Guild Wars 2

BalancingMapQueue = Current_Total_Logged_WvW_Players_AcrossAllServers / (Number_Of_Maps * Number_Of_Servers)

The player base could then transfer to other servers to fill in lacking time slots. This would resolve the overly stacked servers issue and revitalize dead servers. It would also possibly spread players out across maps.

Thoughts?

So.. a player could log to a more empty server, players would stack and overwhelm the enemy to win, every one wants a easy job and effortless rewarding, also servers/game cant handle large fights, and that would also make WvW as awfull as EOTM.

I don’t think the Baruch Bay nightcappers would be happy if they were forced to choose: EotM only or transfer to international servers.

Digomatic.4218:

BalancingMapQueue = Current_Total_Logged_WvW_Players_AcrossAllServers / (Number_Of_Maps * Number_Of_Servers)

The player base could then transfer to other servers to fill in lacking time slots. This would resolve the overly stacked servers issue and revitalize dead servers. It would also possibly spread players out across maps.

Thoughts?

so… if I want to transfer to an overstacked server to play during their strongest timezone, just transfer during their more quiet periods or ask them to organize a temporary blackout period.

It’s a horrible idea if your aim is to spread people out, but a wonderful idea for people who like overstacking servers.

I’m saying that it would be a FLOATING QUEUE based on the population at this exact moment. To keep it simple, 6 servers with 4 maps and 480 people on across “all servers and all maps”.
480/ (6 * 4) = 20.
The queue would be 20 at this time frame. There would be a massive queue punishment for overly stacked servers based on total population. It would benefit a person/guild more to be on a server that has less of percentage of the total population because the queue wait time would be less or nonexistent.
Again, that was just to keep it simple, actual queues would not be 20. It is a self-balancing system. It would limit them during their “overpopulated” time and help them during their “underpopulated” time.
As far as a blackout period, that would only lower the total population of this. Over stacking would just hurt them as far as queues are concerned, the total number of people allowed onto a map is based on that.

As I understand this:

OP is not talking about the actual "Server Populations", so no blackouts to get more people on server.

He is talking about having a Dynamic Changing "Map Queue". So if Server A has 60 people, Server B has 20 people, and Server C has 10 people at the same time. The server would average it out at say 30 people max for map Queue. (Simplified)

This obviously wouldn’t hurt the Servers B+C since they’re under. But Half of Server A would be stuck in Queue. Hoping this would encourage them to move to other servers.

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I don’t know how much it would fix, compared to how much grief it would cause. Obviously Server A in my example above would be very kittened that half their players couldn’t play, but even more severe is that friends and guild members etc might be caught in the queue, and thus making it even harder for them to play together.

Servers, Population, and Queue’s, are a very difficult problem with a lot of angles that needs to be considered. Or it would probably have been fixed already.

One of the root problems, is ANet’s general philosophy that you should never be penalized for having more players around you, that you should never be negative for having another player join. This indirectly leads to what we have in WvW where it causes a negative experience to NOT have more players at hand.

In a PvP-mode (semi competitive, I guess), where you will never have equal numbers, that just won’t work.

Exactly joneirikb.

If a server is so stacked that all 4 maps queue, even with this system, then it doesn’t make it fun for the other two servers. It would encourage transfers to less populated servers. It would also bring back roamers because you couldn’t get blobbed as heavily as right now.

They could always test it for two weeks on something like T5-T6. Then, if it helps, T3-T4 and so on… I just know when i’m on and I see a sea of red and we can’t get a comm because we are so out numbered that we die getting looked at.

Sounds good to me. I would be ok with some per match-up balancing. Might actually spread out the SEA and OCX from being stacked on 1/3 of the servers in most of the tiers.

Apocolyptic.5068:

Sounds good to me. I would be ok with some per match-up balancing. Might actually spread out the SEA and OCX from being stacked on 1/3 of the servers in most of the tiers.

Here is where you can easily hit on one of the other problems I mentioned, that perhaps all the SEA/OCX players on a single server is in the same guild, or all of them are friends that have played together for years. So while forcing them to spread out, you’re also splitting Friends/Guilds/Community.

This is the kind of system that would have made much more sense/less negative impact, by having been included from the start. Adding it this late in the games life cycle, it is likely to cause quite a lot of grief. Same as most other obvious solutions to all problems related to servers.

There has to be balance in order for this game mode to work to have fun over-all. If not, the game mode dies and that community dies anyway. Even if it is an average of 30 between all three and you add 10 extra on as a variant to bump it to 40, it is better than having 80v10.

This touches on a subject of other threads. One about making a change that doesn’t support k-training. This change would diminish the k-training. The other was about a server that is so stacked that it is untouchable. Both of these are in fact, talking about the problems this method would solve.

I wish more people would post their thoughts on this because something needs done. This would limit some population issues. I’m not saying it is perfect or that it is the only thing but, it would help in areas and hurt in others.

The linking is killing server identity and community anyway except for the top 6 tiers servers. Some people liked the smaller scale servers for small fights. This would support that as well.

Speaking of other threads… Did you happen to see the one about “WvW is dead”? The Alliance and how BG stacked from the beginning and how SoR stacked… JQ was stacked and YB got stacked into T1. Then the alt accounts. They left their friends and community anyway.

That ruins guilds and comminities more than this would.

Interesting idea but hard to pull off unless a free transfer is given to everyone.

"Digomatic.4218"

I wish more people would post their thoughts on this because something needs done. This would limit some population issues. I’m not saying it is perfect or that it is the only thing but, it would help in areas and hurt in others.

Player bases traditionally hate "trade-off’s", they want both the cakes and get to eat them both. ANet themselves have guaranteed thought about several plans like these, but considered the back-lash they would get, and the angry fans to not be worth it.

TylerB posted a while back and asks that if they made a set of new exstra servers, if players where willing to de-populate from the larger servers to the new empty ones. The idea he wanted to push us towards was if we had several smaller servers, instead of a few stacked ones, it would be much easier to regulate the population in each match-up. And thus also the Queue’s.

In many ways it would have been a very good solution, except that people aren’t willing to de-stack servers. But that system would have removed most of the same problems that the Dynamic-Queue’s would have. At the cost of every server-link being 2-3-4 servers linked together, changed a bit every now and then, and felt more like EotM light.

"Digomatic.4218"

The linking is killing server identity and community anyway except for the top 6 tiers servers. Some people liked the smaller scale servers for small fights. This would support that as well.

Actually, with the "Full status" on all the host servers, it is killing even those servers in another way. When they re-link the servers (however they do it), it will cause a huge impact. People screaming and yelling, and hating it etc.

So many jumped to the linked smaller servers to play with the larger ones etc. So when they re-link using new populations, probably half of all the small servers are probably going to jump off to other servers again. Thus making the linking-by-population near impossible.

"Brace For Impact!"

"Apocolyptic.5068"

That ruins guilds and comminities more than this would.

They do give those guilds too much credit, they couldn’t have done all that alone.

But the general cycle of servers building up, getting new transfers because they show promise, then collapse to various reasons, and have to restart again. That is something that has happened to every server in some way over the years that GW2 been around.

Kaineng being the perfect example, as a bunch of guilds went from other servers down to Kaineng, ranked dead last. And rode the server up to rank #4 (iirc), and then abandoned it. The server spent 11 months falling down the ranks due to slow glicko back to rank #24.

So it isn’t unique to the top tier servers, or those guilds at all. It is just a natural cause of the server structure, and how player mentality (or flock mentality) works.

Reading the other posts, everyone is more concerned about just pointing out flaws and not as concerned about solutions. I guess that goes with the “having the cake and eating it too” statement you made earlier.

They want things to get fixed but, they don’t want to give up anything like the overstacked population.

Yeah...

I think the dynamic queue control could have worked great, if they also basically trashed the existing servers, and set up something new.

For Ex, setting up new servers entirely, with smaller population max, add the map queue adjustments, make transferring cheaper to low pop servers, and impossible to full servers.

Then you could do some more variations to types of match-ups.

(3server) Have one map that is only 3 servers vs each others.
(3link) Have another map(s) that are a link of multiple servers vs other links.
(3faction) And EotM as the third variation.

You would have a cluster of smaller servers, that could play in a few different ways without changing servers. And the dynamic queue adjustment would be quite useful in a few of these. Especially the 3server map would benefit from this, but also the 3link maps to some extent to force people to spread out, and if there are too many they would have to go to 3faction (eotm) mode, or transfer.