Guild Wars 2

I’m hoping for some CONSTRUCTIVE ideas we can share as a GW community with Anet to possibly shake things up regarding WvW, especially since server transfer are more pricey and it’s unlikely to see massive guild transfers anymore.

My concern is WvW is going to become locked into place, where Every Blue Team will stay Blue for the remainder of time and the Green and Red teams will occasionally swap back and forth between tiers. As a member of a server which isn’t quite good enough to advance higher than Red in Tier 3 but too good to drop below Green in Tier 4, we’re going to be fighting the same couple servers over and over for the rest of eternity.

Unfortunately I’m not sure what a good fix to this monotony will be? We can’t possibly have a tournament style play now, because everyone will just end up where they started. I guess the question is…

Can we come up with any way to balance out the servers and make the play seem more fair from top to bottom? Unfortunately a lot of this has to do with server interest in WvW and how many people you have covering the hours when the majority of your server is sleeping. Those servers with solid 24 hour coverage should always win against a server that can hold out 12 hours a day and get crushed the next.

Again, I’m not complaining, and I don’t know of a solution, but it’d be nice to have some brainstorming and possibly get Anet’s opinion of this, if they see it as a problem or not. It’d just be more exciting to follow the leaderboards if those leaderboards changed occasionally.

What about a random factor to the matches? Your rating, for purposes of pitting you against another team for the next week, could be Rating +/- (Rating * 0.15)

So your real rating is 1000 but for purposes of matching it may randomly be 850 – 1150.

This would provide some swing in the matchups. Top ranked could find itself in the #3 position in T1 or even down a tier. It would shake things up a bit more without doing something completely out of whack (like throwing T3 down into T8 for a round).

Is swapping tiers really going to make a difference. It’s the same map, with likely the same tactics being used despite what tier you’re in. It will likely end up in the same posts of “PvDoor” “coverage is an issue” and all the other topics we are already familiar with.

I tend to think the issue is deeper than just which servers we are fighting against.

Lavath.8924:

Is swapping tiers really going to make a difference. It’s the same map, with likely the same tactics being used despite what tier you’re in. It will likely end up in the same posts of “PvDoor” “coverage is an issue” and all the other topics we are already familiar with.

I tend to think the issue is deeper than just which servers we are fighting against.

For all the basic reasons I agree with you, it is the same map and “a lot” of the same tactics for securing points… but there’s a lot of stuff that isn’t the same, especially I’ve noticed in the higher tiers. Different guilds work together in different ways during fights, and it’s fun to come across guilds you haven’t seen yet using playstyles you hadn’t thought of, and vice versa.

For example… who knows, there may be a fantastic guild on Sorrows Furnace who could hold their own against any guild from any other server with similar numbers, but we’ll never get to see them.

Again, just putting something up there for us as a community to brainstorm about ways to make the best part of GW2 even better.

Slamz.5376:

What about a random factor to the matches? Your rating, for purposes of pitting you against another team for the next week, could be Rating +/- (Rating * 0.15)

So your real rating is 1000 but for purposes of matching it may randomly be 850 – 1150.

This would provide some swing in the matchups. Top ranked could find itself in the #3 position in T1 or even down a tier. It would shake things up a bit more without doing something completely out of whack (like throwing T3 down into T8 for a round).

My biggest concern is not so much where we end the week, but did we get to see some different guilds employing different strategies, especially in open fighting. Having been playing the same couple servers for the last month I pretty much know which guilds are organized and which arent, and what they’re going to do in certain situations… it’d be fun to see other stuff as well.

I really don’t understand these threads. Stagnation is virtually unavoidable unless you are willing to accept more blowouts. There is simply too much disparity in WvW populations (which don’t necessarily track server populations) between servers right now for it to be any other way. For almost any tier a winner-up/loser-down type shakeup will result in a blowout the following week … even more than we have now.

ANet is going to have to come up with a different way of setting up matches that isn’t simply server versus server versus server for this to change. Look at what the next two big MMOs have planned for their equivalent to WvW … the matches are faction based, not server based. That gives them WAY more flexibility in preventing match disparities.

How about disabling waypoint porting unless you’re dead?

Straegen.2938:

I say each server does three matches per day and their opponents are selected primarily by similar average populations during those hours. So a strong NA prime say FA would fight two other strong NA primes with similar populations for 8 hours.

Aside from ANet writing a new server selection, most other changes would be minor. I think this system resolves stagnation, prevents servers from being completely over matched and requires minimal changes to the current system.

I think you are correct that more balanced matches could be achieved that way, but I’m pretty sure that would take a great deal of the strategy out of the game unless towers/keeps/etc could be upgraded faster. Teams would be better off zerging/capping than defending since the higher level defenses (siege, upgrades) would have much less time to contribute to the score.

It would also make server-wide benefits less worthwhile. A foraging buff gained by the server after midnight wouldn’t be useful to someone playing in the early afternoon.

Lastly, I think a system like that could be gamed pretty easily. A server wouldn’t have to juggle their playing times very much to potentially gain a big edge in any particular match.

I’m not trying to be negative, but…

Isn’t tier locking SUPPOSED to happen in WvWvW? I mean why else would they have tiers, rankings, and varying population servers if not to create a system of evenly matched games? I think most of the community would agree that blowouts are far worse than stagnation.

I would assume that more people would want close match ups and building rivalries than to have what tier 8 is complaining about atm where one server facerolls the other 2 and there isn’t a chance to do anything about it. I have been on the other side of Kaineg on their way up in tier 6, and it wasn’t fun at all.

Cactus.2710:

I really don’t understand these threads. Stagnation is virtually unavoidable unless you are willing to accept more blowouts. There is simply too much disparity in WvW populations (which don’t necessarily track server populations) between servers right now for it to be any other way. For almost any tier a winner-up/loser-down type shakeup will result in a blowout the following week … even more than we have now.

ANet is going to have to come up with a different way of setting up matches that isn’t simply server versus server versus server for this to change. Look at what the next two big MMOs have planned for their equivalent to WvW … the matches are faction based, not server based. That gives them WAY more flexibility in preventing match disparities.

For what it’s worth, I really felt like I went out of my way to point out in my original post that the point was to brainstorm, not complain, and I mentioned that we can’t do anything about server size and 24 hour server coverage, which will almost always be the deciding factor in this style of play.

My thought was maybe thousands of head are better than just a handful, so I started reading your response wondering what it takes on a forum to have a legitimate conversation without the usual “I really don’t understand why you bothered posting what you just posted” response…

… and then I kept reading… and you’re response is actually fantastic, so thank you for the constructive answer.

I suppose what they’ve done with PvP, making it more likely that evenly experienced players meet each other in the mists, it’d be fun to see that on a larger scale, focusing on player and guild experience instead of numbers. As much as I hate to say it, WvW is a numbers game.

There are a lot of calls for GvG to come back, but I’d hate to see Anet bring it back and have that kill WvW.

Again, I don’t know the answer, I’m not complaining, and I emphasize the word CONSTRUCTIVE.

Rashagal.5867:

I’m not trying to be negative, but…

Isn’t tier locking SUPPOSED to happen in WvWvW? I mean why else would they have tiers, rankings, and varying population servers if not to create a system of evenly matched games? I think most of the community would agree that blowouts are far worse than stagnation.

I would assume that more people would want close match ups and building rivalries than to have what tier 8 is complaining about atm where one server facerolls the other 2 and there isn’t a chance to do anything about it. I have been on the other side of Kaineg on their way up in tier 6, and it wasn’t fun at all.

I agree that servers getting locked into place is going to happen (to some extent) with the way things are now, but am I the only person who thinks it would be more fun if servers could somehow be somewhat evenly matched to where 5 or 6 servers are all good enough to be number one, and it can change on any given week? Perhaps I’m just dreaming, but again, I seem to have to keep pointing out that this thread is about brainstorming as a community, not complaining.

But there are no 2 servers now where the outcome could possibly be different, and that’s going to get old fast. In my tier (T3) there is no chance Dragonbrand could ever beat Fort Aspenwood and no chance Maguuma could ever beat Dragonbrand… There’s no T4 team that could ever beat us, and there’s no T2 team that could ever lose to Fort Aspenwood.

Emphasis on the word EVER. That’s what I’m getting at by starting this thread. What can we come up with that can help eliminate the word EVER.

Personally, I thought it was kind of fun when Kaening came out of no where and facerolled everyone for a while (and I was on the receiving end of that too). It’s new, it’s different…. The upper tiers got to see them coming, sweat a little, and eventually stops them dead in their tracks… that’s the type of thing people talk about still to this day and beyond. No one will ever sit around and say, “hey, remember that time we beat X server over and over by 30,000 pts 17 weeks in a row… wow, that was memorable.”

Seems that even within the same tier, imbalances and blowouts occur and its usually because of population imbalances.

Placing a max population cap based on the lowest populated server in wvw would solve this but it would limit the amount of players able to enjoy this aspect of the game (especially when servers have different time zone dominance). But I think a buff to NPC’s on Undermanned servers and the removal of guild claim buff (for supply camps) on point leading server would help a lot with maintaining a more closer gap regarding scores.

This could be done without un-balancing pvp combat. The NPC buffs should be based on score with the third place server having the highest buffed NPC’s.
Giving them a chance to hold capture points and catch up with the leaders making a more close score match.

The tier system is too simplistic for making competitive match ups as population is the key to winning. Makes it so the lower populated servers within a tier have a fighting chance at least………..

SlimGenre.6417:

Rashagal.5867:

I’m not trying to be negative, but…

Isn’t tier locking SUPPOSED to happen in WvWvW? I mean why else would they have tiers, rankings, and varying population servers if not to create a system of evenly matched games? I think most of the community would agree that blowouts are far worse than stagnation.

I would assume that more people would want close match ups and building rivalries than to have what tier 8 is complaining about atm where one server facerolls the other 2 and there isn’t a chance to do anything about it. I have been on the other side of Kaineg on their way up in tier 6, and it wasn’t fun at all.

I agree that servers getting locked into place is going to happen (to some extent) with the way things are now, but am I the only person who thinks it would be more fun if servers could somehow be somewhat evenly matched to where 5 or 6 servers are all good enough to be number one, and it can change on any given week? Perhaps I’m just dreaming, but again, I seem to have to keep pointing out that this thread is about brainstorming as a community, not complaining.

But there are no 2 servers now where the outcome could possibly be different, and that’s going to get old fast. In my tier (T3) there is no chance Dragonbrand could ever beat Fort Aspenwood and no chance Maguuma could ever beat Dragonbrand… There’s no T4 team that could ever beat us, and there’s no T2 team that could ever lose to Fort Aspenwood.

Emphasis on the word EVER. That’s what I’m getting at by starting this thread. What can we come up with that can help eliminate the word EVER.

Personally, I thought it was kind of fun when Kaening came out of no where and facerolled everyone for a while (and I was on the receiving end of that too). It’s new, it’s different…. The upper tiers got to see them coming, sweat a little, and eventually stops them dead in their tracks… that’s the type of thing people talk about still to this day and beyond. No one will ever sit around and say, “hey, remember that time we beat X server over and over by 30,000 pts 17 weeks in a row… wow, that was memorable.”

I’ll preface this by stating that I’m in tier 6, and Both AR and BP have won our tier. BP has the advantage through numbers, but they mostly win because AR forced BP to change strategies, We usually held first throughout the week then BP pulled all-nighters on Thursday to win in the hours before the reset. But our tier is exceptionally close, so I do see your point.

To address what could be done however is a different story. I think the only way that you could have a system where 5-6 servers all get a fair shake is by having Anet regulate the server populations and forcibly taking people from their server communities and placing them on other servers, a move which almost all of us that play with friends or are active in our guilds find abhorrent. It can be done, but in doing so it will ruin a fair amount of the server communities.

Edit: Thinking about it some more and it seems plausible that you could also solve people complaining about queue times and server balance at the same time. If Anet gathered data and conducted an accurate census of server populations, they could use that information to guide their transfer policies. You could make it so they only allowed a specific number of transfers and only from a higher to specific low pop servers. This would not only reduce queue times in the higher tiers, but also give the lower pop tiers a more even fight and over time allow for less spread between the servers in terms of manpower and allow for easier changing of tiers and more dynamic ranking systems, because the spread between tier 1 and tier 8 would be much less.