Guild Wars 2

Tekyn.5376:

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.

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.

Dosvidaniya.3260:

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.

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.

Inspired.6730:

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 mute.

Individual rewards are fine. But any significant ones, you’d expect there to be a proportionally significant increase in individual effort. The WvW environment is competitive by nature. If you’re competing for rewards, then other servers are likely going to be able to impede you in getting them. I don’t see any major issues at present. There is simply the potential for disaster if handled wrongly.

For (an extremely artificial and unrealistic) example to convey this point, imagine a link between capturing / holding Stonemist X number of times and having Y% chance at a precursor. Some matchups might give people from different servers the same opportunity. Some servers might get screwed. ( Look at NSP this week for example ).

You may fail to see a fair option to have population balance, but that is what this thread is about. In addition, you seem to have completely misinterpreted my post. Denravi is merely an example of a server which has seen the good and bad in terms of transfers. For a more recent example, see Kaineng.

The point is, without any sustainable system for having balanced matchups, people are forced to pay gems to transfer to a server for the WvW experience they want. The experience on that server will change over time (naturally, or by other people paying gems to transfer to/away from it). At which point the cycle repeats, costing yet more gems.

The only solution to this mess is to lower map population caps. That would solve most of the other problems as well (lag, zerg meta). 60 players per side max would allow for some epic battles without totally crushing the server’s CPUs.

Fancy point adjustment schemes or buffs/debuffs based on population are hard to implement, harder to balance and not necessary since they would not address any other issues (lag, zerg meta).

Transfers away from over-stacked servers could be discounted or free for a short time as well. Doing that without reducing map caps to something servers can actually handle won’t encourage many (or any) transfers. Massive queues are about the only incentive that will work at this point.

Make the game playable and balance the playing field all in one swoop. Drop map caps to around 60 players per side. Large guilds will be able to afford to transfer, and many already have, but in the wrong direction. Please endure their whining for a couple weeks while they sort out their priorities, it will be worth it for the health of the game mode. For every 500 man guild that threatens to quit, there are probably already 50 ten man guilds that have (or will) quit from the monotony of spamming #1 at the hurrdurr-skill-lag-mega-blob.

MeatShield.1983:

snip if the T1 score is greater that T2+T3 then teams 2 and 3 are forced to make an alliance. snip

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. snip

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

I have an idea along these lines, but instead of being a forced alliance, make it optional. If you want to participate, you have to “opt in.” Entire guilds and/or individual players could opt in. Have a truce area -unlocked only to the losing servers- at a certain percentage of score blowout where you could sign a treaty. You could also break the treaty via an option in your personal interface (“leave the alliance”).

Then there needs to be alliance chat so you can communicate about the 2v1 strategy.

I get that 2v1 was intended from the start, but we’ve never been given tools to make it happen.

I think a good way to balance out the fact that some servers have high WvW participation and others do not can be leveraged through the current system of the “Out manned” buff. Right now all of the benefits that it grants are related to the individual’s reward (i.e. greater MF, no repair cost, more WXP). This, however, does nothing to actually help the tide of the battle.

If you were to use the Out manned buff to actually give players benefits that help the tide of the battle you might eliminate some of the unfairness of WvW.

Some ideas on possible buff adds:

1) Increase supply carrying capacity. Each individual is able to carry maybe 20 supply? That would still require the teamwork of more than one person to build siege, but would allow two people to effectively build a ram as opposed to needing three.

2) Increase individual’s actual attributes. More power, more toughness, etc. This number would scale according to how outmanned the player is. If there are only 5 people on a map then maybe it would take 5 reasonable players to be able to beat one of them (almost like a champion).

3) Speed buff. Grant swiftness to all of the players on the outmanned team. One of the main drawbacks of having less people is the inability to get around the map. With a lot of people you can split into groups and defend or attack. When there are few people on your map you can only respond to one situation at a time, and it takes you a long time to actually get to another place.

These are just some brainstorms. But I think the mechanism is already in place (the out manned buff). It just doesn’t target the right thing (individual reward vs. helping the world keep up).

Cactus.2710:

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.

That is not a technical barrier. And the big offerings are available on a global scale and can be moved on demand. I am sure Anet does not own servers and operate them. Everything else would just be plain stupid.

But still not a technical barrier. That’s the only thing I am saying. And if proper peering exists where the computing power is rented then the locality in the world does not matter at all. And with lag in WvW due to bad game engine design this does not even matter. There is no difference for me in EU playing on a NA server (did this for some time). Feels exactly the same.

That it might not be financially possible at the moment is a different thing. But technically you are basically setting up new instances in a “global” space and move existing instance by instance to it. And then you are done. Can be done at reset any time. The WvW maps are already hosted independet anyway, so no biggie.

Beside that users can transfer within seconds to new servers. This already shows that users are not attached to any specific instance with their account. Database just dicated which instances are providing maps for them.

The reason that there is a distinction between NA and EU realm is an anachronism these days. Understand why it is there, but it is not something that’s needed or technical neccessary.

Anyway this would be a nice idea in a general WvW server consolidation. But this is beyond the actual topic what can be done and keeping the system as it is (read: without any additional budget).

Inspired.6730:

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.

World choice should not be punished. Anyone who buys the game and picks a server should be able to have a fun WvW experience. If they want a competitive and highly organized WvW experience then join a top tier server, if they want a casual experience then join a low-tier. It’s not as simple as you are trying to frame it with your choice of ‘join the fight or not’.

And taking World vs World literally has nothing to do with it. If we were to list all the factors that contribute to a win in a weekly match-up server population should be one of many deciding factors, not the sole deciding factor. As I mentioned already, if you read my original suggestion it was to lessen the impact of a population advantage, not to eliminate it altogether. Having more WvW players should be part of the strategy in winning, not the instant ‘I Win’ button that it is now.

One point where we agree, I too, do not think any sort of random teams makes sense. Keep a server together.

styx.7294:

I think this would be a fantastic and fresh change for season 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHcO6Xo8eJ8

Where instead of 3 servers fightin the servers are split by 3 colours and fight each other with WvW guesting allowed to servers within your colour.

this please. excellent refreshing concept. ++++++++++++

Jaytee.9513:

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.

There is more than one reason why people migrate to stacked servers. One is that of course it is easier to get loot and achievements if you roll over your opponent (it’s totally baffling to me that ANet wouldn’t have anticipated that), another is that it is extremely limiting to be on an undermanned server and have to slink around the edges trying to find something useful to do without getting mashed, and a third is that there is always something cooking on a stacked server while half the time you can’t even find any team mates at all off hours (trust me … I’m on Devona’s Rest and know whereof I speak). My basic position, though, is that I don’t believe ANY incentives will offset those things enough to create balanced matches. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again … ANet needs to set up some sort of forced population balance in order to recapture the spirit of WvW that existed for a couple of months shortly after launch. There are a couple of ways of accomplishing that, but instanced matches between arbitrary factions is the most straightforward … and spare me the argument about undermining server community when rampant transfers have made that nothing more than a ridiculous excuse for not doing anything.

In case you still can’t figure it out, I don’t play WvW for rewards. I play WvW for the fun and enjoyment of large scale strategy-based open world PvP … period. I want ANet to fix WvW so that it plays like it was supposed to be … not bribe me with rewards so I’ll settle for something less.

Devon,

Instead of asking why population imbalances, momentum, and coverage cause point imbalances, you should address why it’s not fun to play under these conditions.

I don’t care if my server loses a week. I mean, I care a bit, but I’m not motivated by those tasty Glicko points we’d win. I want to have fun!

I’m bored when the only thing for me to do is follow an Omega Golem swarm around as they PvDoor, or, on the flip side, to solo roam and poke sentries because there’s no way to stand up to the enemy zerg.

What fun PvP activities can you give me to do when I’m outnumbered or outnumbering my opponents?

You’ll probably have to manufacture an “unfair” fight in that situation, in which the outnumbered team gets something to even the odds. You’ve resisted that for some good reasons, but I think you’re going to need to think of some other ideas that satisfy your principals while still giving the outnumbered side a way to fight other players in WvW and not instantly evaporate under the zerg.

The thing to keep in mind is: you don’t need to give the low-pop teams a chance at winning the point count. It’ll be hard enough providing these fun fights without worrying about score mechanics at the same time.

Here’s a simple example: the “equilibrium” fight. Imagine a battlefield where the closer you get to the opponent’s base, the stronger they get. This effect goes so high that even the biggest zerg up against the smallest opponents will eventually hit its limit. You get more PPT for every inch of territory you control, and every inch is hard to hold than the last because your opponents are getting stronger.

If I show up to that fight on the winning side, I can head to the line of battle and push in another inch forward before the opponents get stronger again and can hold the line. If I show up on the weaker side, I can push the line another inch forward before we lose some of our advantage. The lower-pop side can’t possibly win (they’ll lose the advantage long before they gain the lead in territory) but they always have something to do more fun than getting zergstomped.

In either case, I’m able to make a measurable, positive contribution to my side’s efforts, and I’m always getting a challenging fight. There’s no perverse incentive where my teammates benefit more if I don’t show up and try to help.

This is an overly simplistic example, but hopefully you get the idea.

Not sure if this has been suggested already, but what about a system in which having the outmanned buff slows the point gain for the other servers on a map by map basis

The more i think about it the more i agree with devon. the best comeback mechanic to fight the lopsided scores is to SIGNIFICANTLY increase the rewards for killing the first place server. if we got champ bags from players on a server beating us by 100k points our fairweathers would show up with all their friends to farm the winning server and we wouldnt see such a slump at the end of the week when we fight. while it wouldnt fix nightcapping it would fix the morale problems nightcapping causes.

I think you could get away with making two servers one team and making the maps larger. So first rank server and last rank server would be a team. Then keep matching accordingly. Additionally the night before reset you could have a sort of final objective. Each server has max que on a single map and they vote on how many points for their server to wager. Then have then fight for a set time in that one map. The winning server takes all the possible points that were put in the wager.

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 believe that in this context ’impossibl’e means “Very expensive and time consuming therefore we will not be doing that.” To bad cause it would fix the whole population problems. It would double the amount of servers so you could divide the leagues into segments that have lower population disparity. During the normal match ups you would have a bigger pool of adversaries to be matched against increasing the chance of balanced match ups. NA and EU guilds would be able to play in each others off time but still be able to PvE with there friends. You could have an intercontinental tournament where all Us servers play against EU servers in there respective tiers. There would be so many advantages to not having them separated but I disgress.

We were asked for our opinion and world population/coverage imbalance is the biggest issue on our list. It has nothing to do with the score. Many of us could not care less about it. It’s about not getting constantly steam rolled. You say morale has an effect of WvW participation and that is absolutely true, what is the point in even logging in when you are constantly getting crushed over and over and over all night long? What is the point in spending hours to build up fortifications and defenses when the blob comes and destroys it in 1 min? I played on servers that were outmanned every night for weeks and months at a time. Population imbalance is a big problem for anyone not playing in the top 3. There are many great suggestions of how to correct it or mitigate it’s effects in this thread. Since this is a discussion maybe you (by you I mean the Devs) can tell us what could work and what couldn’t and why? Cause at the moment we have been doing all the talking.

ricekrispys.5304:

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

My variation on this theme is:

Resource Camps: 1 point base + 1 point per upgrade (max 5 points)
Towers: 3 points base + 1 points per upgrade (max 15 points)
Keeps: 6 points base + 2 points per upgrade (max 30 points)
Stonemist Castle: 9 points base + 3 points per upgrade (max 45 points)

It would help encourage upgrades and defense and make flipped towers worth less, but I’m not sure it would help with the problems caused by a population or coverage imbalance.

gidorah.4960:

The more i think about it the more i agree with devon. the best comeback mechanic to fight the lopsided scores is to SIGNIFICANTLY increase the rewards for killing the first place server. if we got champ bags from players on a server beating us by 100k points our fairweathers would show up with all their friends to farm the winning server and we wouldnt see such a slump at the end of the week when we fight. while it wouldnt fix nightcapping it would fix the morale problems nightcapping causes.

sigh …

Berk.8561:

ricekrispys.5304:

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

My variation on this theme is:

Resource Camps: 1 point base + 1 point per upgrade (max 5 points)
Towers: 3 points base + 1 points per upgrade (max 15 points)
Keeps: 6 points base + 2 points per upgrade (max 30 points)
Stonemist Castle: 9 points base + 3 points per upgrade (max 45 points)

It would help encourage upgrades and defense and make flipped towers worth less, but I’m not sure it would help with the problems caused by a population or coverage imbalance.

I like the idea to encourage ppl to take upgraded things but the problem that i see is that this only give more ppt to the night/morning capping, because is the time of the day that is more easy to upgrade things.

At prime time(or whatever time wiht full queues on 3 servers) its more difficult to upgrade things.

you can not remove the importance of the night hours because this hours are important hours elsewhere, personally i prefer to just give much more importance to the hours where the three servers are matched to numbers on the map and is more difficult to make differences to well to match the impact of the other hours where it is easier to score.

Cactus.2710:

gidorah.4960:

The more i think about it the more i agree with devon. the best comeback mechanic to fight the lopsided scores is to SIGNIFICANTLY increase the rewards for killing the first place server. if we got champ bags from players on a server beating us by 100k points our fairweathers would show up with all their friends to farm the winning server and we wouldnt see such a slump at the end of the week when we fight. while it wouldnt fix nightcapping it would fix the morale problems nightcapping causes.

sigh …

if it makes you feel better based on every other time they try to give rewards to wvw player’s even if they do go with this plan they would undershoot the rewards by so much that it would be a waste of time.

I saw there was some Dev curiosities on how working a team up in game could go for 2 sides that are flagging behind a dominate 3rd, as while it was expected to happen in practice a good chunk of players just attack any enemy force even if your zerg shows up to help them push and uproot an entrenched enemy that neither has taken out alone

My simplest solution is create a small altar of sorts in an out of the way edge of the map in between each servers starting position. Only commanders could activate it and once activated would need saw 9 others on your server to channel into it. This would show an event to the server whose starting zone it borders. For example I am blue on green borderland. I go to this altar below south camp, red would see the event once we activated the altar. This event could be called "The Enemy of My Enemy… " and would allow a commander on the other server again with 9 others to confirm it to complete theevent. Completing this even would cause your servers to call a truce ffor a short period of time. I was thinking 30 minutes to 1 hour. During this time the two servers see each other as neutral, potentially with both sides being able to see the commander tags of the two that made the truce.

This would allow the servers to coordinate and communicate to their members that they are aligned but still allow each other to damage each other. Ideally the allied server should remain neutral(and yellow) for the duration of the event even if you start fighting them. This means at a glance you can determine who is who in a fight with all 3 sides and try to avoid taking out your allies. But this also means that one an objective is taken and both sides try to cap it they can fight it out if one is unwilling to step aside and let the other have it.

I would have to say we use the term server population but we really should be considering what % of each servers poplulation meets certain criteria first. Anet doesn’t have to share these numbers merely reference them internally when making adjustmentson the eenticements and balances of wvw. I would say break it down A) the players that play 4+ days a week in wvw regardless of score the players that play when the server is ahead. Once we see the population densities of regular wvw players as well as how much that increases during a winning week we can tiredly set about enacting plans to try to bring a balance about.

And to me part of that balance is not keeping the t1 servers cooped up and essentially only fighting amongst themselves. Especially on the old system the t1 servers got so high up in ranking score that once the random matches started any week you didn’t fight at least one other t1 server you hemorrhaged ranking points even when winning by a large margin because it wasn’t huge enough. However if it had gone on longer we would have likely seen eventually weeks where all 3 t1 didnt fight each other. This may sound of but I see that as the optimum solution. Especially the regular wvw players they seek a challenge and winning by blowout doesnt offer much. You would see guilds move to other servers seeking battles against the t1s. Hopefully spreading the concentration of regular wvw from just the cuurent kitten potentially the top 9 servers.

Especially if this wascoupled with a personal buff. The buff would be for the servers that are not currently in the lead. And would accrue through out the week as you played in wvw and your server was not in the lead. Think of it as the /age command but would track time played in wvw that week while not Iin the lead. There would be certain milestones that would determine which buffs applied to you or how many. These would apply even if your server takes the lead. You would just quit accruing more once you were in the lead. These buffs could increase gains like wxp coins karma etc. Maybe even some small stat buffs like dmg to guards or temporary ranks in a wvw skill at significant milestones. This would serve as a motivator to still put in the time and fight for your server by turning more of those fair weather wvw players into regular wvw players and help even out population density.

I haven’t read the whole thread, but I wanted to comment on some of the ideas here.

Any ideas about limiting population to the lowest pop should be thrown out. Waiting to WvW is not fun. So making more people wait is not a good idea.

Incentives for Attacking

A number of people suggested adding incentives for attacking the leading server. I agree with the concept, but all of the incentives that I saw were based off of the rank of the objective. This is a bad idea because it will discourage people from ranking up their objectives to more than a minimally optimal level.

I think time-based incentives would be better. Taking a tower or keep that has been held for 24+ hours should offer better rewards and the rewards should increase the longer the objective is held.

Also, as the match progresses and it becomes increasingly obvious that one side will win, bonuses to score won’t help much, so the bonuses should be individual rewards. Bags with a higher chance for purple gear are an example.

Finally, time-based incentives encourage a type of gameplay that I’ve seen in WvW forum fencing where underpopulated servers dare their opponents to take their fully sieged garrison.

Now this particular example would benefit the higher population server, but I don’t think lower population servers would mind giving incentives to fight where they are strongest while the dominant server will still offer many more bonus targets.

Balanced WvWvW Play

There are some who want perfectly balanced WvW play. I don’t think this is possible without limiting the number of players and, as I’ve already suggested, stopping players from playing is a bad idea.

Instead, I think you should introduce a Guild v. Guild style of gameplay that is a cross between PvP and WvWvW.

Guilds can challenge other guilds to fight on 20v20 and 60v60 maps for 2-6 hour matches. The challenges could be between any servers, but fights within the current matchup could contribute score to the current WvWvW matchup.

The advantage of adding this style of gameplay are as follows.

-Hard-core WvW guilds get to fight good opposition without PUGs messing up their fights.
-Casual WvW players will find WvW a little more friendly with fewer hard-cores on the main maps.
-High-pop always-queued servers will have shorter queues with an alternate WvW style of gameplay.
-Either dominant servers will lose more players as their WvW crews get bored and play GvG, or hard-core WvW players on dominated servers will be able to find even matches after WvW becomes imbalanced.

There are disadvantages to this approach, but the ones that I expect can be mitigated. I won’t get in to them since…wall of text.

styx.7294:

I think this would be a fantastic and fresh change for season 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHcO6Xo8eJ8

Where instead of 3 servers fightin the servers are split by 3 colours and fight each other with WvW guesting allowed to servers within your colour.

This seems a bit complex but I think it would really help address the fundamental issue, which is people clumping on certain servers. If suggestions to penalize large population servers are non-starters, you need a way to get people to move to lower population servers, and this would let that happen in a way not even free transfers off high tier servers would.

DevonCarver.5370:

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

Part of the reasoning behind the Edge of the Mists, as I understand, is to let you play around with certain variables. As a lazy exception, at random times, PPT earned from certain activities on a particular map might increase or decrease. Kind of a WvW version of the Scarlet invasions, or the Living Story as a whole- Events shift population into particular zones or entirely new ones.

Also you made a note in one of your earlier posts about personal reward vs realm score. Some kind of underdog mechanic which boosts both personal reward and realm score might be cool.

Is this thread being watched at all?
Timezones affect which players play at which times, choosing a chunk of time that you don’t play in and going “yep! lets make the points there worthless!” is just…..arrogant.
Population imbalance is a given, example: I started out on yaks bend, discovered that nope, the oceanic is kinda tiny here and the worlds slowly getting more empty of players when i do pve. Switched to dragonbrand, discovered that wow, the attitudes in here are shocking! the WvW is really small during my timeframe and temples? eh? they ever open?. Then decided, I can’t always live in wvw, occasionally I need pve stuff done too. read a crapton of forums and google postings (transfers aren’t cheap!) watched the temple status for a week and discovered ok, looks like Tarnished Coast is for me.
The wvw has players even if i’m up late on the weekend, the pve zones have people actually doing stuff like the temples and it feels far more…alive.
Server transfers don’t just happen so people can win at WvW, a lot of it is timezones, people and guild attitudes when you do play. The reason oceanic etc migrate to servers known to already have coverage there is because …well…it sucks playing alone.
There will always be a zerg than dwarfs yours at some time of the day, even T1 has a dead hour where you can just rock up and take a tower.
The matchups and the points need a rework, for both – you need to have data. Players on at x time, players took x in x minutes, was it just a zerg drive by across all 3 maps at time x? was it a momentary chance and they jumped at it?
We don’t have the data needed to solve this for anet, they need to start fielding some kitten ideas of their own. With freaking feedback.
edit: gameplay 2,500+ hours. Wasn’t just a jump ship! quick decision on server transfers.

Distaste.4801:

Slushey.8236:

DevonCarver.5370:

I think there is something to the idea of PPT being higher during certain times of day, but it has sort of the opposite problem.

[Before I begin, I want to point out that the game currently lacks Oceanic and South-East Asian server options, so players from these regions are forced to play on either a North American or European server and therefore shouldn’t be penalised in their efforts because they have no other options.]

As an Oceanic WvW player on a North American server, I know that servers struggle to pull numbers during the Oceanic (OC), South-East Asian (SEA) and European (EU) time zones in contrast to the North American (NA) time slot. However, the WvW-focused guilds online during OC, SEA and EU slots put in just as much effort as the NA guilds do. Penalising these time slots not only devalues the effort players put in, but also reduces the desire to put in hours for a time zone which barely helps the servers war score.

I do, however, see the problem in a server stacking a specific time zone. Up until recently Blackgate severely lacked in the EU slot compared to Sanctum of Rall who had previously gained several large European guilds which dominated tier 1 during the EU hours. Part of overcoming this has been trying to find new WvW players who could fill our time zone.

All servers lack population during certain hours, but I believe part of being a WvW community is aiming to grow your WvW player base all times of the day, not just NA. This might be recruiting guilds from others servers, or simply organising for a PvE guild on your own server to join you in WvW occasionally.

This idea of reducing PPT during certain hours also raises the issue of unofficial OC and SEA servers. Servers such as Sea of Sorrows, Fort Aspenwood and Isle of Janthir are rich in OC players but lack NA coverage, yet are based on a NA server. If the PPT gained during the OC slot was reduced, they could put in the same amount of hours as NA on their opposing server and still loose because their time and effort isn’t worth as much. The same would apply to Jade Quarry which has a large SEA player base and a smaller NA coverage, so they would be at a major disadvantage despite the dedicated and skilled players on the server.

All in all, I don’t believe reducing the PPT rate during selected times of the day is a good idea at all, as the efforts of OC and SEA players would be neglected, and I’m sure EU players would go back to EU servers where their hard work could be more effective.

The problem is that some timezones do not work anywhere near as hard as NA primetime, yet they determine the match. Are you really trying to say that those timezones where pretty much no map has a queue and things aren’t well defended is equal to NA primetime where nearly every map has a queue and everything is well defended? Sorry, but I don’t think the effort the timezones put in is near what NA primetime has to put in. Sure you put in the same amount of time, but there is a whole lot less stress and tactics involved.

What needs to be incorporated is scaling points based on population. Meaning that if you’re taking things while a map is completely queued for all sides it is worth a lot more than when a map has 20 people on one side and maybe 5 on the other two. It doesn’t discriminated against any timezone but it emphasizes the difficulty and effort required to do so when you’re actually fighting an opponent. There would obviously be a baseline value so contributions when matchups are lopsided are still worth something but not high enough to solely determine the winner of the match.

Firstly, I think the suggestion you put forward in the second paragraph has some value to it. In all honestly, it’s probably amongst the most effective that I’ve seen presented in this thread.

However, your first paragraph is completely and utterly ignorant. While it is true that NA is pretty much the only time zone which can queue all four maps, that doesn’t make the job of OC, SEA and EU any easier. During OC prime every single map in tier 1 WvW has some has a force on every map (roughly 20 – 40 people each). Fighting two other servers with roughly equal numbers is still just as much as a challenge, especially considering the room in each map for a second force to hop over and outnumber you with double the people. Not to mention the fact that when this happens and keeps on other borderlands get hit we have to swiftly move around to assist while still being agile enough to hold down our own assigned map. If anything, I would argue that the work put in by OC, SEA and EU is far more than NA which consistently has enough numbers on all four maps to hold down their territory and enough people to spare to sit down to scout.

I’m going to be brief :

my opinion if you don’t want to force transfer (which would upset many players) is to make sure you give the tools to a smaller but well organized group to beat a zerg.

- remove downed state
- impossibility to raise dead people if still in fight
- remove or increase AOE cap
- no more possibility to TP to a contested fort every few minutes
- reduce the number of siege machine a team can have active on the map (or at least the number of golem) : it would be harder for blobs to organize “8-10 golems” rushes but the smaller server could still organize smaller “2-3 golems” attack
- make it harder to capture a fort/tower. I would start with giving the structure’s lord a 20/30 minutes immunity buff (i wouldn’t change the timer for the camps though), make it a lot harder to shoot people up on walls and easier to shoot at people from walls.

I don’t think this would it would be possible for the small team to beat the bigger team but i think this way the small team still can have some fun instead of seeing its towers re-capped by the enemy within minutes.

On the other end, playing on Vizunah, i can say that or bigger strength is our coverage. We have very dedicated players/commanders who go on “night duty”. As a result, we are scoring very high when our enemies are asleep and we are ticking about the same level as they do during prime time.

I think this is extremely unfun. I love winning as every other man, but is it fun winning because some people play when everyone is asleep ? I’d say reduce the number of points given to teams during the server’s off hours (or maybe divide it between 3 “playtime zones”.)

Somebody else in this thread add the idea that instead of having a tick every 12 minutes we could have a tick every few hours. I find this idea worth exploring as well.

Thanks for reading.

EDIT : this poster stated it very well :

“What needs to be incorporated is scaling points based on population. Meaning that if you’re taking things while a map is completely queued for all sides it is worth a lot more than when a map has 20 people on one side and maybe 5 on the other two. It doesn’t discriminated against any timezone but it emphasizes the difficulty and effort required to do so when you’re actually fighting an opponent. There would obviously be a baseline value so contributions when matchups are lopsided are still worth something but not high enough to solely determine the winner of the match.”

“Eat crow while it’s fresh, it’ll taste better.” quote from a 90something year old patient of mine. This discussion is old crow, but I’m glad ANET is finally “man’d up” enough to eat it. Thank you!

I’ve only been playing WvW regularly for a couple months now, but I know what I don’t love about it and I know what I do love about it. I absolutely DO NOT love being outnumbered 10:1 in WvW because the “server” has X number of people on it yet only 1/1000th of X on the “server” actually play WvW.

I remember group pvp… FA, JQ, AB… (faction from GW1) well, vaguely remember, anyways, I do remember there was a timer for the match to start, a timer that ran out and ended the match, and most importantly, someone correct me if I’m wrong here… the match didn’t start (it actually restarted the match countdown timer) until both sides had their full groups ready? Could this logic be applied in some way to help fix this WvW population mess?

One other important thing to note… when one side was winning, the map shifted to favor the losing side (Borderland?) where they had the upperhand, and when things were even, there was a middle map (EBG?)

So, does this lead us to the question… Is it really a matter of population imbalance or is it really about an unfair advantage?

Alternatively… instead of 1v1v1, how about a ladder with just 1v1?

This would

1) give better representation of a server strength vs another server
2) less 2v1 griefing
3) less objectives to take, hence less stuff to defend which gives lower population servers better chance to fortify

Without knowing what the current population limit actually is, a description of the current queuing system and outmanned system and some input from Anet on this, the thread is kitten ing in the wind.

All suggestions that higher ranks or guilds should be given priority in queues should be ignored-that’s just ‘leet’ people being selfish as normal.

They do need to sort out the queue, so that it is a real queue and not a RNG with people being able to skip it, etc. And a timer is an absolute must- sitting around for hours waiting for it to pop is getting very tedious- you can’t really do a dungeon or anything else whilst waiting for it, apart from join the (yawn) champ train.

I’m pretty sure the thread is about POPULATION IMBALANCE not PPT IMBALANCE. so please.. most people in wvw dont give a rats kitten about PPT, but they do care about being steamrolled 10v70 all the time!

1. Stronger breakouts for when you are losing a mismatch.

2. World Messages (like the ones for scarlet) to encourage people to play when queues are empty and your BL needs help.

3. Big WXP bonuses for outmanned

4. Reduce the map cap

5. Remove the concept of servers from PVE. Make all zones overflows. Like districts in GW1. Then population can just be based on WVW.

WvW is death of a thousand cuts. There are a thousand little ways that have nothing to do with how these so called leagues are organized or how ppt is calculated which negatively affect wvw. Many of these things are basic design elements of the game at large. I mentioned some of them including down state and sieging down structures from inside the safety of other structures. To be honest I dont think it can be fixed without a radical redesign of many core game elements. I mean we’re talking about a game where balance vis a vis individual classes is NOT a design principle. Dont know how one can design large scale pvp starting from such a seed as that.

Here’s hoping ‘others’ are watching this game and taking tips on how NOT to do large scale pvp in such a way that encourages mindless blobbing.

Why not start with nerfing the zerg mentality that makes larger numbers so effective, regardless of organization? Enlarge the maps, making objectives take longer to get to and add more terrain advantages for small groups to use against larger numbers. Lengthen the time it takes to rez someone from fully dead by a large amount, which does not speed up with more rezzers. Possibly make it impossible to rez from dead when you are in combat. All of this would limit the mobility of a large group, especially if they’re uncoordinated. Put a cooldown on how often people can take a separate portal so people don’t try using mesmers to bypass the larger maps. Think about fixing the coding in the game so that the aoe cap can be raised. Encourage items, abilities, and traits that promote reaction-based gameplay and not just the spamming of 1 or 2 buttons (i.e. perplexity runes and many condi builds). Scale rewards based on how many people completed the event (yes, this may deter some pve’ers, but is that such a bad thing given the current karma training state WvW is in?). An actual combat advantage of some sort to the outnumbered server on a map would be nice and has been asked for for a while now. And if you wanna help move population from higher-tier servers to the lower ones, lower que sizes, at least on the borderlands, where most people trying to avoid the lag go, and open up free transfers (limited to servers with stacked populations) to the lower-rated servers for a short time, with each server’s window ending shortly after reaching a certain quota. This could be repeated until all servers are relatively even in either WvW population or scoring. You still have to ask, though, if everyone really wants to have the same population or if some people are happier in smaller servers and some in larger, just as long as they fight similarly-situated servers.
You’ve created an open-world PvP game mode where actual PvP is increasingly looked down upon. Please stop catering to the easy mode players who want to turn it into the next champ farm.

Steelo.4597:

I’m pretty sure the thread is about POPULATION IMBALANCE not PPT IMBALANCE. so please.. most people in wvw dont give a rats kitten about PPT, but they do care about being steamrolled 10v70 all the time!

finding a way to keep PPT from running away due to coverage issue (still.prefer a points per capture system) would help more then you seem to think.

if points stay close and an outmanned server still has a way to score points you’ll have less reason to stack servers. You’ll have less people “phoning it in” since the score will be closer and people will be less discouraged.

the thing is what your talking about can always happen. There is always a chance that one map will have way more enemies then you have friendlies. Even the stacked servers have this problem. SoR is pretty barren on the map as of last night. I didn’t even have a que and TC had better coverage then us during NA primetime. This has to do with the fact that people looked at the score and just decided that the gap is to wide to surmount and either didn’t play our went and did pve.

The problem on world population and coverage isn’t something you can really fix. Especially not by nerfing stuff like zergs.

Putting a higher reward on killing and taking stuff from a high populated (or 1st ranked) server might make it more interesting for players to jump in. But it could also attract players that wouldn’t be very beneficial for the server.

In the end i don’t think you can really fix this coverage problem besides recruiting guilds that can cover them which isn’t easy of course.

Instead of looking at the population of servers, you might want to look at the size of the worlds of WvW we play in. One of the major reasons people are turned of by playing in WvW with low population is by being outnumbered. This happens because there are 4 maps to play on. And when one server has 200 people on for WvW and another only 50, it will cause a major demoralizing impact on the experience of players both in battle, but also in score. Obviously, 4 big maps for a limited number of players is just too much.

Maybe freeze specific maps during hours when population is low for 1 or more servers in order to get people more together and give lower populated servers a chance to compete during those off hours. Yes, freezing maps will give high populated servers a longer que, but perhaps all the more reason not to stack on one server and maybe try out other servers instead of jumping on the bandwagon.

Another way of deterring the map hopping zergs., you know the ones, like a swarm of locusts, running around in a circle capping everything in their path before jumping to the next borderland and doing it again.

When a home borderland is under the outmanned buff, the PPT & Wxp from capping for that map is frozen with the only Wxp available from kills. Even more drastic, have all towers/keeps/camps revert to their previous state once the zerg has gone as long as the outmanned buff is running.

This leads to the zerg having nothing to do, little Wxp to be gained and as a consequence having no reason to play on a stacked server.

Harsh, maybe, but the mindless Wxp zerg needs to be stopped somehow.

The game could use a revamp of its supply line modeling in the borderlands and EB.

I have attached a picture of what the current supply lines are like, as well as a proposed revamp of those supply likes from the perspective of the Blue force and Green force on the Red Borderlands.

The issue with the current supply lines is that it is very easy for a zerg to dominate all needed supply points and not need to stay and defend them thanks to the recap timers on the camp boss being longer than what it takes for a zerg to obliterate a smaller defense force at nearby towers, plus the camps generating supply out of thin air even when isolated from friendly control points.

This combination makes it difficult for small mobile havok teams to have the impact they should be able to have in cutting enemy supply lines, forcing the enemy to spread out to defend captured locations instead of moving in a singular mass.

Alternate supply modeling should be used to help combat the natural inertia of mass numbers.

The overall goal of such a redesign of the supply route model would be to make it increasingly difficult to assault additional objectives as each side has a static amount of supply being distributed per tick to all available camps, towers, and keeps.

Each portal keep should be the sole supply generator for each side; and caravans should all originate from there and radiate outward in a web pattern that requires a drop off point to be friendly before the caravan can continue on.

There should be no recapture blackout timers at any camp or tower; either defend it or lose it. The timers disproportionately benefit the side with greater numbers as is.

This would allow small groups greater ability to disrupt supply availability to the current front line in each zone by either destroying caravans or capturing undefended objectives. This would force an assault zerg to reallocate a portion of its forces to guarding each successive captured point; allowing defense forces on the other factions much needed breathing room when outnumbered.

Supply camps under this would no longer generate supply; but rather serve as a lightly defended stockpile point with a respawn beacon that consumes supply per person spawned there. This would put greater emphasis on fighting efficiently; as poor tactics focused on brute force can easily drain your side of supply at those camps; which means greater travel time to rejoin the battle as well as making it more difficult to quickly bring siege to bear on remaining enemy objectives.

Overkillengine.6084:

The game could use a revamp of its supply line modeling in the borderlands and EB.

I have attached a picture of what the current supply lines are like, as well as a proposed revamp of those supply likes from the perspective of the Blue force and Green force on the Red Borderlands.

The issue with the current supply lines is that it is very easy for a zerg to dominate all needed supply points and not need to stay and defend them thanks to the recap timers on the camp boss being longer than what it takes for a zerg to obliterate a smaller defense force at nearby towers, plus the camps generating supply out of thin air even when isolated from friendly control points.

This combination makes it difficult for small mobile havok teams to have the impact they should be able to have in cutting enemy supply lines, forcing the enemy to spread out to defend captured locations instead of moving in a singular mass.

Alternate supply modeling should be used to help combat the natural inertia of mass numbers.

The overall goal of such a redesign of the supply route model would be to make it increasingly difficult to assault additional objectives as each side has a static amount of supply being distributed per tick to all available camps, towers, and keeps.

Each portal keep should be the sole supply generator for each side; and caravans should all originate from there and radiate outward in a web pattern that requires a drop off point to be friendly before the caravan can continue on.

There should be no recapture blackout timers at any camp or tower; either defend it or lose it. The timers disproportionately benefit the side with greater numbers as is.

This would allow small groups greater ability to disrupt supply availability to the current front line in each zone by either destroying caravans or capturing undefended objectives. This would force an assault zerg to reallocate a portion of its forces to guarding each successive captured point; allowing defense forces on the other factions much needed breathing room when outnumbered.

Supply camps under this would no longer generate supply; but rather serve as a lightly defended stockpile point with a respawn beacon that consumes supply per person spawned there. This would put greater emphasis on fighting efficiently; as poor tactics focused on brute force can easily drain your side of supply at those camps; which means greater travel time to rejoin the battle as well as making it more difficult to quickly bring siege to bear on remaining enemy objectives.

This is a very in-depth analysis offering a sound and possibly very interesting and tactical mechanism. Should there be some kind of capture points that are held clear of enemies at all times or the likes in order to make sure zergs have to split up?

That image shows that not only structures and mechanics are not well thougt out for defence, but also supply lines for borderlands actually favor the attackers and not the defender.

Madam Pomfrey.4162:

That image shows that not only structures and mechanics are not well thougt out for defence, but also supply lines for borderlands actually favor the attackers and not the defender.

Perhaps this was intended? After all, it’s easier for the defender to, well, defend. Look at all the places they can assault from within their own captured structures, and how many structures they can easily get to from their base. Two towers, one-to-three supply camps, and a keep. The attackers can each only get to one tower and one camp easily, possibly one keep. And that’s not counting the fact Bay is siegable from Garrison. All this considered, maybe the attackers having more ease getting supply for themselves is meant to offset this?

In addition, I don’t think the proposed idea for supply lines is very good. While sound in theory, it suffers one fatal flaw: Ease of disruption. All it takes is one small group managing to sneak near the enemy spawn and suddenly they’ve denied ALL siege for the ENTIRE map for one side. And THAT is purely decimating. And if one side gets pushed back to spawn, even if they take a camp through one of the side exits they won’t be able to get supply anywhere.

Chessrook.8643:

Madam Pomfrey.4162:

That image shows that not only structures and mechanics are not well thougt out for defence, but also supply lines for borderlands actually favor the attackers and not the defender.

Perhaps this was intended? After all, it’s easier for the defender to, well, defend. Look at all the places they can assault from within their own captured structures, and how many structures they can easily get to from their base. Two towers, one-to-three supply camps, and a keep. The attackers can each only get to one tower and one camp easily, possibly one keep. And that’s not counting the fact Bay is siegable from Garrison. All this considered, maybe the attackers having more ease getting supply for themselves is meant to offset this?

In addition, I don’t think the proposed idea for supply lines is very good. While sound in theory, it suffers one fatal flaw: Ease of disruption. All it takes is one small group managing to sneak near the enemy spawn and suddenly they’ve denied ALL siege for the ENTIRE map for one side. And THAT is purely decimating. And if one side gets pushed back to spawn, even if they take a camp through one of the side exits they won’t be able to get supply anywhere.

I wouldn’t say defending is easier. If you want to defend a tower against a blob… have fun. it takes about 2-3 minutes for them to get in and wipe everyone.

And no: it’s supposed to be decimating. DEFEND multiple places. It will cause blobs to have to split up… or to loose.

Sirendor.1394:

Chessrook.8643:

Madam Pomfrey.4162:

That image shows that not only structures and mechanics are not well thougt out for defence, but also supply lines for borderlands actually favor the attackers and not the defender.

Perhaps this was intended? After all, it’s easier for the defender to, well, defend. Look at all the places they can assault from within their own captured structures, and how many structures they can easily get to from their base. Two towers, one-to-three supply camps, and a keep. The attackers can each only get to one tower and one camp easily, possibly one keep. And that’s not counting the fact Bay is siegable from Garrison. All this considered, maybe the attackers having more ease getting supply for themselves is meant to offset this?

In addition, I don’t think the proposed idea for supply lines is very good. While sound in theory, it suffers one fatal flaw: Ease of disruption. All it takes is one small group managing to sneak near the enemy spawn and suddenly they’ve denied ALL siege for the ENTIRE map for one side. And THAT is purely decimating. And if one side gets pushed back to spawn, even if they take a camp through one of the side exits they won’t be able to get supply anywhere.

I wouldn’t say defending is easier. If you want to defend a tower against a blob… have fun. it takes about 2-3 minutes for them to get in and wipe everyone.

I was referring more to the overall map. i.e. it’s easier for the Home team to take a majority of the map than it is for either of the two attacking teams on a borderlands.

Simple solution coming through, everyone stand back:

Objectives can only tick for a certain amount before they go flat. After that, they do not reward points to the captor any longer till they’re “recharged”, but still to anyone else who caps it. At that point they would serve mainly as point denial to the enemy servers as well as defensive structures.

It’s good that a server that manages to dominate during the night reaps a points reward. But it’s not okay that this gets greatly magnified. Remember, the losing server not only has to re-cap everything, some of which upgraded/full of ACs by now, it also has to do the exact same feat of holding them through an entire night/morning (or equivalent amount in hours) AND deprive the nightcapping server of exactly the same amount of points for that time just to break even. This is crazy.

Coupled with the both psychological and strategical effect it has that you only ever start a day with wooden towers in your thirds, and the enemy server with fully upgraded T3 keeps with waypoints in them, the effect is doubly and thirdly magnified.

However, this is only a band-aid fix to a very intrinsic problem to WvW server balance, namely the by-now functionally obsolete PvE-WvW server coupling (which makes it due to PvE concerns impossible to equalize numbers and lock pop-capped servers, which wouldn’t be the case if WvW servers were separate. Also IP restrictions.)
I will perhaps elaborate on that further in the future.

This is a pretty tough nut to crack. Population only tells one small part of the story when it comes to WvW. If 2 servers are equal in population, but 1 server is WvW oriented with dozens of large WvW guilds, and the second server has 3-4 WvW guilds and the rest is PvE players, then the WvW server is going to dominate. While dominating people will use coverage and population as the excuse

As long as WvW is partly designed to bring PvE players into WvW you will never get a realistic look at WvW populations outside of the top 3 servers. If you really want to see what WvW population looks like from server to server, you would have to remove all the PvE type activities/achievements from WvW.

One way this would work (yes I now many will object) is to make WvW gear/level like PvP. Without the concerns of up arrow leveling, gear chasing, crafting etc. you would have WvW players in WvW. The WvW ranks etc. would stay as part of the carrot for playing. Make achievments, etc completely WvW based (killing players, camps etc for daily). Once the carrot is WvW based only, then you could have a more realistic sense of WvW populations

1) WvW doesn’t reward people for being good at anything personally. Funniest thing is that it rewards also people who have done nothing to deserve the bonuses for example. WvW only rewards for steamrolling weak opponents.

2) WvW as game mode should be more balanced when it comes to 1v1 combat and player skill.

3) Also “small WvW” should be rewarding game mode instead of being nearly negative income to your wallet.

4) WvW has way too few maps and developement resources.

5) Because people who like to WvW (or spvp too) do not grind much pve they really fall a lot behind when you think about getting legendaries and ascended gear etc. To some players who have been playing since beta 50g is still like whole fortune. I think gear grind and WvW do not belong together in this grindy form it is now.

6) Server transfer should be free.

7) Reward from WvW should be dependant how much YOU DO and how SKILLED you are instead of how much some other people did. Or do the french sleep.

8) No real rewards for doing something together with your own community aka guild in wvw. Maybe by purpose but a bit meh anyway.

I really do like the idea that you can also make something out of wvw if you just zerg like a sheep but where’s the extra reward for doing something risky or special?

Generally I feel WvW is too much fluffy kitten playground. In my opinion it could be much more.

Steelo.4597:

I’m pretty sure the thread is about POPULATION IMBALANCE not PPT IMBALANCE. so please.. most people in wvw dont give a rats kitten about PPT, but they do care about being steamrolled 10v70 all the time!

This … a thousand times this. PPT doesn’t mean squat to me if I can’t play WvW to the same extent as the team with a much larger population. If I have no hope of taking a tower or keep, or holding my own when my group runs into an enemy group, that removes a large segment of the game play EVEN IF my side is able to keep the score close by capping camps or picking off stragglers. I really, really don’t understand why so many people here don’t understand this.

Just because the score is close doesn’t mean that the game is fun to play.

The goal is that at any given time the wvw population is equal. Of course, you can toy around with having a population-weighted PPT formula but that stills leaves lopsided situations in the field and across all maps.

>>> It’s important to note the primary population windows change drastically across the respective prime-times: NA, SEA and EU.

An existing scenario that identifies today’s conflict:
>>> Server A and Server B share roughly the same overall wvw population however Server A is very strong SEA and Server B is very strong NA. The end result is a match-up that is constantly lopsided. An actual example of this is Sea of Sorrows and Maguuma. Overall they are close but during SEA SoS rofl-stomps everyone except Tier 1.

>>> The question is how do we segregate these population imbalances without an insane overhaul?

Proposal:
>>> Servers and scores are now identified by three separate 8 hour time slots, NA, EU and SEA. Using Server time as a base NA is 4pm to 2am, SEA is 2am to 10am, and EU is 10am to 4pm. Every 8 hours the server match-ups will reset to the previous days’ map for the same window. The scores, rankings and match-ups will be separate as well.

For example:
>>> Let’s take a scenario from the perspective of Tarnished Coast. The SEA match-up is Tarnished Coast vs Maguuma vs FA would match up starting from 2am. At 10am the wvw would go down and transition back to the EU match-up as Tarnished Coast vs Jade Quarry vs Blackgate. The map would reset to the same state as it was in EU from the previous day.

>>> The formulas would remain the same to determine the match-ups except that it will formulate 3 scores for each server based on the primetime window. Rankings will be provided as a server cumulative and separately for the respective time slot.

>>> A slight modification to reduce the number of resets is to only have two time slots combining EU and NA as 1pm to 1am and SEA as 1am to 1pm. But this may still have imbalances of course between EU and NA.

The most fun matches are those with the closest populations. Any long term fix should focus on putting players together in even matches. Servers who dominate or get dominated simply have less fun.

I still think the server system is fundamentally flawed and the guild system is the best way to achieve this matchup balance.

akanibbles.6237:

styx.7294:

I think this would be a fantastic and fresh change for season 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHcO6Xo8eJ8

Where instead of 3 servers fightin the servers are split by 3 colours and fight each other with WvW guesting allowed to servers within your colour.

this please. excellent refreshing concept. ++++++++++++

This seems like the perfect solution to the issue. It would really level the playing field, give everyone a chance to see different aspects of WvW and probably eliminate queues on every server.

Win Win Win.

leviN.4390:

Alternatively… instead of 1v1v1, how about a ladder with just 1v1?

This would

1) give better representation of a server strength vs another server
2) less 2v1 griefing
3) less objectives to take, hence less stuff to defend which gives lower population servers better chance to fortify

It sounds good in theory but would cripple larger servers. With one EB and only 2 home worlds, you are halving the total population that could be in WvW at any given time.

Sirendor.1394:

Overkillengine.6084:

The game could use a revamp of its supply line modeling in the borderlands and EB.

I have attached a picture of what the current supply lines are like, as well as a proposed revamp of those supply likes from the perspective of the Blue force and Green force on the Red Borderlands.

The issue with the current supply lines is that it is very easy for a zerg to dominate all needed supply points and not need to stay and defend them thanks to the recap timers on the camp boss being longer than what it takes for a zerg to obliterate a smaller defense force at nearby towers, plus the camps generating supply out of thin air even when isolated from friendly control points.

This combination makes it difficult for small mobile havok teams to have the impact they should be able to have in cutting enemy supply lines, forcing the enemy to spread out to defend captured locations instead of moving in a singular mass.

Alternate supply modeling should be used to help combat the natural inertia of mass numbers.

The overall goal of such a redesign of the supply route model would be to make it increasingly difficult to assault additional objectives as each side has a static amount of supply being distributed per tick to all available camps, towers, and keeps.

Each portal keep should be the sole supply generator for each side; and caravans should all originate from there and radiate outward in a web pattern that requires a drop off point to be friendly before the caravan can continue on.

There should be no recapture blackout timers at any camp or tower; either defend it or lose it. The timers disproportionately benefit the side with greater numbers as is.

This would allow small groups greater ability to disrupt supply availability to the current front line in each zone by either destroying caravans or capturing undefended objectives. This would force an assault zerg to reallocate a portion of its forces to guarding each successive captured point; allowing defense forces on the other factions much needed breathing room when outnumbered.

Supply camps under this would no longer generate supply; but rather serve as a lightly defended stockpile point with a respawn beacon that consumes supply per person spawned there. This would put greater emphasis on fighting efficiently; as poor tactics focused on brute force can easily drain your side of supply at those camps; which means greater travel time to rejoin the battle as well as making it more difficult to quickly bring siege to bear on remaining enemy objectives.

This is a very in-depth analysis offering a sound and possibly very interesting and tactical mechanism. Should there be some kind of capture points that are held clear of enemies at all times or the likes in order to make sure zergs have to split up?

I would suggest any spawn camp under this system be unusable for respawn or teleporting as long as the camp is contested (enemy in the capture circle).

A small force or even a wily individual could cut supply and reinforcement lines at a critical moment this way unless regular patrols are made, which would force a zerg to slowly fracture as it captured more objectives to defend them or immediately lose them to an even moderately persistent havoc squad.

Edit: and the reason I suggest this is that in order to cut down on “server stack to win”, you also have to address “zerg to win”.