Guild Wars 2

So, I have two accounts, and decided to try one of the T4 server matchups compared to where I currently am on my main account(Kaineng with TC). Just wanted to see if there was much of a difference between the two, so transferred my second account to Sorrow’s Furnace(paired with Northern Shiverpeaks).

Ran out last night and gave SF/NS a try. First off, no queues. Second, was much more like Kaineng wvw used to be a year or so ago when we were still very active in wvw. Third, the scores seemed to be a lot closer, although it is early in the week, and that, of course, could change.

I ran with a zerg of around 20 or so players, as well as a couple pug havoc groups of around 5 players or so. The zerg was much more interested in taking towers and supply camps…..much less of the open field blob warfare that is prevalent on T1. We did encounter one blob of around 40 players, and engaged it a few times, getting steam rolled a couple of times, and nicely splitting them and escaping intact a couple other times. The havoc groups were pretty successful in doing their job on the edges, while steering clear of the one blob. Also had several small open field fights in the havoc groups, which was a lot of fun, as it required me to be a better player than when I am running along in ‘blob mentality’….lol.

Biggest thing I noticed is that it all seemed more strategic, much less of the blob descending on another blob and just mindlessly going at it. Don’t get me wrong, as the blob warfare can be quite fun for awhile……but it was a really nice break getting into a wvw server where everything was more strategic with defenses, tower and supply camp takes, etc….

Anyways, not encouraging anyone to transfer, just wanted to try out another matchup and see what the differences were like. Having the luxury of a second account gives me the ability to play 2 distinctly different styles of wvw, which is very enjoyable. I believe both styles serve their purpose, just was interesting to see such a noticeable difference between T1 and T4. T1 is just complete craziness most of the time, while T4 reminds me more of what my lower tiered server used to be like in wvw.

Thanks for the post and being able to go both T1 and T4 is a nice mix.

I think that’s one of the reasons I favor PPT and PPK combos for scoring. Successful higher population servers will gain more from large scale fights and therefore encourage blobbing. More successful lower population servers score more PPT by knowing how to work in smaller groups. Favoring either PPK or PPT more and you start to remove those advantages from one side or the other.

TheGrimm.5624:

Thanks for the post and being able to go both T1 and T4 is a nice mix.

I think that’s one of the reasons I favor PPT and PPK combos for scoring. Successful higher population servers will gain more from large scale fights and therefore encourage blobbing. More successful lower population servers score more PPT by knowing how to work in smaller groups. Favoring either PPK or PPT more and you start to remove those advantages from one side or the other.

Wasn’t Anet talking about making ppk more influential in the new scoring system? If so, that would certainly encourage more of the blob warfare, I would think.

And yea, I enjoy having 2 accounts……gives me more opportunities to experience different servers/wvw/etc……

Ack, a Kaineng person on SF! Just kidding, glad you enjoyed it man.

The current T4 is closer to the old T5 (when it was populated by actual T5 servers) and it’s getting or seems to be getting more even week by week, not sure if it’s because people are moving around or quitting, but being able to atleast see the light is nice. Sure, there are still blobs on all 3 servers, but it was much worse 3 -4 weeks ago. I had a chance to run solo this weekend for a few hours and it felt great. Some may say that equals dead, but to each his own. I know that type of play has a potentially limited life, so may as well thrive on it while we can.

Overall, I’m seeing alot more small havoc and solo all around this week and less 900 man blob every hour (exageration, probably only 80 man blobs at their peak), but, its only Monday, there’s still time for that to change.

I haven’t convinced myself to move an account back to the higher tiers, I had 1 on BG at the start of the pairings and after a day moved it off, hopefully someone got my spot before they locked it.

Thanks, Hazy.
Yea, SF/NS was a nice change from the blob war that is T1. And yes, you’re absolutely correct….I was actually able to do some solo roaming today. It was nice meeting up with small squads and helping them out. Certainly won’t get me off of T1 with my main account, but it is certainly a pleasant and welcomed change at times.

Reason I went there, is I had transferred to Northern Shiverpeaks last year for a short while, and they seemed to be a nice bunch. It is a fun change of pace.

It’s NSP, not NS. So NSP/SF is the pairing.

Sorry, my bad. I should know that.

NSP and DH really wanted that SMC last night, you guys were relentless on that assault, but it was fun constantly trying to break the siege.

There’s rarely big queues on HoD/EB side, only had an ebg queue of like 5 people all night, other than reset night you get maybe on average 15-20 queue per map for a couple hours. You’ll find the usual zerg vs zerg fights, fair share of roamers and havoc teams, pretty much what the mid tiers were a year ago.

Thanks a lot for sharing this Teon, it gives me and my guild a little hope that things will get better. And don’t get me wrong, World Linking is nice (even with a lot of work remaining on the ‘server pride’ side of things), but the top tiers should have never been included on it.

Rednar.4690:

Thanks a lot for sharing this Teon, it gives me and my guild a little hope that things will get better. And don’t get me wrong, World Linking is nice (even with a lot of work remaining on the ‘server pride’ side of things), but the top tiers should have never been included on it.

I am just hoping that they work out the kinks in the pairings. And yea, I agree…..am really not sure if T1 and T2 should have ever been included in any of the pairings.

I really wish that Kaineng had been paired with a T3 or T4 server.

And that last comment is not meant to be disparaging at all to TC. They have been a very friendly and nice bunch. And very welcoming.

Been more and more tempted to take a break and go visit FergHaven a bit, but honestly don’t play enough these days to cash up gems for a transfer. I guess I’ll just try my EU account when I need a change.

Well if you get matched with T3 will share a hail with you and we can enjoy some havoc action. Until then, Good Hunting to you and yours!

Rednar.4690:

Thanks a lot for sharing this Teon, it gives me and my guild a little hope that things will get better. And don’t get me wrong, World Linking is nice (even with a lot of work remaining on the ‘server pride’ side of things), but the top tiers should have never been included on it.

Maybe FA could have used a small server at the time, but yeah they should have left T1 and most of T2 out of it. They should have lumped up three small servers together against another three small/two medium servers. But it would have perhaps started an argument over “why did they get to keep their server identity/pride while the rest of us got blobbed up?” The pairings had good intentions but it was executed in a lazy fashion.

I had my alt account on ET before the link to experience the quieter pace of low pop WvW. Unfortunately… the link means both my accounts are effectively on the same server.

Highly recommended for players to make accounts on other tiers. It’s always an eye opener to see how different tiers do things differently to yours.

The world link is kitten, the ambiguous status is a timebomb. It didn’t fix anything but super short term boost to the population. The server status gonna continue encourage people to stack on selected servers, WvW will revert to how it will be before the world link.

I do not know why people are so obsess over superficial things like scoring than the actual root of the problems.

SkyShroud:

The Population discrepancy is the main problem agreed, but the scoring has also been one of the reasons why especially NA has kept stacking servers and time zones. So scoring is another piece in the puzzle.

Fixing scoring will not magically solve everything by itself, but combined with other changes could make stacking less desirable.

Population disparity has always been the root of the problem. Scoring is nothing more than the result of that. The scoring changes is nothing more than a illusion in telling oneself that population disparity is not the issue. When people plays the game, it is the reality of the map that matters more than the silly scoring.

Also, people stack on the server for the more frequent wvw activities. This stacking cause a chain of problems. When people stack on selected servers, it also means that certain servers are getting less populated which then means that people in those servers can either choose to suck it up, to stack servers like others or stop wvw because it is less interesting. Evidently, lower tier server start to get lesser people over time mainly because of the second and last reason. With the destacking and stacking, you also lose a lot of WvW players over time.

Players are naturally selfish, they do not care about the consequences of stacking and destacking. Anet has to and must step in to put a stop in these actions by implementing a system that does that. Currently, anet system does not discourage stacking and destacking, from a pvp perspective , it is a terrible design.

Lol. People in the lower tiers need to stop crying about everything. I don’t want to see another siege buff, which led to severs like yaks bend abusing it. All the t1 severs can play jusy play for ppt but its beyond boring so we just choose to fight. None of you guys understand the word balance (which doesn’t exist no two severs will be the same there will always be a winner and loser ). @sky shroud #1 forum warrior crying about everything.
This is why smaller severs and guilds should get less say in things.

jason.9548:

This is why smaller severs and guilds should get less say in things.

TIME larger guild than Kazo.

jason.9548:

Lol. People in the lower tiers need to stop crying about everything. I don’t want to see another siege buff, which led to severs like yaks bend abusing it. All the t1 severs can play jusy play for ppt but its beyond boring so we just choose to fight. None of you guys understand the word balance (which doesn’t exist no two severs will be the same there will always be a winner and loser ). @sky shroud #1 forum warrior crying about everything.
This is why smaller severs and guilds should get less say in things.

“It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt.”

Nice job at showing how completely clueless you are.

Funny thing is, several people in this thread and others have been wanting Anet to leave T1 & T2 alone, and just merge the lower servers for wvw. That idea would leave your little blob warfare world intact with nothing to bother your extremely shallow, no experience viewpoint of T3 – T8 servers.

How would you guys solve stacking and population problems? Again seeing people screaming about it but not offering any solutions. Many servers only queue up one map a night (other than BG oh boohoo), so it’s not like anyone feels like they need to move for those reasons.

The top 12 servers are currently locked, if someone wants to stack a server they have to transfer to the lower servers linked to them.

They’ve left it to players and players obviously don’t care enough to help balance this situation, despite people coming in here to complain about it. Fact of the matter is most players want action, they also want an easier time getting it, so they will stack dominating servers.

So what would you have them do? Lower map populations and force queues on them so people consider moving? Offer free transfer to funnel players from the locked servers to lower servers? Actually merge servers and forever destroying 12 NA servers?

Free transfers in the beginning helped unbalance the situation, but even if the free transfers weren’t around there were servers that were already stacked coming out of beta. The tournaments helped unbalanced this situation as well, free transfers and players wanting to stack winning servers, those won’t be back, and the servers who benefited the most with those free transfers aren’t exactly top tier servers right now either.

You know what, at this point I don’t even know why they bother having this as a competition of 12 servers and glicko for ratings, it’s time to break the tiers apart for more specialized play.

Unlink the T8 servers from T1.
Make the old T8 a tier by itself which will be a good home for roamers and small teams, for players who want to be a part of a smaller community.

Make a new tier for gvg’s, the old T2/3.
3 servers where the glicko doesn’t matter, offer free transfers to these servers, but a transfer fee to move. Gvg guilds get a place to play without needing points, without needed glicko, get alpines, ebg, OS for open areas to do random/planned fights.

The remaining 12 servers, merge the bottom 9 with their links. Rename all servers, reset glicko or remove it and do one up one down.

Terrible idea? then stop complaining and come up with your own.

Xenesis.6389:

How would you guys solve stacking and population problems? Again seeing people screaming about it but not offering any solutions. Many servers only queue up one map a night (other than BG oh boohoo), so it’s not like anyone feels like they need to move for those reasons.

The top 12 servers are currently locked, if someone wants to stack a server they have to transfer to the lower servers linked to them.

They’ve left it to players and players obviously don’t care enough to help balance this situation, despite people coming in here to complain about it. Fact of the matter is most players want action, they also want an easier time getting it, so they will stack dominating servers.

So what would you have them do? Lower map populations and force queues on them so people consider moving? Offer free transfer to funnel players from the locked servers to lower servers? Actually merge servers and forever destroying 12 NA servers?

Free transfers in the beginning helped unbalance the situation, but even if the free transfers weren’t around there were servers that were already stacked coming out of beta. The tournaments helped unbalanced this situation as well, free transfers and players wanting to stack winning servers, those won’t be back, and the servers who benefited the most with those free transfers aren’t exactly top tier servers right now either.

You know what, at this point I don’t even know why they bother having this as a competition of 12 servers and glicko for ratings, it’s time to break the tiers apart for more specialized play.

Unlink the T8 servers from T1.
Make the old T8 a tier by itself which will be a good home for roamers and small teams, for players who want to be a part of a smaller community.

Make a new tier for gvg’s, the old T2/3.
3 servers where the glicko doesn’t matter, offer free transfers to these servers, but a transfer fee to move. Gvg guilds get a place to play without needing points, without needed glicko, get alpines, ebg, OS for open areas to do random/planned fights.

The remaining 12 servers, merge the bottom 9 with their links. Rename all servers, reset glicko or remove it and do one up one down.

Terrible idea? then stop complaining and come up with your own.

I never meant this thread to become some sort of whinefest about wvw numbers. Was just trying to relate my experiences in two different tiered pairings in wvw. The last few posts (including that absolutely moronic post stating that the lower tiers should have less say in the game) have kind of moved the thread toward a less constructive tone. (I admit to contributing to that with my response to sheer idiocy)

Fwiw, I don’t think anything can be done about stacking. That is something that Anet can not control, imo.

I’m a savage and I cant be stopped. Banned off tc ts3.

Teon.5168:

Fwiw, I don’t think anything can be done about stacking. That is something that Anet can not control, imo.

I don’t think so either, they can’t lock all the servers because then people will complain about not being able to transfer to friends and family on other servers. I’m sure they could look into heavy restrictions for transfers too, but that’s really a waste of time and money. Like I said there were servers that were stacked from the very beginning of the game, it was going to happen one way or another for a multiple server based system.

Xenesis.6389:

Teon.5168:

Fwiw, I don’t think anything can be done about stacking. That is something that Anet can not control, imo.

I don’t think so either, they can’t lock all the servers because then people will complain about not being able to transfer to friends and family on other servers. I’m sure they could look into heavy restrictions for transfers too, but that’s really a waste of time and money. Like I said there were servers that were stacked from the very beginning of the game, it was going to happen one way or another for a multiple server based system.

Completely agree. Have seen exactly the same sorts of things in other mmorpgs with wvw/rvr.

jason.9548:

I’m a savage and I cant be stopped. Banned off tc ts3.

That’s difficult to imagine. (That’s a sarcastic smiley face….lol)

Teon.5168:

Xenesis.6389:

Teon.5168:

Fwiw, I don’t think anything can be done about stacking. That is something that Anet can not control, imo.

I don’t think so either, they can’t lock all the servers because then people will complain about not being able to transfer to friends and family on other servers. I’m sure they could look into heavy restrictions for transfers too, but that’s really a waste of time and money. Like I said there were servers that were stacked from the very beginning of the game, it was going to happen one way or another for a multiple server based system.

Completely agree. Have seen exactly the same sorts of things in other mmorpgs with wvw/rvr.

Nope. This kind of thing can be controlled and has been demonstrated in some old true PvP focused MMO. It cannot be 100% balance, that is for sure but the disparity can be greatly minimized to the point that match up variety will naturally occur due to it.

The current system works like this
There is a algorithm to determine the number of active WvW players.
There is a cap on the server, this cap is assumed to be fixed as it is historical observed to behave so and I read it somewhere that some T1 servers had higher than average cap before the revamped server status. Base on this, stacking and destacking easily occur whenever the cap is not reached.

What the really pvp focused MMO did is go a step further
They too have a algorithm to determine the number of active players.
Now, instead of a fixed cap, they calculate the disparity percentage of the fractions and close it if the disparity grew too big. This resulted a scenario where all fractions grow at the same rate. Since the population are rather comparable, a higher degree of population balance is achieved. At the same time, this system literally prevent large scale movement that involve multiple guilds intending to switch sides. If guild wars 2 use this approach, match up variety will likely increase due to closer population, people that complain server full status will know it will open when the disparity reduce.

However, like Xenesis said, there is a problem implementing this and that is 3 long years of stacking which means disparity can be really large and some servers will be locked for a long time. What I can suggest is in accompany with this approach, make 3 lowest populated servers completely free to encourage movement of players, quickly reducing the disparity gap.

However, before they can use this approach, they need to resolve the number of servers.

SkyShroud.2865:

Nope. This kind of thing can be controlled and has been demonstrated in some old true PvP focused MMO. It cannot be 100% balance, that is for sure but the disparity can be greatly minimized to the point that match up variety will naturally occur due to it.

The current system works like this
There is a algorithm to determine the number of active WvW players.
There is a cap on the server, this cap is assumed to be fixed as it is historical observed to behave so and I read it somewhere that some T1 servers had higher than average cap before the revamped server status. Base on this, stacking and destacking easily occur whenever the cap is not reached.

What the really pvp focused MMO did is go a step further
They too have a algorithm to determine the number of active players.
Now, instead of a fixed cap, they calculate the disparity percentage of the fractions and close it if the disparity grew too big. This resulted a scenario where all fractions grow at the same rate. Since the population are rather comparable, a higher degree of population is achieved. At the same time, this system literally prevent large scale movement that involve multiple guilds intending to switch sides. If guild wars 2 use this approach, match up variety will likely increase due to closer population, people that complain server full status will know it will open when the disparity reduce.

However, like you said, there is a problem implementing this after 3 long years of stacking which means disparity can be really large and some servers will be locked for a long time. What I can suggest is in accompany with this approach, make last 3 lowest populated servers completely free to encourage movement of players, quickly reducing the disparity gap.

However, before they can use this approach, they need to resolve the number of servers.

What games did that?

Xenesis.6389:

SkyShroud.2865:

Nope. This kind of thing can be controlled and has been demonstrated in some old true PvP focused MMO. It cannot be 100% balance, that is for sure but the disparity can be greatly minimized to the point that match up variety will naturally occur due to it.

The current system works like this
There is a algorithm to determine the number of active WvW players.
There is a cap on the server, this cap is assumed to be fixed as it is historical observed to behave so and I read it somewhere that some T1 servers had higher than average cap before the revamped server status. Base on this, stacking and destacking easily occur whenever the cap is not reached.

What the really pvp focused MMO did is go a step further
They too have a algorithm to determine the number of active players.
Now, instead of a fixed cap, they calculate the disparity percentage of the fractions and close it if the disparity grew too big. This resulted a scenario where all fractions grow at the same rate. Since the population are rather comparable, a higher degree of population is achieved. At the same time, this system literally prevent large scale movement that involve multiple guilds intending to switch sides. If guild wars 2 use this approach, match up variety will likely increase due to closer population, people that complain server full status will know it will open when the disparity reduce.

However, like you said, there is a problem implementing this after 3 long years of stacking which means disparity can be really large and some servers will be locked for a long time. What I can suggest is in accompany with this approach, make last 3 lowest populated servers completely free to encourage movement of players, quickly reducing the disparity gap.

However, before they can use this approach, they need to resolve the number of servers.

What games did that?

Yea, I would like to know which games did this, too. Must have been mmorpgs that I didn’t play.

Xenesis.6389:

SkyShroud.2865:

Nope. This kind of thing can be controlled and has been demonstrated in some old true PvP focused MMO. It cannot be 100% balance, that is for sure but the disparity can be greatly minimized to the point that match up variety will naturally occur due to it.

The current system works like this
There is a algorithm to determine the number of active WvW players.
There is a cap on the server, this cap is assumed to be fixed as it is historical observed to behave so and I read it somewhere that some T1 servers had higher than average cap before the revamped server status. Base on this, stacking and destacking easily occur whenever the cap is not reached.

What the really pvp focused MMO did is go a step further
They too have a algorithm to determine the number of active players.
Now, instead of a fixed cap, they calculate the disparity percentage of the fractions and close it if the disparity grew too big. This resulted a scenario where all fractions grow at the same rate. Since the population are rather comparable, a higher degree of population is achieved. At the same time, this system literally prevent large scale movement that involve multiple guilds intending to switch sides. If guild wars 2 use this approach, match up variety will likely increase due to closer population, people that complain server full status will know it will open when the disparity reduce.

However, like you said, there is a problem implementing this after 3 long years of stacking which means disparity can be really large and some servers will be locked for a long time. What I can suggest is in accompany with this approach, make last 3 lowest populated servers completely free to encourage movement of players, quickly reducing the disparity gap.

However, before they can use this approach, they need to resolve the number of servers.

What games did that?

One example of a old game is shattered galaxy, population unbalance will result in serious bad gameplay since the entire game is built on the idea of players fighting over plots of lands.

Most recent example will be Camelot Unchained. They had a similar proposal for population balancing.

SkyShroud.2865:

One example of a old game is shattered galaxy, population unbalance will result in serious bad gameplay since the entire game is built on the idea of players fighting over plots of lands.

Most recent example will be Camelot Unchained. They had a similar proposal for population balancing.

Shattered galaxy looks like it was a very limited (20 player teams) pvp sort of strategy game, rather than large scale wvw/rvr such as DaoC or GW2. So I find that sort of comparison odd, to say the least. Shattered galaxy had a much smaller scale, and therefore, more controllable sort of pvp.

Giving your recent example as Camelot Unchained, which hasn’t even gotten out of kickstarter funding yet, is absolutely ludicrous. You have no idea what their large scale rvr will be like besides what they’re imagining/hyping for the game at this point. I would just like to point out that CU is being done by Mark Jacobs, who also did DaoC, and I have had lots of experience with DaoC’s large scale wvw/rvr…..and if CU is anything slightly close to Jacobs’ last successful mmoprg, it will have very similar stacking/population problems just like DaoC wvw/rvr did.

Teon.5168:

SkyShroud.2865:

One example of a old game is shattered galaxy, population unbalance will result in serious bad gameplay since the entire game is built on the idea of players fighting over plots of lands.

Most recent example will be Camelot Unchained. They had a similar proposal for population balancing.

Shattered galaxy looks like it was a very limited (20 player teams) pvp sort of strategy game, rather than large scale wvw/rvr such as DaoC or GW2. So I find that sort of comparison odd, to say the least. Shattered galaxy had a much smaller scale, and therefore, more controllable sort of pvp.

Giving your recent example as Camelot Unchained, which hasn’t even gotten out of kickstarter funding yet, is absolutely ludicrous. You have no idea what their large scale rvr will be like besides what they’re imaging for the game at this point. I would just like to point out that CU is being done by Mark Jacobs, who also did DaoC, and I have had lots of experience with DaoC’s large scale wvw/rvr…..and if CU is anything slightly close to Jacobs’ last successful mmoprg, it will have stacking problems just like DaoC did.

It seems like you didn’t play SG before. SG while look like 20v20, but that is just one plot of land. In the whole game, several battles are happening over a world map. If population unbalancing is to be occured, one fraction could push all the way to another fraction’s capital and IIRC, the capital only has 2 maps accessible to it and if got capital lock, you can sit and cry till some group break it. If comparing it to WvW. If your server only has one zerg of 20-men while another server has 3 20-men zerg. The other 2 20-men could be going around cap your stuffs while one 20-men zerg play with your’s.

For CU, like I said, is a proposal. I don’t think the word proposal suggest anything more. You seems rather aggressive.

What did SG do to remove the incentive of one team from logging out to artificially force the other team into extremely limited numbers?

Smaller team based games have been doing that for years. I’m sure most games use it for their smaller battleground spvp scenarios as well, to ensure they don’t start them with a ridiculous 10v1 type of teaming. But for a mmo to use it to populate their servers? Haven’t heard of one yet so I was just curious.

Much easier for CU to go with this system from the very start when they are first populating their servers, that itself is going be problematic and I’m sure we’ll hear of players not able to join their friends and guilds right away and having to wait on the other servers to fill up.

Only way that would work in GW2 at this point is to kick everyone off their servers and repopulate them again, which I don’t think would go over very well.

Chaba.5410:

What did SG do to remove the incentive of one team from logging out to artificially force the other team into extremely limited numbers?

That was a really old game, like early 2000s. People at those time don’t have this cowardly idea of trying game the system. They play the game as it should be.

Xenesis.6389:

Smaller team based games have been doing that for years. I’m sure most games use it for their smaller battleground spvp scenarios as well, to ensure they don’t start them with a ridiculous 10v1 type of teaming. But for a mmo to use it to populate their servers? Haven’t heard of one yet so I was just curious.

Much easier for CU to go with this system from the very start when they are first populating their servers, that itself is going be problematic and I’m sure we’ll hear of players not able to join their friends and guilds right away and having to wait on the other servers to fill up.

Only way that would work in GW2 at this point is to kick everyone off their servers and repopulate them again, which I don’t think would go over very well.

Yes, it is exactly like your typical match balancing mechanism. The difficulty of implementing this on a much greater scale is the existence of uncertainties like players behavior (wvw when feel like it) or returning players or guild activities or so on. Therefore, adjustment is needed to create allowance for this.

Indeed, putting this approach at this stage of game is indeed extremely difficult as all population balancing methods should be applied right from the start since population balance cannot occur overnight and population imbalance will only get worse as days go by.

SkyShroud.2865:

Chaba.5410:

What did SG do to remove the incentive of one team from logging out to artificially force the other team into extremely limited numbers?

That was a really old game, like early 2000s. People at those time don’t have this cowardly idea of trying game the system. They play the game as it should be.

Then I can’t see that working here. Not when history has shown wide cooperation to the extent that communities were able to get more players onto their server by logging out en masse.

Chaba.5410:

SkyShroud.2865:

Chaba.5410:

What did SG do to remove the incentive of one team from logging out to artificially force the other team into extremely limited numbers?

That was a really old game, like early 2000s. People at those time don’t have this cowardly idea of trying game the system. They play the game as it should be.

Then I can’t see that working here. Not when history has shown wide cooperation to the extent that communities were able to get more players onto their server by logging out en masse.

Active count can be current online count and can also be base on a periodic records. Currently gw2 active count is base on a periodic calculation.

SkyShroud.2865:

Teon.5168:

SkyShroud.2865:

One example of a old game is shattered galaxy, population unbalance will result in serious bad gameplay since the entire game is built on the idea of players fighting over plots of lands.

Most recent example will be Camelot Unchained. They had a similar proposal for population balancing.

Shattered galaxy looks like it was a very limited (20 player teams) pvp sort of strategy game, rather than large scale wvw/rvr such as DaoC or GW2. So I find that sort of comparison odd, to say the least. Shattered galaxy had a much smaller scale, and therefore, more controllable sort of pvp.

Giving your recent example as Camelot Unchained, which hasn’t even gotten out of kickstarter funding yet, is absolutely ludicrous. You have no idea what their large scale rvr will be like besides what they’re imaging for the game at this point. I would just like to point out that CU is being done by Mark Jacobs, who also did DaoC, and I have had lots of experience with DaoC’s large scale wvw/rvr…..and if CU is anything slightly close to Jacobs’ last successful mmoprg, it will have stacking problems just like DaoC did.

It seems like you didn’t play SG before. SG while look like 20v20, but that is just one plot of land. In the whole game, several battles are happening over a world map. If population unbalancing is to be occured, one fraction could push all the way to another fraction’s capital and IIRC, the capital only has 2 maps accessible to it and if got capital lock, you can sit and cry till some group break it. If comparing it to WvW. If your server only has one zerg of 20-men while another server has 3 20-men zerg. The other 2 20-men could be going around cap your stuffs while one 20-men zerg play with your’s.

For CU, like I said, is a proposal. I don’t think the word proposal suggest anything more. You seems rather aggressive.

I’m not sure what you find aggressive about my post. Was it my use of the word ludicrous? /scratching head

And no, I did not play SG. Never been much of a fan of the mapboard style mmorts. Just looked it up on wiki to see what it was, as I had never heard of it. And from what wiki and other sources said about it, it doesn’t sound like the game was ever commercially successful, so I have to wonder what sort of actual numbers they had for their playerbase, and/or active players ingame at one time.

SkyShroud.2865:

That was a really old game, like early 2000s. People at those time don’t have this cowardly idea of trying game the system. They play the game as it should be.

LOL. You must have been playing entirely different games than I was in the 90’s to current time. In my experiences on large scale mmoprgs with some sort of pvp/wvw/rvr, players have always tried to “game the system” to get some sort of advantage.

And I don’t believe it has anything to do with “cowardice”…..it is just a game and players naturally look for advantages in a large scale wvw/pvp environment.
Your statement that people ‘played the game as it should be played’ back then is naive, at best.

Just my opinion, and not meant aggressively. I just disagree with your opinion/proposed solutions on it all.

SkyShroud.2865:

Yes, it is exactly like your typical match balancing mechanism. The difficulty of implementing this on a much greater scale is the existence of uncertainties like players behavior (wvw when feel like it) or returning players or guild activities or so on. Therefore, adjustment is needed to create allowance for this.

Indeed, putting this approach at this stage of game is indeed extremely difficult as all population balancing methods should be applied right from the start since population balance cannot occur overnight and population imbalance will only get worse as days go by.

See your statement that I bolded…..that is where the logic of your entire argument falls apart, imo. It is not just difficult to implement on a larger scale, but near impossible. Even if it had a slight chance that it could be done on such a massive scale, it would be so incredibly cost prohibitive (dev team size, labor intensiveness to maintain, etc) that it wouldn’t make any financial sense to even attempt it. The overhead costs of such a system on such a large scale would just take too large a cut of any game profits to be feasible, imo. Not to mention the potential problems/exploits that such a system would have.

All of this is just my personal opinion, of course.

Apologies for the multiple posts. Suppose I could have taken the time to edit all three of them into just one.

I guess we did play different games since you mentioned DAOC. But since you mentioned DAOC, SG also launch in the same year. I guess DAOC and SG simply have a different approach for balancing. SG is literally the most successful MMORTS ever made even until now but the lack of updates kills it eventually. The spiritual successor or should I say the china remake (China is not afraid of copyright infringement) which released a few years back is highly populated.

As for aggressive, half of your comments are. You are thinking way too much into the word proposal like it is already implemented.

I really doubt the there are huge cost accompanying it. Guild wars 2 is already using periodic calculations for active counts, that itself already settle half of the requirements. The other half of the implementation is simply making it a dynamic cap instead of a fixed cap. They simply have to decide the acceptable range or tolerance or margin of error for the disparity differences. The idea is actually very simple, get rid of the fixed cap to allow servers to grow evenly. In fact, the idea of “fixed cap” is exactly the same as your typical match balancing mechanism of 20vs20 or 10vs10 or 5vs5 and so on. But, if you put that in a large context like thousands of players, eventually the thousands of players will fall below that cap due to decline population and create problems.

joneirikb.7506:

SkyShroud:

The Population discrepancy is the main problem agreed, but the scoring has also been one of the reasons why especially NA has kept stacking servers and time zones. So scoring is another piece in the puzzle.

Changes to scoring will encourage more NA stacking though.

Reverence.6915:

I had my alt account on ET before the link to experience the quieter pace of low pop WvW. Unfortunately… the link means both my accounts are effectively on the same server.

Highly recommended for players to make accounts on other tiers. It’s always an eye opener to see how different tiers do things differently to yours.

Why unfortunately? I would’ve loved it if IoJ got paired with FA since then I can play with my IoJ guildies using my FA account.

My experience on other servers has been incredibly positive. I played on Sorrow’s Furnace for awhile with one of my alt accounts. You are right that the play is more strategic. They have to be. And really I would expect that same mindset from any server in the game that is constantly outnumbered. We have some great communities in this game who are overshadowed by larger servers. I laugh every time I hear people say that their isn’t server loyalty. While that may or may not be true, people have created communities that they are proud of across the board. Plus the vocal minority that speaks up on forums only represents a certain percentage of players. Though I suppose since many people I recognize on here are guild leaders that is only partially true.

I’ve said this before: The Kaineng folks I have met in game are universally awesome. Hilarious, good with tactics and relentless. For me personally the pairing has been great.

The thing is there will always be players willing to do kitten near anything to manufacture the experience they want in the game. You will have trolls. You will have community leaders, those who want duels and those who want big fights. I think Anet is currently trying to make changes to satisfy the player base. But its a lot more difficult to change a system already in place.

Another aspect has been rivalry in this game. People have absolutely transferred to different servers to fight specific groups (or to get away from people they see as toxic.)

Healthy rivalry is good, like the kind we used to have when it was the un known “server Silver Scout” player. Unhealthy revenge is bad, but sometimes killing a former teammate repeatidly is more satisfying and less stressful than fighting beside them night after night. The problem now, is most everyone knows who they are fighting because of all the server swapping that’s been going on, so it’s hard to pick personal vendettas.

Fatherbliss.4701:

My experience on other servers has been incredibly positive. I played on Sorrow’s Furnace for awhile with one of my alt accounts. You are right that the play is more strategic. They have to be. And really I would expect that same mindset from any server in the game that is constantly outnumbered. We have some great communities in this game who are overshadowed by larger servers. I laugh every time I hear people say that their isn’t server loyalty. While that may or may not be true, people have created communities that they are proud of across the board.

I’ve said this before: The Kaineng folks I have met in game are universally awesome. Hilarious, good with tactics and relentless. For me personally the pairing has been great.

Right back at ya, Bliss! We do feel fortunate to be paired with TC – and we’ll always find a way to have fun, helped out by new friends and allies. Hoot hoot from Owl Legion!

Fatherbliss.4701:

My experience on other servers has been incredibly positive. I played on Sorrow’s Furnace for awhile with one of my alt accounts. You are right that the play is more strategic. They have to be. And really I would expect that same mindset from any server in the game that is constantly outnumbered. We have some great communities in this game who are overshadowed by larger servers. I laugh every time I hear people say that their isn’t server loyalty. While that may or may not be true, people have created communities that they are proud of across the board. Plus the vocal minority that speaks up on forums only represents a certain percentage of players. Though I suppose since many people I recognize on here are guild leaders that is only partially true.

I’ve said this before: The Kaineng folks I have met in game are universally awesome. Hilarious, good with tactics and relentless. For me personally the pairing has been great.

The thing is there will always be players willing to do kitten near anything to manufacture the experience they want in the game. You will have trolls. You will have community leaders, those who want duels and those who want big fights. I think Anet is currently trying to make changes to satisfy the player base. But its a lot more difficult to change a system already in place.

Another aspect has been rivalry in this game. People have absolutely transferred to different servers to fight specific groups (or to get away from people they see as toxic.)

Excellent post, and very well said! I couldn’t agree more with you on how good the TC/Kaineng pairing has been. Going to T1 was a real culture shock(both good and bad) for many Kaineng players, but the TC players have made it all that more enjoyable with their acceptance and super kind welcoming of their new partners.

My trying the SF/NSP pairing with my other account has just been added gravy. Gives me yet another sort of different wvw mode to experience and relish for times when I want to have a less frantic and crazy time in wvw….lol.

Teon.5168:

Excellent post, and very well said! I couldn’t agree more with you on how good the TC/Kaineng pairing has been. Going to T1 was a real culture shock(both good and bad) for many Kaineng players, but the TC players have made it all that more enjoyable with their acceptance and super kind welcoming of their new partners.

My trying the SF/NSP pairing with my other account has just been added gravy. Gives me yet another sort of different wvw mode to experience and relish for times when I want to have a less frantic and crazy time in wvw….lol.

Yep! For me I keep one of my alt accounts on a server without crazy huge population. Course I do still need to buy HoT for that account too.

I can offer my experience with two different server pairings as well.

Prior to Alpine return and server linking, my guild had transferred off Maguuma to Blackgate for more fights, every tier except tier 1 was just so stale. Fights were great there – it was a lot of fun. Once server linking happened, we continued to have fun until people realized they could play on Blackgate for the low low price of 500 gems by transferring to ET. The server became so stacked that you spent more time in queues than playing the game, so we had to transfer back to our original server of Borlis Pass.

Borlis Pass/Fort Aspenwood has been a lot of fun for roaming and larger group play. I think that is a server link that worked out well to help get better coverage without having to worry about every map being super queued every day. I’m pretty happy with that one, but I have to say that linking the T1 servers really did more harm than good. I suppose if they were trying to get people to transfer off of stacked servers, they succeeded a little bit, but the server is just so insanely stacked its unreal. I wouldn’t be surprised if ET could be a T2 server on its own right now lol.