Guild Wars 2

For those who care about server pride, how important is it that you “force” server pride onto others?

For example, let’s say ANet is thinking of changing WvW so that you have a choice between picking a server (let’s call it “faction”) for WvW, or not picking one at all.

- This makes it easier to measure and balance WvW populations, since you don’t have PvE/sPvP players skewing the server population numbers.

- People who don’t pick a faction, if they enter WvW they will be auto-assigned to any faction (on an hourly basis) to try and balance out population and coverage.

- When you first pick a faction, you get a reward (eg. some free badges, siege.) The lower population the faction, the greater the reward. (T1 gets nothing.)

- It costs gems to switch factions. The greater the population, the higher the cost. (low pop factions can be joined for free.)

—> This is a much more flexible system since it has a pool of uncommitted players who can balance out map populations on an hour-by-hour basis, so hopefully we’ll get fairer matches and coverage all the time. But it means there will be players without “server pride” running around in WvW, mixing with the people who have deliberately chosen a server.

Would you be ok with this? Why/Why not?

Uh, that actually sounds interesting.

Only “problem” might be, that spying on a server becomes a bit more easy.

the most important aspect of wvw is community, if it changes on a daily basis you’ll just get eotm all over again. it sounds like you want to get around free transfers (once at least) and mergers by calling them factions.

There are a lot of players who like eotm style of anonymity but I expect there’s even more players who don’t care about winning or losing as much as playing with their community and friends. That is what server pride is actually about.

I would not be ok with such a change. I love meeting people I know at least from sight in WvW. It somehow feels like a hometown to me, especially after the introduction of megaservers. I would not want to lose that feeling of being a community that has a shared goal.

Another point is that teaching new players the basics of WvW is an investment of time and resources. I don’t think that the veterans of WvW are going to teach new people every hour just to never see them again. That would block off this game mode from new players even more than it is the case now (as far as I observed new players are just overwhelmed and do not know what to do in WvW – Eotm being even worse in this respect as there are even less people explaining stuff, let alone more advanced tactics).

Not wanting randomly assigned people in WvW for me is not only about server pride- as Synosius mentioned earlier it is a community thing.

i will agree with the consernse abowe me and the fact you are saying free transfer to low servers is going to be trouble i still remember the time all tranferes where free and huge and cordinated guilds would transfere down to low servers messing the rankings up and dominating into the server began having troubles and then doing it one more time on repeat and that was not fun atleast not from my point of view

Um, they did this like 3 years ago. Instead of factions it was “servers.” We chose, then they let people re-choose with xfers screwing the system up.

zweiblum.3784:

I love meeting people I know at least from sight in WvW. It somehow feels like a hometown to me, especially after the introduction of megaservers.

That is the perfect way to put it and I agree very much.

This proposal makes no sense. Like it or not server pride is a part of the community, and the server community is what keeps a server alive or lets it die. What is wrong with having people know each other, play together, raid together instead of with a bunch of random auto assigned strangers, there is EoTM already that mirrors your idea, and see how well that crap works over there.

You cannot segregate the so called pve population from the wvw population to get accurate population measures, this is simply technically and practically nonsensical and impossible, even with megaservers. The point of servers/worlds etc, is to provide more room for the player base thats why games decrease the number of servers when the populations shrink. You also cannot assume pve’ers and pvper’s do not do wvw and thus should not be counted as part of some wvw population, this also makes no sense and creates innacurate numbers, many players consider themselves as pvx.

Why would you get rewarded on just picking a faction instead of having to earn it? And auto assigning factions to balance the populations on an hourly basis but also charging gems to switch, that makes no sense either. Why would anyone want to pay gems to switch sides in an hour long match. Auto assigning factions/teams would also make communications and organization extremely difficult so forget any coordinated raiding and fights, it will simply turn into another EoTM style braindead farm.

Server pride drives many people to do wvw because it gives them something to fight for and gives a reason to put in that time investment. Why would anyone spend hours trying to upgrade and spend their gold if not for server pride, it keeps guilds and communities together. My advice to you is to try to become a part of yours, get to know the people, and not think up ways to ruin wvw.

Rieselle.5079:

For those who care about server pride, how important is it that you “force” server pride onto others?

For example, let’s say ANet is thinking of changing WvW so that you have a choice between picking a server (let’s call it “faction”) for WvW, or not picking one at all.

- This makes it easier to measure and balance WvW populations, since you don’t have PvE/sPvP players skewing the server population numbers.

The problem is that you have primarily PvE players that like to WvW occasionally.

Rieselle.5079:

- People who don’t pick a faction, if they enter WvW they will be auto-assigned to any faction (on an hourly basis) to try and balance out population and coverage.

And they find out their friends are on the other server/faction and relay every thing said in team speak to the enemy, er, their friends, who relay that right to the commanders, or perhaps are the commanders.

Rieselle.5079:

- When you first pick a faction, you get a reward (eg. some free badges, siege.) The lower population the faction, the greater the reward. (T1 gets nothing.)

Unless it is a very good reward, it likely may not be a factor at all. In my case for example, I have all the gear I need. Unless it is a precursor, or ones equivalent in gold, It wouldn’t matter to me much. I can only guess how it will effect others.

Rieselle.5079:

- It costs gems to switch factions. The greater the population, the higher the cost. (low pop factions can be joined for free.

I have always thought it made sense to have scaling cost based on the servers tier/population.

Rieselle.5079:

This is a much more flexible system since it has a pool of uncommitted players who can balance out map populations on an hour-by-hour basis, so hopefully we’ll get fairer matches and coverage all the time. But it means there will be players without “server pride” running around in WvW, mixing with the people who have deliberately chosen a server.

I wouldn’t call this “a system” at all. It is a list of thoughts on the matter, but I see where your coming from.

The thing is, you made a new thread to regurgitate a list of ideas that are already being discussed in other threads. I am a little unclear why you needed to make a new thread for yourself, simply to list ideas already mentioned and discussed over and over. Either way, I added my thoughts, other posters thoughts may vary. The flexibility aspect you mention, simply makes it “free of charge” for trolls to feed information, siege troll, or troll burning supplies. At least with the current system, they have to pay in the range of minimum $10 to do so.

WvW is the last bastion for tight-knit communities in this game. Actual communities are a dying breed in MMOs in general these days. They’re being constantly replaced by this incessant need to “merge” everything under the guise of having everyone playing together and more people in the same spot = better. In reality, it doesn’t quite work out that way.

With megaservers/merges/cross-realm zones/whatever, all you end up with are 100 random people playing solo gathering together in the same space briefly to achieve some task. Afterwards, they all leave and go about their separate business. The actual “community” aspect of these gatherings are in reality minimal. The other 99 random players may as well be NPCs. They’re just a passing fixture of the map which you don’t interact with meaningfully 99% of the time. You wouldn’t remember or recognize anyone 5 minutes later since with those systems the players around you change so frequently anyway also (much like the EoTM teams.) It makes the game seem busy, but the actual “community” which should be at the heart of these gatherings is, in reality, non-existent.

When I go into my server’s WvW areas, people recognize me. They know who I am. They know what I sound like. They know my personality and they know which classes I play and what I’m capable of. I also know them and know what they play and how they play it. We know this because we play together on a daily basis week in, week out and have been doing for months… and in some cases years. Sure there’s a natural ebb and flow of people coming in and leaving, but the changes are gradual and the community core is preserved as a result. The new people slowly integrate into the community themselves and become part of it.

I’d wager many people like WvW for this community aspect alone. You don’t have to be some anonymous entity spamming 1 at a Tequatl spawn in some megaserver blob that changes depending on which map you happen to find yourself in: you can actually be someone who is recognized and form friendships with servermates who you consistently play with in good times and in bad, both in-game and within your own server community’s website/forums/TS. That is what makes WvW appealing to many people and what makes the WvW communities as strong as they are.

In theory, it’s probably really easy to “balance” WvW teams. What you suggested would probably be fine from a pure balance POV. But WvW is about much more than this and clinically looking at solutions which purely address balance whilst ignoring the real heart and soul of what WvW is truly about would be a huge mistake and the end of WvW as a meaningful game mode for many who have this deeper appreciation for the community aspect too.

coglin.1867:

Rieselle.5079:

For those who care about server pride, how important is it that you “force” server pride onto others?

For example, let’s say ANet is thinking of changing WvW so that you have a choice between picking a server (let’s call it “faction”) for WvW, or not picking one at all.

I wouldn’t call this “a system” at all. It is a list of thoughts on the matter, but I see where your coming from.

The thing is, you made a new thread to regurgitate a list of ideas that are already being discussed in other threads. I am a little unclear why you needed to make a new thread for yourself, simply to list ideas already mentioned and discussed over and over. Either way, I added my thoughts, other posters thoughts may vary. The flexibility aspect you mention, simply makes it “free of charge” for trolls to feed information, siege troll, or troll burning supplies. At least with the current system, they have to pay in the range of minimum $10 to do so.

Well, see bolded – I did say it was an “example”. My primary purpose for this thread is not to make some sort of feature proposal, but more to address the question in my subject heading – “How important is it to force server pride onto people that might not care about it?”

From the responses in the thread, it seems many people do think it’s important. Even if a PvE/sPvP player has never visited WvW before, and barely even knows their server name due to Megaserver, when they step in into WvW, it seems like server-priders would like that player to locked-in to a WvW server that they never consciously chose.

Remember, when a new player joins GW2, they have no idea which WvW servers are in which tier, where the WvW community is, etc. So their essentially random choice of beginning server will drastically affect their experience and first impressions of WvW. Are we ok with that?

Regarding spying, at the moment it’s still pretty easy to spy with a 2nd account or a guildmate on another server. And you can spy for a whole week. Motivated guilds/servers can pay for spies to server change with each matchup if they really wanted.

With the “system” in the OP, at least:
- Spies cannot choose their server to be auto-allocated to.

- If they exit WvW, they cannot be guaranteed to re-enter the same server (since it allocates based on moment-to-moment populations.)

- So any spying / trolling will at least be accidental and not part of some strategy.

It might also mean greater recruitment opportunities! Underpopulated servers will get a greater influx of unaffiliated randoms, you can talk to them in chat and recruit them to join your faction.

Still, I do take your point – players who are randomly dropped into any server for just a brief period of time would be far more inclined to just mess around and troll etc.

I guess unaffiliated players can be limited in what they can do. Perhaps they can’t build siege or collect/use supply? Perhaps killing them doesn’t grant points to the enemy? They are only warm bodies to fill out fights and join the zerg.

Perhaps they can obtain full capabilities when in a party with a faction player?

Anyways, we probably all know that WvW is a bundle of contradictions. We want fair matches, but we don’t want the same stale matchups. We want to play anytime, but we don’t want coverage to be an unfair advantage. We want to win, but we don’t want people to stack on the winning server. We want to have as many players in our map as we can, but we don’t want our opponents to have more players on the map. We want server pride, but most players have no idea about their WvW server and never consciously chose it.

Tiffany.8576:

WvW is the last bastion for tight-knit communities in this game. Actual communities are a dying breed in MMOs in general these days. They’re being constantly replaced by this incessant need to “merge” everything under the guise of having everyone playing together and more people in the same spot = better. In reality, it doesn’t quite work out that way.

When I go into my server’s WvW areas, people recognize me. They know who I am. They know what I sound like. They know my personality and they know which classes I play and what I’m capable of. I also know them and know what they play and how they play it. We know this because we play together on a daily basis week in, week out and have been doing for months… and in some cases years. Sure there’s a natural ebb and flow of people coming in and leaving, but the changes are gradual and the community core is preserved as a result. The new people slowly integrate into the community themselves and become part of it.

I understand where you’re coming from.

The thing is, I view the fact that GW2 has servers at all, to be an accident of poor technology rather than a gameplay design decision. GW1 was revolutionary in that it didnt have servers or regions at all – play with who you want, whenever you want.

In a market where it’s common to “accidentally” join a different server from your friends (or to have seperate groups of friends on different servers) GW1’s single server was wonderful.

So let’s pretend you’re in a game where there’s no servers (such as GW1, EVE Online, etc). How do get the community feeling that you crave?

The more interesting question is, how is a community feeling formed in the first place? I remember people talking about Everquest, Ultima Online, and other old MMOs, and talking about the communities they experienced there. I guess back then, a server population during a timezone might only be a few hundred people.

It probably all boils down to:
You get the community feeling when you’re constantly (but randomly) exposed to a fixed group of players that’s small enough for you to remember most people.

So in a single-server game (or in a game with multiple servers, but can hold massive amounts of people), I guess the only way to do that is to divide up the players into arbitrary groups. Race/Hometown/Profession etc.

If you have to go back to the Human City to buy your supplies, and visit the Wizards Tower to level up your skills, then even in a single-server game you might rub up against a smaller number of people constantly, and form communities, I guess.

Like this thread very much.

I think new players should somehow be allowed to wander about and find a community they want to be a part of before being forced to "settle down".

I think community is a great thing, and the single best aspect of this game mode.

I also agree that the community does not have to be "server based", but at this stage, to many feathers will be ruffled if this changes. People have grown to used to it.

Sorry but the moment Anet implements something like this I would instantly quit and never return.

I love playing in WvW with the friends I have made on the server I am on, as well as getting to know the enemy. It’s a double edged sword when you know your enemy, and what they do when they think a main pin has left a map. (From all sides.) I like the WvW community I am a part of, and honestly if Anet were to rid the point of a wvw community for each server then I would more or less have no point to come into GW2.

Im already unhappy about the megaservers ruining server communities outside of WvW. Not to mention eating up space on the higher tiered servers by counting all the PvE players on megaservers into the “population”…

Rieselle.5079:

For those who care about server pride, how important is it that you “force” server pride onto others?

How important is it that you beat your wife?

Noone is forcing “server pride” on anyone. Yes, you are required to select a server upon starting the game, but you are not forced to play WvW (there are plenty of things to do in GW2 that are not WvW), and even if you do decide to enter that game mode, you are not required to do anything for the benefit of the server (run around mining ores if you want) or even show loyalty to that server (nothing to stop you from transferring elsewhere).

It seems to me that you’re just trying to define “server pride” as something it is not. To me, server pride means loyalty to one’s server without expecting material benefits.

As for the suggestion itself, it is simply a server merge by another name. And it has been pointed out time and time again that server merges does nothing to resolve the “problem” in the long run, and the effect is no different than what happens now except with the added bonus of kittening off a lot of players for no reason.

One thing I see OP, is that you say “we” a great deal. Such as your reference to what you call stale match ups. I have never heard anyone in my guild, or even on my server mention that even once in all this time. Some folks may see it that way, but you cannot lump everyone together in that manner. I am sure some players feel it is stale, but in my circles, it appears a great many enjoy the rivalry.

roxybudgy.8205:

Rieselle.5079:

For those who care about server pride, how important is it that you “force” server pride onto others?

How important is it that you beat your wife?

Noone is forcing “server pride” on anyone.

There’s been numerous suggestions (some by me) trying to address population & coverage imbalances. My example in the OP, creates a pool of unaffiliated players who can be randomly assigned to fill out gaps in coverage.

People have mentioned problems such as trolls and griefers, but we might be able to solve those by limiting the ability/access of unaffiliated players, etc. As for spying, it’s probably no harder or easier than spying now.

Anyways, the reason for my title is that, such suggestions (along with server merges, etc) are usually met with resistance from people who value “server pride”.

So I gave an example proposal in the OP where players who valued their server community get to keep it, and players who don’t care can stay unaffiliated.

People who argue against this suggestion, therefore would prefer that the concept of “server pride” / fixed communities be forced upon players that otherwise don’t care.

From other people’s comments, I’ve already acknowledged that there’s some value in forcing randoms/new players/PUGs to only meet/see players from their own server, because over time they might start recognising some names, and become more integrated into their community. (whereas a truly random system like my OP would take that away.)
This is a benefit that would have to be weighed against the benefits of improving coverage/population balance, if ANet wants to implement suggestions such as my OP, or server merges, etc.

coglin.1867:

One thing I see OP, is that you say “we” a great deal. Such as your reference to what you call stale match ups. I have never heard anyone in my guild, or even on my server mention that even once in all this time. Some folks may see it that way, but you cannot lump everyone together in that manner. I am sure some players feel it is stale, but in my circles, it appears a great many enjoy the rivalry.

Hah, I can lump anyone I want :P

Like I said, there are many contradictions and opposing forces in the design of WvW. Some players may prefer one end of the spectrum, others might prefer the opposite. Some people are in the middle and torn between both sides.

If I group all GW2 players as “we”, then my statements are perfectly valid :P

Rieselle.5079:

coglin.1867:

One thing I see OP, is that you say “we” a great deal. Such as your reference to what you call stale match ups. I have never heard anyone in my guild, or even on my server mention that even once in all this time. Some folks may see it that way, but you cannot lump everyone together in that manner. I am sure some players feel it is stale, but in my circles, it appears a great many enjoy the rivalry.

Hah, I can lump anyone I want :P

Like I said, there are many contradictions and opposing forces in the design of WvW. Some players may prefer one end of the spectrum, others might prefer the opposite. Some people are in the middle and torn between both sides.

If I group all GW2 players as “we”, then my statements are perfectly valid :P

There is a difference between “lumping” who ever you want and being dishonest. First off, lumping people together is prejudging by definition. Secondly, your being dishonest when you suggest you speak for more then just yourself. What makes it worse, is when it is pointed out, you disregard it.

All guild wars 2 players are not WvW players. I do not agree with some of what you said yourself. Yet you claim you have a right to lump me in with you, and by extension, dishonestly claim to speak for me. If you want an honest discussion with WvW players, you cannot start by being dishonest.

dancingmonkey.4902:

There is a difference between “lumping” who ever you want and being dishonest. First off, lumping people together is prejudging by definition. Secondly, your being dishonest when you suggest you speak for more then just yourself. What makes it worse, is when it is pointed out, you disregard it.

All guild wars 2 players are not WvW players. I do not agree with some of what you said yourself. Yet you claim you have a right to lump me in with you, and by extension, dishonestly claim to speak for me. If you want an honest discussion with WvW players, you cannot start by being dishonest.

I don’t claim to speak for anyone. Just by reading the forums, you can see some players complaining about stale matchups. And the person I replied to was quite happy with their matchup. So a spectrum of opinion is obvious. I don’t see where honesty comes in, when simply summarising opinions heard from others.
Anyways, this is a derail so I’ll try not to reply to this sub-topic anymore. Feel free to have the last word if you want.

This question was asked some 10 years ago by the community in DAoC which also had WvWvW(RvRvR).

Generally, it wasnt met with much happiness but then again it also meant more fights.

It was realm pride that hit DAoC the most rather than merging servers.

So reflecting all this onto gw2, i do not see much harm. Just look at the pseudo wvw AKA eotm.

I don’t have comments on your ideas, but I will answer the question about forcing server pride on others.

Server pride is a way of welcoming people into the community. They see “NSP Pride” spammed in map chat, and want to know what’s going on. They gain the feeling of pride themselves, by being part of it. If it is even possible to “force” pride on someone, it’s something my server sure does not do. Our reputation speaks for itself, and that’s how server pride should be. The pride is a force in itself