Guild Wars 2

Solstice.1097:

you get a NA server vs an Oceanic server.

And here lies the problem. Balance.

azizul.8469:

lowering the map cap in the first step towards balance match up.

it is just that ANET is afraid to experiment with that, even after so many of their previous experiments failed anyway.

They have lowered map caps before, as an experiment to reduce server lag.

Solstice.1097:

there is no way to make dynamic queues work without ruining the game for many players.

the issue comes down to timezones. you get a NA server vs an Oceanic server and now neither of them can play because their enemy can’t lift the queue cap for their time zone.

This is simply not true.

For starters, there is no such thing as an Oceanic server in higher tier WvW. That is just a term people have been throwing around to keep the monopoly they have on nighttime WvW.

The problem we are having now is all of these Oceanic players are flocking to a single server and ruining WvW for everyone else. Regardless of how hard you work during the day, some of these servers have just as many people present during the ‘downtime’ hours as they do during their peak.

We aren’t taking away a fair and balanced experience from them. Using a current match up, JQ isn’t running into nighttime resistance with their nighttime team. They are steamrolling TC and SoS.

A dynamic queue system will give all Oceanic players a chance to move to a less populated server within their existing tier and it would help to spread out the WvW population from tier to tier.

The issue is not ‘timezones.’ It is overpopulation of specific servers in the tier groups. If there are nine servers, and only three of them have a huge Oceanic population, that’s a problem. Dynamic queues fix that.

Oh! My nighttime queue is horrible when playing against Mag and SoS. I know! Better transfer off to one of those.

Buffs aren’t going to fix this, Anet needs to start encouraging the nighttime players to spread out to different servers.

There is no solution to this issue that won’t involve people transferring. With a dynamic queue system, you don’t limit based on an arbitrary number, you limit based on an fair and even match up.

After a week of not being able to get into WvW Oceanic players will have to move if they want to keep WvWing. When that happens, the population issues will fix themselves.

Boredom + queues haven’t made T1 destack yet. Will the population really take care of itself?

Visiroth.5914:

Boredom + queues haven’t made T1 destack yet. Will the population really take care of itself?

No.

If the players could be trusted to even the teams themselves, they would have done so by now. This is why so few games leave it up to the players.

Visiroth.5914:

Boredom + queues haven’t made T1 destack yet. Will the population really take care of itself?

Yeah. I’m lowballing numbers because scope ruins this, but speaking in small terms.

Let’s say:

Standard queue: 100
Blue: 100
Red: 50
Green: 65

Everytime someone from the 100 block leaves, another person takes their place. People are leaving fairly often. Now, let’s say we use a dynamic queue system based off of those numbers.

Blue: 60
Red: 50
Green: 60

Until red gets 60 players, that queue isn’t going to allow in a wave of ten more people and it will just continue to fill in the difference.

That’s forty more people added onto the queue plus however many people were already waiting.

Eventually, if those people actually care about WvW rather than just steamrolling people will leave the server and transfer to either Red or Green.

The people who stay on Blue are going to find that their nighttime monopoly wasn’t as great as they originally thought.

Maybe if ANET offered 500 gold for transfers to lower populated servers, this would counter the effects of BG etc.

…and you should only be able to join a server that is below a certain threshold in your timezone. You perhaps have to select a timezone to enjoy buffs in this period. hmmm.

akanibbles.6237:

Maybe if ANET offered 500 gold for transfers to lower populated servers, this would counter the effects of BG etc.

…and you should only be able to join a server that is below a certain threshold in your timezone. You perhaps have to select a timezone to enjoy buffs in this period. hmmm.

Well, I think the server transfers should be free for starters because it was their original system that encouraged this abuse indirectly and it is hurting the majority of the serverbase in WvW.

Well my first idea of merging the lower population servers got shot down in flames, how is this for an idea:

Everyday there is 3 matches (8 hours each)
Your server gets matched with 2 other servers with population similar to yours in that timezone.
At the end of the 8 hours, points are awarded that count towards a weekly total.
Each week the leader board is updated, each month a winner is recognized.

Of course you’d have to speed up the upgrade time for keeps etc but this would encourage fast furious fights and people would stop complaining about “nightcapping”

It still wouldn’t solve server stacking, but it could at least encourage more people to play knowing they have contributed to something in their timezone that isn’t going to waste.

Yuujin.1067:

The problem we are having now is all of these Oceanic players are flocking to a single server and ruining WvW for everyone else.

Do you even read your own comments?

Now I am an oceanic player playing on an underpopulated server at my timezone (Borlis pass) but why is it bad for players wanting to play with people in their own timezone?

It’s not our fault there will never be servers for us… We are the minority, so you are saying we can’t play unless we are all spread evenly across every server?

It does not matter how you manipulate the transfer system it will never solve the problems, period.

You can bribe people, beg them, force them even but ultimately the problem will reappear again and again with the current mechanics in place.

While the emphasis remains on ‘whoever has the highest numbers wins’ mentality you will never attain population balance until you find a way to offset it and make matches competetive.

Look at the numbers, look at the bottom servers in each league, is there a decline in the number of people playing each week on these servers? As a player I am seeing fewer people each week as the league progresses.

Our server never stood a chance of challenging for the honours and we accepted that in the hope of getting some reasonably balanced fights. It hasn’t happened outside of primetime and now the morale of the server is slowly dropping away.

With the best will in the world, you can only take the constant overpowering for so long before you start to question the whole point of even logging in each day. What for? PvE? Don’t get me wrong, the game is beautiful, the world, stunning, but to a WvW player it holds very little interest.

If the WvW population was truly interested in population balance or even matches they would have done something about it themselves. The simple fact is, they haven’t and whatever you try to do in terms of transfers will never change the fact. You are looking in the wrong direction.

There have been a number of ideas put forward other than simply using the transfer system to resolve the problems and maybe these need closer examination. Transfers caused the problem in the first place, how can it ever be the solution?

As it stands now, with all the achievements in place, the game does not encourage competetition only greed and selfishness.

The way WvW is structured now does not encourage competetion only greed and selfishness.

Sorry for answering so late – it’s due the RL time.

DevonCarver.5370:

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

Wont the problem by solved with the edge of the mist map?
In there everyone who is above the cap will be able to play WvW while waiting. The cap in the map. Besides there are 2 other aspects of the cap.

1st. Server borderlands usually is occupied by people from that server. Many of them goes to borderlands to sell quickly, craft or use crafting station as a bank, repair sometimes use Mystic Forge and go to Lion’s Arch.

If you cut those options off it might help a lot.
You can basically remove them or make area like that on a different map (better solution).
I can understand that people want to do this for free since paying few s each WP is major pain of mine in this game. This makes problems on time vs cost of your time in game.

2nd. As I see it most people sit on their server borderlands and ethereal battleground. There are only big zergs on other borderlands before count time. They go and reset other servers efforts for points, but for most of the time other borderlands are kinda deserted aside from roamers.

So if you decrease the cap you will force people to spread more. Only those highest population servers would suffer but people from those servers should think about moving to lover populated servers anyway.

To make people move you have to redo the reward system for a season to be more equal not as much based on server tier and server place more on how much someone plays. This will prevent people from leaving servers going for the wining servers.

Sorry for answering so late – it’s due the RL time.

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.

For what I can tell there is some imbalance in server population system.

I guest on many servers and I see that some of the have a very little people on the for most of the time and others are alive like bazaar at noon.

I have a feeling that population is calculated simply by the number of accounts that are bound to this server. If so what will happen if I stop playing for 3 months? Or even 6 months?
If it is as I think and I’m still counted for the server then it’s something wrong in the system cause we will see very populated servers with very little people on them.
If thats the case you can unbind the accounts after 3 or 6 months from server. People will choose their home server again if they start to play again.

No real player would consider not logging in for 3 months for save some gems on server transfer anyway.

More problems comes if server has more seasonal players that comes for few days after each LS update. The problem is kinda solved by overflow system anyway so I don’t get technical aspects of the problem with seasonal players.

The real challenge to balance servers would be to calculate how many people play how long and on that statistical value you would have to create server population value.

JonathanSharp.7094:

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 also have a crazy idea.

Why don’t you make each player to be signed to a pair of servers instead of one.
Why make everything on one server and people mix population between PvE, PvP and WvW.

If each player could be on pair of servers: his PvE server and WvW it could work preety good. When you log in you would go to PvE server and when you enter WvW you would go to your WvW server (just like now you go to your WvW while you guest).
You could make like 10 or less WvW servers that would only work on WvW maps. It could probably make them more efficient and there would be no empty servers since if you would be on the server it would meant you entered WvW and you want to play it.

Balancing people across WvW only servers would be way easier since in there you would have only people who care about WvW.

This idea could made way bigger.
If you only like it.

Its going to be difficult to figure out a balancing system for the mess wvw is in. Things that come to mind are AI companions like golems or guards that accompany a small zerg to give them extra numbers. Another easy but non creative solution is to do plain stat boosters.

Another idea is use siege to devastate large zergs and servers that have a tight grip on a map. Rocket artillery, chemical weapons and kinetic bombardment come to mind. WvW would be so much better if it had huge turnovers due to massive weaponry but for this to work they need to be time adjusted for balance purposes.

These siege weapons deactivate when the numbers and/or control of the map start to even out. Also you can have only one siege built at a time alongside the tractor beam. Changing siege puts it on cooldown based on the next siege being built.

Oribtal Strike: A tractor beam changes the trajectory of objects from space such as meteors to hit a large area with devastating force. Used to crush unstoppable zergs. Targets massive zergs randomly and automatically but is a rare occurrence. Will also destroy siege, gates and walls. Players hit by their own side will get hit by a ball of light that resurrects them from a canon at their base.

Poison Gas: Launched on towers to empty them of everything but the Tower Lord. Covers every inch of the tower for 2 minutes. Lords wear special gas masks to protect them from the deadly poison.

Napalm: Launched on supply camps to stop dolyaks and players from getting supply by creating a huge persistent AoE fire. Covers all of the camp and only active on one camp at a time.

Ballistic Missile: Fires a projectile that splits into multiple explosives meant to devastate keeps. Hits are random and they either hit walls, nps or supply. Fires every five minutes.

These are just ideas I have thought of in the past.

There’s a lot of ideas floating around in here about off-peak map queues, small amount of players during off-peak and dynamic queues and extra maps while you wait.
1) Off-peak does not exist, your server either has NA players, Oceanic or both.
2) Guilds – Whats the kitten point of being a WvW guild if half your guys are trapped in a queue, 1/4 are fighting for another server and 1/4 are trapped in a limbo map unable to meet up.
If you have to study or go to work why should the other team be forced to have one less player?
Population imbalance cannot be fixed – people have lives. You can say they’re just not dedicated but you’ll want to go out with your mates, have a date, see a movie, work, take an exam, or take a 20 min loo break. You can’t handicap the other team just because you have something to do. You may drop GW2 for a week. Now what happens when 20+ of the other server has work as its a national festival for instance. now suddenly you’re in a queue and complaining “man, wtf, I don’t care if we outman them, let me in!” and then add being in a guild to the mix, “wtf bob, why the hell are you on blue, you’re our portal mes, exit and relog till you get on our side”
Its going to take a hell of a solution to deal with the variables we have here.

Steelo.4597:

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

… but population imbalance is our own fault.

We knew “there will be queues, and I might not even get ingame”, but we stacked servers.
We knew “we will never have a chance to win anything”, but we stayed where we were.

We (the playerbase) have proven repeatedly that, despite all our protests on forums, WE are not prepared to do anything about population imbalances.

Balance will come when ANET announces:
“We need 500 people to move from Vizunah to Vabbi; and 450 people to move from Piken to WSR; and so on. You have one month to sort this out among yourselves, otherwise we will arbitrarily move people.”

This is, obviously, never going to happen.

Let’s make the week-long matches a “best of three” scenario. Servers A/B/C play three 56-hour long matches. For each match first place gets 5 points, second 3, third 1. After the week is over total points wins and ties are broken by total PPT points scored.

This puts 3 resets, 1 NA, 1 in Oceanic, and 1 in European time. The benefits are immediate:

—matches too short for a blowout to get out of control
—losing team has multiple opportunities to try different strategies and coordinate better to improve their odds
—each major time zone gets to have a reset night which could lead to upset victories
—more useful platform for providing participation rewards to encourage new players
—everything turns back to paper – if you’re getting blown it out it probably is already but your fortified enemy is now back on your level

I was just thinking about the season 1 rewards. If the difference in rewards is too great then everyone will just stack the servers they think are going to win season 2. Something to keep in mind.

Also, you are asking people to leave a winning team to move to a losing team. Why would anyone do that? Especially since Anet has made winning more important with the seasons.

I’m not a fan of introducing PvE to WvW, but I don’t really see many other good choices….

I am thinking, spawn npc’s that will continually try and take keeps, towers and other objectives (similar to a break out event) up to the queue limit… meaning if you have 10 guys on the map and the queue limit is 80, 70 npc’s will spawn and start taking various objectives. Likewise for all the other servers…maybe an event at every tower or keep up until the limit, as people join the map, the NPC’s despawn.

The advantages to this are that they would cause swords on objectives so that would allow smaller groups to roam around and strike various objectives or they could work with the NPC’s to try and take objectives or defend. The larger group could wipe the NPC’s and defend or continue to play as normal. It would encourage more people to play from the PvE side (Which I know some will bemoan, but overall I think its a good thing for WvW) and there will always be something to do.

If you are a server that always has a queue, one would hope that your groups are overall more effective then the npc’s that are running around.

No solution is going to be perfect since it’s a 24 hour game, but it would certainly be interesting to watch it all play out lol, although im not sure the server’s could handle it.

bradderzh.2378:

Yuujin.1067:

The problem we are having now is all of these Oceanic players are flocking to a single server and ruining WvW for everyone else.

Do you even read your own comments?

Now I am an oceanic player playing on an underpopulated server at my timezone (Borlis pass) but why is it bad for players wanting to play with people in their own timezone?

It’s not our fault there will never be servers for us… We are the minority, so you are saying we can’t play unless we are all spread evenly across every server?

Your question really doesn’t make sense. Of course I read my own comments. I’m going to guess that was an attempt to imply something I wrote was completely outlandish.

I don’t think anything I wrote was.

What you are suggesting, all Oceanic players gathering on one server to ‘WvW’, does not result in competitive WvW.

WvW is supposed to be about competition. Implying that because you are a minority and you all want to stick together, the behavior is acceptable is a joke. You are just making excuses to keep those easy wins.

The fact of the matter is, during the day there is coverage for NA players. The match ups are fair and the points reflect that. At night, you can see which servers have Oceanic players and which don’t.

Oceanic players aren’t ‘good’ at WvW. They have no competition. If winning is what you consider both ‘playing’ and ‘fun’, I can see why you’d be opposed to spreading out the Oceanic players.

If you actually want fair and competitive play, you know, compete against other Oceanic players, then population needs to spread out.

Dynamic queues, queues that allow more players in when the match ups are even, won’t prevent Oceanic players for WvWing against eachother once the population spreads out.

You guys will be able to play against eachother just fine.

I’m opposed to introducing hard population caps or making points earned at night completely meaningless. I want Oceanic players contributions to be meaningful. Right now they aren’t though. Right now you’ve got servers that have night time coverage playing against servers that don’t and the result is completely lopsided scores.

There’s been a lot of talk about population balance, but so far it’s been based on individuals moving between servers. This is wvw; individual contributions don’t matter as much as this discussion has been implying.

It’s not simply individuals moving to servers: it’s GUILDS moving servers. When guilds look to jump servers they look at a few key factors such as chances of the new server winning, queue times, and how influential their guild will be on the new server.

Second: Commanders. Good guilds have good commanders, and commanders (good or bad, with or without a guild) have more impact than groups of uncoordinated pugs. I’ve seen good commanders with a small guild or no guild be effective at taking and holding objectives than some large guilds. However, serious wvw guilds tend to grab the good commanders (but not always).

Guilds > Commanders > masses of individuals.

In the spirit of balancing servers is there a way to a) identify the influential wvw guild and b) entice them over to a server that needs help?

Can the same be done for commanders?

DevonCarver.5370:

titanlectro.5029:

I promise you that Devon is looking at all of these metrics and measurements you are theorizing RIGHT NOW, he just doesn’t share them with you.

This is literally true. We don’t share those numbers as a company policy, but we have them and I am looking at them right now.

Devon,

we all understand why you do not share metrics and regard them as a trade secret. But for WvW certain numbers like current map limit or even coverage metrics should be an exception here. It’s jusg a small fraction of the game where this information actually counts or is of interests for players. Especially in this discussion.

Anyway if you are playing with the numbers of various suggestions, the player base really likes to see some more open communication.

You don not have to reveal your numbers, but just tell us which ideas are investigated and which are already off the table.

It could be as simple as:
- Balance map limit: off the table because we do not feel it is fair to people who want to play to wait even longer than they have to at the moment.
- Balance PPT: investigating and playing with numbers of games of the last 6 months to see what effect balancing will have. Did not come to a conclusion here yet.
- Lag: Investigating possibilities to gather skill latency from the client (opt-in) in a future release to find way to make the issue less severe in large fights without large rewrites of client sever communication that only affects larger WvW battles in the end.
- Server Transfer Costs: investigating possible more dynamic adjustments based on trasfer metrics and match results in the last 6 months.
- World Consolidation: Seperating WvW realms from PvE servers is curently off the table. Will be re-visited when the circumstances are appropiate (e.g. yearly overhaul and performance review of current infrastructure).
- Removal of PvE Events in WvW: we still want people to complete achievements without leaving WvW if possible, but we are investigating how this can be done better in the future as with the current release.
- WvW Season achievements: Rethinking of moving season achievements to pre-season achievements based of player feedback.

You see, no numbers revealed on the actual map limit or any other metrics, but you showed your customers that you discussed their ideas, played around with it and discarded some.

More open communication here would make your customers way more happy. Especially as QA hasn’t a very good track record (see patch notes to confirm), so players naturally assume there is some kind of defect involved even if it is not. Without providing detailed metrics the player base won’t really believe you based on the reputation QA has at the moment.

If you talk a bit more open within the limtis of your corporate guidelines the player base will appreciate it. Yes, it takes time and PR has to sign off the wordning, But it will be worth it. More happy customers mean more daily logins, which means more future funding.

There is still the feeling of us vs. them – and this isn’t good for anyone.

The “we are looking into it, trust us” still feels like “the check is in the mail” to the majority of the player base judging forum posts.

Abbot.8496:

There’s been a lot of talk about population balance, but so far it’s been based on individuals moving between servers. This is wvw; individual contributions don’t matter as much as this discussion has been implying.

It’s not simply individuals moving to servers: it’s GUILDS moving servers. When guilds look to jump servers they look at a few key factors such as chances of the new server winning, queue times, and how influential their guild will be on the new server.

Second: Commanders. Good guilds have good commanders, and commanders (good or bad, with or without a guild) have more impact than groups of uncoordinated pugs. I’ve seen good commanders with a small guild or no guild be effective at taking and holding objectives than some large guilds. However, serious wvw guilds tend to grab the good commanders (but not always).

Guilds > Commanders > masses of individuals.

In the spirit of balancing servers is there a way to a) identify the influential wvw guild and b) entice them over to a server that needs help?

Can the same be done for commanders?

This is partially true but doesn’t reflect the issue as a whole.

You are 100% right in that the issue is not individuals, but rather WvW guilds transferring over to these servers.

When someone ask which top tier server has the best nighttime/early morning coverage and they hear it is split between BG or JQ, that’s where these ‘Oceanic’ guilds move to.

Later in the evening and early into the morning commanders aren’t as important because they just don’t run up against any real organized resistance. Your guild can transfer, establish an overnight commander, and start building a reputation or you can just do what a lot of these night time do as is, just run as a guild on mumble server and not worry about commanders as much.

Right now, at 11:30am on the East Coast, you can see just how skewed the scores are from overnight.

JQ is just coming down from their +500 lead, dropped to about +450.
BG is sitting at 370.
Db, +355.
SBI, +420.

Every night these servers run unopposed, they accumulate points that artificially inflate their score. Those high scores attract the WvW guilds, be they day or night guilds.

These servers tend to look better than they actually are because of it so guilds flock there and it just continues to create these huge gaps.

The only way to entice commanders to leave and take their guilds with them is to prevent them from being able to continue to get these easy wins. The only way to do that is to lock them out of WvW.

They aren’t better than your average players, they don’t deserve a carrot on a stick to get them to leave.

It is harsh, but it’s just a reality. They’re winning a numbers game, not a strategy game.

Skill, the solution has to allow for skill to win over everything else.

Map caps, while achieving the balance where skill rules, will cause some issues where some servers have little coverage going against ones with full coverage. You can’t allow 60 per map in NA prime time but only allow 20 per map on OCX primetime. (I don’t have the numbers, just an example). Every player should have the opportunity to play on a max capped map.

Point schemes, while allowing the opportunity for 10 to outscore 80, still has the problem that you can take a few away from the 80 and still prevent the 10 from ever safely leaving their spawn. No real way for skill to determine the winner.

That leaves stat buff/debuff. The real problem here is that you can eventually get a real good group of 10 that CAN defeat 80, but this may cause some inter-server heckling as those 10 want everyone else to leave the map.

As to the latest topic of transfers. If you have a game where skill beats coverage then transfers becomes a non-issue.

One of the sad but true facts here is stacked servers get a lot more loot, achievements, WXP, karma etc.

That’s one of the biggest reasons why people will not transfer down.

Maybe we should triple magic find in bronze league and double it in silver, or in some other fashion compensate for this disparity.

Based on my current matchup I just realized how HUGE the momentum really is. I mean, I knew it was important, but it’s really everything in a match that COULD be close but is not. At all.

The difference is a server can put up a great rest weekend and keep it interesting and fairly close until overnight on sunday or some off-peak time everything gets flipped to paper and then it’s GG karma train all week.

I’ve been thinking about this thread for awhile now and I am just going to say see the Realm Pride discussion happening over here because that is the real crux of the matter.

The whole WvW community building exercise failed in the beginning of this game for many reasons, not the least of which was the extended period of free-transfers. The way to successfully rebalance world WvW populations is to offer more community building tools and ways for servers to set themselves and their “personalities” apart from each other so like minded gamers can find each other and build connections within that community that make jumping ship every other week less attractive. It only takes a small core of stability to weather that “rats-on-a-sinking-ship” attitude that some worlds have experienced after losing badly several weeks in a row.

Take Jade Quarry for example which has had at least two periods of sever losses but always stayed right around Tier 1. Some will say it was our extensive PR recruitment campaign that kept us from hitting free-fall world exodus implosion status but a lot of the guilds that were brought in leave again after a time so it is more that stubborn core of guilds who actually chose to play together on JQ back in BWE1 and encouraged other Realm Pride types to join up and stick together come hell or high water along with a dedicated group of SEA guilds that give us great opportunities at come backs in off peak hours that most worlds don’t get a chance at.

Sometimes I am less than thrilled with what we end up dealing with from all the mass recruiting some are so fond of but having a dedicated webmaster and TS server from Day 1 has been a great boon to JQ along with our Honey Badger mascot to rally around and all worlds should have been able to start out similarly. I would say that was more a failing with ANET than the players and is something they still have the power to affect and improve upon. I still hope to see more better community building tools being offered soon and the more ANET can do to support the WvW community the better. ~cheers

Hello, just want to throw in my thoughts here…

I asume there is no easy solution for the different server population. So i focus on how to deal with the problems!

In order to reduce the impact, that night caping (a server takes over all keeps of another server, which is mainly sleeping) has on the points, it would be an idea to introduce a threshold for the number of points a server can gain per hour.
This threshold would be based on the total amount of active players in relation to the other servers.
Total amount means players on ALL maps, to prevent a server from leaving a map to lower the points other servers can gain here.
Active would be an additional restiction to take out afk players, not sure if or how you can get them out…
This chance would do the following:
A server would still benefit from controlling all maps, because the other servers would gain NO/less points, but they would not be able to get a to big advantage from temporarily controlling all maps.

In additon you could rework the “outmanned buff” to reduce the amount of supplies required to build sige weapons, this would help small groups to attack keeps.
Another idea would be to introduce a second buff, that is activated if a server is stronger (in average) than both other servers (has more active players/more points/…) for more than 30 min. This buff would reduce the number of supplies that are required to upgrade keeps. (maybe it should also increase the number of hp, that are restored at walls/gates by repairing)
Again it is important to use the average, because a server could leave wvw temporarily to prevent the buff from activating. The goal of this buff is to allow it to a server to upgrade keeps more easy if the opponents are much stronger. The 30 min window is important to prevent a server from leaving wvw temporarily to get the buff.
But there would be still the problem, that the dominant server could just farm all dolyaks to cut up supplie. This is an important strategic option of course, but if a server is outmaned, this is massively increasing the preasure! To solve this the first dolyak leaving a camp of an outmaned server could be invulnerable. Invulnerable is maybe not the best mechanic, so maybe a captured camp could give a flat supply bonus to all keeps of the outmaned server.
For example if a outmaned server controlls only one tower, there could be a bonus of 50 supplies for every camp the server captures (on the map where the towers is). Or maybe 10 supplies per minute (same amout considering the 5 min invulnerability of a camp).

hope this helps

Distaste.4801:

You refuse to see the gigantic negatives of a system like that.

1. People will then AFK to not lose their spot due to long queues, this once again fuels imbalance. That is not fun. OR the opposing side leaves a map to prevent the other side from fielding enough to retake things, not fun. Leaving a map also punishes the other server by making people wait even longer for a queue. Losing the match? Stop queuing and at least frustrate your opponents!

2. You’re guild will still be subject to the dynamic caps and half your guild might be locked out for most of the night, that is not fun. Not to mention that some people like playing WvW with lots of other people on the map, so low pop maps aren’t fun for them.

3. Considering long queues you won’t be able to play and having guildies locked out due to low pop cap, neither of which is fun, this isn’t a far out option.

Placing dynamic population caps just opens the game up for more exploiting/cheap tactics. This ultimately punishes more players and that’s generally not a good thing for a game to do. If the dynamic cap route is even remotely being considered then WvW might as well just be scrapped and a new AV style 40v40v40 battleground created.

Unlike the current situation, those issues are largely easy to address.

1) Log people out after a reasonable period for AFKing. Plenty of games do this effectively. It’s a proven way to deal with afk.

2) The point about having a self-correcting system (dynamic caps, plus facilitated transfers to lower pop servers), is that over time the populations even out. I’m not sure if people really understand this, but with evenly distributed server populations, queue times will be much, much shorter. If your server is facing a server with roughly the same activity in WvW, there is no reason why your guild members would be locked out for any length of time.

3) The only people who have long queues will be people on over-populated servers. These are the people who (a) are causing the problems and (b) have the power to fix the problems (by moving server). All it takes is for Anet to give some guilds a free transfer (along with their influence) and the problem completely goes away. For everyone. For ever. No more long queues for anyone. No more massive out-numbering for anyone. Who wouldn’t want that?

lordkrall.7241:

Cribbage.2056:

Are you saying that offered the following 3 options:

1) Play fair (i.e. fun) WvW with a very long queue on the server you are on now

2) Free transfer for you whole guild, including influence to a low population server, where you would also get fair (i.e. fun) WvW due to dynamic pop cap

3) Stop playing

You would choose option 3?

Your question is not really “why should people on a high pop server be penalised?” It is “why should people on a high pop server be given the motive and means to move?” and the answer is BECAUSE WE NEED BALANCED SERVERS.

Only people who stubbornly believe the game should be fixed for them, without them needing to contribute, will defend the right to stay on a server with a population that puts other servers at a disadvantage.

I am personally on a server that is outnumbered 95% of the time.
I still don’t think it is a good idea to punish people for playing on a server with high WvW population.

The thing is, no matter what they do to try and balance the servers there will always be someone that is punished, and I simply don’t think that is the way to go.

Also some guilds actually care about the server they are on, and won’t transfer even if they would get special treatment and so on.

What should be done is trying to get more people into WvW, not trying to force people to transfer off their server.

People keep saying “you shouldn’t punish people for being on high population servers.” But why not? Consider:

1) Our goal is balanced populations. That leads to lowest queue lengths FOR EVERYONE. Surely there should be some negative attached to people who stand in the way of that goal?

2) At the moment people on high population servers are ALREADY EXPERIENCING LONG QUEUES. However, this is balanced by the fact they have a better experience of WvW once they gain entry. A dynamic cap would ensure a better experience for everyone, meaning they now have just the incentive to move and gain shorter queues.

3) At the moment, people are punished for being on lower population servers. And the only possible way to address this is to move to a higher pop server, MAKING THE PROBLEM WORSE. If we are going to punish anyone, we should at least allow them to fix it in a way that doesn’t make the problem worse. That’s just good sense.

Lowering map cap or initiating/promoting any sort of server transfer isn’t the best answer. In my opinion, mass server transfers will lighten the load a little bit on the server, but they are merely bringing over the problems (plus other issues) to another server. But that’s my personal opinion, I’ve never had a good experience with mass server transfers.

Plus, I can see why many people would be very hesitant to transfer from let’s say JQ to let’s say Kaineng (I mean no disrespect). I personally wouldn’t want to go from rolling over people to being rolled over (I don’t have personal experience from being either JQ or Kaineng so please correct me if I’m wrong here).

What I think might be a plausible solution is to force the top 3 server with the highest wvw population/longest queue to break into two teams. Call it a breaking up of a monopoly if you will. After all, silver and bronze leagues have 9 servers each, while gold only has 6. Wouldn’t creating 3 more servers/teams make it a perfect 9 in each league?

For argument’s sake, let’s use BG, JQ and TC as the 3 we will breaking up. Force people from these 3 servers to choose between BG1 or BG2 the next league reset. Or even better, maybe give it a cool name (perhaps a choice between Jade Quarry or Jaded Queue). I think people will more likely be more open to joining a brand new team rather than joining one that has been losing consistently. Plus you are not bringing problems or creating new ones in an existing community.

I may be way off on this but I am imagining some of these top servers to have populations that are way more massive than other servers. This will probably only work if wvw population on these servers are at least 1.5 times the ones on other servers.

ViRiD.2784:

WvW population imbalance is really, really weird to me for a couple of reasons as an MMO vet:

1. The game mode is completely incentivized. It’s probably one of the best ways to get EXP and Karma in the game, and provides access to a lot of exotic gearsets through its own currency. Additionally, it drops an abundance of T7 mats and I’ve personally received a couple of Ascended Rings from the rank chests.

2. It doesn’t correlate completely with overall world population. Though the Server list is notoriously nondescriptive of the actual activity of the servers, I have seen T2 servers like FA be a whole descriptor lower than a server like Kaineng.

These lead me to the conclusion that some servers just lack a WvW-focused group, and for whatever reason the majority have no interest in participating in the game mode. Thus, I feel we should avoid making any sort of conclusion like “low wvw pop -> game is dying” because I don’t believe they are linked in any discernible way.

If I had to spitball a direction for how to tackle the imbalance, it can either fall in one of three ways:

1. Force PvE’ers against their will into WvW. Tying it to the living story, or making it better than FGS or CS for farming, will force a number of players into WvW that may not want to be in there. Other MMO’s have done similar things with large quest hubs tied to a pvp zone.

2. Shift the majority of changes to the game mode to accessibility for casual and non-pvp’ers. Listen to their complaints first and foremost, and have them direct the development of the WvW area. This would likely lead to a reduction of the value of the strict “control the most nodes” game we have now, and shift the points to things like pvp dungeons and other semi-competitive pve encounters.

3. Continue on course, addressing the concerns according to the prioritization Anet had already concluded, and hope that a “better” yet same game mode will naturally attract more players as the gameplay becomes increasingly compelling.

I probably missed things, but that’s my conclusions on pop imbalance off the top of my head.

Oddly have a rank 160 toon and other alts and never got an Ascended to drop or come in a chest. I doubt the Ascended aspect of you getting a couple are the norm, you may be very lucky.

scawacs.8125:

Lowering map cap or initiating/promoting any sort of server transfer isn’t the best answer. In my opinion, mass server transfers will lighten the load a little bit on the server, but they are merely bringing over the problems (plus other issues) to another server. But that’s my personal opinion, I’ve never had a good experience with mass server transfers.

Plus, I can see why many people would be very hesitant to transfer from let’s say JQ to let’s say Kaineng (I mean no disrespect). I personally wouldn’t want to go from rolling over people to being rolled over (I don’t have personal experience from being either JQ or Kaineng so please correct me if I’m wrong here).

What I think might be a plausible solution is to force the top 3 server with the highest wvw population/longest queue to break into two teams. Call it a breaking up of a monopoly if you will. After all, silver and bronze leagues have 9 servers each, while gold only has 6. Wouldn’t creating 3 more servers/teams make it a perfect 9 in each league?

For argument’s sake, let’s use BG, JQ and TC as the 3 we will breaking up. Force people from these 3 servers to choose between BG1 or BG2 the next league reset. Or even better, maybe give it a cool name (perhaps a choice between Jade Quarry or Jaded Queue). I think people will more likely be more open to joining a brand new team rather than joining one that has been losing consistently. Plus you are not bringing problems or creating new ones in an existing community.

I may be way off on this but I am imagining some of these top servers to have populations that are way more massive than other servers. This will probably only work if wvw population on these servers are at least 1.5 times the ones on other servers.

There are a couple of things in your post I don’t really understand.

Firstly, I notice you and other people refer to “lowering the map cap.” Is this a reference to the idea where you only let people into the map if the second highest population is within x% of your server’s border population (people sometimes refer to this as "dynamic population cap)? Or some other idea?

Secondly, assuming the tiering system is eventually refined to the point where is successfully splits servers by skill, why would anyone be able to roll over anyone else when populations are roughly equal?

At the moment, you will get steamrolled if either (a) the enemy server are much better than you or (b) the enemy server outnumber you. Tiering should prevent (a) and dynamic population limits would prevent (b).

You could confidently move to any lower pop server within your tier without worrying about getting steamrolled.

Note, I realise tiering is currently less than perfect. I also realise that there may be certain server who maintain a reputation for elite play that puts them head and shoulders above everyone else. However, at least dynamic pop caps will ensure those servers cannot become too populated without experience longer and longer queues. This hopefully will spread a fair number of the elite guilds to other servers within the tier.