Guild Wars 2

Cactus.2710:

lordkrall.7241:

Maybe you guys should start thinking a bit about what/how you write?
The kind of posts we see here right now is most likely a sure way to get them to shut down this initiative and not do it again in the future.

At this point, what would we have lost? That’s a serious question. We haven’t had a single informed, positive bit of feedback from ANet throughout this entire thread (no … I don’t consider Devon’s posts to be positive since he doesn’t seem to accept that population balance is the objective) and there has been zero collaborative content at all. I desperately wanted this thread to amount to something substantial, and there have been many, many worthwhile suggestions by the WvW player base in an effort to hold up our side of the collaboration. Where is the corresponding participation from ANet?? So far all we know is that the devs have finally managed to get their caffeine fix.

pretty much this look at the living story and pvp threads and then look at this and ask yourself if it’s us players not doing our part or if its the wvw dev’s.

gidorah.4960:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Keep in mind that weekends are a thing. Now that we’re all back in the office, caffeinated and ready to go, we’re gonna jump back in the threads.

Having said that, when you guys get going and are having good discussions, we sit back and make sure we give you guys room to debate/discuss. Just because there isn’t a dev response every X posts, it doesn’t mean we’re not watching the thread.

weird the other 2 threads the dev’s have had no problem posting throughout the week. Maybe you can read the other collaborative development threads see the amount of interaction and see why people think the wvw is being ignored.

Maybe we can back off and be thankful they are even acknowledging and responding at all to these issues I know I am thankful!

Cactus.2710:

Hickeroar.9734:

Population issues could mostly be solved this way:

Your server’s historical performance should set an expectation/goal for the next match based on who you’re fighting (their ranking/performance). A winner will be picked based on the percentage of the goal that they reach. The goal calculation should be based on probably the last four matchups or something along those lines.

Ex: In BG/SoR/SoS this week, it could be said that BG will have a 250k goal, SoR a 200k goal, and SoS a 100k goal.

Now if BG gets 300k, SoR gets 160k, and SoS gets 130k, SoS would technically be the “winner” because their percentage of goal was 130%, as compared to BGs 120% or SoR’s 80%.

This way every server has a relatively even chance of winning, and you end up playing for a goal that is achievable for your server. You can still “win,” even if you’re the underdog, two tiers out of your league.

Winners for a particular week get a prize of some kind. Bonus WXP or ranks, Karma, gold, and/or something like that. You will also see that the winners will change from week to week, because servers that do exceptionally well one week will have a higher goal to reach for the following week. Then, because it’s percentage based, the less populated servers in their matchup will have a better chance at getting a higher percentage and will probably fight harder for it.

You don’t “win” if you’re the undermanned server and all you are able to do is cap camps and kill yaks … and that is exactly what happens even if your score says you were “competitive”. Returning the enjoyment to WvW requires that populations be more or else equivalent so that everyone has roughly the same ability to engage in all those aspects of the match that the game design calls for.

Agreed, I want fun, I don’t want to be steam rolled for 7 days at every turn just to be told I won because I showed up and the Dev team felt bad for me.

Cribbage.2056:

ptitminou.6489:

Here, I’ll break your idea:
EVERYONE GET OUT OF THIS BL – [DFND] HAS 20 PEOPLE IN AND WILL LOCK IT DOWN. GET OUT SO THE OTHERS GET STUCK IN QUEUE!

On every organized server, that is exactly how it would work. As long as there is PPT, you cannot have balanced matches. However, sPvP does have that balance you look for, why not join it?

a) I think you’ll find most people’s desire to actually play is greater than their desire to win. Not many would care enough about winning to actually leave the border. Probably it would happen, but I can’t see it being frequent enough to hurt the game.

b) With population limiting rules there is a question do you limit it per border or for the whole of the borderlands. I suspect the latter would work a lot better.

c) There is also a question of how low the minimum population should be before the capping kicks in. I personally think it should be low enough that minimum vs unpopulated border would struggle to take a tower. That would help a lot to prevent night capping. In my opinion 20 is way too high.

Hi, have you ever gotten involved into server politics? Have you ever seen a guild of 50 end up with only 5 players because all the WvW guilds started going at em, recruiting players, shaming the guild, refusing to play with certain guilds? Leaving them dead? 1 or 2 trolls saying they wont leave is not a problem. So what if 22 players are allowed in. 10vs22 is still winnable when you have 3 superior ACs on every gate.

So if there is a limit for the whole of the BLs then you punish all those who dont play in NA primetime since logging in will be near-impossible. ATM, our PPT during primetime is 500+ but we have at most 30 people on our BLs during day times. So your suggestion is to make sure our opponents cannot cap it back? 10 people can defend easily vs 15 with a few ACs.

For your last point, you are saying that if we do a T3 keep, it should be impossible to take if no one is on? I mean, if towers are hard, imagine keeps and the hour of running supply to building siege on 2 gates. 1 at a time of course, since guards may respawn you gotta keep em dead. All that given that 5 people can take a tower in 2 minutes. Yeah, we’ve ninja’d keeps with only 5 before, but it took forever and required absolutely no resistence.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Keep in mind that weekends are a thing. Now that we’re all back in the office, caffeinated and ready to go, we’re gonna jump back in the threads.

Having said that, when you guys get going and are having good discussions, we sit back and make sure we give you guys room to debate/discuss. Just because there isn’t a dev response every X posts, it doesn’t mean we’re not watching the thread.

I totally agree with you on the whole weekend thing!

However I got to disagree with you on the watching but not participating thing.

Why?

I’m sure you’ve heard of the silent treatment. But have you ever stopped to wonder why the silent treatment works? Why does saying nothing at all work as a better attack than direct confrontation? The Answer: People care, a lot, about being heard.

The thread was an invitation to forge a relationship between devs and players. However, if we get no response for days, it begins to feel like the silent treatment. We begin to feel hurt and ignored, regardless of whether or not it is justified. When the silent treatment goes on long enough, people can become hostile.

It is not enough for you to be listening but not speaking. We need feedback the same as you. We need to know what YOU think about what WE are saying.

We don’t need a lot of feedback, one post a day would be plenty. Just assure us that we are not talking to a wall.

Gamadorn.2659:

gidorah.4960:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Keep in mind that weekends are a thing. Now that we’re all back in the office, caffeinated and ready to go, we’re gonna jump back in the threads.

Having said that, when you guys get going and are having good discussions, we sit back and make sure we give you guys room to debate/discuss. Just because there isn’t a dev response every X posts, it doesn’t mean we’re not watching the thread.

weird the other 2 threads the dev’s have had no problem posting throughout the week. Maybe you can read the other collaborative development threads see the amount of interaction and see why people think the wvw is being ignored.

Maybe we can back off and be thankful they are even acknowledging and responding at all to these issues I know I am thankful!

i’m not thankful at all for what the wvw dev’s are doing again look at the other collaboration threads and look at this and see why.

Gamadorn.2659:

gidorah.4960:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Keep in mind that weekends are a thing. Now that we’re all back in the office, caffeinated and ready to go, we’re gonna jump back in the threads.

Having said that, when you guys get going and are having good discussions, we sit back and make sure we give you guys room to debate/discuss. Just because there isn’t a dev response every X posts, it doesn’t mean we’re not watching the thread.

weird the other 2 threads the dev’s have had no problem posting throughout the week. Maybe you can read the other collaborative development threads see the amount of interaction and see why people think the wvw is being ignored.

Maybe we can back off and be thankful they are even acknowledging and responding at all to these issues I know I am thankful!

But their not responding to the issues, the thread is about WvW population issues not PPT issues. Without a response this is just a discussion that is going to get out of hand real quick as it already is. We can discuss all these issues and solution with other players until our fingers bleed but, not one of us has the power to implement anything, we don’t work for Anet, I have a feeling once everything is said and done we’ll get some patch notes along the lines of “the players asked and were heard, the upcoming WvW patch will now include Elephants that can be used instead of rams” followed by the player reaction of …. WTF ?

Nuzt.7894:

Gamadorn.2659:

gidorah.4960:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Keep in mind that weekends are a thing. Now that we’re all back in the office, caffeinated and ready to go, we’re gonna jump back in the threads.

Having said that, when you guys get going and are having good discussions, we sit back and make sure we give you guys room to debate/discuss. Just because there isn’t a dev response every X posts, it doesn’t mean we’re not watching the thread.

weird the other 2 threads the dev’s have had no problem posting throughout the week. Maybe you can read the other collaborative development threads see the amount of interaction and see why people think the wvw is being ignored.

Maybe we can back off and be thankful they are even acknowledging and responding at all to these issues I know I am thankful!

But their not responding to the issues, the thread is about WvW population issues not PPT issues. Without a response this is just a discussion that is going to get out of hand real quick as it already is. We can discuss all these issues and solution with other players until our fingers bleed but, not one of us has the power to implement anything, we don’t work for Anet, I have a feeling once everything is said and done we’ll get some patch notes along the lines of “the players asked and were heard, the upcoming WvW patch will now include Elephants that can be used instead of rams” followed by the player reaction of …. WTF ?

To be fair, one of the discussions is that the population imbalance is a large issue because of the scoring system.

While I also agree they could give us more feedback, I think that we could always nit-pick anything they do.

I am just saying, some of these things we have asked them to look at SINCE LAUNCH and were ignored. At least now they are making an active attempt to truly rectify issues that matter in the game and I applaud and am thankful for that even in it’s imperfections. So sure it would be nice if they gave us more feedback, but frankly i’m simply glad they are even addressing it and giving feedback at all! I also appreciate them even asking us for our feedback…something that really was never done in the past. So as much crap as we have given them, I do feel is proper for us to at least acknowledge them when they are trying to help us

JonathanSharp.7094:

Sure, those devs are free to post on the weekend if they want to!

Keep in mind that some devs have families, or may have prior obligations/plans on a weekend, while some other devs may have a lot of free time on a given weekend!

Oh cmon.. since this thread opened on the 28th Oct there have been what 15 pages of posts and like a very small handful of responses from the red badge brigade, one of which is the original opening post and others from Devon basically saying don’t ask for this that etc.
Why do other areas of the game get regular dev responses with a view to collaboration and WvW basically gets given the cold shoulder and before you try reiterating the weekend thing that works both ways, many of us have families, many of us have plans so many of us post during the week in the hope that we get something back before or after the weekend… except we get nothing but silence.

Population imbalance has in no uncertain terms made Season 1 a washout for many of your WvW players and you know it, in fact you most likely knew this weeks prior to launch and rushed in a host of PvE achievements into the season to try and project healthier numbers for servers that were always going to be pushed aside…
You made a concerted effort to push gem sales prior to season 1 via your clueless transfer sales which have only served to widen the population disparity within the leagues, but I guess it got you the all important income spike the bean counters hoped for.. except I would hazard a guess many of the players that have been effected by the population disparity are already fed up and moving on, I know my guild is.

So anyway – If ANET are able to monitor when a server becomes outmanned it must mean you have a monitoring mechanism for each server,. Why then do you seem to think adding a MF bonus buff when this happens is the answer – it never has and has been lambasted many times, but to no avail. Servers no matter what the reasons are, sometimes (or most of the time now on a lot of servers) go outmanned, we all know that, but there are so must be a better way of utilising your monitoring tools and make it more relational to the effects of population imbalance. Slow point ticks, reduce Wxp/Karma gains etc for a start.. but surely before getting to that stage wvw caps need to be better monitored and traffic managed in order to maintain balance. Every server should have overflow maps for each matchup or failing that shard each matchup and just added in an overall points point in the general tab so that each shard accumulates points on its own merit but is all added to the overall points potential etc… if guilds/grps get separated then a porting policy between shards is provided. So many MMO’s provide such a simple but effective solution to population balance its insane that GW2 is so far behind… but instead you say you listen, read and openly encourage collaboration so prove it and start discussing and collaborating instead of playing the “ignore them long enough and they will forget about it” game.

Can’t people just stop with the whole “Buhuhuh the dev is not answering my posts!” and actually post stuff that is useful (unlike this post) instead?

Almost makes me think that some people WANT the initiative shut down.. But then again I suppose that would be perfect for all those claiming that ArenaNet doesn’t care about what the players want.

lordkrall.7241:

Can’t people just stop with the whole “Buhuhuh the dev is not answering my posts!” and actually post stuff that is useful (unlike this post) instead?

Almost makes me think that some people WANT the initiative shut down.. But then again I suppose that would be perfect for all those claiming that ArenaNet doesn’t care about what the players want.

again go look at the other collaboration threads and look at this one. It’s not that the dev’s aren’t answering any particular posts its that the aren’t answering any posts. why would it matter if a discussion thread gets shut down if it had no discussion in the first place.

DevonCarver.5370:

Hey everyone,

I wanted to chime in again and say that the discussion around population imbalance and WvW has been really wide-open and interesting. There are some definite things we’ve learned from reading your responses and some really interesting ideas in here as well. The goal of this initiative is to foster discussion about the game and for that discussion to help us make better design decisions in the future. I think there have been some good points raised in this thread and I’ve definitely seen some new ways of looking at the problem. This particular issue is very thorny, which makes it a bit more difficult to wade into the conversation. Population affects so many other areas that it makes it complicated to untangle it and get actionable ideas. We believe that between the studio and the community we can find new ways of looking at the problems that can lead us to great solutions, and we appreciate your taking the time and energy to share your thoughts. Hopefully we can all take WvW and Guild Wars 2 further by being able to work some of these problems out together.

I wanted to further discuss a couple of ideas. Firstly, several posts have called for reduced map caps in WvW. The problem that would create is that we’d be allowing even fewer people to play in a given period of time if we were to do that. So I wonder if there is another way to accomplish the same goal, while not disenfranchising people who would now be unable to get into the maps? It’s a hard problem because the more populated servers face long queues while the less populated ones face empty maps. From my perspective there aren’t a ton of good options, which is why discussing this problem is pretty important.

Secondly, there has been some amount of discussion about the nature of server transfers and how that affects population. I think there is some space for us to make changes there, but there is always going to be a tradeoff. For example, what if we restricted or completely eliminated transfers during a season? I think it has some positives, but it might be overly damaging to people who aren’t intending to bandwagon, but legitimately want to change servers. It may be the case, though, that that number is so small that it is worth the cost. Or, what if we prevented people from transferring to the higher population servers, but not all of them? Again, it runs the risk of being a burden on some number of folks, but it may be worth the cost.

Again, this is a good discussion, it’s really important to consider the costs to any action and to remember that our goal is to do the best thing for as many of our players as possible.

Thanks for posting, but I’d like to point out that once again neither you nor anyone else bothers to show up until the players get frustrated and the thread turns testy. How can you not understand that you are encouraging the exact negative behavior that these collaboration threads were intended to address??

Server hopping might be reduced by giving incentives to individuals for staying on a server. Improve the WvW drops or give special chests to “server” loyalists, perhaps — make “loyalty” like “luck”, but you lose all loyalty by server hopping.

Make server loyalty a benefit. Sadly, in this society, loyalty is most often bought.

I Love you all !!!

Especially Arena Net !!!!1

Sytherek.7689:

Server hopping might be reduced by giving incentives to individuals for staying on a server. Improve the WvW drops or give special chests to “server” loyalists, perhaps — make “loyalty” like “luck”, but you lose all loyalty by server hopping.

Make server loyalty a benefit. Sadly, in this society, loyalty is most often bought.

I think it’s time to not think about how to reduce server transfers but how to reverse the trend they’ve been on since launch. People post about 7 hour queues while maps are empty!

It hardly helps to restrict movement during the season when you offer reduced price transfers the week before the season starts. What’s the point after the season starts?

DevonCarver.5370:

Hey everyone,

I wanted to chime in again and say that the discussion around population imbalance and WvW has been really wide-open and interesting. There are some definite things we’ve learned from reading your responses and some really interesting ideas in here as well. The goal of this initiative is to foster discussion about the game and for that discussion to help us make better design decisions in the future. I think there have been some good points raised in this thread and I’ve definitely seen some new ways of looking at the problem. This particular issue is very thorny, which makes it a bit more difficult to wade into the conversation. Population affects so many other areas that it makes it complicated to untangle it and get actionable ideas. We believe that between the studio and the community we can find new ways of looking at the problems that can lead us to great solutions, and we appreciate your taking the time and energy to share your thoughts. Hopefully we can all take WvW and Guild Wars 2 further by being able to work some of these problems out together.

I wanted to further discuss a couple of ideas. Firstly, several posts have called for reduced map caps in WvW. The problem that would create is that we’d be allowing even fewer people to play in a given period of time if we were to do that. So I wonder if there is another way to accomplish the same goal, while not disenfranchising people who would now be unable to get into the maps? It’s a hard problem because the more populated servers face long queues while the less populated ones face empty maps. From my perspective there aren’t a ton of good options, which is why discussing this problem is pretty important.

Secondly, there has been some amount of discussion about the nature of server transfers and how that affects population. I think there is some space for us to make changes there, but there is always going to be a tradeoff. For example, what if we restricted or completely eliminated transfers during a season? I think it has some positives, but it might be overly damaging to people who aren’t intending to bandwagon, but legitimately want to change servers. It may be the case, though, that that number is so small that it is worth the cost. Or, what if we prevented people from transferring to the higher population servers, but not all of them? Again, it runs the risk of being a burden on some number of folks, but it may be worth the cost.

Again, this is a good discussion, it’s really important to consider the costs to any action and to remember that our goal is to do the best thing for as many of our players as possible.

Honestly, I’m tryin to think of a legitimate reason that a guild would have to transfer to Blackgate right now and my imagination isn’t that big. Like, am I gonna break any hearts when I say stop transfers to Blackgate?

If we can agree on Blackgate, we can then start hagglin about how far we can move the line.

I dont think its fair to have reactive comments from the devs in this forum, it takes time to read everything and to formulate an idea or summary that adequately covers everything in this thread. How many of us have bothered to read all the comments in this giant thread?

Not only must the thread be viewed read and digested into ideas and constructions that give those ideas form in the minds of the devs. When posters say are u listening to my words devs I see no evidence of it? is based on what? from your perspective or the few who might share your perspective, or the most vocal? A small number can dictate the outcome for all the rest and this is only a small percentage of the gaming community of GW2 that actually decided to post on the forum, and in this particular section of that forum.

Time zone imbalances are difficult to regulate as are players that wish to play in wvw, I cant think of a single thing that will help improve that situation other that the servers affected going hard to promote their server, buy guilds for transfer or tailor the entry of wvw based on the side with the least number of players.

Offering other methods of wvw participation.

If queued to enter, perhaps along the lines of guild missions but with a wvw flavor added to it. This would allow higher participation when not actively in WvW,

Guild mission wvw Jumping puzzle
- Lore required for relevance
- Objectives to achieve for Server benefits outside in the general wvw zones.
for example : Lets take Borderlands jumping puzzle, these could be expanded as infiltration nodes to exploit weaknesses in towers and supply zones.
Breaking structure stability, causing a flood, sinkholes, blowing up bridges that provide access for supply to reach towers. weakening foundations of towers. these are random ideas only to stimulate a potential idea.
- Guild mission WvW Target Assassinate X commander tiers 1 through to 6
- Guild mission WvW Infiltrate Towers
- Guild mission WvW Defend Towers
These could be separate server from wvw main, but offer a place to still rumble with wvw objectives that still contribute to the server.

But what of the individual that wants to queue and cant get in? allow them to become recruits to the guild mission that can join along as well.

I didn’t read the vast majority of the posts here, so excuse me if I’m suggesting something that has already been brought up.

Might help fix population ballence if you made servers team up… have 6 servers on 3 teams for each match. First and last place would form one team, second place and second last would form another, and so on.

Then add a few more WvW zones to handle the larger teams and cut down on que times. (some variety would be nice after a year of the same scenery)

Gamadorn.2659:

Maybe we can back off and be thankful they are even acknowledging and responding at all to these issues I know I am thankful!

The game has been out a year and not much has been done to address the issues. ANet’s initial stance was that population was up to the players and would fix itself, but that hasn’t happened. Yes, some of the super stacked servers have broken apart, but only to be replaced by new monsters.

Pertaining to population balance we’ve gotten:
1) a single in-game change, the breakout event
2) WvW Season 1 designed to, presumably, attract more people into WvW.
3) talk about Bloodlust becoming a comeback mechanic, not implemented yet

Maybe #3 will fix some of the underlying mechanics with population imbalance, but I’m willing to bet it will be a conservative change. Bloodlust should have given more stat to losing server and less to winning server on day 1 of its inception. People were asking for these kinds of changes to the Outmanned buff a year ago.

Basing Transfers off of rank and possibly closing transfers to server that should be full (instead of increasing the cap as per usual) would be a start. That doesn’t address how to populate lower ranks though, even with cheaper costs why would someone want to move down ? There needs to be an incentive to do so or a rework of how seasons play out such as the one suggested several times of combining score from all Green servers/red servers/blue servers while allowing players to guest within their server color. This would mean unfortunately that servers would have to be stuck with 1 map color for the entire season which may upset some players, but if it was rotated so the following season it might not sting as much.

Allowing players to guest within their team color would promote players to move around because scores on lower servers directly impact their score.

Well one way to adress server transfers without interfering with the rest of the game (like forbidding transfer to high population servers, which might be something bad in some rare cases) would be to make it FREE to transfer AWAY from overpopulated WvW servers (maybe only to low populated WvW servers). This would allow people that are stuck on servers with long queues (that don’t transfer because of the cost) help in a big way. Also let guild leaders take their guild (with all upgrades!) to another server because most active WvW players are part of a WvW guild and this would allow guilds from overpopulated servers to transfer the whole guild for free and without any drawbacks to low populated WvW servers!

This would allow players and guilds to leave overpopulated servers without loosing anything.. and there are no major drawbacks (at least none that I can think of) for any player…

Making the transfer free would also allow to forbid transfers to that servers! Let’s say a player (in most cases a PvE player I guess) wants to join that server for the only reason that some friends are playing on that server. If transfer is forbidden he obviously can’t do that but his friends can change severs for free! So they still have the possibility to play with each other and if you implement guild transfers they can also take the guild that they made with them!

These changes would also reduce the problems that a reduction of WvW map caps would create because players that are facing long queues can transfer (for free) to servers with no/smaller queues.. I think the idea of lowering the caps is suggested for more than the reason of population imbalances.. it would also reduce skill lag what is the next major flaw of WvW that also favors overpopulated servers (if skills dont work and therefor tactics are irrelevant the larger amount of players wins most of the time..).
But in my opinion a reduced map cap can only work if the already announced overflow map is ready because in the beginning the queues will be massive.. additionally I would implement my previous stated idea first.. That would limit the effects of a reduced cap by a large amount!

Im on a guild that have transferred on a few servers (haven been in top tier, and less populated tier), and we have discussed some times(nothing really serious, just hanging out ) about to tranfer again or not and where. Most guildmates don’t want to go down because there is no enemies at our raid time, other don’t want to go up because the long queues. Never anyone have complained about the gold spend for the transfer (some ppl have gems already saved for future transfers if nedeed!) or the reseted guild upgrades(now have a guild upgraded is not having much impact on WvW, at leats not too much ) .

What im trying to say is that things like free transfers , the guilds upgrades are maintained between server transfers (something that for some ppl is of common sense) or items/gold benefits wont make the guilds to make transfers to other servers, at leat not for serious WvW guilds. From my point of view the only ways to really encourage the guilds to move really down on tiers, would be to make some way that the guild have more impact on the final score or make some way the organized guilds have more impact on maps(what is the point for your guild playing good and defeat enemies if they return at the next instant and you only can maintain your own area because there are ppl going inside the conquest area again and again). The silly tactic of mass die and return instant to your keep/tower a lot of times force some guilds to leave the area, its true that make more easy to defend your own area, but personally i like that when my guild have made an effort to enter a T3 defended structure we dont have to go out because there are ppl constantly committing suicide to keep the area and with the warrior banner this only make it worst.

In my opinion, you could close the transfers to top tiers, within a time some guilds maybe would move to some other servers. yes, but which servers? and for what servers you would like to be transfers? i dont know, i think it’s dificult to find some way to encourage the ppl to move too low on tiers. Im serioulsly thinking that this maybe is one of the easiest ways that would make to spread the ppl along the different top servers. But would need time to see how this go.

About reduce the cap per map, its true that would make more queues and more guilds maybe would move, but I honestly dont really like the idea. Some ppl have said that this would make ppl to go in lower groups, but this isnt true, well its true, but all would be the same, all servers will go with one blob per map(only less people on map and blob). Its like a forced way against their will for the guilds to make transfers in my opinion.

Personally, the way more easy that i think would make guilds to transfer on lower tiers would be to change the system of ppt and that the guilds would see that they can change this server without the need to get together different timezones guilds to make a 24h/7d server or doing PvD. Other way i think but more elaborated would be to make the result of the match by colours and free but restricted transfers between servers with the same colours, this way the guilds maybe would move to make the worst server to not loose to much points to win the final score, altough this surely would make necesessary to remake too much things. At least i cant see other ways to make ppl to want to transfer down.

PS: All this is from a point of view from a player focused on guilds. I am not taking too much in count how could react a non-guild player. But i think that who will be more inclined to perform transfers and will have more impact on a low populated servers will be the guilds because one guild move like a mass of active players.

I think some (not all) of the problems with server population imbalances could be solved by encouraging the two losing teams to team up and work together rather than attempting to artificially shift server populations or restrict the number of players that could log in.

Reasons that this does not happen already, in no particular order:

• There is no obvious way to communicate with players on another team in order to coordinate battle strategies. You can’t even find out the username of the enemy commander in order to send a PM unless you have friends (or less generously, spies) on the enemy server). Even then, you won’t know anything about that person: are they trustworthy? Are they skilled at command, or is this the first time they’ve popped their tag? You have no way of knowing.
• There is no way to merge two servers’ forces together. “Friendly fire” will destroy your allies. Any player on either of the allied server that either doesn’t read map/team chat or isn’t in that server’s VOIP won’t know not to kill them, and of course they can easily choose to ignore your directions if they do know because “red is dead.” You can’t build siege equipment and then allow your allies to use it. You can’t give them boons. This requires any alliance to be complicated, rather than just allowing for the obvious strategy of “let’s both just march on their keep together.”
• When one server holds most of the towers on the map, it is likely that the towers they hold will be upgraded, while the towers they don’t hold will be at base level. This means that the losing servers will have a much easier time destroying each other than attempting long, complex sieges the game doesn’t readily support against the first-place server. Both the fully-upgraded tower and the “paper” tower are worth the same in terms of scoring. There is no immediate incentive to attempt an alliance.
• Of course, there’s the general mistrust that two enemy teams will have for each other—but that isn’t something we can change or would want to.

Some potential solutions, some of which have been elsewhere in thread:

• Allow commanders a method of finding out the names of commanders on other servers so that they can talk to each other. Note that obviously this shouldn’t give away the enemy players’ positions, just their names. Trolling is one potential drawback to this.
• Create a mechanism within the game that temporarily merges the two losing servers’ forces such that they are real allies, with green names, sharing of siege equipment and boons, and a united map/team chat.
• Give a point bonus to the capturing team of a structure based on the number of upgrades it’s undergone and the amount of siege inside (we know that the game keeps track of the latter already because you can hit a cap for a particular structure). This would encourage attacks on upgraded towers and therefore give more incentive for alliances.

Having said all of this, I want to emphasize that this won’t fix everything. In particular, for a lot of players, the draw to WvW is the large-scale zerg vs. zerg combat, and when one server has 90 players and their opponent has 60, those battles will always be a matter of numbers rather than skill. Players that want their large-scale combat to be fair will not be satisfied with anything less than equal numbers, and I can’t blame them.

Haven’t read the entire thread, and this one may be completely insane, but I’ll toss it out there anyway:

If you can’t balance the server populations, balance the server power.

If a server is severely outnumbered on a wvw map, start scaling their stats up to make the individual players more powerful. The more outnumbered the server is, the higher the stats get scaled. Simple lack of bodies on the map would probably still leave the undermanned server at a disadvantage, but at least they couldn’t simply be steamrolled by an enemy zerg, and could put up more of a fight.

Hinado.6291:

Well one way to adress server transfers without interfering with the rest of the game (like forbidding transfer to high population servers, which might be something bad in some rare cases) would be to make it FREE to transfer AWAY from overpopulated WvW servers (maybe only to low populated WvW servers). This would allow people that are stuck on servers with long queues (that don’t transfer because of the cost) help in a big way. Also let guild leaders take their guild (with all upgrades!) to another server because most active WvW players are part of a WvW guild and this would allow guilds from overpopulated servers to transfer the whole guild for free and without any drawbacks to low populated WvW servers!

This would allow players and guilds to leave overpopulated servers without loosing anything.. and there are no major drawbacks (at least none that I can think of) for any player…

Making the transfer free would also allow to forbid transfers to that servers! Let’s say a player (in most cases a PvE player I guess) wants to join that server for the only reason that some friends are playing on that server. If transfer is forbidden he obviously can’t do that but his friends can change severs for free! So they still have the possibility to play with each other and if you implement guild transfers they can also take the guild that they made with them!

I like your idea but how would you define a what a low-populated server and a high-populated server is? Base on rank? Where do you draw the line? What about mid ranked servers?

I can see this scenario: Server A is high ranked so cannot get transfers so they intentionally tank their rank so that they can get more transfers in.

Another scenario: Server is high ranked but there are servers with much a larger wvw population (eg JQ vs TC) so it prevents that server from making any “progress”. What will it do? Do they have to accept the fact that their server is locked from transferring and will never reach the heights of servers that are higher up? Does it tank? Does is not?

Or another: Guild wants to transfer to a low rank server. Do they go to the top ranked low rank server or the lowest of the lowest? Answer is obvious here….. and what happens as a result? A mid ranked server drops down so they will get the next batch of transfers (assuming it would happen).

Also wvw guilds don’t care about guild upgrades. Making upgrades transferable between server only hurts low ranked servers more since there is nothing to stop guilds from leaving them now….
___________________________________________________________

I think the best solution would just be locking transfers to particular (T1) servers. It’s that simple. They don’t need anymore people and the constant inflow of guilds to those servers is what is causing even further bandwagoning. Only reason any of those servers get guilds is because another one got a guild. Lock transfers to all three and it’ll be over. Who gives a crap about pvers wanting to transfer to “play with friends” they still can, it’s call guesting.

DevonCarver.5370:

Or, what if we prevented people from transferring to the higher population servers, but not all of them? Again, it runs the risk of being a burden on some number of folks, but it may be worth the cost.

Here’s a random thought, and it may sound a little excessive. If it’s the middle of a season, rather than limiting transfers at all, how about making it where if you transfer up to a “higher” server, you don’t get anything. No progress for achievements and no WxP. If someone is moving up to stack servers for points, it will eliminate the reward for doing so.

You could even go the other way with that. Let’s say you transfer “down” servers, you could get a boost (like, a percentage of MF, WxP, XP, Gold Find across the board—nothing huge, like 1% per every level dropped) that will give incentives for going down. If people go to the bottom, get rewards for the season and try to transfer up at the last second, they lose it all.

I’m not saying it’s a good idea, mind you. Just a random thought.

DevonCarver.5370:

Hey everyone,

I wanted to chime in again and say that the discussion around population imbalance and WvW has been really wide-open and interesting. There are some definite things we’ve learned from reading your responses and some really interesting ideas in here as well. The goal of this initiative is to foster discussion about the game and for that discussion to help us make better design decisions in the future. I think there have been some good points raised in this thread and I’ve definitely seen some new ways of looking at the problem. This particular issue is very thorny, which makes it a bit more difficult to wade into the conversation. Population affects so many other areas that it makes it complicated to untangle it and get actionable ideas. We believe that between the studio and the community we can find new ways of looking at the problems that can lead us to great solutions, and we appreciate your taking the time and energy to share your thoughts. Hopefully we can all take WvW and Guild Wars 2 further by being able to work some of these problems out together.

I wanted to further discuss a couple of ideas. Firstly, several posts have called for reduced map caps in WvW. The problem that would create is that we’d be allowing even fewer people to play in a given period of time if we were to do that. So I wonder if there is another way to accomplish the same goal, while not disenfranchising people who would now be unable to get into the maps? It’s a hard problem because the more populated servers face long queues while the less populated ones face empty maps. From my perspective there aren’t a ton of good options, which is why discussing this problem is pretty important.

Secondly, there has been some amount of discussion about the nature of server transfers and how that affects population. I think there is some space for us to make changes there, but there is always going to be a tradeoff. For example, what if we restricted or completely eliminated transfers during a season? I think it has some positives, but it might be overly damaging to people who aren’t intending to bandwagon, but legitimately want to change servers. It may be the case, though, that that number is so small that it is worth the cost. Or, what if we prevented people from transferring to the higher population servers, but not all of them? Again, it runs the risk of being a burden on some number of folks, but it may be worth the cost.

Again, this is a good discussion, it’s really important to consider the costs to any action and to remember that our goal is to do the best thing for as many of our players as possible.

Sometimes you have to be harsh in order to balance and save your game Devon.

I understand how big T1 / T2 servers are and trust me I understand what queues a T1 server faces. I’m from Blackgate which is one of the big 3 and the only way we can ever compete against each other is by queuing maps, is this really what you wanted WvW to be Devon? Queued maps across all maps as the only way to beat the other servers?

You guys talked a lot prior to this about wanting to enable skilled groups to beat bigger numbers, sure that sounds good until your skilled 20man comes up against 80 man map blob and gets lagged to death, if you reduced the map cap to 50 this would mean the 20man would stand a chance and be able to compete.

The simple answer to producing similar “coverage” on other servers is to disperse the players, it would hit servers like Blackgate, Jade Quarry and Sanctum of Rall the hardest, but so what? Real reform and change takes bravery and I don’t think people would mind at all if you reduced the map caps, because at the end of the day no one likes skill lag, no one likes being in a queue for 30+ mins, reduce the map caps give everyone a free transfer, balance your game. More recently we have seen guilds from EU moving to NA servers because of these ridiculous queues in the higher Tiers of EU, this is due to queues but they still want competitive matches, so instead why not help the lower “tier 8 to tier 4” gain quality guilds and make their server competitive forcing guilds to disperse instead of “stacking”.

Not only this but it solves majorly the ‘off-hours’ issue instead of all of your NZ/AUS/SEA/EU players on NA being forced onto Blackgate, Sanctum of Rall, Jade Quarry and other top 6 servers in order to “Queue” these maps to remain competitive the population in these ‘off-hours’ would disperse evenly across servers to avoid queues especially if you made the transfer at this junction of change free.

Be brave, be bold, make 24 / 18 competitive servers instead of 3-4. Make the bold changes and the players will reward you, not scold.

Thanks,

~MagiKarps Blackgate.

Not everybody transfers servers for WvW reasons. In my guild, we have members on multiple servers, but we are built up only on one server. We want to get members onto the one server so they can use what we’ve built up, and to have their influence actually contribute. If you freeze transfers for WvW, you make it so we have to wait.

Really, the guilds on different servers have different rewards thing is harmful to us, but we can currently mitigate it (in a quite expensive way). If you take away this option, give us a different way to get around this system that is harming us.

Population control on WvW:

Scrap your WvW current state. Allow guilds to create alliances thru GW2 and they then play as a server.

Rethinking the whole process is better than what you have today. The issue is not population on a server you might transfer to but the competition you play at.

Make the ability to create server alliances gold – gem based. The player created servers would be separate from the current servers. The player based servers would be size restricted and have better rewards. They would be in different leagues. They should be invite only.

DevonCarver.5370:

I wanted to further discuss a couple of ideas. Firstly, several posts have called for reduced map caps in WvW. The problem that would create is that we’d be allowing even fewer people to play in a given period of time if we were to do that. So I wonder if there is another way to accomplish the same goal, while not disenfranchising people who would now be unable to get into the maps? It’s a hard problem because the more populated servers face long queues while the less populated ones face empty maps. From my perspective there aren’t a ton of good options, which is why discussing this problem is pretty important.

I am in favor of lower map caps for several reasons, and agree that it would be a difficult thing for many if implemented without any way to mitigate the negative impact on high population servers.

The best idea I can think of is to create a system where if a certain amount of maps (2-3?) are queued with a high number of players, those players can “guest WvW” on a server suffering from “outnumbered” status on more than 1-2 maps. The servers available for guesting would have to be outside the homeworld’s current matchup, to prevent shenanigans, but otherwise they could still gain WxP while in queue. I think this would go a long way toward solving many issues in WvW, including both the issues of the high population server’s queues and the lower population server’s empty maps.

The upcoming new map may help to relieve the queue problem somewhat but it doesn’t address the empty map issue or server load related lag at all.

More briefly: Lower map caps to 60 and create WvW guesting from high pop queued servers to outnumbered servers outside their matchup.

Lock in server alliances. Instead of putting me in a queue in LA, put me onto a random, less populated server, within my server group. Allow me to be in queue back to my server, when a spot opens up. Rework the scoring to include all servers within my group.

With this, you could reduce players per map, lessen queues, even out population imbalances, limits server stacking and still keep server rivalries. You could still have individual server rankings, but modify them based on your group’s score. In modifying the scores, you can pull up the scores of traditionally barren servers, and lower the scores of the stacked servers. This would add all sorts of new variety, rivalries, and alliances.

I thought that this is what the leagues might be. What we have now is more of a bracketed tournament, with Group A, B & C. Give me a reason to care about what is happening in the other brackets and, more importantly, a way to help both my queue time, and another server.

Yes, Trolls will be trolls, and supply will be wasted, but how is that any different from what we have now?

Devon and other guys at A-net

The population / coverage problem is vast, and I do not see a way to fix it without hurting someone in the process. No matter what you do here, some people will get so ticked off that they will leave. In the short term you will lose some players.

However, by fixing these giant complex issues for the long term, you will regain the customers which you lose and give your product far more longetivity then it has in its current state.

I have read a lot of the posts here, and to address the core issues, you would have to make the drastic changes to the transfer costs, lock the transfers to the top 6 servers, etc. Perhaps lower the player map limit a little bit (5%-10%) while at same time giving them the new map to play on and lowering the transfer costs to low wvw pop servers.

Other then that, you can do a large plethora of small “band aid” adjustments for the symptoms, such as many discussed here.

1. Adjust PPT to reflect more participation / effort then time on the map. This adjustment doesnt have to be 0-100%, it can be +-30% for example, or even +-20%.

2. Make some changes to the outmanned and the bloodlust buffs.

3. Start rewarding “server loyalty” in every way.

There are some other ideas which may work but not until other systems are worked out 1st.

For example allow wvw guesting from qued to non-qued map on another server, but this can not nor should be done until there are solid systems in place to deal with wvw trolls, griefers, hackets etc. currently the systems are just not there or non-existant. If 40-50 people report someone several times a day on a wvw map, that should be an immediate red flag with a pager for a-net employee to come in and observe and take immediate action upon seeing evidence. That is not the case.

So before people are allowed to map/server hop in wvw that has to be worked out. Otherwise, dont touch it, you’ll open yourself up to another huge set of issues.

So my overall thoughts are the small adjustments you can make immediately and without much redesign of the system already in place, where the core issues will require much more effort.

You can tackle the problem from many different angles simoultaneously to have less of an impact on existing playerbase, but no matter what, some will be dissatisfied and they will leave, but the game will be healthier for it.

I don’t think locking people in a server, or not making it possible to transfer to a higher populated server is going to work. It might even have the opposite effect. People might be afraid to transfer because of the risk of coming in an outnumbered server. Another thing is that server population and wvw population aren’t that dependent of eachother. An server with a high population doens’t have to have a high wvw population.

There are several issues in wvw at the moment. One of the is coverage.

Not every server has as many…enthousiastic players staying up all night to defend their borderland. Merging EU and NA servers is one solution, but there might be lag issues. Other than that, I can not come up with another solution.

There is also the issue is the difference between wvw populations, even during uptime. The problem is that a larger server will always win, when evenly skilled. This is because there are no mean to defend yourself against a zerg larger than yours. You could evade the zergs and sneakily cap other structures, but there is little fun in that. On top of that, if evenly organized, the larger numbers will still win. I’d wish there was a way for an outnumbered server to defend theirselves, and perhaps even go on the attack, fighting against odds and winning because of better tactics. Numbers shouldn’t be the deciding factor, but tactics and strategy should.
—
Another solution against overly dominating servers could be the meddling of skritt and harathi. Because if the increased presence they feal threatened and join the offensive. Whenever a server controls the largest parts of all maps (over 60% or so) the harathi and skritt will launch an offensive. They will attack the controlled structures causing damage on the walls, gates and perhaps also draining the supply. Perhaps they whould even be able to cap structures, not only denying the dominating server points, but even retracting points from them. Then when an not dominating server runs along, they can just waltz in and cap the circle. The mobs will stay to help defending, unless the other non-dominating server attacks. Then they will remain passive as they don’t care.

Meanwhile in the other borderlands, the mobs could also launch offensives against the owned keeps by the dominating server, damaging their keeps, making it easier to attack for the losing servers.
—
A different idea might be to change who you are going to fight. Perhaps guilds from all three servers can pick a certain color preference. At the end of each war, all the different guilds get allocated to a color and battle eachother. There are some problems though. What if a person is in multiple guilds? What if someone is not guilded?
—
Lastly, a more expensive idea, could be altering the wvw maps. At the moment, when you have lesser players, you can choose between focusing your numbers and only owning a few structures or disperse your numbers, for the same effect.

What if there were several layers of defense in each home borderland. Each layer would concentrate the defending forces more and more, while doing the opposite for attacking forces. People who like to zerg could join the frontlines, while people enjoying smaller scale battles could go on more tactical missions.

These were just a few rough ideas, but I just wanted to throw it out, perhaps you can do something with these ideas. I don’t want a ‘solution’ that denies access to wvw for players. I also don’t want to force people to play in a way they don’t want to. The goal is to make wvw more fun, not more right.

DevonCarver.5370:

I wanted to further discuss a couple of ideas. Firstly, several posts have called for reduced map caps in WvW. The problem that would create is that we’d be allowing even fewer people to play in a given period of time if we were to do that. So I wonder if there is another way to accomplish the same goal, while not disenfranchising people who would now be unable to get into the maps? It’s a hard problem because the more populated servers face long queues while the less populated ones face empty maps. From my perspective there aren’t a ton of good options, which is why discussing this problem is pretty important.

…disclaimer… i have not played gw1 so forgive me for my ignorance.

part of the larger problem is that most players do not like pvp related things, so some servers will be hit or miss for wvw participation. in order to bridge that gap, i propose that you introduce a mists area (that makes sense from a lore standpoint) where players can gain points for their server and earn rewards in the process. having something like this would be great for those waiting in queue, and possibly help lead more players on pve heavy servers to eventually test the wvw waters. even if some players never step foot in wvw, at least they would be making some type of server contribution that is more on their terms.

after doing a little research on the wiki for some ideas, i came across information on the battle isle from gw1 and thought an area like that might have some potential. i have not fully thought out the details, but you could introduce a revamped clashing sea map where players have to fight along side the zaishen order against demons from the rift. there could be open maps and instances where players have to hold points and clear out areas against hordes of creatures to gain server points and boosts to the power of the mists stats. you could design these additional server based rewards to favor the lowest to highest scoring servers respectively to help balance numbers out.

in addition to standard loot rewards, players could earn copper zaishen coins to trade in/covert into other game currencies and possibly even for ascended gear (provided you did the same ascended acquisition across all activities). doing it this way would allow players to earn all of the various rewards while still doing the noble service of supporting their server.

also, the battle isle could serve as a new home base for spvp, and you could introduce guild halls and gvg arenas here as well.

overall, there seemed to be a lot of interesting ideas and lore from the battle isle that could be used positively for many aspects of gw2 so it’s worth a thought.

high fever induced dumb idea maybe, but that’s all I’ve got.

thanks for reading.

hello guys/gals
isnt it nice if you can put everyone from every servers into a huge bucket and redistribute them into each selected servers so that the population with respect to type of players (pve/pvp/wvwvw) are balanced for each servers. Instead of having a server that has more pve players and another server that has more wvwvwer.. we have a few servers that has a balance mixed of players (dream…).
there maybe data from the database for each players that is helpful ie. players with certain rank in wvwvw versus their playtime and currently active: players with certain achievement points and low rank points versus their playtime and currently active. these data will be useful for assessment of population and individual/overall servers population studies.

Deli.1302:

Hinado.6291:

Well one way to adress server transfers without interfering with the rest of the game (like forbidding transfer to high population servers, which might be something bad in some rare cases) would be to make it FREE to transfer AWAY from overpopulated WvW servers (maybe only to low populated WvW servers). This would allow people that are stuck on servers with long queues (that don’t transfer because of the cost) help in a big way. Also let guild leaders take their guild (with all upgrades!) to another server because most active WvW players are part of a WvW guild and this would allow guilds from overpopulated servers to transfer the whole guild for free and without any drawbacks to low populated WvW servers!

This would allow players and guilds to leave overpopulated servers without loosing anything.. and there are no major drawbacks (at least none that I can think of) for any player…

Making the transfer free would also allow to forbid transfers to that servers! Let’s say a player (in most cases a PvE player I guess) wants to join that server for the only reason that some friends are playing on that server. If transfer is forbidden he obviously can’t do that but his friends can change severs for free! So they still have the possibility to play with each other and if you implement guild transfers they can also take the guild that they made with them!

I like your idea but how would you define a what a low-populated server and a high-populated server is? Base on rank? Where do you draw the line? What about mid ranked servers?

-truncated for space

As the issue at hand is WvW population, not rank, I think a logical definition of ‘high’ server here would be queue length. I don’t know where the threshold would need to be, but that’s arguing details. Maybe based on peak queue for the past X days or something, any server with an average peak queue above Y minutes can’t be transferred to and is free to transfer off of.

I would agree with the sentiments that the only purpose of server ‘identity’ is WvW. PvP is not server specific and PvE has guesting.

In the vein of spitballing ideas which may or may not be good: Was just discussing with a friend the ideas regarding adjusting score based on population. I’m unconvinced it gets at the root issue, but here was our logic train: Make ppt based on population ratio. So set up scoring something like (raw ppt) * (fudge factor) * (enemy players/friendly players) , per tick if possible. So if the player numbers were 60v50v20, server 1’s player scaling is 1.17, 2’s is 1.6, and 3’s is 5.5.

Ideally what this is intended to do is to make number of quality players matter more than just flat zerg size. And possibly punish winning by zerging a bit, though I don’t know if that’s a goal.

I have no idea if something like that’s even codable with the current system, but there is clearly a way to kitten how many players are on the map in order to send people into the queue, so maybe it could query that.

The overriding reason you have imbalance is because it is to the advantage of players able to transfer to.

You have to change the incentives without completely creating a pendulum effect.

For WvW, you may want to allow servers getting trounced to join up. I’ll throw out if the daily point total is 1.5 times the “combined” score of the remaining two servers, they should automatically no longer damage each other. In short, their attention should focus on beating up the “king of the hill”.

Right now the reward comes from winning and winning tied to total score which leads to a pounce the minute there are new pairing effects that can put the smaller server in such a hole that it seems hopeless.

For PvE, one issue is accessibility of content which requires a critical mass of people. If I need to get something done but rarely can find enough people to do it, why wouldn’t I move? Especially if PvE is just a necessary nuisance? So, the easier you make PvE to do with a very small group and PUGS, the less imbalance. But the counter is there are people who want that difficulty. Therein lies the rub.

The more the population the harder the PvE?

Another quick answer to building up a population is rewarding new players. If you got double experience or double gold to play an underpopulated server (to 80 then the bonus would be less), you might get newer players to stick. That is especially effective for people who want multiple characters but dread the idea of redoing the leveling process. The key is that once 80 if they move you just lost the whole point.

UltraHiDef.4809:

To fix the balance issue can’t be any simpler. Leagues should be what they imply, teaming up of servers. Strong servers and a weaker server are to be teamed against some others of different matchups like BG VS. JQ VS. SoR as one match up and the other FA VS. MAG VS. TC. Like jq+FA vs. BG+ Maguuma SoR+TC.
The teaming process is to allow people of allied servers to be able to guest to the other’s match up and help the allied servers if their coverage is in trouble and the allied servers with thw most War Points wins.
There was a vvideo about this and I can link it if you want.

I hope the devs read this post. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHcO6Xo8eJ8

I still favour the ‘colour’ team solution. This could include a cap for each matchup, and a list highlighting the fill rate/average queue length.

With a list of the current battles your ‘team’ is fighting and the ability to jump into one that isn’t capped (or just queue for your own, with the queue favouring those on their own server).

The winning alliance of servers (i.e. ‘team’) would all receive the same rewards at the end of the current ‘round’.

Secondly, there has been some amount of discussion about the nature of server transfers and how that affects population. I think there is some space for us to make changes there, but there is always going to be a tradeoff. For example, what if we restricted or completely eliminated transfers during a season? I think it has some positives, but it might be overly damaging to people who aren’t intending to bandwagon, but legitimately want to change servers. It may be the case, though, that that number is so small that it is worth the cost. Or, what if we prevented people from transferring to the higher population servers, but not all of them? Again, it runs the risk of being a burden on some number of folks, but it may be worth the cost.

I wouldn’t mind locking down server transfers, but at the same time you need to allow for an infinite number of server guesting, so that people can hop to the servers they need to for PvE content without hitting any limits. I’ve found my own server has become almost empty for PvE content lately, and might want to switch servers at some point so that I can find a more actively functioning community, but if I could just guest there reliably across multiple characters per night then that would be fine too.

all i can say is at least give the lower map cap a try…..

Specific character bindable items that can be crafted for use in wvw, because, let’s face it, crafting doesn’t do much for wpvp besides oils and food.
Examples
Armorsmith – portable shield that can block siege damage in a small radius up to X amount of damage
Weaponsmith – doorcutter that is a type of handheld ram doing less damage and reducing mobility when when it is equipt
Huntsman – single shot sniper rifle long distance, one shot and a super high cd that can be used to shoot or stun players on siege or on walls
Leatherworker – Wearing animal skins – turn yourself into an NPC neutral npc on the other player’s screens such as coyote or warg / rabbit (scouting and ambush)

more to come…
Separated towers keeps / further apart – siege not being able to reach towers to keeps or keeps to towers because, as someone on the forums stated “in real sieges the defender doesn’t siege from the comfort of his own castle”
Buildable forts – defenses such as wooden walls which can be built anywhere on the map to make a “siege camp,” walls being a lot weaker and vulnerable to player damage
More quests – have an event that if you collect enough badges or parts of players killed you can summon a special npc to go on “patrols” with you or an NPC army that can help you take objectives etc (could be only usable in your own borderlands) because killing players and more diversity would be a great addition
different bl maps – three different maps for first second and third place in a match up and have each map themed with a certain terrain such as red – fire map, blue – sea / port map, green – jungle / forest map
Customizable NPCs – When you claim a tower keep you have the option of outfitting the guards with your own guild’s personal armor / weapons to make the keep look and feel more like it’s yours. Also, allow guilds to customize or pick from templates as how the walls of the tower / keep appear once claimed. i.e. guild A claims tower and has a gothic template selected so the walls of the tower appear in a gothic fashion and when upgraded becomes “cooler looking.” You could also use guild influence to “buy” customizable weapon skins (with or without adding better stats) for the guards to the keeps or towers you claim.
All in all I think those would make world vs world feel more like a “war” instead of cookie cutter.

DevonCarver.5370:

Secondly, there has been some amount of discussion about the nature of server transfers and how that affects population. I think there is some space for us to make changes there, but there is always going to be a tradeoff. For example, what if we restricted or completely eliminated transfers during a season? I think it has some positives, but it might be overly damaging to people who aren’t intending to bandwagon, but legitimately want to change servers. It may be the case, though, that that number is so small that it is worth the cost. Or, what if we prevented people from transferring to the higher population servers, but not all of them? Again, it runs the risk of being a burden on some number of folks, but it may be worth the cost.

I’ll just get this out of the way first since it’s been brought up before. Why are the rates always based on the total server population rather than the WvW population? It might have been hard to determine WvW population before but with the addition of WXP it would be relatively safe to say that anyone who has earned any WXP can be counted as being part of the WvW population. People just go in for stuff like crafting/bank/TP/etc. wouldn’t be getting any WXP.

Restricting or eliminating transfers during a season seems like a great way to kitten off people who don’t play WvW at all for no real gain? I don’t see how stopping transfers would help with imbalance but you have access to actual data on how many transfers occur and we don’t.

What sort of people are you expecting to transfer? Individuals? Entire guilds? Small Guilds? Medium Guilds? Large Guilds?

I would never transfer and nor would any of the people in my guild. We are a small guild and rebuilding all the upgrades is not something we want to do. We’ve been playing since headstart and we are finally almost done. Transfering would be a waste of more than a year of effort put into those unlocks. The mechanisms you have put in place to discourage server hopping might be working too well.

Instead of discouraging/restricting/eliminating transfers how about encouraging maximum server hopping for a while. Perhaps free transfers and decreasing the transfer cooldown down to 24 hours for a week so people can actually go and search for another a server that fits them. Maybe provide an option to transfer all guild upgrades(or provide enough influence on the destination server) if they move and remain on specific servers at the end of that week.

Population imbalance is a symptom of a missing mechanic to account for deviations in populations. Traditionally in smaller PvP settings in one team versus another this is simple to handle with a basic numerical balancing to keep teams as close to even as possible. This is overtly not present in WvW, and has long been pointed to as the source of the reason WvW is imbalanced by design.

Points do not matter. Rewards do not matter. All that matters is that the end user has fun, makes memories, and has the opportunity to feel as if they personally made a difference in the grand scheme of the match-up. A fancy backslot item or shiny achievement isn’t going to supplement the notion of fun. At best it only serves to reward those who can obtain them easily, and at worst it only provides incentive to continue in spite of not having fun. The entire scope of the mode is being looked at with a flawed perspective that is attempting to balance that which is by design imbalanced.

Keeping in mind population discrepancies are unavoidable regardless of attempting to match servers with near identical populations, peak hours, and relative co-ordination, there remains a few methods yet to have been attempted: destructible waypoints, mobile anti-personnel siege, and weapons of mass destruction.

Destructible Waypoints would simply give all waypoints a toughness and health relative to the structural upgrade of the keep. It presents an element of strategy for long range siege to take out enemy waypoints prior to attacking, to force opposing groups to use the topography of the map to reach the point to defend it. Additionally it creates an objective for forces to take out to ensure the enemy doesn’t waypoint in en masse and win a fight they should’ve lost since weren’t strategically positioned to win.

Mobile Anti-Personnel Siege would come in the form of tough, fast moving engines, immune to mobility and stunning conditions (there are quite a few concepts strewn about the Black Citadel to take for a test drive) that would largely impede the movement of affected enemies, and much more so than causing damage. Knockdowns, Knockbacks, Cripples, Immobilizes, and Chills should be the idea behind anti-personnel. If the blob can’t get to where it needs to go because a few clever enemies are punishing them for bulking up it shifts the momentum in favor of the few.

Weapons of Mass Destruction should be a mechanic available as a purchaseable upgrade at any waypointed keep. Something like a massive Asuran Skyhammer as seen in sPvP could be assembled at an allied keep and could be fired by a player, utilizing all of that player’s supply in order to do so (more supply, more damage). The firing platform would of course be destructible, always built in a known position in a keep, have a limited range (perhaps slightly further than a Trebuchet), and have a obvious, highly telegraphed animation. The specific goal would be to do massive damage to enemy siege and players, with average damage to gates and walls. The goal is to provide means to outnumbered players to do more significant damage to large clusters of enemy players.

These are just general concepts that could be further refined into something more workable, but the theme is the point. Instances of population imbalance occur even during matches in which all three servers are evenly populated. Reducing the advantages of blobbing up across the map by implementing mechanics that make that tactic risky should be the focus as it not only serves to provide an illusion of balance in an imbalanced system, but adds more strategy and game play elements to invigorate a bored WvW fanbase…a few massive new maps might do a fair bit of good too…

cdimgcc.1638:

On top of that, if evenly organized, the larger numbers will still win. I’d wish there was a way for an outnumbered server to defend theirselves, and perhaps even go on the attack, fighting against odds and winning because of better tactics. Numbers shouldn’t be the deciding factor, but tactics and strategy should.
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Another solution against overly dominating servers could be the meddling of skritt and harathi. Because if the increased presence they feal threatened and join the offensive. Whenever a server controls the largest parts of all maps (over 60% or so) the harathi and skritt will launch an offensive. They will attack the controlled structures causing damage on the walls, gates and perhaps also draining the supply. Perhaps they whould even be able to cap structures, not only denying the dominating server points, but even retracting points from them. Then when an not dominating server runs along, they can just waltz in and cap the circle. The mobs will stay to help defending, unless the other non-dominating server attacks. Then they will remain passive as they don’t care.

Meanwhile in the other borderlands, the mobs could also launch offensives against the owned keeps by the dominating server, damaging their keeps, making it easier to attack for the losing servers.

I love this idea here. I’m a commander in IoJ. Because of server transfers before the season started we are in silver league when clearly we need to be in bronze. I full heartedly agree with stopping transfers entirely for large periods of time to the Highly Populated servers and making it free to transfer out of them, I even heard the idea for incentives to transfer out of them. Let me explain. The high population WvW servers have huge que times.. spreading those populations out again to the lower tiers would reduce que times while also making more servers more competitive. you can only really spread them out by doing nothing except leaving transfers to lower population servers free. for the PVE content they have guesting, MOST and remember I say most not all high population WvW servers have huge presences in PVE as well. Why add to that presence anyway instead of sharing whats ment to be a community game among even the lowest server. Stopping transfers to high population servers and adding incentives to populate the lower tiers helps both PVE and WvW. If someone is trying to transfer to play with a friend, let that friend transfer down. Some players will be mad about this but who are those? the small percent that want more people in high populations?

Changing the outnumbered buff to make a server more competitive while being outmanned is a great idea. Not a huge buff but enough, currently the bloodlust system works against the servers with lower player numbers, I like the system but again its all about which server has more numbers on, make it so that even if a server has more numbers on they still have to fight and work together, stay coordinated to win, don’t make the other servers just able to steam roll them, we don’t want players leaving, but we need to make it easier to defend what we have and still attack hard. The idea above that I quoted is an awesome suggestion, Obviously it needs some stuff worked out of it, but its a ground point.

Coming at this from multiple angles simultaneously is the only way to get a working solution, one at a time does nothing, and as someone else stated, fixing a complex problem that always has downsides will hurt some members of the community, Of course it will, but its the long run not what happens in the short run that matters to all of us. If most of us are still here afterwords then job well done, we lost some players that didn’t help us much anyway.

I’m passionate about this issue because of what happened to IoJ, right before the season an exodus happened. Three large WvW guilds left to larger servers. A large number of our player base. Now we are left trying desperately to defend against higher population servers. Que times? Those only happen on reset nights and very rarely in the week. Spread the population, make the lower populations have more fight, and stop allowing large populations to become larger. just my opinion

Remove everyone from every servers. Rename 24 global servers (no more NA or EU but GLOBAL): make everyone choose a server after these change : implement a lower cap on population on every of these server. Start leagues. Here you have 24 random servers that have all equals chances. Next season repeat the same: remove everyone from servers, rename them all, etc…

DevonCarver.5370:

Firstly, several posts have called for reduced map caps in WvW. The problem that would create is that we’d be allowing even fewer people to play in a given period of time if we were to do that. So I wonder if there is another way to accomplish the same goal, while not disenfranchising people who would now be unable to get into the maps?

I think there have been 4 non-radical solutions offered to revolve the population balance.

1) Physically balance the populations through transfers, either forced or with strong incentives.

I think this is unlikely to work because the WvW population and coverage depends on so many things (e.g., college players may take time off during finals but then play much more over the summer, players may take time out of WvW to do PvE Living Story achievements, etc.) that I think this is unlikely to work. Further, as I stated earlier in the thread, I like the range of play that different populations offer and actually like the small town feel of the lower population servers. Flooding them with transfers, forced or chasing an incentive, could easily destroy the communities on smaller servers.

2) Capping how many players can enter a map.

The problem with this is that it means people don’t get to play or get stuck in queues. That’s not particularly fair to the higher population server.

3) Buffing the disadvantaged side or nerfing the advantaged side.

While this may balance zerg vs. zerg, it will greatly imbalance 1 on 1 and small group encounters. Players looking for fair battles won’t find them unless populations are matched and the effectiveness of characters could vary wildly from day to day or even our to hour.

4) Adding or buffing NPCs.

The main problem here is that people in WvW want PvP, not PvE. But given that heavily imbalanced match-ups already include a substantial amount of PvE in the form of PvDoor and in other cases involve rolling over the weaker opponent with minimal resistance, I’m not sure that’s a valid objection to this solution. Of all of the solutions, I think this is the most viable, since it doesn’t depend on counting on player participation or changing actual server populations, it doesn’t prevent people from playing, and it doesn’t stop 1v1 and small group engagements from being between opponents with roughly equal abilities. The game also already has the mechanics to dynamically balance encounters, spawn NPCs, and upscale the NPCs to be tougher during combat because it does that in PvE.

The way to make this work is that the goal of the added or buffed NPCs is to (A) more fiercely defend sites that the less populated server lacks the manpower to defend, so that what’s already a PvDoor experience is more difficult and challenging and the lower population server has more time to bring actually players into the battle, and (B) to fight alongside the players to improve their chances in open field combat, much in the way pets augment a ranger’s combat abilities.

I have personally seen how (B) can work several times when I’ve been able to solo larger groups by staying among NPCs and having them fight with me. The NPCs, alone, are no match for players but with a player among them, they can be a real nuisance and make a big difference. The NPCs can deliver additional damage, draw fire, and help hold objectives and they can be easily spawned, de-spawned, buffed, and nerfed without having to adjust the effectiveness of the player characters. Right now, a camp provides enough NPCs to fight off an additional attacker or two but more NPCs and tougher NPCs could help negate an even larger imbalance while giving the attacking server more targets to fight and and a more challenging combat than rolling over a heavily outnumbered defender. No, its not ideal to be attacking NPCs and people could get that experience in the PvE part of the game, but given the alternatives, rolling over an opponent that’s too outnumbered to fight back is an even less challenging experience.

As for how to stop any of the solutions from being abused:

1) Only make them available to a server that’s losing, so the advantage can’t be used to win in points.

2) Base the comparison population on the larger of either the current map population or the rolling average for the last half-hour or hour. If the population drops suddenly, it will take a half-hour or more for the advantages to kick in but if the population suddenly increases, that will be taken into account immediately.