Guild Wars 2

Just wanted to jump in and say that I have loved the alliance suggestions. I wanted to lay out how I could see it working (sorry if something similar has been said).

It seems that most matchups are determined by the end of the weekend, so my thought was on Monday if the T1 score is greater that T2+T3 then teams 2 and 3 are forced to make an alliance. The other server will now appear green instead of red so there is no option but to fight with them. I think that you combine their scores at this point and they become a new color indicating the alliance. Obviously this doesn’t fit in with the ranking system, but all you do is when the alliance is formed freeze the ranking system and however each server was going to gain or fall in rankings doesn’t change the rest of the week. To encourage people to continue playing you can win a reward chest at the end of the week that either T1 or the alliance of T2 and T3 can win. You would be eligible for the chest if you get 25-50wvw kill during the alliance period.

Something along those lines, I know its probably not a perfect idea, but I think it would make the weekday more fun for blowout matches. I think I saw Devon posted earlier he was surprised this didn’t happen more naturally to begin with and I think it seems to be and unwritten rule that you don’t form alliances. Any time that I have seen people do this or try to do this people become very angry. It really doesn’t make sense because it makes for betting fights. I know the one time (a while back) this happened to Ehmry Bay. I think we were beating Anvil Rock and Borlis Pass by a large margin and they agreed to an alliance. It was awesome an week. Instead of being bored and steam rolling we had interesting and difficult fights. Being constantly double teamed in eternal made for some really epic keep defenses.

TL;DR: Some sort of alliance system would really help with population imbalances and make matches a lot more fun.

Edit: many other great posts in here about adjusting PPT too, I’m just not sure whats best.

Going further, and reading some other posts. Each team could have a natural advantage in it’s own borderlands or section of its keep. For example, free or instant upgrades. For example, let’s say red takes up one morning and discovers that green has taken Overlook.

When green takes overlook the keep is paper. When red takes it back it gets a free upgrade (reinforced walls).

This would help red slingshot back into the game.

Another idea is that the more you own the more expensive upgrades become. They require more supply (not $$/karma). Or maybe Dolyaks carry less supply the further you are from your base (kind of like straining supply routes.)

The best suggestion I’ve seen here is to award less points for upgraded or long held structures. I know people in my guild have been advocating that for months and I still believe it would help a lot.

Although I still see benefits of just getting rid of score, if score is kept then there are limits to what should be done, but there are options.

If a score is higher because of greater population, whether time factored or not, that’s the way it should be. No server should be punished because they bring more players to the fight.

Conversely, if population imbalance occurs because one team has gained a scoring advantage and thus players stop entering the fight, that can probably be addressed. I can think of couple possibilities, but I bet there are a lot more and better ones.

• There could be sub scores, like a daily score so that a server which was losing the overall score could still work to take the day.
• There could be greater individual rewards given to players who are on a server losing by a significant amount to encourage them to play. For example: darn were losing, well at least I can get bonus wxp and karma for playing.
• There could be some form of momentum changer. Unfortunately I can’t think of any good ones, and need to be careful with this because getting momentum should be a desirable thing. I suppose this is where it be better to limit momentum.

The only thing I think of right away to limit momentum that doesn’t like it would kill fun, would be having more fixed property on a map, so that it couldn’t be completely wiped.

Still probably better to allow a comeback, but not a good idea to have it be based at all on getting rewarded for have done poorly earlier. For example, the team who wins the last day or two of a match could get a huge bonus to their score.

Caliban.3176:

The best suggestion I’ve seen here is to award less points for upgraded or long held structures. I know people in my guild have been advocating that for months and I still believe it would help a lot.

My problem here is it significantly decreases the incentive to defend when there’s barely any to begin with. You wind up with matches where you never see an enemy player because there’s no real incentive to stop you from taking their stuff.

Caliban.3176:

The best suggestion I’ve seen here is to award less points for upgraded or long held structures. I know people in my guild have been advocating that for months and I still believe it would help a lot.

So you’re advocating playing absolutely no defense, inviting the enemy to come take your keep or tower, simply so you can flip it back right away to get back to scoring ‘the good points’?

Yamirashi.6430:

Caliban.3176:

The best suggestion I’ve seen here is to award less points for upgraded or long held structures. I know people in my guild have been advocating that for months and I still believe it would help a lot.

My problem here is it significantly decreases the incentive to defend when there’s barely any to begin with. You wind up with matches where you never see an enemy player because there’s no real incentive to stop you from taking their stuff.

The incentive is still the same even though it is still very small. You get a small amount of points for an easy to defend objective (even though you likely won’t defend) but on top of that keeping a structure is a way of denying your enemies to get points. This is already the case right now and won’t change if you decrease the rewards those structures give.

This way it’ll hurt way less (though the pain is still there) if you get nightcapped and wake up to everything T3 with waypoints.

While this might be hard to implement, what about adding a queue option as “emergency response.” Where players from other worlds on your continent can be moved to your world when you become outnumbered?
Give a small bonus in WxP, XP, Karma, and coin (5-15%) to those coming to help to give them a reason other than just their main server has long queues; maybe have this for only defensive events, but even if they’re attacking it helps as it’d make the other servers send people to defend. With the restrictions that, you cannot respond to outmanned servers that your world is currently fighting and that siege placement is either restricted to being appropriate placements (ie rams within range of enemy gates, arrow carts on ally walls) or their siege does not count towards the maps limit to prevent griefing.
Responders can only be present while the server would otherwise be outmanned. With some room allowed so they’re not immediately kicked out, making them joining pointless. So server has to be outmanned for X minutes before responders can show up, and are given a timer for being kicked out once the world have +5 people above the outmanned status for X minutes.

Shonie.5297:

Caliban.3176:

The best suggestion I’ve seen here is to award less points for upgraded or long held structures. I know people in my guild have been advocating that for months and I still believe it would help a lot.

So you’re advocating playing absolutely no defense, inviting the enemy to come take your keep or tower, simply so you can flip it back right away to get back to scoring ‘the good points’?

No that would be a horrible strategy because you’d have to give the other team ‘the good points’ first. (never a good idea to help the enemy team) And even when you take it back your keep/tower is more vulnerable to be taken again.

I’m advocating that playing it safe shouldn’t be the most rewarding way to play. Hiding in a T3 keep and avoiding confrontations shouldn’t net you the most points.

Changing PPT alone wouldn’t work.
Lowering PPT for objectives when you heavy outnumber all enemies in the zone
It will overpopulated server having a harder time getting points in off hours
But wouldn’t make people decide to transfer to lower populated servers. Since they still can karma train and PvDoor.

But if you determine personal rewards players get for taking objectives and killing by calculating population difference and people actually get a lot less reward if they take objectives when there isn’t anyone in the zone who could have defended it. There will be a lot of players who will transfer to a lower populated server.

So:
PPT: At each tick calculate all enemies in a zone.. both enemies have queues it means you will get 100% normal point tick.. And % will decrease the less enemies are in the zone

Reward: If server Y takes something or kill someone from server X ,the difference of people in the zone between X and Y are calculated. If both are equal you get the normal reward you get now. If X > Y , Y will get more then 100% reward. If X < Y, Y will get less then 100% reward. The bigger the difference the bigger the % reward will get.

So with other words you get best reward when taking objectives from the server who has most players in the zone. If you play during a time when your server will be outnumbering the other servers in all the zones, you will get bad rewarded. And its better to move to another server.

Caliban.3176:

I’m advocating that playing it safe shouldn’t be the most rewarding way to play. Hiding in a T3 keep and avoiding confrontations shouldn’t net you the most points.

Why not?

“spirit of collaboration that we want to foster between players” –Collaboration is based on necessity and preference. I have people that prefer independence over integration but for those that do become part of a team the tools are not in the game to expand the collaboration. I have 4 different voip programs installed to facilitate collaboration within my server community. The guild structure is there but in order to facilitate communication across guilds I have to join other guilds and my members have to join even more guilds so that we can find active WvW participants and organize. And of course membership and participation are dynamic so the 20 person guild you worked to establish contact and coordination with can be gone in a day.
“we don’t release specific numbers in terms of populations, queues, etc.” – My request was for ranges and proportions not specifics.
“discussion about the design principles”- The title was Collaborative Development: World population. Title it design principles of GW2population distribution and it may have sent the conversation in a different direction.
“why people think that the population causes the scoring issues”- The story about a ball team that plays a 9 inning game and only fields their team for 7 innings is the most accurate depiction of why coverage determines scoring issues. Coverage is based on population. Coverage gaps are the most acute example of population imbalance. WvW population is not equal to World population.
“design of various aspects of the game and how the team and the players view them” You have seen plenty of our viewpoints on population what is the teams viewpoint on population?
“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.” This point takes me back to the very first one – What tools have been put in the game to facilitate cross server(opponent to opponent) coordination? Yes 2nd and 3rd place have a shared opponent in 1st but that doesn’t make them allies. Even if the servers choose to ally based on leaders’ communication the individual players can invalidate that agreement. It won’t happen consistently in a controlled manner unless you as developers facilitate it.
In closing I saw the post about morale having a significant impact on participation. I concur and believe this is a huge factor. Leader moral, general player moral, guild organizations, alliances, server communities as a whole all are enduring fatigue and frustration while trying to make the time spent in game worthwhile without the tools needed to improve or overcome the acute effects of coverage gaps and WvW population imbalances.

Caliban.3176:

Shonie.5297:

Caliban.3176:

The best suggestion I’ve seen here is to award less points for upgraded or long held structures. I know people in my guild have been advocating that for months and I still believe it would help a lot.

So you’re advocating playing absolutely no defense, inviting the enemy to come take your keep or tower, simply so you can flip it back right away to get back to scoring ‘the good points’?

No that would be a horrible strategy because you’d have to give the other team ‘the good points’ first. (never a good idea to help the enemy team) And even when you take it back your keep/tower is more vulnerable to be taken again.

I’m advocating that playing it safe shouldn’t be the most rewarding way to play. Hiding in a T3 keep and avoiding confrontations shouldn’t net you the most points.

Of course it should.
Either way, rewarding less points for holding structures does nothing to alleviate the population imbalance between servers, which is supposed to be the topic of this discussion.
ANet is reaching out and giving us an opportunity to discuss the population imbalance issue, not an open forum to discuss everything we’d like changed in WvW.
I’m not a moderator or anything, but it seems like people take any opportunity to put their 2 cents in, regardless of whether or not it pertains to the issue even being discussed.

On topic:
Separate WvW from PvE servers.
Create new worldwide WvW servers. No more NA and EU.
People would still have their PvE servers, but also belong to a WvW server.
So I would still be SBI for PvE, but I would also belong to a separate WvW server.
Create just enough servers that most worlds will be heavily populated at most hours. Adjust accordingly.
Won’t be perfectly balanced, but there will be far more parity than there is now, since it is impossible to perfectly balance WvW population. The best we can do is replicate what T1 NA is like for everyone. And that means not having like 5 or 6 out of 51 servers having decent coverage.

As I see it, the reason for score runaway is straightforward: Losing in WvW is not fun.

It’s not fun to die repeatedly because your side is outnumbered.

It’s not fun to repeatedly stage doomed defenses of structures.

It’s not fun to build siege in structures, upgrade them, and secure supply to them when the enemy server can easily wipe it all out again.

It’s not fun to try to take the offense against the winning server when their entire force can quickly use waypoint to intercept you.

I love WvW. I play it more than any other mode of GW2 and more than every other videogame that I play.

Defense in WvW is not rewarding. Structure Defense events reward much less WXP, Karma, and money than their corresponding Structure Capture events.

Defense in WvW is expensive and time consuming. Rebuilding a waypoint costs a a fair bit of coin, time, and a whole lot of supply. Building siege costs a fair bit of time and supply. Tagging siege costs a fair bit of time.

It is hard for the underdog server in a matchup to hold even one keep for any length of time. Holding on to a keep in those circumstances requires that somebody is present in it 24 hours per day, tagging siege every single hour and monitoring all approaches to it. In exchange for that large amount of work, they’ll get essentially 0 reward.

azurerogue.9240:

Caliban.3176:

I’m advocating that playing it safe shouldn’t be the most rewarding way to play. Hiding in a T3 keep and avoiding confrontations shouldn’t net you the most points.

Why not?

Taking stuff in off hours when you can outnumber the other servers, upgrade everything. And sit during prime time and even numbers inside the T3 keeps behind tons of arrow carts is the easy mode way to win.

In PVE, live and most other things the hard things get rewarded the most. Not the easiest things. Why should playing easy mode in WvW be rewarded more then hard mode?

imo – wvw should be 2 worlds -

1 what it is now without a score – making it a play as you like pvp environment – this can also double as a practicing area for the competitive version…..it’s more social and has more of the roleplay aspect.

2 – an spvp map with a cap for balance and an spvp locker. – minimal pve elements.

to favor one over the other is not good as each one is completely different and has it’s own audience – the pve version opens doors for innovative player created matches – the competitive one is simply that – a balanced fight with no pve elements.

Dutchares.6084:

So:
PPT: At each tick calculate all enemies in a zone.. both enemies have queues it means you will get 100% normal point tick.. And % will decrease the less enemies are in the zone

Reward: If server Y takes something or kill someone from server X ,the difference of people in the zone between X and Y are calculated. If both are equal you get the normal reward you get now. If X > Y , Y will get more then 100% reward. If X < Y, Y will get less then 100% reward. The bigger the difference the bigger the % reward will get.

So with other words you get best reward when taking objectives from the server who has most players in the zone. If you play during a time when your server will be outnumbering the other servers in all the zones, you will get bad rewarded. And its better to move to another server.

New meta… everyone zones to Lion’s Arch with 30 seconds left before tick.
Zone back in a minute later.

Shonie.5297:

Caliban.3176:

Shonie.5297:

Caliban.3176:

The best suggestion I’ve seen here is to award less points for upgraded or long held structures. I know people in my guild have been advocating that for months and I still believe it would help a lot.

So you’re advocating playing absolutely no defense, inviting the enemy to come take your keep or tower, simply so you can flip it back right away to get back to scoring ‘the good points’?

No that would be a horrible strategy because you’d have to give the other team ‘the good points’ first. (never a good idea to help the enemy team) And even when you take it back your keep/tower is more vulnerable to be taken again.

I’m advocating that playing it safe shouldn’t be the most rewarding way to play. Hiding in a T3 keep and avoiding confrontations shouldn’t net you the most points.

Of course it should.
Either way, rewarding less points for holding structures does nothing to alleviate the population imbalance between servers, which is supposed to be the topic of this discussion.
ANet is reaching out and giving us an opportunity to discuss the population imbalance issue, not an open forum to discuss everything we’d like changed in WvW.
I’m not a moderator or anything, but it seems like people take any opportunity to put their 2 cents in, regardless of whether or not it pertains to the issue even being discussed.

On topic:
Separate WvW from PvE servers.
Create new worldwide WvW servers. No more NA and EU.
People would still have their PvE servers, but also belong to a WvW server.
So I would still be SBI for PvE, but I would also belong to a separate WvW server.
Create just enough servers that most worlds will be heavily populated at most hours. Adjust accordingly.
Won’t be perfectly balanced, but there will be far more parity than there is now, since it is impossible to perfectly balance WvW population. The best we can do is replicate what T1 NA is like for everyone. And that means not having like 5 or 6 out of 51 servers having decent coverage.

No it shouldn’t. High Risk, High Reward is pretty self balancing, Low Risk, High Reward obviously is not.

Also this is on topic. Because changes like this would indeed alleviate the effect of the population imbalance. So even if the imbalance is still there, it wouldn’t matter as much.

Also WvW is already pretty separated from WvW. Basically everyone has to choose a WvW server and that is set in stone unless you transfer but for PvE you can guest.

Devon has said that merging NA and EU is impossible.

WilliamDaBloody.2591:

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.

It is not technical impossible. That this one is out of question regarding the involved work for your current architecture is a different thing, but it is technical doable.

It might be technically impossible if they are leasing server space from one company in NA (Amazon?) and a different one in EU. ANet very well might not own their own servers since MANY companies now lease space from giants.

Shonie.5297:

Dutchares.6084:

So:
PPT: At each tick calculate all enemies in a zone.. both enemies have queues it means you will get 100% normal point tick.. And % will decrease the less enemies are in the zone

Reward: If server Y takes something or kill someone from server X ,the difference of people in the zone between X and Y are calculated. If both are equal you get the normal reward you get now. If X > Y , Y will get more then 100% reward. If X < Y, Y will get less then 100% reward. The bigger the difference the bigger the % reward will get.

So with other words you get best reward when taking objectives from the server who has most players in the zone. If you play during a time when your server will be outnumbering the other servers in all the zones, you will get bad rewarded. And its better to move to another server.

New meta… everyone zones to Lion’s Arch with 30 seconds left before tick.
Zone back in a minute later.

Probably not going to happen but that is indeed why I think that linking scores to the actual population is not a very good idea. That and the fact people might become even less welcoming of newcomers or noobs, because their mere presence will drag the scores down in those case, even when there is not a q.

What’s the point of this discussion again? The fix (EU / NA server merge) is impossible according to Anet. Everything else is window dressing around the giant Elephant in the room. Oh btw, who is manning the midnight to 6pm shifts in the NA T1 servers. No Euro or Oceanic based guilds I’m sure.

Shonie.5297:

Dutchares.6084:

So:
PPT: At each tick calculate all enemies in a zone.. both enemies have queues it means you will get 100% normal point tick.. And % will decrease the less enemies are in the zone

Reward: If server Y takes something or kill someone from server X ,the difference of people in the zone between X and Y are calculated. If both are equal you get the normal reward you get now. If X > Y , Y will get more then 100% reward. If X < Y, Y will get less then 100% reward. The bigger the difference the bigger the % reward will get.

So with other words you get best reward when taking objectives from the server who has most players in the zone. If you play during a time when your server will be outnumbering the other servers in all the zones, you will get bad rewarded. And its better to move to another server.

New meta… everyone zones to Lion’s Arch with 30 seconds left before tick.
Zone back in a minute later.

Good luck organizing that especially when there are queues every 15 minutes.
And its all enemies together so you also have to convince server B to do the same so server C get a lesser % PPT for objectives they own.
Also if you do that often server C will know this and use it to get another one of your objectives.

But if you still worried this will be abused you can always take a random time within the 15 minutes to calculate all enemies in the zone .. or since every time an objective is taken the people of at least 2 servers are counted already(to determine reward %).. So if within last 15 minutes objectives are taken you can use those numbers

Caliban.3176:

Shonie.5297:

Dutchares.6084:

So:
PPT: At each tick calculate all enemies in a zone.. both enemies have queues it means you will get 100% normal point tick.. And % will decrease the less enemies are in the zone

Reward: If server Y takes something or kill someone from server X ,the difference of people in the zone between X and Y are calculated. If both are equal you get the normal reward you get now. If X > Y , Y will get more then 100% reward. If X < Y, Y will get less then 100% reward. The bigger the difference the bigger the % reward will get.

So with other words you get best reward when taking objectives from the server who has most players in the zone. If you play during a time when your server will be outnumbering the other servers in all the zones, you will get bad rewarded. And its better to move to another server.

New meta… everyone zones to Lion’s Arch with 30 seconds left before tick.
Zone back in a minute later.

Probably not going to happen but that is indeed why I think that linking scores to the actual population is not a very good idea. That and the fact people might become even less welcoming of newcomers or noobs, because their mere presence will drag the scores down in those case, even when there is not a q.

So what makes someone a noob? Someone who doesn’t follow the zerg ?
Or someone who follow the zerg and have learned to only spam 1 because of lag, and probably not even have dodge key binded?

And what is a newcomer?
So if a guild who is known to be able to wipe a zone wide blob with 30 people joins your server , they will hate that?

Mine personal experience is the more higher up tier you go at the moment, how more noob the players are. The guild I am in wiping large zergs easier when they are higher tier. Lag of high tiers battles and not able to use any skills or organized skills and outnumbering the enemy most of the time, does that to people
We ourselves are usually also rusty after fighting servers that most of the time only run away of us or got wiped easily. After such a week is mostly a couple of fights against a good guild before we start playing at our best again. Cant imagine what would do that to people if they have to play without much of a challenge or with only 1 skill most of the time.

Also the most reward you will get when numbers are about equal. Since if you get objectives while being outnumbers give you more for each objective you take. It is harder to survive because the enemy has more players. When equal you still get descent rewards but you will win fights too.

So yeah when you have already more or equal numbers and more join it would be bad for the players already playing. But I don’t think players will join a server when they know reward will suck. They rather would join under populated servers.
And on the servers that already are very overpopulated it would be a good motivation for players to leave that server. So spreading out and fixing the problem even more

I believe that all these posts suggesting score adjustments based upon population differences totally miss the point … which is that it is not fun to play when you are significantly outnumbered. In my opinion, the ONLY way to fix WvW is to come up with some way to roughly balance populations in a match. Otherwise we will get the situation where, in an extreme example, an undermanned server can keep the score close by mostly capturing camps or killing yaks. That’s not a full spectrum of the WvW experience.

I suppose that the suggestion to automatically form an alliance between B and C if A has a dominant population presence might help, but that’s pretty much just a way to balance a 2-way battle …. it no longer is the 3-way conflict originally intended. In my opinion, a better method would be to keep the 3-way format and implement a forced mercenary system like Rift did with their warfronts … although I’ll admit not everyone would like that.

In any case, score balance does NOT equate to game play balance. If instanced matches with equal player caps for each faction (notice I didn’t say server) are the only way to achieve game play balance, I say do it.

The biggest problem of coverage imbalance is the fun it takes away from the one on the losing end.
the way WvW works is that if you keep a tower/keep for some time iwthotu it being contested it becomes insanely hard to take where the person in the weak spot gets stuff that is insanely easy to take down.

What keeps the more casual players out of WvW is that they login to a fully sieged up enemy T3 keep with a wp and full supply which they wont be able to take so they log off, increasing the population imbalance even more.

If there would be changes to this aspect there would be a lot less complaining about this subject as the player can just login and have fun instead of being crippled by not having players when he is away.
This would for example mean reducing the effectiveness of wall/gate upgrades and arrow carts.

Scoring is just a way to see who has most players, the effects on fun by coverage are bigger than players going mad over score because of this. (and yest here is 0 way to determine the skill of a server with score, its all population/coverage)

Caliban.3176:

Shonie.5297:

Caliban.3176:

Shonie.5297:

Caliban.3176:

The best suggestion I’ve seen here is to award less points for upgraded or long held structures. I know people in my guild have been advocating that for months and I still believe it would help a lot.

So you’re advocating playing absolutely no defense, inviting the enemy to come take your keep or tower, simply so you can flip it back right away to get back to scoring ‘the good points’?

No that would be a horrible strategy because you’d have to give the other team ‘the good points’ first. (never a good idea to help the enemy team) And even when you take it back your keep/tower is more vulnerable to be taken again.

I’m advocating that playing it safe shouldn’t be the most rewarding way to play. Hiding in a T3 keep and avoiding confrontations shouldn’t net you the most points.

Of course it should.
Either way, rewarding less points for holding structures does nothing to alleviate the population imbalance between servers, which is supposed to be the topic of this discussion.
ANet is reaching out and giving us an opportunity to discuss the population imbalance issue, not an open forum to discuss everything we’d like changed in WvW.
I’m not a moderator or anything, but it seems like people take any opportunity to put their 2 cents in, regardless of whether or not it pertains to the issue even being discussed.

On topic:
Separate WvW from PvE servers.
Create new worldwide WvW servers. No more NA and EU.
People would still have their PvE servers, but also belong to a WvW server.
So I would still be SBI for PvE, but I would also belong to a separate WvW server.
Create just enough servers that most worlds will be heavily populated at most hours. Adjust accordingly.
Won’t be perfectly balanced, but there will be far more parity than there is now, since it is impossible to perfectly balance WvW population. The best we can do is replicate what T1 NA is like for everyone. And that means not having like 5 or 6 out of 51 servers having decent coverage.

No it shouldn’t. High Risk, High Reward is pretty self balancing, Low Risk, High Reward obviously is not.

Also this is on topic. Because changes like this would indeed alleviate the effect of the population imbalance. So even if the imbalance is still there, it wouldn’t matter as much.

Also WvW is already pretty separated from WvW. Basically everyone has to choose a WvW server and that is set in stone unless you transfer but for PvE you can guest.

Devon has said that merging NA and EU is impossible.

I’m not talking about merging the two.
Clearly people can go back and forth since transferring between the two is possible.
Just get rid of the NA and EU WvW split… and make one set of worldwide servers for WvW.

The solution: Dragons.
Put some kittening dragons in the borderlands. I’m talking Skyrim style, swoop-down-from-out-of-the-blue-and-put-the-fear-of-god-into-you godkitten dragons. Make them hard as kitten to kill and make them kitten AoE anti-zerg motherkitteners.
Have them spawn when the enemy is queued on your borderland and you aren’t. Have them give great PvE rewards to the players that kill them and give warscore to the home team of the borderlands. Hell, maybe they “defend” a keep at the expense of knocking down an outer wall section. Make them a force of chaos and make them exciting, but most of all have them be the thing that wipes the karma train so your whole map doesn’t get flipped by a blob that can only press “1”.

There are only 2 ways to combat population imbalance and 2 ways alone. Neither is going to be implemented as one is to much work the other too costly.

1 Completely rewrite the server architecture to make the US and EU servers be able to communicate properly. Making WvW true 24/7 battle. Devon says impossible, but of course this is not true. It is just unwanted due to the amount of work involved and most likely no one is skilled enough for the task.

2 Remove the AOE cap to give small groups the ability to wipe zergs. Too costly due to processing power involved.

Every other solution involved will just be shuffling the problem around. Or to paint a more clear picture. It will be akin to putting a band-aid on a severely broken leg and say cured.

Dutchares.6084:

Caliban.3176:

Shonie.5297:

Dutchares.6084:

So:
PPT: At each tick calculate all enemies in a zone.. both enemies have queues it means you will get 100% normal point tick.. And % will decrease the less enemies are in the zone

Reward: If server Y takes something or kill someone from server X ,the difference of people in the zone between X and Y are calculated. If both are equal you get the normal reward you get now. If X > Y , Y will get more then 100% reward. If X < Y, Y will get less then 100% reward. The bigger the difference the bigger the % reward will get.

So with other words you get best reward when taking objectives from the server who has most players in the zone. If you play during a time when your server will be outnumbering the other servers in all the zones, you will get bad rewarded. And its better to move to another server.

New meta… everyone zones to Lion’s Arch with 30 seconds left before tick.
Zone back in a minute later.

Probably not going to happen but that is indeed why I think that linking scores to the actual population is not a very good idea. That and the fact people might become even less welcoming of newcomers or noobs, because their mere presence will drag the scores down in those case, even when there is not a q.

So what makes someone a noob? Someone who doesn’t follow the zerg ?
Or someone who follow the zerg and have learned to only spam 1 because of lag, and probably not even have dodge key binded?

And what is a newcomer?
So if a guild who is known to be able to wipe a zone wide blob with 30 people joins your server , they will hate that?

Mine personal experience is the more higher up tier you go at the moment, how more noob the players are. The guild I am in wiping large zergs easier when they are higher tier. Lag of high tiers battles and not able to use any skills or organized skills and outnumbering the enemy most of the time, does that to people
We ourselves are usually also rusty after fighting servers that most of the time only run away of us or got wiped easily. After such a week is mostly a couple of fights against a good guild before we start playing at our best again. Cant imagine what would do that to people if they have to play without much of a challenge or with only 1 skill most of the time.

I did not mean to qualify anyone as a newcomer or noob, I was merely saying that linking points to the players that are in the borderland might lead to vitriol and bullying because, let’s admit it, there are mean people on the interwebz.

So I red here that outnumbered buff and the new borderland bloodlust have nothing to do with server population.. Here’s the reason why I think that’s wrong and how to adress that.

The bloodlust buff is a mechanic that highly favors the server with higher player numbers. Fixing it would therefor reduce the advantage an overpopulated server has. Fixes like that won’t solve the problem completely but reduce it’s effects ingame.

If you have a larger zerg it’s easier to send out ppl to get the buff and defend it. Since there is a decay in capped camps (they go neutral after a while) a group of up to 5 players has a hard time to cap 3 ruins and defend them. For starters that decay needs to be removed what will reduce the number of players you need to get the buff. Because it’s much easier for the larger zerg to send some ppl out than for the smaller once. Secondly the stat buff is just wrong here because it helps the larger zergs massively. My idea would be the following:

- Remove stat bonus from bloodlust buff
- Add the stat bonus to outnumbered buff
- Remove magic find/experience bonus from ounumbered buff
- Add magic find/experience bonus to bloodlust buff
- Award (one time) 10 points for a server when getting a bloodlust buff
- Award 5 points for a server that interrupts an enemy team from getting bloodlust (while the timer is running)

In my opinion this should help smaller servers (a little) while also keeping bloodlust attractive. Getting it is even a little risky because the other server can interfere and get 5 points what adds a lot of gameplay options. (Bloodlust still gives points for stomping).
As I said not a fix for the problem but yet another way to lower it’s effects (multiple others have been stated before..).

In my opinion balancing server population should be a long term goal (transfer stop to overpopulated WvW servers, free or cheaper to weaker servers) but the advantage the server gets through overpopulation must be addressed as soon as possible. Things like leagues and borderland bloodlust just made this advantage even more significant what’s definitely the wrong way to go.

Ps.: Please merge borderland JPs into one and add it to obsidian sanctum what should have a separate queue. This might be a minor thing but having queues and a smaller zerg because there are 10+ people doing jumping puzzles is frustrating…

Shonie.5297:

DevonCarver.5370:

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.

But drastically redistributing the populations of the game is exactly what needs to happen…
That is the solution. If you’re not willing to do that, there really isn’t much discussion to be had.
Find a way to balance out the populations.

This ^^. The point of this thread needs to be discussing ALL possible options for how to address population issues. Not all can be implemented of course, but they should be discussed and analyzed.

I just feel that there is a huge disconnect between what Chris and Devon said. If what Devon said is true, we might as well close this thread, because there isn’t a lot of value to be gained. If what Chris said is true “1: This initiative is all about discussion.”, then I see a lot of value.

Again, this thread is around “World Population”. If we can’t discuss “World Population”, why are we all wasting time here?

If we’re keeping the scoring system as it currently stands, then “population imbalance” and “landslides” are a function of having certain coverage gaps. In other words, during prime NA time, three servers might actually be very closely matched, but one of the servers pulls ahead every single time because they also have enough numbers to overwhelm outside of prime NA time.

So then there are a couple of options:
- try to weight the scoring system such that certain times are more meaningful than others. Leads to people playing at off-hours feeling like their contribution is worthless.

- separate the timezones as fairly as possible to allow scores to more accurately reflect the competition in that timezone.

Let’s run with the second scenario:

Three 8 hour blocks. (Block A) 8pm-4am EST, (Block B) 4am-12pm EST, (Block C) 12pm-8pm EST.

Fifteen minutes before the end of a given block, the active zones close to new players and the zones for the next block are spun up (similar to how it works with patches). At the end of the block, all remaining players in the zone are kicked to LA and a snapshot of the overall scores, as well as the ownership and upgrade status of each objective is taken and stored. The zones for the new block are spun up using the snapshot of that block from the day before.

Scores are reported by block throughout the week. People would see their win/loss in the context of the block they play in rather than feeling they were snowed under by a more populated server.

Ideally – if it’s even possible – the server matchups would be done block-by-block rather than having all three blocks with the same server matchup, but I could see why that wouldn’t be possible.

Local superiority becomes all that matters, global imbalance is less concern. If three servers can fill a queue for 8 solid hours, they they are evenly matched regardless of what happens in the other two blocks. Moreover, since there is a defined endpoint, I think you’d see pretty spectacular fighting right up to the block change-over, and then everyone would be able to log off happy, knowing that their efforts will not be undone until the start of their timezone (which I’d bet the more dedicated players would be there to see – it would be like they never stopped fighting).

This scheme also doesn’t marginalize any particular playtime as the first option above would.

I know that the snapshot would be possible. I suspect it wouldn’t be that hard to run a script to automatically flag and upgrade objectives to match the snapshot. The server tech I describe is already used in the game elsewhere. I fully admit I don’t know anything about the backend here, but it all seems plausible from the outside looking in.

Honestly, I don’t think that the 24/7 is ever truly going to promote player satisfaction. Every other RvR-like system I can think of suffered from the problem of population imbalance and the players always always complained about it. GW2 is currently no different from what has gone before on that score – but honestly I think it could be. I think separating out various timezones (fairly and with equality) is virtually the only way this particular game-type can be universally satisfying.

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.

Devon,

The reason is that when one server has a population advantage of even 20 people those 20 people can form a zerg and quickly capture towers & keeps that are undefended. The ease to which an offensive zerg can be formed compared with what it takes to assemble a defense is what creates the scoring imbalance.

Case in point look at this week’s match in the bronze league between Darkhaven, Gate of Madness, and Ferguson’s Crossing (http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/map/1093). That match was one of the closest ever until the new patch hit and all of GoM’s PvE players vanished from WvW. If you look at the second graph you can see GoM has not been able to get it’s PPT above 250 for some time now (http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/43). The reason for this is not that GoM suddenly started sucking, but because we cannot match the numbers of the other servers. The other servers have enough people to push us on multiple fronts and our defenders are too few to stop them. A fully upgraded keep means nothing when a 30 man zerg pulls up with 5 Alphas and only a handful of people are defending.

In terms of how WvW could be designed differently I already made suggestions in this thread, but the gist of my opinion is that capturing objectives needs to be made harder and defending an objective needs to be more feasible for small groups. (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Collaborative-Development-World-Population/page/5#post3111942)

Also, I agree with you that momentum is part of what affects scoring bursts, but I think that is only an after effect of the core problem. Given that most WvW players play for short periods it’s easy to swing momentum as new groups of players sign on. The actual problem is that when one server out populates another repeatedly the disadvantaged server starts to feel disenfranchised to the point where every battle feels lost before it begins.

Regards.

DevonCarver.5370:

…
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.
…

Firstly, I think we’re all glad that you acknowledge there is a definite population imbalance.

Secondly, you have a personal observation. Without any data you’re willing to share to actually back this up, the personal observations of the WvW community are equally valid. My observation is that there is a moderate positive correlation with numbers (actively participating) and point per tick. This leads me onto the next point.

You’re not willing to share data regarding queues and populations. What’s the philosophy behind this? Isn’t this sort of information exactly what’s needed to have an intelligent / meaningful discussion though? Why don’t we have any transparency here?

Whatever solution you put in place to address the population balance. How is this going to be measured going forwards? Are we just going to have a temporary fix and be at this point X months down the road?

Are you just trying to fix the perception of the population imbalance, or the population imbalance itself? (If the former, I would strongly recommend a ‘Somebody Elses Problem Field’. It worked in Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy).

Regarding not releasing raw figures about queues and WvW populations.

Could we not have a ‘normalised’ view of server populations per WvW map averaged over score tick period length (ideally through the API). A percentage of the population cap and not an absolute figure. That way, this data can be taken and compared with PPT and you would not expose the actual numbers. We can then have a sensible discussion and see for ourselves what impact population has. One side of the argument is going to be in for a surprise.

If you’re not going to even consider the above, then my contribution to this discussions is “Quaggans. Lots more Quaggans. Infinite Quaggans.” Because otherwise, this thread isn’t a serious dialogue.

Devon – There are separate problems associated with servers at the moment. I didn’t get to read every post in this thread, but here’s what I see the problems as:

1) Incentive. WvW population differs greatly because different players have different priorities. Stacked Tier 1 servers have a majority of the players whose priority is WvW. Their incentive is to be the top of their region, have good fights, get their WvW ranks, etc. PvE players, unfortunately, don’t care that their servers are 1st of 20th, or have WvW ranks, or fight other players. Their focus is doing Living Story, Dungeons, JPs, etc. For them, there is no real incentive to WvW, except to do their Season 1 metas. Due to this, the players who are coming into WvW on the lower tiered servers are not as experienced, thus leading to lopsided battles. Anet can’t force players to change their mindsets. Even if you offered higher incentives to lower tiered servers (i.e. +300% Precursor drops), all this does is encourage players to switch servers for such bonuses. Which leads to the next problem.

2) Transfers. Another problem with WvW is that people are allowed to transfer between servers so often. It doesn’t matter that there’s a Gem fee for doing so, or a week cooldown. The fact that people can switch sides often creates instability. Of course, drawbacks exist to server stacking. One of the main negatives is queue time. Higher tiered servers have the longest queues, so it’s sort of a self-imposed punishment to stacking.

3) Point System. The next problem is the way points are scored. WvW is a 24 hour battle between worlds, so of course there won’t ever be a balance between one server with a heavy NA population, and one with a more balanced NA/EU/SEA population. When you have points given on a timer as it is now, the servers with the most coverage will always win. OK, fair enough. But you take one world (Server A) with the best players and coverage for 10 hours of the day, but are weak for the remaining 14 hours, that is what creates such large point discrepancies. As long as the score is based on Points Per Tick, the servers with the best coverage in their time zones can earn points for doing nothing, thus creating artificial point gaps.

Suggestions:

1) There isn’t much Anet can do to create incentives for WvW while staying fair and balanced. Sure the psychological makeup of the player can be altered by way of carrots. Offer stuff like Precursors, and you instantly have lower tiered servers’ population skyrocket. But this would be unfair to the servers with the WvW-centric players. “Why does Server X get the good bonuses when my server is already 1st place?”. Unfortunately, I can’t think of any suggestions to resolve this issue. Anet needs to be fair across the board, or else you just have more server hopping.

2) Transferring servers should be changed slightly to discourage server stacking, although it might be too late for this. Season 1 has a great idea, where your “Home Server” is the one you began with once the season started. Off-season should have something similar. When you change servers, you’re with your previous WvW world for X weeks before you can WvW with your new server. In essence, you’re technically “guesting” to the new server for X weeks before you officially join. The wait period forces players to consider long term goals of their choice to move, and also prevents instant server stacking for quick weekly wins.

3) Get rid of PPT. As others have brought up, score the points based on actually doing something. Points for objective captures. Points for defending (as in active defending). Points for killing opponents. Points for JP chest even. Just don’t give points for a server owning everything, and just waiting around for the competition to show up. This creates the best balanced situation, as points then become more skill based. If Server B decides to run away from a fight, and hide in a tower they own, they don’t get any points. But if the other server attacks said tower, then Server B players can defend for points with the current 3 minute event timer. Successful defense earns X points per player. Heck, give points for repairing damaged Gates/Walls too. This type of change would encourage people to actually fight each other. To add to this, reduce repair costs or even get rid of armor damage altogether in WvW. People run because they either don’t want to be killed, or don’t like to pay for repairs.

The easiest way in my mind to balance everything is to combine servers into “battle groups” (sorry Blizzard for stealing the term and idea). Each battle group consists of one server from the top 6, one from the bottom 6 and 2 from the bottom 12. You then make EB larger and increase the population by whatever percentage you deem reasonable (IE 300% bigger with more keeps and towers, map population has now been tripped) and some “neutral borderlands” that are like mini EBs each the size of a regular BL. To keep things fair and to make sure the gold servers don’t overcrowd the maps you set caps for each of the servers in the group (IE 30% of the population per map is allotted to each server, once that is full the other 10% is up for grabs). If the gold portion becomes queued and bronze population is half of what the cap is, its cap is shrunken a little bit and gold gets the slots. To encourage an equal population on each server, 1/2 the price of transfer between servers in the same battle group to equalize the population a little bit. Since they are all linked together, you now have no reason for guilds to hop from a bronze server to a gold server, it encourages the growth of player skill as they are now able to fight along side gold players and learn from them, it will reduce queues due to the encouraged population balanceand it will get rid of the skill lag. How will it get rid of skill lag you ask? Now that you have gone from 24 worlds to 12 you now have 4 matchups with 5 or 6 maps each, reducing the server’s needed per map (with 5 maps each matchup you are looking at 20 maps and with 6 maps you are looking at 24 maps vs 32 with 8 ) decreasing the amount of sharing overall. Because EB has jumped up in size, stick it on its own server for each matchup. I haven’t noticed any skill lag on battlegrounds, so those work fine and continue to share resources.

Just a few thoughts.

1. Overhaul Bloodlust to coincide with outmanned buff and population present /per map. Details can be found in many ideas in this and many other posts and via metrics. Give it small boosts to many areas, make it helpful but not overwhelming.

2. Overhaul the outmanned buff, again give it low helpful bonusses but not overwhelming or game breaking.

3. Adjust transfer prices based on WvW population per time slot and per server rating, drastically. Make transfers to T1 cost 5k-10k gems, free to lowest servers, all else in between.

4. Stop rewarding stackers that server stack with features such as new maps etc. They have made their poor decisions and need to live with the consequences of their own poor choices.

5. Adjust PPT score to reflect actual effort in capping and holding an objective. Give less points for taking undefended objectives and almost no points for doing so on an empty map. Likewise with holding it. Undefended objectives should give very little points because they take very little effort to take.

6. Adjust rewards for defense to coincide with rewards for offense. This will go a long ways to address many problems in the game.

7. Introduce a “superior force” debuff. Opposite of the outmanned buff.

8. Adjust waypoints, remove capability of building waypoints on enemy Borderlands and in EB building them in enemy captured keeps, while making making remaining waypoints harder to contest. This will greatly increase mobility of defensive groups, especially on their home BLs, as it is currently it is the opposite where it takes defenders longer to get back to defend then it takes opponents to go on offense.

Cactus.2710:

I believe that all these posts suggesting score adjustments based upon population differences totally miss the point … which is that it is not fun to play when you are significantly outnumbered. In my opinion, the ONLY way to fix WvW is to come up with some way to roughly balance populations in a match. Otherwise we will get the situation where, in an extreme example, an undermanned server can keep the score close by mostly capturing camps or killing yaks. That’s not a full spectrum of the WvW experience.

I suppose that the suggestion to automatically form an alliance between B and C if A has a dominant population presence might help, but that’s pretty much just a way to balance a 2-way battle …. it no longer is the 3-way conflict originally intended. In my opinion, a better method would be to keep the 3-way format and implement a forced mercenary system like Rift did with their warfronts … although I’ll admit not everyone would like that.

In any case, score balance does NOT equate to game play balance. If instanced matches with equal player caps for each faction (notice I didn’t say server) are the only way to achieve game play balance, I say do it.

I don’t think they completely miss it because many times it is the score imbalance that causes the lower playing population. Unfortunately there are many reasons why populations are and become imbalanced just as there different reasons why score imbalances exist.

Clearly if you’re winning the score while being significantly outnumbered you would not want to change that. Anyway, being balanced was stated as not being a goal of WvW and I don’t have a problem with that. It should be possible to have good fun battles and matches without perfectly balanced sides.

Tekyn.5376:

Devon,

The reason is that when one server has a population advantage of even 20 people those 20 people can form a zerg and quickly capture towers & keeps that are undefended. The ease to which an offensive zerg can be formed compared with what it takes to assemble a defense is what creates the scoring imbalance.

Case in point look at this week’s match in the bronze league between Darkhaven, Gate of Madness, and Ferguson’s Crossing (http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/map/1093). That match was one of the closest ever until the new patch hit and all of GoM’s PvE players vanished from WvW. If you look at the second graph you can see GoM has not been able to get it’s PPT above 250 for some time now (http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/43). The reason for this is not that GoM suddenly started sucking, but because we cannot match the numbers of the other servers. The other servers have enough people to push us on multiple fronts and our defenders are too few to stop them. A fully upgraded keep means nothing when a 30 man zerg pulls up with 5 Alphas and only a handful of people are defending.

In terms of how WvW could be designed differently I already made suggestions in this thread, but the gist of my opinion is that capturing objectives needs to be made harder and defending an objective needs to be more feasible for small groups. (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Collaborative-Development-World-Population/page/5#post3111942)

Also, I agree with you that momentum is part of what affects scoring bursts, but I think that is only an after effect of the core problem. Given that most WvW players play for short periods it’s easy to swing momentum as new groups of players sign on. The actual problem is that when one server out populates another repeatedly the disadvantaged server starts to feel disenfranchised to the point where every battle feels lost before it begins.

Regards.

Except this an example of why an outmanned server should lose. Not enough of your players are willing to join the battle.

While one can feel bad for servers that have lower population and we can wonder if anything be done to change that, when a world’s population chooses not to fight the options are and should be significantly limited. You were able to compete and then chose not to. This is a group activity and in this regard it cannot successfully be regarded or considered at the individual level.

This is one of the good reasons to switch servers. If WvW is a priority for you, then you should go to a server where there are a significant number of WvW players. Perhaps some servers should just not have a WvW presence. Or maybe the bottom couple servers get combined into one WvW force. It could even be based on number of players who’ve participated in WvW over the prior period.

Thwomp.3912:

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.

You must of missed this weekend Gold T1 match-up. SOR had a 20k lead they built up over the weekend. It was looking like they had the victory in the bag, for the reason you stated. Yet, Blackgate steam rolled them, and we have turned around the score completely.

I would be careful about slowing down momentum because, how would a server ever catch up if a server was able to farm PPT for 3 straight days? Such as BG did this week.

if anything this is exactly what the problem is. Over the weekend when people get on earlier or stay later the match was back and forth between BG and SoR. With SoR taking a lead. During the week BG cab get upto 500 PPT with little resistance.

Inspired.6730:

Cactus.2710:

I believe that all these posts suggesting score adjustments based upon population differences totally miss the point … which is that it is not fun to play when you are significantly outnumbered. In my opinion, the ONLY way to fix WvW is to come up with some way to roughly balance populations in a match. Otherwise we will get the situation where, in an extreme example, an undermanned server can keep the score close by mostly capturing camps or killing yaks. That’s not a full spectrum of the WvW experience.

“cut due to post length….”

I don’t think they completely miss it because many times it is the score imbalance that causes the lower playing population. Unfortunately there are many reasons why populations are and become imbalanced just as there different reasons why score imbalances exist.

Clearly if you’re winning the score while being significantly outnumbered you would not want to change that. Anyway, being balanced was stated as not being a goal of WvW and I don’t have a problem with that. It should be possible to have good fun battles and matches without perfectly balanced sides.

Tekyn.5376:

Devon,

The reason is that when one server has a population advantage of even 20 people those 20 people can form a zerg and quickly capture towers & keeps that are undefended. The ease to which an offensive zerg can be formed compared with what it takes to assemble a defense is what creates the scoring imbalance.

Case in point look at this week’s match in the bronze league between Darkhaven, Gate of Madness, and Ferguson’s Crossing (http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/map/1093). That match was one of the closest ever until the new patch hit and all of GoM’s PvE players vanished from WvW. If you look at the second graph you can see GoM has not been able to get it’s PPT above 250 for some time now (http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/43). The reason for this is not that GoM suddenly started sucking, but because we cannot match the numbers of the other servers. The other servers have enough people to push us on multiple fronts and our defenders are too few to stop them. A fully upgraded keep means nothing when a 30 man zerg pulls up with 5 Alphas and only a handful of people are defending.

In terms of how WvW could be designed differently I already made suggestions in this thread, but the gist of my opinion is that capturing objectives needs to be made harder and defending an objective needs to be more feasible for small groups. (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Collaborative-Development-World-Population/page/5#post3111942)

Also, I agree with you that momentum is part of what affects scoring bursts, but I think that is only an after effect of the core problem. Given that most WvW players play for short periods it’s easy to swing momentum as new groups of players sign on. The actual problem is that when one server out populates another repeatedly the disadvantaged server starts to feel disenfranchised to the point where every battle feels lost before it begins.

Regards.

Except this an example of why an outmanned server should lose. Not enough of your players are willing to join the battle.

While one can feel bad for servers that have lower population and we can wonder if anything be done to change that, when a world’s population chooses not to fight the options are and should be significantly limited. You were able to compete and then chose not to. This is a group activity and in this regard it cannot successfully be regarded or considered at the individual level.

This is one of the good reasons to switch servers. If WvW is a priority for you, then you should go to a server where there are a significant number of WvW players. Perhaps some servers should just not have a WvW presence. Or maybe the bottom couple servers get combined into one WvW force. It could even be based on number of players who’ve participated in WvW over the prior period.

1. Nope. You can always guest for PvE with other Eu/Aussie/SEA players, you can not guest in WvW. A shocking hint: you can organize for PvE just like WvW.

2. When you steamroll an empty or nearly empty maps you are putting in a small fraction of effort, tactics, strategies required, you should not be getting rewarded for that in any way shape or form, directly or indirectly. Reward system needs to reflect player effort which is not possible while taking an empty map.

This idea may have come up before …

How about dynamic door/wall/NPC strengths that are inversely related to the current PPT holdings?

Depending on the function used, this could make it harder for a zerg to steamroll through unimpeded when the other servers do not have many players on line.

One possibility would be to vary the power/toughness/retaliation of NPCs and the toughness/retaliation of doors/structures. Of course, other modifications could create similar effects.

the problems of population imbalance boil down to two key issues: server stacking, and night capping. the servers that fill themselves to the brim with 24 hour coverage will beat a server that only has 18 hour coverage every single time. the solution to this requires several steps to be taken. first, the maximum number of players possible on each map has to be set and well known. 80 will work. next, the queues have to be actual queues, not the random lottery it is now. get in line, wait your turn, get onto the map. the ways to bypass that need to be fixed.

ok, now that a limit is set, and people know about it, the goal is to get the surplus players from the top tiers to spread out to the lower tiers. this isn’t all that hard to accomplish, actually. the first step is to make the bronze leagues free to transfer to, and even beyond that, allow players who do transfer to those server to retain all of the guild influence and upgrades they had. then moving to spread out isn’t punished, and they’re reward for helping to even things up by having lower queue times or none at all. silver league should have a moderate cost attached to them, and should also allow guilds to retain their influence and upgrades. gold, however, should have a very large cost, and guild should lose their influence and upgrades. this will encourage transfers to go to the servers that need the numbers, instead of servers that are exploding at their seams with people.

ok, next, night capping. now, it’s been stated that no one’s time should be treated as any more or less valuable than anyone elses, and i agree with that. so…… we need to look to hockey for the solution here. hockey games are made up of three 20 minute periods. in between the periods, the zamboni takes care of the ice. for WvW purposes, this would translate into three 8 hour “periods”. each with it’s own score being ticked. these scores woudl operate the same as the current scores, meaning at the end of the week, each server would have three scores. period 1, period 2, and period 3. but…. that doesn’t fix the problem entirely, because “why upgrade when we’re just going to lose everything during the period where we’re outnumbered?” so…. these periods also need to have their own sets of map states. basically, like different instances, with them rotating automatically every 8 hours (with a small downtime while the state of the previous instance is saved, and the state of the upcoming instance is loaded). so if a server owns their entire borderland at the end of period 1, when period 1 comes back around again, they’ll have their entire borderland exactly how they left it. instead of owning the entire borderland during period 1, getting pushed back to just their north during period 2 as people go to sleep, and losing it all during period 3 while they get night capped to come back to nothing when period 1 comes back around again. next, make each of these periods worth 1 (i dunno, let’s call them “medals”, though they can be called anything really) at the end of the week, there would be 3 “medals” that could be awarded. so, using hypothetical numbers here, say server A ends up with 125,000 points during period 1, 50,000 points during period 2, and 75,000 points during period 3. server B has 100,000 points during period 1, 75,000 points during period 2, and 30,000 points during period 3. server C has 50,000 points during period 1, 100,000 points during period 2, and 150,000 points during period 3. which means, server A won period 1, they get 1 “medal”. server C won period 2 and 3, so they get 2 “medals”, and server B didn’t win any period so they get 0 “medals”. which means server C wins the match and gets 5 points in the season rankings, server A came in second and gets 3, and server B came in last and gets 1 point.

(continued)

however, this is all moot until defense is addressed. if server B is constantly getting rolled over by much larger numbers during one of the time periods, those few people on server B are just going to eventually quit. if the maps are set up how i laid out here: however, this is all moot until defense is addressed. if server B is constantly getting rolled over by much larger numbers during one of the time periods, those few people on server B are just going to eventually quit. if the maps are set up how i laid out here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Beside-bug-lag-Bal-how-to-improve-WvW/first#post3024534 this helps tremendously. entire areas can’t be flipped in 20 minutes if the areas are actually laid out to support each other, and the layout of the areas themselves are actually helping to defend each other. so a smaller group can collapse back and hold their own. which helps keep off hour population on smaller servers from getting completely discouraged and giving up entirely. coordinated offenses would still have successful pushes, however, just slapping everyone into a giant blob and facemashing would eventually be halted by the smaller force, who could collapse in defend, and then recover. meaning, actually enjoying their playing time, instead of just getting constantly reamed any time they log in. combine this with the methods above, and things will move towards an even competitive playing field. instead of a lopsided one dominated by who can collect the most off-peak coverage this helps tremendously. entire areas can’t be flipped in 20 minutes if the areas are actually laid out to support each other, and the layout of the areas themselves are actually helping to defend each other. so a smaller group can collapse back and hold their own. which helps keep off hour population on smaller servers from getting completely discouraged and giving up entirely. coordinated offenses would still have successful pushes, however, just slapping everyone into a giant blob and facemashing would eventually be halted by the smaller force, who could collapse in defend, and then recover. meaning, actually enjoying their playing time, instead of just getting constantly reamed any time they log in. combine this with the methods above, and things will move towards an even competitive playing field. instead of a lopsided one dominated by who can collect the most off-peak coverage

Inspired.6730:

…

While one can feel bad for servers that have lower population and we can wonder if anything be done to change that, when a world’s population chooses not to fight the options are and should be significantly limited. You were able to compete and then chose not to. This is a group activity and in this regard it cannot successfully be regarded or considered at the individual level.

This is one of the good reasons to switch servers. If WvW is a priority for you, then you should go to a server where there are a significant number of WvW players. Perhaps some servers should just not have a WvW presence. Or maybe the bottom couple servers get combined into one WvW force. It could even be based on number of players who’ve participated in WvW over the prior period.

You say it’s a group activity and not to be considered at an individual level. But there are individual level rewards. Throwing more incentives or rewards into WvW is likely going to be biased towards certain populations or servers unless it’s a more even playing field. Is that fair / right?

In your mind we should just pay to transfer.
In a guild with upgrades? Tough. You’ve got to grind them again.

If your chosen server gets vast amount of queues so you can’t play as you like?
Tough. Pay for gems. Transfer.

If your chosen server sees an exodus / grows indifferent to WvW.
Tough. Pay for gems. Transfer.

As a member of a server in WvW, for the most part, you are at the mercy of the general WvW population of the server (aka bandwagon) and may have to keep paying Arenanet money transfer to find yourself in fun / reasonably fair WvW matches. I can see why Arenanet is more than happy with this as the status quo, but why are you?

It is precisely this stance which is alienating people. Perhaps whatever your server you play on hasn’t suffered from transfers. As a proud Denravian since BEW2, I’ve suffered from both sides of the imbalance problem. Neither is particularly fun.

Tongku.5326:

1. Nope. You can always guest for PvE with other Eu/Aussie/SEA players, you can not guest in WvW. A shocking hint: you can organize for PvE just like WvW.

2. When you steamroll an empty or nearly empty maps you are putting in a small fraction of effort, tactics, strategies required, you should not be getting rewarded for that in any way shape or form, directly or indirectly. Reward system needs to reflect player effort which is not possible while taking an empty map.

Not sure what the “nope” refers to. Since you can guest for PvE, the only thing that server choice matters for is WvW. So players should choose their servers based on WvW. Also, not every server needs to have a WvW force if there aren’t enough players for it.

We may just disagree on the other. I don’t see WvW as being about player effort. It’s a group event and should be based on world effort and a part of that is fielding a sufficient fighting force. It should never be an option for a world to say, we don’t have enough players to win so everyone leave so they get less rewards.

Remedy.8051:

Inspired.6730:

…

While one can feel bad for servers that have lower population and we can wonder if anything be done to change that, when a world’s population chooses not to fight the options are and should be significantly limited. You were able to compete and then chose not to. This is a group activity and in this regard it cannot successfully be regarded or considered at the individual level.

This is one of the good reasons to switch servers. If WvW is a priority for you, then you should go to a server where there are a significant number of WvW players. Perhaps some servers should just not have a WvW presence. Or maybe the bottom couple servers get combined into one WvW force. It could even be based on number of players who’ve participated in WvW over the prior period.

You say it’s a group activity and not to be considered at an individual level. But there are individual level rewards. Throwing more incentives or rewards into WvW is likely going to be biased towards certain populations or servers unless it’s a more even playing field. Is that fair / right?

In your mind we should just pay to transfer.
In a guild with upgrades? Tough. You’ve got to grind them again.

If your chosen server gets vast amount of queues so you can’t play as you like?
Tough. Pay for gems. Transfer.

If your chosen server sees an exodus / grows indifferent to WvW.
Tough. Pay for gems. Transfer.

As a member of a server in WvW, for the most part, you are at the mercy of the general WvW population of the server (aka bandwagon) and may have to keep paying Arenanet money transfer to find yourself in fun / reasonably fair WvW matches. I can see why Arenanet is more than happy with this as the status quo, but why are you?

It is precisely this stance which is alienating people. Perhaps whatever your server you play on hasn’t suffered from transfers. As a proud Denravian since BEW2, I’ve suffered from both sides of the imbalance problem. Neither is particularly fun.

Individual rewards are fine and even beneficial, but they should be (and I believe mostly are) separated from server rewards and score. No doubt WvW should be made more popular and a significant part of that would be better individual rewards.

They’re dealing with the queues as they need to, but eliminating queues will if anything make the WvW population imbalance greater.

I just fail to see a fair option to force population balance. Everyone needs to pick a server based on their preferences. And WvW impacts this while PvE doesn’t nearly as much because you can guest wherever you want. So you keep guesting on Denravian if that world’s WvW is unacceptable to you while fighting for a different world in WvW. But asking for special allowances for Denravian because they can’t or won’t field a competitive force in WvW doesn’t seem right or beneficial to me.

Also, a lot of WvW players don’t jump to the top servers. If they did, everyone who WvW’s would be there and this discussion would be moot.

Inspired.6730:

Except this an example of why an outmanned server should lose. Not enough of your players are willing to join the battle…

This is one of the good reasons to switch servers…

While this mentality is justified and logical, the end result is extremely problematic. Everyone ends up transferring. The desolate servers stop participating. The server at the bottom gets tired of having no one to play with (or losing every week to the same guy) and they transfer. That creates another desolate server as it self destructs and the process slowly climbs the ladder until the remnants are left sitting in one giant group with no one to play against.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

…
2) Transfers. Another problem with WvW is that people are allowed to transfer between servers so often. It doesn’t matter that there’s a Gem fee for doing so, or a week cooldown. The fact that people can switch sides often creates instability. Of course, drawbacks exist to server stacking. One of the main negatives is queue time. Higher tiered servers have the longest queues, so it’s sort of a self-imposed punishment to stacking…

…
2) Transferring servers should be changed slightly to discourage server stacking, although it might be too late for this. Season 1 has a great idea, where your “Home Server” is the one you began with once the season started. Off-season should have something similar. When you change servers, you’re with your previous WvW world for X weeks before you can WvW with your new server. In essence, you’re technically “guesting” to the new server for X weeks before you officially join. The wait period forces players to consider long term goals of their choice to move, and also prevents instant server stacking for quick weekly wins…

I’ve seen mention to a number of options that use stacking penalties as a method to balance population. While they can be effective, the current design would need massive changes in order to actually make them effective.

Here, you mention a penalty that is a one time cost. Paying for the transfer and being forced to wait after a transfer are one time costs. These methods don’t work. Think of luck stacking. Is it worth it to get that first 50%? I think everyone would say yes. Eventually, it will pay for itself and then you just gain. The same is true here. Unless the one time cost is so ludicrous that it will never be worth it, this doesn’t work. If it is never worth it, it means legitimate transfers won’t happen either.

You also mention a recurring cost in the form of queues. Recurring costs can mitigate server stacking as long as the cost is actually higher than the gain. However, I’ve never seen a game that met that criteria. Queues make people unhappy. They can also be fixed. We all know there is a new map being developed to help with queues. Devs are actively combating the current recurring penalty. Given current additions to the game, the imbalance will only get worse.

I don’t think we’ll get far be penalizing server transfers. I’ve never seen it work. In order to make it work, the incentive to transfer needs to meet the penalty to transfer. Since the incentive is fluid, the bottom snowballs the penalty and it eventually leaves nothing in its wake. Alternatively, the penalty is so large that even the biggest incentive can’t overcome it. In this case, it means that legitimate transfers don’t move either.

Inspired.6730:

Except this an example of why an outmanned server should lose. Not enough of your players are willing to join the battle.

While one can feel bad for servers that have lower population and we can wonder if anything be done to change that, when a world’s population chooses not to fight the options are and should be significantly limited. You were able to compete and then chose not to. This is a group activity and in this regard it cannot successfully be regarded or considered at the individual level.

This is one of the good reasons to switch servers. If WvW is a priority for you, then you should go to a server where there are a significant number of WvW players. Perhaps some servers should just not have a WvW presence. Or maybe the bottom couple servers get combined into one WvW force. It could even be based on number of players who’ve participated in WvW over the prior period.

I think you misread what I said or you do not understanding which issue we are talking about here. I was not making the case that my server should be exempt from losing because we have fewer players. I was using my server’s current situation as an example of how population advantage can have a drastic impact on the score.

Your point that “You were able to compete and chose not to” is a false choice if the competition is unfair and unbalanced. Unfair and unbalanced competition due to population advantages is the point of this discussion.

Lastly, any argument that includes telling people to switch servers makes no sense. The idea that “some servers should just not have a WvW presence” is something I am sure ArenaNet would instantly reject thus I don’t see how it has any bearing on this conversation.

Hmm Pve monster just gave me a good idea, so i’m posting it in a quicky.

The longer a Mob is alive the more exp it gives.

The longer something is NOT captured (and gives ppt to the owning server), the more bonus points it gives on a capture. A base example would be, for every hour something is NOT capped, the bonus PPT (instantly gained after capture), becomes +5. I think at first this may sound ‘What this is overpowered’. I think it isn’t. Look at the stomp system. 1-3 points per stomp. That’s a lot. Keeps don’t often switch sides. Waypointed keeps even less. But say vizunah square who is very good at abusing mechanics to keep their buff for themselfs. This means (EB for instance) all their side of the landscape rarely gets flipped. Every hour they do so however, the capture bonus raises. +5 is actually very low but could be an experiment to then later more ‘actualize’ the bonus. The max 24 hours *5 (points) *7 (days) = 840 points. So technically vizunah square eb keep (sorry that i keep using Vizunah as example but they are one of the best examples how coverage can give lesser skill player still massive advantage). could give 800 point if you cap it on friday before reset. I think it should be even more for keeps. Most things flip often enough that with this system i set up, it would barely give bonus points. So that means it barely can be abused. Like if you karma train, you won’t gain anything cause the stuff you cap is wooden, and not long ago flipped.

what do you guys think. At least its more incentive to cap the enemies stuff like vizunah square ‘over arrow carted’ keeps/towers.

Vizunah square stacks? (example) Riverside is kitten ed, breeds a plan, takes vizunah square keep after 5 days and get 500-600 in this example (should be more in fact, for a keep, to punish blind server like vizu to just ‘camp’. Camping is cheap and should be punished. Initiative (attacking) taking server should have more reward. Vizunah rarely attacks. But holds their PPT. Half of time they are runnign away. If we insert this mechanic, they will have to fight superior hard, no more ‘run away but keep best PPT’. Sorry i say this but a server that runs 10x away in 30 minutes from a fight, should not be rewarded for it. This must be punished, so player come out of their holes, and actually start playing. Start fighting. My hope is this will put enough stress on leading servers, that they will have dillema’s ‘defend keep or attack enemy keep’. ‘upgrade keep or focus on capturing’. ‘scout our towers, or attack enemy tower’. Basically to defend a lead score, the leader would need more manpower in this case to fully disable the enemy from taking advantage of the point bonus system. That means it also should cut ‘full blobbing’ down as that would make it easier to surprise attack the point leaders objective (long standing bonus points), and take it. This would make the ‘lazy, but still win’-behavior more punishable. Cause let’s face it, some of the winning servers, really weren’t that great, and made some big mistakes. This mistakes should be reflected in PPT and they are’nt atm. This system seems perfect start (but it should be taken way more into detail, with other system correlating with this to even further solute the imbalance problem). This problem is to specifically, make it harder for the leading server to keep the point difference high. This also an incentive to make camping tower with few people, but very strong siege, more risky, cause if they fail, they pay with a lot of points, As it should be.

TL:DR Punish stacked servers for keeping something a long time. If that other (weaker server) caps it, it both gives instant bonus PPT, and maybe more pve reward (more silver/karma/exp reward, if the server kept is superior long time).

Cactus.2710:

I believe that all these posts suggesting score adjustments based upon population differences totally miss the point … which is that it is not fun to play when you are significantly outnumbered. In my opinion, the ONLY way to fix WvW is to come up with some way to roughly balance populations in a match. Otherwise we will get the situation where, in an extreme example, an undermanned server can keep the score close by mostly capturing camps or killing yaks. That’s not a full spectrum of the WvW experience.

I suppose that the suggestion to automatically form an alliance between B and C if A has a dominant population presence might help, but that’s pretty much just a way to balance a 2-way battle …. it no longer is the 3-way conflict originally intended. In my opinion, a better method would be to keep the 3-way format and implement a forced mercenary system like Rift did with their warfronts … although I’ll admit not everyone would like that.

In any case, score balance does NOT equate to game play balance. If instanced matches with equal player caps for each faction (notice I didn’t say server) are the only way to achieve game play balance, I say do it.

The idea of adjusting PPT/rewards according to population differences makes players realize that easy battles does not equate to easy PPT/Rewards, which is the one of the main causes of population stacking.

In order to make population spread out on its own, you need to create incentives to do so. Given choice of joining a stronger group or weaker with same rewards for the win which would you choose?

Now if you create a population ratio which determines rewards/ppt, you place a question in the player’s minds: Do you want easy battles with little rewards or challenging battles with great rewards?

As I said in previous posts I don’t feel like its a punishment for stacked servers as they make up for the smaller rewards with increased frequency of taking objectives. Weaker servers have greater rewards/PPT because of the difficulty in fighting against superior numbers.