Full Servers, is their an end in sight
Its the numbers of people actively doing WvW now. Not the numbers on that server. So the inactive accounts are not being counted. The metrics also cover a longer span of time, not second by second like the old way. So, whole guild can leave a server and not drop down as its still within that old measuring set.
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
ANet may give it to you.
ANet has already taken your advice (sort of).
Server status is currently determined by the level of activity in WvW. Dormant accounts have no impact on “full” status.
The reason that some servers are full and are expected to remain that way for a while is that they have a very active WvW community. One guild here or there won’t change that.
Things aren’t likely to change quickly, either: people looking for active WvW are drawn towards high-pop servers and hardly any WvW fan wants to move to a less active world — and even if they did, they aren’t likely to want to pay 500 gems to do so.
Until something happens to change those dynamics, full servers will remain full for long periods of time.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Just to add to that and clarify, when they said WvW, EOTM is excluded from those calculations according to A-net. They only count total activity in EB + the 3 borderland maps.
And personally, I understand since you were not too aware of these things you must not be a WvW focused player, but I disagree with you and your solution.
The main reason WvW in general has degraded so severly is because of overstacking of the servers which are now labeled as full. They do not need any more people, in fact, they need to destack and spread out to make things better, not the other way around.
Heavy Deedz – COSA – SF
Just to add to that and clarify, when they said WvW, EOTM is excluded from those calculations according to A-net. They only count total activity in EB + the 3 borderland maps.
Good point. For some reason, I think of EotM as “PvE karma trains, occasionally interrupted by a skirmish.” i.e. I keep forgetting it’s technically WvW.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Here’s all the info, from the wvw forum:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/World-Population-Changes-Are-Coming/first
The main reason WvW in general has degraded so severly is because of overstacking of the servers which are now labeled as full. They do not need any more people, in fact, they need to destack and spread out to make things better, not the other way around.
Which is one of ANET’s goals with server population only looking at WvW activity
The intent is that since you can’t join or transfer to a “Full” server, their populations are going to diminish over time, until eventually they reach “Very High” again. At this point, all “Full” servers are going to be balanced. This won’t be right away, though, since we’re not kicking anyone out of their servers.
Time will tell if it works or not.
I would like to address a problem that may/may not be answered, and that is the problem of full servers. I do not know how some servers appear to be full, when whole guilds leave for other servers, and yet the server still shows it as being full.
Because it’s the Dev’s/Dev manually pushing buttons. I have no confidence or belief in the Dev’s on these population numbers. How can a server be full and yet, I can log in and run around a map with maybe 2 or 3 other people on it during off hours? That pretty much defines how poor the decisions on population control have been. What’s the worst about these lowered populations is that it encourages playing over time to a very unhealthy level.
[AwM] of Jade Quarry.
I would like to address a problem that may/may not be answered, and that is the problem of full servers. I do not know how some servers appear to be full, when whole guilds leave for other servers, and yet the server still shows it as being full.
Because it’s the Dev’s/Dev manually pushing buttons. I have no confidence or belief in the Dev’s on these population numbers. How can a server be full and yet, I can log in and run around a map with maybe 2 or 3 other people on it during off hours? That pretty much defines how poor the decisions on population control have been. What’s the worst about these lowered populations is that it encourages playing over time to a very unhealthy level.
Populations are determined automatically. The devs don’t have anything close to enough time to do this “manually”.
Their algorithm looks at a variety of factors and all of them relate to WvW. There’s absolutely no reason to expect that a “full” server won’t have peak and off-peak hours; it’s not in the least surprising that you might not see anyone during off-hours.
And I’m not at all sure why you think that population in WvW “encourages playing over time to a very unhealthy level.” I don’t see any direct connection at all between WvW pop and how often people play or for how long. At worst, people who get really into WvW are more likely to play a lot and more likely to gravitate towards popular servers, thus there’s a correlation, but no causal connection.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Thank you all for the feedback, I can understand a bit more of the server dynamics from the feedback. I will say though that we have had quite a few guilds move server, and prime time which used to have ques on all Border Lands, now has a que on EB only. If the server is showing full based on WvW activity, how is this possible, and would this mean no one can then transfer to the server?
Thank you all for the feedback, I can understand a bit more of the server dynamics from the feedback. I will say though that we have had quite a few guilds move server, and prime time which used to have ques on all Border Lands, now has a que on EB only. If the server is showing full based on WvW activity, how is this possible, and would this mean no one can then transfer to the server?
If the server is full due to WvW activity then it’s closed to people transferring in. It’s not until enough active WvW players transfer off and after the long term metrics see a drop in WvW activity that the server status will drop down to very high and transferring in is possible.
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
ANet may give it to you.
Their algorithm looks at a variety of factors and all of them relate to WvW. There’s absolutely no reason to expect that a “full” server won’t have peak and off-peak hours; it’s not in the least surprising that you might not see anyone during off-hours.
They “say” they have an algorithm. They have not mentioned any of these “factors” either. After 3 years of WvW’ing, I take most statements from the Dev’s as nothing more than flowery words of sunshine and rainbows with little substance.
The “not seeing anyone” in a competitive environment is exactly what creates an unhealthy level of time invested. When the server population to man hour requirements of the maps are in healthy balance, there should not be any time where the maps are empty. Empty maps and the desire to win leads to excessive behaviors. If you WvW often you’d have experienced this behavior in others and most likely yourself too.
[AwM] of Jade Quarry.
The “not seeing anyone” in a competitive environment is exactly what creates an unhealthy level of time invested. When the server population to man hour requirements of the maps are in healthy balance, there should not be any time where the maps are empty. Empty maps and the desire to win leads to excessive behaviors. If you WvW often you’d have experienced this behavior in others and most likely yourself too.
when you play on europe server its logical to expact most of WvW’er being on WvW in european “prime time” of playing – analogicaly on US servers – if you are playing out of said time don’t be surprised that there are lesser amounts of players.
and if you are refering to guilds gathering in late night/early morning hours to capture objectives of server that has little to no players online because of said hours – well if they have to pull that kind of trick off to recapture an objective succesfully there were not in posisition to influence the weeks output in any reasonable way anyway.
“-Shield is meant to be broken!”
“-and on this occasion I keep mine plate armors”
discussion about offensive/deffensive playstyles
“-and on this occasion I keep mine plate armors”
discussion about offensive/deffensive playstyles
Their algorithm looks at a variety of factors and all of them relate to WvW. There’s absolutely no reason to expect that a “full” server won’t have peak and off-peak hours; it’s not in the least surprising that you might not see anyone during off-hours.
They “say” they have an algorithm. They have not mentioned any of these “factors” either.
For the same reason they don’t publicly talk about the details of hacks or exploits. Telling players exactly what the system entails is basically an open invitation for players to abuse the system.
Their algorithm looks at a variety of factors and all of them relate to WvW. There’s absolutely no reason to expect that a “full” server won’t have peak and off-peak hours; it’s not in the least surprising that you might not see anyone during off-hours.
They “say” they have an algorithm. They have not mentioned any of these “factors” either. After 3 years of WvW’ing, I take most statements from the Dev’s as nothing more than flowery words of sunshine and rainbows with little substance.
The “not seeing anyone” in a competitive environment is exactly what creates an unhealthy level of time invested. When the server population to man hour requirements of the maps are in healthy balance, there should not be any time where the maps are empty. Empty maps and the desire to win leads to excessive behaviors. If you WvW often you’d have experienced this behavior in others and most likely yourself too.
dont expect them to tell you how to abuse the system.
JQ: Rikkity
head here to discuss wvw without fear of infractions
head here to discuss wvw without fear of infractions
dont expect them to tell you how to abuse the system.
Abuse of what exactly? The WvW map queues have always been the universal balancing mechanism, not server populations. As long as there is sufficient players to fill or nearly fill the Queues, then any amount over this limit will inherently have diminishing returns. To the point where players will transfer and move around on their own so they can get past the queues to play. Attempting to shrink and spread out server population thru limits, to the point where they eliminate hitting map queues, will cause nothing but more imbalance and more coverage issues. And, as I mentioned above, this will entice players to play an exorbitant amount of hours per week trying to compete. The whole not going to school, calling in sick to work, not sleeping for a couple of days, etc.
No, the Dev’s do not have the time and cannot replicate what a Worlds Community does. Though they can push a button and set arbitrary limitations upon them. The Dev’s should be working with a Worlds community to strengthen and help them. Instead, they seem determined to be antagonist.
[AwM] of Jade Quarry.
Thank you all for the feedback, I can understand a bit more of the server dynamics from the feedback. I will say though that we have had quite a few guilds move server, and prime time which used to have ques on all Border Lands, now has a que on EB only. If the server is showing full based on WvW activity, how is this possible, and would this mean no one can then transfer to the server?
The server status does not change in “real time.” The algorithm monitors population over an unknown amount of time, and updates server status at an unknown time. Anet has not provided us with these “unknown” factors. This is why it is possible for several wvw guilds to change servers and not immediately allow other players to transfer in.
Its really easy to figure out. People who want super active wvw over all other things will gradually migrate to the full servers. So lets say the current batch of full servers has a guild leave or go inactive, it might go very high for a day, someone will notice, and youll see wvw’ers flood in while they can, then be very active in wvw, making it full again.
What will, or has happened is that there are now “wvw dream destinations” for no other reason really than they are full servers, meaning extremely high wvw participation. The block of full servers are the wvw servers. Not that other servers don’t have active wvw but anyone whos hardcore into wvw is going to want to go to the full servers whenever given the chance.
So I don’t see the full servers really changing much. I bet you could make a flow chart showing people moving from the low activity servers to the very high, then moving to the full when given the chance, if you followed hardcore wvw’ers server transfer history.
In some sense, at least to me, those full servers sort of have a legendary mystique when it comes to wvw. I would if I could transfer to them, knowing there is no downside to pve in doing so, or other aspects of the game, you only gain the chance to roll with some very active wvw’ers.
Their algorithm wont matter when the second a full server goes very high a bunch of people transfer into it.
They “say” they have an algorithm. They have not mentioned any of these “factors” either.
In fact, they did mention most of these factors.
- https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/World-Population-Changes-Are-Coming/5315121
- https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/World-Population-Changes-Are-Coming/5324934
- https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/World-Population-Changes-Are-Coming/5326517
As others have stated, they aren’t going to share the exact details, to prevent people from gaming the system.
After 3 years of WvW’ing, I take most statements from the Dev’s as nothing more than flowery words of sunshine and rainbows with little substance.
And it’s your right to do so. However, this is different:
- It didn’t involve flowery words.
- It was implemented shortly after the announcement.
- The effects were instantly apparent, with notable changes to some pop statuses and people completely unable to transfer to completely full servers (whereas previously, you could, with a hit-or-miss success rate).
The “not seeing anyone” in a competitive environment is exactly what creates an unhealthy level of time invested. When the server population to man hour requirements of the maps are in healthy balance, there should not be any time where the maps are empty. Empty maps and the desire to win leads to excessive behaviors. If you WvW often you’d have experienced this behavior in others and most likely yourself too.
I’m still not following your logic. The population is determined in part by peak-load metrics, which is what you’d want: if a world is constantly queued by 80+ people during peak hours, you’d want that to be considered a “full” even if there are never queues off-peak. Thus “full” and “empty maps” aren’t necessarily 100% correlated.
Further, “excessive behavior” isn’t caused by empty maps — some people like breaking rules and/or trying to push boundaries; that has nothing to do with the population. There are documented examples of people using exploits in both top-tier and bottom-tier worlds, in both “winning” worlds and “losing” ones — this has more to do with large crowd and anonymity-of-the-internet dynamics than it does with population.
tl;dr you’re welcome to believe anything you like. In this case, however, there are easily-established facts that suggest something else is going on.,
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
snip
Your links contain no data other than a Red post saying something is changing. There’s is absolutely nothing more to it than that.
The population is determined in part by peak-load metrics
Having an over abundance of players for a 3 to 4 hours period per day should not automatically flag a server to full status. The “off peak” as you put it, should easily outweigh those couple of hours with a queue/s. Right now though, the population required to flag this “Full Status” appears to be set arbitrarily and set too low. Far below what it would take to fill all 4 maps, over a 24 hours period, with 60+ players playing for a couple of hours each. A well balanced server should have such populations to achieve that and not have such extreme highs and lows to create labels as “peak” and “off peak”. The only thing that should create general highs and low are the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Consider those high’s and lows as WvW’s circadian rhythm. Those the maps caps can be designed around.
[AwM] of Jade Quarry.
snip
Your links contain no data other than a Red post saying something is changing. There’s is absolutely nothing more to it than that.
That’s not quite true. As has been explained before, ANet isn’t going to go into exact details; they have, instead, given us the general rubric for determining server status.
The population is determined in part by peak-load metrics
Having an over abundance of players for a 3 to 4 hours period per day should not automatically flag a server to full status. The “off peak” as you put it, should easily outweigh those couple of hours with a queue/s. Right now though, the population required to flag this “Full Status” appears to be set arbitrarily and set too low. Far below what it would take to fill all 4 maps, over a 24 hours period, with 60+ players playing for a couple of hours each. A well balanced server should have such populations to achieve that and not have such extreme highs and lows to create labels as “peak” and “off peak”. The only thing that should create general highs and low are the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Consider those high’s and lows as WvW’s circadian rhythm. Those the maps caps can be designed around.
First, it’s not 3-4 hrs a day; there are three peaks during the day. Second, of course the volume during those hours far outweighs the importance of off-peak hours — if you play during peak hours, you get stuck in queues; if you play during off-peak, you don’t — “population” is somewhat meaningless if it doesn’t apply to, you know, the actual populations.
Third, your point about off-peak has to do with a different dynamic: there just aren’t that many players who are online during off-peak, whether in WvW or not. It’s more noticeable to WvW, because it affects scores. Maybe you’d like to see ANet track location as an additional metric, so that perhaps people who play during Asia-Pac peak hours can move to a server that doesn’t have that many Asia-Pac players, even if it’s full for EU & NA peaks. I’d support that.
What I am gathering (mostly from your latest post) is that you don’t like the way that ANet has setup WvW, that you think the goals, scoring, and population mechanics have created an uneven mess, with a few very strong servers, a few very weak ones, and very little true competition.
I can’t disagree with that. I would like them to think of “healthy populations” rather than full|high|medium. People care about good fights and might be willing to tolerate more queuing for that.
However, the original discussion was about what constitutes “full” in the current game and whether those servers that are full will change. That’s what I was addressing, rather than where I’d like the game to be.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”