Guild Wars 2

First, I would like to propose an idea I have had in my mind for some time now. If there is any repetition please do forgive me because I just breeze through the thread.
I think it might not be a good idea to server merge as it affects existing communities in WvW. I would think there are others who are proud of their server and want their server to still be there.

I think the solution to population imbalance is to level the playing field for servers with lesser WvW numbers in each map because currently numbers plus coverage wins you the weekly match and to be frankly, demotivating. Knowing that the maximum number of tickets you can get trying to play WvW Tournament is 400 being that you get last place every week doesn’t necessarily motivates people to come and play much less transfer to lower WvW population servers.

For that I introduce the Death Penalty System.

What is death penalty?

Death Penalty is applied to a player when a player dies in WvW while in combat. It reduces overall stats of your character by percentage for an amount of time. For ex, when I die in WvW I will have an 8% overall stat reduction applied to me for the next 5 minutes and stacks up if I die again within that 5 minutes. Death penalty is scaled to the ratio of players in a map. Let’s say:

Server A/ Server B/ Server C has a 2:1:1 ratio.

So Server A have twice the amount of players then the other 2 servers on a map. So the new death penalty applied on each server in that map is 20%/8%/8%. A server with a higher player ratio in the map will suffer higher death penalty upon death. Death penalty do not effect players below level 60.

Why the death penalty?

Larger servers most of the time throws their players against keeps and towers with very little consequences. If they die, they will either be hard resurrected on the spot or they port back to the nearest waypoint and run back. [Let’s be frank, if you are up against a titan, their Keep is likely waypointed and your Keep either doesn’t have one, its currently building or is contested.] So no matter how many times you kill a larger zerg. They will still come back full force till they take their desired objective.

With death penalty players have to be more careful of not dying. Most of all larger WvW servers can be dwindle down with siege weaponry and multiple engagements [Assuming your smaller group has some real skills in Zerg Busting. ^^]. If Server A hard resurrects a player in your keep, that same player has now 20% reduction in overall stats for 5 minutes and is now weaker and likely to die in the next engagement giving Server B a chance to dwindle down Server A’s fighting force or force them to retreat and give Server B more time to patch their keep up or re siege up their keep. This stop players from dying, port, re-engage and repeat given that repair cost was removed. Most of the time I feel the interval between each engagement is too short giving players defending objectives very little time to rearm themselves for the next coming engagement or even a chance of pushing larger forces out of objectives. This also helps smaller WvW forces when they zerg bust bigger groups.

Limitation, Stacking up Death Penalty and removing it.

All things have to be moderated or it goes out of hand. If a person can stack till a 90% Death Penalty, he might as well sit in his spawn for the next 5 minutes. How much Death Penalty you can stack up also depends on the ratio of players in each map in each server.

Let’s use the same ratio, Server A/ Server B/ Server C has a 2:1:1 ratio.

All 3 servers will now stack maximum of say 35%/18%/18% in a decreasing amount. This means Server A will stack up 20% > 30% > 35% death penalty when they die 3 times in their 5 minutes duration and 35% being the cap. [Duration resets upon death so you can’t die 3 times and wait one minute to be full strength again.] I also think duration might increase with each death.

There must also be a way to reduce death penalty too quicken the process. For example ability to reduce death penalty when escorting yaks, successfully defending objectives, capturing enemy objectives, taking supplies from camp and fixing wall and gates, capturing mercenary camp, and killing enemy players. I would also like to suggest Scouting but for now there is no way to know who scouted and who did not. This promotes the doing of smaller task in WvW. [Sometimes it’s really hard to get people to do this things.]

Conclusion

Although I do not think this will solve coverage directly, I think death penalty might be able to level playing fields of each map by encouraging players to disperse across maps more equally if their maps are not queued to avoid the increasing death penalty. This helps reduce blobbing on one specific map and travelling in large groups. Hey, even if you can’t win the match but @ least there is some good leveled fights and a small chance to taking a higher spot. All numbers are just simplified. I am sure there is more complicated math involved. =P

Tell me your opinions guys. Maybe there are ways to improve this and maybe I’m wrong but I do feel it might help. Please don’t troll me =P

It takes about that long to run back depending on where the fight is. You’re also putting the low coverage server at a disadvantage as they will have low numbers and reduced stats.

I think if you are outmanned, it is safe to say you will not be affected by death penalty. Maybe if a smaller ratio or under certain amount of players you will not be affected by death penalty will give a server with low player number some kinda advantage?