoneMist 5x
   Matchup rank #2: Camps/Towers multiplier 1.5x Keeps 2x and StoneMist 2.5x
   Matchup rank #1: Camps/Towers mutliplier 1x Keeps 1x and StoneMist 1x
   _ just a example of what it could be, rates should be discussed _
2. Objective multipliers:
   Other things I’ve seen that would really affect WvW alot is to add multipliers to the rewards based on a objectives tier. But this is more of a common thing that will affect any server.
3. Attacking mutlipliers:
   Based on your servers matchup rank, attacking an higher rank will increase the WXP/XP/Karma received from events. In this way leader of the matchup will be attacked more frequently.

This will make the game for those with lesser numbers more attractive. But in contrast the server that is leading the weekly matchup shouldn’t just use a kittenty strategy to benefit from those bonusses. So to balance the matchup the reward for winning a matchup must be worth it. Just an example: handing out WXP/Items based on your char’s/account performance within the matchup. Sure many people would have their vision, please do share! For higher ranks within the matchup might benefit from a Defenders bonus mutliplier.

Why I am not a fan of increased loot for any server within a matchup is simple because, people would rather get to a lower rank within a matchup to farm. So this should be a no-go!

Queues
Queues are annoying but necesarry as the server can or will not hold that many players. It will be even worse than every player can imagine with the skill lag. I do hope the the limit is based on the servers capacity as on the input of the different servers.

There are some great community ideas about queues. One that I want to highlight is the idea of logging on another char while your main-wvw-char is in the queue.

In many other games you can also queue up for a server. In those cases you will be shown what your number is in the queue, for example: You are number 3 outta 5. Feedback is of great importance as we humans like to know were we’re up to!

Guilds
Some people mentioned guild relative stuff like Guild vs Guild events. I really hope to see more rewarding stuff for guilds. This will make the guilds willing to play together as a team and they might even wanne transfer just to beat another guild.

Guilds should be rewarded more for playing in WvW instead of just getting/spending influence or their symbol to be displayed on a Keep/Tower. It might be a nice idea to give guilds another income so they try to hold their claimed land. If the guild claimed an objective they should generate some currency (gold / formula based on total guildmembers / or what so ever) for holding. For exmaple for claiming/holding a tower for 1hour will generate 1g, that will be added to the guild-bank.

World transfering
Some people mentioned that the cost of a world transfer should depend on the active players for that server in WvW. The downside of this is that Areanet has to track wether an account entered the WvW matchup weekly. The other part that is bugging me is that when a server keeps track on the changing rates of the cost to transfer, you might be able to see the WvW popultion of your enemies. You don’t want to reveal any data when it comes to revealing WvW playernumbers as you could easily laydown a blitzkrieg on their objectives to win a matchup. So instead of revealing a WvW’s playernumbers it should be based on League/Rank of the server as this represents their representation of WvW.

With the lower transfer costs the previous ideas might be able to move Guilds/players from one server to another, just to gain benefit from bonusses.

Credits
Yeah I scattered ideas from different users. I do used your idea and would like to bring you the credits but following the whole topic made me forgot your username. I’m sorry, but feel free to take the credits if needed

Introduce no more achievements in WvWvW zones until you fix the broken queuing system and lag.

Why Server Population needs to be balanced for WvW:
- Coverage influences the score massively
- In most cases the larger Zerg wins battles (at least for public zergs)
- Loosing due to the number of players is no fun
- People stop playing after a few wipes → Even larger disadvantage
- Higher population often leads to PvDoor what’s no fun
- Even matches are the most exciting!!

Possible Solution

Decrease Map Capacity: One server can’t be outnumbered as hard as right now and queues would be longer on overpopulated worlds what would lead to server transfers to lower populated servers. I could imagine that this would also solve the skill lag problem. The problem is that this seems to be impossible until the WvW overflow map.

Let WvW activity influence the transfer cost: Something like compare the hours spent in WvW of each server and let that number influence the transfer cost. That would encourage transfers to lower populated servers. There could also be a maximum value at which it gets impossible to transfer to a server but free to transfer off that server. Obviously the easier solution which should also be easy to implement..

Decreasing disadvantage without balancing population: In my opinion these would only be short term solutions, because a balanced server population would make WvW much more fun. You could for example increase the effect of the outnumbered buff or increase durability of Gates and Walls at night (probably would only work for Europe). More Guards at night or even while outnumbered would also be a little help. Making a tower upgrade called “Scout” which sends a message to the whole map as soon as a wall or gate looses 10% HP within 1 minute would make scouts less needed what will increase the number of active players as well (35v55 is a little better than 30v50). There are many possible ways to decrease the disadvantage through numbers without balancing it out.

Thankyou for doing this!

My thoughts (and some of these mentioned above already):

1. Mechanism to take guild upgrades/influence when moving guild to another server
2. dynamic server pops on maps, so if SoS (with lots of oceanics) plays another server with few, numbers can be made (a little more) balanced making fights more competitive.
3. and any queued from (2) above can go to Edge of the Mists or do something else.
4. “diminishing returns” for holding objectives over long periods, which will reduce score blow-outs
5. A few weeks after leagues finish, have a one-off transfer deal based on where servers are ranked on WvW (bottom six free, next nine half price etc).

My 2 cents (and wishful thoughts)

• To address server population imbalance.

- It is really only critical in the late nights/early morning (right now on our server we have long queues on all borders on prime time), when most of WvW is depopulated. As the point tick does not differentiate between prime time and late hours, a few dedicated ’night-shifters’ can heavily influence the final WvW score.

To minimize this effect, my suggestion is:
- Adjust the tick for WvW server points according to the time of the day (or total aggregate population in all 3 servers).

The expected result would be:
- Peak hours (i.e. times of the day that most players are online) would contribute more to the WvW server score than non-peak hours. All players could ideally influence equally on the total score, no matter what time they play.
- A win-win for all WvW players. Night-shifters would still be able to cap entire maps and get their rewards accordingly, but their influence on the total server score would decrease – and other players would not be dishearten to find out that the gap on the server scored quadrupled over night.

Implementation:
- Anet knows of course the total distribution of players in WvW according to the time of the day on EU and US servers – and on the plus side for the coders: it would not be difficult to implement.

(disclaimer: I have posted this on suggestions a while ago)

I don’t think you can solve the problem of population imbalance.

Without making it possible for the server with a smaller population to win the match up anyway. The big problem is that match are decided in the first day or two usually. If you make the score difference smaller all week long it will still be possible for the smaller server to win.

Here is my suggestion :

1. Give a boost to the losing servers based on score difference with the winning server in match-up

+ health on wall/gate
+ supply from dolyak caravan
+ stats to NPC
+ damage from siege

This will make the score closer and will stop complete rip off and karma train from the server with the higher population.

2. Make the final PPT matter.

- Add the final PPT when the week end multiplied by 100 to the final score.

This will make it possible for the losing server to close a cap of 20000k in an instant.

Combine the 2 suggestions and you get thrilling match all week long where nothing is decided until the end.

English from Google Translator, sorry.

==========
Solutions for World Population Imbalance (out of box):

1 )
Add new, improved, individual “PvE” quests into the WvWvW maps (new areas) linked only to the player or group. Those quests offer better weapons and armor than legendaries as loot. Guest players get more XP.

Explanation : lower population servers will attract players to fulfill the quests in less competitive lands, the “natives” can solve prevent quests from foreigners or not. : )

2 )
Over the head of each player put the very name (not the server name). It is more important to know the personal name of an enemy that its origin.

Explanation : Instead of the server name , the player’s name , its origin can be identified by the color of the letters of the name . This will make the PvP in WvWvW a personal dispute and no more a randomic fight.

3 )
So, when choosing the WvWvW the player can choose to:

a) WvWvW traditional – all the same

b ) WvWvW with individual quests in open PvP environment (alone or not), yes you can be killed a lot by other players

 i – in the server itself – normal XP
ii – as a guest on another server – Extra XP more better loot

4 ) Chat channels between different servers, so players can schedule PvP fights and challenges

5 ) Map/server cap indicators (if devs cannot show numbers, show graphics in colors from full to empty) so the player can choose where to go.

6 ) Special XP points for guilds that help other servers. Entire guilds would transfer as guests to conquer points for helping other servers.

This “help mode” must work just for guilds.

In conclusion: Simple ideas, revolved worlds, balanced population in 4 weeks.

Good luck!

As I’m no longer able to edit my post, as it won’t let me (exceeded the maximum of characters 5001), I’m just reposting the new idea I came up with:

Respawntimers
I would like to introduce respawntimers based on either Worlds rank or on the Worlds population in that borderland. The respawntimers I like to introduce will give more breathing space for servers that manage to whipe a stronger World. When in a fight, players can not waypoint back when they’re death. People should be able to be revived during or after the fight. After the fight ends in that area a World can use the waypoints. If the stronger server got wiped they get a timer upon death after the fight so they are delayed for loosing the fight. With the delay that the stronger world has, the more time the weaker world they bought theirself for taking them out.

I think it would go a ways to either contract a few servers or allow world transfers while retaining guild progress for better mobility. On my server in any case, it is frustrating because we don’t even do Jormag anymore, let alone Tequatl. We failed Shatterer the other night! It’s frustrating having a server that is plagued with a perception of low population, and then compounded on by people complaining in map chat that we are a dying server and thus refusing to help out on these events. TO some degree player attitude makes an existing problem seem worse than it is, but nonetheless…

I think the common trend I am seeing in these posts are that we are asking for actual numbers posted. Nothing can be resolved until we get a more clear picture of what is going on.

In example:

-Ratio numbers of WvW players to actual Server Population per world

-Number of hours each world puts into WvW, and the timezones

-The number of players allowed into a given map per world

I would just like to put in that u can still have fun in wvw on a low pop server vs a high pop one. Just today I got 387 kills from defending against what was probably a full map zerg with 20-30 people and the way we won 3x is by pre making siege. We had 7-8 superior arrow carts in inner bay before we were attacked. Together with this and the help of Jd guild we were able to fight off a full drakkar zerg 3 times fully wiping them, all the while trying to get our bloody loot bags off the ground. Id prefer to see some changes to the maps so they arent copy pasted in the borderlands. Outnumbering isnt that fun though I feel sorry for drakkar lake

Some suggestions are fine, but still won’t solve the issue.

Less points for server who outnumbers the enemies. It helps by slowing the point increase, but they will still win points AND the players on the other side won’t have fun anyway.

Also servers with coverage have a day to get free upgrades on their stuff and then when prime time comes the servers without coverage now fight to get a T3 tower/keep/SM which now is worth full points cause the population is equal.

Yes, the suggestion will make the gap smaller, but the winner will be the same AND what’s more important people in off peak will still not have fun.

Working solutions are those that make numbers even, or that give chances for outnumbered servers to at least defend for a reasonable time, cause right now there is no defending against a zerg even if you defend a T3 structure. Siege inside is uselless, you can’t even stand on walls. The only “solution” is to ban rez the lord untill the zerg gets bored, but even for that you need some good numbers. And if you can’t defend the server with more numbers will get 1 point instead of 10, but will still get that point and you won’t get any.

From all the solutions I saw the one I think would fix this is WvW servers different from PvE servers. Match-ups based on colors only so every color would have numbers and coverage all the time.

But I don’t know if they can implement that in their current engine, so even if it looks like the best solution it doesn’t mean it’s also possible.

Markadis.9012:

I think the common trend I am seeing in these posts are that we are asking for actual numbers posted. Nothing can be resolved until we get a more clear picture of what is going on.

In example:

-Ratio numbers of WvW players to actual Server Population per world

-Number of hours each world puts into WvW, and the timezones

-The number of players allowed into a given map per world

i agree with this alot too. for someone wanting to have a discusion with players you seem to want to make sure we know as little as possible of whats going on.

I’ve thought about this often…

But it seems that world population is more of a natural thing that seems to fix itself. Guilds transfer. People quit.

However it seems the only way world pop can be “balanced” or “fixed” is to add something(s) Maps, 3 new servers maybe…either way without adding or being more strict on server transferring…World pop will act more like a force of nature…
Or like a blood clot.

I fancy the idea of in WvW: removing the more PvE aspects like Centaurs and Skritt and replacing them with different objectives or ways for the defending BL to manage their areas.
In wvw to put each Jumping puzzle either in their own realm or combine them with the Eternal Battle ground realm so they can be cross traveled….Or just make one super Borderlands Jumping puzzle. and rid of the other JPs.

I know this might sound drastic but some games have PvE servers…

There is only one balance issue. Queues are not a problem Arenanet should be addressing, they are a symptom of players being unwilling to transfer or ignorant of the transfer opportunity.

The balance problem is that of coverage. While some servers have many overnight players, other servers have barely any. This leads to situations where the maps are completely one colour overnight with waypoints and full upgrades in every keep. This, in turn, leads to boring games that nobody enjoys and makes the score irrelevant.

I believe, there is a certain capacity limit of number of players which a BL or EB map can take. If there is no control over the balance number of players each server can enter, we essentially get very imbalance number hence the game match is not fairly matched.
Say for example, in spvp, 3 v 5 .. We get auto balancing. It sort of resolve the issue better than having 3 v 10 players. perhaps this kind of system or similar should be in place for wvwvw environment.
We want a fair game.. Not getting overwhelmed by numbers bcos there is con control overs how many versus how many as a whole.

Last sunday.. I felt we were on average of 1 UW player versus 10 to 15 AM players versus 3 GH players for many hours AND that was when EB was on full capacity many UW players tried to enter but was put on queue .. typically speaking, we were massively out numbered… It was basically unplayable.

Tht is why i hv suggested 1/3 split of BL or EB map capacity allocated to each server. With some kind of auto balancing system in place similar to tht of spvp match.. eg with a coeeficient range tht triggers the auto balancing..

After reading through the thread, as a non-hardcore WvWer first off have to say that a lot of these suggestions have been great, whilst some are not so much.

With the altering points due to population numbers, try and think of this from the off-time populations view (full disclosure, I’m an Australian, so my prime time is your offtime) – why should those who play the same mode, with different constraints get penalized for playing when they can?

I apologize if I’ve misinterpreted the suggestions above massively. The other thing that comes to mind when reading this thread is that ultimately this question is about what play should be encouraged or discouraged in WvW as a game mode; is Zerging the important play in WvW or should players split up into smaller groups?

Personally, whilst it’s fun to run with the zerg, I feel it promotes less tactical play for individuals; the commander/s in this instance are doing more work to keep the zerg going, but due to lag each person’s contribution to the success of the zerg is small. The most fun I’ve had in WvW has been defending keeps with a few players and well placed siege…not that we succeed very often, but it is fun.

I have will be a rather unpopular suggestion but I’ll voice it anyway – add in more objectives to encourage players to split up. Make these objectives have an effect on the capture/defense of other objectives. These may just add another point for the zerg to move through, but it may also help give lower population servers an edge

Make Mercenary Camps Help Defense

Currently the mercs play very little into the way WvW works on any map. Maybe we could have these areas once controlled spawn a group of NPC’s similiar to a Dolyak, but will move to the closest large objective (eg, not camp) and spawn a Siege weapon based on their flavour; like say a Poisen Turret for the Hylek, a patrol of Ogres from the Ogres. The key is to make these objectives bonuses ramp up the longer their held; so each “supply run” adds one defence addition, and once two are added to the nearest objective the group would add to the next furthest objective ect.
(This would also predicate on changing some of the current groups which just wander; the Centaur and Skritt in the Borderlands maps to Mercenary Camps.)

There are 2 different problems about population:

1. Overall quantity of players: if you want similar numbers during a match, give to the losing side more incentives to play wvw; you can do this by changing the gameplay or, only if really needed, by changing the gem cost to transfer to some servers.

2. Coverage problem: coverage is too much important in the current score system; if you want balanced scores you have to give more points tied somehow to how many enemies there are, and give less points for taking objectives (or make them harder to take)

I see two kinds of imbalance being discussed. Imbalance of use of servers, and imbalance of numbers within a WvWvW battle. For the latter problem, you can either let the majority side keep winning but more frequently change their opponents to be from the worlds with the most similar averaged population numbers (however that is measured), or you can limit numbers of the dominant side to be closer to the numbers from the least dominant side, putting all their extra players into a separate (secondary) WvWvW instance or match up instead of only being in a queue for the main match where they can’t enjoy any WvW at all. Doing this could involve requiring more servers to play more matches, each with fewer people, and the ‘secondary’ match ups could be more short lived, (coming and going like town instances in GW1) which may also address the first issue of imbalance of servers, in that you can use the least used WvWvW servers for the secondary match ups.

The only way you’re going to fix population imbalance is if you incentivize the two losing servers to attack the leader. There’s a few ways you could do this.

Make their stuff more valuable. Killing players and taking possessions owned by the leading server should be worth more in immediate rewards than taking possessions owned by the #2 or #3 guys. I’m not sure to what degree, but the loot should be better, the gold should be better, the exp (both level and WvW) should be better, etc.

For the #1 server, rewards for attacking the #2 guy should be greater than attacking the #3 guy. In fact, attacking the #3 guy should be perhaps even less than normal rewards, at maybe a -30% penalty. Nobody’s impressed with a bully kicking the little guy when he’s down.

Basically, rewards should be skewed towards encouraging people to attack the server in the lead more than each other.

Break up the zerg. Make zerging less rewarding and effective. Towers should be easier to take by smaller teams of people, and being IN a zerg should be more hazardous than safe. There’s really nothing an outmanned server can do against a zerg that’s just bigger than they are.

I’m not sure how to do it. Here are some spitball ideas off the top of my head.

• Make proximity to 10+ players grant a “crowded” debuff that lowers your stats.
• Make AOE hurt groups more. Like, a lot more, to discourage people from being groups up in the first place.
• Make buffs harder to stack in a large concentration.
• Prevent siege from being placed too close together.
• Make towers and keeps easier to assault by fewer people, meaning servers will need to spread out more and keep a closer eye on their possessions. Unmanned installations should fall easy.
• Send yaks more often. This will spread out the yak hunters and make more people want to hunt them, since the rewards will be good, and also keeps will get supplies faster, which is something you’d be more incentivized to prevent.

I dunno, stuff like that.

Improve the “outmanned” buff. First, give it to any server that is outmanned by a certain percentage (let’s say, 30% overall or whatever, to just toss out a number) and make the buffs actually provide benefits that would help with BEING outmanned. Increase damage and movement speed, maybe. Gift players temporary abilities to spawn siege and make it hurt a LOT to attackers. Give the outnumbered force a clear benefit to help them compete.

Edit: Additionally, the ‘outmanned’ buff should apply if you’re outnumbered over the four zones, not just in that particular zone. If you’re poplocked in EB, but have nobody in the other four, you should enjoy the buff in EB. Maybe you’ll wreck face there, but you’ll still be losing overall, and it might spread people out more.

Would a one month restriction time on transfers help any? Would force the player to really consider before moving and also kind of force them to get to know the community and maybe decide to stay? Also put that restriction on level one toons (allow one switch if toon deleted, then lock it in) to avoid other kinds of abuse?

I would like to make a few suggestions and provide reasons.

1. Display the number of people in the que and an estimated timer.
It helps plan out the limited play time most people have. Sitting in a battleground que for 3 hours with the expectation it can pop at anytime stops people committing to other things in game and real life. It would also balance the servers player base across all battlegrounds.

2. Prioritize ques for guilds over randoms.
Top tier servers have a “roster” for guilds to provide coverage for a certain battleground between certain hours of the day. With the influx of PvE achievement chasers taking a large portion of the available battleground slots, WvW guilds cannot get everyone into the map. If you have 20 guild members in a battleground you should be given a preference over someone who has 0 guild members and intends to use supply to repair walls being trebed or do a jumping puzzle.

3. Remove all PvE from the WvW maps.
Remove the mobs, skillpoints, POI, vistas, achievement points and jumping puzzles from the maps. There is a whole continent dedicated to being a carebear. We do not need people taking up WvW slots to do activities offered elsewhere. PvErs would cry if open world PvP was offered in Tyria where slots are NOT limited. It seams only fair WvWers cry that PvE is offered where slots ARE limited.

4. Stop server transfers.
I know GW2 has a business model of buy to play and milk people with the microtransation cash shop instead of a subscription. However if a server has WvW ques for more than 25% of the week, close transfers to the server. Also offer free transfers away from the server to give people incentive to move to less populated servers. This won’t effect the PvErs who can guest and sPvP is cross server anyway.

5. Guild buffs/ progression/ reputation should be cross server
Remove one of the barriers that prevents whole guilds moving. It seams ridiculous that a guild looses all buffs, levels and reputation if it does the right thing and moves from high pop server to a low pop server. Let the guild benefits follow the guild to the new server.

On a side note I do like the idea of the new map with the overflow and cannot wait to play it. Unfortunately open map GvG death matches are lacking and I hope this will fill the void.

A lot of writing and very little reading in this thread. Everyone just says what he wants to say and very few check what others have said.

Anet, you shouldn’t leave this thread for a couple of days, stay active, engage and direct the conversation/discussion or you’ll just have a bunch of messages directed straight at you and not an actual discussion.

The world population. I believe that the PVE areas are fine.

The WvW areas struggle with the issue. The Solution lies in a Rotation. The League turned into a LADDER’s qualifying match, WHICH is what we already have.

If you want a true league, then there has to be complete rotation. A v B v C : D v E v F :G v H v I :Then A v D v G :B v E v H :C v F v I and so on until all Worlds have faced off.

Yes that will leave some pawnage. This is where ANET can apply the bonus points to the lower rated servers.

The T1 teams will earn normal to -8% bonus based on the tier of the opponents. The T8 Teams will receive normal to +8% bonus on xp, karma, gold, and drops.

One other solution is a making the home base penetrable. If the Home Area is attacked and captured, that Team is sacked as a Server for a set time. Their forces could not return to their home castle for a minimal buff period where the sacked home is (Rebuilt) restored. Nothing more than 15 minutes.

On a Side note, The ENTIRE ANET World Population says QUIT DROPPING DANDELIONS from harvested plants. No one likes it when their character starts sneezing from allergies!!!

There Can Be only ONE, and that one is WINE.

Svarty.8019:

There is only one balance issue. Queues are not a problem Arenanet should be addressing, they are a symptom of players being unwilling to transfer or ignorant of the transfer opportunity.

The balance problem is that of coverage. While some servers have many overnight players, other servers have barely any. This leads to situations where the maps are completely one colour overnight with waypoints and full upgrades in every keep. This, in turn, leads to boring games that nobody enjoys and makes the score irrelevant.

i’ve been on my t1 server since beta. WHY SHOULD I Have to leave because bandwagoners showed up later? We started in 17th place BTW.

Sanduskel.1850:

Svarty.8019:

There is only one balance issue. Queues are not a problem Arenanet should be addressing, they are a symptom of players being unwilling to transfer or ignorant of the transfer opportunity.

The balance problem is that of coverage. While some servers have many overnight players, other servers have barely any. This leads to situations where the maps are completely one colour overnight with waypoints and full upgrades in every keep. This, in turn, leads to boring games that nobody enjoys and makes the score irrelevant.

i’ve been on my t1 server since beta. WHY SHOULD I Have to leave because bandwagoners showed up later? We started in 17th place BTW.

You don’t have to leave. It’s all about choice. Hate the queues, investigate elsewhere. Don’t want to leave, then deal with the queues. Simple.

Jayne.9251:

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.

+1 on this…..

i have suggested this many many many times…..

please ANET, implement this now… do justice to your crying servers, they are suffering from overload….

Sanduskel.1850:

Svarty.8019:

There is only one balance issue. Queues are not a problem Arenanet should be addressing, they are a symptom of players being unwilling to transfer or ignorant of the transfer opportunity.

The balance problem is that of coverage. While some servers have many overnight players, other servers have barely any. This leads to situations where the maps are completely one colour overnight with waypoints and full upgrades in every keep. This, in turn, leads to boring games that nobody enjoys and makes the score irrelevant.

i’ve been on my t1 server since beta. WHY SHOULD I Have to leave because bandwagoners showed up later? We started in 17th place BTW.

because you invited the bandwagoners without thinking the consequences through.

Caliban.3176:

A lot of writing and very little reading in this thread. Everyone just says what he wants to say and very few check what others have said.

Anet, you shouldn’t leave this thread for a couple of days, stay active, engage and direct the conversation/discussion or you’ll just have a bunch of messages directed straight at you and not an actual discussion.

i agree anet needs to be in here directing the flow of discussion not abandoning the thread for a few days until it goes off topic

Give players with higher WvW levels a priority in queues. A level 150 WvW player should have a chance to get into the map faster than someone only leveled 23. That means you better play if you don’t want to suffer from queues.

This should be done by some kind of random chance system.

Example. Let’s say there are 2 guy waiting in queue for a borderland. Player 1 was the first to join the queue. Player 2 join after.

Player 1: Level 67
Player 2: Level 100

The combined level of player 1 and player 2 is 167. Since 100/167=60%, there is a 60% chance that player 2 will overtake player 1 in the queue, when player 2 press the join button.

Now let’s say there is already 5 players in a queue, when player 6 joins in. Player 6 is level 120.

Player 1: Level 67
Player 2: Level 100
Player 3: Level 23
Player 4: Level 45
Player 5: Level 12

Player 6 will first fight player 5 for the queue. Since 120/132=91%, there is a 91% chance that player 6 will overtake player 5 in the queue.

Assume that player 6 successfully take over player 5’s spot. He will be fighting against player 4 next. Since 120/165=73%, there is a 75% chance that player 6 will overtake player 4 in the queue.

Assume that player 6 got bad luck and he didn’t take over player 4, his spot will stop there. Here will be the new queue.

Player 1: Level 67
Player 2: Level 100
Player 3: Level 23
Player 4: Level 45
Player 6: Level 120
Player 5: Level 12

Player 6 have no idea how many players he beat in the queue. So re-queuing is meaningless. A high level player cannot abuse this by keep re-queuing. But having a higher WvW level does improve his chances of having a shorter queue.

To implement this system, the WvW ranking must be shared for all characters in a player’s account.

A newbie WvWer on a high population server will be stuck in hours long queues. This, combined with discounts for going into a low population server (or even free gems), will temp many players to move to a low population server. This will eventually achieve server balance.

beauty of wine.5879:

The world population. I believe that the PVE areas are fine.

The WvW areas struggle with the issue. The Solution lies in a Rotation. The League turned into a LADDER’s qualifying match, WHICH is what we already have.

If you want a true league, then there has to be complete rotation. A v B v C : D v E v F :G v H v I :Then A v D v G :B v E v H :C v F v I and so on until all Worlds have faced off.

Yes that will leave some pawnage. This is where ANET can apply the bonus points to the lower rated servers.

The T1 teams will earn normal to -8% bonus based on the tier of the opponents. The T8 Teams will receive normal to +8% bonus on xp, karma, gold, and drops.

One other solution is a making the home base penetrable. If the Home Area is attacked and captured, that Team is sacked as a Server for a set time. Their forces could not return to their home castle for a minimal buff period where the sacked home is (Rebuilt) restored. Nothing more than 15 minutes.

On a Side note, The ENTIRE ANET World Population says QUIT DROPPING DANDELIONS from harvested plants. No one likes it when their character starts sneezing from allergies!!!

There Can Be only ONE, and that one is WINE.

Having points buff and debuff depending on server strength is fine but people don’t go to WvW for points. At least, it isn’t the main driving force motivating them. They go to have some good fighting. There is no good fighting when you are getting pawned and there is no good fighting when you are doing the pawning. Trying to encourage PvErs to join the fight by dangling a carrot is not going to work. Those people are not interested in PvP. They need to find a way to spread out the WvW people across all worlds instead of having them stack in the top 3. There have been some really good suggestions on how to do that. Whether Anet will take those into consideration, well lets just say my faith is a little shaken from the recent updates.

What is your end goal?

Do you want to have 24 servers with roughly equal numbers of players 24 hours a day? Only way to get there is to assign servers. And to do that. you would need people to choose one of their guilds as a WvW guild to allow each person to play WvW with a guild of their choosing. And you absolutely need to allow guilds who get bumped from their server to take their guild benefits with them. It is only wishful thinking to say anything else will get you there.

If equal numbers of players are not as critical as equal scores, then the simplest answer is to apply handicaps to the scores of lower ranked servers. The #1 rank may get 5 PPT for a camp, but the #10 server gets 50 points for it. Actual values would be based on some math that would theoretically balance all 3 teams.

Want to reduce the zerg? Give no points for undefended towers and keeps. Or give points but send in NPC assassins to break into them which would give any players defending the tower something to kill while waiting for actual players to attack. An assassin that gets to the lord kills him and neutralizes the objective. The number of assassins sent to each objective would be based on how many more players your server has than the others. Be sure the personal rewards for defending the tower are fair compared to someone just zerging.

Want to allow for better comebacks? Force an alliance between the two losing servers if the points between them and #1 gets too great. All points for the objectives are split between the allies. The alliance is not broken until one of the 2 lower servers is winning the match.

Randomize placements of guilds on servers.

I think we need to be careful with how we approach world population issue’s. We cant punish players for playing in different regions, just being on T1 or forcing guilds onto servers they may not want to play on. Punishing success has proven through out history to do nothing but lead to failure and stagnation (Think non swedish socialism). If we were to punish people in game by forcing people to transfer, Capping map populations based on the lowest server or not rewarding you PPT/WXP for capping a keep you would have tons of players leave the game in droves and it would not be a good PR look for Anet. So I think those idea’s should not be used.
The Solution I think should revolve around giving people more tools so they have oppurtunities to comeback, to work and reward people for putting in the effort and trying. Here is what I propose

1st Defensive Buffs: The purpose of a defensive buff is to give players who are in outmanned situations an opportunity to fightback should they choose to utilise the tool.
Improve outmanned – add 10% more siege dmg (excluding golems) to the current outmanned buff.
Home Defense – This would only apply in the homeborderland and only when you are 2nd or 3rd to reflect the desperateness of the situation. In addition to granting the outmanned buff, Home defence increase’s stats of Lords and supervisors by 250% and each keep has its NPC number doubled. Home defence would also grant 100% extra WXP while in the home borderland, repeling attacks at keeps and towers grants wxp as if you had captured them.
The Liberator – an ancient warrior of unknown origins. Said to appear in times of dire need when a nation is facing its demise Accessible when your server is losing by more then 10000, is 2nd or 3rd and replace’s siegerazor in Home and eternal. For all intense and purposes does the same thing as siegerazor except has 250% more stats, only takes half dmg from siege, has an AOE fear move, Grants nearby players 100% extra WXP. Also strike’s 3 Targets (2 towers and 1 keep) instead of one in a randomised path. Despawns after taking keep and all enemies players inside are killed. The liberator is treated as a world boss so if opposing players manage to kill him they are rewarded with a guaranteed rare and 2 Gilded Strongboxes

2nd. Free Transfers for WvW players (those who play say play 8 or more hours a week) to the Bottom 6 ranked servers between leagues. No conditions, no cost. If you play WvW regularly you can if you choose to transfer free to a bottom server. This is to ensure that only WvW players can move for no cost. This would overtime allow servers that bottom out to rebuild and rebound while overtime helping to address balance
Long term as well I would consider Restricting rallying to 1 player per kill (last to hit cept necromancers since coming from the dead is there theme)*. This is about giving players another tool while removing the immortality that zergs have.

Sorry about the long post lol but I hope this helps give you guys idea’s. I don’t think perfect population balance will ever be acheieved but we can make it possible for a lower population server to fight back, stop blow-outs and mitigate the problems associated with imbalance. All this without punishing players or servers. The defence buffs make breaking out of spawn in outmanned situations much easier and defence rewarding. The liberator Idea would make WvW more cinematic and fun since those T1 servers now have to deal with a rampaging world boss just as victory seemed in there grasp. While free server transfers to the bottem 6 and fixing rallying go towards directly addressing the population issue Anyway that’s my 2 cents and I really hope You guys take a look at my post :P.

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.

I simply have a question. Why won’t, or haven’t you (Anet) provided accurate numbers?

Also what is the average percentage of total GW2 players playing WvW?

Finally for the players, why do you want to know the exact population numbers on any given server, at any given time etc?

the only way to manage this is to remove the server based achetype

i.e you have 4 WvW servers (Random number) and guilds join which ever server they can get into, some people might want to join the full ones and others might want to join the low end ones. Either way the worlds are in no way related to server

Points are calculated by the players activity in what ever world they joined in and go towards that players server score at the end of the week

so example:

4 WvW Servers

Player 1 from Server A joins WvW server 4 and earns 5 points
Player 2 from Server A joins WvW server 1 and earns 10 points

Server A now has 15 points

Each WvW server has a team balancing safety net when selecting to join Red, Blue or Green

This removes timezone issues and coverage gaps and “over stacking to win” which is ultimately what people are talking about here

However this also creates new problems but also creates a thousand new possibilities for fun and cross server alliances

By doing such a system this should also free up some hardware resources (servers) that will no longer be in use once players are merged into a server browser list

This system would also need points deducted for doing badly in order to stop organised score fixing

Quenta.2978:

Randomize placements of guilds on servers.

you do know that guild version exist across all servers, right ? that’s why you see people in the same guild across different servers. my guild has members located on different servers. the only difference is the upgrades.

There’s no way to fix population imbalance. Players need to accept it and decide what server they want to be on to have more fun. No one has a fair solution.

No amount of financial incentive with lowering or increasing gem cost of transfers will change the fact that many people want to be on the server that is winning.

Ideas on this thread I don’t agree with:
-Lower PPT during off peak hours? Unfair to oceanic or euro players (on NA servers).
-Knowing the map player limit? Satisfies our curiosity, but knowing won’t change imbalance issues (which is what people are mad about)
-PVE’ers into WvW – Ugh, it’s already bad enough having to deal with queues, it’s even worse when your guild or wvw vets can’t get in, and it’s a bunch of trash PVE’ers who don’t get on TS. On the plus side, there are noobs on the other side to farm. Double edged sword. And it won’t even out the population during off peak hours.

Not bad ideas:
-Buff siege, NPCs, or give players that are outnumbered a major buff – if it’s done right, this could be ok, but it’s already been done with siegerazer. Maybe give a respawn timer to the servers with a larger population.
-Gating – introduces new problems, but is probably the best solution if you decide to do anything. I would be angry if the enemy server had a small WvW population on and only a small population of people on my server could get into the map, especially if the small population of my server was absolute garbage.

Very good idea:
-Allow guilds to keep their upgrades if they transfer to another server

I’m going to go against what many people think is the ideal and say that I don’t really want all of the server populations equalized, nor do I want to see a transfer of huge WvW guilds to my low-tier server. I think that would feel like an even larger invasion than what we experience in match-ups against servers with much higher WvW populations. There is a lot that I like about the dynamic on lower population servers, especially when we are up against similarly sized opponents, and I really don’t want to see that replaced by the dynamic I read about from players on T1 and T2 servers.

Yes, it would be nice to have more WvW players than we do and more consistent coverage throughout the day, so I’m not trying to discourage individual or even guild transfers to Eredon Terrace because we could certainly use more help. What I don’t want to see is the existing community drowned out by transfers because I like our existing community quite a bit and like how much of a different individuals and small teams can make on the lower-tiered servers. And, no, it’s not all PvDoor, especially when we have coverage.

What I’d like to see is the opponent pool limited to servers that are not wildly different in WvW populations, coverage, or ability. In that regard, the leagues have been helpful in limiting the disparity by putting distant servers out of reach, though some servers have wound up on the wrong side of the cut-off. Yes, variety is better than static tiers, but the existing pre-league system had too much variety. ET should never have been put up against Yaks Bend, for example.

So maybe a looser definition of leagues that’s not limited to a fixed number but to groups servers into broader tiers based on WvW population, coverage, and score could be useful, because I think what many people are complaining about the most is blow-outs where an opponent is so powerful it can show up on a servers Borderlands and take most or even all of it without the defending server having any ability to stop it. Most WvW players accept that losing is part of the game, but it’s not a lot of fun being impotent.

So I think the first goal of any fix should be preventing blow-out match-ups where a server is powerless to fight back.

Ceeps.3185:

There’s no way to fix population imbalance. Players need to accept it and decide what server they want to be on to have more fun. No one has a fair solution.

No amount of financial incentive with lowering or increasing gem cost of transfers will change the fact that many people want to be on the server that is winning.

Ideas on this thread I don’t agree with:
-Lower PPT during off peak hours? Unfair to oceanic or euro players (on NA servers).
-Knowing the map player limit? Satisfies our curiosity, but knowing won’t change imbalance issues (which is what people are mad about)
-PVE’ers into WvW – Ugh, it’s already bad enough having to deal with queues, it’s even worse when your guild or wvw vets can’t get in, and it’s a bunch of trash PVE’ers who don’t get on TS. On the plus side, there are noobs on the other side to farm. Double edged sword. And it won’t even out the population during off peak hours.

Not bad ideas:
-Buff siege, NPCs, or give players that are outnumbered a major buff – if it’s done right, this could be ok, but it’s already been done with siegerazer. Maybe give a respawn timer to the servers with a larger population.
-Gating – introduces new problems, but is probably the best solution if you decide to do anything. I would be angry if the enemy server had a small WvW population on and only a small population of people on my server could get into the map, especially if the small population of my server was absolute garbage.

Very good idea:
-Allow guilds to keep their upgrades if they transfer to another server

There is a solution, you failed to read my post – my solution has 0% chance to be accepted by community, however it addresses the issue they complain about. Question is will people like to see thier world being turned upside down to fix the population spread? Its likey an argument that will cause more arguments once the first argument is fixed

A bit of caution please on buffing the underdog – please don’t do anything that would incentivize bad play – such as throwing a match or “not playing” on purpose. I do like the ideas of buffed NPCs for underdogs and more Siegerazor etc., but scaling points too much could lead to players being told to leave the map so points could be earned for not playing.

Now while I do agree population imbalance is an issue, I also understand that WvW is not about “fair” or “equal numbers” and is more about diplomacy, encouraging server mates to join up, rallying around a charismatic commander. But we need to figure out how to encourage the humans behind the keyboard to spread out instead of all trying to sit in the same chair at the poker table when there’s empty chairs all around. If we all end up in the same seat, we’re not going to have anyone left to play against, and how much fun is that?

My main suggestion to encourage the population to spread out is three-fold:
(a) Publish the queue times – tantalize guilds with published data so they can see for themselves that server x has queue times under 10 minutes or is even outmanned on a daily basis
(b) Allow guilds to retain their influence points/items on transfer
© Free transfers to servers who don’t have a big wvw presence – not the overall server population, but the average hours players spend in wvw away from the spawn & merchants. No need to publish these numbers – just offer free transfers to those servers that need more wvw players.

Next, what I think a lot of people are looking for is what’s called in many sports and games “handicapping”. Wikipedia defines handicapping as:

“Handicapping, in sport and games, is the practice of assigning advantage through scoring compensation or other advantage given to different contestants to equalize the chances of winning. The word also applies to the various methods by which the advantage is calculated. In principle, a more experienced player is disadvantaged in order to make it possible for a less experienced player to participate in the game or sport whilst maintaining fairness. Handicapping also refers to the various methods by which spectators can predict and quantify the results of a sporting match.”

Handicapping can take many different forms. It can be applied to the score in the form of point spreads, free points, adjustment rations, or even the Glicko system that’s being used to determine ranking evolution. It can be in the form of an advantage given to the inferior competitor in the form of more information, more resources, reduced limits, reduced costs, buffed abilities, increased use of abilities, or a looser application of the rules and limits. It can be in the form of a disadvantage given to the superior competitor in the form of less information, fewer resources, increased limits, increased costs, penalized abilities, decreased use of abilities, or a tighter application of the rules and limits.

Reducing or buffing the abilities of individual characters is problematic for players who want WvW to be a game of ability and for there to be some consistency in the quality of battles, so that sort of adjustment should probably be avoided. But there are other things that can be done to help an underdog server or hinder a dominant server:

Improving the NPCs that guard empty towers for underdog servers, including adding more, making them stronger, or allowing them to fire unmanned siege if no defenders are there that could man it. I know people don’t want more PvE in their WvW, but PvDoor is hardly PvP, either, and there is no reason why it should be easy for the dominant servers that engage in it. Don’t like fighting NPCs? Then find a defended tower to capture.

Give the underdog server more information, specifically in the form of reduced or eliminated delays for when swords appear on a location to allow an underpopulated server time to respond to attacks more effectively.

Give the dominant server less information, specifically in the form of increased delays before swords appear on a site under attack or eliminate the swords warning entire, except on waypoints. If they want to defend and hold sites with a superior number of players, they’ll need to have scouts and camp sites and not depends on zerging in when the sword appear.

The challenge there is to find a way to determine which server is superior and which is inferior enough to warrant a penalty or help and how to introduce them without players being able to exploit it by modulating their population on a map.

The easiest way to implement the information adjustment, in my opinion, is to look at the difference in score and implement the bonus and/or penalties when a servers score falls below, say, 65% of the top server’s score (and at least 1,000 points, to prevent it from kicking in immediately) and eliminate the bonus and/or penalities when the score falls back to within 75% of the top server’s score, so it won’t disappear instantly but can’t be used to win. The bonus and/or penalties could also be phased in with multiple tiers. Score is often a reasonably good proxy for determining coverage and population disparities, especially when the gap in scores is large.

As for the improving the NPCs defending empty towers (and perhaps the strength of tower and keep doors and walls, too), that would not only help weaker servers when they have coverage but also help deal with disparities in coverage, as well. People engage in PvDoor because it’s easy. Maybe it shouldn’t be.

So how to we make sure it’s based on coverage but it’s not abused by a server manipulating their map population? First, make the adjustments happen in small increments so that no small population change makes much of a difference. Second, use rolling averages where it makes sense instead of simply current map population.

Calculate two population numbers. The first is a one hour (or maybe half-hour) rolling average. The second one is the current population. Use the higher of the two numbers to calculate the difference in population on a map for rewarding bonuses and penalties. If a server suddenly exits a map, they get no immediate benefit and the population will effectively slowly go down as the average rolls foward. If the server suddenly surges on to a map, on the other hand, that will immediately get used for calculating things.

Berk.8561:

“Handicapping, in sport and games, is the practice of assigning advantage through scoring compensation or other advantage given to different contestants to equalize the chances of winning. The word also applies to the various methods by which the advantage is calculated. In principle, a more experienced player is disadvantaged in order to make it possible for a less experienced player to participate in the game or sport whilst maintaining fairness. Handicapping also refers to the various methods by which spectators can predict and quantify the results of a sporting match.”

One thing I wanted to add to this point is that I think this pretty clearly illustrates why many people react badly to the Orbs and Bloodlust buffs. They are basically anti-handicapping. Rather than equalize the chance of winning, they actually further imbalance already imbalanced maps in favor of the stronger server.

We should have:

1. See how many people are queuing up for each borderland
2. Where are you right now in the queue for the borderland
3. See the total number of players in a World server
4. To know which overflow you are in when compared with your other party members in other overflow map (something like America server1, America server2 back in GW1)

I’m sure there are problems with this idea, but at the moment I can’t really think of any so here goes:

1. Make unmanned structures decay. First losing upgrades, then going to neutral. Some indicator on the map will alert a team when a structure is in a state of decay. You have this in the ruins already. Just make it much longer for structures (30min/1hr of no defenders in a keep, 15/30min for towers?) This will spread zergs out and force defense.

2. Make neutral structures worth 0 PPT when captured. Once a successful defense event for that structure has been completed, it begins to generate normal PPT. Stops night-capping and pv-dooring from decimating a low pop server.

3. Neutral structures still give event completion, karma, wxp, champ bag etc when captured, so people can still karmatrain even when the opposing servers are asleep.

4. Camps are left alone and don’t decay. They simply don’t send yaks to neutral structures.

5. Increase PPT the more ticks a structure is successfully kept-up. This allows a server with low pop to concentrate on making a ‘last stand’ in just a few structures while not getting blown out. This also promotes upgrading structures, and gives an opposing force a reason to besiege a difficult target rather than just flipping towers all day.

6. Remove waypoints from keeps.

These solutions are intended to address the problem of population/coverage imbalance without actually relying on populations being balanced or punishing servers with healthy wvw populations by lowering queue limits on them.

Allow low population servers to group up with low population servers if the total number of active players are less then specified threshold. Kind of like the mercenary systems in other games.