Guild Wars 2

I think the population imbalances are more a perception of winning in many cases rather than a lack of players who could be having fun if they try. People open the wvw menu, think from what they see that see their server either will win, or will not win, and don’t play. I go play anyway, and have a very good time, as there are many things you can do even if you haven’t enough to hold the keeps.

1. The first change is short-term. Change the wvw display to give people the full story. Add a ‘history’ page that shows you what happened in the last hour or the last 5 ticks. It could show how many ‘hold the camp/tower/keep’ points each side earned, how many ‘player stake’ points, and other points, like for guard point captures and anything else that has an effect on score, like dynamic events.

As it is now, people are not seeing what they can do to make a difference. Taking Stonemist may be impossible, but staking 10 players, taking a merc camp, capping four guard points, killing two dolyaks and doing a veteran harpy event? That is possible.

This change could be done (I think) relatively quickly and would help players feel that wvw is worth playing even if they don’t own the keeps. It would also help drive discussion on more meaty changes.

2. The second change is on a longer timescale. Once people get used to seeing where points REALLY come from, change the scoring system so that it feels possible to recover from a bad night. I think scoring needs to change, but only after people get a reliable in-game way to see what is driving the old scoring system.

3. Long term, add an alliance system. This sounds hard to develop if done well, and done poorly it would be a disaster. My first thought is if one team has more than 50% of the overall score (not just the structure-holding ppt but all sources of wvw score points) for 30 minutes then have a moderate chance to generate an alliance event every 10 minutes.

If the alliance event happens, then up on the side of the screen there will be a pop-up window that puts it to a vote for the two lower scoring teams: “Alliance? y/n. “ If the majority of both teams (not the overall majority) vote yes, then WvW does a ‘redirect to lion’s arch’ and everyone is kicked out. The two allies come into wvw as if they were one server, and there are only two colors on the map. They split their score evenly. At the end of the alliance (maybe four hours?) everyone is kicked out of WvW again and returns with their normal colors. Selecting who has what structure at that point would be difficult, and would probably have to be selected by who’s home base it was closer to.

P.S. Please work on the queue system. A reliable, fair queue with some feedback (short, medium, long) and multiple queues for multiple BLs would be a wonderful improvement.

DevonCarver.5370:

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

I completely agree with the observation about the momentum, IoJ was a great example a few months back. They were outnumbered hopelessly in prime time, but wake up Sat morning and they had caught back up. Their late night SEA and Oceanic guilds would spend all night PvDooring and getting their ppt up enough that although we would trounce them in prime time, the ppt they could get while most of us were sleeping would be enough to win the week.

While it does nothing for outnumbered servers, what about awarding points for a camp/tower/keep take based on the number of enemies involved in a fight? I think much of the problem with the 24/7 coverage is tied to how much PvDoor can be done while the other servers are sleeping. Wouldn’t awarding more points for taking a defended objective slow some of this momentum down? PvDoor would still award PPT, but you could make it so the bulk of your points would come from the enemies killed in prime time, whatever that time is for your server. Some kind of weighting for killing enemies and defended objectives vice just karma training.

What about varying several factors based on ppt level, such as yak speed, RI, stats for guards, siege damage, number of guards, etc.? Make it difficult for someone with +600ppt to defend anything due to no RI, slow moving supply, and weak guards? On the other hand, if you only have +100ppt: faster yaks, more and stronger guards, longer RI to help you rebuild faster. Maybe even invulnerable yaks below a certain ppt?

Make each borderland have a certain number of guards per borderland. If you own everything, your guards are spread out and objectives are easier to take. If you do not own anything, your guards are concentrated (on siegerazer to begin with?) in the first objective you take, and spread out as you take objectives back. This would be great for at least slowing PvDoor and karma trains.

Just some ideas while waiting for the servers to come back up.

Make guesting for 2 different allied servers possible in a match up! Server queues and population get significantly less! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHcO6Xo8eJ8

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.

Would it be possible, from a technical standpoint, to have different map caps at different times of the day?

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? 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.

This only true while you have massive imbalances in the WvW populations on servers. If you had more even populations, NOONE would have a long queue.

The goal should be to incentivise the player base to move towards balanced populations. Creating a system where they queue for a long time unless they move to a more suitable server would be a very good way of doing that.

Sure, you frustrate them temporarily, but they will have the power to improve their situation themselves, which mitigates that frustration a lot.

Your idea that you have to live with massive population imbalances but can through some game mechanics make it not count in fights in unrealistic. It’s been tried in other MMOs and it never works.

DevonCarver.5370:

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.

This is a great example of what I am talking about above. You COULD create a simple game mechanic where people get free transfers to servers who need them. Instead, you are wrestling with a really destructive idea of server transfer freezes in an attempt to work around the real problem.

You need to stop being afraid of long queues. As long as you tell the players how they can avoid them, and give them free transfers to help make it happen, it will help solve the problem.

More US players should be encouraged to play on EU servers. There are EU servers with weak night coverage and US servers with long queues. People should transfer. Also maybe from EU to US.

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.

First try to better calculate the population(people actually playing WvW – PvE server with “very high” but all the time “outnumbered” in WvW should not have to cost “very high” transfer cost to transfer to). Then before a new season starts: 2 weeks free or cheaper transfers. 4-6 weeks to let it balance and make normal matches for better “ratings”(they slowly will change cause of the transfers). Then start the league. Maye 1 transfer at normal cost for people that still need to transfer during league. But only 1 so they can’t transfer back and forth too much to. Should be enough for “people who aren’t intending to bandwagon, but legitimately want to change servers” if you cap it at 1 while season is running.

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.

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 guess you never read my previous posts then.

I asked for a simple system. It would work like this:
Let 25 people in on each server side.
Then make rest people queue till 5 people from each server wants to join in. Let those 15 (5 people from each server) in and wait for another 15, then for another 15 until the cap.

How it would work in my mind (I hope its objective thinking).

• People from low population server would be able to play normally with high population servers due even chances on fields.
• The higher population servers would clash like they do now and those servers would nod suffer. The more people would be on each side the more potential those matches would have instead of crashing the weak (sadly it’s not like 300 move – it’s not a Sparta).
• Instead of encouraging people to transfer to high population servers they would see them as endless queues and some guilds would look for empty servers to play and not to be stacked in queue. Even if in other thread you wrote this might happen it won’t cause people won’t do it without a good reason that this system would provide.
• This would discourage people from leaving servers that were weak (that happened to my server) instead giving them more allies to back them up.

Additional system
There should be season server wide average time in queue calculated as a statistic next to the server and population to be shown in wold selection/transfer. This would show people which servers need more new blood for balance.

I would really aprikittene your answer to this idea.

Septemptus.7164:

I asked for a simple system. It would work like this:
Let 25 people in on each server side.
Then make rest people queue till 5 people from each server wants to join in. Let those 15 (5 people from each server) in and wait for another 15, then for another 15 until the cap.

Have you considered scenario where strong server meets weak server? You will end up in situation where there are 25 people from strong server and 20 people from weak server. No one wanting to join from weak server and 200 people in queue on strong server side. How would you solve this kind of scenario?

Eventual answer : Split PvE and WvW servers.

Maybe think differently.

Create a new map adjecent to BL and EB. Only spawn in Home BL or Keep(new map) or in Keep EB. New map means another 80-100 people in it on all servers. Wich means the zerg will need to split to cover all angles.

Now its to small and a zerg can be there is a small amount of time.

Also maybe make spawnpoint only available when you are dead. means less easy jumping and need tactics to safe a sieged keep/castle etc..

Kaleston.5671:

Septemptus.7164:

I asked for a simple system. It would work like this:
Let 25 people in on each server side.
Then make rest people queue till 5 people from each server wants to join in. Let those 15 (5 people from each server) in and wait for another 15, then for another 15 until the cap.

Have you considered scenario where strong server meets weak server? You will end up in situation where there are 25 people from strong server and 20 people from weak server. No one wanting to join from weak server and 200 people in queue on strong server side. How would you solve this kind of scenario?

Yep I considered it.
This would be a big sign – Go to weaker servers and balance all WvW instead of waiting in endless queues.

If people can move whole guilds for rewards at the end of Season 1, they would move to be able to play – believable me.

And ANet can make free or low cost transfers to help with the balance.

BL BLUE —> newmap BLUE —> EB and enemy BL (2x)
BL RED —> newmap RED -- > EB and enemy BL (2x)
BL GREEN —> newmap GREEN —> EB and enemy BL (2x)

This way you create a big triangle with EB in the center as the current map is desiged.

MAP BL portals of enemy adjecent to new maps. and create a cool new map that fits the design of the WvWvW layout….

Why not implement a voluteer mechaninc ?

like spvp, a guy from the more populated servers can voluteer to join a less populated server for the entire duration of the league and get rewars for that :

- Wxp boost
- karma boost
- Gold boost
- Magic find boost
- The possibility to get back to the native server once the league is ended ( for free)
- Anything that can lure people out of the stacked servers, even entire guilds.

Glad this other thread was bumped:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Final-solution-for-league-and-transfers

Maybe the reason we’ve had a lack of response about this topic is because Devon’s already made his opinion know…

DevonCarver.5370:

Walabone.6713:

I hope you take into consideration adding achievements that encourage zergs to disperse. Lets not have another WvExp situation.

Although, all in all, I’m not enthusiastic about this new system. I fail to understand the concept of “competition” that you hope to instill, when the playing field is inherently unbalanced. Numbers win everything. How is that a fair competition?

At no point did I, or would I have, said “Fair competition” WvW is not intended to be “fair”. There are servers with more people, there are servers with better organizations and that will always be the case. This competition will be about showing how your world can do over a defined period of time, against a variety of opponents. SPvP is the part of our game that aims for a completely level playing field. WvW would never be able to match that goal.

In his opinion WvW isn’t about fair competition, can never have a level playing and if you want one, go play sPvP.

shagworth.5017:

Glad this other thread was bumped:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Final-solution-for-league-and-transfers

Maybe the reason we’ve had a lack of response about this topic is because Devon’s already made his opinion know…

DevonCarver.5370:

Walabone.6713:

I hope you take into consideration adding achievements that encourage zergs to disperse. Lets not have another WvExp situation.

Although, all in all, I’m not enthusiastic about this new system. I fail to understand the concept of “competition” that you hope to instill, when the playing field is inherently unbalanced. Numbers win everything. How is that a fair competition?

At no point did I, or would I have, said “Fair competition” WvW is not intended to be “fair”. There are servers with more people, there are servers with better organizations and that will always be the case. This competition will be about showing how your world can do over a defined period of time, against a variety of opponents. SPvP is the part of our game that aims for a completely level playing field. WvW would never be able to match that goal.

In his opinion WvW isn’t about fair competition, can never have a level playing and if you want one, go play sPvP.

And he is right. Population goes far beyond simple numbers. The difference between a border land with 100 WvW organized players of 2-3 guilds vs 100 puggers is beyond belief. Outside of possibly the top 3 servers of gold league, there are no server matchups that are balanced with 24/7 coverage, all WvW oriented guilds etc. Part of the fun of WvW vs PvP is the variety of the fights, and not knowing what is around the corner. yes there are more unbalanced matchups then balanced, and hopefully a few ideas will come out in this thread to help smooth out those unblanaced match ups

The only way to balance the population voluntarily is to take away all the advantages of being on a stacked 24/7 server and hand the advantage to the underdog servers. If a map has 80 invaders v 20 defenders, buff the defence stats of objectives by x4, buff the defenders stats x4, NPC’s etc. Decrease upgrade times substantially.

Sure, the stacked servers and their zergs will cry foul. Of course they will, they wanted easy mode victories not balance. Once they realise the only thing they have to look forward to is long queues the penny might drop and that moving to a lower populated server might actually be a good idea.

It may sound harsh but it has to be to have any chance of voluntary population balance.

Remove PPT, you gain points from kills and captures only, and regarding captures, if the defenders reclaim an objective within a certain time, the attackers gain nothing from it and any upgrades are reinstated thereby negating the dubious advantage of running as huge zerg whose only purpose currently, is to cap as much as possible in the shortest time against the least opposition.

The fundamental issue with WvW as a game mode is that it only really works well when a rather strict condition is met: when all 3 servers are operating at, let’s say, 50% to 90% of the map’s capacity. Below 50% (I made up the numbers but you get the point) activity is insufficient, 90% to 100% the servers are overloaded. and over 100% people are waiting in queue. And this condition must be met for high and low population servers, for primetime and off-peak hours, for weekends and labour days, for WvW-oriented and PvE-oriented servers, for individual players and large guilds, etc.

I think the only real solution is to aggregate populations. It could work like this:

- There are 3 alliances in the game, let’s call them red, green and blue.
- During reset, each server is assigned to one of the 3 alliances. These assignments are made so that overall population is similar for the 3 alliances across all timezones. For example, collect data on each server’s average occupation for each 4- or 6-hour timeframe during a given period (week, month, whatever). Servers are assigned so that alliances have a similar aggregate occupation figure for each of those intervals.
- Using something similar to your overflow technology, create and destroy copies of the 4 maps as needed.
- Allow players to switch overflows so guilds and/or nationalities can play together.
- Each server receives rewards according to its alliance’s result.

Pros:
- Levels the faction populations as much as possible.
- Server communities are still viable.

Cons:
- You need some logic in place to prevent players from gaming the system (e.g. getting an advantage in a map then somehow locking it from removal, possibly replicating this process in several maps).
- Individual efforts as a player, guild or server make less of an impact.

and add in there that I think siege decay timers should be very long for undermanned servers and very short for queued servers.

Titan.3472:

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…

This^^ With the exception of keeping NA and EU separate for lag reasons.

Remember, this is a thread about “World Population”. It needs to be even across servers. Right now it is not.

Eolung.2450:

Pros:
- Levels the faction populations as much as possible.
- Server communities are still viable.

Cons:
- You need some logic in place to prevent players from gaming the system (e.g. getting an advantage in a map then somehow locking it from removal, possibly replicating this process in several maps).
- Individual efforts as a player, guild or server make less of an impact.

I like this concept, as a whole. This concept has been suggested a few times in this thread already, and I would like to see the concept fleshed out a bit more.

Use the upper Tier servers as the main maps, concentrate the populations there. Use the subsequent server maps as overflows to eliminate the queues. Tie the scoring directly to all servers within the group, prorate/balance as necessary. This gives higher tier players the incentive to do well on the map that they are in, while maintaining their connection to their home server.

Rather than closing, or resetting, a map when it is underpopulated, freeze it. Freeze the map including all current siege, upgrades, and PPT. This allows the underpopulated maps, to maintain their identity, while also making any of my/our investments into another servers map a more lasting investment.

I mentioned freezing the PPT, also add a scoring component that allows my contribution on another server’s map to count back to my home map. At least some of what is needed is already available through blood lust. Maybe the outmanned buff can be modified for this purpose, as it should be needed less. I can only guess that this can be modified to include something based off of my WXP, to some scoring back to my home server.

So if all of the servers in my group are tied together, we need to be able to remove players from underpopulated maps. Waypointing forces you into a populated map. Someone avoiding waypoints? Put a portal buff on the NPCS, or have some of these PvE mobs instagib you, and force the waypoint.

With multiple sets of the 4 maps available, now you can look towards limiting the max population on each map. You can now start to look at limiting participation on each map based on the population of your competitor. The queues developed from these limits, would effect one set of maps, at a time, as opposed to the current setup that would effect each individual set of maps if implemented now.

Tie the scoring together, tie the servers together, eliminate queue times, and still allow everyone that wants to WvW, to WvW. I just hope that it is possible, technically.

DevonCarver.5370:

I wanted to further discuss a couple of ideas. Firstly, … <snip> 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.

…

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.

Devon,

Is there any appetite among the WvW team for solving the problem of queue length by forcibly cycling the queue more quickly? In my view such an approach isn’t ideal but does fulfil your “best thing for as many players as possible” goal.

If players were removed from WvW upon death, to be replaced by queued players, all else being equal you would have two players who both get to play in WvW rather than one playing a lot and another playing very little or not at all (stuck in queue).

It sucks for people that would normally get to play many hours of WvW straight (logging in before the queue begins for instance), but does serve the bulk of the playerbase more equitably.

style.6173:

Titan.3472:

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…

This^^ With the exception of keeping NA and EU separate for lag reasons.

Remember, this is a thread about “World Population”. It needs to be even across servers. Right now it is not.

actually, this thread is less about fixing population imbalance, and more about addressing the problems it causes.

Berk.8561:

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

2) Capping how many players can enter a map.

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

4) Adding or buffing NPCs.

You forgot 5) Delete servers and make it “Alliances”, cross-server, with overflows, or a sufficient number of maps (that might mean one complete open world server with capture-able pve environments).
To prevent everyone from stacking: Reward each player individually for:
- Kills done over the week
- Healing done over the week
- Damage done over the week
- Siege usage over the week
- Yak-kills/defends over the week
- Tower defences over the week

Then reward each alliance based on:
- PPT score
- Population in WvW (e.g. alliance A has 100% players logged in, alliance B has only 50%, alliance B has 70%). Reward the outnumbered based on their relative PPT score.

The disparity is obviously all in the off-hour population here. The 12 minute point ticks aid in this disparity because they allow for a lot of fluctuation/accumulation. Why not increase the time between point ticks? This in the short term would at least decrease the massive number disparity on the score board that drives many people away from wvw. You could even apply this in phases or areas. Such as your borderland only gives points to the enemy every 30 mins or at a reduced rate during times of population disparity. This of course would leave anet to create a way of tracking this disparity and making use of it.

DevonCarver.5370:

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

1- You guys designed WvW to be a 24/7 game mode, yet made the decision to have dedicated servers for NA & EU. This splits the potential guilds that can work a time zone for a server in 2 separate entities. Because of this, getting EU on NA or vice versa already unbalances said servers from the rest that don’t have the guilds/population.

2- A well defended upgraded keep can take an organized group their whole prime time (can go up to 5h) just to flip that structure.

3- If you look at the long history of JQ/BG/SoR, you will see just how well a new force in a timezone can change the momentum for the groups coming after. It takes about 1h of uncontested yaks to upgrade a structure.
Back in JQ’s prime days, BG & SoR, with blatant 2v1 could not do anything to stop them from running away with the matchup. BG got some EU guilds (HB) doing work between JQ’s massive SEA & NA dethroning JQ for the #1 spot. SoR gets IRON that plays EU & late-EU to early-NA and start winning because we were managing to keep HB busy and when it came to late-EU (dead time) stuff upgraded and gave us the edge over the other 2 for the whole duration of NA until the opposed servers adapted (recruited). Now that leagues started, BG gets a massive russian guild in an uncontested time slot of late-SEA/early-EU and guess what, they are running away with easy wins.

4- The very simplistic population density control the game has only applies to PvE and considers sPvP & WvW activities players can do. There is a lack of WvW population management. 2 servers can be noted “Full” or “Very high” for population but still see a massive density difference in WvW because of said players interests in the game. WvW and PvE populations should not be treated as one and the same.
People (PvE) generally want to be on the same server as the rest of their guild and can take up an interest in WvW in an already saturated alliance.

5- Again, i really do not understand why the districts concept & guild alliances from GW1 was not applied to GW2 in order to separate PvE from WvW. This would allow you to limit alliances to a certain number of guilds (theoretically eliminating queues if said alliances are being smart about it – choosing spread coverage vs over-stacking a timezone). This would also allow guilds to collaborate with the guilds/players they choose to diminishing the issues of verbal abuse / griefing / spies sabotaging.

If you are (far) behind in score (and outmanned), you should get some extra help.

Few possible solutions:

- When you capture a tower: 2 ac’s will spawn inside.
- When you capture a tower: it will be tier2.
- Supply and upgrade costs will be reduced.

hugs dev’s me and aleaf knows you are trying. Quaggan kisses

p.s. more intimidating giggle emotes.

When the out-manned buff is active, should death be harsher for the larger force? Should resurrection by players be disabled?

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 don’t understand… It seems your solution is written into the post itself?

Do you not think population imbalances are a problem? If you are not even willing to acknowledge that then this thread is a collosal waste of time.

For truly balanced matches dynamic population cap would be required with cap set at lowest servers queue. Either hourly re-logs or relogs set when population differences are greater than a certain percent.

This would pertain to total 4 map populations and not single maps…..

Simple solution which insures balanced matches no matter who the opponents are.

Problems involved with this solution:

1) Higher queue times for stacked servers when playing underdogs.

2) Imbalances of power/player ratio due to wvw rank masteries (high tier servers tend to have higher ranked players due to constant steamrolling of lower populated servers and their ability to “WXP farm” faster.)

3) Imbalances due to lack of organization (no commanders in wvw, guild groups with have their members waiting in queue while opponents have full guild groups playing).

For those asking for three faction model these are the problems that have to be addressed:

1) Populations can still stack to a dominating faction (Organized guild stacking could also pose a problem).

2) Controlling “trolls, griefers, spies, and hackers” becomes problematic as tracking and banning individuals become harder (population pool per faction becomes very large so these individuals can “hide” easier).

3) This type of change may require major re-coding meaning a long wait period for the WvW player base before a “fix” is implemented (Look at PVE guesting as an example).

4) Voip communications need to be reset for each “instanced” match up (teamspeak server set for each match would change weekly).

These are the problems that I can see arising…….Which is why I suggested a lower impact type solution of tying rewards/ppt to a population ratio.

Players can decide for themselves whether easy wins/small rewards or challenging wins/large rewards suit them (effort = reward amount).

Smaller servers would gain stronger players due to faster WvW rank leveling, while stacked servers would have slower leveling when playing underdogs (no more easy wxp/karma/reward farming).

Solstice.1097:

style.6173:

Titan.3472:

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…

This^^ With the exception of keeping NA and EU separate for lag reasons.

Remember, this is a thread about “World Population”. It needs to be even across servers. Right now it is not.

actually, this thread is less about fixing population imbalance, and more about addressing the problems it causes.

Then in my opinion this thread will be a waste of time. Just about every proposal I’ve seen to simply address the score imbalance caused by population imbalance would either be ineffective or could easily be abused. If we aren’t going to see some serious effort from ANet to equalize match populations then WvW is doomed and I will go find something else to do until ESO or some more intelligently crafted game comes out. You can equalize the score without fixing the population balance, but you can’t equalize the scope and entertainment value of the match without it. It’s that simple.

Cactus.2710:

Solstice.1097:

style.6173:

Titan.3472:

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…

This^^ With the exception of keeping NA and EU separate for lag reasons.

Remember, this is a thread about “World Population”. It needs to be even across servers. Right now it is not.

actually, this thread is less about fixing population imbalance, and more about addressing the problems it causes.

Then in my opinion this thread will be a waste of time. Just about every proposal I’ve seen to simply address the score imbalance caused by population imbalance would either be ineffective or could easily be abused. If we aren’t going to see some serious effort from ANet to equalize match populations then WvW is doomed and I will go find something else to do until EOS or some more intelligently crafted game comes out. You can equalize the score without fixing the population balance, but you can’t equalize the scope and entertainment value of the match without it. It’s that simple.

You need to look at the reasoning why people bandwagon or stack populations. If you don’t address those it will just re-occur. Look at my above post to see the problems a “faction” system could produce.

I feel for your frustration at unbalanced matchups ( I face them on a regular basis as well —-—>ehmry bay is my server) but Anet is trying to not alienate the large player base on tier 1 servers with longer queues (which I feel is the players own fault).

At least they are acknowledging the concerns and asking for feedback.

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?
…

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?

Reduce match length significantly (to a given number of hours – 2-6 most likely, but slightly longer would also be possible) and allow multiple instances of maps to run as and when. No transfers and minimal queuing required.

I think another issue is the lay-out of the map. The defenses of most structures make place for open field battles. For an outnumbered server, this is very bad. It is quite hard to win against superior numbers head to head. Creating a few more choke points could resolve this.

Another point is the coordination. As said before, you can not make alliances. Making alliances between guilds, could create more coordination.

Perhaps making more ranks could also help. Now you only have a commander. Making one or more ranks, to make it possible for commanders to create task forces could help coordination. Then you would have something like a general, with different people following different generals. Commanders and generals should be able to issue orders or something.

There is a little problem though. Bad commanders. A solution for this, might be a some sort of commander ranking system, where each rank provides different buffs. You could even expand this, giving commanders their own fighting style. The commander can pick his own buffs, such as bonus supplies, higher running speed outside battle (faster than swiftness), faster speed inside battle, building siege faster, and so on. Basically the buffs should complement certain tactics, such as hit and run, defending, open field battles, underwater fights and so on.

Battlemarkers are the second issue. I don’t mean the orange ones, but the white swords around a keep icon. I feel that whenever a small group attacks, it shouldn’t be shown as fast as when a bigger force attacks. This would make it possible for smaller coordinated servers to attack without meeting a zerg when the gate/wall is halfway down. The problem is that the bigger servers can also take their advantage of this…but pehaps you guys can work it out a solution.

(more in next post)

Smaller numbers can be an advantage. When you have smaller numbers you should use a more mobile style. As mentioned before, hit and run tactics are one option. At the moment it is a bit difficult to execute such tactics. What if the outnumbered servers get additional spawn points? These spawn points could spawn at every edge of the map. This would make it easier for smaller servers to use hit and run tactics. For example, they could attack bay to get the enemies attention, then quickly port to the other side and cap lake or hills.

Another point is that I feel that it that shouldn’t be able to pvd a gate down. This is no fun to defend against, as you can’t do much against them. Sure you can put up a few siege units, but you need a lot of them to defend against much larger numbers. When fighting against superior numbers, you usually don’t have much supply. This creates a situation where you are defenseless.

Basically what I want is more coordination, making it easier to execute hit and run tactics and get appropiately rewarded. It is unfair that a larger server automatically wins because of bigger numbers. There is no challenge in it.

Perhaps we need to overhaul the point system and reward them differently. I don’t know how the system works internally, but if it is clear beforehand whether or not a server is going to be severely outnumbered, you could change the way points are rewarded. For example, issue objectives. Hold hills for 24 hours (in a week) and upgrade it to tier 2.

The objectives could be expanded and tied to the earlier mentioned commander/general ranks. General receive objectives on a more short time span and commanders on larger timespans. Commanders work out strategies, and generals execute them using their own preferred tactics.
Perhaps you could make the war continuous. So for example, the previous red server had to hold hills and upgrade it to tier 2. If they succeeded, the new red server will start with a tier 2 hills. It’s just an idea, it needs to be thought out more, because I can already see issues, as it might actually make the outnumbered issue worse.

These are just some ideas, which definitely need to be thought out a bit more, but perhaps you guys could do that. I also have no insight in what the time, costs and effort will be in implementing these things, so it might be stupid. Sorry for my bad english.

Laurelinde.4395:

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?
…

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?

Reduce match length significantly (to a given number of hours – 2-6 most likely, but slightly longer would also be possible) and allow multiple instances of maps to run as and when. No transfers and minimal queuing required.

At that point, how different is it really from sPvP?

I thought of a couple more ideas so I am deleting my previous post and combining here.

I believe these types of changes would make the game much more enjoyable and playable while population imbalances still exist as they do today. This would also prevent server exoduses due to frustration as well as make the decision to transfer to a lower pop server less of a death sentence for your gaming enjoyment.

1. Erosion – if you hold a structure for 24 hours, it starts losing upgrades. You have to keep re-researching them or it ends up going back to paper.
2. Survival instinct – outmanned buff also allows you to see enemy dots on mini-map
3. Righteous Indignation – lasts between 1-15 minutes depending on server score
4. Contested Waypoints – stay contested 10 seconds after event ends, however still can be used by one player every 12 seconds. OR contested waypoints cost 10 supply to use.

Core game changes -

Matches 56 or 84 hours long instead of 168
Server rating difference applied as a handicap to PPT

lordkrall.7241

Caliban.3176:

Please provide accurate numbers about actual WvW population and not just server population and base transfers on that. I believe that would already go a long way.

But how would they actually do that?
What would be considered WvW-population?
Someone that logged in for 5 minutes one day?
Someone that is logging in daily but only does it for crafting?

I often hear people wanting stuff based on WvW-population, but I have never actually seen anyone come up with a good way to actually get an accurate number for WvW.

You do this using averages. Several methods could involve using variables such as number of players logging in to WvW vs numbers logging out in a given time frame. Also averaging totals per tick, per hour, etc.

A bean counter (accountant) shouldn’t have problems working up numbers like this, its what they do.

If i remember correctly the current maps are the biggest ANet can make at the moment.
I like the idea of getting points only on caping. Also if you defend an objective for an hour but lose it, you have 20 mins to reclaim it. If you do so the enemy server gets no points. If you defend it for 2 hours, you get 25 min to reclaim it. Something like that to give defenders a reason to protect their stuff.

I dont like the idea of kills giving points. Just imagine the hate all the lvl 1-79 characters in WvW will recieve.

I believe a “variable que” could be a solution to the problems of numbers imbalance. For instance, if team A had a total WvW population of 100, and team B had a population of 150, then team B’s que would drop down to equal team A’s until a balance was achieved.

Basically, the que would reflect the lower populated teams numbers, unless the teams balanced out by a given percentage.

When both teams balance is equal, the que for both teams would then be upped by a set amount, letting players from both sides join, until a mismatch occurred again, bringing up a que for the overbalanced team.

This would of course have to be a universal que for the entire realm, as individual map ques would not solve the problem.

The solution here would solve 2 major global issues:

1st: Players rage quitting WvW due to a feeling of hopelessness. The overall populations of all 3 realms SHOULD increase with the knowledge that victory is possible and any team you play on. Thus, even the team with the advantage in overall numbers would, in the long run, not be penalized by long wait ques as the overall populations on all 3 realms should stabilize over time.

2nd: The desire to transfer to a more populated WvW realm would be lessened knowing that such a transfer would be irrelevant. Realms would no longer experience population balloons due to players desires to move to a guaranteed winner. This method would in fact, encourage players to move to fewer populated areas and thus, decrease wait times to enter WvW.

Radakill.3469:

I believe a “variable que” could be a solution to the problems of numbers imbalance. For instance, if team A had a total WvW population of 100, and team B had a population of 150, then team B’s que would drop down to equal team A’s until a balance was achieved.

Basically, the que would reflect the lower populated teams numbers, unless the teams balanced out by a given percentage.

When both teams balance is equal, the que for both teams would then be upped by a set amount, letting players from both sides join, until a mismatch occurred again, bringing up a que for the overbalanced team.

This would of course have to be a universal que for the entire realm, as individual map ques would not solve the problem.

Just curious what would happen when both teams are even, we’ll say 100 each side, then Team A has people start logging off while Team B retains its population ? Does Team B get to keep their 100 or do people get randomly booted out.

I’ve seen this happen on lower ranked servers, Commander lets everyone know he/she is tagging down and calling it a night, there is no Commander to replace him/her so players start logging off rapidly while the enemy is still going strong.

imo the queue size per map will not and should not change. nor should it vary.

nor should servers been done away with in favor of some red/blue/green extremely casual pride-less kittenathon.

Just curious what would happen when both teams are even, we’ll say 100 each side, then Team A has people start logging off while Team B retains its population ? Does Team B get to keep their 100 or do people get randomly booted out.

Then the overpopulated team would have a variable wait que imposed until a balanced is again within a certain percent parameter, for instance, a 25% variable (hypothetical). So if team A and team B had 100 each, team A lost 30, then team B would have a que imposed until either team A’s pop increased, or team B’s pop decreased to the desired population variable.

This would be true for all 3 realms of course, just using 2 teams as an example.

The cap que could and should still be in play for all 3 realms, that shouldn’t cause any problems.

Radakill.3469:

Just curious what would happen when both teams are even, we’ll say 100 each side, then Team A has people start logging off while Team B retains its population ? Does Team B get to keep their 100 or do people get randomly booted out.

Then the overpopulated team would have a variable wait que imposed until a balanced is again within a certain percent parameter, for instance, a 25% variable (hypothetical). So if team A and team B had 100 each, team A lost 30, then team B would have a que imposed until either team A’s pop increased, or team B’s pop decreased to the desired population variable.

This would be true for all 3 realms of course, just using 2 teams as an example.

The cap que could and should still be in play for all 3 realms, that shouldn’t cause any problems.

I would like to think that once a certain % difference in population is noted a re-log is enacted to balance population. If not steamrolling will continue as players can remain playing even with the disparity.

Though this may lead to some exploiting of the mechanic to prevent keep captures.

Server populations/coverage do not have to be made equal amongst all servers. As long as each server has 4 other servers with roughly similar population/coverage, we have enough interesting matchups.

We can then go back to the randomized matchups — but with far less volitility in the RNG.

That is what I was getting at, I know on Ar at its lowest point when we were struggling to just have a small force fighting back it wasn’t uncommon to see almost everybody log off while the enemy was still storming around. So if both had 100 and 80 of Team A logs for the night and Team B retains its 100 then its pretty clear what would happen to Team A. I don’t think players would be happy if they started getting randomly booted to balance or if a re-log occured, this would only happen so many times before players decide to leave and find a new home higher up the chain that would allow them to play.

If you slow down momentum or not, its all about population. I live in Australia, and most australian players have moved to gold league so they can find someone to fight in the same time zone due to lack of australian servers.

JQ (My server) has recently been against Magumma, Sea of Sorrows and Tarnished Coast. There is no one to fight. No one to defend. Even if you find some way to hinder massive PPT momentum, there is no one to fight.

The old system is much better. I am now incredibly upset with the League and blow out matches. Ive never had massive dis-interest in this game until now. I am looking at new games just because there is nothing to do in WvW anymore.

And before anyone mentions that I should “leave a stacked server to go to a smaller server” – That is not my issue. There are no Australian/SEA opponents outside of BG/SOR/JQ. There would be no one to fight and I will end up quitting the game

If Devs continue to put in achivements, leagues in WvW (and further implement PPT handicaps to justify blow out matches) and move it away from the fights this game will not last long. I guarantee a season 2 will trigger most people to leave and find another game.

again – my solution is on page 3

I would like to think that once a certain % difference in population is noted a re-log is enacted to balance population. If not steamrolling will continue as players can remain playing even with the disparity.

Though this may lead to some exploiting of the mechanic to prevent keep captures.

I see your point but I still disagree.

2 reason why I belive this is unnecessary:

1: Its doubtful that populations will vary to a great extent if ques are open on less populated or less WvW oriented servers, and closed on the overpopulated ones. So huge variances in numbers shouldn’t be an issue.

2: Players rage quit due to the belief that there is no hope in sight and they staying and fighting will just result in another failure due to never ending population variances. By not allowing new players to join already overpopulated teams, those teams numbers will eventually balance, with that in mind, there is hope for even lower populated realms to have a chance and thus, much less giving up and leaving.

As to the exploit, this wont be a problem if handled correctly by Anet. Player numbers sampling can be done at various times that are either variable, or just not disclosed to the general population, or both. There are many ways to make this a viable way to population control without it being an exploit.

Server populations/coverage do not have to be made equal amongst all servers. As long as each server has 4 other servers with roughly similar population/coverage, we have enough interesting matchups.

We can then go back to the randomized matchups — but with far less volitility in the RNG.

If this were true this thread wouldn’t even be necessary.

There are many other variables that count toward overpopulation on WvW matches, even when it appears that servers are “balanced”. Some servers have better 24hr coverage, and thus an advantage, while others are populated only during certain time frames. Some are more PVE oriented, just for a few examples.

Constant minute by minute monitoring and balancing is the only way to truly level the playing field for games such as WvW.