Guild Wars 2

Anet no doubt has the player data re: server populations at various times. Given that they have this data, what if (after the season) they encouraged certain players/guilds on certain servers to transfer to others in order to balance out populations? Free transfers (to specific servers), or even small incentive gifts, might encourage those on the fence.

The result I think we’d like to see is six competitive servers in the gold league, and nine each in the silver/bronze leagues. While this solution might lead to an exodus of off-peak players from silver and bronze, Anet could respond by somehow prioritizing peak hours in the other leagues (say, by having ppt worth more during peak hours and less during off hours).

Anyway, just a thought. While this would lead to changes, such changes are needed given population/time imbalances at the moment.

Everyone would lose their kittens and the forums would be nothing but posts about Devon manipulating the matches in favor of his chosen servers and/or guilds.

Did you read the collaborative dev thread? Its a huge pile of people whining that the population means nothing and that all Oceanic players can just go die and shouldn’t be allowed to get points for their server and its those oceanics that are ruining the game.
Ever thought that the Oceanics just got tired of playing alone on their servers so moved to ones with players?
Population imbalance can’t be fixed unless you know exactly whos going to be online at what time. If you organise a soccer match and three of your guys call in sick you’re screwed.
GW2 has people with lives, you’ll naturally get more people on fri night, sat, sun, than during the week.
What if your hardcore wvw guild decides they’re taking fri night off to do all their guild missions and kill teq? Suddenly your servers down 250 players. Imbalance is a dynamic variable, you never know how many will show up at any given time, therefore its unfixable.

Population doesn’t have to be equal amongst all servers. However, each server should have (at least) 4 other servers that have comparable population/coverage. This is a much easier objective than balancing out all servers’ populations and is good enough that each server has a variety of good matchups.

Oceanics can all stack to a few servers so that they have others to play with — that’s fine. The problem is that the population/coverage gap between servers even adjacent in ranking is often too big.

Talissa Chan.7208:

Imbalance is a dynamic variable, you never know how many will show up at any given time, therefore its unfixable.

But if anyone is in a position to know this, it is Anet. And thus they could use their information to encourage more balanced coverage.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Population doesn’t have to be equal amongst all servers. However, each server should have (at least) 4 other servers that have comparable population/coverage. This is a much easier objective than balancing out all servers’ populations and is good enough that each server has a variety of good matchups.

Agree entirely. And this is why I made the post. I’m assuming that there is enough player data to make rough assumptions about playtime, etc. And similarly, I assume that there are enough off-peak players spread throughout silver/bronze leagues who, if properly incentivized, might switch to one of the bottom three gold-league servers.

While this might lead to cries of server favoritism, it could also lead more towards balance—specifically, 3 balanced leagues.

Remove score and www is balanced.

Junkpile.7439:

Remove score and www is balanced.

this!

then we get to watch the blob wonder why they spent the last 8 hours in que.

it’d be a riot!

Servers need to be merged for WvW when fighting op servers.

Avoid the zerg, make the whole wvw map a jumping puzzle.

Junkpile.7439:

Remove score and www is balanced.

Nope! T1 versus anything lower than T2 is a sucktastic match regardless. Crappy for T1 since they will steam roll the opposition and crappy for the enemy server since they will frequently log in with practically nothing on the map that is theirs.

The score is only an indicator of a poor matchup not the cause of it.

Talissa Chan.7208:

Did you read the collaborative dev thread?

That’s really all that needs to be said.

Straegen.2938:

Junkpile.7439:

Remove score and www is balanced.

Nope! T1 versus anything lower than T2 is a sucktastic match regardless. Crappy for T1 since they will steam roll the opposition and crappy for the enemy server since they will frequently log in with practically nothing on the map that is theirs.

The score is only an indicator of a poor matchup not the cause of it.

t1 vs t2 is pretty sucktastic as well. Ask SoR, they can even say that t1 vs t1 is sucktastic as well.

Andrew Clear.1750:

t1 vs t2 is pretty sucktastic as well. Ask SoR, they can even say that t1 vs t1 is sucktastic as well.

True. The only winners so far in the league is sitting in Bronze where the matches are at least somewhat balanced. Silver and Gold look sad with blowouts in nearly every match.

Ultimately the scores are reflecting players reducing play time during those tougher matchups. So few want to play when they odds are so heavily stacked against them.

How do you expect to balance this exactly?

You have hundreds of people PvDoor’ing when the opposition is sleeping.

It’s obviously a joke more than a league.

Calae.1738:

How do you expect to balance this exactly?

You have hundreds of people PvDoor’ing when the opposition is sleeping.

It’s obviously a joke more than a league.

Sadly, you have hundreds PvDoor’ing during peak times too, because they don’t want to fight and would rather just get the rewards for capping stuff.

reduce map cap. by 50%.

azizul.8469:

reduce map cap. by 50%.

Won’t happen. People want large scale battles, so reducing the map cap will only hinder that. Plus, people aren’t filling up maps on the lower servers during off hour coverage anyways, so a reduction in map cap is useless.

Andrew Clear.1750:

azizul.8469:

reduce map cap. by 50%.

Won’t happen. People want large scale battles, so reducing the map cap will only hinder that. Plus, people aren’t filling up maps on the lower servers during off hour coverage anyways, so a reduction in map cap is useless.

says a person on a stacked server…..

Or they could just close www when one server has significantly less players in maps.

azizul.8469:

Andrew Clear.1750:

azizul.8469:

reduce map cap. by 50%.

Won’t happen. People want large scale battles, so reducing the map cap will only hinder that. Plus, people aren’t filling up maps on the lower servers during off hour coverage anyways, so a reduction in map cap is useless.

says a person on a stacked server…..

Pfft, considering my server wasn’t that stacked all year long.

I understand the lack of coverage causing us to lose, almost everytime. I understand getting farmed.

Reducing the map caps by half will not help you on off hours coverage, which is when you get thumped most the time in WvW. If you can’t fill a whole map in off hours, what will a 50% reduction really do?

Andrew Clear.1750:

Reducing the map caps by half will not help you on off hours coverage, which is when you get thumped most the time in WvW. If you can’t fill a whole map in off hours, what will a 50% reduction really do?

Don’t think about how it would affect low tier servers. Think about what would happen to T1 servers.

Andrew Clear.1750:

azizul.8469:

Andrew Clear.1750:

azizul.8469:

reduce map cap. by 50%.

Won’t happen. People want large scale battles, so reducing the map cap will only hinder that. Plus, people aren’t filling up maps on the lower servers during off hour coverage anyways, so a reduction in map cap is useless.

says a person on a stacked server…..

Pfft, considering my server wasn’t that stacked all year long.

I understand the lack of coverage causing us to lose, almost everytime. I understand getting farmed.

Reducing the map caps by half will not help you on off hours coverage, which is when you get thumped most the time in WvW. If you can’t fill a whole map in off hours, what will a 50% reduction really do?

less enemy from the other side to face….. more balanced match up….if normally the weaker server face 40v80, now they get to fight 40v40…..

I guess the real question that needs to be asked of non-prime-time WvW players (SEA, Oceanic, etc.) is: What would encourage you to move to one of the gold league T2 servers?

Conversely, to those prime-time players in silver and bronze: Would you be ok with matches that gave greater value to points scored during prime-time hours?

What is prime time? is this when servers are balanced?

what if a server has more players during what you think of as non-prime time… is this the prime time for that server?

azizul.8469:

less enemy from the other side to face….. more balanced match up….if normally the weaker server face 40v80, now they get to fight 40v40…..

And more complain because people are stucked in the queue.
Chicken and egg.

akanibbles.6237:

What is prime time? is this when servers are balanced?

what if a server has more players during what you think of as non-prime time… is this the prime time for that server?

This is where Anet comes in. I presume they have the data to determine this. (That said, I’d assume something like 09:00 to 22:00 PST (17:00 to 06:00 GMT) on most North American servers.)

KOK.2650:

azizul.8469:

less enemy from the other side to face….. more balanced match up….if normally the weaker server face 40v80, now they get to fight 40v40…..

And more complain because people are stucked in the queue.
Chicken and egg.

non-stacked server that way————————————————————>

with multiple maps with outnumbered buff

OR

they can happily fight in the Edge of The Mist soon to be introduced…

Lowering map caps (I don’t know exactly by how much – let’s say 20%) would solve the worst problems :

*Skill lag (yes T1 servers I know there’s no such thing) would be greatly reduced.
*Longer queues would provide more incentive to move to servers with a smaller population

Off-peak capping might still be a problem but defending while outnumbered 4:1 is definitely better than 5:1

“Could Anet help with population balancing?”

not without really upsetting at least 1 person.

“Balanced fights are OP!!!!! Why Anet, Whyyyyyyyy?!?!”

lol :p