Guild Wars 2

1. Clogged queues

There’s only one way to deal with this, as far as I can see; open up transfers out of the stacked servers and to less populated servers. I don’t think it should be made free to move to a low-populated server, but made cheap to move from a high-populated server. Seems pretty straightforward to me; “if: lots of queues, then: cheap transfers”.

2. Coverage
Hard to deal with without severe changes to server structure. I think WvW changing from a primarily PvP to PvE zone as the zones fill and empty might be on the ticket here. As I understand, this is one of the big things that developing the new zone will be trying to fill?

Might be a bit weird, but I don’t see why the leagues are sold as they are. The achievements are great and the new blood’s great for it, but because of the fundamental population imbalances, it is impossible to have a truly balanced matchup in WvW. IMO, it should be accepted that this problem can never be truly solved, and alternate accommodations should be made to cover competitive large-scale combat (hi GvG).

Its difficult to solve the population issue without some form of debuff. Perhaps instead of debuffs, a Handicap can be provided in some way for servers which are less populated? Of course, implementing buffs like these would be more dependent on firmly establishing the populations and publishing the exact population class (Very High, High, Medium, etc) of the server. Some ideas for buffs that I have been tossing around are as follows:

1. Start reset night with keeps in states of upgrade based on server population in comparison with others in the matchup (ie My server has the lesser population of all three servers so I start with all my keeps fully upgraded, the second highest has reinforced, and then the least populated are not upgraded)

2. Create a PPT buff of a point range for being less populated in the matchup (ie +5 ppt for the least populated server, +3 ppt for the medium, and then no modifier for the highest populated).

So this might sound funny, but the solution I believe to Queues/population issues is to reduce map sizes.

Reduce the number of players currently allowed on a map from the ridiculous 80+ we see to queue a map and reduce it to 40-50 players per map.

This solves multiple problems, not only does it reduce queue times it will lead to balancing of other servers as people move off “T1” servers because they can NEVER hope to get into WvW in their current state, also allows for a more competative “league” system which also compensates for “offhours” if you have to put 50 on a map to counter the enemy force instead of 100 it makes “offhours” coverage a lot more equal and fair.

Not only this but when make the map sizes smaller as people move off the “top3” servers they move down to the “top6” so instead of having 3 servers with 400 ppl in WvW all the time you have the “top3” having 200ish which means there is 160-200 people to be allocated to create a whole new server basically, meaning servers like Sorrows Furnace, Devonas and other server who currently don’t get queues can experience what wvw should be but also the “offhours” or Oc/SEA/EU timezones can have real WvW competition and not be forced into “blobbing” in T1 because there are no adequate Oc/SEA competition in lower tiers.

Population imbalance has occured because Anet you have been too ambitious with your game mode, assuming excessive amounts of players will play your game, you made the map caps to servers available ratio much too high meaning that in order to “fill” these map queues the entire Oc/SEA/EU populations on the North America servers have been forced into 3-4 servers in order to “queue” your maps to remain competitive. As stated above reduce the map sizes, cater for less players on your maps and the other “lower tier” servers will gain coverage akin to the “T1” servers just purely by limiting players in map spreading your WvW population evenly across all servers.

I believe this will not only solve population imbalances, we will see truly skilled combat between guilds making this game represent it’s name of “guild wars” and by reducing the map caps significantly we reduce and can possibly eliminate the ungodly and unwanted skill lag.

~Karps ~BG

- You may no longer waypoint back to spawn in WvW. Dying has a 10s respawn timer, this hinders zerg mobility, slower to respond to ninja forces.
– A capture circle is no longer reset when the lord is rezzed. Waypoint upgrade is removed, a buff that causes keep capture to take more time is added as a upgrade instead.
– You no longer see when you are outmanned. Outmanned servers gain 1 point per enemy player kill, the tally is calculated every 15 mins so people cannot calculate the outmanned buff.
– If you outnumber any opposing server on 3 or more maps, each of those maps generate half the point tick.
– Divide the cost of upgrades and supply carried by dolyaks such that a max upgraded keep can hold 500 supply to address supply accumulation over night. Also fixes golem rushing.
– Dolyaks move half supply on a map where both enemies are outmanned.
– Server transfers are decided on WvW ranking for their cost. Full servers cannot be transfered to but are free to transfer off.

And that is how you fix the WvW population imbalance by mitigating the effect of a server having more population. As it is quite clear we cannot actually force players to
balance the servers.

Alternatively for epic trolls, remove 1 ppt from the servers ppt for each player they have in queue and watch the stacked servers generate no points

In my view regards to WvW;
At the moment WvW really design to be 24/7 means you need all NA/EU/Oceanic/SEA to be on the same server to provide the best coverage and you need at least 2 similar coverage server to compete.

My proposal:
1) Combine all lower tier/small servers into one. There is no point to have empty battlefield on those lower tier servers. I knew they said they’re fine but when you compare a full total 90ppl map play with total 20ppl map play. It’s huge difference.
2) Logically you need at least 6 servers to be almost on the same level of coverage to provide fun and competitive for ppl with variety in league. (At the moment we only have 2-3). Thus reduce down server numbers to 6 is the best way.
3) Give ppl free transfers during the server merge so that they can choose where they want to be
4) Provide “graphical data” of queue time and WvW population for each server at each timezone so that ppl will based that into their mind
This way you will get healthier WvW atmosphere with 6 servers with similar coverage into one league.

Also provide more mechanic like:
1) When you hit a top score server, it give you more WXP. Thus incentives for 2nd or even 3rd scored server to hit the 1st. This will make sure 2v1 ganking tend to be at the winning server meaning it will tight the score gap make it competitive throughout the week.
2) AoE cap, this limit so much meta at the moment. Ppl will just clump up and take less dmg, move as a mega blob. This eliminate so many potential tactics. So please rethink this. Make AoE cap higher so that there will be more penalty when you clumb up together as megablob.
3) WvW overflow map is really good idea so that you at least have some places to do something while waiting for the main map.
4) Keep tagging. It’s so annoy when you have someone (only one) hidden in the keep or scout just one to tag the keep then you unable to warp. I think you need more than 1 ppl to tag the keep will make it harder and devise more complex gameplay
5) Rally. Rally is very bad mechanic. And it also give mega blob a main reason to be the only meta. Remove it will make ppl to rethink of the tactic more. Small numbers with better position and tactic will have more chance to beat the big blob of zerg. We’re bored with the same “STACK UP ON ME” tactic. Just REMOVE RALLY, fix a lot of things.

You shouldn’t give additional points to outmanned servers in normal play as that will push up their glicko rating making it more likely that server will be matched against servers with higher populations.

1.) Coverage: It’s been mentioned here many time before, but in NA, a very large % of the time when people complain about “Population Imbalance”, they REALLY mean “Coverage Imbalance”. Tarnished Coast, for instance, has a relatively massive population, and bring PLENTY of people to WvW, but only for about 12 hours a day… the other 12 hours they are just bleeding PPT whenever they run up against a Tier 1 server, most of which have 18-24 hours of decent coverage. Fixing this isn’t easy, of course, because WvW isn’t the only thing in the game; if you forced all of the Australian & New Zealand players to split up amongst the various server, they’d have no one to play with in open world PvE content, unless they all Guested every night to 1 server together. A set of Asian & Oceanic servers competing with each other in WvW, seperate from EU & NA, would probably help a lot, shifting those populations out of NA, and cutting down on the Coverage Imbalances that currently exist. Even this wouldn’t completely solve the coverage problem, but it would lessen it significantly.

Coverage is a problem that won’t be solved by simply merging servers or forcing players to move around more within the same NA or EU sections of WvW. I don’t really know exactly how to fix the Coverage problem, but it is the root problem when it comes to making a truly competitive and fair WvW League or environment.

This is made particularly clear when there is a “sale” on transfers for people moving down to lower population servers; during the last sale, there were exactly ZERO Low or Medium Population servers in NA! Not one. The only way you could take advantage of the transfer sale was by moving to one of the 3 or 4 High Population servers we had. Server mergers are pretty much out for this same reason, they wouldn’t solve anything right now unless they also somehow changed the Coverage Imbalances.

Many different sound suggestions have been made as people look at it from different perspectives. The question to be asked is why do players create these imbalances?

Human psychology dictates that people will follow the path of least effort for the most gain. Simply put: current game mechanics favors population stacking for easy wins and rewards.

Now my suggestion would be to change the mechanics by creating a population ratio between servers which would be used to determine rewards. A highly stacked server would not get easier rewards playing against much weaker ones as the ratio would reduce the reward amount. Weaker servers would be highly rewarded for efforts against a stacked server as the ratio would boost rewards.

1) WXP, Karma, and Loot should be based on ratios of population difference. If server A has highest population playing against a server with half the population they receive half the base reward. Server B with half the population of A gets double the base reward. Player reward =(base value)X(ratio)

2) PPT should work similarly with each objective having a PPT value point given at the time it was acquired. PPT= (base value)X(ratio)

3) Population is based on averages (10 samples) taken randomly each hour, counting total population of all 4 maps. This would prevent population ratio manipulation.

These changes in my opinion would promote a value system where more effort equals more rewards for players and servers and may help prevent stacking in the future. These changes may create a more strategic type of game play instead of the zerg to win mentality as taking objectives while outnumbering opponents maybe prove unfavorable.

It may promote weaker servers to target the strongest to get greater rewards and PPT. (preventing the 2 stronger servers targeting the weakest for easy ppt routine as attacking the weakest may net very little rewards).

Once again the idea is for players to realize that more population equals less rewards and PPT per objective taken, which could reduce the incentive to stack servers over the long run.

Draygo.9473:

You shouldn’t give additional points to outmanned servers in normal play as that will push up their glicko rating making it more likely that server will be matched against servers with higher populations.

Yea, all that glicko in the league system…..

In anycase it is all relative, the higher servers will also get more glicko from even higher servers all the way to 1. So the corresponding order of balance will remain the same, the only result is that matches will be closer because there is actually the potential to win. And if you can beat a higher pop server then no reason your glicko shouldnt be higher than theirs.

Not that this matters since we currently have a league system, so the only objective should be to make matchups more competitive which can only be done by buffing the outnumbered server unless we are going to magically balance all server pops (aka never happening).

Ricky.4706:

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

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

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

I came here to post this, but you had already articulated it for me.

Using this system for a League sounds good, you would build a League based on the top 9 servers in NA. By alternating each triplet for a 3v3v3 fight, you would still end up with 7 matches, but every server has a chance to fight on equal footing because you could fill all maps 24/7.

Most if not all of the suggestion points id point out have already been outlined by other but here goes my post:

1. Queue Times: The program should display average expected length of the que as well as be less random (its extremely frustrating to have been waiting for an hour to hear a guild member say he got in instantly.) To add to this a way to prevent ferrying of people to abuse jumping the queue time.

2. Separate WvW from PvE: This involves balancing skills, adding achievements and content intended for one to the other. Too many times have the servers been hampered by people who are trying to do a jumping puzzle for example instead of participating in WvW activities; same can be said about skill/class balances that are intended for one type of content and affect the viability in the other. Simply Put PvE and WvW are NOT the same thing, stop acting like they are.

3. Servers should be weighted for seasons: WvW season 1 for example has a conundrum in the gold league where Blackgate, Sanctum of Rall and Jade Quarry are evenly matched but in the later weeks the balance is out of proportion. JQ for example gets 3 weeks where they have an easy win (unless the other two servers double team them) and those weeks if won should count less than the win by Blackgate or Sanctum who dont have it as easy. Similarly if a lower rank server manages to beat higher tier servers they should get more points.

4. Have WvW be more secondary friendly: equiping a secondary character is extremely hard particularly if you want to have it be PvE and WvW proficient, not only that but its almost impossible to level a secondary for WvW if you have to spend lots of time on your main (an upleveled character frankly sucks and is not a solution). Have WvW drop vials of liquid experience that you could dump on secondaries so I can play my main and have the Exp gained be transferable into my secondaries if I want.

5. Adress Zergs: The AoE cap limitation made it extremely hard to deal with zergs and a lot of the time what could be a competitive, strategic and skill based game is dumbed down to “who has the biggest number of bodies.” There has to be more added into the game that allows people to break mindless zergs.

6. Incentivate WvW: have better drops and aditonal items. Medals should be able to get you more than just WvW items and equipment, as well as compensate the time not spent grinding PvE because you were in WvW.

~Ras, BG

Problem: Population is the major determining factor in any WvW matchup and causes some less than fun matchups with zero chance of winning.

Solution? There is no simple solution here. Whatever gets done will require a lot of work, which is why these systems should be well thought out to start with.

My proposed “fix” is just do away with server vs server matchups. There are very few matchups where the 3 servers involved all have an equal shot at winning when the match starts. There simply isn’t enough servers or people playing to create a fair tiered matchup like the one implemented; So it’s time to just trash that system.

No longer will it be 1 server on each side, but 8 servers per side or even better is 17 per side IF the technology in place allows EU servers to connect to NA servers. The servers will be matched by unique number of WvW participants, duration of play, time of play(late night etc), and server contribution. Each week everything will be tallied up and servers assigned to new sides. With this system each week you have a chance at winning and timezone coverage imbalances minimized.

The downside to this system is going to be queues and lag. The solution there is more maps and different game mechanics to spread out players. Basically there will be 6 new maps designated as supply maps. These maps will be be the new locations for supply resources(current supply camps should be turned into something else), which will be split into mineral, wood, and food. Wood and mineral for siege and defenses and food for NPC’s. The new supply camps will no longer generate supply in given intervals, they will need to be harvested by NPC’s or by players. Players will also be able to haul larger amounts of supply but are a bit slower and cannot attack while carrying it. Siege weapons will now take supply to fire.

Each supply map will have another map that is a direct conflict(battle between 2 adjacent sides) map(frontline) that connects to EBG. Supply maps will then also have another map connected to them(Backlines) that connects to the side not in the direct conflict. All backlines maps will be connected to all other backlines maps as well. Example being Red and greens supply maps will be connected by red/green Frontlines but if blue wants a piece of the action they can storm through the EBG portal located somewhere between Red and green. OR blue can go through their own supply camp into the backlines that connects to red or greens supply camp. Borderlands will be changed so that the enemy sides need to actually push into them and build a waypoint, of course points on an enemy borderland will be worth a lot more since they will be harder to assault.

The idea is that supply should be very powerful and the thing being most fought over. By making the supply chains longer there is more that needs protected and that in turn forces the population to spread out in order to do so. With supply originating on another map you now not only need to protect that map from capture, destruction, or pillaging. Since borderlands are connected directly to supply maps it will be easier to keep them stocked with supply and thus easier to defend. EBG will be harder to assault/defend since you will need to get supply through either at least a borderland or a frontline.

All said and done this would add 12 maps(6 supply, 3 frontlines, 3 backlines), each side would then have 6 maps they can queue for and more if their side is able to build a waypoint in a zone they don’t have direct access to(other frontline matchups, backlines, or supply maps). I’m hoping that the combination of more tech being dedicated to WvW and 16 total maps that it will alleviate the queue and lag issue.

I’m sure there are plenty of things that still need worked/fleshed out but it’s an idea at least.

1. Accurate Server population numbers for WvW, PvE and PvP
what the definition of these populations are should be discussed but should include such things as different timezones and content being completed

2. Get rid of NA and EU servers being split
this is the main explaination of why people complain about night capping and server in-balances, just label the servers as EU or NA in the transfer window and let people choose the language base for each server (which is what has happened as it is), spliting the off hour coverage of all servers does not help the balance but makes it worse, as all the top servers in NA and EU server groups are those with 24/7 coverage not those with the highest population during peak time

3. GvG arena’s which are not server based and people can watch
give those people who want to GvG a place to do it which does not impact WvW population and enables guilds on the same server to fight against each other, also allow anyone to go into a viewing area where they can watch either in character or from a players who is fighting’s camera view

4. Allow WvW Guesting
PvE guesting has been great, now share that with WvW, once a month a player can choose to guest to a server for WvW, the player can cancel it at any time but cannot choose a new server to Guest to for another month and cannot choose the same server each month, this allows players to get a feel for a server they are thinking of transferring to while also trying to minimize trolls

5. Give servers a way to police botters, trolls etc in WvW themselves
if WvW populations can be agreed upon, then they can also give a vote to designate a few people on each server to have the power to temp ban players who are griefing, as it is most higher tier servers have some type of WvW community which tries to police their members help us by give them the tools to be more effective at it

6. Map Que Times
its rather self explanatory

7. Secondary Build while in WvW
group builds are not made for solo pvp, pve builds are not built for WvW, make it easier for those who want to do abit of WvW and PvE, if it means giving some type of dual build in PvE too fine, but being able to have the right build for the game type you are playing is rather important, the number of times i have seen PvE players get discouraged from play WvW due to having a PvE build and blowing up when they run into a WvW built player

WvW and PvE population has to be separated when classifying server population. With guesting option, the only real main reason to pay gems for server transfer is for WvW content.

Point 1 :
There exist a PPT calculator that adds up points every 15mins. Expand on this to record number of players on each server on all 4 maps. This will give you the numbers to properly classify servers as High / Medium / Low and price gem transfer accordingly.

Point 2 :
Anet already has a very powerful weapon against overpopulation and that is called queues. Expand on this to enforce queues on each server in a matchup rather than on map basis. In other words if the participants limit per map is 300, allow 100 spaces per server for that map. If Server A has already 100 players on a map, their players have to queue. Server B which has 60 players and not reached their quota will allow their players to enter immediately. For 4 maps, that means 400 players per server allowed to participate in WvW without queueing. This limit can be adjusted if Anet invests in better server hardware and software improvements to cope with more players.

Point 3:
PvE players and new entrants to WvW are very easily influenced by WXP and achievement rewards. Increase the WXP and Magic Find bonus to outmanned servers to ease the pain of getting roflstomped continuously. The bonuses have to be OPed big so that players seek out less stacked servers. This will obviously only affect the low population servers but will make huge PvE guilds hesitate to bandwagon onto successful Tier 1 servers to piggyback on their success.

Point 4:
Follow the guild influence system and restrict WvW ranks to server specific. When players switch servers, their ranks get reset to lvl 1 for new server. If they choose to return to original server, their original ranks come back. This will create a sense of belonging and will encourage players to commit to build up on a server rather than hop to the winning flavour of the season.

This is a big topic that has many routes of discussion. I think this largely stems from the fact that no one (except perhaps anet) knows the extent and truth of population imbalance. The longer it stays this way, the more that it will be QQ’d about, because there is no way to actually refute it. I think that this affects nearly every area of the game and understandably so. One fundamental thing about <most> games is that there are ‘rules’ that make certain variables equal, so that other variables (skill) are the only (likely) reason for a victory. Population imbalance is such a fundamental rule change that it has effects across all aspects that people typically associate with a game. Even more so, this fundamental rule is random and/or unknown. You’ve [anet] expressed in the past an unwillingness to share what the reality of this rule is. Is this because there is ‘funny business’ that happens with how you handle this rule, based on how the game is going? I think you will always have a perceived problem with a game if the players doubts elements of the game itself, instead of playing. Players clearly don’t like this doubt – many suggestions here are to in one way or another, modify the rule to ensure equal or more equal population coverage. My biggest question is do players not like the rule, or do they not like the uncertainty around the result of the rule? I think if you remove (some of) the doubt around the rule, then you can get better opinions if it really is worth keeping the rule.

Queuing:
I believe Devon was quoted for saying something pre-leagues that if you transfer to high pop servers you will end up queuing more. To me, this sums up a lot of how you imagine this balancing itself out – you tell people not to stack and hope it happens. You really need to have actual context for the player for them to make an informed decision. If I essentially never queue on silver/bronze and will queue for 30+ minutes on gold, that is much more real to me.
To help get why this won’t work, I’ll try a quick analogy. I want to get ice cream and there are lines at two shops. One shop has notoriously ‘better’ ice cream. However, I can’t actually see the length of the lines – which do I go in?

TL;DR; Expose data on per-server queue times as a better way to encourage the server movement you[anet] want

Winning:
To be clear, I’m talking about the aesthetic victory (not loot). Pretty much every other game has very clear winners and losers. This is because the rules in the game result in an inherently balanced scenario, leaving <only> skill. I’m pretty sure you are not out to create a balanced game. As this is the case, you need to be careful about how to define winning in order to frame this for the players that are disadvantaged, out of their control. For now, ‘losing’ server groups that still loyally play Tuesday-Friday, do so because they can win individual battles on the field and PPT doesn’t matter. I think that there are ways you could ‘revamp’ PPT (in addtion to actual in game rewards) to aid in this, but certainly putting a ‘win’ in context is one.

TL;DR; Expose data on overall match population relative to end score to better frame the win

Playing:
Related to winning, is playing. Even with random/variable rules, people know what they like and want to play that. Letting people know a rough estimate of what they are up against (even if it’s as inaccurate as approximate pop count) will help people go to where they want to play (or even if they want to play). Some want an even match, some want a challenge, some perhaps just reality: help them find it.

TL;DR; Expose live data on population balance. Do a per server and/or per server map population that updates on the tick for the average over the last tick (15 minutes)

Neither Anet nor the player base in WvW is ever going to put up with gating populations, or forcing people to play certain ways or valuing the time of certain players in WvW less than other players. So long as players can transfer servers whenever they desire, and play with whoever they desire we will never have population balance. The hardcore WvW players want to play with hardcore WvW players. Various nationalities want to play with people who speak their language. And those factors will always cause imbalance.

What Anet can and should do is change the way you score points in WvW. Instead of looking for an unguarded objective to take and gain PPT, points should mostly be scored when you have an actual enemy to fight.

For example, killing an enemy player, scores a point for your server. Killing an enemy player while you have the outnumbered buff, two points for your server. Killing an enemy while you have bloodlust buff and outnumbered, even more points. Make taking a tower or keep almost worthless, unless it is defended. The more heavily defended it is, the more points it is worth.

And tie the point value into the level of rewards(karma/coin/items) you get. You fight harder more outnumbered fights, you get better rewards(you can always add in some titles or something).

Overhaul the scoring and reward system to favor even or outnumbered fights, and you will see the population imbalances start to fix itself.

You will never get Anet and the player base on the same page, always will have conflicting ideas.

Server population kerbing can only be achieved by forcing people to transfer server via either merging servers or reducing population caps on maps, forcing people into eternal queues and making transferring much cheaper to lower pop servers so that moving is an option. I also agree with the “make guilds transferable” posts.

I think the population issue can’t be resolved, an example could be Vizunah and SFR, they both hyper staked, but vizunah has better coverage, so in the end it will prevail most of the times.

What if we change system ?

-1 – We choose 3/5 time frames, like 08:00-09:00 / 12:00-13:00 / 16:00-17:00 / 20:00-21:00 / 24:00-01:00, in this time frames the points matters.

-2- Anet creates a new map system, the normal 4 maps that we are isued to ( but without points ) for the normal hours, and another set of them for the competition :

-2a- In the normal hours everyone can play as used to but without gaining server points, Implement something to give SM/keeps/towers/camps a meaning like Lineage 2, where you can gain golds and something else for your guild by mantaining a Structure ( big guild can play for SM/keeps, while smaller guilds can play for towers/camps, giving everyone something to do )

-2b- the competition maps start like the reset, there will be 3 borderlands and 1 Eternal battleground ( might add some other bls for tier 1/2/3 servers )

This will provide a less depressing system for server that are loosing badly ( like the FoW-DL-Arborstone machup ) and give them something to enjoy in bad machups.

The problem as I see it is a fundamental property of the game format the way it is currently defined through the set of applied mechanics. Specifically, the amount of negative reinforcement is insufficient for the existing imbalance in player populations. It isn’t just a matter of a lack of strong negative reinforcement mechanisms. Some basic mechanisms actually cause positive reinforcement, thus worsening the problem.

A game format where ANet achieved a sufficient level of negative reinforcement was Alliance Battles in GW1, my favorite activity in that game (got double savior and wrote probably the most extensive public guide to the format). With two sides fielding numerically balanced teams for each match, adjusting terrain advantage depending on the average success of the sides provided enough negative reinforcement to allow interesting matches to happen regardless of the average skill level on either side.

Terrain advantage is the only major negative reinforcement mechanism in WvW. The asymmetry less pronounced than it was in AB, making it less effective as a balancing mechanism. Furthermore, because teams are not numerically balanced any more, mere terrain advantage is completely insufficient as a mechanism.

Based on developer statements, it was assumed in the design phase that matching three teams against each other would provide a natural negative reinforcement mechanism through two weaker servers forming a pact against the forerunner. This didn’t work as intended. As it currently stands, the second and third place servers usually have a larger incentive to fight each other for the second place than try to contest the strongest one (and possibly draw its ire on themselves). This is positive reinforcement, with the weakest server beaten to pulp when the two stronger servers preferentially attack it instead of each other, and the strongest server left alone to do whatever it well pleases, like the proverbial 600 pound gorilla.

All mechanics that allow one side to consolidate their lead are positive reinforcement as well. Orbs of power? Borderland bloodlust? Fortifying towers and keeps? All these mechanics make the strong even stronger at the expense of the weak, further imbalancing the matches. This is counterproductive in the long run.

Even without making any specific suggestions, I would recommend the developers to have a top level look at the basic mechanisms of the game format, to identify which mechanisms provide negative reinforcement and balance the game, and which ones provide positive reinforcement, further instabilizing it.

Even something as simple as having “preferential ownership”, e.g., by allowing only the owner of a borderland to build structural improvements there, or having vastly different supply requirements for building based on “proximity” to your home, would go a long way toward allowing more interesting matches.

I love the fact this issue is adressed.

The only real solution i see is this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Easy-solution-to-Server-Pop-imbalance

Along with free transfers. Yes you heard me right! Free transfers again!

We have 2 kind of World Population Imbalance, full wvw servers against semi empty servers, server with almost 24h wvw coverage against poor night or morning or even afternoon coverage.

24 HOURS OF FUN IN WVW, NO MORE PLAYER VERSUS DOOR
The simple solution, that don’t involve strange mechanics or NPC help, is the fusion between American servers and European ones, this way borderlands should be alive with fights every hour and "night capping " is no more essential for winning a matchup.

GUILD WARS 1 DISTRICTS, TIME TO BRING THEM IN GUILD WARS 2
There is a little pve discussion before getting to the point.
Let just get rid of servers in PVE; too many low level zone are already dead and empty but without server restriction every zone should bloom with life and active players. Districts are essential though, because Orr and other zone are very popular and always full, so let me make and example. I’m Italian and I choose for my DEFAULT DISTRICT the ITALIAN DISTRICT, so when I go to LA or Southsun Cove I’m in the ITALIAN DISTRICT of those zone and if I see that there is nobody I can choose to go to the ENGLISH DISTRICT or ENGLISH DISTRICT 2 (overflow system still remain) where I know there is a lot of people.
Now PVE population is saved from boredom and people choose a server only for wvw glory and rapresentation; we can assume that WvW population is far less than the wvwvw population so maybe we can have less servers and transfer fee based on effective wvwvw population and wvwvw server ranking.

1. Make keeps/towers/camps strategical. Let them give a specific buff (+x all stats, +1 AoE cap and such) and worth no point towards the total score
2. Points are earned only by killing players and are calculated on the number of fighters – with DR (a small group defeating a big group will give more points than a big group defeating a small one).

Nightcapping will become useless since score will not change and mindless zerg will be punished and roaming organized guilds will be rewarded and become more useful.

A server with less but stronger players will win against a server full of bad players.

You can only solve this problem if you seperate PvE word and WvW worlds. There isnt any need they should be connected. Then you can start to balance things with some software.

Please keep in mind that when discussing a server, you are talking about the WvWer’s on that server not the Pvers. Pvers really have no server because they are not penalized for bouncing around.

My input on what can be done with the current system and the least amout of investment and time needed.

Take average number of players in the last couple of hours to get the current coverage as a baseline for any balancing introduced.

Now adjust rewards based on them.

Example: 100 vs 50 vs 10.

The server with 100 will get 50% rewards of the one with 50 and 10% of the one with 100 when capturing their objective and vice versa.

Easy to be implemented and balances the score. If you have 10 times the players of another server you need do to 10 times more to get the same score based on objectives. You need to hold way more towers/camps to get a decent tick.

As this is a bit harsh some modifier like converage in the last 24 hours can be added to mitigate this decline in rewards based on current coverage. A lot of options here to balance it solely focusing on coverage and the rewards. And of course it can’t drop below a certain threshold. But all that comes natural when thinking about the actual implementation details.

That’s the basic idea to solve the point problem. Lesss karma, less WxP, less points.

And a lot of people will hate it as their stacking on a server advantage is now gone. Good, isn’t that what’s the goal here?

But I see no other way. Reducing map cap? Does not get enough daily logins and played hours to secure future funding. Probably raising it would be a smarter move, but then the lag problem comes in.

Similar things can be applied to a lot of areas in WvW. But one thing at a time. You just need to make it not rewarding to PvD and Karma Train for starters and therefore stack on T1 servers.

With a point balance the result is more rewarding for each server as the actual skill in playing the game (not skill in your character, but skill in playing WvW as a server) reflects on their place earned and their rewards. Makes more sense for seasons where points or now meaningful.

In addition, the server you are on is basically meaningless for PvE and PvP. Let guilds or individuals choose a realm they want to play for. The system of home servers and trasfers needs to be revisted as well after some time. Idea here is to rebalance WvW population as well and actually encourage it. This would be a second step.

As a consequence guild transfers can be bought as well with gems, meaning you don’t have to wait for days until your guild has again all the research. Maybe its on a cooldown for a week or so before back to normal or you have to spend some gold/gems for it as well. Right now it’s just annoying for a guild to transfer. Not because of the costs (negleticble) but the time it needs to be back where you were before.

Maybe a good idea is to reduce the overall WvW realms and make them independent of your PvE server. Again, icentive is to rebalance population easily in the long run.

TL;DR

Balance points, WxP, Karma, EXP based on average coverage in the last few hours, plus a modified for the average coverage in the last day or days. Give incentive to repopulate WvW and rethinking stacking on servers and makes points for seasons meanigful as now actualy skill in playing WvW as a whole is measured instead who has the best 24/7 coverage.

There are better more complex ways for sure. But I see this as a fix to the current system with the least amout of investment that can be implemented rather quickly.

High population v WvW

Achieving server balance in terms of number of players is an impossible dream. Limiting server size or ‘Gating’ will disadvantage stronger servers and increase queues.
From experience, PvE’ers dislike WvW for several reasons, basically, WvW offers them nothing they cannot get easier, quicker and cheaper through PvE.

In the PvE world they have organised mining runs, champion runs, temple runs and dungeon runs. They play for loot and rewards, period.

They balk at anything that is going to cost them money, repair costs, upgrade costs, siege costs.

The new Season achievements have done nothing to improve the quality of WvW, if anything they have made it worse.

Queues

One thing to ease primetime queues is to provide a separate arena/instance for GvG. Like it or not, GvG happens and having 40-60 people on a map effectively contributing 0 to the war effort and simply adds to the queue.

From experience, on our server at least, most Primetime guilds start their guild raids at 19:00 = instant queues. We have tried to get guilds to stagger their start times to ease the problem.

More maps to spread the numbers, and although this does not alter the disparity in coverage, it would help to reduce queues.

Limiting Server Imbalance

Most people accept 24/7 coverage and numbers is king. The current system does nothing to address the imbalace with the emphasis on PPT regardless of coverage.
Increasing the ‘tick’ frequency from 15 minutes to 60 minutes would reduce the score overkill derived from ‘night capping’

Reduce the points for all objectives, 3 for a camp, 5 for a tower, 10 for a keep, 15 for SM. This is more a psychological move so people are not discouraged by seeing they are 100k behind the strongest server after 2 days.

Disincentivising the Zerg to reduce skill lag

Ah the zerg, love it or hate it, it is currently the most efficient way to win a matchup but is the biggest cause of skill lag.

In order to break the monopoly of the zerg alter the scoring to prioritise the holding of objectives over the simple capping of them. As it stands now, the zerg appears on a map and runs around in a circle constantly capping everything in its path while low numbers of defenders are left to scratching their heads in frustration.

Points should be awarded for holding objectives not simply capping them i.e. SM/Garrison must be held for an hour, other keeps – 45 minutes, towers – 30 minutes, camps – 15 minutes. This will mean the zerg has to split up into smaller groups to be effective.

Attack over Defense

Possibly the biggest disparity in the game. It takes hours to upgrade objectives and these can easily be taken in minutes. There is nothing more demoralising than to see hours of hard work, gold and co-operation destroyed in minutes simply because the opposition have vastly superior numbers at a given time.

Garrison in particular, on each borderland should be similar to SM in terms of difficulty when it comes to capture.

More upgrade options are needed for objectives, more & stronger guards, reduced upgrade times. Guard level increased with each upgrade ending with all guards in the ‘Lords Room’ reaching Champion level on a full upgrade.

With camps, refresh the Righteous Indignation’ buff on every upgrade with the supervisor reaching Champion on a full upgrade. Increase the number of guard upgrade available, provide choke points and siege points to slow down the zerg and give defenders time to mount a defense. Each camp upgrade also increases the speed of dolyaks.

more upgrade options including stronger fortification is a good idea. Some of the home shopping stuff needed for t3 upgrade is a complete waste of supply.

Most of the solutions I read so far are (in my opinion) either technically unfeasible or create more problems than they solve.
I am in favour of a more conservative solution: Let’s use what we already have.
The ranking mechanism takes quite good care of the problem “high population vs. low population”. But yes, I think WvW population and overall population are two different things and should be treated seperately. A metric for detemining the WvW population could be how many hours per day there is a queue for WvW. The length of the queue can probably not be determined as it doesn’t seem to be a real queue, right?
Anyway, the problem with the queues… I really don’t like to be waiting for hours to get on a map. In my opinion, an overflow system for WvW maps would be a good idea.
That said, it’s of course no use to play for a specific server on an overflow… that would mean the outnumbered-imbalance would be even worse on every overflow. Instead, just randomly assign each person to a team (red, green, blue), with the usual restrictions: party members get in the same team (maybe even guild members?), if a party is on two different overflows they can switch and play together, etc. Of course, on the overflow no points can be earned for any server. And it would not be any use to have more than one borderland, as the colors are assigned randomly.

This could solve a number of problems:
1.) JP-people: people doing the JPs can do it on the overflow, which is good for them, because they don’t have to wait to get through the queue and good for those on the real map, because fewer people are missing the action.
2.) Daily-people: People who just want to finish the dailies can do that on the overflow. Again, better for everybody and less rant against those poor fellows.
3.) Map-completion-people: Same thing. With the additional benefit that colors are assigned randomly, so you can complete it quicker by changing color.

I think the rest will sort itself out over time. “hardcore” players will always try to get on the real map to earn points and have a high-quality lead, while random people will try to get on the overflows: less stressful, you can do what you like and have a good time anyway. probably overflows can become an essential part of the WvW, when organised groups do their training on the overflow before they throw themselves into “real” battle.

This proposal is extendabel… for example: what if you could choose the color that you play on an overflow?
- map completion people would be happy
- groups larger than 5 can play together.
Of course, this could lead to an imbalance again, but i don’t think it will be bad. you could establish a limit, that one team may not be much bigger than another team, or just give the small teams outnumbered bonus, or provide other reasons why it is good to play on a small team.

I say: What could possibly ever go wrong?

So it is about the population finally(or again)? As someone mentioned in another thread: With guesting population(shown at the server list) is only important for WvW.

This should not be the number of currently logged in players. Not the number of accounts registered to this server. Not the number of PvE players.

The “average number” of WvW players.

There could be like an hourly check that also can be used to measure coverage(of course at some random time every hour not at full hour to make it possible to manipulate it – like guild attendancy think is also random I think). Then make this for the whole week.

So you have 7×24 = 168 values(even more if you make it per map) and then maybe check: how often below 5(almost no one), 5-25, 25-50, 50-75, 75-95, >95(near queue – no 100 because few might leave or disconnect just the moment when you do random check). High population and coverage servers will have a lot of >95 and in night maybe tons of 75-95 and a few 50-75. Low population like the “very high” underworld atm will have >95 at weekend evening. Other days evening maybe 75-95… other than that much less. (and servers like Vabbi and other Bronze league a lot less).

This should be used to set incentives to transfer. Of course first you need to make it possible by changing the cost: Cost should be calculated based on population of source and target servers. If you server is high and you transfer to a low server then it should really be 0. If you transfer from low to high it should be extremely high. Medium to medium, low to low… should cost an average amount. If we have 3 tiers: very high, high, medium for example there could be calculated the difference: very high is 3, medium is 1. Very high to medium means 3-1 = 2 = high cost. Same to same lowest do highest is 1 -3 = -2 which is no cost. Between that different amount of costs. Works with higher amount of population tiers as well. – MAYBE: 1 whole week totally free to let it balance after you managed to recalculate the population in a better way.

Of course this are not incentives. Only is like “removing something that stops players from transfering”. There might be huge rewards for transfering but if the cost is high they just don’t want it. Especially if they consider their server a “home” cause they played there since release.

Real incentives should be: Rewards for players transfering. Gems(maybe very small amount), higher MF or gold drop from events, karmas… stuff like that. For guilds also: Guild releated stuff. Commendations or more influence(They could need it since they’ll lose their stuff because guilds are server bound).

Now we have the problem with achievements atm: You can just do them in a few days if you really want to farm them. Incentives should be long term. Small reward after 1 week, medium reward after 1 month. Big reward after 6 months I’d suggest. But only if people stay there without changing to anyother server all this time. And only if they play regularly(count this with some sort of system similar to monthlies that need you to do dailies – they need to play WvW).

To me, the real trick that is being missed by ArenaNet with the WvW population imbalances is that they are trying to provide artificial, external (to the game play) incentives to spread people out, and these are entirely ineffective due to the fundamental game mechanics.

The path of least resistance to the most rewards is what you should expect the majority of your players to follow. Right now, that is very clearly to get the biggest possible zerg and go on offense. The game design very heavily favors being a massive bully and overwhelming your opponents with sheer numbers. Because of the mechanics, you have to expect that players are going to try to get into the biggest population they can…and that’s what they are doing.

If you want to spread people out without forcing them, you have to change the game mechanics to favor even fights, defense, and holding territory. You have to provide diminishing returns as fights become more lopsided, so that scores change the most when both sides are playing and fighting each other…rather than the most dramatic score changes occurring when one server isn’t even online.

If you provide the correct incentives and the right “path of least resistance”, players will spread out on their own. Until the server WvW populations are more balanced, these tournaments are completely pointless…and really painful for most players.

I’d like to see WvW be a game of organization and strategy and skill (both individual and group), rather than a game of sheer numbers.

A thing that will go long way is to low the graffics in WvW.
Game has allready too powerfull graffics and people when are fighting in a battle at wvw they see nothing except spikes.
I am sure that all players dont have the ultra machine(meaning pc) in their hands so they can reciprocate all these graffics.I am sure that all players enjoy the high end graffics that game has but it can be more comfortable for all players to play without spikes and lags in the duration of a wvw battle.
Thanks

My thoughts

-lower pop cap per map —spreads everyone out
-combine both NA and EU severs —balances timezones
- free transfers to low pop servers-- spreads everyone out

Now I don’t think that will happen so another way to look at things

Server 1- 100ppl on map = Nerfed skill dmg 50%
Nerfed speed 50%
Nerfed seige dmg 50%

Server 2- 50ppl on map = no changes

Server 3 – 20ppl on map= Buff skill dmg 50%
Buffed speed 50%
buffed seige dmg 50%

Or something like that that reduces a large zergs impact on a map and allows ppl with very few players on to be competitive against a larger zerg.
So in a weird theory a high pop server has no advantage with numbers over a low pop sever ,in fact a major disadvantage , forcing servers to self regulate and spread out over all servers. off cause Anet would have to then be more concise about wvwvw populations.

What I gather from things (correct me if I am wrong) Wvwvw is played in a seperate zone on a server, so If that is the case why Not create a starting wvwvw Map seprate from the pve server, and not part of the match. this Map could also allow guilds to purchase their own Guild Camps and give us back our much loved and missed guild hall type area.

well that’s my stupid thoughts hope I have given something useful to discus

Cheers Phabby

Population imbalances are a given, they will always exist in some form.

The main problem is that the scoring system rewards coverage more than good gameplay in wvw. Only if all sides field about equal numbers will the current scoring system work fairly. The huge advantage a server gets from just one guild playing at night time offsets most if not all differences in strategic gameplay during peak hours, if the other servers don’t have such a night time force.

Therefor this is the main point to be fixed. As others have suggested before, the point ticks need to take into account headcounts on all sides. It may not be enough to do this strictly from one moment to the next, as it may lead to people trying to shoo others off a map to get a tick advantage due to lower but well organized numbers against greater but badly organized teams. The adaption of ticks can also not go as far as making a night time force completely pointless against a server which doesn’t have any.

Also not allowing a very dominating server to upgrade any of its structures on a map which has hardly any coverage from the opposing teams might help somewhat. This goes into the realm of help for the underdog already, which is another aspect to consider.

Additionally it would be nice if there was an easy way to even out coverage for all servers. Technical problems due to set up of data centers aside, it would be great if everyone had two wvw worlds to play on – one in EU, one in NA. That would even out coverage somewhat, and help to alleviate queues at the same time.

Forcing people by various means to transfer servers is not the way to go in my eyes, since servers are still organized into similar timezones, and people generally have not much leeway when it comes to changing the times they can play.

Since Start of the Season one my server which was in the middle around 15th place lost its players. Its all due the fact we are totally overruned by other servers just in numbers. There is no strategy or anything else. They just have at least 2 times the number of people that we have.

Sure around hours like 6pm to 11pm its balanced, then we fade and around 1am there is almost no one in there. I’m nut surprised since I usually don’t stay that long. People have families and live. We can’t afford to play 24h/7days but somehow other servers do that and that made me feel sad and bad to the point I don’t see another reason to go into WvW aside from making meta progression.

I was on another server that is now in bronze league and we had the same problem. It was usual strategy that people logged in at 1am or 2am and flipped all map to their advantage since people on my server weren’t online (I guess sleeping) since I have a live I have a family and I don’t play for even most of the day and logging in in the middle of the night is out of the question also since I have a job.

When I think about it will be rewarded based on our place in the leage so it means that my rewards will be crappy anyway so really I don’t even know why do I bother but I probably will try till the end of the season. After that I will probably leave WvW for good.

I understand that servers with many players online have a lot of fun and they will write that Season one is one of the best things that happened but I have a sour taste of playing WvW that probably won’t vanish for a long time.
So while you will gain some people who probably never tried WvW, you will loose guys like me from not great servers that lack power of peoples playing.

Only idea that I have that would have to make those matches really something is to make buildings unflipable for like 3/4 of the day and only make a window like 6h for real changes. Outside windows you can make some structures like ruins of power that don’t have real constant point base.

Yeah… I see the outrage, but seriously if you want to make people have any way to take game seriously it can’t be done 24h/7. You can read about people rage quiting because Living Story takes so much time. It also feels like that in WvW as for me at least.

Mmmm, this quickly turned from discussion to “Tell Anet exactly what to do to about world v world population.”

A lot of these paragraphs are essentially the same ideas- but no one felt they needed to read other peoples ideas- because of course, they have to explain it to devs.

Since we have plenty of that on the table already, why not talk about what we, the players could do to improve WvW competition and balance of our servers. What tools would we like, to help with it.

Player and Guild recruitment is something the servers have used to grow their WvW teams since the beginning of the game- it would be nice if there was something along the lines of a more complicated LFG system for guilds, Looking for server in game, and players on those servers could all have the chance to pitch their server to these roaming guilds.

Since I would like to see more servers be suitable competition for JQ other then BG and SOR, it may be fun to have set server team weeks, like ET and BG vs SOR and AR SBI and JQ- they could go to each others maps and help out or something. Could be fun to help the underdog, while not essentially letting your enemy win.

And, last but not least- A basic voice chat system built into the game would be nice. It’s no Vent or Ts3, but being able to talk to someone can make a difference, and not everyone is comfortable using 3rd party software, (or unsure how to use it.)

lol I sort of said what Id like again, but much of this requires effort on our own part so. Santa baby~

Another idea.

In GW1 we waited in PvP to have 5 people in one side and 5 people in 2nd side so we could have a balanced match. Why cant it be done in WvW?

Lets say we let 25 people to go in to WvW and then make others wait until each server have 5 waiting, then let them go in. Wait for another 5 people per server to let them in.

It could make servers feel a bit empty (only non hardcore servers), but there wouldn’t be just pure power in numbers anymore.
I would prefer waiting or not playing in WvW than being overruned just because people on my server are sleeping/working.

Making server transfers cheaper or easier is not a solution, it is more a cause of the problems by destabilising populations and breaking up communities. Ok, not everyone is interested in fighting for their community, but a lot are.

Any attempt to artificially balance server populations will never succeed, there will always be anomolies like servers pulling ‘All night’ events to gain an advantage.

Septemptus.7164:

Sure around hours like 6pm to 11pm its balanced, then we fade and around 1am there is almost no one in there. I’m nut surprised since I usually don’t stay that long. People have families and live. We can’t afford to play 24h/7days but somehow other servers do that and that made me feel sad and bad to the point I don’t see another reason to go into WvW aside from making meta progression.

I was on another server that is now in bronze league and we had the same problem.

THIS is a major problem. Why would people want to be on a server where the community is mostly asleep when they are online? They are more likely to transfer to a server with lots of people on at that time of day, naturally. So we end up with massive zergs on some servers at night and on other servers, complete ghost towns.

I haven’t a clue how to solve this without locking objectives between certain hours, but that seems a little draconian.

Problem one: Accurate metrics

As many have pointed out, world population has nothing to do with WvW population. I can’t help but wonder if the simplest solution (number of hours played in www per server) is more complicated to show than we like. So here is another ideas for Anet to indicate what servers have a strong WvW coverage:

• Take all the accounts on the server that was active last month and add up their total WxP. *

This gives a rough indication of the total WvW potential of a server. Even if people don’t log in currently, if they have amassed WxP, then they could potentially log in if it was fun. It also factors in an organized core vs tons of relative newcomers. It seems that this should be a simple enough metric to filter from the data, and should at least be somewhat immune to the fluctuations of not logging in that week because we are getting steamrolled/steamrolling someone else next week.

I don’t think there is a feasible way to balance wvw-populations, neither between servers in general nor on a time-of-day basis due to populations distributed over different timezones.

What can be balanced however is the scoring system. And IMO it needs to be tweaked in such a way that a server which is outnumbered on a map receives more points per tick for the estates it possesses.

If we consider the total number of players on a specific borderland to represent 100%, then a balanced situation would be that each server holds 33.3% of that population. In this case the scoring should have an even multiplicator for all servers. But if e.g. we have a situation 40%/40%/20%, then the 20% server should have a multiplier of 2 for its scores, since it only has half the population during that tick, so possessing a keep in that situation is worth more than possessing it if you have a lot of players on the map.

This could also even out the night cap situations, where a server without a large overseas population may be outnumbered, but it does not hurt that much.

If I might offer an idea: Circumvent the issue of world population.

Why are teams and scores based on servers? A server holds all sorts of players. Some hold so many or so few players interested in WvW that the experience becomes horrible because of queues or a constant state of outmanned.

Why, instead, are we not assigned (by ourselves or another agent) to a Team/Army? In addition, or instead of said teams, why is our score tied to our server? Perhaps players could accrue score tied directly to their character or guild, so that they are not let down or propped up by a lackluster/stellar population in other timezones in their server.

Is it possible to approach the idea of a Meta WvW achievement/reward from the other end? Instead of tying eligibility for the reward to a floor-level of WvW participation, maybe players or guilds could sign up as ’Soldier’s of Fortune’. Only players who have elected to be in this state can receive the veteran title, the meta chest and any of it’s attendant rewards.

While a Soldier of Fortune, or ‘Mercenary’ or something, guilds or players can fight on behalf on any server/team (with a limit on switches), and generate score tied to themselves directly. Now, in achieving score during a league they unlock higher and higher tiers of reward for themselves, and in doing so prevent others from achieving those rewards, retaining the competitive spirit of WvW. Perhaps joining beleaguered servers invokes a beneficial score adjustment? There would need to be limit on how often you switched teams, obviously.

TL;DR This is a big mish-mash of ideas, many conflicting and very likely flawed, but all tied to the idea that once you sever rewards and WvW allegiance from the player’s hosting server, the population issue simply ceases to exist. Perhaps other players have ideas on this theme?

A separate idea: When you have the out-manned buff, your ‘home’ (your third of EBG and everything in your BL except the southern towers) objectives on that map are worth more score to your team, up to a maximum total PPT (So if you would generate 300 naturally, this buff wouldn’t kick in even if you were outmanned). This provokes the enemy into attacking, instead of just holding their lead and extending the gap (because that gap will grow much more slowly with this buff). It makes defense a viable tactic for the out-manned, instead of dooming them to the impotent situation of needing to attack but being unable. It makes said defenses worthwhile, and it prevents an imbalance in one timezone completely undoing the otherwise balanced clashes of the teams in prime-time. It also makes striking at a borderlands controlled heavily by the enemy, but poorly defended, not only attractive but essential in pushing down their score to allow your team to pull ahead.

Problem two: Queues

Theoretically queues are a good way to make coverage more even. However, in order for that to work people need information about how big the queues are. It can be exact or general, but people need to know a few of these things:

• Your queue position
• The general queue length right now
• The general queue length in average on that server during primetime hours.

The two last doesn’t have to be exact, they can be color coded. Green-nearly no queues, red, long queues.

Especially the last one needs to be information available for a server, just like the WvW potential I was talking about earlier. If they are not, people cannot make informed decisions to move servers.

Also, guilds needs to be able to move

If you cannot just move it straight up, make a way to ‘dismantle’ a guild and get some of the influence back, like breaking down equipment. You could give the guild leader a bunch of guild influence pots making up a largish portion of the guilds influence. That way people can move server and it will be a hassle, but you won’t lose everything you have worked for.

Problem three: coverage wars

Servers are never going to be balanced. Especially not in time. At the same time, you need to let the people who play at those hours have fun/not feel useless. This is hard, but I have a few suggestions, all tied to the outmanned buff:

• It is not possible to upgrade castles/towers/camps if your opponent has the outmanned buff.

That at least means that even if you lose your upgraded borderland over night, you won’t face fully fortified positions the next morning. If you are concerned that people will move back/forth between borderlands to take advantage of this, simply tie it to be outnumbered in 2 of 3 borderlands or something similar.

• When you have the outmanned buff, you have more/harder NPC’s.

A lot of people have mentioned this, and I think it might work. Siegerazer is nice, but too limited.

• When you have the outmanned buff you have better rewards.

I am in general loathe to include combat stat boosts. But it might be worth testing for the more passive stats. Why not a MF boost? Or a gold earning boost? Maybe even WxP post? Bonus bags from taking towers/keeps? Right now a lot of people would rather go PVE and get some money to buy siege later instead of sticking around to cap a camp they will lose five minutes later and risk being steamrolled. Make the server ‘downtime’ a time when you can earn good money stuff to spend when the primetime starts again!

Allow lower cost to almost if not totally free transfers from a high pop server to a low pop server.

Display average queue times as a radial icon on the world transfer window. (2 12 hour radial clockface icons with green pixels for <1 min, yellow for <15 min, red for >15+ min.)

Allow guild leader ranks the ability to majority vote to move the guild to another server; just attach a cost to doing so to keep abuse to a minimum while not forcing guilds to start completely over.

Fix the game so the people with less powerful computers (yet still better than the minimum req) can come into WvW.

There’s a large untapped amount of players who avoid WvW because of hardware, and would likely be there on the lower pop servers if the game would run properly.

Nothing gets people to leave faster than 10fps in a small zerg fight.

Just my $0.02

The solution to very unbalanced WvW popluations must take into account that in EU and NA brackets there are more players during their respective primetimes to go around. There aren’t even enough SEA and OCX players for even a quarter of the servers to have multiple queues.
The best I can figure is to close down a borderland (or two) during the 3/4ths of the day that is outside primetime. This means there are less potential points on the board to go along with less overall players. I don’t like the idea of making the objectives worth less during times of the day, having less objectives seems more fair. I just don’t see anyway around doing this if the goal is keep matchup’s scores more balanced, and encourage players spread out a bit. People will still be able to have a laggy Stonemist three-way at 5am server time if they want. Letting fewer people in each map during off-hours seems like a worse solution:
The largest epic battles are no longer possible
would encourage people to stay logged on for many hours to avoid queue

I also think transfer costs should be based on WvW rank. It is by far the biggest reason transfer to a server. Also, you probably want to offer free/really cheap transfers if a change is made that puts a bunch of people in queue to encourage destacking.

could we make more world bonuses for outnumbered? both in PvE and and WvW?

The psychological problem is that people leave because they arent having fun when they get smashed night after night because they are so few.

At the same time it creates a negative mood because people give up and declare that only zergs can win and that well coordinated smaller groups can’t! But we have all seen how that is not the case with good leadership and planning.

What if the outnumbered servers would go into an “alliance” with another outnumbered server and then share WvW as allies against a much more dominating world.

what would happen is that the outnumbered servers would suddenly have twice as many players, but since those servers would primarly not be WvW players because all the WvW players would have left for other servers, it would even out.

Problem four: Making outnumbered suck less

Servers are never going to be completely balanced. But right now you need to consider alternative ways to make the game more fun when it is imbalanced. While many have suggested to get more points if you fight stronger opponents, all this would do is to make the points gap smaller, and the servers ‘seem’ more balanced. The difference would still be there, so that might even be more harmful in the long run. Instead I would suggest a few other things to at least spread the zerg:

• The ‘crowded’ debuff. If there are enough people within a certain distance, you get the ‘crowded’ debuff.

This works like a combination of vulnerability and poison, you take more damage and you heal for less. The ‘crowded’ debuff do NOT apply inside friendly fortifications. Not sure whether it should work or not within enemy fortifications. That is a big balance question.

• Make things to do in towers/keeps

Right now there is almost no time to defend a tower/keep against a zerg. With ram mastery and superior rams, people can break down doors faster than people can run there. Even if you have scouts that alert you, there is no way to reach there in time. You need a garrison. The problem is, that if you are outnumbered, chances are you won’t have people to do that, and you need those people to go out and take over camps, run dollies and the like. What is needed is a way to get the casuals to stick around in a tower, and have something to do there that feels useful.

Why not removing the crafting stations from your own home border and sticking them in keeps/towers? Maybe a BLT guy in the keeps? Little crafting stations in the towers? Bank access somewhere?

Maybe even other things? Little mini games? Target shooting birds from the walls? A spy-glass you can aim at different other areas to see what goes on there? Anything really, just give people something to do while sitting there that’s not just staring out into space.

A suggestion: Allies!

If by half the turn, the two losing servers have just a small amount of points, have them ally against the larger one. Not sure how that would work with leagues though.