What would happen if ANet changed the way the borderlands work to leverage the new EOTM overflow + matchmaking system, but apply it to the old maps with persistent PPT scoring and week long “matches”?
SERVER GROUPS
Servers still would be sorted out by population, but instead of matching server to server, the system would use a random process to form server groups that, overall, will have evenly matched populations. Simple raw number of players could be used, but if they have it (and I assume that they do) ANet also could use the previous week or previous month data on number of player-hours actually spent in WvW on each server to set that server’s “effective population” for the purpose of this calculation.
The trick is that the grouping would be random from week to week, so that people could not predict which servers would be grouped with each other consistently. And if actual player-hours in WvW were used, then servers that get stacked with the most active WvW guilds would wind up always grouped with servers that tend not to stack, which would mitigate the effect of people hopping from one bandwagon to another.
MATCH UPS
For the actual match ups, the colors would be formed up into matches that would run on the existing borderlands maps, but like EOTM they would overflow once a map fills to whatever the cap is on total population per map that the system can handle. The total world score for each color would be summed over all overflows and would be cumulative for the entire week, as it is now with the borderlands.
The matchmaking would need to make sure that an overflow is not created until the first opened instance is “full,” and also would have to start queueing players for a color when the total number hits 1/3 of the maximum population allowed. (This would be a good reason to use historical player-hours in WvW for grouping instead of raw population; to ensure that servers likely to have lots of players queueing are grouped with ones that historically have less players in WvW, so that generally the overflows will start promptly and fill evenly.)
There would need to be some minimum and roughly equal number of players queued on all three sides in order for a new overflow to open up, to avoid creating graveyard overflows with just a couple people in them, and to prevent creating overflows with only players from one color.
POPULATION CONTROL
If the population of any color in an existing overflow gets above a certain ratio to the others, then players of that color no longer could enter that overflow and would be shunted off to other overflows that were still “open” to their color. Once a steady-state number of overflows are formed, this would keep the color balance in each within reason, so that people can’t just pile into one map where their color is dominating.
The system also could allow people to queue up in groups, or to invite from one overflow to another so that guilds can play together, but only subject to the same rules that apply to random queueing. So a party that queues would get put into the first overflow that has “room” for the entire group on their side, or otherwise would have to sit and wait until a big enough hole opens for them in an overflow (or until enough people of other colors queue up for a new overflow to open).
Likewise for guilds playing together, you could gather to your overflow with invites, but only as long as there is still room for more players of your color already in your map. Ideally, there also would be an option to “find my guild” that a player could select when queueing up solo, which would cause the queue to look for an overflow that already has members of their guild in it, and, if space is available, prefer to put them there (of course, if you check this, you also might have to wait a bit to get in, vs. queueing to the first available spot in any map).
Finally, when the total population of an overflow falls below the minimum threshold for overflow creation, that map would get set into “depleting” mode, where no players of any color can enter, and then the instance would be closed and destroyed once the last player leaves. (Or, if enough players of all colors queue up at some point that would normally cause a new overflow to form, then the system could “reopen” the depleting map and start to refill it rather than starting a new one.)
(edited by Heezdedjim.8902)