Guild Wars 2

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.

Agree and this was my point in previous post, there is no need to log off players already in WvW, this is unnecessary and would be vary unpopular. Simply regulating the flow of new players should be sufficient, and would also be enough of a incentive for new players on lower populated realms to join, further narrowing the balance gap in a positive way.

Why not just scale PPT given by a tower/keep/camp/stomp based off of the ratio of the players in WvW on the two servers involved? Have it be the total ratio on all maps. That way if you go after the server with fewer people/less coverage you get less points (makes sense since there is less work/risk involved). I don’t see a reason to buff/nerf either side with something like this.

A player can’t transfer to a server ranked higher than his current server

Exception : Last tier can transfer between last tier

Other PvP games don’t try and fix imbalanced teams by buffing stats, giving handicaps, or handing out more points and rewards to the undermanned team. They fix player imbalance by balancing the teams!

I still don’t know why Anet refuses to permanently allow free transfers to the lowest tier, lowest populated servers. I remember when they did this in just a week, my server’s (FC) WvW activity almost doubled. Imagine if they had kept it open.

Sirendor.1394:

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).

I said that I was enumerating the “non-radical solutions” to the problem, meaning those that could be implemented without major structural changes to the game. While this option is interesting, I think it’s fairly radical and would require a lot of effort to implement. I think we are more likely to see ANet implement a non-radical solution than a radical one.

I really think that limiting people’s freedom of movement isn’t going to solve the WvW issues. What we really need is what golf, and bowling have. We need handicaps.

The problem is, how could you implement an effective handicap, that would not be exploitable? Also, the handicap needs to not be a means to punish the server with more population, but just to help even the playing field for the servers with less population.

Maybe scale the strength of guards based on the population within the zone. So say, server A has 30 people running in the zone, and server B has 5 (and it is server B’s home bl). Now, as it stands now, server A is gonna take the whole BL, and tick like crazy all night, leaving server B in a whole they can’t get out of.

So, with this kind of a disparity, strengthen the guards so server A just can’t easily PvD their way to victory. Add some extra guards in the towers and keep, and if server A had built some siege before they logged, then allow these guards to use the siege. Make it harder for server A to take the BL, while server B is sleeping.

Maybe, make an npc squad that could automatically trigger (like siegemaster), that could go out and take back towers and keeps that the enemy have left unattended in Server B’s bl.

Sure, that is a lot of pve to add to wvw, but, when there is an absence of players, npcs would be better than nothing.

Something really needs done to the scoring, to make the matches competitve, no matter the population imbalance. This would benefit WvW for the near and long term, as the game ages and less people play.

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.

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.

It won’t stop rage quitting. Routinely, I see a full queued map lose the garrison then almost everyone leaves. The attackers stay to camp/farm though! You also see this when a commander leaves and no one replaces them.

What about the reality of player composition when facing organized guilds? Against a good guild you typically need many more players in order to win via brute force, but it seems impossible with your system as population “imbalance” cannot occur. However, population is not always the same as strength on a map.

The people who keep suggesting a handicap system or giving ppt bonuses are not gettingit. The score means nothing if your not having fun, getting steam rolled constantly by far superior numbers to the point where logging off is more enjoyable than playing is what needs to be fixed. Don’t kid yourselves you didn’t win because the ppt was tweaked, you still got your kitten handed to you by 2-5 X the number of players. Would it really make people happy to say " we were spawn camped for 7 days, but we won because the numbers up top said we did".

One of the only viable ways is to use the Red Blue Green across the board teams to balance out the population since server imbalance are pretty much impossible to balance.

If RGB is too simple a name, perhaps we could use the gods name like grenth lyssa etc. so we get like 6 gods to fight under?

No transfer to a server ranked higher than yours.

All server will have balanced population in a few months and it will stay balanced.

It’s a long term viable solution.

And it’s ultra simple.

Leave it as it is, such are the ebs and flows of players interested in wvw, don’t see much point in trying to change things drastically other than upping the numbers of players allowed on each map and at least giving us an idea of what the actual queue time will be.

Andrew Clear.1750:

I really think that limiting people’s freedom of movement isn’t going to solve the WvW issues. What we really need is what golf, and bowling have. We need handicaps.

The problem is, how could you implement an effective handicap, that would not be exploitable? Also, the handicap needs to not be a means to punish the server with more population, but just to help even the playing field for the servers with less population.

Maybe scale the strength of guards based on the population within the zone. So say, server A has 30 people running in the zone, and server B has 5 (and it is server B’s home bl). Now, as it stands now, server A is gonna take the whole BL, and tick like crazy all night, leaving server B in a whole they can’t get out of.

So, with this kind of a disparity, strengthen the guards so server A just can’t easily PvD their way to victory. Add some extra guards in the towers and keep, and if server A had built some siege before they logged, then allow these guards to use the siege. Make it harder for server A to take the BL, while server B is sleeping.

Maybe, make an npc squad that could automatically trigger (like siegemaster), that could go out and take back towers and keeps that the enemy have left unattended in Server B’s bl.

Sure, that is a lot of pve to add to wvw, but, when there is an absence of players, npcs would be better than nothing.

Something really needs done to the scoring, to make the matches competitve, no matter the population imbalance. This would benefit WvW for the near and long term, as the game ages and less people play.

I agree that there need to be some sort of handicap or buff.

But it should not be based on population

Why?

Simple… If you put it on population it can easily be abused even by the winning server. If all the player on the winning server left the map they will get the bonus too? Also, a server with a strong SEA presence and no NA presence will get the buff up at all time during NA. Do we really need to help a server that PvDoor you all night and is already winning?

Scoring and population are 2 different issues

1. Population problem : If you outnumber your opponent 2 to 1 you should and will win the fight. Problem is that if you always outnumber your opponent 2 to 1 you will win every fight and it’s no fun for everyone.

2. Score problem : The match are decided in the first few hours and there is no turning back. We already know the winner and the loser.

If you want to solve the population problem you need to do something like :

- You can’t transfer to a server ranked higher than yours

If you want to solve the scoring problem you need to do something like :

- Give buff or handicap to server based on their current score. The goal is to keep the score close all week long so that every week is a thrilling photo finish.

Nuzt.7894:

The people who keep suggesting a handicap system or giving ppt bonuses are not gettingit. The score means nothing if your not having fun, getting steam rolled constantly by far superior numbers to the point where logging off is more enjoyable than playing is what needs to be fixed. Don’t kid yourselves you didn’t win because the ppt was tweaked, you still got your kitten handed to you by 2-5 X the number of players. Would it really make people happy to say " we were spawn camped for 7 days, but we won because the numbers up top said we did".

You are viewing this problem too narrowly. There are many different issues at play here, such as:
1) coverage
2) morale
3) power of zergs versus smaller numbers
4) incentives for zerging

They all combine to create the problems we see. For at least the last 3, the current system can be tweaked without the massive overhaul that some suggest.

Gudradain.3892:

No transfer to a server ranked higher than yours.

All server will have balanced population in a few months and it will stay balanced.

It’s a long term viable solution.

And it’s ultra simple.

Relying on players to destack themselves is a losing proposition. What incentive is there for someone to leave their current server for a lower tier server. And if it happens how do we ensure that the population doesn’t try to stack on a single lower tier server, which has happened many times.

Would be interesting to know the bench marks from low>medium>high>very high>full servers. Could show some interesting numbers. And if it only tallies people currently online based from that server, depending when x players last logged in or if it included people guesting including dungeon instances being hosted etc.

No idea how this beat skill lag haha.

I have a feeling that to be able to address the topic, we need to focus down on fixing the smaller things that add up to make the issue.

A larger server may be more attractive than a smaller one because of a number of things;
- Established community and playerbase. Some servers have a large number of guilds and groups that regularly wvw, websites and forums. Obviously you need wvw’ers to establish a wvw community so this is likely a case of ‘rich get richer’.
- Coverage. Tied into the above point, and again a ‘rich get richer’ issue. People typically want to play with people in thier own timezones. Oceanic’s want to play with other oceanic’s and will flock to the larger servers because that’s where the majority of players in that timezone play.
- Rewards. Players in the top tiers have more enemies to fight/kill and due to the way wxp works and the poor implementation of defensive rewards players on these servers get more wxp, more rank chests, more loot. (IMO: There needs to be some way to ramp up the rewards defenders get the longer they hold out fighting an enemy for and also ramp up the rewards the longer attackers try to take a structure. The flip and forget bull we see day in day out needs to stop)
- Moral. There needs to be ways to keep players engaged when they are not ‘winning’. While most of us hate to admit it, many wvw’ers are motivated by reward. “Why spend my time defending at x timezone, the enemy has 20 more players than us and we have no hope of holding it. I dont get any loot, wxp, karma by being here trying so I may as well champfarm/dungeon crawl/<insert other pve event>.”

We need more dev input to focus on specific points they want us to address because this thread is a mess.

In case anyone is keeping score
Living story: 66, WvW: 9

To me the biggest issue that is holding down the balance is the fixed points for capturing points in WvW.

I have seen at least one other suggesting altered points given based on how upgraded something is. I would add that a changed points given depending on how many current active players are online from the server you take the point from.

Let us say that Server A has 100 people online one night, and server B has 10 people. The outmanned buff gives absolutely no incentive for those 10 to go into an actual fight. Server A will steamroll all over Server B until Server B has nothing left.

If the points where more flexible, then Server A would only get 10% of the usual points for each captured point UNTIL Server B’s population grows ingame to match that of Server A. Note that Server A can not get less points at any time for what they did. As soon as the servers are balanced in terms of current online people, Server A is getting 100% of the points they deserve because at that point it is up to server B to reclaim what was lost. (Note that you may or may not get above 100% for capturing something while outmanned, it would be slightly OP in my book, but that is up for discussion)

To prevent abuse by leaving the WvW just before taking a point, the number of players calculated should be based on how many people have been online at all for the past hour.

This will give big incentive to actually defend objects that are worth a lot, has big upgrades and so on. It also reduces the value of having large teams go at the “night” hours because the points given from owning those night time becomes severely reduced.

It will give lower populated servers the chance to catch up instead of falling helplessly behind within 12 hours, and then not care at all for the next 7 days of play. For the servers where they are balanced, this will be no change at all.

Note that these suggested changes are based on the 2 sides attacking and defending. Server C that is not involved gets no say in things until they take something (and will encourage server C to take from Server A, as that gives more points, rather than going after the less populated Server

Let me ask you guys a question…..if rewards were more being on a stacked server than a weaker one which would you choose?

Simple question right? And that is your answer……..players stack population because its easier to get more rewards.

Anet needs to address these facts that its easier to win, get more loot, and get more wxp on higher populated servers……

If winning on a stacked server netted you 10 copper and 20 wxp per objective compared to 10 silver and 500 wxp on an undermanned one which would you choose?

If I was fighting at a ratio of 2 to 1 I feel I should get more rewards if I succeed, is that considered fair? Now why would I feel I should get more?

Well, more effort was placed to succeed, because the odds are against me.

If I see other servers having an easier time to get the same rewards why shouldn’t I join them?

Currently there are no incentives other than no wait time to enter wvw and the queues don’t seem to be enough of a deterrent to stop stacking. If you adjust the amount of rewards based on population ratios, some players who like challenges (but want to get rewarded for effort) may decide to choose a lesser populated server thus creating a shift in population. Players on lowest populated servers who play against highest should receive great amounts of WXP, karma and currency for their efforts.

Sure you get defeated a lot….but each victory should reward you way more, making your character stronger through wvw ranking and gear progression.

The point is it shouldn’t be easier to level up your characters and get loot on a stacked server, it should be harder because of the less effort required to achieve objectives. Make this a factor and you may see the population start balancing on its own as players on lower populated servers gain more levels quicker and get gear quicker etc.

Creating a positive incentive to move to a lower populated server is what is needed in combination with a smaller player cap so the disparity becomes less (and skill lag becomes more manageable).

@Jaytee.9513 I hear what your saying and the idea to me has some merit, except for A few gaping flaws…
WvW ranks might make you feel stonger when your sitting on your rams with full mastery, but on an outmanned server when the 50+ zerg train comes howling down on you it counts for diddly squat. There is nothing in the rankings that can possibly make any real difference in regards to population imbalance imo.
Gear progression has no great effect because there isn’t much in the way of gear progression, its cosmetics not stats. The main difference on gear is how you choose to mix your stats in your build. Sure up levels might benefit in havine a better yellow on them or maybe if their lucky get their first exo on them but when you reach 80 the gear progression all but ceases until the next tier is released into game… which ok ascended might be it but now ascended is craftable and dropping ingame it wont be long before every man and their sheep dog has that as well.. so coin and gear progression are all but irrelevant in wvw as well.

But as I say your idea has merit, perhaps the devs can play around with rewards and make changes somewhere because I think you are right in thinking players will often hive to where the rewards are best, dungeon running should of told ANET this already but asking them to look at game trends is like pulling teeth otherwise they would of already seen the upsurge in Warriors across the game.. it simply has no meaning to ANET and therefore there is no issue.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Nickface.5984:

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

Nods, it’s something we’ve talked about internally.

A lot of times, we’ll preface ideas with, “I’m not saying this is a great idea, or something we’d do, but I’ll throw it out to see if it sparks a brainstorm for anyone else…<insert idea>.”

These types of ideas (and this whole thread) are still amazing for generating ideas. Even if an idea might have a lot of problems with it, still toss it out! Maybe it’ll lead us to the eventual answer!

I appreciate the open invitation to exploring ideas – I’ll throw out some of my wacky ones to see if anyone can brainstorm off them…

1. Make the T8 servers an ongoing live open test server for any changes to WvW. This might encourage players to transfer there to get an early peek at possible changes to WvW and since those bottom tier fights are pretty much out of the race and usually a blowout anyway it shouldn’t be that impactful…?

The rest of my ideas are based on my assumption that any changes made based on map population would only encourage ‘gaming’ or manipulating the system. “We have too many on X map – commanders, pull your teams off”. A better way might be to look at score differential. When a server’s score falls beneath certain thresholds (ex: 10% less than the reigning server, 25%, 50%), then underscore mechanics or scoring could kick in.

2. An obvious idea is that underscore servers earn more points per tick on their objectives or overscore servers earn less. But this still doesn’t really solve how to comeback after a night of unbalance, it just delays the inevitable.

3. Overnight balance could be addressed by underscore server’s objectives becoming increasingly more difficult to take at certain score differentials. It could require a new type of very supply expensive siege to break through their walls. This new siege could have some kind of time gate on it and take hours to build, thereby smoothing out any overnight population differences.

4. Underscore servers could get new tools at certain score differentials – ladders to climb walls or jump pads to vault over them (trebucheting asura over walls haha).

5. The trickiest knot to untangle is how to encourage underscore teams to work together. I really think this is the key to blowout matches in WvW, that 2 “beaten” servers can come together and take down the big guy. The tricky part is how to implement this type of coordination while still maintaining the rivalry and competition between those servers (in addition to how scores would be handled). Some random ideas:
a) a temporary truce mechanic where the underscores could become neutral to each other
b) a form of siege or wall that would require components from both of the underscore teams to create
c) some kind of communication device that would allow underscore teams to coordinate…?
No idea how score could be allocated between the underscores when they were truced, maybe split the score until the truce expires then the team with the most players on the objective owns it?

Keep up the great discussions everyone, you are doing good stuff here.

Well I managed to make it through reading the first 4 pages of this thread, and for the most part I have come to the conclusion that the problem plaguing WvW is the fact that it is WvW. There is no simple or easy solution to the two main problems that people have pointed out: severs coverage and clogged queues. My suggestion would be to remove the fact that match-ups are based on servers and change it the PvP style that minics what was done in Guild Wars factions with alliance battles. Im not saying servers should be in alliances, but use lore in the current game could be used I mean we have the priory, vigil, and whispers, so why not turn the current WvWvW into a place where those 3 groups duke out their differences. For those of you who are unfamiliar with alliance battles I suggest checking out the wiki http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Alliance_Battle

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.

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.

As I see it, it’s a bad idea and you should try thinking about it from a different perspective. Ask yourself (or even better, open up a thread and ask your players, all of them, not WvW section ones) what are the other reasons that make them transfer.
When you know that, you can find a way to solve the WvW bandwagon problem w/o messing with your PvE players, I can assure you’d have a crowd of very disappointed players otherwise.

To me the key of the problem is the way guilds work. I’ve always assumed WvW mass transfers are the reason behind it, correct me if I’m wrong.
Evidence is server tied upgrades are not stopping WvW guilds from transfering but are causing a lot of issues for small guilds and single players who want to join a guild on another server. This is what made me transfer.
Guesting is not a solution, being on a different server from most of your guild makes you feel excluded, you only have access to guild chat, no upgrades, no bank, no mission info, you cannot gain influence form them, nor buy it, you’re non existent to the guild gameplay wise. And this is a good, non WvW related and fully legitimate reason why many players transfer. Why I did, why many in my guild did or will do as well.

So the solution IMHO is change the way guilds work. Make home server (and therefore transfers) matter when it comes to WvW but make it so they don’t impact other players so much. You can keep WvW upgrades server tied but the rest of it should be server wide. This way I can truly be part of my guild even if I’m on another server; I’d still prefer to be on the same server, mind you, because guesting all the time can be annoying but the difference will be small and for many not even worth the gold of the transfer. This way if you lock transfers down for the sake of WvW balance, other players are not greatly impacted.

Ps. I have no english grammar check on this PC so forgive me if I missed some errors :P

Don’t know if this would work, but how about pairing up servers? eg, one high pop server, one low and one medium pop. Make this ‘one big server’ for wvw?

Quite frankly I’m getting tired of staring at queues and people who will only fight within running distance of one of the (all the) towers that they own.

Getting to the point where I’m done with this game very soon.

I get the feeling that we have completely wasted our time and the developers time in this thread…

Here is a summary:
Players: We need to do something about population imbalance.
Developers: There is nothing we can do about population imbalance.
Players: Yes there is! Here are over 100 ideas!
Developers: Population imbalance cannot be fixed, lets talk about something else.
Players: You cannot be serious!
Developers: -silence-
Players: Say something!
Developers: Thank you for your feedback.

/thread

Let me be clear, this is not meant to be a slam on the developers. I really like the developers of this game. However, if fixing population imbalance is off the table, we should have been told that at the beginning. Better yet, we should have been given a different topic that might actually be productive.

The PvE living world thread has left me quite excited. This thread has left me disappointed and frustrated. Perhaps it was my expectations.

It is not too late to turn this thread around, but it will require significant DEVine intervention. I guess we will see.

Nuzt.7894:

The people who keep suggesting a handicap system or giving ppt bonuses are not gettingit. The score means nothing if your not having fun, getting steam rolled constantly by far superior numbers to the point where logging off is more enjoyable than playing is what needs to be fixed. Don’t kid yourselves you didn’t win because the ppt was tweaked, you still got your kitten handed to you by 2-5 X the number of players. Would it really make people happy to say " we were spawn camped for 7 days, but we won because the numbers up top said we did".

^this^ … and it discourages me immensely that so few posters here seem to get it. If the PPT and score adjustment advocates got their way WvW would still suck and they’d be back here again in a month to complain about how this server or that was manipulating their populations to affect the PPT, or how the score adjustments didn’t account for something, or some other such bullkitten. The ONLY way this game gets back to its premise of a large scale open world strategy-based PvP mode where the winner is determined by team work, communication, strategy, guile, cleverness, and skill is if ANet is willing to implement some scheme that balances the actual player populations during the majority of the match.

I have rather little hope that ANet will have the conviction to fix this, but even less so given the number of misdirected posts focusing on PPT bandaids instead of the surgery that’s really needed.

It can’t be a coincidence that the med pop servers in EU are doing worst in wvw. I see no real need for PvE players to move server en mass so variation in server population must largely be connected to movements of wvw players/guilds.

whatever solution to population needs to force wvw players/guilds to transfer downwards. easiest one would be adjust the levels of the ranks of population and then rename high and very high servers to full and disallow transfers. Have low as always free.

Bloodstealer.5978:

@Jaytee.9513 I hear what your saying and the idea to me has some merit, except for A few gaping flaws…
WvW ranks might make you feel stonger when your sitting on your rams with full mastery, but on an outmanned server when the 50+ zerg train comes howling down on you it counts for diddly squat. There is nothing in the rankings that can possibly make any real difference in regards to population imbalance imo.
Gear progression has no great effect because there isn’t much in the way of gear progression, its cosmetics not stats. The main difference on gear is how you choose to mix your stats in your build. Sure up levels might benefit in havine a better yellow on them or maybe if their lucky get their first exo on them but when you reach 80 the gear progression all but ceases until the next tier is released into game… which ok ascended might be it but now ascended is craftable and dropping ingame it wont be long before every man and their sheep dog has that as well.. so coin and gear progression are all but irrelevant in wvw as well.

But as I say your idea has merit, perhaps the devs can play around with rewards and make changes somewhere because I think you are right in thinking players will often hive to where the rewards are best, dungeon running should of told ANET this already but asking them to look at game trends is like pulling teeth otherwise they would of already seen the upsurge in Warriors across the game.. it simply has no meaning to ANET and therefore there is no issue.

Look at dungeons like you said, the easiest dungeons get the most participation because effort to reward is greater. Hard dungeons get little attention because the reward difference is too small…… Apply this thinking to WvW mode and what do you get? Stacked servers because its easier to get rewards.

Regarding gear progression, it does make a big difference especially armor and trinkets.

I’ve been running mostly green trinkets because WvW gives a poor return for time invested and badges are hard to come by on undermanned servers don’t you agree?

Compared to some players on stacked servers my kill count and wvw rank levels are low even if I surpassed them on hours played. This is exactly my POINT, by staying on an undermanned server you get punished…….

Which is why a lot of players transfer up to a dominant server (it doesn’t have to be top tier to dominate but for example top dog in a tier) which allows them to farm the weaker servers to their hearts content.

This is why I am asking for a population ratio co-efficient to regulate rewards/ppt……..It may incentivize moving to lower populated servers.

MORE EFFORT = MORE REWARDS

Cactus.2710:

Nuzt.7894:

The people who keep suggesting a handicap system or giving ppt bonuses are not gettingit. The score means nothing if your not having fun, getting steam rolled constantly by far superior numbers to the point where logging off is more enjoyable than playing is what needs to be fixed. Don’t kid yourselves you didn’t win because the ppt was tweaked, you still got your kitten handed to you by 2-5 X the number of players. Would it really make people happy to say " we were spawn camped for 7 days, but we won because the numbers up top said we did".

^this^ … and it discourages me immensely that so few posters here seem to get it. If the PPT and score adjustment advocates got their way WvW would still suck and they’d be back here again in a month to complain about how this server or that was manipulating their populations to affect the PPT, or how the score adjustments didn’t account for something, or some other such bullkitten. The ONLY way this game gets back to its premise of a large scale open world strategy-based PvP mode where the winner is determined by team work, communication, strategy, guile, cleverness, and skill is if ANet is willing to implement some scheme that balances the actual player populations during the majority of the match.

I have rather little hope that ANet will have the conviction to fix this, but even less so given the number of misdirected posts focusing on PPT bandaids instead of the surgery that’s really needed.

Not to sound argumentative but what are your suggestions for addressing the situation?

You have been pretty adamant about being against ppt adjustment saying that it could be manipulated (How if its based on a running average each hour?) or how its doesn’t change game play (You are still outnumbered….etc.).

The people making these suggestions are not looking for instant answers but long term solutions. Read my post above with an objective view and make points to why its bad or good, this is what this discussion is for: Idea generation and player input on suggested fixes.

Every suggestion will have positives and negatives to it.

Please remember that major changes require major re-work in coding (eg. may take months to implement) which I feel is too long to let slide but that is just my opinion.

1) Introduce alliance system – guilds form alliances that compete in WvW. Abolish idea of PvE server = WvW server. An alliance can consist of a) several guilds, b) single guild, or c) single players.
2) Alliances queue up for a match on a BL or EB with a certain number of people. Use “is online” or a opt-in check box system to figure numbers of participating players for that alliance.
3) Assign alliances to a BL or EB until map limit reached. Give preference to alliances from the same PvE server, but if necessary pull alliances from all possible PvE servers. Guilds from one server that want to play together can join alliance to assure to will be assigned together. With the alliance size granularity established in a) it should be possible to get fairly even populations.
4) Matches are 4-6 hours long, with a break in between. People can drop out of a match at any time. Allow members of currently competing alliances to back fill these slots, though use anyone to back fill empty spot ASAP. Stagger matches, so one starts at least every hour. That way you can join a match as a stand alone player until your alliance starts a new match. At that point you’d leave your match and join with your alliance. Your spot in the ongoing match should be back filed in short order by another stand alone player.
5) Create a ranking system for alliances to eventually match up similarly skilled alliances. Account for shifts in alliances, guild moves, matches played with large percentage of stand alone players on either side, etc.

Doing this
- will even out populations in matches
- eliminate queues to the time between match starts
- will allow you to keep playing with your guild in your alliance and likely server mates, at least some of them
- might team you up with a “rival” alliance against an alliance from your own PvE server
- will almost eliminate spying and sabotaging due to the random assignments of teams and option to “size” your alliance to completely fill a BL/EB, removing stand alone players from the equation
- will eliminate night-capping and prevent PvDoor, unless population in a match’s time slot is very limited and concentrated in too few alliances, though that should sort itself out in little time; for the most part I think people would rather fight even a guild from their own server than PvD in an empty BL for 4 hours.
- will provide challenging matchups once rankings catch up.
- will allow changing map population cap to combat lag, because queues are gone
- may impact “server pride”, though I think it will just shift a bit from “we’re NA/EU server #1 !!”, to “we have the top-ranked alliance”, or “most alliances in the top 5 ranked”

I think each server should get a +20 player increase to map limit in their own BL so if you queue your own BL you will always have a numbers advantage on your home turf. This advantage would really only come into play when an enemy is hitting you in full force otherwise it would be pointless to queue anyway.

If you’re getting double-teamed then you’d still be outnumbered like 200-120 or so, but in general it does give the weaker server a better chance to really hold their ground and make a stand to try to keep a respectable amount of points on the board.

And while we’re at it, have the bloodlust buff only apply to the BL it is in, and remove it completely from EB but have a default +1 point per stomp on all maps at all times – in a BL with bloodlust you get an extra +1.

Creates a home field advantage and makes it a bit easier to defend your natural BL. It won’t really help when you get double-teamed and your bloodlust taken from you, but the extra 20 player limit will definitely give you a better fighting chance.

you can’t make server population even, not with out a huge up heavly from players.
you can’t handicap scores, makeing one teams prime time less then someone elses or making people upset when you have people show up just doesnt work.

so like i said before. you move to a point system that rewards you for capping, defending and killing.

1) keeps/towers/road guards/supply camps will be worth points when capped. the longer the point has been held the more it will be worth.

2) defending an objective will give points over time based on the amount of attackers. this will be the only ticking point score. at a determined amount of time the defenders will gain points for there realm depedent on the amount of people attacking the keep. to keep people from pulling off the keep before tick to fool the system. the number of attackers will randomly be selected between ticks.

3) player kills will add to ppt, you will get bonus points for a stomp when under bloodlust.

4) yaks are already worth points and can stay the same.

this will keep points to being accrued at there peak during the most active average time for all servers in the match up. the server that has the best off peak coverage will accrue a bump in points when the can cap maps uncontested. this could be off set by the outmanned servers taking and holding a tower and defending what they took.

is this perfect? no and no suggestion ever will be. yet i see no other way to keep games close and fun. this does not punish people and no suggestion ever should. we want wvw to be fun and the most fun people have is when a match is close and people keep showing up. if you can keep the points from becoming too huge a gap to ever be closed you will see less people phoneing it in by tuesday.

Let’s fix the stuff to bring current populations into wvw. Let’s start with an easy one!

Incentives in wvw are still terrible. 20 min dungeon run gets me 1g+. 20 min tower siege gets me what? Crap.

Afraid of abuse from tower trading? Make a reward like dungeons, X amount of towers per day give a reward. Same with keeps.

Small, easy change that can help increase the people joining wvw. New achievements added a huge flux of players. Some did the meta and left. Others enjoyed wvw and stayed. Give the ppl who left a reason to come back once in a while. They may enjoy wvw the next time they come back.

There will always be an imbalance with this many servers and 24/7 matches. It can’t be helped. Start small, add content, add incentive to spread out. Living word adds content and incentive (achievements/loots/rewards/new things to do). WvW only has 2 maps eb and 3 mirrored BLs after over a year.

Samhayn.2385:

you can’t make server population even, not with out a huge up heavly from players.
you can’t handicap scores, makeing one teams prime time less then someone elses or making people upset when you have people show up just doesnt work.

so like i said before. you move to a point system that rewards you for capping, defending and killing.

1) keeps/towers/road guards/supply camps will be worth points when capped. the longer the point has been held the more it will be worth.

2) defending an objective will give points over time based on the amount of attackers. this will be the only ticking point score. at a determined amount of time the defenders will gain points for there realm depedent on the amount of people attacking the keep. to keep people from pulling off the keep before tick to fool the system. the number of attackers will randomly be selected between ticks.

3) player kills will add to ppt, you will get bonus points for a stomp when under bloodlust.

4) yaks are already worth points and can stay the same.

this will keep points to being accrued at there peak during the most active average time for all servers in the match up. the server that has the best off peak coverage will accrue a bump in points when the can cap maps uncontested. this could be off set by the outmanned servers taking and holding a tower and defending what they took.

is this perfect? no and no suggestion ever will be. yet i see no other way to keep games close and fun. this does not punish people and no suggestion ever should. we want wvw to be fun and the most fun people have is when a match is close and people keep showing up. if you can keep the points from becoming too huge a gap to ever be closed you will see less people phoneing it in by tuesday.

Sorry but I don’t think this system addresses population imbalances….I think you are assuming primetime differs for each server so when one has many an opponent has less and they can make up the differences when they are the OP server.

Look at it this way, a stacked server can have round the clock coverage meaning at NO time will they not have a sizable force. How can a server with only NA prime coverage compete?

Every tried defending a keep or tower when you are heavily outmanned? How long do you think it takes to capture an unfortified objective with no supply and few defenders. Defenders probably won’t last long enough to collect on the “Defense PPT”….

Now ever tried attacking a defended tower while undermanned…..OP server zerg swoops in and wipes you a lot of the times before you can take the objective, meaning they accrue “defense PPT” and points for killing your group while you the Undermanned force gets nothing.

Once everything is paper on the outmanned side there is no coming back with this system.

Well,

Given the likeness this is to Realm versus Realm, different of course.
One of the faults in comparison is the weekly reset.

In the Realm versus Realm flavor, it gave the underdog a chance because they knew eventually the Giants would get bored and allow them to finally be at an even playing field. Right now, the underdog story really doesn’t show in terms of points.

Lets say

Server A – 1000 people
Server B – 990 people
Server C – 400 people

No matter how good and how hard server C tries, they can’t ever see their Total points being higher. Plus this example also shows that server coverage would be effected. Given if no one worked and all only did WVW. Server A and B could have better time shifts then Server C.

Having PVE server tied to your WVW server becomes another balancing act.

Using the ABC example above. Lets say all 3 servers had the same population but above reflects the WVWers. Just making sprays WVW servers and allowing signups would still create the same balance concerns we have now though, it would have to be severely regulated in order to work.

The incentive is another story, for those that are borderline or WVWers, it doesn’t take much to make us happy. But getting PVEers to step out of their safety net is much harder if it doesnt have a great reward. I dont believe its something that is even worth aspiring for as it would create a whole new economical and conflictious debate in the community.

The truth is, there are many things that need work in order to help the underdog.

Better defendable keeps, easier defendable keeps, line if sight corrections, a reason to defend and hold a keep. A reason to upgrade a keep. Keeps should not be as easy to flip. Even towers need work.

Currently, everything is offensive, no defense needed. This needs to change, but what good is defending since its more tedious and pointless then just going to take another place.

There is much more but I will become very long winded, so I will let you soak in this bit for now

Berk.8561:

Sirendor.1394:

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).

I said that I was enumerating the “non-radical solutions” to the problem, meaning those that could be implemented without major structural changes to the game. While this option is interesting, I think it’s fairly radical and would require a lot of effort to implement. I think we are more likely to see ANet implement a non-radical solution than a radical one.

Oh my bad. Sorry.

Jaytee.9513:

Samhayn.2385:

you can’t make server population even, not with out a huge up heavly from players.
you can’t handicap scores, makeing one teams prime time less then someone elses or making people upset when you have people show up just doesnt work.

so like i said before. you move to a point system that rewards you for capping, defending and killing.

1) keeps/towers/road guards/supply camps will be worth points when capped. the longer the point has been held the more it will be worth.

2) defending an objective will give points over time based on the amount of attackers. this will be the only ticking point score. at a determined amount of time the defenders will gain points for there realm depedent on the amount of people attacking the keep. to keep people from pulling off the keep before tick to fool the system. the number of attackers will randomly be selected between ticks.

3) player kills will add to ppt, you will get bonus points for a stomp when under bloodlust.

4) yaks are already worth points and can stay the same.

this will keep points to being accrued at there peak during the most active average time for all servers in the match up. the server that has the best off peak coverage will accrue a bump in points when the can cap maps uncontested. this could be off set by the outmanned servers taking and holding a tower and defending what they took.

is this perfect? no and no suggestion ever will be. yet i see no other way to keep games close and fun. this does not punish people and no suggestion ever should. we want wvw to be fun and the most fun people have is when a match is close and people keep showing up. if you can keep the points from becoming too huge a gap to ever be closed you will see less people phoneing it in by tuesday.

Sorry but I don’t think this system addresses population imbalances….I think you are assuming primetime differs for each server so when one has many an opponent has less and they can make up the differences when they are the OP server.

Look at it this way, a stacked server can have round the clock coverage meaning at NO time will they not have a sizable force. How can a server with only NA prime coverage compete?

Every tried defending a keep or tower when you are heavily outmanned? How long do you think it takes to capture an unfortified objective with no supply and few defenders. Defenders probably won’t last long enough to collect on the “Defense PPT”….

Now ever tried attacking a defended tower while undermanned…..OP server zerg swoops in and wipes you a lot of the times before you can take the objective, meaning they accrue “defense PPT” and points for killing your group while you the Undermanned force gets nothing.

Once everything is paper on the outmanned side there is no coming back with this system.

first, you will never destack servers. ANET is not going to do forced moves.

second, if a stacked serv tacks and holds everything when your server can’t do anything about it right now they will get a huge lead. At least as I propose it when you finally can capture those keeps they will be worth more points for your team since the longer you hold a keep the more its worth when captured.

all my suggestion is for is to close the gap in scoring between servers to keep people motivated to keep fighting. As far as I and from posts from anet are concerned you will never fix coverage or population imbalance.

Jaytee.9513:

Cactus.2710:

Nuzt.7894:

The people who keep suggesting a handicap system or giving ppt bonuses are not gettingit. The score means nothing if your not having fun, getting steam rolled constantly by far superior numbers to the point where logging off is more enjoyable than playing is what needs to be fixed. Don’t kid yourselves you didn’t win because the ppt was tweaked, you still got your kitten handed to you by 2-5 X the number of players. Would it really make people happy to say " we were spawn camped for 7 days, but we won because the numbers up top said we did".

^this^ … and it discourages me immensely that so few posters here seem to get it. If the PPT and score adjustment advocates got their way WvW would still suck and they’d be back here again in a month to complain about how this server or that was manipulating their populations to affect the PPT, or how the score adjustments didn’t account for something, or some other such bullkitten. The ONLY way this game gets back to its premise of a large scale open world strategy-based PvP mode where the winner is determined by team work, communication, strategy, guile, cleverness, and skill is if ANet is willing to implement some scheme that balances the actual player populations during the majority of the match.

I have rather little hope that ANet will have the conviction to fix this, but even less so given the number of misdirected posts focusing on PPT bandaids instead of the surgery that’s really needed.

Not to sound argumentative but what are your suggestions for addressing the situation?

You have been pretty adamant about being against ppt adjustment saying that it could be manipulated (How if its based on a running average each hour?) or how its doesn’t change game play (You are still outnumbered….etc.).

The people making these suggestions are not looking for instant answers but long term solutions. Read my post above with an objective view and make points to why its bad or good, this is what this discussion is for: Idea generation and player input on suggested fixes.

Every suggestion will have positives and negatives to it.

Please remember that major changes require major re-work in coding (eg. may take months to implement) which I feel is too long to let slide but that is just my opinion.

I have posted my suggestion, I’ve put up the video to my suggestion and while it may not be what everyone wants it does address all the issues in WvW and doesn’t mess with PPT at all. Sure its not what everyone wants, the suggestion everyone agrees with will never happen. I think my part of his quote was pretty clear, PPT does not make unbalanced matches fun for the server(s) getting steam rolled. PPT is just a number at the top of your screen, it doesn’t make fights more enjoyable, it doesn’t make all sides even, it doesn’t prevent 1-2 servers dominating the actual battles/fun factor. Your entitled to your suggestion I just don’t see how it will fix the real issue, which is the lack of enjoyment that comes with 1-2 servers preventing another server from doing much more then killing yaks do to population.

I’m not trying to be argumentative either, just trying to point out the flaw in tweaking the PPT, which does not change anything when it comes to enjoying your playtime.

I guess some people might enjoy dying every couple minutes to a huge zerg that they cannot pull enough numbers on the map to compete with as long as the score tells them they won.

You have to realize there is more than 1 school of thought.

I personally enjoy more than anything a close PPT game and playing macro map strategy rather than micro fight strategy. In the last 3 weeks I have been involved in 2 matches where the winner was not determined until Friday, and they were the most fun matches I have ever played.

Any relatively competitive game should have lead changes sometimes.

The biggest thing that makes matchups fairly even is when all 3 servers are fairly close

The biggest thing that ruins it is when 2 close servers have a 3rd who is way above or below

With a much higher or lower server in the mix, it completely ruins the balance of the matchup. The only server in all NA that could not easily be put into a competitive matchup is Tarnished Coast because the server above them is way above and the server below them is well below.

Other than TC the old “tier” system would have worked great if it weren’t for the glaring flaws in the glicko system. If you KNOW for a fact that 300 people left a server, it shouldn’t take 6 weeks of blown matches for the rating to even out. If you KNOW for a fact a server received massive influx, it shouldn’t take 6 weeks of blown matches to reach the actual rating.

Solstice.1097:

You have to realize there is more than 1 school of thought.

I personally enjoy more than anything a close PPT game and playing macro map strategy rather than micro fight strategy. In the last 3 weeks I have been involved in 2 matches where the winner was not determined until Friday, and they were the most fun matches I have ever played.

Any relatively competitive game should have lead changes sometimes.

The biggest thing that makes matchups fairly even is when all 3 servers are fairly close

The biggest thing that ruins it is when 2 close servers have a 3rd who is way above or below

With a much higher or lower server in the mix, it completely ruins the balance of the matchup. The only server in all NA that could not easily be put into a competitive matchup is Tarnished Coast because the server above them is way above and the server below them is well below.

Other than TC the old “tier” system would have worked great if it weren’t for the glaring flaws in the glicko system. If you KNOW for a fact that 300 people left a server, it shouldn’t take 6 weeks of blown matches for the rating to even out. If you KNOW for a fact a server received massive influx, it shouldn’t take 6 weeks of blown matches to reach the actual rating.

I get what your saying but, the PPT being close does not mean the match is close, it does in terms of who is winning/losing but if the numbers were tweaked to favor the lowest population, you would still be getting spanked on the field in a lopsided matchup. I would rather come in third in a close matchup then first in a matchup that was handed to me because I was so severly outnumbered Anet took pity on me. It’s aparent not everyone feels this way and thats fine, but if they tweaked the scores you would still have servers coming here saying “ya we came in first but we couldn’t get out of our spawn for 7 days” (exagerated of course but to the point). And what happens when your underpopulated server comes in first and is moved up the ranks to fights servers that have even more numbers then their previous matchup, they win again because of pity PPT so they move up again, until you have a server like AR fighting BG. (again I’m exagerating but doing so to explain what could happen)

Nuzt.7894:

Jaytee.9513:

Cactus.2710:

Nuzt.7894:

The people who keep suggesting a handicap system or giving ppt bonuses are not gettingit. The score means nothing if your not having fun, getting steam rolled constantly by far superior numbers to the point where logging off is more enjoyable than playing is what needs to be fixed. Don’t kid yourselves you didn’t win because the ppt was tweaked, you still got your kitten handed to you by 2-5 X the number of players. Would it really make people happy to say " we were spawn camped for 7 days, but we won because the numbers up top said we did".

^this^ … and it discourages me immensely that so few posters here seem to get it. If the PPT and score adjustment advocates got their way WvW would still suck and they’d be back here again in a month to complain about how this server or that was manipulating their populations to affect the PPT, or how the score adjustments didn’t account for something, or some other such bullkitten. The ONLY way this game gets back to its premise of a large scale open world strategy-based PvP mode where the winner is determined by team work, communication, strategy, guile, cleverness, and skill is if ANet is willing to implement some scheme that balances the actual player populations during the majority of the match.

I have rather little hope that ANet will have the conviction to fix this, but even less so given the number of misdirected posts focusing on PPT bandaids instead of the surgery that’s really needed.

Not to sound argumentative but what are your suggestions for addressing the situation?

You have been pretty adamant about being against ppt adjustment saying that it could be manipulated (How if its based on a running average each hour?) or how its doesn’t change game play (You are still outnumbered….etc.).

The people making these suggestions are not looking for instant answers but long term solutions. Read my post above with an objective view and make points to why its bad or good, this is what this discussion is for: Idea generation and player input on suggested fixes.

Every suggestion will have positives and negatives to it.

Please remember that major changes require major re-work in coding (eg. may take months to implement) which I feel is too long to let slide but that is just my opinion.

I have posted my suggestion, I’ve put up the video to my suggestion and while it may not be what everyone wants it does address all the issues in WvW and doesn’t mess with PPT at all. Sure its not what everyone wants, the suggestion everyone agrees with will never happen. I think my part of his quote was pretty clear, PPT does not make unbalanced matches fun for the server(s) getting steam rolled. PPT is just a number at the top of your screen, it doesn’t make fights more enjoyable, it doesn’t make all sides even, it doesn’t prevent 1-2 servers dominating the actual battles/fun factor. Your entitled to your suggestion I just don’t see how it will fix the real issue, which is the lack of enjoyment that comes with 1-2 servers preventing another server from doing much more then killing yaks do to population.

I’m not trying to be argumentative either, just trying to point out the flaw in tweaking the PPT, which does not change anything when it comes to enjoying your playtime.

I guess some people might enjoy dying every couple minutes to a huge zerg that they cannot pull enough numbers on the map to compete with as long as the score tells them they won.

I think I saw a video explaining the three faction system. This suggestion does have merits but consider these following issues…….

How do you stop Organized guilds from stacking on one faction with such a system?

How do you prevent/deal with spying, griefing, trolling on such a system when the population pools become so large?

How do you organize VOIP (Teamspeak, Ventrillo, Mumble) systems when match ups change weekly?

How do you organize command structure (guild, commanders, pugs-militia) when match up are more like instances (imagine having 20 commander tags on the map)?

Is the playerbase willing to wait a few months before change can be implemented (look at how long it took for PVE guesting to be implemented)?

Not saying its a bad idea but the above needs to be worked for it to be successful.

Solstice.1097:

The only server in all NA that could not easily be put into a competitive matchup is Tarnished Coast because the server above them is way above and the server below them is well below.

Other than TC the old “tier” system would have worked great if it weren’t for the glaring flaws in the glicko system. If you KNOW for a fact that 300 people left a server, it shouldn’t take 6 weeks of blown matches for the rating to even out. If you KNOW for a fact a server received massive influx, it shouldn’t take 6 weeks of blown matches to reach the actual rating.

Yes, one problem is the Glicko system. And this brings us to a little mentioned part of puzzle – Matchmaking.

I have suggested in a number of posts and threads that Anet should make the matches manually. Not strictly Glicko. Not RNG. A person should look at the servers and match them up for the week. There could even be variety in this method. The best of both worlds.

So I’m going to ask, Devon, would you all consider manually making the matchups after the season is over? If not, can you say why not?

Jaytee.9513:

Cactus.2710:

Nuzt.7894:

The people who keep suggesting a handicap system or giving ppt bonuses are not gettingit. The score means nothing if your not having fun, getting steam rolled constantly by far superior numbers to the point where logging off is more enjoyable than playing is what needs to be fixed. Don’t kid yourselves you didn’t win because the ppt was tweaked, you still got your kitten handed to you by 2-5 X the number of players. Would it really make people happy to say " we were spawn camped for 7 days, but we won because the numbers up top said we did".

^this^ … and it discourages me immensely that so few posters here seem to get it. If the PPT and score adjustment advocates got their way WvW would still suck and they’d be back here again in a month to complain about how this server or that was manipulating their populations to affect the PPT, or how the score adjustments didn’t account for something, or some other such bullkitten. The ONLY way this game gets back to its premise of a large scale open world strategy-based PvP mode where the winner is determined by team work, communication, strategy, guile, cleverness, and skill is if ANet is willing to implement some scheme that balances the actual player populations during the majority of the match.

I have rather little hope that ANet will have the conviction to fix this, but even less so given the number of misdirected posts focusing on PPT bandaids instead of the surgery that’s really needed.

Not to sound argumentative but what are your suggestions for addressing the situation?

You have been pretty adamant about being against ppt adjustment saying that it could be manipulated (How if its based on a running average each hour?) or how its doesn’t change game play (You are still outnumbered….etc.).

The people making these suggestions are not looking for instant answers but long term solutions. Read my post above with an objective view and make points to why its bad or good, this is what this discussion is for: Idea generation and player input on suggested fixes.

Every suggestion will have positives and negatives to it.

Please remember that major changes require major re-work in coding (eg. may take months to implement) which I feel is too long to let slide but that is just my opinion.

I’ve already made my suggestions several times, including once earlier in this very thread that you could have easily discovered if you had bothered to actually read my posting history. There are several thoughts in that post that go well beyond how to balance populations.

In a nutshell, I think the server-vs-server-vs-server model is doomed to failure no matter what restrictions (map caps based upon lowest population), incentives (outmanned buffs or rewards), or score adjustments (handicaps or graded PPT) people try to use as crutches. In my opinion, the only viable solution is to abandon the server format and migrate to an instance-based matchmaking model of some sort. There are various ways that could be accomplished, but relying on second and third order influences to control the overwhelmingly dominant first order effect (player population) is just ridiculous. It won’t work, and if ANet agrees with folks like you they will spend a lot of time and effort coming up with some crutch that still doesn’t make any of us happy.

To some extent, Devon was correct when he said that WvW matches were never intended to be “fair”, and that’s because superior strategy, superior skill, and superior teamwork should always win the day. But superior NUMBERS at a macro level should never determine the breadth and depth of the experience players have in the match, and that’s exactly what will happen even if the final score says differently.

There is definately bugs that would need to be worked out theres no question about that. I’ll try to answer sopme of your concerns imo of course.

Organized guilds stacking : they typically like to fight each other it presents a challenge for them, also I said in another post if Anet didn’t release which server would be each color until say an hour before reset they would be playing a guessing game unless they all went to one server in which case see the first part of this answer.

Spying/Griefing: This is already rampant and a moot point its going to happen in any situation.

VOIP: It would be up to the players to govern this just as it is now, I’m sure each server has its procedures to do their best to avoid your concern.

Commanders: Would work the same as it would now, most Commanders that have a clue realise having multiple tags on a map creates Chaos and I would like to think they would avoid it. I am also willing to bet many Commanders wouldn’t mind a break and letting someone else tag up. It might happen but I think its a little far fetched to suggest all commanders would refuse to tag down. Also if the Commander tag issue’s that players have been asking for were addressed such as only visible to guildies or party or the other hundred suggestions this wouldn’t be as much of an issue but thats another issue on its own.

Playerbase willing to wait: I’m going to venture that anything Anet does is going to take time, they haven’t been the speediest company at implementing/fixing things, so whether its 3 months for a PPT tweak or 3 months for the cross server matches doesn’t really matter, 3 months is 3 months regardless of what they do. Also they have guesting now, it really shouldn’t take them all that long to implement it now that its a functioning part of the game.

Its not a perfect system and its not the only good suggestion in this thread but, it is a suggestion that gives solutions to several problems all at once.

Jaytee.9513:

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.

Wrong. Without touching world population (that would be a convenient name for a collaboration discussion), we are just putting a band aid on the problem. The only solution to keep servers balanced is to separate PvE server from WvW server. This way they can actively manage the cap of players on each server. That will force even numbers.

Without a “World Population” fix or discussion, people will always navigate to the winning server. That’s also the answer to why people bandwagon.

I hinghed sight the 2 dumbest things for wvw where having it server based and splitting servers in na and e. PProbably seemed like a good idea at the time but doesn’t work. The truth is that the only way to really fix wvw is the scrap pretty much everything. No more na and eu and no more being server based. There should be fractions that get people from BOTH na and eu this will help with coverage as na and eu primetimes r different. There also needs to be a reward system in place to prevent people from all flocking to one faction. Rewards based on points scored in relation to the active population. On another note let’s get a urban wvw map. Just take divinity reach add a fort in the middle with some cap points.

Limit the way transfers and WvW interact.

When a transfer occurs, if the destination server is ranked higher – the player remains in the queue for their prior server for a designated time period.

This grace period could be 1 month, 2 months or an entire season as an example.

style.6173:

Jaytee.9513:

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.

Wrong. Without touching world population (that would be a convenient name for a collaboration discussion), we are just putting a band aid on the problem. The only solution to keep servers balanced is to separate PvE server from WvW server. This way they can actively manage the cap of players on each server. That will force even numbers.

Without a “World Population” fix or discussion, people will always navigate to the winning server. That’s also the answer to why people bandwagon.

Not if rewards for steamrolling opponents are way less………

PvP and PvE servers. Oh yeah, the good old days of ganking.

Been a while since I had a good gank

DevonCarver.5370:

So, if prices for server transfers were based on WvW population, what would a fair distribution of costs look like from the lowest population servers to the highest? Keep in mind that making it completely impossible to transfer to a server puts a burden on other players. That doesn’t mean that you couldn’t have an incredibly high price, just that completely blocked isn’t an option.

I dont think price is the largest issue here, the issue is more of the fact that world population =/= WvW population. Making Very high servers with low world pop very difficult to justify xferring to.