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.
You said your server was doing good and then the update hit and less players on your world chose to help the fight. That’s a world choice and should be punished. What’s unfair or makes it an unbalanced competition if your world’s players chooses not join the fight? I guess I just take World vs World more literally than you. And clearly you’re not alone, because there are others who want some random teams formed from available players. However, I think anything like that would destroy the strategy of WvW.
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.
Or they start being competitive. If a world just isn’t competitive, and there’s nothing they can do about it by learning to coordinate better or getting more players to the fight, they’re just not going to be competitive. Manipulating the score isn’t going to make them more competitive. Cheating for them by giving them a bonus if they’re losing isn’t going to make them more competitive. It almost seems like some think that of the score were close because they got bonus points for having half as many players this would make it fun for them. I don’t see how.
To the extend the score is a problem, get rid of it. But to the extent that servers don’t have enough WvW players, messing with score won’t change that. Unfortunately, it seems obvious to me that if there’s a minimum number of WvW players on a server required for it to be fun for you and if a server doesn’t have that number then they just won’t have fun in WvW there. And combining servers is the same as transferring for WvW.
There are X number of players who WvW. Right now X / [the number of servers] is less than the population limit on WvW. Either there needs to be more players doing WvW, there needs to fewer WvW servers (doesn’t need to affect PvE), or the population limit on WvW needs to be lowered. Those are the options to make it numerically competitive.