Guild Wars 2

misterdevious.6482:

Deal with the issues created by population imbalance, namely Foregone Conclusions early on in the match, and people not having fun because either there is nothing left to do when you own everything, or there is nothing you can do because you’re getting dominated.

When a server is facing a massive score gap, new options like the ones suggested below could become temporarily available from the Traps and Tricks vendor to give them the option of continuing to fight.

Mercenary Trap: Trap that summons temporary Mercenary Allies
Purchaseable Merc Pet: Merc ally to follow you around
Demolition Kit: Deployable device that will do 5% damage to any wall or gate.
Purchaseable Stealth Buff: Chance to get to an objective to do something
Reinforcement Boost: Speed buff upon respawn

When one server has conquered the entire world, they should expect some insurrection/rebellion/sabotage. You shouldn’t expect the massively outnumbered group to fight fair.

New meta with this would be:
-lose everything on map
-send 25-30 man groups to every keep
-blow through inner and outer before it even gets marked as contested
-cap everything for the tick before enemy can even respond.

It would create huge imbalances & for lower population servers, it doesnt change the fact that they cant cap it. Don’t forget they have to be able to win the fight to actually capture the point.

2nd bad possibility i see:
- get on map where disadvantaged
- lose everything
- get the items
- blow through their fully upgraded keep before they can even respond

Dutchares.6084:

Jharkin.9357:

Mercenaries

Mercenaries open up when a specific server is extremely outgunned. What mercenaries does is allow guilds from other servers to temporarily join the outmanned server to help balance the odds. Only guilds from servers that are winning their matchup may become mercenaries. Mercenaries get a bonus in wxp and money, however are unable to interact with supply in towers and keeps to avoid griefing.

Like I said before, I don’t think NPC’s are the solutions.
Did you ever see a zerg avoid a supply camp because the NPC orges are in it?
Even a solo player can take a supply camp with the NPC’s in it, it just takes longer.
If you send lots of NPC’s to towers and keeps will only mean maybe a small delay for the zerg (probably not). I don’t think a zerg in a zone with only NPC enemies will every be stopped by the NPC’s

May want to read that again. I was talking about players and not NPCs.

Solstice.1097:

1. No forced transfers

No forced transfers, but no complaining about queues while there are free transfers available.

Jharkin.9357:

Dutchares.6084:

Jharkin.9357:

Mercenaries

Mercenaries open up when a specific server is extremely outgunned. What mercenaries does is allow guilds from other servers to temporarily join the outmanned server to help balance the odds. Only guilds from servers that are winning their matchup may become mercenaries. Mercenaries get a bonus in wxp and money, however are unable to interact with supply in towers and keeps to avoid griefing.

Did you ever see a zerg avoid a supply camp because the NPC orges are in it?
[stuff]

May want to read that again. I was talking about players and not NPCs.

Rename them “Freelancers” or something instead

What is needed is a simple UI to accurately show the current state of the WvW server in any time zone so that informed transfer decisions can be made.

I envision something like a 24 hour clock face where you indicate your anticipated daily or weekly play schedule. Something like a slider, for example, that will show I will be playing from 7pm to 10pm Server time most week nights. Based on that slider a calculation would be done for that time slot:

[Average number of people in Que for WvW]/[Average number of people in WvW] = [Que Percent]

This would show the average percentage of people in que during that desired play time for that server. No proprietary data or actual counts is revealed, but the player considering transfer can now analyze a server and all time of play elements relating to that server and make an informed decision whether to transfer there.

The community can best regulate itself if given the proper information.

What makes a WvW player when we are discussing measurement of WvW population?
Time committed to the play of WvW. Where do we set the bar? It has to be spread across the life of the account. The player may have spent three months in WvW and turned away due to frustration with the dynamics. You don’t want to discount that committed time unless the player has not actively logged in in over 45 days because they are likely no longer part of the population. Average play time per day as a snap shot is good to know information. Does the player go into WvW for 45 minutes and then go spend 5 hours doing dungeons? So percent of played time in WvW should be a factor. What about the folks waiting in long queues to enter? Do you include the queue time as WvW time since the intent to play was there?
Time should be measured over life time of account.
Should be measured as a percentage of play
Queue time should count toward WvW play time.
Players that have not logged in for over 45 days should be considered inactive and dropped from the calculation.
Once WvW players are identified then calculate the percentage of the population they comprise.
Show us by percentage the split between WvW players and the general population. I would also like to see a from the WvW population a number of guilds involved with a floor of 5 people as the smallest increment. Then sort the WvW guilds by server to size and show us guilds by size in a range split of 50 person increments starting with 5-50. There will be a portion of the WvW population on the server that is not representing or not a within the range of 5 or more in guild in WvW. Place this remainder in the pie chart. None of this information would betray the specific numbers of people on a server it would only display as percentages of population.
So this would give us a overall percent of WvW players per server and a breakdown of organized participation by size vs general WvW players. It will provide guild leaders with a clear picture of which servers are best to move their force to based on population. This is key for those who are trying to make an informed decision to move. Right now the movement process involves servers recruiting, guilds sending representatives forward to recon the community and play style and a then a rough integration that can easily fail because you moved to a server that didn’t have room for you or the culture that fits your play style. Of course the decision of individual players to move would be better informed with this same information. If you wanted to be part of a vibrant small man team community you could see where that is happening. If you wanted to know where the huge guilds are it would be apparent. This would eliminate the finger pointing between tiers about who does or does not small man.

This is snap shot of Devonas Rest WvW guild population as of July based on personal interviews with 92 guilds that I verified participated in our WvW community.
84% sized 50 or under(mostly 5-10), 8 % 50-100, 7% 100-150, 1% over 150.

Jharkin.9357:

Dutchares.6084:

Jharkin.9357:

Mercenaries

Mercenaries open up when a specific server is extremely outgunned. What mercenaries does is allow guilds from other servers to temporarily join the outmanned server to help balance the odds. Only guilds from servers that are winning their matchup may become mercenaries. Mercenaries get a bonus in wxp and money, however are unable to interact with supply in towers and keeps to avoid griefing.

Like I said before, I don’t think NPC’s are the solutions.
Did you ever see a zerg avoid a supply camp because the NPC orges are in it?
Even a solo player can take a supply camp with the NPC’s in it, it just takes longer.
If you send lots of NPC’s to towers and keeps will only mean maybe a small delay for the zerg (probably not). I don’t think a zerg in a zone with only NPC enemies will every be stopped by the NPC’s

May want to read that again. I was talking about players and not NPCs.

Still I don’t see this would fix the problem, so people spread out over all servers. Or get more population in off hours when the enemy is running large zerg with 0 defenders.

Guilds run mostly in peak hours. Problems of server balance isn’t in peek hours where most servers have queues on all borders.

I think to solve this problem is ask why people transferred to higher tier servers?
It was because they wanted to be on the winning server.
Having karma trains even in off hours. Having the biggest zerg during most of the day so they get easier rewards. Not wanting to be on a server were you have no chance defending against a big zerg with only a few numbers.
(also a good question (maybe for someone who studies Psychology looking for a nice topic) : why do a lot of players these days prefer an easy mode kick kitten play style more then a hard, good challenging fight play style ? Would love to see the result on the research)

So if you make being on the highest populated(24/7.. so especially in off hours where you can easily outnumber an enemy with 10-1) less important to get rewards and being the winning server.

So the question should be how to do this.
Fixing queues, telling people how long queues are, exact numbers of server population difference, NPC’s, guesting, free server transfers, etc wont fix it.

Good ideas:

- An accurate WvW population indicator, based on a server’s total hours spent in WvW in the last 24 hours. By all means keep the existing overall indicator as well, but base the actual transfer cost on the WvW measure. Medium pop and below are always free to transfer to.

- Allow a guild to retain its influence etc when transferring, but only when transferring down.

- Scale the PPT timer to be based on the smallest of the three server’s WvW presence at any given time, recalculating at every tick. Example: reset night on T1 there might be 10 mins between ticks, night time on T8 during the week might be an hour.

- Whenever a server has more than 50% of PPT, players on the other two servers appear as yellow to each other instead of red and there are no rewards for taking “yellow” server objectives.

- Accurate queue timers, and the ability to queue multiple maps at once.

- Outmanned buff needs more granularity, i.e. instead of simply being outmanned or not outmanned, scale the buff for more rewards the more outmanned you are.

Bad ideas:

- Anything involving more Siegerazer-style NPCs. A balanced player coverage should be the goal here; NPC-based solutions are a crutch and won’t solve anything.

- The league system. Server rankings absolutely must determine match-ups on a weekly basis, otherwise dying servers only die faster.

- The edge of the mists. T1 players should be encouraged to transfer down, not be rewarded with a new map for their stubbornness.

Giving lower tier servers bonuses to help even out the playing field? Leave transferring to lower server free, and medium 40% off. I think we also need a server size increase. It’s disappointing waiting for 4 hours for a WvW queue and having 50 people who queued 3 hours after you did get in before you.

I also agree with the idea of having transfer prices based on WvW population. If one server cannot field enough players out compared to higher tier servers, there should be some way to balance this out, draw players into those lower tier server to even out the playing field. This is why I gave the idea of giving benefits to lower tier server, I’m not sure what kind of benefits, but I’m sure people could cough up ideas!

May I just add something for everyone posting here? Just wanted to say that seeing so many concerned with creating fairness and balance in the virtual realm’s, shows great promise for our civilization in the real world. Good on ya’!

Dezarys.1372:

Giving lower tier servers bonuses to help even out the playing field? Leave transferring to lower server free, and medium 40% off. I think we also need a server size increase. It’s disappointing waiting for 4 hours for a WvW queue and having 50 people who queued 3 hours after you did get in before you.

I also agree with the idea of having transfer prices based on WvW population. If one server cannot field enough players out compared to higher tier servers, there should be some way to balance this out, draw players into those lower tier server to even out the playing field. This is why I gave the idea of giving benefits to lower tier server, I’m not sure what kind of benefits, but I’m sure people could cough up ideas!

Just a question to make a point:
You having problems with queues? So why didn’t you transfer already to a lower tier server who doesn’t have queues?
What kind of bonus do you want to have before you will do this?

My point I want to make is still : server transfer prices.. some farm bonus when playing on a server who is overrun most of the time, etc doesn’t fix it.

You need to find a way so being outnumbered (even with a lot) doesn’t mean you will get lesser/harder to get rewards then being on the overpopulated server. But also you need to make it for the overpopulated harder to win (for example changing the PPT system when being outnumbered)

I would like to see a graph of players on certain borderlands through out the hours over the course of a day by day basis. This could stamp out illusions and assumptions people have about ‘coverage’ in wvw.

Then from there a detail of numbers of players capping what points, at certain times. Might help people know how many people at one time are doing something, or overlapping with a smaller group in that same zone. Also what guild claimed a camp or structure. This might be a double edge sword if competing servers can see this information, but at the same time it could be a matter of ‘studying’ your opponent.

Obviously this kind of information should be released after a match up is done.

EDIT :
Why can’t Living Story effect WvW? Random events, temporary event themed siege, and incentive to get into wvw regardless if winning or losing. Have events randomly ‘attack’ structures! Just anything that can break up the mundane pace that wvw slips back into during lopsided match ups.

Right now, for servers that blow out the score, they get bored of easy matchups, and losing servers just keep dying out or go into a none competitive state of mind (IE Karma Train) which is basically farming in PvE but in WvW.

taikerr.6205:

I would like to see a graph of players on certain borderlands through out the hours over the course of a day by day basis. This could stamp out illusions and assumptions people have about ‘coverage’ in wvw.

Then from there a detail of numbers of players capping what points, at certain times. Might help people know how many people at one time are doing something, or overlapping with a smaller group in that same zone. Also what guild claimed a camp or structure. This might be a double edge sword if competing servers can see this information, but at the same time it could be a matter of ‘studying’ your opponent.

Obviously this kind of information should be released after a match up is done.

I don’t see how knowing these numbers will make people to transfer to lower tier servers? Or change the server population imbalance
People who transfers to high tier servers don’t care about if they take stuff from the enemy while the enemy has only a few in the zone. They would even prefer it. They would use these kind off info to see when the enemy has low numbers and play on that time frame.

They care about winning. And the loot. Not fair challenging fights.

Vol.5241:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a great point and one of the few posts that offers some sort of way to address it.
The coverage is what wins the match for a server. We all know this. We also all know night capping (looking at it from whatever time zone) will never be changed because it is ArenaNet’s view that no time zone is more important than another. The problem is people change to winning servers even if they don’t go out in WvW and they will continue to unless something is changed. If the matches were closer and one server didn’t always seem to destroy and demoralize the other server perhaps people wouldn’t move servers as often.
I second adjusting PPT to be higher/lower based on the population at any given time.

To fix pop would require the current system to be tossed. By design it wasn’t setup for competitive play.

The more drastic option would be to push with the instance over flow system, and make that the WvW play.
Scoring moved to an active system, and game play move away from hard objective baby sitting, basically no more “Cap point” as main play.

I’ll also suggest making a handful of dedicated battle servers not tied to the current PvE servers, on a ladder system, shorter rounds not week long.

This lets battle server time zone instances open on servers in the locale, so each prime time would have instances open in their area, and cycle down as pop transitions out and new instances open in the next time zone server cluster.

Anyway just an idea.

Dutchares.6084:

taikerr.6205:

I would like to see a graph of players on certain borderlands through out the hours over the course of a day by day basis. This could stamp out illusions and assumptions people have about ‘coverage’ in wvw.

Then from there a detail of numbers of players capping what points, at certain times. Might help people know how many people at one time are doing something, or overlapping with a smaller group in that same zone. Also what guild claimed a camp or structure. This might be a double edge sword if competing servers can see this information, but at the same time it could be a matter of ‘studying’ your opponent.

Obviously this kind of information should be released after a match up is done.

I don’t see how knowing these numbers will make people to transfer to lower tier servers? Or change the server population imbalance
People who transfers to high tier servers don’t care about if they take stuff from the enemy while the enemy has only a few in the zone. They would even prefer it. They would use these kind off info to see when the enemy has low numbers and play on that time frame.

They care about winning. And the loot. Not fair challenging fights.

It’s about stamping out assumptions. Knowledge is half the battle.

People complain about being outnumbered, or talks about having a long queue, but when people look around there is not a lot of people actually there.

It’s only about the assumptions I am referring to at this point.

EDIT : I am also not talking about a reason for people to transfer to other servers at all.

I think I’m going to be going against the grain of just about every other post in this thread, but I simply don’t see how server-vs-server-vs-server is EVER going to give balanced matches … and balanced matches are what we are all looking for. Buffs and point adjustments for population differences might tend to balance scores BUT THEY WON’T BALANCE GAME PLAY. I’ve played GW2 since launch and came here specifically for the promise of WvW … large scale, open world, strategy-based PvP requiring teamwork among varied player roles (armies, scouts, small raiding teams, etc). The score should be a measure of how well we do that, but the actual enjoyment comes from the process … not the result.

As long as population and coverage trump everything (and they always will), some other scheme needs to be in place to set up matches instead of simply having interested players from three difference servers show up on the battlefield. I’ve thought about this for months and I see no other way to do than to change to a red-vs-blue-vs-green faction type of format with defined player caps for each instance. The original concept of server-vs-server-vs-server was supposedly that server loyalty would be a dominant theme, but the mass transfers of players looking for better matches has put the lie to that premise. Most players want competitive, full spectrum open world PvP WHEN THEY WANT IT above all else, which means populations and queues need to be controlled effectively. the only way I can see that ever happening is with an instanced format. Make it so that teams of players can join together and make it so that multiple instances can be run at the same time.

That would be my major desire, but while spending all those hours trying to figure out how WvW might be made more workable I came up with the following additional thoughts. Consider them or reject them as you see fit, but at the very least I feel we need to abandon the server-vs-server-vs-server concept.

If I had my way, I’d totally revamp WVW. I’d make matches instanced (more or less equal populations determined by dynamic queues), and I’d have matches start on blank maps … terrain features only, no structures. I’d scatter ore deposits randomly around the maps (different for each match) so that the first thing each team had to do would be to scout for deposits and secure the surrounding land. Mining the ore would develop the camp, and the ore thus mined would be used as supplies to build towers and keeps anywhere on the map that players chose. Other gathering nodes (herbs and trees) could be incorporated and required for building (food for NPC workers, wood for walls, etc) as well. Towers and keeps would require a blueprint just like siege does now, with each blueprint costing Badges of Honor, karma, or some such non-gold currency. Siege (both offensive and defensive) would be similar to what they are now, with possibly some changes (like backtracking on siege mastery) to address current grievances. Towers and keeps could be destroyed, but not captured … they’d have to be rebuilt, either in the same place or somewhere else. Supply locations (ore, trees, food) could be captured and recaptured, but would need to be redeveloped to be productive. Supplies could be stockpiled in keeps and towers by players. Points would accumulated as they are now … as a function of territory and structures controlled.

I suspect that such a scheme would have some unforeseen flaws, but I think the general concept would entail much greater strategic play, require better overall coordination, broaden the contributions for a wider variety of players, and generate some much harder fought battles over key locations.

Dutchares.6084:

Jharkin.9357:

May want to read that again. I was talking about players and not NPCs.

Still I don’t see this would fix the problem, so people spread out over all servers. Or get more population in off hours when the enemy is running large zerg with 0 defenders.

Guilds run mostly in peak hours. Problems of server balance isn’t in peek hours where most servers have queues on all borders.

Only gold league servers queue on all borders during peek hours when there isn’t an wvw achievement going on . Try dropping down a few tiers and you will get matchups where one server is queued and the other is half queued or worse. Also, there are plenty of aussie and even european guilds that play off hours on na servers.

How about two matches per week where there is a scored, rated match for 3.5 days (just like current match) and then there is an unrated match where guesting is allowed for 3.5 days?

During the unrated matches top tier players would guest onto lower tier servers to avoid queues. It would start to create cross-server communities that would, as long as queues are still a problem on higher servers, set the stage for players beginning to transfer downwards much more often.

Portal Master.9146:

Vol.5241:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a great point and one of the few posts that offers some sort of way to address it.
The coverage is what wins the match for a server. We all know this. We also all know night capping (looking at it from whatever time zone) will never be changed because it is ArenaNet’s view that no time zone is more important than another. The problem is people change to winning servers even if they don’t go out in WvW and they will continue to unless something is changed. If the matches were closer and one server didn’t always seem to destroy and demoralize the other server perhaps people wouldn’t move servers as often.
I second adjusting PPT to be higher/lower based on the population at any given time.

Agree, this sound good. Server population difference wouldn’t be so high impact on the server difference in ranking. Lower population servers have a good chance of winning even if they only can hold a few objectives, or can hold objectives only in prime time.

I just would also add the rewards players will get for taking/defending objectives and killing guards/players is also depended on total WvW population.

And WvW population (so total of hours every player was in a WvW zone) is recalculated every week. So the amount of points you get for an objective, but also the amount of rewards you get is determined by last week people spending time in a WvW zone.

Portal Master.9146:

I second adjusting PPT to be higher/lower based on the population at any given time.

As I just stated above, that might adjust the score but it doesn’t really fix the game play. We still end up with matches that are skewed by population differences. Just because one side gets more points for doing something because they have less population does NOT mean that they are able to play the game the same way as the side with the greater population. Think about it for ten seconds and you’ll see what I mean. HOW we play the game is the important aspect here … not just the score … and equalizing the score is NOT the same as equalizing the game play.

PPT as a function of player population is not a fix for anything worthwhile.

Solstice.1097:

How about two matches per week where there is a scored, rated match for 3.5 days (just like current match) and then there is an unrated match where guesting is allowed for 3.5 days?

During the unrated matches top tier players would guest onto lower tier servers to avoid queues. It would start to create cross-server communities that would, as long as queues are still a problem on higher servers, set the stage for players beginning to transfer downwards much more often.

Nope this will have the opposite effect. Still can be on the winning server.(and get rewards for it : karma training during off hours) And have halve a week without queues.

Solstice.1097:

How about two matches per week where there is a scored, rated match for 3.5 days (just like current match) and then there is an unrated match where guesting is allowed for 3.5 days?

During the unrated matches top tier players would guest onto lower tier servers to avoid queues. It would start to create cross-server communities that would, as long as queues are still a problem on higher servers, set the stage for players beginning to transfer downwards much more often.

or 5/2 or something doesn’t have to be 3.5/3.5

Dutchares.6084:

Solstice.1097:

How about two matches per week where there is a scored, rated match for 3.5 days (just like current match) and then there is an unrated match where guesting is allowed for 3.5 days?

During the unrated matches top tier players would guest onto lower tier servers to avoid queues. It would start to create cross-server communities that would, as long as queues are still a problem on higher servers, set the stage for players beginning to transfer downwards much more often.

Nope this will have the opposite effect. Still can be on the winning server.(and get rewards for it : karma training during off hours) And have halve a week without queues.

i have a feeling it would make the queues worse during those 3.5 days. also a main reason people don’t de-stack is the community. If they came to feel like part of another community, the choice would be much easier to make.

Jharkin.9357:

Dutchares.6084:

Jharkin.9357:

May want to read that again. I was talking about players and not NPCs.

Still I don’t see this would fix the problem, so people spread out over all servers. Or get more population in off hours when the enemy is running large zerg with 0 defenders.

Guilds run mostly in peak hours. Problems of server balance isn’t in peek hours where most servers have queues on all borders.

Only gold league servers queue on all borders during peek hours when there isn’t an wvw achievement going on . Try dropping down a few tiers and you will get matchups where one server is queued and the other is half queued or worse. Also, there are plenty of aussie and even european guilds that play off hours on na servers.

I play in European silver league.. During prime time (8.00-11.00) we have queues on all borders. And what I hear from guilds on servers we fight against they also have most of the time problems getting their guild into the same zone.
But like I said queues aren’t the problem here that need to be solved. Its the effect player difference in off hours have on a server. It is the main factor that determines what server will win. So not how good your server is during prime time.. or when you server has about the same number of players as the other servers(hate the term prime time. if the server have in a zone about the same amount of players even in off hours , current PPT would work, if one of the server has a lot more the PPT should change)

I want to elaborate of my earlier post.

PPT changed to Points per capture/kill.

Points will only be accrued when you first capture an objective. Points will also be awarded for a stomp well you have bloodlust. When you have the outmanned buff you are worth no points when killed (stomping under BL would still give points). What this will accomplish would be a focus on defense. Denying your enemy points from a capture well also accruing points from killing attackers. Since you only gain points from an initial capture of a point it makes it that a smaller server could concentrate its forces on one map and not have to worry about the objectives on other maps ticking points to the larger server. Thus keeping scoring closer. Also if you are outmanned and defending a tower you will he able to accrue points from kills but since you are outmanned death will not give points to the attacker and during defense stomps are near impossible to pull off.

suggested time zones for servers.

with the changes I layed out above you can see where fighting other servers that have a presence in your time of play would be more enjoyable. Hence the suggestion to split the servers into groups much like we have now and give a suggested window of play on them. This would not be a forced play time. Just a suggestion so people would have an idea of when wvw should be the busiest on there server.

limited free transfers.

lastly with the new suggested play times it would be nice for people to be able to move to those servers that are part of there play time for free. This would be a limited time and a single move per account.

Samhayn.2385:

I want to elaborate of my earlier post.

PPT changed to Points per capture/kill.

Points will only be accrued when you first capture an objective. Points will also be awarded for a stomp well you have bloodlust. When you have the outmanned buff you are worth no points when killed (stomping under BL would still give points). What this will accomplish would be a focus on defense. Denying your enemy points from a capture well also accruing points from killing attackers. Since you only gain points from an initial capture of a point it makes it that a smaller server could concentrate its forces on one map and not have to worry about the objectives on other maps ticking points to the larger server. Thus keeping scoring closer. Also if you are outmanned and defending a tower you will he able to accrue points from kills but since you are outmanned death will not give points to the attacker and during defense stomps are near impossible to pull off.

suggested time zones for servers.

with the changes I layed out above you can see where fighting other servers that have a presence in your time of play would be more enjoyable. Hence the suggestion to split the servers into groups much like we have now and give a suggested window of play on them. This would not be a forced play time. Just a suggestion so people would have an idea of when wvw should be the busiest on there server.

limited free transfers.

lastly with the new suggested play times it would be nice for people to be able to move to those servers that are part of there play time for free. This would be a limited time and a single move per account.

Problem with this is no one will defend since holding stuff isn’t important.
It will be PvDooring all the time.

Except if you make the points you get for killing (so not only stomping) even if you don’t own the bloodlust a lot higher. Defending will give you most of the time more kills.

But giving more points for killing can change into ignoring keeps and towers completely(sieging) and only go for the kills.

It seems to me there are two ways to go about addressing the problem of balance. One is to deal with the actual populations. Two is to introduce mechanics to assist the weaker side(s) when there is an imbalance.

1. Dealing with the actual populations. There are many good ideas listed in this thread and some not so good ones. If it is possible, some form of combining servers like the video suggesting teams based on colors and being able to temporarily transfer to one of your “teammates” servers would be awesome. However, I have my doubts about the technical feasibility of this.

• Matchmaking also falls under this category. You have demonstrated the technical ability to manually make the matchups. So instead of the original Glicko system that didn’t adjust fast enough. And instead of the RNG method which created horrible matchups too often. Just manually make the matchups each week. You can see which servers would have more even matches – and you can do it better than some RNG computer.

2. Mechanics to assist the weaker side(s). If relatively equal populations are not possible then introducing mechanics to assist the weaker side(s) are necessary. Unfortunately, the vast majority of game mechanics favor the side that is already stronger. This has got to be changed.

• Examples:
• The way supply is handled. Favors the larger population. The more people, the more supply you can carry, the more siege you can build, etc…
• Superior siege. Should never have been introduced. Should be done away with. At first you might think hey, this can benefit a small squad to take a structure faster. Problem is if one superior ram can take down a gate fast enough for a small group to ninja, hey, if I’m in a zerg, why not throw down 4 superior rams and melt the gate in seconds. Same for every other piece of superior siege – it benefits the stronger, more populated side.
• Boons. The bigger the group the more boons you can get. E.g. Swiftness – a zerg can have perma-swiftness. Yes, the larger army can actually travel faster than the smaller army – which is totally backwards from the way it should be.
• Mastery lines. Increases the strength of the stronger side. It makes OP superior siege even more OP. (And Guard Leach, Applied Fortitude, seriously???)
• Bloodlust buff.
• Anything else with + stats.

• Suggestions:
• Incentive to attack the stronger server is a must. Some great suggestions from others about how to do this so I won’t repeat them.
• Incentive to the two weaker servers to gang up on the stronger server. A proper 2v1 would make up for differences in population.
• Some form of strength scaling where small groups can benefit but a zerg doesn’t linearly scale in power – it scales less.

Dutchares.6084:

Samhayn.2385:

I want to elaborate of my earlier post.

PPT changed to Points per capture/kill.

Points will only be accrued when you first capture an objective. Points will also be awarded for a stomp well you have bloodlust. When you have the outmanned buff you are worth no points when killed (stomping under BL would still give points). What this will accomplish would be a focus on defense. Denying your enemy points from a capture well also accruing points from killing attackers. Since you only gain points from an initial capture of a point it makes it that a smaller server could concentrate its forces on one map and not have to worry about the objectives on other maps ticking points to the larger server. Thus keeping scoring closer. Also if you are outmanned and defending a tower you will he able to accrue points from kills but since you are outmanned death will not give points to the attacker and during defense stomps are near impossible to pull off.

suggested time zones for servers.

with the changes I layed out above you can see where fighting other servers that have a presence in your time of play would be more enjoyable. Hence the suggestion to split the servers into groups much like we have now and give a suggested window of play on them. This would not be a forced play time. Just a suggestion so people would have an idea of when wvw should be the busiest on there server.

limited free transfers.

lastly with the new suggested play times it would be nice for people to be able to move to those servers that are part of there play time for free. This would be a limited time and a single move per account.

Problem with this is no one will defend since holding stuff isn’t important.
It will be PvDooring all the time.

Except if you make the points you get for killing (so not only stomping) even if you don’t own the bloodlust a lot higher. Defending will give you most of the time more kills.

But giving more points for killing can change into ignoring keeps and towers completely(sieging) and only go for the kills.

defending would deny points to the attackers. Also allowing you to gain kills from the safety of a tower. So yes points per kill would have to be meaningful.

also you could have objectives be worth more.points the longer they are held.

as for people for going keeps for open field battles, you may see more open field (not a bad thing) but the idea is to kill with out being killed in return.

no idea is going to be perfect but at least im not trying to punish people for being on certain servers.

As a suggestion, can we have a stricter AFK policy in WvW? Kick someone to LA (or WvW overflow when that’s done) after X minutes.

Yes, people do need to have a small break, but there have been many occasions where I spawned at a WP, saw some people AFK, go fight for 20 mins, die, respawn at WP to see the same people AFK.

Just sorting out that should help the queues a little. Not by much, but it should have some sort of impact.

Grav.3568:

Good ideas:

- An accurate WvW population indicator, based on a server’s total hours spent in WvW in the last 24 hours. By all means keep the existing overall indicator as well, but base the actual transfer cost on the WvW measure. Medium pop and below are always free to transfer to.

- Allow a guild to retain its influence etc when transferring, but only when transferring down.

- Scale the PPT timer to be based on the smallest of the three server’s WvW presence at any given time, recalculating at every tick. Example: reset night on T1 there might be 10 mins between ticks, night time on T8 during the week might be an hour.

- Whenever a server has more than 50% of PPT, players on the other two servers appear as yellow to each other instead of red and there are no rewards for taking “yellow” server objectives.

- Accurate queue timers, and the ability to queue multiple maps at once.

- Outmanned buff needs more granularity, i.e. instead of simply being outmanned or not outmanned, scale the buff for more rewards the more outmanned you are.

Bad ideas:

- Anything involving more Siegerazer-style NPCs. A balanced player coverage should be the goal here; NPC-based solutions are a crutch and won’t solve anything.

- The league system. Server rankings absolutely must determine match-ups on a weekly basis, otherwise dying servers only die faster.

- The edge of the mists. T1 players should be encouraged to transfer down, not be rewarded with a new map for their stubbornness.

Wow, I agree (very strongly) with all of these except the league. I think if they do everthing else on this list, the league will be a good idea. +1 for you, Sir.

One of the attraction it T1 server is the larger wvw population and almost 24/7 battles. Reducing map population forcing people into queues is not the solution. We want everyone to play the game, not wait in queues. A solution is to have more maps and also introduce overflow to WvW. Instead of fighting for PPT, we should be fighting for kills

Population imbalance will a always exist if we keep this server vs server paradigm. I would love to see it more like eve-online where all servers are merged into one where everyone could fight anybody

Samhayn.2385:

I want to elaborate of my earlier post.

PPT changed to Points per capture/kill.

Points will only be accrued when you first capture an objective. Points will also be awarded for a stomp well you have bloodlust. When you have the outmanned buff you are worth no points when killed (stomping under BL would still give points). What this will accomplish would be a focus on defense. Denying your enemy points from a capture well also accruing points from killing attackers. Since you only gain points from an initial capture of a point it makes it that a smaller server could concentrate its forces on one map and not have to worry about the objectives on other maps ticking points to the larger server. Thus keeping scoring closer. Also if you are outmanned and defending a tower you will he able to accrue points from kills but since you are outmanned death will not give points to the attacker and during defense stomps are near impossible to pull off.

I really like the idea of getting rid of PPT and just having points awarded based on captured/defend events.

to elaborate on this, capture events should be worth more for upgraded objectives and less for “paper” ones. capture events should also be worth more for each defend event that passes during the seige, and defend events should be worth points as well. this would encourage attacking upgraded, defended objectives because success would be worth the effort. it would also encourage defending since you could gain a lot of points by completing multiple defend events.

servers with more off hour coverage would not gain any more points because they would already own everything, and karma training in a circle flipping paper towers would just result in a stalemate, since everyone would gain points more or less equally.

i’m sure there are unforseen issues/potential exploits with this, but generally i think getting rid of PPT is a step in the right direction.

THE PROBLEM

At its most basic level, the problem is population imbalance.

However, the problem is actually two separate problems:
1) Game-wide server imbalance
2) Imbalance within a given match up

Each problem needs to be addressed separately.

GAME-WIDE SERVER IMBALANCE

Simply put, the difference between T1 and T8 is FAR too large. Guilds have been abandoning lower tier servers for stacked servers at an alarming and increasing rate. Why is this happening? It is quite simple.

Currently, the game rewards stacking
No one is forcing people to stack servers. People are doing of their own freewill, because there is an advantage to stacking servers, and no disadvantage (except recently for queue times, which Anet already plans to “fix.”) Because people have been encouraged to stack, they have been making this problem progressively worse.

The game needs to reward balance
If the game rewards population balance, the player base will balance the population themselves. Simply create a sliding reward scale: the lower the servers population, the greater the reward. People will transfer to these “rewarding” places, until the population balances out and the rewards are equal. From that point forward, if ever a massive shift happens to imbalance the populations, the players will correct it themselves.

Ideas for how to reward balance

• Base server transfer fees on server rank
• Scale WvW loot drops by population or rating
• Scale Wxp rank-up chests by population or rating
• Scale guild influence gain by population or rating

IMBALANCE WITHIN A GIVEN MATCH UP

Once an imbalanced match up begins, there is a tendency for the weaker servers to “give up” and for the larger servers to start “karma trains.” The three way battle was supposed to help balance this, when the two weaker servers gang up on the stronger server. Unfortunately, the reality is that the first place server will get a free pass, and the other two servers will “play for second.”

Currently, there is no reward for fighting against difficult/impossible odds
If you are dominating WvW with numbers, you are greatly rewarded with loot, karma, xp, wxp and three bonus chests. If you are steamrolled in WvW, then you are rewarded with not paying an armor repair bill (maybe). There is no incentive to keep fighting, other than personal determination.

The game needs to reward the underdog for not giving up
I’ve watched people wipe and die over and over again in PvE just because the reward was worth it. Give a reward “worth dieing for” to the underdog and they will keep fighting. Both sides will enjoy this more, because even the winning side gets bored in a washout.

Ideas for how to reward the underdog for not giving up

• When a server is losing by a large enough ratio, give them advanced powerful siege
• Give the losing team guerrilla warfare advantages, like weapon caches, hidden passages ways, and hiding places.
• Create a sliding scale MF bonus, based on the ratio between scores.
• Spawn dragons or other powerful monsters to attack and distract the winning team.

Currently, the game promotes playing for second
WvW is a classic prisoner’s dilemma. If both weaker servers work together, they could get first and second place. Instead, because they cannot trust each other, the weaker servers will play for second, make the balance worse instead of better.

The game needs to promote ganging up on the first place server
Due to the inherent nature of the prisoner’s dilemma, the game gives to give additional incentive to “go for first.” The incentive needs to be greater than the incentive to play for second, or it will not break the prisoner’s dilemma.

Ideas to promote playing for first

• Change the victory chests: 1st = 2 chests, 2nd = 1 chest, 3rd = 1 chest
• Give more war points for spiking players on the winning team (could be tied to bloodlust)
• Give better rewards for capping the 1st team’s objectives.

CONCLUSION

People always talk about the “meta,” but the “meta” is just people responding to game mechanics. People steer toward rewarding actions and away from punishing ones. Anet can leverage this to control the meta, and make it promote balance.

I agree, that there has to be an incentive to get players to move down to the lower population servers and get players to play more in the low pop servers.

How about a Dynamic Reward Boost for the lower population on WvWvW which would be visible by mousing over the WvW tab in the game….

So server A, is fighting B, and C. Server A has 3x the current WvW players of B and 2x the players of C. On the WvW tab for Server B it shows that there is currently a 50% reward gain (MF, exp, karma, Gold) while on Server C, they see a 25% reward gain. Players rush into WvW to take advantage of the higher rewards which then starts to stabilize the match…after 10 minutes now A is only .5x more than B but still 1x more than C. B’s rewards have dropped to only a 5% bonus, while C’s is now 10%….as more people come on or leave this dynamically changes the rewards for the lower population servers up and down. I don’t think this should be map based (as that could possibly be abused, but WvW based (players in WvW on your server).

This has a double effect of :

A: making players who play PVE on a particular server think twice about playing in WvW (if the rewards are good, they will come)…at the very least it would get the casual players to perhaps do WvW on a night instead of dungeons / champ farm…

and B: it would entice players and even whole Guilds to move servers down to one of the lower population servers. If your guild likes getting loot from WvW, you would want to be on one of the consistently lower population servers in order to get this loot. Of course moving your whole guild increases the population of that server…it becomes a guessing game for players… (If I move to Server C which consistently has a 25% reward gain, how many other players are also moving there?), but since moves cost money…players wouldn’t move all that much.

If you really wanted this to work fast, you could tie it in with a new armor or weapon skin that only drops in player kill bags in WvW….so players would REALLY be incentivized to get onto a low pop server for their chance at the rare new skin.

Eventually, I would think if this population discrepancy reward chance increase is great enough, you would start to see servers even out. Right now, with giving loot boxes to everyone on a “winning” server, the only incentive is for everyone to move to one of the winning servers to get the loot.

This could also help odd hours of the night, players may transfer just simply to play on a server at an odd time (maybe transfering to a EU server to play at 3:00AM when they are Low pop), which might even out times of the day also.

Its been shown again and again, People go where they can earn gold and stuff the fastest…use that to your advantage.

titanlectro.5029:

THE PROBLEM

At its most basic level, the problem is population imbalance.

However, the problem is actually two separate problems:
1) Game-wide server imbalance
2) Imbalance within a given match up

Each problem needs to be addressed separately.

GAME-WIDE SERVER IMBALANCE

Simply put, the difference between T1 and T8 is FAR too large. Guilds have been abandoning lower tier servers for stacked servers at an alarming and increasing rate. Why is this happening? It is quite simple.

Currently, the game rewards stacking
No one is forcing people to stack servers. People are doing of their own freewill, because there is an advantage to stacking servers, and no disadvantage (except recently for queue times, which Anet already plans to “fix.”) Because people have been encouraged to stack, they have been making this problem progressively worse.

The game needs to reward balance
If the game rewards population balance, the player base will balance the population themselves. Simply create a sliding reward scale: the lower the servers population, the greater the reward. People will transfer to these “rewarding” places, until the population balances out and the rewards are equal. From that point forward, if ever a massive shift happens to imbalance the populations, the players will correct it themselves.

Ideas for how to reward balance

• Base server transfer fees on server rank
• Scale WvW loot drops by population or rating
• Scale Wxp rank-up chests by population or rating
• Scale guild influence gain by population or rating

IMBALANCE WITHIN A GIVEN MATCH UP

Once an imbalanced match up begins, there is a tendency for the weaker servers to “give up” and for the larger servers to start “karma trains.” The three way battle was supposed to help balance this, when the two weaker servers gang up on the stronger server. Unfortunately, the reality is that the first place server will get a free pass, and the other two servers will “play for second.”

Currently, there is no reward for fighting against difficult/impossible odds
If you are dominating WvW with numbers, you are greatly rewarded with loot, karma, xp, wxp and three bonus chests. If you are steamrolled in WvW, then you are rewarded with not paying an armor repair bill (maybe). There is no incentive to keep fighting, other than personal determination.

The game needs to reward the underdog for not giving up
I’ve watched people wipe and die over and over again in PvE just because the reward was worth it. Give a reward “worth dieing for” to the underdog and they will keep fighting. Both sides will enjoy this more, because even the winning side gets bored in a washout.

Ideas for how to reward the underdog for not giving up

• When a server is losing by a large enough ratio, give them advanced powerful siege
• Give the losing team guerrilla warfare advantages, like weapon caches, hidden passages ways, and hiding places.
• Create a sliding scale MF bonus, based on the ratio between scores.
• Spawn dragons or other powerful monsters to attack and distract the winning team.

Currently, the game promotes playing for second
WvW is a classic prisoner’s dilemma. If both weaker servers work together, they could get first and second place. Instead, because they cannot trust each other, the weaker servers will play for second, make the balance worse instead of better.

The game needs to promote ganging up on the first place server
Due to the inherent nature of the prisoner’s dilemma, the game gives to give additional incentive to “go for first.” The incentive needs to be greater than the incentive to play for second, or it will not break the prisoner’s dilemma.

Ideas to promote playing for first

• Change the victory chests: 1st = 2 chests, 2nd = 1 chest, 3rd = 1 chest
• Give more war points for spiking players on the winning team (could be tied to bloodlust)
• Give better rewards for capping the 1st team’s objectives.

CONCLUSION

People always talk about the “meta,” but the “meta” is just people responding to game mechanics. People steer toward rewarding actions and away from punishing ones. Anet can leverage this to control the meta, and make it promote balance.

His idea is similar to mine, but goes into greater detail…I think these ideas on rewarding balance would work!

taikerr.6205:

EDIT :
Why can’t Living Story effect WvW? Random events, temporary event themed siege, and incentive to get into wvw regardless if winning or losing. Have events randomly ‘attack’ structures! Just anything that can break up the mundane pace that wvw slips back into during lopsided match ups.

Right now, for servers that blow out the score, they get bored of easy matchups, and losing servers just keep dying out or go into a none competitive state of mind (IE Karma Train) which is basically farming in PvE but in WvW.

You should work for ANET since you seem to think alike.

The problem though is that people go to WvW to fight other players. If they want PvE, they can do that.

My analysis

The worst part about population imbalances (and how it got so ridiculously bad) is that all the transfers are goin up tiers.

How we got here

-game launched, servers that had drama fell apart and transfers to the servers that didn’t have drama and/or had good coverage
-free transfers ended, so people transferred up tiers while it was free
-transfers aren’t free ’cept if you have a big guild and you wanna go to tier 1, so lots of guilds find it afford to move up tiers
-WXP means people in higher tiers are richer
-leagues resulted in mass transfers to tier 1
-new overflow map will probably only be the playground of servers that have queues
-all this means small servers are getting smaller, emptier, so people get lonely and transfer up tiers

The last point is especially important so I will expand on it:
Right now transfers from the low tiers are people who aren’t leaving ‘cause of drama, they’re people who find your game depressing. People in tier 1 who say “I don’t want to transfer and so shouldn’t to” to them I say “I’ve seen lots of guilds who didn’t want to transfer transfer because the game is forcing them to. Surprise, that’s the kitten we’re in”

My idea for a solution

Some inequality is okay, some people do actually like less smaller communities so decide on acceptable inequalities, some sort of max level of population and some sort of min level.

Now:
-make transfers to servers with WvW populations above that max level impossible.
-make transfers to servers with WvW populations below that min level free.
-scale transfer costs for servers between those two levels.

Eventually the server WvW populations will level themselves out. Most importantly it won’t get worse because as things are right now it will get worse and “dead servers” will actually get dead.

I posted earlier, but let’s make this really easy
1. WvW server does not need to equal PvE server
2. In January, allow for signups to the 24 new WvW servers (This way a guild can coordinate and all go to the same one)
3. Keep server population the same on all 24 servers (in other words, set a max number, only increase that number when all servers are at capacity)

There. Balanced WvW.

Transfer costs should be scaled to the server rating. That is probably the best measure of active WvW population there is. Transfer for the 24th placed server should be free. Transfer to T1 should be prohibitive.

I do not agree with scaling server pop in maps.

During the match current server PPT could be used to scale a few things (current PPT being the best measure of the active WvW participation right now).
1. RI on objectives could be scaled to PPT differential. In a 400-100-100 match, the RI on camps, keeps, and towers could be 4X as long for the two lower ranked servers vs. the higher ranked.
2. Could also scale objectives for gate/wall/NPC hitpoints.
3. Could also scale supply, dolyak speed, siege attack speed, siege cooldown on skills, siege cap.

All of these could make the higher scoring server have to work harder to get points.

It does not solve ZvZ fights.

People told me to post this here, so here goes. I thought about splitting each matchup into a few divisions. Something like this:

1) Each matchup is split into n divisions. n is a reasonably low number like 2, 3 or 4.

2) Each division takes up a part of the day. For example, you could have a Night Division during 0.00-8.00, a Morning Division during 8.00-16.00 and a Prime Time Division during 16.00-24.00.

3) Each division has its own map status (control point ownership, upgrades, siege equipment, etc.) that only changes when that division is active.

4) The division’s impact on the overall score of a server depends on how populated the division is. More popular divisions have higher score coefficients.

5) To be clear, these divisions wouldn’t have their own tiers. You’d be fighting the same servers in every one of them.

In GW2’s case, this solution could even be justified by lore regarding the Mists. You’d get a “The Mists are changing” message before a division changes and you’re transported to the new division.

Why do I think this would be a good solution?

1) It would make night coverage less important while still letting people with unusual schedules influence the score.

2) The influence of night coverage would be less annoying for whose who play during prime time both points and morale wise. Losing keeps while you’re asleep isn’t fun.

3) It has the advantages of disabling capture point flipping during the night without many of its disadvantages.

4) While the coefficient may seem punishing at first, each player matters more when there are few players per map. A well-picked coefficient would make nighttime players roughly as important as daytime players.

Of course, this looks like a pretty challenging solution to implement, so it’s more of a thought exercise than a real suggestion.

First, i am Herebe, Arborestone serveur (EU).
thanks a lot for this initiative.. Gw2 community is so close from the dev team !!!

i give you some ideas for help the wvw, it s an activity, i like in this games.

I am commander too for my serveur and guild… so i can give you an overview of playing in my server ( but just my point of view).

1. first need : is it possible to delet the spam filter in Chan map when you tag as a commander.
we you teamspeak for most player but for those not. commander give orders with this chan ( and team too).
but with the limitation of post in this chan…it s difficult to organize some actions…

2. i have some rerols but just one tag… is it possible to have commander tag bound to the Account…

3. the non player gamer like lord in castles or towers are too weAk… The lord can’t tank a group …
I propose too give more difficulty. The objective is to help the owner server to defend the point like a worldboss in pve And organize the defense.

4. We need “alliance” management tool. The goal is to group some guilds in a specific chan !!
The maximum of guild can be define like 4 or 5 in the same alliance.

Thank you

What we have in WvW is a simple product of the law of supply and demand. WvW spots are in short supply, and the new AP rewards have raised the demand. I propose that A-net do what airlines and hotels do: implement a system that adjusts costs to reflect the demand at a given time. A new system might look something like this:

1. At the close of the WvW season, there will be an interim period during which transfers to a lower-population server are free, and all other transfers are half price. This will encourage transfers to lower population servers, alleviating the population imbalance to some degree. At the end of the interim period, the new season will begin, and server transfers will return to the normal price.

2. All queues will be staged from the Edge of the Mists. The Edge of the Mists will have overflows, so there should be no issue entering that map. Players will not be able to queue for a full WvW map from any PvE or PvP zone.

3. A player wishing to enter a map with a queue will need to pay a fee to do so. This fee will scale with the number of players already queued for the map. Maps without a queue will be free to enter, while fees to queue up will vary from 1-10 silver according to the length of the queue. These fees are similar to the WP fees incurred during normal PvE play, and are therefore not an excessive burden. Players on servers with extremely long queues will potentially pay 10 silver per half-hour in WvW, while players on servers with no queue will pay nothing. Please see item 1 above for the solution to any complaints about this.

4. Queue wait times will no longer be random, but will now be on a first in, first out basis. If a player wishes to play with a party, then all players to be included should queue at the same time to ensure that all get in within a short time span. After 10 minutes of inactivity, any player in a map with a queue will automatically be transferred to the Edge of the Mists. WvW maps are intended for active play.

5. Every half hour, the queue length for a player’s current map will be displayed. A dialog will appear, giving players on queued maps the option to pay the queue fee to remain on the map, or exit to the Edge of the Mists. An option in the settings menu will enable players to automatically pay the queue fee to avoid having the dialog appear. Players wishing to move from one queued map to another must do so by moving to the Edge of the Mists, and entering the queue for the new map, if any.

6. Gold rewards, especially for successful defensive actions such as keep or tower defense or dolyak escort will be increased slightly to compensate for the new fees. Players who a deploy a superior siege weapon from their inventory and spend any supply to build it will be exempt from fees for the next half hour period. Again, this will compensate players for the costs incurred on behalf of their server.

A system like this will accomplish several important goals. First, it will provide incentive to players to choose a server that has fewer active WvW players and smaller queues, reducing WvW population imbalances and thus making more servers competitive with each other. Second, it will provide an additional gold sink to counter the gold inflation the game is experiencing. Third, it will reduce frustration and increase player enjoyment because there will be more servers that are evenly matched and thus equally able to compete with each other for season rewards. Fourth, the system will incentivize active play, so that players will no longer enter WvW, taking up a valuable queue spot, only to go AFK for an extended period.

my suggestion is too long and includes non-population topics so all I have to say is:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/How-would-you-react-to-these-notes/first#post3115955

Dutchares.6084:

Jharkin.9357:

It probably would have been better doing this discussion in it’s own forum, instead of a thread.

Mercenaries

Mercenaries open up when a specific server is extremely outgunned. What mercenaries does is allow guilds from other servers to temporarily join the outmanned server to help balance the odds. Only guilds from servers that are winning their matchup may become mercenaries. Mercenaries get a bonus in wxp and money, however are unable to interact with supply in towers and keeps to avoid griefing.

As a stretch goal, mercenaries is a permanent flag and the guild becomes “serverless” in wvw. Losing servers are able to offer up some method of payment to entice good mercenary groups to help their server.

Like I said before, I don’t think NPC’s are the solutions.
Did you ever see a zerg avoid a supply camp because the NPC orges are in it?
Even a solo player can take a supply camp with the NPC’s in it, it just takes longer.
If you send lots of NPC’s to towers and keeps will only mean maybe a small delay for the zerg (probably not). I don’t think a zerg in a zone with only NPC enemies will every be stopped by the NPC’s

Oh this could work quite well.. it’s just a case of the community on agreeing on it for a server that is outgunned gets this advantage.

Simply, make all the NPC’s legendary, make them heal and revive each other, and use mass CC’s. Throw 10-50 of those in any given tower or keep.. and it won’t be as easy to take as some people think.

Lets face it, it’d probably be a lot more interesting fighting that then a handful of veterans and a champion. Then again, this would also drastically hinder any objectives the dominating server has.

We are now moving to the discussion phase of this initiative

This kind of suggests that you’re happy with how matchups are arranged at the moment. This is quite concerning.

Daddar.5971:

What we have in WvW is a simple product of the law of supply and demand. WvW spots are in short supply, and the new AP rewards have raised the demand. I propose that A-net do what airlines and hotels do: implement a system that adjusts costs to reflect the demand at a given time. A new system might look something like this:

1. At the close of the WvW season, there will be an interim period during which transfers to a lower-population server are free, and all other transfers are half price. This will encourage transfers to lower population servers, alleviating the population imbalance to some degree. At the end of the interim period, the new season will begin, and server transfers will return to the normal price.

2. All queues will be staged from the Edge of the Mists. The Edge of the Mists will have overflows, so there should be no issue entering that map. Players will not be able to queue for a full WvW map from any PvE or PvP zone.

3. A player wishing to enter a map with a queue will need to pay a fee to do so. This fee will scale with the number of players already queued for the map. Maps without a queue will be free to enter, while fees to queue up will vary from 1-10 silver according to the length of the queue. These fees are similar to the WP fees incurred during normal PvE play, and are therefore not an excessive burden. Players on servers with extremely long queues will potentially pay 10 silver per half-hour in WvW, while players on servers with no queue will pay nothing. Please see item 1 above for the solution to any complaints about this.

4. Queue wait times will no longer be random, but will now be on a first in, first out basis. If a player wishes to play with a party, then all players to be included should queue at the same time to ensure that all get in within a short time span. After 10 minutes of inactivity, any player in a map with a queue will automatically be transferred to the Edge of the Mists. WvW maps are intended for active play.

5. Every half hour, the queue length for a player’s current map will be displayed. A dialog will appear, giving players on queued maps the option to pay the queue fee to remain on the map, or exit to the Edge of the Mists. An option in the settings menu will enable players to automatically pay the queue fee to avoid having the dialog appear. Players wishing to move from one queued map to another must do so by moving to the Edge of the Mists, and entering the queue for the new map, if any.

6. Gold rewards, especially for successful defensive actions such as keep or tower defense or dolyak escort will be increased slightly to compensate for the new fees. Players who a deploy a superior siege weapon from their inventory and spend any supply to build it will be exempt from fees for the next half hour period. Again, this will compensate players for the costs incurred on behalf of their server.

A system like this will accomplish several important goals. First, it will provide incentive to players to choose a server that has fewer active WvW players and smaller queues, reducing WvW population imbalances and thus making more servers competitive with each other. Second, it will provide an additional gold sink to counter the gold inflation the game is experiencing. Third, it will reduce frustration and increase player enjoyment because there will be more servers that are evenly matched and thus equally able to compete with each other for season rewards. Fourth, the system will incentivize active play, so that players will no longer enter WvW, taking up a valuable queue spot, only to go AFK for an extended period.

Encouraging players is fine and dandy, the problem is that low population servers do not have the players needed, no matter how many carrots you throw at them.

DeadlySynz.3471:

Simply, make all the NPC’s legendary, make them heal and revive each other, and use mass CC’s. Throw 10-50 of those in any given tower or keep.. and it won’t be as easy to take as some people think.

Lets face it, it’d probably be a lot more interesting fighting that then a handful of veterans and a champion. Then again, this would also drastically hinder any objectives the dominating server has.

Not if the NPCs are only improved based on how much lower a server’s score is than the top server’s. If a server falls below, say, 70% of the top server’s score and at least 1000 points lower (suggesting a significant imbalance in population and/or coverage), start buffing the NPCs to from Veterans to Champions and from a Champion to a Legendary. When the score falls below 60%, add a couple more Champions. When it falls below 50%, turn two of the Champions into Legendaries. Reverse the change for NPCs out of combat as the gap closes, thus a server will lose this advantage once they get within 30% of the top server and can’t use this handicap to take the lead. ]

As an added benefit, if two servers are being dominated by a third server with a higher population and/or better coverage (not all that uncommon), they’ll both get the improved NPCs making them less attractive targets for each other and encouraging them to turn their attacks on the dominant server.

And, no, this isn’t adding more PvE to WvW. It’s making the existing PvE in WvW harder so that servers being severely beaten can concentrate more of their people on attacking the dominant server or spread out to add some PvP to the PvDoor instead of the dominant server rolling over mostly empty camps, towers, and keeps and the losing server or servers having to allocate most of the people they have to holding a few core locations. And even when they do defend, a server with double the points will likely just roll over them, anyway, if they choose to attack in force.

Note that by basing this on score, it eliminates the problem of servers complaining that too many people are on the map or deliberately manipulating their populations, and while a server could deliberately try to maintain the improved NPCs by keeping their own score low, it’s not going to help them win any more than losing the improved NPCs for a while and then getting them back once the score gap reappears would.

One other thing that could help buff NPCs is to allow them to use unmanned siege if there are no players at the location under attack that could man the siege. So if you had 3 ACs in an empty tower, 3 NPCs might man it, but if there were two players in the tower, only 1 NPC would man 1 of the ACs, leaving the other two to be manned by the players, even if they don’t actually man them.

Iluth.6875:

Encouraging players is fine and dandy, the problem is that low population servers do not have the players needed, no matter how many carrots you throw at them.

This would be true, except that players from high population servers might well migrate (for free) to a lower population server in order to play WvW for free rather than 20 silver/hour, plus a wait to get in. This would help correct the population problem…

It almost feels hopeless when your guild of 20 are the only ones on the map and the enemy zerg is 70+ strong. Because of time zones and peoples physical need to sleep and eat real food – this is the nature of the beast and it’s never going to change.

You learned in your early days with SPVP that separation doesn’t pan out. So what can you do?

Increasing the effectiveness of the outnumbered buff would be a good start – some way to even the odds when the deck is stacked against you would be ideal. Maybe new siege weapons – a trap that causes a corrosive contagious disease that spreads from player to play making them weaker and maybe ultimately kill them. Maybe a last man standing buff – when a player has 20+ enemies within an 800 unit radius they detonate.

Something that would make it more fun for both the attacking and defending players. Maybe something to punish players for stacking on top of each other like a nuke. Players are going to go where players are gonna go, devs and incentives won’t change the popular water hole. I trust you can get creative with this idea – I believe in you!

Problem: World Population Imbalance
Solution: Balance the WvW Populations of the worlds (servers)

Ah, but the devil is in the details – how to do it. I favor solutions that preserve player choice about worlds.

Here are the ideas I like, most of which have been mentioned in the thread already.
The Basic Idea: Give players incentives to move to the low population servers.

To ENABLE such movement, Anet would need to:
- Calculate WvW population levels very frequently (ideally, every 15-minute ‘tick’)
- Make the population information available to the players (so they know which servers are high, medium and low population).
- Have the information available over time so guilds and servers can see when their coverage gaps are.
- Allow guilds to move between servers without losing all their influence, bank, unlocks, etc.), so a guild doesn’t need to grind on it’s new server to get set up.

To ENCOURAGE such movement, Anet could:
- Adjust Transfer costs based on population (cheaper or free to move to low pop)
- Dymanically scale (strengthen and weaken) servers based on population
– have guards man siege until players kick them off
– outmanned
– bloodlust
- Dynamically adjust rewards (drops, wxp, etc.) based on population
– Special Achievements (“Outmanned, but not outplayed”)
- Strengthen/scale the “comeback” mechanics (e.g., siegrazer)