Guild Wars 2

Due to the imbalance created by just shear numbers skewing the “balance” in so much of WvW (i.e., zerg effect), I’m trying to determine if the following would be viable. I’m not a regular of the forums (prefer to WvW with my limited time) and can’t get the search function to work so hope this isn’t redundant / previously dead horse…

What do you think would be the effect of limiting the population for any given map to the lowest number of players from the top two servers? Meaning that the population cap for a map would be dynamic, based upon the top two servers on the map. Of course, this would eventually hit the “ceiling” determined by ANet for performance reasons (i.e., the current cap).

A few that I can think of…

PRO: At least it would allow for two of the three servers on a map to have an even match, population wise. This would still allow the more organized servers to have the advantage and would do nothing for the third (lowest pop) server, but a decent basis for competition.

CON: Not as many players from high population servers could play on a given map. Maybe that’s a PRO for balancing server populations…

CON: Since the caps would be dynamic, you’d have more queues during off-peak hours. Peak times (e.g., Friday reset, weekend NA day times) would continue to hit the performance “ceiling”.

This has been discussed to exhaustion. (Night-Capping-and-YOU, Server Match up is terrible, etc.)

No matter how clever systems players suggested, their system would always prevent some players joining WvW when they want to play. WvW is not structured PvP by definition.

The ratings and matchup algorithm are what balance the matchups. Vabbi won’t face Vizunah Square.

There was also lot of discussion about randomness in matchups. First players wanted randomness or guaranteed opponent changes. The matchups were too balanced, facing the same opponents week after week.

Now there is randomness. It is tuned so that matchups are not stale but still balanced. The matchups seem more imbalanced, but not lopsided. Winning a matchup seems meaningless.

Soon we will have leagues. They will guarantee variation with opponents and give more incentive to win. Let’s see how that plays out.

when “dynamically” reducing the map cap you’re standing on a slippery line, because it can easily be manipulated to fully cap enemy bl’s as effective as possible and goes against the whole “non elitist” thing Anet are trying to go for.