Guild Wars 2

IDEA: auto teamups of the two trailing teams

When leading team score > (2nd + 3rd) / modifier then 2nd and 3rd become automatically allied and/or gain bonuses for attacking the leading team.

Perhaps when as a ratio of players gets out of balance, simply reduce the number of available waypoints to the bigger team. Making them have to support from a greater distance.

DevonCarver.5370:

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to provide a little direction here to the discussion. Firstly I want to reiterate Chris’ point in the original post: “2: We will not be disclosing information pertaining to what is currently in development.” I think there are a lot of really intriguing ideas to be found in this thread, but it’s not the purpose of this space for us to discuss what we are or aren’t doing to address the issue. More broadly speaking I wanted to clarify the types of things we take into consideration when we make large changes to WvW. One of the most important aspects of Guild Wars 2 is the spirit of collaboration that we want to foster between players. It’s a core principle behind the event system, the skills in the game, the way we created gathering nodes, etc. Simply put, if a change will cause players to be less inclined to playing with other players, we won’t make it. Changes to WvW that incentivize players to avoid others on the map or that create incentives to have a smaller general population on the map create just that problem. When we look to make changes to WvW we look towards encouraging players to play together, finding ways to empower groups of skilled players to be able to make their mark even against superior numbers, etc. Solutions to the population imbalance would absolutely have to take that into account.

In addition, we don’t release specific numbers in terms of populations, queues, etc. and I can’t comment directly on those statistics. I’d be more curious to know what people think is the reason behind the fact that score is so directly related to the number of people on a server 24/7 and how WvW could be designed differently to address that moving forward. My personal observation is that the momentum you gain from even a small period of having more people online is so large that it can’t be overcome. Which makes me think we need to be doing more to slow that momentum.

Again, this is intended to be a discussion about the design principles, and not a forum for requests for information about current projects or to request specific changes.

Thanks again for the discussion, I hope it continues to progress positively.

If we need to slow the momment as you said wouldnt had been more wise to fix some of the basic imbalances with the system?
For example protection reduces siege dmg taken,and stacks with siege bunker (iron hide….frost aura….)
Siege bunker costs 30 points and siege might costs 70!
Arrow cart dmg used to work fine with repeling attackers and forcing them at least to commit and use supply to take a tower till it got nerfed to a point where we fire 2-3 superior carts at a blob and they laugh at us.
Condition dmg builds end up buffing the enemy instead of hurting them with the cleansing infestation running rampant in the game.
Also every defender got annoyed for a year now with no rewards till the last straw was the latest change on removing the defender only titles.
From terrain to mechanics there is a huge handicap to defenders,not to mention the time loss for nothing.
I know it had been stated before that anet preffers structures to change hands.
Problem is they change hands too fast.
Also defending a structure costs currency time and effort where a blob pulls an entire queue with minimal cost for maximum profit.
All those are design flaws that need to be adressed.

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

IDEA: auto teamups of the two trailing teams

When leading team score > (2nd + 3rd) / modifier then 2nd and 3rd become automatically allied and/or gain bonuses for attacking the leading team.

I like this idea. Too often the 3rd place team drops off and has no effect on the game other than to stop the 2nd place team be competitive to the 1st place team.

well, at moments with the three servers with full queues the ppt usually are about 2xx bwetwen them. Differences only of 50 points or less by tick. One only tick without enemys you can make 200 points of difference without problem, you can reach 300 – 500 poitns of diference with some matchups by tick.

Furthermore, you have all structures resetted and your structures T3 with defenses normally, so its more easy to expand those ticks with more enemies.

A multiplier by 10 when three servers have queues would be a simple way to
to give more importance to those ticks of ~50(would be 500). Actaully the difference of the ticks with full queues are too low compared to the other.

I still think that 24h coverage is the main issue and the solution is to merge american and european servers, so we should have more 24h coverage servers and more fun matchups, at least the golden league servers must have all a 24h coverage.

Changing the score is another idea, I think that PPT can be improved and simply by a daily reset.
Every day in a matchup the server with more PPT gain a point so a server can score max 7 point in week, think if there are 3 competitive servers in a matchup every server score 2 point and on Friday there is the final battle for the decisive point!
Maybe is better to change the matchup duration from a week to 5 day so there are less “dead” days, because with a machtup of a week duration if a server win for 4 day straight there are 3 more day of discouraged people.

Addressing the population and momentum issue, and speaking from a server that has a huge SEA, a lowish to medium NA, and almost non-existent representation any other time:

While outnumbered, there’s almost nothing that server can do to stop an enemy zerg from taking everything. Towers are fortified with people on siege, while the other few people on the map try to run in. The siege barely affects the enemy zerg and the tower is inevitably lost. The power boost to siege in the form of superiors and mastery benefits all servers, but it is extremely overpowered in the hands of the winning zerg. This is not including how currently, omegas allow the winning server to completely roll over everything on the outnumbered server in minutes without repercussion or any chance of retaliation. Also, the outnumbered server is unable to retrieve their territory for some time until population reasserts itself.

This type of domination is of course the result of server imbalance, but the pace at which the outnumbered server loses everything despite having some valiant players on the map is demoralizing. This ultimately comes down to an issue of encouraging defense and allowing the outnumbered server boosts to defending, or reducing the incentive to siege or continually siege the outnumbered server.

Several solutions (which have been mentioned) would work, if implemented together:
1) Incentives to go after structures that have not changed ownership in a while
2) Incentives to go after the server with more presence on the map
3) Incentives to defend (Dev team has said they are working on this and that it is difficult to implement, but hopefully a solution can be found soon as this is probably the most important change that could come to WvW)
4) Free transfers to lower tiered server
5) Ability to keep guild upgrades after transfer
6) Less incentive to PvD – a zerg can take down reinforced door without siege much too quickly even while being sieged
7) Contested swords appear quicker on structures, allowing faster response time, and structures stay contested, especially if enemy numbers are within
8) Contested swords do not appear from npc attacks
9) Remove staggered league rewards until population issue is more balanced
10) Modify or remove the way superior siege and masteries work, or reevaluate the effect that stat creep has on empowering the winning server.

Most of these suggestions would encourage some transfer to lower servers, allow an outnumbered server faster response time, and encourage populated server to hopefully not spawn camp in the search for ppt.

The most drastic change that could be implemented is to do away with ppt and implement a system based on kills, how long a structure is held, how upgraded it is, and perhaps scaled somewhat proportionally to population present.

What was the point of this thread? Because from that reply I understand there is none. There are things already in development that will be implemented and can’t be discussed.

And then " I’d be more curious to know what people think is the reason behind the fact that score is so directly related to the number of people on a server 24/7 and how WvW could be designed differently to address that moving forward."

WOW. You want to know why? Really? I mean you really expect an answer to that? And suggestions on how to address that have been already provided, but will probably be ignored cause things are already in development anyway.

Sorry to say, but with each post devs make I’m more and more amazed at the disconection between players and developers.

“One of the most important aspects of Guild Wars 2 is the spirit of collaboration that we want to foster between players. It’s a core principle behind the event system, the skills in the game, the way we created gathering nodes, etc. Simply put, if a change will cause players to be less inclined to playing with other players, we won’t make it. ..”

I like this : )

I would suggest a change to how PPT is calculated.

Barebones( no upgrades) camps and towers would give reduced karma and exp( discourage cooperative karma trains), and also significantly less PPT. For example, all un-upgraded towers/keeps/camps would just add just 5 PPT. As you upgrade the structure, x PPT is added for each completed upgrade depending on the structure and karma/exp rewards increase exponentially for successful assaults/defenses.

Camp PPT: 5 (upgrades at camps do not add PPT)
Tower PPT:5 + [(# of completed upgrades) x (Multiplier 1 )]
Keep PPT:+5 + [(# of completed upgrades) x (Multiplier 2 )]
Stonemist: +5 + [(# of completed upgrades) x (Multiplier 3 )]

What this means is that if a server has a weak night time presence, they can potentially retain a competitive PPT if they lockdown/defend their fully upgraded holdings in their borderlands, while occasionally resetting the upgrades at their enemies territories.

If I’m understanding your request correctly, Devon, then I think we as a community really need to go back to the basics of how WvW works on a fundamental level if we’re going to actually compensate for population imbalances.

The most obvious solution to me is a timezone-bridging capstone event somewhere on the order occurring every 12 hours that acts as a primary accumulator of points in WvW, and uses the number of controlled nodes as a multiplier for the number of points rewarded such that winning it and denying other servers it is the single most important thing to victory.

As it stands, ticking every 12 minutes for points leaves the mode subject to the most subtle of population fluctuations. Constant 24/7 activity is far too necessary, and the point system would be my first consideration for relieving that.

DevonCarver.5370:

akanibbles.6237:

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

IDEA: auto teamups of the two trailing teams

When leading team score > (2nd + 3rd) / modifier then 2nd and 3rd become automatically allied and/or gain bonuses for attacking the leading team.

I like this idea. Too often the 3rd place team drops off and has no effect on the game other than to stop the 2nd place team be competitive to the 1st place team.

This is an intriguing concept. The original idea behind WvW was that this would happen of its own accord, but I haven’t seen that in practice. I think it could be much more of a part of the game if there were a way to do this. Would it make more sense to provide increased score from this or to increase the individual rewards? I would lean slightly towards the latter. I also wonder if it would work to be really heavy handed about it and actually put the two losing servers on the same team. Of course, that presents numerous problems including score tracking at that juncture. But I would think we can find some sort of system that encourages servers to work together to defeat a bigger server.

Well this is better, I’m glad that I’m wrong its great to know your working and discussing ideas with us. I don’t fully understand how the two teams servers would be thrown together but the increased score for attacking whom ever is in the lead is a good start.

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

IDEA: auto teamups of the two trailing teams

When leading team score > (2nd + 3rd) / modifier then 2nd and 3rd become automatically allied and/or gain bonuses for attacking the leading team.

I really like this idea, however if a team is overpowering the other teams that much, they would also have the ability to keep the score at just the right point so this alliance does not occur.

While this idea would make a big difference, I still believe the main issue is the population imbalance that occurs. With the implementation of the new que system that is coming, there will no longer be a deterrent for people to not join higher tier servers, which will make the problem even worse

DevonCarver.5370:

In addition, we don’t release specific numbers in terms of populations, queues, etc. and I can’t comment directly on those statistics. I’d be more curious to know what people think is the reason behind the fact that score is so directly related to the number of people on a server 24/7 and how WvW could be designed differently to address that moving forward. My personal observation is that the momentum you gain from even a small period of having more people online is so large that it can’t be overcome. Which makes me think we need to be doing more to slow that momentum.

I thought about this for a while now, well before this post. Here are a few ideas i’ve come up with. The last one is my favorite . My biggest problem is how 2D the gamemode is. How simple it is to build siege equipment and take entire structures. This allows large group of players to tackle the objectives fairly easy since they dont require a whole lot of strategy to take (the amount of structures i took because some trebuchet in SM took down its wall 30 mins ago, or it was undefended, or we just built 3-4 flame rams and zerg rushed it is beyond the number of fingers on my hands) The simplicity of it allows for a very fast gameplay and allows
First lets go head and look at current things in the game that are supposed to stop/reduce momentum of zergs.

Siege/Walls- Right now in a lot of the current maps there are walls and structures that can be destroyed from another structure. An example of this is in EB Overlook can destroy a wall of SM, most of the surrounding towers can destroy a wall of SM , and vice versa. This makes it so one person can destroy a wall and can undermine the whole point of walls. Preventing this from happening can cause the original walls to greatly help and stopping the push of zergs.

Now some ones i thought up of-

Destructible Bridges- This being something in the current map in progress could help reduce momentum of zergs, however it wont be very effective. Main reason is that you’d need to make the amount of supplies very high. How much do you think a bridge would slow a zerg down if it only required 100 supplies? Not too much. One way around this is to make it so that the destruction and repair of the bridge is based around NPCs and a event with them. Escorting a demo or engineering team to the bridge for destruction/repair > defending them while they do the work. This could also allow more leveling opportunities for the lower levels.

Destructible Environment/Dynamic Environment- doing certain things in game to allow a rockslide to take out a path or causing a flood, then requiring NPCs to come in to clear the path could really help. Making it so you can’t take out a path through the environment unless your server has less than a certain amount of towers and making it so the other server can’t remove the path blocker unless the enemy server has X amount of towers/structures could help with allowing servers to come back while limiting the zerg push of a server against them.

Making Supply Camps more “out of the way”. A zergs ability to resupply is very easy. Camps are the hardest things to defend against a zerg and zergs will cap a tower, cap the nearby camp, resupply, then continue. Making it perhaps so that a zerg can only pull supplies from a certain cap, but allowing them to destroy supply at other camps could help. You could rework parts of the map to make camps more out of the way instead of allowing zergs to have a straight path of conquership.

Types of supplies- making it so that siege equipment require certain supplies. This supplies can be gained in 2 ways. From camps or from Nodes. There is no way for a team to have all supplies in close proximity to one another in terms of camps. So say in EB the top team supply camps provide metal and wood. To build a ram they also need rope/cloth. To get these supplies there either need to go to a certain part of the map and perform certain actions to gain it, or they need to capture an enemy camp across the map and protect it while the NPCS gather it. When a team captures a camp that isn’t in the proximity of their spawn, that camp will then send out supply caravans that go all the way back to the camps near the spawn where they will drop off the supplies. It takes a long time for it to go and it is impossible to reach the end (thanks to NPC spawns) unless it is protected by a player. You could take it a step further and make it so players can only take a certain supplies at once.

DevonCarver.5370:

ferra.9867:

I still think that 24h coverage is the main issue and the solution is to merge american and european servers, so we should have more 24h coverage servers and more fun matchups, at least the golden league servers must have all a 24h coverage.

While an interesting idea, merging EU and NA servers is a technical impossibility. They have to remain separated.

There are American guilds on my european server, Seafarer’s rest, and European guilds, Italians an Russians ones for example, on American server and you can transfer from Europe to American and viceversa; so I don’t understand where is the issue, but it doesn’t matter. At least consider the idea of districts a la GW1 for PVE and fewer servers because I think wvwvw population is less than the PVE population.

As I’m sure you have expierenced now Devon being on NSP, getting stomped on for 7 days and then repeated over several weeks is not fun, people get discouraged and either transfer up, stop playing, or a very stubborn and brave few just ride it out and do what they can. I won’t post the video again because its been posted several times in this thread and I’m sure you have seen it. It addresses more than just the population issue which isn’t relevant to the topic but there does seem to be some really good ideas in there that may kill several birds with one stone (ok its more like a machine gun but hey whatever works) are any of those suggestions possible or something your team would be willing to play with ?

You already have a system in place for killing mobs in PVE even in WvW, which rewards bonus XP for killing someone/something that hasnt been killed for a set period of time, what about giving a bonus amount of points for capping something that hasnt been capped for a while.

ferra.9867:

There are American guilds on my european server, Seafarer’s rest, and European guilds, Italians an Russians ones for example, on American server and you can transfer from Europe to American and viceversa; so I don’t understand where is the issue, but it doesn’t matter. At least consider the idea of districts a la GW1 for PVE and fewer servers because I think wvwvw population is less than the PVE population.

People can play on different servers yes.
But that does not mean that the server can directly interact with each other.
It is for example not possible to guest between NA and EU-servers for one.

Ideas for Improvement:

1. When the first place server reaches a certain threshold in point lead, then any tower or keep they hold is worth extra points once taken. This gives the 2nd and 3rd place servers a natural incentive to team up. There is a certain time limit on how long the point buff lasts once taken, but lets say for the first hour after a 1st place tower is taken, its worth %50 more points to the server that has taken it.

So, lets say, once the first place server has 40% more points than second place server, their towers and keeps become worth 50% more points. This would mean its better for 1st place to defend rather than go around flipping towers, because any tower they flip can be flipped right back for extra points. Essentially, first place servers with a large lead will feed the other servers points if they cap more keeps/towers than they can defend.

2. The scoring method encourages coverage wars. That’s hard to change. What could change is comeback methods via new scoring methods.

If you get nightcapped, you can have the score run up on you to a point where no matter your efforts during the rest of the time, you won’t be able to come back.

I’ve suggested this before, but breaking up the week long match-up into sections, and awarding a win point for winning the total score for that sections, and then adding up the win points over the week to choose a victor would greatly lessen the power of nightcapping.

The idea is that each day is broken up into three 8 hour sections, creating 21 win points in a week. Those win points are then fought for by all three servers, with a total week point tally as a tie-breaker. This can be done by offering say 3 points for first, 2 for second, and 1 for third. Thus, losing heavily at night won’t end your hopes. You can fight hard during the other two sections of the day to even out your losses at night. However, having night coverage still matters since its still a win point and contributes towards winning the tie-breaker.

The idea is the same as a playoff series or American sports league. Losing by 30 points in the first game doesn’t mean you have to win by 30 extra points in your next game. You just have to even out the loss with a win.

I don’t think that adding PvE and LS content to WvW will get more players playing together, PvE players come to WvW to get those achievements and when done leave, while there they aggravate WvW players, don’t defend, don’t listen to commanders, don’t play as WvW players do, they ruin the game for other players, hence you Anet are ruining the game for WvW players by trying to merge WvW and PvE, and in the end will end up losing a lot of WvW players imho.

DevonCarver.5370:

I’d be more curious to know what people think is the reason behind the fact that score is so directly related to the number of people on a server 24/7 and how WvW could be designed differently to address that moving forward. My personal observation is that the momentum you gain from even a small period of having more people online is so large that it can’t be overcome. Which makes me think we need to be doing more to slow that momentum.

Everything is related to upgrade.

The winning side is winning because they are better or have more number (mostly the later one). They win the majority of the fights in open field. If you try to attack one of their upgraded towers they will just come with a huge zerg and destroy your attack.

That they win most of the fights I’m fine with it and I don’t care much. If they are better or have more numbers in a battle they should win it.

The problem is that because they win mostly every fights they can easily upgrade their stuff while the two losing servers will struggle a lot. And with upgrade come the real problem.

When you see the winning server with T3 towers and T3 keeps all full on supply and a huge zerg running around that will wipe you if you try to take one objective, do you still want to attack them?

Even while there are empty paper towers from the other losing team that have no siege up to counter your ram, no player to defend them and give the same personal reward as the fully upgraded tower from the winning team?

Most players don’t and I agree with them. Why take 2 hours to get 1 tower, wiping several times, filling the bags of the winning server with awesome loots while you can cap 50 camps and towers in that same time by attacking the other losing server…

That’s the reason behind my suggestion. Give a bonus to the losing servers based on score difference with the score of the winning server

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

This is making it harder to attack the losing servers for the winning server giving them a chance to defend and upgrade
Second it’s making it easier for the losing servers to attack the winning server (with the bonus to siege damage).

The losing servers will still lose every open field battle but they will have a chance to play smart and keep up in score.

The problem is points per tick. That’s why you get run away games and total blow outs. If a server can’t field people in a certain time slot what ever server can gets a chance to gain a large amount of points unmolested.

that’s why I and others have a suggested a points per capture system. If you have a time slot where you are uncontested you will still capture everything and gather points it just won’t allow you to let those objectives just keep gaining you an even bigger lead.

also add points for dolyak and guard kills, points for player kills and bonus points for a stomp (set values not points for everyone involved) and you will give a team in an outmanned time slot at least a fighting chance. The small team well not able to flip a map may be able to concentrate its forces in one keep getting points for taking it and then getting points from kills well defending it. Havoc teams would also become a contributing factor with there hit in run on large groups for kills and yak slapping and guard killing.

will this fix population imbalance? No and I don’t think you can really do that. What it does do is give servers with a lower off hours presence a chance to stay in the game and not log into a 100k defacet that makes them disheartened and choose not to fight.

DevonCarver.5370:

akanibbles.6237:

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

IDEA: auto teamups of the two trailing teams

When leading team score > (2nd + 3rd) / modifier then 2nd and 3rd become automatically allied and/or gain bonuses for attacking the leading team.

I like this idea. Too often the 3rd place team drops off and has no effect on the game other than to stop the 2nd place team be competitive to the 1st place team.

This is an intriguing concept. The original idea behind WvW was that this would happen of its own accord, but I haven’t seen that in practice. I think it could be much more of a part of the game if there were a way to do this. Would it make more sense to provide increased score from this or to increase the individual rewards? I would lean slightly towards the latter. I also wonder if it would work to be really heavy handed about it and actually put the two losing servers on the same team. Of course, that presents numerous problems including score tracking at that juncture. But I would think we can find some sort of system that encourages servers to work together to defeat a bigger server.

The problem with this is that in the more competitive matches, breaking the other servers’ morale is the point of the game. Fights are generally long drawn out and causes a lot of fatigue for everyone, until one side decided that enough is enough and gave up.

The game mechanics does not allow for one side to be defeated until the match ends, so winning and losing depends on morale management of each server’s leadership. That’s what’s holding the game mode together in T1 IMO.

Therefore, if you are going to introduce mechanics that minimize the morale management aspect of the game, I hope you’d also consider implementing a defeat mechanic together at the same time.

I will take my server match up to explain why it’s an issue, although I think it was already pointed out in this thread.

AMvsGHvsUW

At reset we were very close to AM. But they still have more players than GH even in prime time and that meant fight on UW decided won the reset. It was AM by a very small margin. But night came and the gap widden and widden.

Next few days even if we fought at prime time in home border and AM border and EB and downgraded everything, UW border put them on top.

Every evening we have to fight to downgrade their stuff on all borders and usually manage to do that, while they have to get our paper properties cause we had no chance to upgrade during the night and day cause we don’t have people to defend.

They tick 500, 600+ at night. Which we can’t overcome in the 2-3 hours of prime-time.

If we talk about PPT the real solution to this is population balance. Anything else will not solve it. If we talk about player enjoyment during those times then there are more solutions that can be discussed (oh, I forgot, that can’t be discussed cause there are already solutions in development).

Me, as a non prime time player I get no enjoyment if the enemies get less PPT for buildings while steam rolls us, or if they get less wxp and karma. I actually find it unfair for them to get less rewards (PPT they can get less), because it’s not their fault that we don’t have the man power at those hours.

Defence in GW2 is a joke. Against zergs is a bad joke. Helping me defend versus zergs will make me happy even if my server still loses in score. At least I know I can defend that T3 tower, or delay the attacker for a long of time and not get steamrolled in 1 minute.

But increasing defence posibilities also gives power to the servers that dominate, cause now at prime time they have an easier time defending their T3 structures. So this doesn’t solve PPT issues, solves fun issues for people playing in off peak.

The coverage is important cause the PPT is the same no matter the time of day, the people attacking or defending. It’s like playing basketball where a team can field players for 4 quarters while the other can only for 1 or 2. It’s obvious who will win, but it seems it wasn’t obvious for ANET when this system was designed and EU and NA got separated.

DevonCarver.5370:

I think there is something to the idea of PPT being higher during certain times of day, but it has sort of the opposite problem. That’s the balance we haven’t yet struck, in my opinion.

If you want to go this route it’s very simple. You changed the score at each tally based on the time passed by each server in WvW during the last 15 minutes (1 tally duration)

Between each tally you could do the following :

scoreA = the score server A made between that time
scoreB = the score server B made between that time
scoreC = the score server C made between that time

timeA = sum of the minutes passed in WvW for all players on server A
timeB = sum of the minutes passed in WvW for all players on server B
timeC = sum of the minutes passed in WvW for all players on server C
timeTotal = timeA + timeB + timeC

finalScoreA = scoreA * timeTotal / timeA
finalScoreB = scoreB * timeTotal / timeB
finalScoreC = scoreC * timeTotal / timeC

If you do it like that everything should be totally fair but I don’t think the score follow the population at all.

I really believe that sometimes just having 25% more population in general can make a server having 2 times the score of the other server for example.

Population imbalances are a fundamental issue with the open-world system, both for WvW and PvE, that destroys any form of fair competition or well designed difficulty.

For this reason I’m a bit confused on what we are meant to be discussing here. Trying to solve population imbalances, which is an issue with the very foundation of WvW, is impossible without major changes like reworking the map population system, only letting equal numbers play, or server merges where all maps will be filled to the brim at all times of the day.

Of course nothing like that’s going to happen, so what are we meant to discuss? How to apply stitches to a wound which cannot be sealed?

I have an idea that’s been swirling around in my head for a few days now. A lot of people might not like it, but it would DRASTICALLY balance both coverage and population.

Many ideas so far has been punishing those who don’t play during their server prime time. This has angered me a lot, playing from OCE time. I don’t want to be punished for not having a dedicated server in my region.

Instead of reducing PPT during offpeak hours or whatever, my idea is this:

Close WvW on the bottom 6 servers in both the EU and NA region. Encourage transfers from NA to EU and vice versa from those servers into higher tier servers.

My reasoning is this: Many people play WvW for large scale PvP fights. I don’t want that to go away. The only issue is the lack of coverage a lot of servers have. We have too many servers and not enough players. To combat this, why not reduce the number of servers that have WvW? There’s no excuse about the PvE side of things since you can still guest for free, and it greatly increases WvW population on Silver tier servers and up, increasing competition in both EU and WvW while hopefully reducing queue times by encouraging movements across continents (in servers).

It’s not a fully fleshed out idea. Criticisms are welcome.

World population is highly irrelevant to WvWvW. Nearly everyone knows WvWvW population is different from World population. A large part of world population have either gone totally inactive or only play intermittent on the rare occasions. Population coverage of prime times at different time zones also has enormous impact on servers which also lessen the relevance of world population in regard to WvWvW participation.

Logged on population in WvWvW over the various coverage prime time timezones of a server should be the most important criteria.

Me and my friend came up with an interesting idea to add class bonuses for various levels. Each class would give 3 different levels of bonuses or traits to players on their team that would, individually, be small, but would also have diminishing returns. There would be a “Group Trait,” a “Map Boons,” and a “Mist Bonus.”

The group trait would give each class some wait to benefit the people around them like mesmers could make groups appear larger from a distance. Map Boons would be akin to bloodlust and would effect things like Claimer invulnerability duration or Reinforced walls bonus health. Mist Bonuses would be small attribute increases to all players for a team.

With the Mist and Map Bonuses, the traits would be a small percentage per player playing a class (possibly 0.1% or less), but after a certain number of people (25 for map, 75 (or 100) for mist) it would make less of an impact, thus pushing a more even class makeup.

It would seem to be beneficial to give Theives, Rangers, and Engies stronger buffs than some of the “Core WvW” classes. But I won’t speculate on that.

My friend expanding on the group trait for the non-cores: I think it would be a neat idea make their group trait really useful. Like thieves destroy supply if they stomp someone, engineers naturally regen their squads group, and rangers add a range bonus to their squad.

DevonCarver.5370:

What I hope to get out of this is a sense of why people think that the population causes the scoring issues, because that is something we can find a solution to.

I personally think its the other way around. Scoring causes population issues. When a server has a very well performing ‘reset night’ and they get that ‘score momentum’ you are talking about, they tend to carry that through the rest of the week with them. There are very few comebacks. It creates a pshychological defeatist effect on the two other servers. They are already losing so whats the point this week? Might as well hope we get an easier matchup next week! Now that less players are logging in, the losing compounds itself even more until even the members of the hardcore WvW guilds cant be assed to log in anymore.

This is how I felt when Desolation was underperforming over the last few months. I felt like any effort I put in was null and void because we were so far behind for it to even matter. Now that Desolation is doing well in the leagues im putting alot more hours into WvW and even doing some commanding. Its fun to win, its crap to lose.

The fix for this in my opinion is rewards. There is simply not enough personal incentive in WvW to keep players in it even if they are having a rough time. The rewards should be greater than the negative effect of having a low score.

IDEA: Make WvW the single greatest place to earn karma in the game. Add a vendor inside SM when held (and the Citadel of the home Borders) that sells Obsidian Shards and “Mists Lockboxes” that drop identically to Orrian Boxes + a chance at blueprints and low chance of superior blueprints.

Let us correct the population/coverage problems with a few tools:
1. Show us how many allies we have on the map. A lot of 30 v. 60 fights are on equally queued maps and are more a problem of organization rather than population. Give people the tools to tell the difference.
2. Publish each server’s average queue times per hour for EB, home BL and an average of the enemy BLs.
3. Show transfer information on the queue popup and in the new overflow map.
4. Base transfer costs on wvw ranking and find an option for guilds to transfer or be able to buy massive amounts of influence cheaply on lower ranked servers. WvW’ers are used to being ganked when we trickle in, we’re stronger as teams.

Help give underpopulated servers a fighting chance:
1. Consider respawn timers if one server has more people on the map than the other two, with length based on how imbalanced it is. When a smaller group can wipe a larger group, they still have to face a constant flood of respawns coming back.
2. Have outmanned halt siege decay, so the few on the map can concentrate on the enemy rather than on tagging siege.
3. Add more organizational tools like alliance chat between guilds/maps. Make it easier to call for help.
4. In the face of a complete blowout (xx number of points ahead by one server) allow temporary alliances between the two losing servers (on maybe a 4-hour timer). Let them share the points for things they cap and have those things go back to neutral when the alliance has decayed. Allow team chat between the two servers during this time. They might not catch the stronger server in points, but should be able to put up a better fight together which is better for everyone.

Do NOT punish us for wanting to wvw:
1. Please no gating. Don’t make people sit in an artificial queue because one of the other servers can only field five or 10 people. It’s not the larger server’s fault.
2. Please no guesting between same-colored servers. There is a lot of rivalry between servers and there would be griefing.

An easy solution would be to give less points during nights so that the other servers can easily catch up and dont get demoralized next day if they play better.
Personally i play on desolation which has a great night team that gave us the extra edge we needed to win match ups, i wont lie about it.

Vex.3021:

An easy solution would be to give less points during nights so that the other servers can easily catch up and dont get demoralized next day if they play better.
Personally i play on desolation which has a great night team that gave us the extra edge we needed to win match ups, i wont lie about it.

So punish people that don’t play during your prime-time?
I don’t really think that is a good solution.

Night for you is not night for the whole world.

DevonCarver.5370:

Hey everyone,

-snip-

I agree with that stance. You can’t add mechanic that discourage people playing together, that’s what MMOs are all about after all.

I think that most of the fundamental WvW problems (the steamrolling, the scoring and the persistence of zerging) are all tied to one big issue. The small maps.

Now there’s probably not much to do it, but with maps being as small as they are, the larger, more dominant force doesn’t have the disadvantage that normally comes with a lot of territory. In fact it’s easy enough for a single zerg to defend and entire Borderland as speed and size is in their favor.

I have no doubt in my mind that a lot of the WvW issues would be mitigated by having significantly larger maps. But the GW2 engine seems to be really limited in that regard, for some reason.

But there are things that can be done to help address current issues.

1. Less hand-holding for zergs – Make it more feasible for a smaller defending force to pressure an attacking zerg by reducing the speed at which you can revive and limiting resurrections to out of combat. At least that way you can build up a little momentum on the defending side instead of watching all your efforts be nullified by all the easy rezzing.

2. Make walls less of a death trap – Yeah, standing on walls is a sure way to die, especially when the zerg is significantly larger than your own. This is completely counter-intuitive as it makes defending more dangerous than attacking.

Finding a way to limit range when shooting up, and increasing range when shooting down, would really help, as well as fixing some of the line-of sight issues when shooting down.

3. Limit “trash” damage against doors to melee weapons only – There’s no reason to enable a 80 man zerg to kick down a door within 30 seconds. People run with zergs because everything becomes increasingly faster and easier. Siege weapons, and siege weapons only should be the way to break open doors. The reason I think melees would be ok is to give Burning Oil a more important role. Also, sometimes you do need a little trash damage. But it should be a high risk/reward scenario.

4. The score system, while objective, doesn’t facilitate close and exciting matches. Instead it’s all about coverage aka. having enough people online at every hour.

Rarely does the system result in close matches, very often it results in blowouts.

In my opinion the flaws are:
-Kills and winning fights aren’t important enough (not even with Bloodlust).
-Holding keeps during night hours is too rewarding and important for the relative effort.
-Coverage is too important.
-Personal rewards do not align with what is best for your realm. This is a big problem as I see it. A player should, ideally, not be forced to chose between “winning” and between “personal rewards”. But in GW2 they do just that. Personal rewards are maximized buy running Karmatrains…aka. massive capping zergs that have little interest in defending or even maintaining whatever they conquer while the “points per tick” system is all about holding whatever you own until the next “tick”.

You need to redesign the WvW reward-structure so that “winning” and “personal rewards” are maximized performing the same thing. What is best for your realm, should be best for you as well.

What that means in practice is more difficult to deduce.

Given the issue is logged on population and inherent big blob imbalances, Anet should reward free transfers to servers that excelled at small group achievements. For instance the current over all make up of bloodlust and ruins claiming still favour the big logged on population and big blob. This will not address the ‘world population’ issue in WvWvW.

Therefore I think Anet should make achievement for small group in WvWvW and when any server that does well in small group achievement Anet should award that server with free transfer. Specific small group achievement should be differentiated from big blob and world population as a whole. Such differentiation can be favouring small group by game mechanics.

Edit: Favouring small group mechanics does not mean any stat handicap for big logged on pop/blob. For instance actual real life physical body blocking amongst individual as players/characters would stop blobbing. blobbing is possible now because of game mechanics allows friendlies to go through each other and occupy the same space.

DevonCarver.5370:

Madam Pomfrey.4162:

You want to know why? Really? I mean you really expect an answer to that? And suggestions on how to address that have been already provided, but will probably be ignored cause things are already in development anyway.

The way that we try and find answers to the types of problems raised in this thread are by trying to get to the heart of the issue. Saying things like “populations aren’t balanced” doesn’t lead to any productive solutions because they all involve things like drastically redistributing the populations of the game. Finding the core reasons for that like “score momentum is overpowering” allow us to attack the actual problem. What I hope to get out of this is a sense of why people think that the population causes the scoring issues, because that is something we can find a solution to. As part of that it’s important for us to more clearly explain why we’ve made some of the decisions we have made so that we talk about the reasoning behind those and how they’ve been in practice.

These threads are intended to be a discussion about the design of various aspects of the game and how the team and the players view them. Our decision making in terms of what actions we take and what we are already doing have to take a wide range of things into account including available resources. So it was never my intent to imply that we would jump to do the things mentioned in this thread because some aren’t feasible, some require resources we don’t have, and some might already be in progress.

I think there is a major disconnect being expressed here. When you talk about solutions to population imbalances being scoring based it does not take into account the player experience while in WvW. I, personally, don’t really care what the score is at the end of the week. I care about having fun while I am there. It is not in any way fun to fight another server that continually outnumbers you. No one likes getting their face pushed in due only to a numbers difference.

Yeah, you can address scoring issues and that would help. But you have a basic game design that rewards zerging so much more than any other type of game play. There need to be mechanics involved in your design that allow a smaller force a fighting chance. And I am speaking of individual engagements, not just some esoteric scoreboard. We don’t need a scoreboard to tell us who just won an engagement and who just got sent to spawn and running away.

If i’m not actually helping the realm by being an oceanic – whats the point of logging into wvw? Champ grind at least is rewarding. Changing the game based on timezones is a bad plan.

Handicapping system………

Given both populations are present at same time:
ex)
If server A has 100% pop cap on map 1 they get 100% score tick.
If server B has 75% pop cap on map 1 they get 125% score tick
If server C has 25% pop cap on map 1 they get 175% score tick

Use tiers to which percentage of population get which percentage of tick.

I know they are concerned about players getting hostile with each other over join a map, but realistically this happens regardless. A great example of it is happening now with the hardcore wvw players vs the achievement seekers.

DevonCarver.5370:

[….]
I’d be more curious to know what people think is the reason behind the fact that score is so directly related to the number of people on a server 24/7 and how WvW could be designed differently to address that moving forward..[…]

The real question is.. Why do people play during the night or recruit people who can?

This is easy to answer. What I and most people have noticed is that having a night time crew is the most effecient way to get points. Basically, being strong during the night is better and will net you A LOT more points than during primetime (depends on the opponent as well of course).

Here is the thing. If a server is GOOD during primetime, they have superior tactics and are stronger. The coverage is often the same as the other servers. Yet, the point margin is always relatively small so the actual points they gain compared to the opponents isn’t that great. They might get 1-2k points ahead in 6 hours.

In the night, if the enemy uses a night crew, they can easily get 75% of all the points for around 6 hours. They accumulate a lot more points than the strong primetime server in this span of time. Heck, 10k+ points can be made profit with a good night crew.

If other servers are bad during the night, it’s easy for people to see the oppertunity! People play at night or recruit guilds from diffferent timezones because they KNOW its the time when other servers are sleeping. Heck, they might even skip primetime to play during the night. It is the most important time of the day for gaining points!!

This is why so many servers started to take the matchups less serious before the seasons. Everyone knew that points accumulated during the night were not based on any form of skill or in-game tactic. This is why coverage won matchups. The points gained outside primetime were easy to accumulate. The server that was actually stronger when the numbers were even, would often not even win the matchup.

I can take my server Gandara and Desolation as example. Deso, won the first season matchup and we ended second with not even a huge difference. But during the night, they always took a lot of points. Without their night presence, the matchup would have been extremely balanced and fun.

Heinel.6548:

DevonCarver.5370:

akanibbles.6237:

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

IDEA: auto teamups of the two trailing teams

When leading team score > (2nd + 3rd) / modifier then 2nd and 3rd become automatically allied and/or gain bonuses for attacking the leading team.

I like this idea. Too often the 3rd place team drops off and has no effect on the game other than to stop the 2nd place team be competitive to the 1st place team.

This is an intriguing concept. The original idea behind WvW was that this would happen of its own accord, but I haven’t seen that in practice. I think it could be much more of a part of the game if there were a way to do this. Would it make more sense to provide increased score from this or to increase the individual rewards? I would lean slightly towards the latter. I also wonder if it would work to be really heavy handed about it and actually put the two losing servers on the same team. Of course, that presents numerous problems including score tracking at that juncture. But I would think we can find some sort of system that encourages servers to work together to defeat a bigger server.

The problem with this is that in the more competitive matches, breaking the other servers’ morale is the point of the game. Fights are generally long drawn out and causes a lot of fatigue for everyone, until one side decided that enough is enough and gave up.

The game mechanics does not allow for one side to be defeated until the match ends, so winning and losing depends on morale management of each server’s leadership. That’s what’s holding the game mode together in T1 IMO.

Therefore, if you are going to introduce mechanics that minimize the morale management aspect of the game, I hope you’d also consider implementing a defeat mechanic together at the same time.

While this is true for T1 thats where it ends, there is a difference between breaking morale when matches are close, it is completely different from a server being outmanned 24/7. When fighting back becomes hopeless because for every one person you can field they field 5 its no longer a case of morale being destroyed by defeat, its a case of morale being destroyed by game mechanics.

DevonCarver.5370:

akanibbles.6237:

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

IDEA: auto teamups of the two trailing teams

When leading team score > (2nd + 3rd) / modifier then 2nd and 3rd become automatically allied and/or gain bonuses for attacking the leading team.

I like this idea. Too often the 3rd place team drops off and has no effect on the game other than to stop the 2nd place team be competitive to the 1st place team.

This is an intriguing concept. The original idea behind WvW was that this would happen of its own accord, but I haven’t seen that in practice. I think it could be much more of a part of the game if there were a way to do this. Would it make more sense to provide increased score from this or to increase the individual rewards? I would lean slightly towards the latter. I also wonder if it would work to be really heavy handed about it and actually put the two losing servers on the same team. Of course, that presents numerous problems including score tracking at that juncture. But I would think we can find some sort of system that encourages servers to work together to defeat a bigger server.

Temporary alliances, handled like an event, with ppt split on things captured together would give a better fight for all three servers. Things can go neutral when the alliance time is over.

DevonCarver.5370:

[…]and how WvW could be designed differently to address that moving forward. My personal observation is that the momentum you gain from even a small period of having more people online is so large that it can’t be overcome. Which makes me think we need to be doing more to slow that momentum.
[….]

I partially agree with you here Devon. It is important to realise that coverage is HEAVILY tied to this. If server X plays during the night and captures everything, they might have a lot of their structures upgraded. So once server Y logs in, they might eventually get even numbers, but they still have to capture everything back. And when structures are fully upgraded, this can be a challenging and lenghty process. In the meantime, they lose a lot of points. This is true. And it happens during any time of the day.

And there are servers that are strong at almost every time of the day. Take Vizunah Square for example. If they golem rush your borderlands at 5am, they won’t give you a window of oppertunity during the morning of afternoon. Simply because they always have coverage and scouts. Taking objectives back will be hard and Vizu will just keep defending their nightly efforts (which didn’t require any effort sadly).

But… most servers are NOT equally strong at all times. Say server X takes everything during the night. server Y might login in the morning and notice that server X is mostly sleeping. This is NOT weird because once they have captured everything during the night, they will often log out soon after. What else is there to do? Upgrade or escort dolyaks with 100 man at 5am? Nah! So what happens is that server Y takes everything back without much effort. Still, the loss of points during the night has been felt.

So, to slow the process of having more people online to gain the advantage. I first would look at what kind of servers actually have the possibility to do this. And then we are looking at servers with great coverage throughout the entire day. Which brings us back to the problem at hand.

ricekrispys.5304:

I would suggest a change to how PPT is calculated.

Barebones( no upgrades) camps and towers would give reduced karma and exp( discourage cooperative karma trains), and also significantly less PPT. For example, all un-upgraded towers/keeps/camps would just add just 5 PPT. As you upgrade the structure, x PPT is added for each completed upgrade depending on the structure and karma/exp rewards increase exponentially for successful assaults/defenses.

Camp PPT: 5 (upgrades at camps do not add PPT)
Tower PPT:5 + [(# of completed upgrades) x (Multiplier 1 )]
Keep PPT:+5 + [(# of completed upgrades) x (Multiplier 2 )]
Stonemist: +5 + [(# of completed upgrades) x (Multiplier 3 )]

What this means is that if a server has a weak night time presence, they can potentially retain a competitive PPT if they lockdown/defend their fully upgraded holdings in their borderlands, while occasionally resetting the upgrades at their enemies territories.

I like this idea. I also have a similar suggestion. Like with stomps, if you could gain some automatic points for a capture of structures and the amount of points is increased based on the level of upgrade of the structure. This might create an incentive for the two servers to go after first place structures which will typically be more upgraded. But I like your idea too as it might have a similar effect, though it may simply benefit the first place server more and produce extra discouragement on players of the losing server.

DevonCarver.5370:

ViRiD.2784:

The most obvious solution to me is a timezone-bridging capstone event somewhere on the order occurring every 12 hours that acts as a primary accumulator of points in WvW, and uses the number of controlled nodes as a multiplier for the number of points rewarded such that winning it and denying other servers it is the single most important thing to victory.

As it stands, ticking every 12 minutes for points leaves the mode subject to the most subtle of population fluctuations. Constant 24/7 activity is far too necessary, and the point system would be my first consideration for relieving that.

That’s certainly a different direction. My concern here would be that we put too much emphasis on a very specific time of day. It might be the case that we should try and put more emphasis on specific portions of the day, but the more focused it is, the more you encourage everyone to show up at exactly the same time, which makes the queue worse and just lessens the experience for everyone. I think there is something to the idea of PPT being higher during certain times of day, but it has sort of the opposite problem. That’s the balance we haven’t yet struck, in my opinion.

Not everyone plays in prime time. Some people in NA are Oceanic and some (like me) are just insomniacs. Don’t punish off-hour people by making what they do worth less.

Don’t punish prime-time people. Not all of us are WvW heroes. There are a lot of pugs/militia/minions/greenies out there. If points are worth more in prime time, they will be asked to leave.

Servers can recruit for off-hours people and guilds. Consider easing the passage by lowering transfer costs/allowing guild transfers to lower ranked servers. Consider doubling or tripling the wxp for defense events in off-hours to encourage off-hour people to seek more than pvdoor.

It is a 24/7 war and a lot of times there is constant action from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. That’s a good thing.

While I don’t have a brilliant solution to put on the table (I’d not want to steal your jobs, after all), I’d like us to outline a way to turn hard-earned objectives more rewarding than those left to dust: We already have an upscaling system for events, so it would be awesome if a tower guarded by 50 men turned out to be more profitable than a tower I pvdoor’ed alone at 5 a.m.

This line of thought would have a direct impact in prime time fighting, since that’s when populations tend to be higher, without necessarily writing in stone that at x hour of the day a match is decided. I love the concept of 24/7 battles, but holding a point – or cap it – when your enemy has a lot of people in the map should grant better rewards.

It would also imply in lower population servers having a better chance against servers with a bigger time coverage, since it would need a small amount of points hold to generate a decent amount of PPT.

TL;DR: PPT should be relative to the amount of people enemy servers have in the map or involved in specific events. This way low populated servers can hold their PPT while covering a smaller territory, bigger servers won’t be rewarded for pvdoor, and holding a point during primetime would be more rewarding than doing it in the middle of the night.

Jaytee.9513:

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.

Many of the suggestions may mitigate problems caused by population imbalances but don’t address WHY imbalances occurred to begin. Look at what happened before the start of Leagues…..people speculated which server would get an easy win/easy reward and began stacking.

We need to create a disincentive to stack servers which is my reasoning behind a population ratio co-efficient controlling PPT and rewards.

When a stacked server plays against a weaker ones its too easy to “farm” WXP and Loot as well as maintain PPT…. make players realize they can’t have it easy and reap rewards at the same time. Taking objectives while an opponent is heavily outmanned should not provide the same rewards and PPT while taking objectives while undermanned should give way greater gains.

Population ratio is not map based but an average wvw population count at time objective was taken/defended, so manipulation of ratios would be hard to do.

Are you punishing stronger servers? No because the fact is the more players a server has the easier it is to obtain objectives………

More effort more reward….. easy wins equal little reward. When players realize this they may transfer to lower populated worlds and help spread out population base.