Guild Wars 2

I had a question, an issue, and a suggestion. All three are around the same subject, as evidenced in the thread title, and all three revolve around a Dev’s willingness to answer. Players can offer feedback, but only a dev could actually answer this. Let me add some background.

My current home server is Devona’s Rest, we are currently listed as a high population server. I believe I’ve read elsewhere that the server pop is based on the number of accounts that call the server home, not the number of active accounts; this leads to a couple of questions I had.

Why not come up with a better metric for server population? From my point of view, as an active player (3-4 hours per day minimum), this server is dead. I can run through Lion’s Arch and never see more than 15 players at a time, I’ve seen 2 overflows the entire 9 months I’ve played, I can literally run through whole area’s, including starting area’s or normally high traffic area’s, such as Frostgorge Sound, or Queensdale and count the number of players I see or find in /map on my fingers and toes. The LFG tool more often than not groups me with people from other servers. WvWvW is the same 30 people every time I log in, and I have never seen more than 50 people there. How is this server classed as a high population server? Is there any way to do the number of active accounts, rather than the number of total accounts? Active being defined loosely as an account that has more than 1 hours worth of activity in a week. As a player I feel like some content punishes me for being in a lower population, or activity server, i.e. Tequatl Rising. And I feel like we will see more content in the future will need activity and cooperation from a community like the Tequatl event. This is going to cause a bleeding effect, which someone told me happened shortly before I joined, of active players abandoning servers in favor of higher activity servers. I can guest to other servers and see large numbers of people 24 hours per day.

So, those were my questions. My suggestion is to add soft server caps, or to at least display better metrics of server population. This is a big issue. I understand you don’t want to show your servers are emptying, or that you are bleeding players, but for the players you do have, you need to let your current playerbase know what they can expect of the server they are on so they can make informed decisions, i.e. whether to change servers, what servers to go to, and what to expect from a server. This is especially important for new players. A new player that joins Devona’s Rest is going to have little to no support from the playerbase, because there isn’t one. This is going to discourage those people, and cause yet more lost players.

These are just my opinions, and please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about the state of this server, or other servers in similar positions.

Syndrilious.9632:

I had a question, an issue, and a suggestion. All three are around the same subject, as evidenced in the thread title, and all three revolve around a Dev’s willingness to answer. Players can offer feedback, but only a dev could actually answer this. Let me add some background.

My current home server is Devona’s Rest, we are currently listed as a high population server. I believe I’ve read elsewhere that the server pop is based on the number of accounts that call the server home, not the number of active accounts; this leads to a couple of questions I had.

Why not come up with a better metric for server population? From my point of view, as an active player (3-4 hours per day minimum), this server is dead. I can run through Lion’s Arch and never see more than 15 players at a time, I’ve seen 2 overflows the entire 9 months I’ve played, I can literally run through whole area’s, including starting area’s or normally high traffic area’s, such as Frostgorge Sound, or Queensdale and count the number of players I see or find in /map on my fingers and toes. The LFG tool more often than not groups me with people from other servers. WvWvW is the same 30 people every time I log in, and I have never seen more than 50 people there. How is this server classed as a high population server? Is there any way to do the number of active accounts, rather than the number of total accounts? Active being defined loosely as an account that has more than 1 hours worth of activity in a week. As a player I feel like some content punishes me for being in a lower population, or activity server, i.e. Tequatl Rising. And I feel like we will see more content in the future will need activity and cooperation from a community like the Tequatl event. This is going to cause a bleeding effect, which someone told me happened shortly before I joined, of active players abandoning servers in favor of higher activity servers. I can guest to other servers and see large numbers of people 24 hours per day.

So, those were my questions. My suggestion is to add soft server caps, or to at least display better metrics of server population. This is a big issue. I understand you don’t want to show your servers are emptying, or that you are bleeding players, but for the players you do have, you need to let your current playerbase know what they can expect of the server they are on so they can make informed decisions, i.e. whether to change servers, what servers to go to, and what to expect from a server. This is especially important for new players. A new player that joins Devona’s Rest is going to have little to no support from the playerbase, because there isn’t one. This is going to discourage those people, and cause yet more lost players.

These are just my opinions, and please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about the state of this server, or other servers in similar positions.

I am not on Devona’s Rest, but I agree with you 100%, as my server is in better shape, but similar situation is happening, we are bleeding players to the better stacked ones instead of them bleeding players to us. In fact, we have had a few hours of conversation on this topic on our server voip.

In addition to the info you ask for, I would like one of the top devs or administrative bodies for Arena net to give us a few more concrete answers. Not just the regular PR BS or answers that do not answer anything, but actual, face value info. Please note, a large portion of the transfers issue is driven by WvWvW aspect of this game, so the questions and answers required, are likewise. We would like to know as follows:

1. When can we expect some true incentives for transfers to the lower tiers (not mid tiers) that will actually make a significant number of players come over and stay ?

2. When will you implement a WvW score system which better reflects a servers “off-time”

3. Why do you continue to implement features and changes which encourage further server stacking and further player base bleed-offs from lower pop servers, instead of the other way around (examples: bloodlust, discounted mid range server transfers while low pop left same) ?

4. Are the non-wvw devs even vaguely aware of how their game works and what the problems with it are ? do they realize how these things are tied together ? Does the upper management not communicate enough here ? Does the CEO (or equivalent) actually need to get involved and set things straight due this apparent lack of communication ?

We need some direct answers from Anet, we already have countless of thousands of players feedbacks and opinions and countless useless PR spins. Need direct actual answers this time.

Thank You

This is a very sensitive issue for Anet, or any other MMO company for that matter.
They will not adjust the world population indicator to reflect active accounts instead of registered accounts for two reasons.

1) Doing this will reveal real population levels for each server.
If the population levels are low this can cause players to move to another server causing further unbalance. It can also give the game a bad PR if all servers have lower than expected population levels, stopping new players from trying out the game and even causing some players to abandon it.

2) It will use developers time for something that, for the reasons stated above, they feel is unsuitable for the game at this time, and perhaps anytime. This most likely was a decision taken deliberately. If they wanted otherwise it would have been so from the start.

It would be nice if they could do something like deactivating accounts after X days of not logging in (90 days would be good IMO). After 90 days of no activity, you’d be taken to an account activation page, and asked to re-select a home server. If something like that can’tbe implemented, then close a few of the lowest population servers and give those people free transfer to a medium or high (not very high) population server. NA servers are all listed as high or very high, and I don’t believe that is a true representation of each server.

Skyline.3480:

This is a very sensitive issue for Anet, or any other MMO company for that matter.
They will not adjust the world population indicator to reflect active accounts instead of registered accounts for two reasons.

1) Doing this will reveal real population levels for each server.
If the population levels are low this can cause players to move to another server causing further unbalance. It can also give the game a bad PR if all servers have lower than expected population levels, stopping new players from trying out the game and even causing some players to abandon it.

2) It will use developers time for something that, for the reasons stated above, they feel is unsuitable for the game at this time, and perhaps anytime. This most likely was a decision taken deliberately. If they wanted otherwise it would have been so from the start.

And that is the issue, by doing that they are further alienating players on those low pop servers. I’m really close to just leaving gw2, just because I can’t enjoy the game when there aren’t enough players to do a good portion of the games activities.

I know that feel bro

Lol my server (Tarnished coast) is a big joke. 3 Massive zergs in frostgorge and queensdale stealing champs from each other.and flooding the chat. Our server population is only growing i think . When i do my AC daily runs , i see plenty of nubbies trying to find a group .

a t s e.9614:

Lol my server (Tarnished coast) is a big joke. 3 Massive zergs in frostgorge and queensdale stealing champs from each other.and flooding the chat. Our server population is only growing i think . When i do my AC daily runs , i see plenty of nubbies trying to find a group .

That is the flipside of what we are talking about.

At the low end things are snowballing at a really rapid pace, we are losing players at an increasing rate making regular gameplay difficult + wvw + events such as tequatl. Once more world boss updates go live we will be completely deprived on this content on home servers, then what ? Guest ? if we all guest then what do you think will happen to the overflows on the top ? Remember teq ?

Skyline.3480:

This is a very sensitive issue for Anet, or any other MMO company for that matter.
They will not adjust the world population indicator to reflect active accounts instead of registered accounts for two reasons.

1) Doing this will reveal real population levels for each server.
If the population levels are low this can cause players to move to another server causing further unbalance. It can also give the game a bad PR if all servers have lower than expected population levels, stopping new players from trying out the game and even causing some players to abandon it.

2) It will use developers time for something that, for the reasons stated above, they feel is unsuitable for the game at this time, and perhaps anytime. This most likely was a decision taken deliberately. If they wanted otherwise it would have been so from the start.

So basically you’re saying that ANet built a game around mechanisms that are critically dependent upon server population (WvW, dragon events, farm trains, etc) but aren’t willing to provide any details because the information wouldn’t be healthy for the game. Got it.

Cactus.2710:

Skyline.3480:

This is a very sensitive issue for Anet, or any other MMO company for that matter.
They will not adjust the world population indicator to reflect active accounts instead of registered accounts for two reasons.

1) Doing this will reveal real population levels for each server.
If the population levels are low this can cause players to move to another server causing further unbalance. It can also give the game a bad PR if all servers have lower than expected population levels, stopping new players from trying out the game and even causing some players to abandon it.

2) It will use developers time for something that, for the reasons stated above, they feel is unsuitable for the game at this time, and perhaps anytime. This most likely was a decision taken deliberately. If they wanted otherwise it would have been so from the start.

So basically you’re saying that ANet built a game around mechanisms that are critically dependent upon server population (WvW, dragon events, farm trains, etc) but aren’t willing to provide any details because the information wouldn’t be healthy for the game. Got it.

This is my main issue, because it feels like this is exactly what they are doing. That information is pretty important to the “world” in each server. Withuut that information it is really hard to determine if your server can do certain events.

rhapsody.3615:

It would be nice if they could do something like deactivating accounts after X days of not logging in (90 days would be good IMO). After 90 days of no activity, you’d be taken to an account activation page, and asked to re-select a home server. If something like that can’tbe implemented, then close a few of the lowest population servers and give those people free transfer to a medium or high (not very high) population server. NA servers are all listed as high or very high, and I don’t believe that is a true representation of each server.

I would say no to this simply because people are inactive for various reasons- I would hate it if for some reason I can’t log in and then find myself locked out of my home that I chose in the betas.
on my server I have never seen a population problem- I am on Gunnar’s Hold and we fluctuate between high and medium, there are people everywhere really.

I have seen it suggested that Anet creates underflow servers for PvE maps- this seems a better solution to me.
on the other side there is always guesting

Morrigan.2809:

rhapsody.3615:

It would be nice if they could do something like deactivating accounts after X days of not logging in (90 days would be good IMO). After 90 days of no activity, you’d be taken to an account activation page, and asked to re-select a home server. If something like that can’tbe implemented, then close a few of the lowest population servers and give those people free transfer to a medium or high (not very high) population server. NA servers are all listed as high or very high, and I don’t believe that is a true representation of each server.

I would say no to this simply because people are inactive for various reasons- I would hate it if for some reason I can’t log in and then find myself locked out of my home that I chose in the betas.
on my server I have never seen a population problem- I am on Gunnar’s Hold and we fluctuate between high and medium, there are people everywhere really.

I have seen it suggested that Anet creates underflow servers for PvE maps- this seems a better solution to me.
on the other side there is always guesting

I feel your pain, but for somethings guesting is not a fix. I think it is time for them to lock the very high servers and force players onto the lower pop servers.