Guild Wars 2

Please realize this is the first report, and many more are to come from this one. I will be reviewing past reports in order to update them in the future in order to add certain concerns, or idea’s that the community feels needs to be added.

Next Weeks Topic: Siege Trolling
Please feel free to give feedback on this report, and ideas for next weeks topic.

Cheers!

Issue: Unbalanced WvW matchup
Thread links:
(1) https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance *
(2) https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Completely-Unbalanced-WvW-matchups/first
(3) https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-balance-limited-resources
(4) https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Clever-solution-for-imbalance-wvw
(5) https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/please-put-auto-balance-into-EOTM (for future reports)
(6) https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Community-Standards-Mass-Server-Transfers/first#post4790876
I linked these threads due to the amount of “constructive criticism” present. Below you will see quotes from different users that I’ve found to be the most enlightening on the subject of balance when matching up servers in WvW.

• Nativity.3057 “….Shift the idea of GW2 endgame from fractals to WvW Let’s be completely honest, GW2 lacks “endgame” unlike other MMOs (cough WoW). The game’s name has “war” in it, why not focus on that aspect? While making WvW endgame might result in server stacking (players wanting endgame equips quicker by joining servers that are winning WvW battles), actions can be taken to prevent this. One would be to prohibit server transfers to same tier servers. Another idea would be to handicap the server that is in first place (and stays in the same tier). If the server stays in first with the handicap (handicaps will increase with each win), the rewards for winning increases as well.”
• Smooth Penguin.5294 “They can’t combine servers, because in the event that there’s a mass influx of new WvW players, the combined servers won’t have space to hold them all. The best option at the moment is to keep the servers as they are, and just try to give more incentive for PvE players to WvW more often.”
• Rimmy.9217 “Dropping map population caps to sixty or even forty would probably nudge that along, even if the map caps were only temporary. If player population is a fluid (which it’s not), then rather than the hydraulic despotism of hoarding it all in one place it should be left to to spread out. A large group of people have more fun in a wide seven-meter deep pool than in a single-lane pool that’s thirty meters deep. And more matchups without population imbalances means more fun for more people – fun in a game, if you can believe it. It will also mean that players new to WvW will find an active scene regardless of which server they’re on. It will also lead to more matchup variability, which is definitely a good thing. And finally, it’ll mean that being in the top three means more than “we out-blobbed the other servers”. There will have to be a hint of skill in there too.”

-Popular ideas-
A) Population reductions
B) Server Merging
C) A reward system (similar to the PvP reward track) based on the duration of a player’s stay on a single server.
D) Battle Groups (mentioned in the first link)
E) Better rewards for doing WvW

Based on the communities responses approximately: (posts on subject)
57.73% suggested for better rewards (101)
15.24% suggested server merging (26)
12.08% suggested population reductions (17)
10.32% suggested battle groups (18)
4.63% other (8)

Based on the statistics above, it can be postulated that earning better rewards in WvW seems to be the general consensus for getting new players to join WvW. Having new, and improved rewards will help bring PvE players into WvW to help establish WvW as a form of end-game content. This could eliminate some issues of barren servers, with this influx of new players. Merging servers could be put into place after the revamp of rewards in order to help servers who still need help “refreshing” their WvW populous. Population cap reduction, however, has been vigorously stated by the community as a form of containment for the unbalanced match-ups. An opposing argument has been made, although, stating that creating a lower population cap in the WvW maps could lead to extremely high queue times in higher server tiers. This brings up the point of differentiating map caps, based on that server’s population. I digress, the main points that have been made have been to either “revamp” existing rewards to pull PvE players back into WvW, or to merge servers in order to collect the few players in the barren servers in order to allow for more balanced gameplay in the lower tiers.

In addition to population caps looks into sentiments about off-hours coverage.

The reasons matches are unbalanced are because of servers stacking time-zones, but even without a time zone being stacked simply having strong off hours coverage than your opponent will completely lopside match ups (i refer you to the history of DB, SoS, KN, JQ, and TC).

The issue really isn’t with player population so much as it is the PPT system.

Beyond that, yes- a WvW “reward track” would be awesome. We have masteries which are nice, but having gear sets or titles we could actually work towards would be amazing. Even having WvW collections that have items that take badges that then have to be bought from particular WvW objectives (certain towers or keeps) would be an acceptable reward system.

A lot of us would just like to work on quality PvE gear less and be able to get our top tier gear from committed WvW. The only reason i leave WvW is because it is unsustainable to pay for food, oils, and other needs from playing WvW unless i play in very specific ways. PvP players need never leave pvp if they do not want to, nor do PvE players- save for a few minor things. Most people will need to leave from WvW to make money needed for alternative gear sets and builds, higher quality gear, decent food, and any number of things.

Gold and quality rewards are just too seldom in WvW

Not everyone is in favor of just putting wvw rewards on par with pve/pvp the main reason being that many do not want wvw to become eotm. Basically turned into a karma/champ/exp farm, many in the wvw community despise eotm and the pve’ers that go there because of their lazy entitled attitude and aversion to fighting in a pvp map in favor of unobstructed farming.

Giving Incentive to players to go into wvw is not easy, and being a former guild leader I can tell you some people just will not step foot outside the citadel and see a borderland as something to quickly map for world completion or to use the bank/guild vendor/la asura gate. The problem here is, as we have seen in the past with AP during seasons rewards and pve players going into wvw can cause a lot of friction with WvW guilds, yes the maps are open to everyone but this is not something that should be ignored or pretend it does not happen. The other problem is, that many who just go to wvw for rewards is that they finish and leave, they didnt stay to help with anything, they didnt stay to learn tactics, or learn about siege etc. This is easily seen with dailies.

What I think would be a good idea as has been proposed numerous times is a wvw reward track where anything that rewards wxp would progress the track, but the rewards should not be similar to pvp/pve rewards, it should be specific to wvw. It could reward superior siege, ascended materials, badges of honor, maybe champ bags and tomes of knowledge and maybe a few unique skins at the END of the track to deter farming.

Credit goes to Sir Marmatt for doing this in the wake of everything. I can honestly say I wouldn’t volunteer for this job, since it does require a lot of time to organize our thoughts. Hope the Devs give the specialists some Gems for their time.

This poor guy got a really rough reception. But that level of toxicity is to be expected from pvp communities. Good luck to you sir, I don’t envy your position.

I like the rewards idea and XTD’s proposal sounds good with WvW specific rewards for WvW play.

On the topic of unbalanced matchups:

One of the main complaints I hear is about how PvE population can make a server show as “Full” when they can hardly queue maps yet other servers who have a larger WvW population show less population. I think if this were focused on then the trickle down affect will at least make some headway into WvW population imbalance.

Has Anet (or anyone else) thought of something to not have players automatically count against a worlds WvW population? Since Megaservers started, it doesn’t matter what world you are on for PvE, you just get on a map and then join your party on theirs if you end up on different overflows. But it most certainly affects WvW.

I know it will have holes but something like this:
Players do not pick a world for PvE, they just log in and start playing. For WvW each account can choose what World they fight for. Same transfer rules, pay gems and you can change your world affiliation. If you do not log into WvW for X consecutive weeks then you world affiliation is put on hold and you do not count against the population of said server and after another (or a few more) consecutive weeks you are then stripped of world affiliation and would have to pay a fee (smaller than transfer fee) to affiliate with that server again or pay the transfer fee and go to another world. Or remain PvE only.

Added: Perhaps it is also time to maybe lessen the number of NA WvW servers? (since I know nothing about how EU server work I only speak to the NA situation)

How many of those who suggest server merges are actually in the lower tiers? How many of those are in T1 and T2, where that suggestion has very little effect on them?

What if I suggested we disband all T1 and T2 servers and spread them out into the lower tiers. I’m sure a lot of T3 and below wouldn’t mind this “fix” as it doesn’t damage their own servers. Does that mean this solution should even be entertained? Probably not.

You have to be careful with metrics and interpreting metrics. I don’t think counting forum posts to determine popularity of suggestions is a very good idea.

How exactly a better reward for wining would reduce the population unbalance? Wouldn’t better rewards just give us a reason to stack in 1 server and win every week?

Server merging in the other hand seems to be a win win situation. If we transform the botton 6 or 9 servers into only 3 we would be able to transform several low populated servers into 3 active ones.

Some people may be afraid that server merging is normally a signal of mmo entering in decline though.

xDudisx.5914:

Server merging in the other hand seems to be a win win situation. If we transform the botton 6 or 9 servers into only 3 we would be able to transform several low populated servers into 3 active ones.

How do you feel that will effect the likely influx of players from an upcoming expansion? Everyone has seen how an expansion brings in a massive influx of both old and new players. I would think that waiting until after HoT to make a change might be wise. If folks try to go back into WvW or new folks want to experience it, and have 200 players queues, it could turn off a very large amount of potential WvW players.

As for fixing the matchups:

Rewards are not going to work. Lack of rewards can turn people off the game mode, but they’re not going to bring people in: unless you go nuts and end up with EotM again.

Staleness of the game mode is the problem. That’s why populations have diminished so drastically. Rewards aren’t going to fix staleness.

You need new maps. You need them periodically. Say, every 6 months. You don’t have to spend a ton of dev time on them. Just keep them simple. You don’t need tons of gimmicks and fancy terrain all over the place like in the bloodlust area and EotM (and, from what it looks like, the HoT BL).

Keep the game fresh and people stay in the game. One new BL every four years is not going to cut it.

Did anyone suggest this in those listed threads? Probably not. Could it be that forum users have extremely low expectations of Anet, and so they don’t even bother to discuss options that take serious dev effort? I’d say that’s very possible.

So before even reporting on solutions to this problem, I think you need to give players a better idea of how much work the devs are willing to put into WvW so that they can give solutions that take this into account. We are currently assuming very little of the devs and our solutions reflect that.

coglin.1867:

xDudisx.5914:

Server merging in the other hand seems to be a win win situation. If we transform the botton 6 or 9 servers into only 3 we would be able to transform several low populated servers into 3 active ones.

How do you feel that will effect the likely influx of players from an upcoming expansion? Everyone has seen how an expansion brings in a massive influx of both old and new players. I would think that waiting until after HoT to make a change might be wise. If folks try to go back into WvW or new folks want to experience it, and have 200 players queues, it could turn off a very large amount of potential WvW players.

From the 24 NA servers we have about 7-10 with a good wvw population. The rest are active for a few hours and then become ghost towns. Adding a new map will require the servers to have even more players to be active in wvw. The T8 servers for example have been dead almost since release. Do you really believe 1 expansion will be enough to double or even triplicate the number of players?

Based on the influxes I have seen in other MMO’s, I absolutely believe that, yes.

How will adding a new map require more players? The number of active maps will not change. As they stated, we will simply have the same 3 borderlands, only they will be the new map, and rotate back and forth between maps, for every other match up. At least that is what they stated, was the thinking now.

Personally I think servers should be locked in their respective tiers. The one at the bottom should need to lose X amount of times before dropping a tier and same with the one at the top they should win X amount of times before moving up. Alternatively merge low population servers together for WvW. Fleshout the numbers and fill up all the maps then servers will see no point in buying guilds to win at wvw, yes i feel like wvw is buy to win due to this.

The problem with unbalanced servers have no easy solution, the "obvious" solution is server mergers. But there are a lot of problems related to it.

* 24/7 match system means that stacking NA Prime time doesn’t mean much when you don’t have the Night and EU etc. You can have 80players x4 maps x3 teams = 960 players battle it out for 12 hours to a close fight. Then everyone goes to bed, and 5-10 players on a single server can be enough to turn the entire match around. So just merging servers together without somehow dealing with this will only mean ques for everyone in NA, and no change outside of that. (PPT, 24/7, Nightcap)

* Server Pride: Some servers have a very knit community, breaking that could make many of them leave. SoR is a good example of this, many there would be furious if they deleted their server and leave the game entirely.

* Server Density: Some players just enjoy lower population servers, and forcing everyone onto 6-9 servers etc would make many of them leave the WvW mode. Or heck, transfer to EU to play on their night crew (as I would). Unless you somehow adds specific maps for those that enjoy a low population game mode, or have own dedicated low population servers, or some other way to keep these players happy.

* Just merging servers will just create this same problem again at a later time when the player population changes again, and they will either have to create or delete servers again. If they want to fix this, it will need to be some sort of flexible system that can self adjust (without kittening people off). The "Alliance" system mentioned in the DCI population Discussion is one example that could work here, but would need to be implemented really well, even small design mistakes on that could leave a whole lot of angry people.

* WvW rewards itself is not a cure for the population problems, but a very good thing for existing WvW players, since many resent having to leave WvW unless they themselves want to. It would be a Quality Of Life change for WvW’ers. Unless the rewards are so out of whack that people realize that WvW would be the most rewarding game mode in the game, then they would make it a second EotM which no one wants.

* I should also mention that the Glicko system while not perfect, does what it supposed to do. The fact that Tier3 is a train Wreck has nothing to do with faults in the Glicko or "wrong match-ups", but that the servers are just that uneven, and have nowhere else to go. They probably could make some changes and tweaks to it to open up for more variation so the same servers doesn’t get stuck in T3 each week, but then you would get a lot of more bad match-ups for everyone else, like T1 finally getting broken up, and T8 vs T6 servers etc. While those that wants to close the match-ups further to keep as balanced matches as they can get, will lock this further up for T3 etc. Choose your poison.

There are a lot of different issues that all goes together to create the situation we’re inn, and requires multiple things to be fixed. Server merges alone is not going to make any positive changes.

Cantur Soulfyre.5409:

On the topic of unbalanced matchups:

One of the main complaints I hear is about how PvE population can make a server show as “Full” when they can hardly queue maps yet other servers who have a larger WvW population show less population. I think if this were focused on then the trickle down affect will at least make some headway into WvW population imbalance.

Has Anet (or anyone else) thought of something to not have players automatically count against a worlds WvW population? Since Megaservers started, it doesn’t matter what world you are on for PvE, you just get on a map and then join your party on theirs if you end up on different overflows. But it most certainly affects WvW.

I posted an idea recently that has been mentioned before regarding basing the transfer costs off a servers WvW performance rather than their population. The current full / very high / high / medium designations are very uninformative (we don’t know exactly how total population is calculated) and irrelevant to all other modes of the game with the advent of mega servers. I haven’t even seen “medium” in awhile.

My original post can be found here – Link Transfer Costs to WvW Performance

As I mention there, I believe any attempt to solve the balance issues must be accompanied with a change to the gem transfer system. Similarly changing the transfer system by itself without creating incentives to transfer or address the core reasons people want to stack in the first place won’t solve the problem either.

I like the reward idea’s and keeping them separate from PvE rewards.

The battle historian worked well for that and if some decent stuff was added people would want to earn tickets for 1st place victories each week.

I wouldn’t mind a arrowcart mini. Or to be able to buy sup siege, some new WvW infusions and maybe make the infusions worth getting.

There is no need for population reductions, the problem is the ppt system need to be changed, the servers with high population wins because they have coverage most of the day and got night teams, I remember there was a post about the ppt system and people wanted a match up to take a period time each day for certain hours and winner take point for the day the server with most points of the week wins, something like that if I am not mistaken, hopefully you will discuss the ppt system more with us and the devs.

Can I just register a big fat “no” to map population reduction suggestion? Organised WvW guilds want to play together on the same map, even in EU silver league we sometimes have to queue to get everyone on a BL when we are running 15-20. Don’t make it harder for guilds to play together.

We go to BLs looking for fights, lowering the map pop will reduce the likelihood of us finding them. Fewer players spread over the same map area doesn’t strike me as a good idea unless you like PvD.

Ever try taking T3 garri with 15 when it’s defended and sieged up with ACs and trebs? It can’t be done, you need numbers (and rightly so). Reducing the number of attackers will just make it easier for PPT servers to bunker up in their keeps and towers and trust me we really don’t want that. “Epic siege battles”, such fun lol

Marmatt.8590:

Please feel free to give feedback on this report, and ideas for next weeks topic.

Feedback:

Its nice to see you making a serious effort to this and looking back through past issues and posts. I hope you continue to do so.

In regards to server balancing it is a tough issue. Many wvw players dont like high population engages (roamers/scouts). But the disparity between the T2 servers and T3 servers is obviously a problem as neither the T2 server stuck in T3 or vice verse are enjoying the match-ups and I wish you luck in trying to sort through the responses too it.

Topic Idea:

Coming from a GvG player, obviously I would like GvGs to be discussed. I would like some kind of reward system (or really anything profitable as there isn’t any rewards). Mainly just wish Anet would set an instanced area that allowed us to have GvGs free of trolls using the gear and stats we have crafted that doesn’t limit us to just 5 or 10 on a side.

I agree that doing something to increase total WvW population across the servers would be a good first step towards revivifying the best game mode in any MMO, anywhere.

Increasing rewards, as stated, carries with it a risk that it will draw a large population of players who are not interested in PvP and will do anything they can to avoid it, just to get the maximum return of rewards?

The solution? Simple.

Make the best personal rewards in WvW come from killing enemy players, not capturing objectives. There should never be a situation in WvW where two large groups of enemy players will deliberately avoid engagement in PvP because they don’t want to disrupt their “karma train”.

Capturing objectives should still be the primary team objective, and it should give a decent reward to everyone on the winning realm (and diminishingly towards the 2nd and 3rd server) after the scores are tallied for the week. This weekly “WvW reward chest” could even be applied a coefficient depending the player’s personal contribution to WvW and track for example the number of captures, NPC kills, enemy player kills, etc.

So in summary.

• Reduce immediate personal rewards for capturing an objective (or killing enemy NPCs).
• Increase immediate personal rewards for killing an enemy player.
• Introduce a weekly WvW reward chest, the contents of which will depend on both your realm’s and your personal performance in the past week’s WvW matchup.

Lord Kuru.3685:

How many of those who suggest server merges are actually in the lower tiers? How many of those are in T1 and T2, where that suggestion has very little effect on them?

What if I suggested we disband all T1 and T2 servers and spread them out into the lower tiers. I’m sure a lot of T3 and below wouldn’t mind this “fix” as it doesn’t damage their own servers. Does that mean this solution should even be entertained? Probably not.

You have to be careful with metrics and interpreting metrics. I don’t think counting forum posts to determine popularity of suggestions is a very good idea.

Hit the nail on the head.

@Op: You missed one of the better suggestions, using a floating player cap instead of a hard cap. Put the hard cap at something like 20-30 players per side per map and only raise it when the other servers reach the cap.

This wouldn’t be the end all solution, they would still need to add things like better rewards, changing the scoring system, etc., but it would be a good start. At the very least it could be something they test out in one of their “events”.

There was a CDI about ‘world population’: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/Collaborative-Development-World-Population/page/23#post3192772

Might be an interesting read.

Jim Hunter.6821:

@Op: You missed one of the better suggestions, using a floating player cap instead of a hard cap. Put the hard cap at something like 20-30 players per side per map and only raise it when the other servers reach the cap.

This wouldn’t be the end all solution, they would still need to add things like better rewards, changing the scoring system, etc., but it would be a good start. At the very least it could be something they test out in one of their “events”.

Thought this idea was already debunked.

When servers reach that second or third soft cap and one server captures tons of objectives before quickly logging off, wouldn’t it force other servers to boot players or reset the soft cap when the try to log in? Then the server that capped can stay ahead while fighting a lower number of enemies until the match is over.

If you are one of those who propose a server merge, then answer this:

How would a server merge be any different to what already happens now?

A server merge is essentially a transfer of players from one server to another. Except noone would have a choice in the matter.

The way things are now, you can move to the server of your choice. Yes, there is a fee involved, but it is still your choice to make.

The way things are now, those who are content with the way things are on their server can choose to stay.

All a server merge does is take away our choice, that is ultimately the only difference a server merge would make. And bandwagoners will still flock to the “winning” server, so any population “balance” would only be temporary.

So take your blinkers off before spouting server merge as the panacea of WvW.

roxybudgy.8205:

If you are one of those who propose a server merge, then answer this:

How would a server merge be any different to what already happens now?

A server merge is essentially a transfer of players from one server to another. Except noone would have a choice in the matter.

The way things are now, you can move to the server of your choice. Yes, there is a fee involved, but it is still your choice to make.

The way things are now, those who are content with the way things are on their server can choose to stay.

All a server merge does is take away our choice, that is ultimately the only difference a server merge would make. And bandwagoners will still flock to the “winning” server, so any population “balance” would only be temporary.

So take your blinkers off before spouting server merge as the panacea of WvW.

Server Merge would reduce the total amount of servers, which would inevitably lead in more population per realm on average. There is a limit of how much people can stack to the “winning” servers. For example at the moment transfers to the most populated realms is pretty much closed 24/7.

Tom Gore.4035:

Server Merge would reduce the total amount of servers, which would inevitably lead in more population per realm on average.

Then those who want to play on a high population server should move to one. And if one does not exist (are all full) then choose a fallen bandwagon server and move there en masse.

So the way I see it, server mergers are still nothing but forced transfers that only temporarily benefit those who like playing on crowded servers, and treat everyone else like lesser citizens that don’t matter.

If anything, they should make server transfers free so that those who like the high population play style can bugger off the “lower” servers. Since Anet need to make money somehow, perhaps limit the free transfers to once a month, since populations change over time, people may quit playing WvW, newcomers may step into WvW for the first time, old players might return. Any forced reorganisation of players will only ever be temporary.

Honestly without knowing the metrics on server populations, its really tough to come up with a fix.

I mean we have 4 servers that are full, and three of them are at the top of the WvW heap. The fourth is fighting hard for place #5.

20 servers are at “Very High”. That obviously doesn’t mean they have WvW populations, but it may mean that they have low WvW participation.

We don’t have the metrics on those server populations nor do we have the metrics that would tell us what timezones are stronger for each server.

I’m sure ANET has those metrics, and could tell us if its a participation problem or not.

Marmatt, good luck with your new role.

I think everyone appreciates that the issues of unbalanced matchups is pretty complicated. It’s associated with server population, coverage and the demographics of each server. Some server WvW populations are made up of predominantly WvW guilds, others (such as my own server SBI) are made up of predominantly PvX players and others are somewhere in between. The demographics of each server is a large part of how much they participate in WvW on a day to day basis.

In my view all of these issues need to be addressed in some way. Some preferred solutions that I have read on these forums:

Population – Reduce the number of servers, starting by removing three only and see what impact this has. This will be very unpopular with people on those servers and I fully appreciate that. If it means renaming all other servers so be it.

Coverage – Time slice a day into 3 or 4 segments and award points on which server manages the most PPT in each segment to help cap ‘runaway PPT’ for those servers who have more coverage.

Participation – Better personal rewards to attract more people into WvW as a form of endgame. More diverse rewards for diverse play e.g scouting/defending. Better incentives for PvX guilds to spend more time in WvW than they already do by introducing guild based rewards in WvW.

Marmatt, I really hope that you are able to express to Anet that simply adding a new map in HoT without addressing some of the underlying fundamental issues is only a temporary solution to breathing new life into WvW.

Tom Gore.4035:

Make the best personal rewards in WvW come from killing enemy players, not capturing objectives.

perhaps you are new to WvW, but killing enemy player is not, nor has every been, the actual object of the game mode.

Jim Hunter.6821:

@Op: You missed one of the better suggestions, using a floating player cap instead of a hard cap. Put the hard cap at something like 20-30 players per side per map and only raise it when the other servers reach the cap.

You mean one of the worst suggestions possible right? This idea does nothing more then *artificially forces the higher tear servers to experience the same problem of lower tier. I was under the impression the goal here was to increase the WvW player base. Not force them out with artificial queues.

coglin.1867:

Tom Gore.4035:

Make the best personal rewards in WvW come from killing enemy players, not capturing objectives.

perhaps you are new to WvW, but killing enemy player is not, nor has every been, the actual object of the game mode.

WvW is PvP, if you like WvE you can go EoTM.

Capturing objective should be the least rewarded thing in WvW, defending and killing other players should be far more rewarding.

sminkiottone.6972:

coglin.1867:

Tom Gore.4035:

Make the best personal rewards in WvW come from killing enemy players, not capturing objectives.

perhaps you are new to WvW, but killing enemy player is not, nor has every been, the actual object of the game mode.

WvW is PvP, if you like WvE you can go EoTM.

Capturing objective should be the least rewarded thing in WvW, defending and killing other players should be far more rewarding.

Remind us again, How do you win a match up?

Sometimes I think it would be the best if Arenanet would reset the home server for all players and the players would have to sign for a new WvW home server. But this time the slots for all servers are limited. The cap will only be raised if all slots on all servers are occupied. This would cause a more equal distribution of the players. I addition players should be bound to their home server for a certain time like three or six months and you can only transfer to servers with free slots.

coglin.1867:

sminkiottone.6972:

coglin.1867:

Tom Gore.4035:

Make the best personal rewards in WvW come from killing enemy players, not capturing objectives.

perhaps you are new to WvW, but killing enemy player is not, nor has every been, the actual object of the game mode.

WvW is PvP, if you like WvE you can go EoTM.

Capturing objective should be the least rewarded thing in WvW, defending and killing other players should be far more rewarding.

Remind us again, How do you win a match up?

Coverage and population.. it’s a joke that there are still ppt heroes around

Lord Kuru.3685:

How many of those who suggest server merges are actually in the lower tiers? How many of those are in T1 and T2, where that suggestion has very little effect on them?

What if I suggested we disband all T1 and T2 servers and spread them out into the lower tiers. I’m sure a lot of T3 and below wouldn’t mind this “fix” as it doesn’t damage their own servers. Does that mean this solution should even be entertained? Probably not.

You have to be careful with metrics and interpreting metrics. I don’t think counting forum posts to determine popularity of suggestions is a very good idea.

The match-ups are only broken because of the actions of the T1 and T2 servers who have bandwagoned into the top tier servers. So I don’t think we should care how they feel about anything when they are the ones responsible. It would be like asking a thief if he is okay with his own sentence before sending him to jail.

Zetsumei.4975:

coglin.1867:

sminkiottone.6972:

coglin.1867:

Tom Gore.4035:

Make the best personal rewards in WvW come from killing enemy players, not capturing objectives.

perhaps you are new to WvW, but killing enemy player is not, nor has every been, the actual object of the game mode.

WvW is PvP, if you like WvE you can go EoTM.

Capturing objective should be the least rewarded thing in WvW, defending and killing other players should be far more rewarding.

Remind us again, How do you win a match up?

Coverage and population.. it’s a joke that there are still ppt heroes around

Battling for keeps, to stay ahead in the points standing creates organic battles for territory. But I guess I can be your hero if you want. Thanks for asking.

With population balance, I think a good start would be reducing the cost of transfers to T3 and below servers.

I can’t see how with the Mega server that a T8 server with almost no WvW population is listed as very full and costs the same to transfer to as a T1 server. The only reason to transfer servers now is for WvW so the cost of that should reflect the situation of WvW on servers and not whether or not they have a good PvE population.

The other issue I would like to point out is you mentioned encouraging PvE’rs into WvW and while fresh blood is great I think an issue you are over looking is the amount of WvW players that have left and why. If you keep focused on getting new people instead of retaining the old you are going to be constantly chasing your tail. While the focus of bringing PvE elements into WvW may attract some new players for a short period of time it drives away long time players as they play WvW because they aren’t interested in PvE.

Dhemize.8649:

Jim Hunter.6821:

@Op: You missed one of the better suggestions, using a floating player cap instead of a hard cap. Put the hard cap at something like 20-30 players per side per map and only raise it when the other servers reach the cap.

This wouldn’t be the end all solution, they would still need to add things like better rewards, changing the scoring system, etc., but it would be a good start. At the very least it could be something they test out in one of their “events”.

Thought this idea was already debunked.

When servers reach that second or third soft cap and one server captures tons of objectives before quickly logging off, wouldn’t it force other servers to boot players or reset the soft cap when the try to log in? Then the server that capped can stay ahead while fighting a lower number of enemies until the match is over.

There is no reason for it to kick players already in game. If you have 30 players and the other servers have 30 players and you are beating them so bad that they decide to log off, the cap will hold until they have enough people log on to further raise the cap.

So if you steam roll and have everyone log off thinking you are going to force the enemy off the map you will be mistaken and you will leave your map undefended.

Also remember there is a 3rd server holding the cap so even if you are steamrolling 1 server to to the point where they log off and then you get your server to log off trying to prevent them from getting back in, you won’t be lowering the cap because the 3rd server still has players logged in.

Thank you Marmatt for choosing to report of unbalanced matchups. It’s by far the most important problem of WvW in my opinion.

coglin.1867:

Tom Gore.4035:

Make the best personal rewards in WvW come from killing enemy players, not capturing objectives.

perhaps you are new to WvW, but killing enemy player is not, nor has every been, the actual object of the game mode.

Jim Hunter.6821:

@Op: You missed one of the better suggestions, using a floating player cap instead of a hard cap. Put the hard cap at something like 20-30 players per side per map and only raise it when the other servers reach the cap.

You mean one of the worst suggestions possible right? This idea does nothing more then *artificially forces the higher tear servers to experience the same problem of lower tier. I was under the impression the goal here was to increase the WvW player base. Not force them out with artificial queues.

Nope, the goal here is to prevent unbalanced match-ups. I guess you missed the thread title.

This would mean actual competitive matches where you had to outplay your opponents instead of just outnumbering them. People that are looking for PvD rather than competitive play can go to EotM while they wait in queue.

Guild groups looking for fights can organize something in Obsidian Sanctum if they can’t all make it onto the same map.

Marmatt.8590:

Please feel free to give feedback on this report, and ideas for next weeks topic.

Cheers!

Thanks for your report.

I think it shows that there’s too many voices advocating the wrong things. It boggles my mind, for example, how better rewards will make matchups more balanced.

If you think better rewards will make WvW more fun, then that should be in a “Make WvW more fun” report, surely?

Nicely done!!!

And there are those who thought you weren’t qualified…. :P

Keep it up!

Jim Hunter.6821:

coglin.1867:

Tom Gore.4035:

Make the best personal rewards in WvW come from killing enemy players, not capturing objectives.

perhaps you are new to WvW, but killing enemy player is not, nor has every been, the actual object of the game mode.

Jim Hunter.6821:

@Op: You missed one of the better suggestions, using a floating player cap instead of a hard cap. Put the hard cap at something like 20-30 players per side per map and only raise it when the other servers reach the cap.

You mean one of the worst suggestions possible right? This idea does nothing more then *artificially forces the higher tear servers to experience the same problem of lower tier. I was under the impression the goal here was to increase the WvW player base. Not force them out with artificial queues.

Nope, the goal here is to prevent unbalanced match-ups. I guess you missed the thread title.

This would mean actual competitive matches where you had to outplay your opponents instead of just outnumbering them. People that are looking for PvD rather than competitive play can go to EotM while they wait in queue.

Guild groups looking for fights can organize something in Obsidian Sanctum if they can’t all make it onto the same map.

Although saying it is to make the matches competitive it does ignore constraints and population differences between maps. Causing massive ques on some.

And even to say that guild groups can go to the Obsidian Sanctum (OS), OS isn’t large enough to handle fights larger then 20v20 realistically. And on top of that, what do you do if another guild is in there before you. Where do you go then. Or do you stand around and watch the guild before you fight for 10 or 15 minutes between rounds?

What you are suggesting is a selfish call for what YOU think WvW should be without excepting that not everyone plays the same style as you. It is for that reason that Anet has such a hard problem. There are many sub-groups of WvW players with many different styles of play. If Anet only focuses on one (Eotm) the general community isn’t happy about it.

Good luck with your adventures through the toxic land that is the wubwub sub forum Marmatt! I for one will cheer for you and send positive vibes on your way as this is perhaps the nastiest and most thankless job you could have picked. Kudos for picking unbalanced matchups as your first report too since it truly does affect every single one of us here.

Lord Kuru.3685:

How many of those who suggest server merges are actually in the lower tiers? How many of those are in T1 and T2, where that suggestion has very little effect on them?

What if I suggested we disband all T1 and T2 servers and spread them out into the lower tiers. I’m sure a lot of T3 and below wouldn’t mind this “fix” as it doesn’t damage their own servers. Does that mean this solution should even be entertained? Probably not.

You have to be careful with metrics and interpreting metrics. I don’t think counting forum posts to determine popularity of suggestions is a very good idea.

While I’m not 100% opposed to merging servers(most in the lower tiers are opposed to it), I agree that it’s mostly top tier server players that pushes for lower tiered servers to be merged.

As it is now none of the issues with population are solved by merging a few of the “unimportant” servers and therefor I can’t support merging servers.

"Pocket.2740"

Coverage – Time slice a day into 3 or 4 segments and award points on which server manages the most PPT in each segment to help cap ‘runaway PPT’ for those servers who have more coverage.

I have been thinking about this system a lot lately, and I can’t predict exactly how it would affect the game and matches, but I think it could be a very good start to handle the "coverage" aspect of the problem with WvW. I’ll probably make a post about this later trying to discuss it further (aka, wall of text incoming).

XxDesertDragonxX.7564:

There is no need for population reductions, the problem is the ppt system need to be changed, the servers with high population wins because they have coverage most of the day and got night teams, I remember there was a post about the ppt system and people wanted a match up to take a period time each day for certain hours and winner take point for the day the server with most points of the week wins, something like that if I am not mistaken, hopefully you will discuss the ppt system more with us and the devs.

THIS THIS THIS!!!! or something like this. Couldn’t we “try” a few modifications to PPT scoring just like we did with PPK and “white swords”? How about making the “outnumbered” buff actually be something that helps the server that is out manned, strengthen all the guards or reduce the amount of supply to complete upgrades.. something REAL. For 2 weeks at a time.

Xerox.6851:

What you are suggesting is a selfish call for what YOU think WvW should be without excepting that not everyone plays the same style as you. It is for that reason that Anet has such a hard problem. There are many sub-groups of WvW players with many different styles of play. If Anet only focuses on one (Eotm) the general community isn’t happy about it.

What I’m suggesting is a solution to the problem being discussed.

A floating cap wouldn’t prevent large groups like T1 and T2 from having large scale fights. It would however make T3 much more enjoyable. I’ve been on both sides of lopsided matches, it’s terrible for everyone involved.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Xerox.6851:

What you are suggesting is a selfish call for what YOU think WvW should be without excepting that not everyone plays the same style as you. It is for that reason that Anet has such a hard problem. There are many sub-groups of WvW players with many different styles of play. If Anet only focuses on one (Eotm) the general community isn’t happy about it.

What I’m suggesting is a solution to the problem being discussed.

No, it cuts ones nose off, to spite their face.

I think you miss the point. I believe the idea is to find a solution that doesn’t destroy the game mode more then the problem. Your suggestions may be a means to an end result, but it is a bad one. I agree with the other poster, that it is a selfish idea. It solves a smaller problem, while created a tremendous one.

Jim Hunter.6821:

A floating cap wouldn’t prevent large groups like T1 and T2 from having large scale fights. It would however make T3 much more enjoyable. I’ve been on both sides of lopsided matches, it’s terrible for everyone involved.

A floating cap locks players out artificially. A floating cap lowers when players log off. A few people DC. Now the cap lowers, forcing them out of the game.

coglin.1867:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Xerox.6851:

What you are suggesting is a selfish call for what YOU think WvW should be without excepting that not everyone plays the same style as you. It is for that reason that Anet has such a hard problem. There are many sub-groups of WvW players with many different styles of play. If Anet only focuses on one (Eotm) the general community isn’t happy about it.

What I’m suggesting is a solution to the problem being discussed.

No, it cuts ones nose off, to spite their face.

I think you miss the point. I believe the idea is to find a solution that doesn’t destroy the game mode more then the problem. Your suggestions may be a means to an end result, but it is a bad one. I agree with the other poster, that it is a selfish idea. It solves a smaller problem, while created a tremendous one.

Jim Hunter.6821:

A floating cap wouldn’t prevent large groups like T1 and T2 from having large scale fights. It would however make T3 much more enjoyable. I’ve been on both sides of lopsided matches, it’s terrible for everyone involved.

A floating cap locks players out artificially. A floating cap lowers when players log off. A few people DC. Now the cap lowers, forcing them out of the game.

You are making the assumption that people would rather not play the game. For your scenario to happen players from all 3 servers would have to DC at the same time and then choose to not log back in.

I’m willing to bet there are far more people that would log back in because they enjoy the game than there are people that try to manipulate the system by not playing.

It’s even more likely that more players would start logging on during off hours since they wouldn’t be hopelessly outnumbered.

Svarty.8019:

Marmatt.8590:

Please feel free to give feedback on this report, and ideas for next weeks topic.

Cheers!

Thanks for your report.

I think it shows that there’s too many voices advocating the wrong things. It boggles my mind, for example, how better rewards will make matchups more balanced.

If you think better rewards will make WvW more fun, then that should be in a “Make WvW more fun” report, surely?

The idea they are tossing around is making WvW reward tracks the end game of GW2.

As of now the only attraction to WvW is when the K-Train is running full steam ahead. Most people haven’t learned the fun of fights and how to create fights with PPT.