Guild Wars 2

Especially since they have overflow servers, why in the hell do we have so many servers when the majority of them feel incredibly dead? Wvw especially would greatly benefit from merging especially since even the high/full servers have nearly empty maps much of the time. Having coverage/people actually playing in the maps that exist would be nice, and yet anet is adding more to spread the people out even further. I want to play this game, but I find that the player activity is just.. very low. Too low. People are too spread out as a whole and it just doesn’t feel busy.

Its called mega servers..

Everyone is a part of one server now technically (except for WvW purposes)

sooooo, you are the type who doesn´t spend 2 minutes of google searching (or checking standard sources like the game websites or GWwiki) before starting threads about things you do not know about I presume?

Felix.3467:

Especially since they have overflow servers, why in the hell do we have so many servers when the majority of them feel incredibly dead? Wvw especially would greatly benefit from merging especially since even the high/full servers have nearly empty maps much of the time. Having coverage/people actually playing in the maps that exist would be nice, and yet anet is adding more to spread the people out even further. I want to play this game, but I find that the player activity is just.. very low. Too low. People are too spread out as a whole and it just doesn’t feel busy.

Speaking about PvE servers, mega server as already mentioned, is just that. All the servers merged together. Now much of what you may be seeing as far as “dead areas”, is A) you are in an “overflow” with an unknown number of “full” servers. B. ) You are in areas where there isn’t much going on, which leads to fewer people on said map. or C) The times you generally play are “off times” with fewer people on.

WvW is the problem and the TC mentioned it

As for maps being empty the servers are already merged and it’s simply a population issue. More people should be logged in for HoT then it should die down again though the population of this game remains in either WB train, DT, PvP lobby, SW, or Arch outside of those places the game is dead.

WvW needs mergers more than anything as many servers are either dead or locked in a perpetual loosing streak because they have so few people. The few that are active have a que and a stable middle ground doesn’t exist in the sense that it should.

This is what happens when you do TCP over carrier pigeons …

Khisanth.2948:

This is what happens when you do TCP over carrier pigeons …

The RCF 1149 protocol usually only has a latency measured in a few hours, though…

In the WvW thread about letting WvW activity count as server population they said they are letting the full servers decrease by attrition. When they are low enough they are going to rebalance the populations. Eventually they should have less people in the high population servers and more in the low ones.

Samuel Loretan.8601:

A “Full” server is a server with a number of Active WvW Players (as defined by the algorithm) above a certain threshold. It has nothing to do with hardware limitations, or PvE players.

The “Full” threshold is slightly different than the other ones because it doesn’t have an upper limit. So some servers can be just slightly above the threshold and marked “Full”, and some other servers might be well over it, and also marked “Full”, even though their populations aren’t really balanced.

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.

I should have clarified, I mean primarily for wvw purposes since if we’re all a megaserver technically, whats the difference? As you can tell the bulk of my post is about wvw

Just a flesh wound.3589:

In the WvW thread about letting WvW activity count as server population they said they are letting the full servers decrease by attrition. When they are low enough they are going to rebalance the populations. Eventually they should have less people in the high population servers and more in the low ones.

Samuel Loretan.8601:

A “Full” server is a server with a number of Active WvW Players (as defined by the algorithm) above a certain threshold. It has nothing to do with hardware limitations, or PvE players.

The “Full” threshold is slightly different than the other ones because it doesn’t have an upper limit. So some servers can be just slightly above the threshold and marked “Full”, and some other servers might be well over it, and also marked “Full”, even though their populations aren’t really balanced.

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.

That just seems stupid, you’d think for competitive play they’d want people to be able to play in higher numbers … not lower…

Felix.3467:

Especially since they have overflow servers, why in the hell do we have so many servers when the majority of them feel incredibly dead? Wvw especially would greatly benefit from merging especially since even the high/full servers have nearly empty maps much of the time. Having coverage/people actually playing in the maps that exist would be nice, and yet anet is adding more to spread the people out even further. I want to play this game, but I find that the player activity is just.. very low. Too low. People are too spread out as a whole and it just doesn’t feel busy.

Merging servers won’t have any impact on PvE at all, due to megaservers — there are only as many instances of any specific map as there needs to be.

For WvW, merging servers won’t have the impact you are hoping for. People gravitate towards certain servers for various reasons, both good and bad; as long as those reasons aren’t affected by merging, people will continue to do that. At best, we might have 4-5 months before a new, similar status quo sets in.

Right now, there’s no reason for anyone on a ‘full’ server to pay gems to leave, except if they have a ton of friends who also WvW and can’t get in. Entire guilds might move for various reasons, but often they are subsidized by the destination server or provided with other benefits that aren’t a direct part of the game.

Consequently, it would be better for the community if ANet did more things that affected the incentives and disincentives for moving, especially to convince small guilds to move from high-pop worlds.

Felix.3467:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

In the WvW thread about letting WvW activity count as server population they said they are letting the full servers decrease by attrition. When they are low enough they are going to rebalance the populations. Eventually they should have less people in the high population servers and more in the low ones.

Samuel Loretan.8601:

A “Full” server is a server with a number of Active WvW Players (as defined by the algorithm) above a certain threshold. It has nothing to do with hardware limitations, or PvE players.

The “Full” threshold is slightly different than the other ones because it doesn’t have an upper limit. So some servers can be just slightly above the threshold and marked “Full”, and some other servers might be well over it, and also marked “Full”, even though their populations aren’t really balanced.

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.

That just seems stupid, you’d think for competitive play they’d want people to be able to play in higher numbers … not lower…

Since they are very unlikely to server merge, would you rather they spread out the population or kept the high ones high and the low ones low, as they are now.

The current problem with using WvW population, which is valid because only WvW matters when it comes to server population, is that new players not realizing this will most likely choose the most “populated” server in their region even if they have no interest in WvW. They don’t realize it doesn’t really matter for PvE or PvP (I think?), they are concern about playing on empty maps. They only empty map is the most recent map instanced.

The current problem is due to the higher the population in a server, the more the total of dps in that world. Players move to servers with more wins and low rank servers have fewer players. It becomes a virtuous circle.

To work around this problem, there should a cap or upper limit of total dps per server. The more the server populated, the more diluted the dps per player. In this way, small guilds will have incentive to move to less populated server because of the dps bonus.

Honestly they should just make WvW team selection randomized per season, stop calling them servers, and treating them like servers.

If you’re in a guild, the guild is assigned a team at the beginning of each season, if you’re in multiple guilds, the system asks you which guild you’d like to join for the wvw season (without telling you the team name the guild is going to) if you’re not in any guilds at all, it simply assigns you as an individual.

The system can then load balance it using collected wvw metrics like wvw ranks, average login times, etc. to ensure an even distribution across all teams at the start of each season, and thus each season would be competitive, with high ranking teams naturally rising to the top and low ranked teams naturally dropping to the bottom, and generally better and more competitive distribution overall.

You know, use matchmaking to make WvW more fun and competitive, and ditch the server model that causes so much stagnation and server hopping problems.

PopeUrban.2578:

Honestly they should just make WvW team selection randomized per season, stop calling them servers, and treating them like servers.

If you’re in a guild, the guild is assigned a team at the beginning of each season, if you’re in multiple guilds, the system asks you which guild you’d like to join for the wvw season (without telling you the team name the guild is going to) if you’re not in any guilds at all, it simply assigns you as an individual.

The system can then load balance it using collected wvw metrics like wvw ranks, average login times, etc. to ensure an even distribution across all teams at the start of each season, and thus each season would be competitive, with high ranking teams naturally rising to the top and low ranked teams naturally dropping to the bottom, and generally better and more competitive distribution overall.

You know, use matchmaking to make WvW more fun and competitive, and ditch the server model that causes so much stagnation and server hopping problems.

sounds good on paper… but they have struggled for 3 YEARS with matchmaking in sPvP… imagine how bad it would be with WvW and all the big guilds and even non guildies who run wvw ….

anet does not have a good history with matchmaking algorithim lol

SkiTz.4590:

PopeUrban.2578:

Honestly they should just make WvW team selection randomized per season, stop calling them servers, and treating them like servers.

If you’re in a guild, the guild is assigned a team at the beginning of each season, if you’re in multiple guilds, the system asks you which guild you’d like to join for the wvw season (without telling you the team name the guild is going to) if you’re not in any guilds at all, it simply assigns you as an individual.

The system can then load balance it using collected wvw metrics like wvw ranks, average login times, etc. to ensure an even distribution across all teams at the start of each season, and thus each season would be competitive, with high ranking teams naturally rising to the top and low ranked teams naturally dropping to the bottom, and generally better and more competitive distribution overall.

You know, use matchmaking to make WvW more fun and competitive, and ditch the server model that causes so much stagnation and server hopping problems.

sounds good on paper… but they have struggled for 3 YEARS with matchmaking in sPvP… imagine how bad it would be with WvW and all the big guilds and even non guildies who run wvw ….

anet does not have a good history with matchmaking algorithim lol

Yeah, but WvW matchmaking is more about volume of players and easily trackable wvw ranks/login times than much harder to balance individual player skill.

WvW doesn’t really care about individual skill on a macro game level. What matters in wvw balance is more population numbers and coverage, which is far easier to get as “hard data” than attempting to build SpVp mmr rankings based on score and w/l ratios.

WvW can simply balance based on population and projected time slot avaliability, and it doesn’t have to be as good in a MMR sense as sPvP as outliers don’t really have the potential to disrupt matchmaking in such a big sense. If you mismatch one guy, or even one big guild in WvW, they can’t really roll over the game and break the match, wheras in sPvP if you, match even one really good player against five noobs it creates serious match imbalance.

Felix.3467:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

In the WvW thread about letting WvW activity count as server population they said they are letting the full servers decrease by attrition. When they are low enough they are going to rebalance the populations. Eventually they should have less people in the high population servers and more in the low ones.

Samuel Loretan.8601:

A “Full” server is a server with a number of Active WvW Players (as defined by the algorithm) above a certain threshold. It has nothing to do with hardware limitations, or PvE players.

The “Full” threshold is slightly different than the other ones because it doesn’t have an upper limit. So some servers can be just slightly above the threshold and marked “Full”, and some other servers might be well over it, and also marked “Full”, even though their populations aren’t really balanced.

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.

That just seems stupid, you’d think for competitive play they’d want people to be able to play in higher numbers … not lower…

Since when has WvW been about competative play? What is competative about “highest number of players wins”?

If you want competative the spvp forums are → https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp

Cyninja.2954:

Felix.3467:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

In the WvW thread about letting WvW activity count as server population they said they are letting the full servers decrease by attrition. When they are low enough they are going to rebalance the populations. Eventually they should have less people in the high population servers and more in the low ones.

Samuel Loretan.8601:

A “Full” server is a server with a number of Active WvW Players (as defined by the algorithm) above a certain threshold. It has nothing to do with hardware limitations, or PvE players.

The “Full” threshold is slightly different than the other ones because it doesn’t have an upper limit. So some servers can be just slightly above the threshold and marked “Full”, and some other servers might be well over it, and also marked “Full”, even though their populations aren’t really balanced.

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.

That just seems stupid, you’d think for competitive play they’d want people to be able to play in higher numbers … not lower…

Since when has WvW been about competative play? What is competative about “highest number of players wins”?

If you want competative the spvp forums are -> https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp

WVW is not always about the highest number of players, it is about the capability of the pug commander who does the night and early morning shift

What they need to do is assign some servers a “teammate” server that would play on the same side.

Hey McFly .. in which year do you live actually ?

And btw.:
http://dulfy.net/2014/04/02/gw2-introduces-megaserver-system/

I’d like some “alliance” of sorts. There’s really a problem with the population. Sometimes we are few in our server and the other servers are many, then at other times we are many and the other servers are few. What fun is that? You think karma train started in EotM? It started in regular WvW, and it’s still happening 3 years after this game’s release.

The problem is only for WvW players. They can pay the gems and transfer to a more full, higher tier server if they don’t like the WvW player population on theirs. They just won’t get into the top tier any time soon.

If you aren’t playing WvW it simply doesn’t matter therefore HoT doesn’t have any impact to PvE map populations unless you think there will not be enough players to reasonably populate a single instance of every map in core Tyria.

A cynic would suggest the OP was looking for a free transfer but I think he just wants more players from his own world playing WvW. I’m on one of the full servers and there are times the borderlands seem totally empty, I can’t imagine how empty a medium pop server is.

There are issues with WvW population on servers, no doubt. Many already do support merging of servers for WvW reasons. There are way too many low pop servers (now listed as medium), when ideally you want servers to be High, Very High, or Full for players to fully experience all that WvW have to offer.

So I do think on the WvW front, they’ve got work to do. Merging servers may not be the solution, as this whole World vs World vs World isn’t really working out in the long run. There are so many low pop servers where there’s barely any WvW activity, it’s not right and a great way to discourage new players from experiencing WvW. Which in turn, if new players have bad taste in WvW, they likely won’t continue playing GW2.

exp.3168:

Cyninja.2954:

Felix.3467:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

In the WvW thread about letting WvW activity count as server population they said they are letting the full servers decrease by attrition. When they are low enough they are going to rebalance the populations. Eventually they should have less people in the high population servers and more in the low ones.

Samuel Loretan.8601:

A “Full” server is a server with a number of Active WvW Players (as defined by the algorithm) above a certain threshold. It has nothing to do with hardware limitations, or PvE players.

The “Full” threshold is slightly different than the other ones because it doesn’t have an upper limit. So some servers can be just slightly above the threshold and marked “Full”, and some other servers might be well over it, and also marked “Full”, even though their populations aren’t really balanced.

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.

That just seems stupid, you’d think for competitive play they’d want people to be able to play in higher numbers … not lower…

Since when has WvW been about competative play? What is competative about “highest number of players wins”?

If you want competative the spvp forums are -> https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp

WVW is not always about the highest number of players, it is about the capability of the pug commander who does the night and early morning shift

True, but this is much more affected by organisation and devotion than server population (though a higher server population does mean getting a better chance of more people playing those times).

this has been discussed over and over again.

the new pop status is working, i understand the programming concept…

the problem is that there are too many servers while too little intake thus it doesn’t work that well for bottom servers in practice.

the overall number of servers need to be reduced so that population will not spread out so thin to the point that it is hopeless