Guild Wars 2

Note: I am not talking about megaserver dynamic maps.

Was just thinking of ways to deter bandwagoning …

What if each server could only get X+10 players on a map based on the lowest populated server?

Server A has 100 players trying to get on EB.
Server B has 65 players trying to get on EB
Server C has 50 players on EB

Server A and B would only be allowed to have 60 players on map unless Server C added more players.

A queue would result for any over the 60 cap, added to incrementally as each new player joins the map from Server C.

If players from Server C leave the map, further reducing lowest pop numbers, then players on A and B remain, but if they crash or leave, that spot is removed.

People hate queues.

Would this motivate to spread out, at least for some, if they can’t consistently get their whole guild on map; or can’t get on as a single player?

That would not work, ive been in momments where y server has like 10-15 players across all maps while other servers way much had larger groups.

Assume if a server/link decides to tank and bail out of wvw, all other players will get the impossibility to play because others are making it so….

It feels a very exploitable thing to do, it has been discussed by players few time.

Aeolus.3615:

That would not work, ive been in momments where y server has like 10-15 players across all maps while other servers way much had larger groups.

Yeah that’s why I thought this may work: If you’re facing a queue all the time you want to wvw, wouldn’t you look to another server with more space?

Aeolus.3615:

Assume if a server/link decides to tank and bail out of wvw, all other players will get the impossibility to play because others are making it so….

Yes, I can see that point. What’s a counter to it then? I would hope that if the numbers were reasonably even because of the elasticity, that people wouldn’t bail out. Most often they bail because of impossible odds — or are there other reasons?

Aeolus.3615:

It feels a very exploitable thing to do, it has been discussed by players few time.

I’m interested in exploring this because I’m the first to yell “it can be exploited” at new suggestions — what are some ways it could be exploited (brainstorm).

I still believe allowing guilds from other servers to temporarily fill out a map is their best solution given their limitations. Pretty much anything to help balance the scales would be welcome.

Nice idea but wouldn’t work. Strong servers could just log off during periods of bad coverage (like OCX) to ensure their T3 objectives remained at T3.

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

Nice idea but wouldn’t work. Strong servers could just log off during periods of bad coverage (like OCX) to ensure their T3 objectives remained at T3.

Most don’t care about the score. What most people abhor is getting constantly run over by 3x plus their numbers. Stop that from happening and WvW solves 90% of its non-technical problems.

Look at T1. A mercenary group probably cannot stop BG from running up the score so they win but at least during BG’s peak hours the fighting would be me more competitive.

Jayne.9251:

Note: I am not talking about megaserver dynamic maps.

Was just thinking of ways to deter bandwagoning …

What if each server could only get X+10 players on a map based on the lowest populated server?

Server A has 100 players trying to get on EB.
Server B has 65 players trying to get on EB
Server C has 50 players on EB

Server A and B would only be allowed to have 60 players on map unless Server C added more players.

A queue would result for any over the 60 cap, added to incrementally as each new player joins the map from Server C.

If players from Server C leave the map, further reducing lowest pop numbers, then players on A and B remain, but if they crash or leave, that spot is removed.

People hate queues.

Would this motivate to spread out, at least for some, if they can’t consistently get their whole guild on map; or can’t get on as a single player?

So force a map cap to the LCD… Great way to annoy the playerbase.

It’s a good idea and I think it’s something that Arenanet should trial particularly given the other things they have tried haven’t worked too well.

To limit exploits:

1. Limit numbers not based on the lowest populated world, but based on the 2nd lowest populated world. This retains the essence of your idea but only the largest world would normally get queues and nobody could exploit anything by “simply logging out”.

2. Implement a lower limit before such a system would kick in – for example you can always get the first 20 people into a map no matter how many enemies and then for the 21st person if would depend on how many enemies there were on the map. This makes it much easier for a guild to get most or all of its members on the same map. This would also mean that a world can always have at least 80 people total before queuing all maps (and obviously many more if the enemy turns up) but is prevented from having all 80 people as a single blob unless the other worlds have similar numbers.

3. Allow a grace period for people who got disconnected or otherwise left to re-enter the map without needing to queue again. Otherwise people who did get disconnected would be frustrated that they can’t rejoin.

4. Trial a system first and then adjust it based on feedback.

5. Some game elements would need to be rebalanced to assume more even numbers.

Straegen.2938:

I still believe allowing guilds from other servers to temporarily fill out a map is their best solution given their limitations. Pretty much anything to help balance the scales would be welcome.

Ok, so 30 guild members from SOS goes to help “fill out” a JQ map… This helps JQ right? What happens to SOS now with 30 less players helping?

…Think this through a little bit more.

Adamarc.7463:

It’s a good idea and I think it’s something that Arenanet should trial particularly given the other things they have tried haven’t worked too well.

To limit exploits:

1. Limit numbers not based on the lowest populated world, but based on the 2nd lowest populated world. This retains the essence of your idea but only the largest world would normally get queues and nobody could exploit anything by “simply logging out”.

2. Implement a lower limit before such a system would kick in – for example you can always get the first 20 people into a map no matter how many enemies and then for the 21st person if would depend on how many enemies there were on the map. This makes it much easier for a guild to get most or all of its members on the same map. This would also mean that a world can always have at least 80 people total before queuing all maps (and obviously many more if the enemy turns up) but is prevented from having all 80 people as a single blob unless the other worlds have similar numbers.

3. Allow a grace period for people who got disconnected or otherwise left to re-enter the map without needing to queue again. Otherwise people who did get disconnected would be frustrated that they can’t rejoin.

4. Trial a system first and then adjust it based on feedback.

5. Some game elements would need to be rebalanced to assume more even numbers.

Those are all great ideas and what I was hoping to get from this thread.

Thank you!

So minimum 20 players per map, regardless of population on other servers.

As the middle server adds players, other servers can add incrementally. Middle server is the blue server, and will not change for duration of week as measuring stick. Blue server can only max out at 20 if either of other two servers have less than 20 on a map.

Trial period of one month to sort the issues from the whinging.

Only four maps. No new maps are created with population influx. Once four maps are full, there’s a queue.

Addresses:

• server stacking
• forces players to spread out or sit in queue.
• gives all servers a fighting chance each week.
• no overwhelming blob that rolls over another team (unless that team can’t meet the minimum 20/counter 20).
• addresses night capping and runaway T3 ktrains pv-doors, assuming your team can counter 20.
• encourages regional spreading out. So no one server has all OCX etc.
• all servers are unlocked for transfer. But stacked overfill servers means less chance of getting in to play.
• strong, lower pop servers can start to progress upwards with population issues levelled.
• means an increase in competition.
• offer organized guilds with guild halls the ability to take all those earned items to any server with transfer, but only active/accessible on one server at a time.
• idea is reliant on removing linking and going back to traditional single servers to enhance mobility.

ADDED BONUS: your skills will actually work in three-way fights.

Per map and across all maps are very different.

If base by per map, it reduce strategic play like blob from ebg moving off to borderland to hit defenseless keep. In more details, strategic play let say both sides have 80 total across maps. Base on your limitation, you can only squeeze in 20 on borderland, you can’t put 40 in borderland and 40 defending ebg, 40 surely is enough to defend ebg with sieges.

It will require new strategy and more rapid response.

If server A jumps to red BL to attack. Server B responds with 40, that means room for 20 more from server A. And 40 more players from server C.

It means you’ll have to have a very tight well composed team if you plan on ktraining, and more overall fights.

You will always be able to go to any empty map with 20.

I will give you another scenario base on your limitation.

Let say initial everyone in ebg, capping it out at 70.
AA went BB’s BL with 20. Then, the BL enter a queue base on your condition.
They manage to break into keep lord by the time scout notice, the scout call out to prep for ewp.

BB responded, port into the BL with his 70, thanks to your queue, the 70 manage to get in, likewise AA get in their other 50.

Now the tricky part, AA got 50 at spawn, they need to run there to the keep. The scout pull the ewp, BB send in his 70 and immediate smash the 20. The 50 still running there.

Here’s another example.

Server A takes its 20 crusty warriors to hit an empty map based on scouting reports.

Defending server responds, adding beyond 20 players to 35.

That means attacking server A has the empty map queue pop to add more players.

Conversely, Server A can sneak in with 20 and flip an entire map.

SkyShroud.2865:

I will give you another scenario base on your limitation.

Let say initial everyone in ebg, capping it out at 70.
AA went BB’s BL with 20. Then, the BL enter a queue base on your condition.
They manage to break into keep lord by the time scout notice, the scout call out to prep for ewp.

BB responded, port into the BL with his 70, thanks to your queue, the 70 manage to get in, likewise AA get in their other 50.

Now the tricky part, AA got 50 at spawn, they need to run there to the keep. The scout pull the ewp, BB send in his 70 and immediate smash the 20. The 50 still running there.

Everyone porting in to respond, regardless of server, has to run from spawn. WPs would be contested. Enemy spawn to E/W keeps is a faster run than from north spawn and about equal from Garri.

Oh and if you own a keep with a WP on enemy map, equal time run to garri vs north spawn. Plus insta queue pop into strategic spot on map as more players are added. Make it important for defenders to respond AND contest keep WP to force invaders to run further.

Makes it a real emergency response.

And I agree with your point about EWPs, they’d have to be removed.

Now, I will give yet another scenario.

Let say EBG is fully queued by all sides, pugs doing their usual thing in ebg.

This particular guild started to raid, it is their raid time. 20 entered BL, good compositions and all, no map queues thanks to some enemy roamers already in.

They hit a keep, got into inner. The scout call out enemy in inner. EBG responded. Your limitation resulted in at around 30+ cap. 30 guys (at best) out of 70 ported in. Realistically speak, way less than 30 will port in because roamers across other maps might too responded.

Now, since is pug tag, when they do port, they just put up a wp. The problem is this, how much of their original compositions are retained in this pug blob when they port in?

Can this 30+ of gibberish compositions handle that 20 organised zerg?

Even if they do manage to retain their keep due to sieges, can they clear out that 20 organised zerg running around the keep? I don’t know, I think the 30+ gibberish zerg will be farmed.

And that’s when the guild sits down and discusses whether to move servers. With no guild hall penalty, it’s less about rewards and more about group play.

In a perfect world, three guilds who are friends agree to each go to three different servers for the fights.

In a not so perfect world, ie. reality, the guild goes to a different map than EB, as EB tends to be Pugland, and most organized guilds know this. Other guilds on opposing servers agree to leave EB and focus fights on the bls.

In a compromise, the servers go back to the old days of scheduling organized raids during prime time for each map.

The bottom line is its 30 vs 30 with the possibility to expand as queue pops, and not 30 vs 70, which is never very much fun.

You claim it will encourage off hours to spread, have you forgotten that off hours stacked before the existence of linking exactly because of the activity level?

The dynamic map cap isn’t gonna stop people from stacking because clearly cap grows equally which is the point of dynamic cap. If cap do grow equally, off hours can all stack on 3 main servers since we all know the cap itself will raise equally.

If you’re playing off hours and you can’t get into map because of a permanent queue, you’re gonna move

And if they’re stacked on all three servers equally, then it’s much better than what exists now. (One server ktraining an empty map — and technically one server COULD ktrain an entire map if the opposing teams don’t have the bodies/skill to counter 20).

It’s a good step forward.

Anet could even offer one free transfer to assist folks in the “great destack”.

But back to regular fees after a 7 day window.

Jayne.9251:

Anet could even offer one free transfer to assist folks in the “great destack”.

But back to regular fees after a 7 day window.

They could entice players on a certain full server to transfer out by offering a free transfer + 2,000 Gems or something.

No gems, quality of life, that’s it,

Jayne.9251:

If you’re playing off hours and you can’t get into map because of a permanent queue, you’re gonna move

And if they’re stacked on all three servers equally, then it’s much better than what exists now. (One server ktraining an empty map — and technically one server COULD ktrain an entire map if the opposing teams don’t have the bodies/skill to counter 20).

It’s a good step forward.

Why would that be much better? Have you forgotten something called one up one down? The one that go up and the one that go down will be either ktrained or ktraining others.

SkyShroud.2865:

Jayne.9251:

If you’re playing off hours and you can’t get into map because of a permanent queue, you’re gonna move

And if they’re stacked on all three servers equally, then it’s much better than what exists now. (One server ktraining an empty map — and technically one server COULD ktrain an entire map if the opposing teams don’t have the bodies/skill to counter 20).

It’s a good step forward.

Why would that be much better? Have you forgotten something called one up one down? The one that go up and the one that go down will be either ktrained or ktraining others.

Actually that’s a strength of this proposal. If you try to ktrain a map a significant proportion of your ktrain will be stuck in a queue until at least one enemy has sufficient numbers to defend.

Gg, let the enemy decide how many people I can field at once. I can’t imagine what the great minds out there will do to game the system. I too agree some work on balance is needed (I.e BG ppt is both YB and JQ added, almost) but I won’t agree letting enemies decide whether I can play or not.

Roxanne.6140:

Gg, let the enemy decide how many people I can field at once. I can’t imagine what the great minds out there will do to game the system. I too agree some work on balance is needed (I.e BG ppt is both YB and JQ added, almost) but I won’t agree letting enemies decide whether I can play or not.

If you end up in a queue because of a system like this you still have three other maps to choose from. It’s not like you can’t play….

Adamarc.7463:

Roxanne.6140:

Gg, let the enemy decide how many people I can field at once. I can’t imagine what the great minds out there will do to game the system. I too agree some work on balance is needed (I.e BG ppt is both YB and JQ added, almost) but I won’t agree letting enemies decide whether I can play or not.

If you end up in a queue because of a system like this you still have three other maps to choose from. It’s not like you can’t play….

I was assuming this system would apply to all the wvw maps? Also there is nothing to guarantee the enemy server will have few players on other maps making it difficult for you to join as well.

If both opposing servers have few or no people on any map then you would still be able to have a total of 80 people in wvw before you queued all maps (20 per map). And in that unlikely scenario you would own every structure on every map and probably wouldn’t want to log in anyway.

As soon as one opposing server logs on a decent number of people, the higher population server will be able to field more people as well. The idea is to reference the map cap not from the lowest population server, but the middle population server so that a single server deciding to log off doesn’t prevent the other two from playing.

Such a system would be best applied to all maps but could be trialed in the borderlands first. And various parameters including how much one side can outnumber the others by before triggering a queue could be adjusted based on feedback.

OP meant the population of the smallest server. Which in the worst case is around 5 people across all maps, which means a total of 45 across all 4 of my maps. If you think about it, 5 isn’t that far-fetched if a server decides that today is not the day to get run over. This means if some people decide they don’t like your face and not want to play, they can stop you from farming wvw rewards too.

Let’s say we go with your suggestion and have a cap of 80 during which you already own most of the structures, then I fail to see the usefulness of such a system.

Jayne.9251:

Note: I am not talking about megaserver dynamic maps.

Was just thinking of ways to deter bandwagoning …

What if each server could only get X+10 players on a map based on the lowest populated server?

Server A has 100 players trying to get on EB.
Server B has 65 players trying to get on EB
Server C has 50 players on EB

Server A and B would only be allowed to have 60 players on map unless Server C added more players.

A queue would result for any over the 60 cap, added to incrementally as each new player joins the map from Server C.

If players from Server C leave the map, further reducing lowest pop numbers, then players on A and B remain, but if they crash or leave, that spot is removed.

People hate queues.

Would this motivate to spread out, at least for some, if they can’t consistently get their whole guild on map; or can’t get on as a single player?

that’s such a kitteng dumb ideea
1. server a wants to fight server b, so they go on server c map
they can’t cause server c got no players there
2. server a fight server b , so server c decide to border hop. server A lose so 15 plaeyrs leave the map . ( according to you server A will have 80 players on map , server b 95 ( map cap) server c – 0. No players from server b are allowed to join the map while in queue cause no server C on the map …

Let servers die. Bring in “Battlegroups” and be done with it. Clinging to servers in this time is redundant.

Roxanne.6140:

OP meant the population of the smallest server. Which in the worst case is around 5 people across all maps, which means a total of 45 across all 4 of my maps. If you think about it, 5 isn’t that far-fetched if a server decides that today is not the day to get run over. This means if some people decide they don’t like your face and not want to play, they can stop you from farming wvw rewards too.

Let’s say we go with your suggestion and have a cap of 80 during which you already own most of the structures, then I fail to see the usefulness of such a system.

Keep reading down the thread. You’ll see, through conversation, the concept adapted and changed.

Interesting Jayne. I don’t know if I like this or not… (truly undecided not blowing smoke)

With this system, why would 50 man guilds destack? If they move down tiers, likely they can’t get into one BL because the other servers likely won’t field 50 (or 30-40) on each map?

Strider Pj.2193:

Interesting Jayne. I don’t know if I like this or not… (truly undecided not blowing smoke)

With this system, why would 50 man guilds destack? If they move down tiers, likely they can’t get into one BL because the other servers likely won’t field 50 (or 30-40) on each map?

My guild who tends to run groups of 10-15 at max would like this, but…

Adamarc.7463:

SkyShroud.2865:

Jayne.9251:

If you’re playing off hours and you can’t get into map because of a permanent queue, you’re gonna move

And if they’re stacked on all three servers equally, then it’s much better than what exists now. (One server ktraining an empty map — and technically one server COULD ktrain an entire map if the opposing teams don’t have the bodies/skill to counter 20).

It’s a good step forward.

Why would that be much better? Have you forgotten something called one up one down? The one that go up and the one that go down will be either ktrained or ktraining others.

Actually that’s a strength of this proposal. If you try to ktrain a map a significant proportion of your ktrain will be stuck in a queue until at least one enemy has sufficient numbers to defend.

That why people will stack up even further.

In wvw we have pugs, pugs fill up part of the space, then we also have guilds.

It is very important to understand that we do not have 24 ocx or sea or eu guilds to go around 24 NA servers.

This design will encourage people to stack more because they know that only by stacking, the chance they will get into a map will increase significantly. They do not have to worry about opponent not having enemies because they all know everybody stacked in specific tier. When guilds and people start to stack, it will eliminate match up varieties which people wanted, it also make one up one down approach questionable. It will slowly revert back to the old days of T1 and T2, the difference from then will be having the other tier completely dead in off hours.

Jayne.9251:

What if each server could only get X+10 players on a map based on the lowest populated server?

why not take the middle server as baseline for queue?

oh, i cannot elaborate further….. its useless, they already said it

“you cannot see whats inside the box because you are outside of it,
you can only think outside the box” -a dev

btw don’t lose hope, every men makes mistakes
thinking with a limited perspective is different from thinking from a new perspective
you just have to know the issue, and the issues are clear to everyone of us
its called the notorious imbalance