(edited by Luxon.1389)
Collaborative Development: World Population
Replace PPT. I think its the biggest contributor of stacking servers. It encourages off hour play and having more off hour players, which makes it unfair for those who don’t play off hours or don’t have enough off hour players
Replace PPT with system similar to points gained from stomps when you capture nodes/ruins. Towers gives 10 points per kill, keep gives 30 points per kill, camps gives 5 points per kill. This basically don’t reward timezones where its PVDoor, when theres noone to kill. This will work well for most NA/EU servers that don’t have off hours players and encourage fights
Under this system, the good guild and players would try to form alliances and move to other servers esp to lower tiers wheres theres very little players that give needless points to hostile server.
So, tell the people who play off hours to take a hike, and make the match only decided by the prime time players?
That right there makes your solution fail, because the game mode is 24/7 and everyone needs to be considered.
No, those off hours who do play, just don’t contribute to score as much unless they have opposing forces to kill as well. Most tier 1 servers have off hours, so their off hours are a big contributor to the score as well. If theres no opposing forces during off hours, they still contribute by giving your side fortified towers/keep
Replace PPT. I think its the biggest contributor of stacking servers. It encourages off hour play and having more off hour players, which makes it unfair for those who don’t play off hours or don’t have enough off hour players
Replace PPT with system similar to points gained from stomps when you capture nodes/ruins. Towers gives 10 points per kill, keep gives 30 points per kill, camps gives 5 points per kill. This basically don’t reward timezones where its PVDoor, when theres noone to kill. This will work well for most NA/EU servers that don’t have off hours players and encourage fights
Under this system, the good guild and players would try to form alliances and move to other servers esp to lower tiers wheres theres very little players that give needless points to hostile server.
So, tell the people who play off hours to take a hike, and make the match only decided by the prime time players?
That right there makes your solution fail, because the game mode is 24/7 and everyone needs to be considered.
No your looking at the idea wrong imo.. off hours players still get points just not as many.. why should you rake points like you do currently when there is no resistance across borderlands… sitting back and letting 2-3 players that might be on map retake something just so’s you can retake with your nightcap is by far the worst thought out idea in WvW.. I have no issues with players being online at anytime or earning for themselves and their server but when there is no resistance and a huge imbalance like what happens with Tankolation nightcap… then it makes the current WvW model completely useless.
UW EB is all but a sea of blue at present except for the AG coner that Tankolation wont go near.. they prefer the outmanned UW corner.. the flip it all then sit back and wait for the 3 or 4 on map to recap keep then steam roll it again… where is the fun in that throughout the off peak times . only thing I find more intriguing is how motivated Tankolation are to keep replaying the same thing for hours on end until finally some resistance comes online and the sink back into their towers to wait for the nightcap again….
Like I said you want it easy mode through the night that’s fine but don’t expect the same level of reward for golem rushing empty structures and open fields for hours.
Replace PPT. I think its the biggest contributor of stacking servers. It encourages off hour play and having more off hour players, which makes it unfair for those who don’t play off hours or don’t have enough off hour players
Replace PPT with system similar to points gained from stomps when you capture nodes/ruins. Towers gives 10 points per kill, keep gives 30 points per kill, camps gives 5 points per kill. This basically don’t reward timezones where its PVDoor, when theres noone to kill. This will work well for most NA/EU servers that don’t have off hours players and encourage fights
Under this system, the good guild and players would try to form alliances and move to other servers esp to lower tiers wheres theres very little players that give needless points to hostile server.
So, tell the people who play off hours to take a hike, and make the match only decided by the prime time players?
That right there makes your solution fail, because the game mode is 24/7 and everyone needs to be considered.
No your looking at the idea wrong imo.. off hours players still get points just not as many.. why should you rake points like you do currently when there is no resistance across borderlands… sitting back and letting 2-3 players that might be on map retake something just so’s you can retake with your nightcap is by far the worst thought out idea in WvW.. I have no issues with players being online at anytime or earning for themselves and their server but when there is no resistance and a huge imbalance like what happens with Tankolation nightcap… then it makes the current WvW model completely useless.
UW EB is all but a sea of blue at present except for the AG coner that Tankolation wont go near.. they prefer the outmanned UW corner.. the flip it all then sit back and wait for the 3 or 4 on map to recap keep then steam roll it again… where is the fun in that throughout the off peak times . only thing I find more intriguing is how motivated Tankolation are to keep replaying the same thing for hours on end until finally some resistance comes online and the sink back into their towers to wait for the nightcap again….
Like I said you want it easy mode through the night that’s fine but don’t expect the same level of reward for golem rushing empty structures and open fields for hours.
Maybe we could keep PPT but on a much lower level. Maybe upgrades could increase the PPT. Maybe on Maps with outmanned buff the PPT should be inactive.
I have the feeling the EOTM will send new shock waves into WvW after its release. How many players are really focused on PPT and server ranks? How many players want only good fights and large-scale PvP? Will EOTM be sufficient for large-sclae PvP? Can players therefor neglect traditional WvW in favor of EOTM? Wow will this influence the WvW population on different servers?
A simple concept that goes a really long way
Borderland structures can only give PPT to the native team to that BL. You cap stuff in enemy BL to deny enemy points, but you do not gain them for yourself.
This instantly makes the game more defensive-minded, forcing offensive pushes to be more strategic, which moves more towards rewarding coordination and skill and a little bit away from sheer numbers.
Strategies will quickly adapt. I imagine towers being much more sieged up, and therefore trebuchets and other longer, more drawn out sieges, resulting in more fighting and less of a musical chairs back-capping game.
See the thing is if server A caps all of server B’s borderlands, that sets server B back, but it does not give server A a point advantage over server C, so if server C sees that happening and goes after server A, forcing A to pull back off B, etc, you can quickly see how it would quickly become a more thought-out macro-strategic game.
Hmmm….interesting idea.
Can we discuss this?
Let’s say server A is the most populated one. So he goes to B and spends time taking B’s BL. He also has to protect EB and his own BL. B is not making points in his BL, and instead it goes to EB and try to stop A there. Since EB is the only place where the battle for points is. The one who domains EB, domains the game.
Now, what would be the balance between EB and a BL? Will a server with his entire BL producing points be enough to fight a server controlling EB?
A simple concept that goes a really long way
Borderland structures can only give PPT to the native team to that BL. You cap stuff in enemy BL to deny enemy points, but you do not gain them for yourself.
This instantly makes the game more defensive-minded, forcing offensive pushes to be more strategic, which moves more towards rewarding coordination and skill and a little bit away from sheer numbers.
Strategies will quickly adapt. I imagine towers being much more sieged up, and therefore trebuchets and other longer, more drawn out sieges, resulting in more fighting and less of a musical chairs back-capping game.
See the thing is if server A caps all of server B’s borderlands, that sets server B back, but it does not give server A a point advantage over server C, so if server C sees that happening and goes after server A, forcing A to pull back off B, etc, you can quickly see how it would quickly become a more thought-out macro-strategic game.
Hmmm….interesting idea.
Can we discuss this?
Let’s say server A is the most populated one. So he goes to B and spends time taking B’s BL. He also has to protect EB and his own BL. B is not making points in his BL, and instead it goes to EB and try to stop A there. Since EB is the only place where the battle for points is. The one who domains EB, domains the game.
Now, what would be the balance between EB and a BL? Will a server with his entire BL producing points be enough to fight a server controlling EB?
Now this is interesting. One of the things that makes many ideas not workable is that it affects different “Tiers” differently (an idea may be good for lower tiers but harm T1 for example is usually what happens). This idea I don’t think will drastically affect T1. But it would greatly help lower “Tiers”.
Speaking from a mid-tier perspective, this would be an interesting change. In mid-tiers, EB is usually the most popular map, there’s always people there. So I don’t think this will drastically change EB play – except to make the fights even more intense. People will now need to attempt to go after the other teams points more because that’s where the points can be gotten. Eh, I think I just found a flaw in this idea. It would probably cause even more ganging up on the weakest server which would be a very bad thing.
So many ideas, I hope Anet tries them. That’s really the only way we’ll find out what works. Maybe Anet can have an Idea Month – or better yet two monts. Each week they institute a different change and see what works best. People won’t qq if they realized before hand that it is a trial period and won’t necessarily be permanent.
Sticking to the lines of transfers, what are reasonable restrictions to place on players after they transfer? No WvW for the rest of the match? No WvW for 24 hours? Would that help any or would it actually exacerbate the problem?
Zero impact in my opinion. The ppl would transfer on the last day and no problem. But what is the point to punish someone after a transfer? in theory, transfer to a lower server is not anything bad. I think is better to try to encourage ppl to make transfer to less populated servers.
A simple concept that goes a really long way
Borderland structures can only give PPT to the native team to that BL. You cap stuff in enemy BL to deny enemy points, but you do not gain them for yourself.
This instantly makes the game more defensive-minded, forcing offensive pushes to be more strategic, which moves more towards rewarding coordination and skill and a little bit away from sheer numbers.
Strategies will quickly adapt. I imagine towers being much more sieged up, and therefore trebuchets and other longer, more drawn out sieges, resulting in more fighting and less of a musical chairs back-capping game.
See the thing is if server A caps all of server B’s borderlands, that sets server B back, but it does not give server A a point advantage over server C, so if server C sees that happening and goes after server A, forcing A to pull back off B, etc, you can quickly see how it would quickly become a more thought-out macro-strategic game.
Hmmm….interesting idea.
Can we discuss this?
Let’s say server A is the most populated one. So he goes to B and spends time taking B’s BL. He also has to protect EB and his own BL. B is not making points in his BL, and instead it goes to EB and try to stop A there. Since EB is the only place where the battle for points is. The one who domains EB, domains the game.
Now, what would be the balance between EB and a BL? Will a server with his entire BL producing points be enough to fight a server controlling EB?
Well after some thought I think EB could operate the same way, with SMC being the only structure that can give PPT to any server that owns it. Therefore whoever holds SMC becomes the target of the other 2 servers, and encouraging the 2v1 that was initially expected to happen in WvW naturally.
Replace PPT. I think its the biggest contributor of stacking servers. It encourages off hour play and having more off hour players, which makes it unfair for those who don’t play off hours or don’t have enough off hour players
Replace PPT with system similar to points gained from stomps when you capture nodes/ruins. Towers gives 10 points per kill, keep gives 30 points per kill, camps gives 5 points per kill. This basically don’t reward timezones where its PVDoor, when theres noone to kill. This will work well for most NA/EU servers that don’t have off hours players and encourage fights
Under this system, the good guild and players would try to form alliances and move to other servers esp to lower tiers wheres theres very little players that give needless points to hostile server.
So, tell the people who play off hours to take a hike, and make the match only decided by the prime time players?
That right there makes your solution fail, because the game mode is 24/7 and everyone needs to be considered.
the only way off hours players (what ever that is differs per server) would only have a hard time gain points if there was no one to fight.
It was 2 vs 20 but its ok we got’em both!
I’ve had several ideas and read all 20 pages of this post and here is my FINAL SOLUTION if it were up to me:
Phase I
Transfer system is the best place to start since it will be the easiest to fix, immediately making stacking less desirable and offering an incentive to de-stack.
Transfer fee = (9 – tier) x 300 gems. Transferring to tier 5 or lower comes with a “rebate” upon transfer. Rebate = (tier – 4) x 300 gems. Rebates can only be received by accounts active more than 90 days with no rebates in the previous 90 days, and only when transferring “down” one or more tiers. Transferring to tier 1 comes with a probation period where some WvW functionality is restricted for a period of time. It also comes with an option to undo the transfer and receive 50% of your gems back. Transfers, including “undo’s” take effect until the weekly reset following your transfer.
Phase II
Scoring change – no longer do you receive points for holding enemy structures. You only earn points for holding what is naturally yours. You win by capping enemy structures to deny their points, while holding your own. The game becomes more strategic and scores become visually closer. You still earn points for stomps, dolyaks, and sentry caps and these become a much bigger factor in the overall score. Currently they can be up to 30% or more of the score, under this system they would likely make up 50% or more. Bloodlust and dolyaks become potential game changers.
Phase III
Actual changes to the game mechanics.
Waypoint contesting mechanic is revised to allow 1 player every 12 seconds to use waypoints that are contested, however the waypoints stay contested for 10 seconds after the event ends, meaning there will not be a “split second” for everyone to spam in during a continuous siege. This allows people to slowly WP in and starting sieging up to try to slow down the enemy while the main force runs there. Previously you could wait 2.5 minutes and spam a 50-man zerg in. Now in 2.5 minutes you’ll have 12-13 people inside with the rest on the way.
Outmanned buff now allows you to see enemy players on your mini map within X range.
Zergs of 40+ even when not in combat create an orange troop icon on the map showing their location.
Other possible good ideas here!
LOL. What part of that achieves population balance?? Did you forget which thread you were posting in? And don’t tell me that your first suggestion does that, because it won’t.
It addresses the broken transfer system and then introduces scoring and gameplay changes that make it much more possible for the undermanned server(s) to stay close in score, and gives favor towards coordination over sheer numbers.
spreading people out is only a small part of this topic, a bigger part is making it so it is more fun playing while outmanned.
Replace PPT. I think its the biggest contributor of stacking servers. It encourages off hour play and having more off hour players, which makes it unfair for those who don’t play off hours or don’t have enough off hour players
Replace PPT with system similar to points gained from stomps when you capture nodes/ruins. Towers gives 10 points per kill, keep gives 30 points per kill, camps gives 5 points per kill. This basically don’t reward timezones where its PVDoor, when theres noone to kill. This will work well for most NA/EU servers that don’t have off hours players and encourage fights
Under this system, the good guild and players would try to form alliances and move to other servers esp to lower tiers wheres theres very little players that give needless points to hostile server.
So, tell the people who play off hours to take a hike, and make the match only decided by the prime time players?
That right there makes your solution fail, because the game mode is 24/7 and everyone needs to be considered.
the only way off hours players (what ever that is differs per server) would only have a hard time gain points if there was no one to fight.
then my server would just tell our night crew to not log in at all when we’re in the lead.
Replace PPT. I think its the biggest contributor of stacking servers. It encourages off hour play and having more off hour players, which makes it unfair for those who don’t play off hours or don’t have enough off hour players
Replace PPT with system similar to points gained from stomps when you capture nodes/ruins. Towers gives 10 points per kill, keep gives 30 points per kill, camps gives 5 points per kill. This basically don’t reward timezones where its PVDoor, when theres noone to kill. This will work well for most NA/EU servers that don’t have off hours players and encourage fights
Under this system, the good guild and players would try to form alliances and move to other servers esp to lower tiers wheres theres very little players that give needless points to hostile server.
So, tell the people who play off hours to take a hike, and make the match only decided by the prime time players?
That right there makes your solution fail, because the game mode is 24/7 and everyone needs to be considered.
the only way off hours players (what ever that is differs per server) would only have a hard time gain points if there was no one to fight.
then my server would just tell our night crew to not log in at all when we’re in the lead.
yeah good luck telling people not to play because you don’t want them too.
It was 2 vs 20 but its ok we got’em both!
Replace PPT. I think its the biggest contributor of stacking servers. It encourages off hour play and having more off hour players, which makes it unfair for those who don’t play off hours or don’t have enough off hour players
Replace PPT with system similar to points gained from stomps when you capture nodes/ruins. Towers gives 10 points per kill, keep gives 30 points per kill, camps gives 5 points per kill. This basically don’t reward timezones where its PVDoor, when theres noone to kill. This will work well for most NA/EU servers that don’t have off hours players and encourage fights
Under this system, the good guild and players would try to form alliances and move to other servers esp to lower tiers wheres theres very little players that give needless points to hostile server.
So, tell the people who play off hours to take a hike, and make the match only decided by the prime time players?
That right there makes your solution fail, because the game mode is 24/7 and everyone needs to be considered.
No your looking at the idea wrong imo.. off hours players still get points just not as many.. why should you rake points like you do currently when there is no resistance across borderlands… sitting back and letting 2-3 players that might be on map retake something just so’s you can retake with your nightcap is by far the worst thought out idea in WvW.. I have no issues with players being online at anytime or earning for themselves and their server but when there is no resistance and a huge imbalance like what happens with Tankolation nightcap… then it makes the current WvW model completely useless.
UW EB is all but a sea of blue at present except for the AG coner that Tankolation wont go near.. they prefer the outmanned UW corner.. the flip it all then sit back and wait for the 3 or 4 on map to recap keep then steam roll it again… where is the fun in that throughout the off peak times . only thing I find more intriguing is how motivated Tankolation are to keep replaying the same thing for hours on end until finally some resistance comes online and the sink back into their towers to wait for the nightcap again….
Like I said you want it easy mode through the night that’s fine but don’t expect the same level of reward for golem rushing empty structures and open fields for hours.
I am not looking at it wrong. Right now, with PPT, there are roughly the same amount of points distributed each hour, no matter how many people are logged in. Sure, off hour people can contribute to the score in a very unbalanced manner at the moment, but in your proposal, prime time players would contribute to the score in the unbalanced manner.
Causing the off hour people to contribute only 10% or so of the final score, really makes their efforts useless. You need to find a solution that allows everyone to contribute equally, no matter what the other servers populations are that they are facing.
Replace PPT. I think its the biggest contributor of stacking servers. It encourages off hour play and having more off hour players, which makes it unfair for those who don’t play off hours or don’t have enough off hour players
Replace PPT with system similar to points gained from stomps when you capture nodes/ruins. Towers gives 10 points per kill, keep gives 30 points per kill, camps gives 5 points per kill. This basically don’t reward timezones where its PVDoor, when theres noone to kill. This will work well for most NA/EU servers that don’t have off hours players and encourage fights
Under this system, the good guild and players would try to form alliances and move to other servers esp to lower tiers wheres theres very little players that give needless points to hostile server.
So, tell the people who play off hours to take a hike, and make the match only decided by the prime time players?
That right there makes your solution fail, because the game mode is 24/7 and everyone needs to be considered.
the only way off hours players (what ever that is differs per server) would only have a hard time gain points if there was no one to fight.
They would gain points, a small amount because they can’t kill as many people as prime time players can. So, in essence, off hour players wouldn’t contribute much.
Unless, the goal of this is to force all off hour players to stack onto a few servers? Then, isn’t that very counter productive to the goal at hand?
I guess t1 servers would love for this to happen, but the rest of us wouldn’t.
i figured out the perfect fix – Completely kill the guild system and have all characters log into random servers everytime – This will bring total chaos to organization – and make me and my roleplay very happy. It will Balance out the servers once and for all being that now Anet can rotate populations as they please. This will compliment the people who transfer at a whim.
I care about your guilds as much as you care about my server loyalty.
Chaos for the win!
No such thing as a half way crook – No Gm – No Order – Pure Chaos. Done!!
Out of chaos comes order.
IBM PC XT 4.77mhz w/turbo oc@ 8mhz 640kb windows 3.1 hayes 56k seagate 20 meg HD mda@720x350 pixels
Zero impact in my opinion. The ppl would transfer on the last day and no problem. But what is the point to punish someone after a transfer? in theory, transfer to a lower server is not anything bad. I think is better to try to encourage ppl to make transfer to less populated servers.
The point is not necessarily to punish people, but more to add an increased cost to transferring. If you are switching worlds to be a spy or because you are bandwagoning, it makes a difference if you can’t play WvW after doing so for some period of time. It may not be worth doing, I was just curious what people thought.
i figured out the perfect fix – Completely kill the guild system and have all characters log into random servers everytime – This will bring total chaos to organization – and make me and my roleplay very happy. It will Balance out the servers once and for all being that now Anet can rotate populations as they please. This will compliment the people who transfer at a whim.
I care about your guilds as much as you care about my server loyalty.
Chaos for the win!
No such thing as a half way crook – No Gm – No Order – Pure Chaos. Done!!
Out of chaos comes order.
Sorry no. I enjoy playing with my friends. Being matched up with a bunch of strangers every time is not an option. I think it would result in many players quitting this game (it would have this effect on me). Guilds are the only thing that actually make WvW enjoyable.
pure chaos would make being a spy and bandwagoning a thing of the past.
Leave guilds for pve. wvw – random server log ins.
Your guilds serve no purpose to the guildless other than dungeons.
the way gw2 is set up now, makes it impossible for me to make my preferred alignment guild – which is a guild of chaos – in my guild we like fighting each other as much as teaming up to fight other guilds.
Have you ANY idea how many interesting fights aren’t happening because all these big guilds are clumping together to pounce on smaller guilds. ??
Its wrong, VERY wrong!! -wiggles fingers- Chaos will fix it!
Trust me, you will have more fun finding your guildies in sm as enemies. Chaos is good for you.
release your inner beast – don’t tell me you never wanted to smack a guildmate for making bad moves in wvw. let’s be honest here.
guess what a chess club is ? the irony. :p
Guildwars 2 needs a Civil War!! Yarr!
IBM PC XT 4.77mhz w/turbo oc@ 8mhz 640kb windows 3.1 hayes 56k seagate 20 meg HD mda@720x350 pixels
(edited by Ricky.4706)
Unless, the goal of this is to force all off hour players to stack onto a few servers? Then, isn’t that very counter productive to the goal at hand?
Actually, this gets to an important point that everyone is glossing over in talking about transfer costs and balancing population.
Simply put, there are not enough players to fill 24 NA servers, especially during non-NA prime time. And there are not enough players to fill 27 EU servers, especially during non-EU prime time.
And there’s no way you’re going to be able to distribute them evenly.
(edited by Johje Holan.4607)
Zero impact in my opinion. The ppl would transfer on the last day and no problem. But what is the point to punish someone after a transfer? in theory, transfer to a lower server is not anything bad. I think is better to try to encourage ppl to make transfer to less populated servers.
The point is not necessarily to punish people, but more to add an increased cost to transferring. If you are switching worlds to be a spy or because you are bandwagoning, it makes a difference if you can’t play WvW after doing so for some period of time. It may not be worth doing, I was just curious what people thought.
Storing transfer requests and processing them at reset? It would keep transfers from messing with matches that are under way.
Gate of Madness
I’ve had several ideas and read all 20 pages of this post and here is my FINAL SOLUTION if it were up to me:
Phase I
Transfer system is the best place to start since it will be the easiest to fix, immediately making stacking less desirable and offering an incentive to de-stack.
Transfer fee = (9 – tier) x 300 gems. Transferring to tier 5 or lower comes with a “rebate” upon transfer. Rebate = (tier – 4) x 300 gems. Rebates can only be received by accounts active more than 90 days with no rebates in the previous 90 days, and only when transferring “down” one or more tiers. Transferring to tier 1 comes with a probation period where some WvW functionality is restricted for a period of time. It also comes with an option to undo the transfer and receive 50% of your gems back. Transfers, including “undo’s” take effect until the weekly reset following your transfer.
Phase II
Scoring change – no longer do you receive points for holding enemy structures. You only earn points for holding what is naturally yours. You win by capping enemy structures to deny their points, while holding your own. The game becomes more strategic and scores become visually closer. You still earn points for stomps, dolyaks, and sentry caps and these become a much bigger factor in the overall score. Currently they can be up to 30% or more of the score, under this system they would likely make up 50% or more. Bloodlust and dolyaks become potential game changers.
Phase III
Actual changes to the game mechanics.
Waypoint contesting mechanic is revised to allow 1 player every 12 seconds to use waypoints that are contested, however the waypoints stay contested for 10 seconds after the event ends, meaning there will not be a “split second” for everyone to spam in during a continuous siege. This allows people to slowly WP in and starting sieging up to try to slow down the enemy while the main force runs there. Previously you could wait 2.5 minutes and spam a 50-man zerg in. Now in 2.5 minutes you’ll have 12-13 people inside with the rest on the way.
Outmanned buff now allows you to see enemy players on your mini map within X range.
Zergs of 40+ even when not in combat create an orange troop icon on the map showing their location.
Other possible good ideas here!
I think your WP change favors the larger populations. The amount allowed in should be proportional to population difference. If defenders have a larger population at the time, less people have accesses to WP. However if defenders are UM they should have instant access to WP.
Replace PPT. I think its the biggest contributor of stacking servers. It encourages off hour play and having more off hour players, which makes it unfair for those who don’t play off hours or don’t have enough off hour players
Replace PPT with system similar to points gained from stomps when you capture nodes/ruins. Towers gives 10 points per kill, keep gives 30 points per kill, camps gives 5 points per kill. This basically don’t reward timezones where its PVDoor, when theres noone to kill. This will work well for most NA/EU servers that don’t have off hours players and encourage fights
Under this system, the good guild and players would try to form alliances and move to other servers esp to lower tiers wheres theres very little players that give needless points to hostile server.
So, tell the people who play off hours to take a hike, and make the match only decided by the prime time players?
That right there makes your solution fail, because the game mode is 24/7 and everyone needs to be considered.
the only way off hours players (what ever that is differs per server) would only have a hard time gain points if there was no one to fight.
They would gain points, a small amount because they can’t kill as many people as prime time players can. So, in essence, off hour players wouldn’t contribute much.
Unless, the goal of this is to force all off hour players to stack onto a few servers? Then, isn’t that very counter productive to the goal at hand?
I guess t1 servers would love for this to happen, but the rest of us wouldn’t.
as to what we have now? Off hours play disproportionately swinging the score in the favor of a server that has stacked off hours players and guilds?
also would it be really bad to have the bulk of off hours players on a set of servers where the would actually see each other and have a chance to fight each other?
It was 2 vs 20 but its ok we got’em both!
Most good guilds transfer to where they will have the best competition and best chance at not looking at queue screens. This is the reason not many if at all will ever transfer to lower tier servers.
If you want to actually fix some of the issues with imbalance then lets introduce some “Guild Scoring”. After all this is called guild wars, and its currently server wars. Lets give guilds something to work towards in WvW, and make us feel like the time we spend in WvW has an impact. Right now any time we spend in WvW gets overshadowed now by coverage in which outcomes on 95% of matches are mostly pre-determined. Also this would promote people actually playing more after a match is determined.
Why can’t my guild get laurels for doing stuff in WvW? Why do we have to go zerg some NPC in a pve zone to get currency which we can spend in WvW? It makes absolutely no sense. Give me a guild mission that is to go hold an opposing sides garrison for 1 hour or something. Fighting against zerg servers would make these types of things tough and then maybe people will spread out to other servers.
Other games have had a siege style combat also, and they had to resort to Prime Time windows for the main scoring to take place. If Anet is opposed to that and wants to maintain a 24 hour setup, then you will always have coverage being the number 1 factor in any matchup.
Zero impact in my opinion. The ppl would transfer on the last day and no problem. But what is the point to punish someone after a transfer? in theory, transfer to a lower server is not anything bad. I think is better to try to encourage ppl to make transfer to less populated servers.
The point is not necessarily to punish people, but more to add an increased cost to transferring. If you are switching worlds to be a spy or because you are bandwagoning, it makes a difference if you can’t play WvW after doing so for some period of time. It may not be worth doing, I was just curious what people thought.
Hi Devon
I would like to point out that most spies are on seperate accounts and usually level 1 characters due to fear of getting banned on their main. Eventually since early levels can be obtained at a very fast pace, it is not uncommon to see them lvl 10 or 20+ within a day or 2. The only real solution here is that when you get a mass amount of reports against the person/account, that should raise an immediate red flag to your employees to come and observe and take immediate action based on the observation.
As far as the bandwagon, the current transfer costs to the top servers of 2400 gems are negligible when taking into account all the factors involved including guild buying etc. transfer costs need to make the said “buysers” pause and seriously reflect if they wish to proceed or not, which is currently not the case.
Couple that with the facts that you can guest for PvE and reduced transfer costs need to be implimented for lower rank servers and there really is no reason not to double or even triple the top rated server transfer costs up to 6k or 9k gems.
Heavy Deedz – COSA – SF
Most good guilds transfer to where they will have the best competition and best chance at not looking at queue screens. This is the reason not many if at all will ever transfer to lower tier servers.
If you want to actually fix some of the issues with imbalance then lets introduce some “Guild Scoring”. After all this is called guild wars, and its currently server wars. Lets give guilds something to work towards in WvW, and make us feel like the time we spend in WvW has an impact. Right now any time we spend in WvW gets overshadowed now by coverage in which outcomes on 95% of matches are mostly pre-determined. Also this would promote people actually playing more after a match is determined.
Why can’t my guild get laurels for doing stuff in WvW? Why do we have to go zerg some NPC in a pve zone to get currency which we can spend in WvW? It makes absolutely no sense. Give me a guild mission that is to go hold an opposing sides garrison for 1 hour or something. Fighting against zerg servers would make these types of things tough and then maybe people will spread out to other servers.Other games have had a siege style combat also, and they had to resort to Prime Time windows for the main scoring to take place. If Anet is opposed to that and wants to maintain a 24 hour setup, then you will always have coverage being the number 1 factor in any matchup.
That is somewhat true, however, look at the T1 bandwagon where guilds transferred to just before leagues regardless of aniticipated que times and now many are whining about those ques. I think that goes to prove that PPT trumps que times when it comes to transfers.
Heavy Deedz – COSA – SF
If you get rid of players transferring, then you are saying you want the imbalance that currently resides on all the servers.
you can give a fair amount of time before closing the transfer once and for all.
BTW, I was referring to the second and most important part of my post where I explain a new mechanic that would prevent minor WvW population to be impacted so negatively as it is now.
The alliance idea is a good one.
Have two intervals:
1. alliance match ups to pit world alliances against each other, similar to world match ups we have now.
2. alliance balance after interval 1 which balances the world populations according to wvw player statistics.
This way there’s never more than a few weeks to wait until populations rebalance.
This would probably assure that you would fill your instance population on all sides.
Then just add true GvG to keep the queues from backlogging.
!(wired)?(coffee++):(wired);
Zero impact in my opinion. The ppl would transfer on the last day and no problem. But what is the point to punish someone after a transfer? in theory, transfer to a lower server is not anything bad. I think is better to try to encourage ppl to make transfer to less populated servers.
The point is not necessarily to punish people, but more to add an increased cost to transferring. If you are switching worlds to be a spy or because you are bandwagoning, it makes a difference if you can’t play WvW after doing so for some period of time. It may not be worth doing, I was just curious what people thought.
Transfering down should be rewarded, give them a boost to WXP like the B-day boost, or a shiny new skin, no repairs for X amount of time, retain their Guild Xp, or any number of things that won’t cost Anet anything but will give incentives to move down.
Sticking to the lines of transfers, what are reasonable restrictions to place on players after they transfer? No WvW for the rest of the match? No WvW for 24 hours? Would that help any or would it actually exacerbate the problem?
This is sidestepping the question and I am pretty sure someone has suggested this in some form or another but why not have some sort of ‘WvW guesting’.
Allow people to queue into any other WvW match except the two that their server is currently facing. That would avoid the spying/sabotage issue. Don’t put in any restrictions aside from having to requeue if you leave WvW. There should probably be some reserved spots for natives. The guesting queue should only be processed if the queue for the natives is empty.
If someone is frequently acting as a mercenary for another server and then they decide to make a permanent transfer give them a discount for the transfer. Not sure what the exact structure might be but the idea that you could play WvW to pay for a transfer that is mostly motivated by WvW looks appealing. You would also be playing on the server you want to be on as you work on making it permanent.
There shouldn’t be a need for population based restrictions in that system. If someone tries to use it for transferring to a high WvW population server they’ll find themselves waiting a long time in the guest queue. The smaller the population of the guest server the easier it will be to play your way to a transfer. It would be self regulating since it would be hard to impossible to use it to get on a stacked server but it would be very easy to use it to get on less populated servers.
Not everyone is interested in transferring so there should be other incentives. Perhaps something based on how the guest server. If a server starts at 3rd and ends up 1st then give the mercenaries 5g at the end of the match. If it’s 3rd→2nd or 2nd→1st then 2g and nothing if there is no change. Obviously the numbers are just examples but considering how easy it is to get the equivalent of the 5g I don’t think that is too much to ask, maybe too little. Unfortunately this part also creates some conflict of interest and it would require putting in some restrictions. Maybe leave this part out and only consider adding it in if just the previous part alone still isn’t doing enough.
So I found this short video when I was looking around on my home worlds forums. Pretty straightforward concept, I think it is worth the time to watch.
http://youtu.be/qHcO6Xo8eJ8
Team Deathmatch for PvP – Raise the AoE cap for WvW – More unique events for PvE
Attempting to use incentives, gimmicks and/or debuffs will NOT solve population problems and will only have minimal results at best. This has already been thought out, tried, implemented, executed and retried over and over with minimal results in game after game. History will only repeat itself if its attempted again, guaranteed.
The ONLY way to solve ballooning is to expand what is already being done with the current que system and make it variable based on population. If the problem isn’t addressed directly, it will fail.
Incentives are already in place with the outnumbered buff and it has absolutely no effect. Just expanding on that wont matter a hill of beans to people that are already comfy in their overpopulated servers. They wont leave something that’s working that well with an established leadership base over a few incentives or even debuffs.
Population must be directly controlled by an automated system that equalizes realm numbers period.
It would be like saying “we are going to remove the current que system for all wvw maps in favor of a more player friendly incentive system, population caps in all maps are now a thing of the past…” and expecting that this will stop people from exploding zergs to capture keeps. …right…
yep, exactly. Right now wvw is like trying to mix a game of dodgeball and chess with a straight face lol.
transferring to win is not the way – expecting people to transfer to balance is not a logical solution either because they wont have any way of evaluating what would be a fair distribution of guilds – and even that wouldn’t work because it would be based on people wanting to play fair…..there’s always “that” guy!!
stacking a server to win is the team with the dodgeball and smaller servers are the fat kid trying to play chess. No, just..No!!
random teams like fort aspenwood from gw1 – instant balance, no more spies, no more que’s, no more need to transfer ^.^ – no more praising a score that is meaningless. win a match – get a cookie. done.
IBM PC XT 4.77mhz w/turbo oc@ 8mhz 640kb windows 3.1 hayes 56k seagate 20 meg HD mda@720x350 pixels
I’ve just come from 5 hours of fighting on tc ebg. We’ve got quite a large pop, fairly long ques and we’re currently facing sos and jq. Now when the match started we had jq and sos both make a beeline straight for the tc side, we had the entire sos zerg parked in our keep for over an hour and we basically wandered around as a megablob and smashed through either gravity or will into every blob we saw. The guilds agg and ep managed to get their forces into sos and proceeded to form what i can only describe as a tight knit rolling ball of death that – as we did earlier – roamed around looking for fellow blobs to sever and smash.
Now in a few more hours sos will quieten down but the jq night crew will kick in – and they field roughly the same amount till about 3am nz time. Then theres a tiny window of quiet. Tc has a fairly good presence till just about 4am so we get to squeeze in a brief game of “cap it quick!”
The point of this ramble? -
The ppt frankly mean squat to the real wvw guilds/players. Its been a VERY long time since at reset after an hour i’ve heard anyone mention the score at all.
If a guild team gets in – they want to achieve whatever that guilds objective is – most of the time these days its “I want a good fight kitten and some freaking bags” holding your third is more about "quick! their zergs at quentin! form up and rush – get the veils going! drop statics!
The whole ppt side could seriously be dropped and as long as you had some form of choosing which server did the best at the end of the week people would be happy.
You could go by -
Number of items successfully flipped + player kills and that would still work, its just a minor goal anyway.
Population imbalance happens because we’re all in different timezones like the description I gave entails. If you start swaying the points/rewards/way to win in order to match a certain set timezone you’re going to kitten off a lot of people. Population imbalance i feel can’t be fixed, theres just too many variables – some can’t play due to study, some work, some live in antarctica, some moved full guilds to avoid ques, some suddenly rush in due to achieves.
The real fix will be the points short term to keep a lot of people happy then figure out how to split the maps to allow more in, raise the caps to take the edge off ques, fix the coding/hardware so the server lags bearable. Give t1 & 2 matchups extra maps to fight over, guilds can organise “great lets meet up on map 3 of eb” if you cloned ebg 3 times but lowered the points on each map by 1/3 bingo. same points, wayyy more players able to attend and meetup. Suddenly people can get their whole guild in and play “whack a zerg”. Everyone has fun rather than stress and annoyance.
This season just gloified stacked servers.
Every other server outside of those are constantly losing morale, so we can’t even keep pressure or counter, so we just let the others run freely around.
There definitely needs to be some kind of balance to outmanned players.
What’s even better is that the edge of the mists will do away with the only reason people transfer now: the queue.
What’s even better is that the edge of the mists will do away with the only reason people transfer now: the queue.
That does however depend on the players.
Some players play WvW in order to win.
You will not be able to win the match-ups in EotM since it does not effect the “real” match-up. And thus serious WvW:ers would most likely transfer if the queues were too long even with the new map.
Krall Bloodsword – Mesmer
Krall Peterson – Warrior
Piken Square
Krall Peterson – Warrior
Piken Square
I think most people just care about karma trains, and since those will have to exist (otherwise the edge of the mists doesn’t seem to have a point) most people won’t care.
Zero impact in my opinion. The ppl would transfer on the last day and no problem. But what is the point to punish someone after a transfer? in theory, transfer to a lower server is not anything bad. I think is better to try to encourage ppl to make transfer to less populated servers.
The point is not necessarily to punish people, but more to add an increased cost to transferring. If you are switching worlds to be a spy or because you are bandwagoning, it makes a difference if you can’t play WvW after doing so for some period of time. It may not be worth doing, I was just curious what people thought.
Transfer cost should discourage people from moving low>>>high (WvW pop) and encourage people to move high>>>low.
With that in mind, you could profile transfer scenarios as follows:
Critically High pop to any lower pop … Free
Any non-critical pop to a lower pop … 400 gems
Any non-critical pop to a higher pop … 1600 gems (or maybe even more)
Critically Low pop to any higher pop … Not permitted
This would encourage migration trends in a direction that would help the game.
However, for people on high population servers, this merely facilitates the move. You ALSO need a reason for them to want to move in the first place. The obvious sensible one seems to be zone queues. Put rules into the game to make populations equal (within tolerances), which will push up queue times on higher servers.
This would lead to a system where:
1) Players on low population servers get good WvW and low queues, and have no reason to make a game-damaging move to a higher population server
2) Players on high pop servers get good WvW but have high queues, giving them an incentive to make a game-improving move to a lower pop server. Transfer prices facilitate this move.
Everyone gets good WvW and the only people penalised in any way are also given the option of free or cheap transfers to fix their issue.
What could be fairer?
A simple concept that goes a really long way
Borderland structures can only give PPT to the native team to that BL. You cap stuff in enemy BL to deny enemy points, but you do not gain them for yourself.
This instantly makes the game more defensive-minded, forcing offensive pushes to be more strategic, which moves more towards rewarding coordination and skill and a little bit away from sheer numbers.
Strategies will quickly adapt. I imagine towers being much more sieged up, and therefore trebuchets and other longer, more drawn out sieges, resulting in more fighting and less of a musical chairs back-capping game.
See the thing is if server A caps all of server B’s borderlands, that sets server B back, but it does not give server A a point advantage over server C, so if server C sees that happening and goes after server A, forcing A to pull back off B, etc, you can quickly see how it would quickly become a more thought-out macro-strategic game.
Hmmm….interesting idea.
Can we discuss this?
Let’s say server A is the most populated one. So he goes to B and spends time taking B’s BL. He also has to protect EB and his own BL. B is not making points in his BL, and instead it goes to EB and try to stop A there. Since EB is the only place where the battle for points is. The one who domains EB, domains the game.
Now, what would be the balance between EB and a BL? Will a server with his entire BL producing points be enough to fight a server controlling EB?
Well after some thought I think EB could operate the same way, with SMC being the only structure that can give PPT to any server that owns it. Therefore whoever holds SMC becomes the target of the other 2 servers, and encouraging the 2v1 that was initially expected to happen in WvW naturally.
This is the best idea I’ve seen, as the concept in and of itself functions for every tier, it really stresses defense over offense, and it encourages more tactical usage of Borderland maps within the scope of all of WvW.
It also reduces the raw number of points available, which I think is better for the game, since having a 60k deficit breaks morale a lot more than something like 20k. If Server A has terrible coverage, as long as they can maintain their BL, they won’t fall as far behind, and can then try to rally to make up the smaller point gap.
Scrubbiest Necro NA.
(edited by Balefire.7592)
Transfer costs won’t change much population wise… other than you guys will make more money (which I’m not opposed to, but I would like this problem dealt with). It’s not like some one that wants to go to a high tier server will all of a sudden choose to a far lower tier because it’s free (where they really need the people). They’ll either settle for a rank 4-6 server (not nearly as in need of people) or suck it up and save longer/bust out the credit card.
People won’t leave their already stacked server. The populations of these will still stay very high.
It also won’t solve the coverage problems… which is one of the biggest (if not biggest) issues.
Tarnished Coast
Salvage 4 Profit + MF Guide – http://tinyurl.com/l8ff6pa
Salvage 4 Profit + MF Guide – http://tinyurl.com/l8ff6pa
(edited by Aberrant.6749)
A simple concept that goes a really long way
Borderland structures can only give PPT to the native team to that BL. You cap stuff in enemy BL to deny enemy points, but you do not gain them for yourself.
This instantly makes the game more defensive-minded, forcing offensive pushes to be more strategic, which moves more towards rewarding coordination and skill and a little bit away from sheer numbers.
Strategies will quickly adapt. I imagine towers being much more sieged up, and therefore trebuchets and other longer, more drawn out sieges, resulting in more fighting and less of a musical chairs back-capping game.
See the thing is if server A caps all of server B’s borderlands, that sets server B back, but it does not give server A a point advantage over server C, so if server C sees that happening and goes after server A, forcing A to pull back off B, etc, you can quickly see how it would quickly become a more thought-out macro-strategic game.
Hmmm….interesting idea.
Can we discuss this?
Let’s say server A is the most populated one. So he goes to B and spends time taking B’s BL. He also has to protect EB and his own BL. B is not making points in his BL, and instead it goes to EB and try to stop A there. Since EB is the only place where the battle for points is. The one who domains EB, domains the game.
Now, what would be the balance between EB and a BL? Will a server with his entire BL producing points be enough to fight a server controlling EB?
Well after some thought I think EB could operate the same way, with SMC being the only structure that can give PPT to any server that owns it. Therefore whoever holds SMC becomes the target of the other 2 servers, and encouraging the 2v1 that was initially expected to happen in WvW naturally.
This is the best idea I’ve seen, as the concept in and of itself functions for every tier, it really stresses defense over offense, and it encourages more tactical usage of Borderland maps within the scope of all of WvW.
It also reduces the raw number of points available, which I think is better for the game, since having a 60k deficit breaks morale a lot more than something like 20k. If Server A has terrible coverage, as long as they can maintain their BL, they won’t fall as far behind, and can then try to rally to make up the smaller point gap.
It will seem like a lot less of a good idea once you see a single highly populated server hold it unbroken for days against two low pop servers. Those servers will in your proposed system have no way at all to score points and no meaningful objectives to head for.
And if by some chance the two smaller ones overpower the high pop server, as soon as one of them caps SMC, the fight becomes them vs high pop + the remaining low pop. So they get to hold SMC for all of 5 minutes.
At least as things stand, smaller groups can dodge about taking minor locations.
Playing with Transfer costs alone won’t fix the problem. The masses are stupid and will continue to stack servers.
You’ll have to take additional measures to mitigate the overwhelming power that superior population gives.
First: show the average WvW queue times around the clock on the World choice/transfer display. This will allow WvW oriented people to make an informed choice about whether they want to sit in queue for hours or begin on a lower tier server that has no queue and a need for manpower.
Two: Logistics modeling! If you truly mean to simulate warfare via wvw and don’t want it to keep devolving into a default of stack population to win, you need to redo your supply model per map to ensure that a mindless zerg will collapse under its own weight by consuming supply faster than it can produce it per objective captured. I already made one suggestion in this vein. Planetside has/has had the same issue in a way when it comes to zergs when they screwed up their supply modeling. ANY GAME THAT IGNORES THIS IN A MASS PVP FORMAT WILL CONTINUE TO HAVE STACKING ISSUES!
Third: This is the layer where you need the server transfer cost tweaking to promote down transfers. The cost should scale based on how far down you go. kitten bottom? Free. Etc.
Fourth layer: scorched earth time! Adjust the population cap per WvW map dynamically in increments of 5 based upon the lowest pop side.
Example:
Side kitten in queue
Side B 52 in queue
Side C 33 in queue/on map
result= 35 allowed per side into map until the numbers change.
If there is a disparity greater than 5 between the lowest and highest population on the map, grant a version of the bloodlust buff to the lower side that keeps scaling up the greater the disparity.
Most of this is group punishment, yes. But people in general are stupid little monkeys and will misbehave unless inescapable consequences for their actions are harshly enforced, which is why group punishment works.
Discourage Zerg play, encourage tactical play.
-Massively increase victory reward and experience (successfully capture or defend keeps, towers ) for the servers that are heavily outnumbered on the map, massively decrease reward and experience of the servers that have massive number advantage on map.
So what if Devon has the stats that we are all blindly theorizing on? Obvious those stats don’t help him because he’s come to US asking for solutions.
Think about that. He’s got the numbers. We don’t. And yet he’s asking US for ideas. He’s a guy with two working eyes asking a hoard of blind people to lead him. Why would he do that unless the numbers were meaningless?
He wouldn’t. Numbers are meaningless. The only thing that will solve the population imbalance is an understanding of human psychology and a change to the mechanics of how the game is played.
Make numbers not an advantage on a mechanics level. Break up the zerg and design the game so that just because you have more people, doesn’t necessarily mean you have any meaningful advantage. Abandon the idea about messing with server transfers. If players were going to self-regulate one way or the other, they would have done so by now. If you locked all the servers down and allowed ZERO transfers, you’d still have massively overpopulated servers that would be guaranteed locks to win. You’d still have the blowouts every-single-week, because WvW is designed poorly for “serious” league play from the ground up.
1. Abandon the league concept, it is fundamentally broken.
2. Break up the zerg. The “crowded” debuff is the best idea I’ve got to resolve this, but other people might have better.
3. Change the capture mechanics so that a small force can effectively defend against a large one. you know, kind of how things are with defense in every human conflict ever fought anywhere across all of human history.
Fiddling with the knobs on the server transfers is a waste of time.
Every season give 4 different league, that is Diamond, Gold, Silver, Bronze
Every league has 6 servers
Server 1 will ally with server 6, server 2 with s5 and s3 with s4
Ally server can go to other friendly server if their Que is full
This ally works for entire league, that means, player in number 1 server in Diamond league can go play in a server number 6 in bronze league.
The fact that Anet chose to only concentrate on one topic from the myriad of suggestions given leads me to believe that the collaborative development isn’t as serious as we would like to believe it is. There will always be those servers that can populate WvW more heavily than others, you can’t hamstring them for doing a better job of organizing their players.
If the devs were serious about trying to make WvW a better experience for all, and only want to focus on one of the many problems with the current League system, then the obvious choice regardless of collaboration is the Skill Lag issue. You can’t balance out WvW population on the maps if you can’t pop a heal in the middle of a 20v20 battle, or even a 3 way for SMC. Especially on Reset night, when Crystal Desert faced SBI and BP at ruins with a total of about 100 toons all clashing in the middle of an open field fight. I’m sure it’s worse on other higher populated servers, but the point is still the same.
Eventhough some servers can fill more bodies on a WvW map, it doesn’t make them better. I’ve seen 40-50+ blobs get their butts handed to them by 10-15 well organized zergbusters. But that can’t happen if the Skill Lag isn’t addressed first and foremost.
I think the root of the problem resides in the foundation of each server. Take a look at high tier servers, they all have a community of sorts, and each community varies by having different people and different coverage.
All these factors , translate into ranking and you can see that.
Now if you actually want to make people to move to lower tiers for wvw purposes , you want to those tiers to have communities as well. Thus encouraging people to gain power as a unit.
Problem we face : How do you “force” a community on a server that doesn’t have the people or the initiative for that. Well , I think Anet should implement more tools that encourage “server pride” , " server communication " , "server websites " . ( tools that are already in possession of all high tiers )
Having those tools, will eventually grow a strong community of wvw players across each server, and by that encourage them to participate more in wvw and having there rank go up.
There ranks go up, people think they are worth a shot.
My thought on this.
[KoA] Raid Leader – SFR
As I write this, our server is getting roffle-stomped by one of the “Big 3.” A chief problem we’re running into is the fact that we’re not able to hold onto our points because once the RI cools down, the enemy zerg rolls up in there and takes it back with little to no effort. We’re being farmed, and that’s not fun. I’ve asked myself a few times now “Why am i even bothering with this?”
Here’s an idea for a solution that doesn’t even mess with the idea of transfers, or directly look to control the population itself. Depending on performance, adjust the amount of RI that your NPCs get. Let’s say 30 seconds for every interval of 10,000 points.
For example:
Sever A has 35,000 points, Server B has 25,000 points, and Server C has 15,000. Server a will have RI on its Lord for the usual 5 minutes. Server B captures that tower, and now it’s tower lord has RI for 5 minutes, 30 seconds. Server C comes in, and it’s afforded the bonuses that server B has, but also it’s own since it’s so far behind, and the RI on their tower lord is 6 minutes.
This would help slow down the blobs just running around and capping everything in site with little to no resistance, and also gives the lower presence/lower population servers a chance to get out a little easier. But at the same time, the shift isn’t so bad that the highest population server doesn’t have unrealistic chances to go cap, it just encourages them to defend a bit more.
I have seen a few options that I think should be test, the 2 that really stand out to me are…
“A server can ony gain points from their own borderland”
And
“Low population servers get a reward, to try and draw people to that server.”
There are problems with both, but I believe that incorporating these at the same time could possibly work.
With the “reward” option, it would have to be either some sort of server wide buff or a simi-permanant item/skin that goes away when you leave the server. As for a buff, I would suggest a magic find increase and exp increase, as well as siege requires 10% less supply to build. But if something permanent were given to a player, what’s stopping them from going back to their old server.