Guild Wars 2

It just happens faster in GW2 due to the permission to change “factions” or servers: population imbalance when it comes to PVP.

“If you can’t beat them, join them.”
In other MMOs faction based pvp tends to die people just create characters in the winning faction, it just happens slowly because on some it’s forbidden or have associated costs and then players usually have to start new characters from scratch.

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
Companies would rather allow faction or server switching because they rather not quickly lose a significant portion of the playerbase. So they need to satisfy most players’ desire of being in the winning side.
While an around 50/50 ratio would be enough to keep most players happy, this rate is currently unachieavable with the solutions implemented in MMOs.

I believe the challenge for the next generations of MMOs would be to design a system where PvP won’t be so severely affected by population imbalances.

GW2 has hit the spot regarding sPVP, where teams are formed regardless of “faction”. But WvWvW concept is flawed, and it’s not because of the lack of a third faction, a reason which is often pointed out as the cause of the failure of several MMOs plagued by population imbalance.

1. the game has not even been out 2mo.
2. I remember them saying it will take 3-4mo to gather data to get WvW balanced
3. DAoC was great PVP due to 3 factions.

It’ll be fine and fixed.
Gotta give them time.

Look at the brightside. NO MONTHLY FEES….

I think we should probably wait until they disable free transfers before making a judgment.

We should also tell ANet to disable free transfers.

Umm, nope. Tri-faction is the answer as long as you make scoring based on combat, give outnumbered people buffs and credit for resistance and support server community building which with free transfers is nonextistent aside from big guilds.

I wouldn’t mind having on top of that the opportunity to kill whoever I wish from my server for doing stupid things, but it seems that Anet carebear attitude won’t allow that. I cannot even focus on killing people of my own chosing without getting in trouble for alledged griefing.

At this point the 3 faction system is starting to sound like “cut taxes” in that it never seems to work but people always want it. But I dont think GW2’s current results say anything about 3 factions at all. There are too many other factors and variables at play to say 3 factions doesn’t accomplish its purpose.

Server Transfers
Lack of Reward (motivation)
Same classes/races
Same world
Bots
Population restrictions
AoE restrictions

There are no real mechanics in place to keep players on their given server.

In DAOC sometimes it was the fact that there were no transfers and time spent was significant enough to keep players on their faction/server. Or that they preferred one faction/race/class/setting over the others not available to the other sides. Or that there was reward worth continuing to try for. Or that artificial limitations on populations weren’t in place and not exacerbated by the fact that Bots take up those spots as well. Also Population imbalances were alleviated a lot by organization in which a smaller group could easily destroy a larger unorganized one.

GW2 does not have any of these things and in most cases compound the issues with pop imbalances. This shouldnt reflect on the 3 faction system at all when considering everything else thats done wrong.

Sarrs.4831:

I think we should probably wait until they disable free transfers before making a judgment.

We should also tell ANet to disable free transfers.

I really don’t think disabling free transfers is the answer to this. Players that jump servers because they want to be in the winning side are numerous enough to shift balance. Then they’re followed by those that while they can accept losses, being roflstomped so much is unbearable for them (including me as I am really considering abandoning my server as I get instantly ganked by thieves the moment I step out of my base and I do like WvWvW siege concept). So disabling free transfers would lock these players in the state their servers are at this moment and will most likely quit playing, thus worsening even more the situation.

Its to late. People are already starting to quit because of anets total disregard for WvW in leaving transfers open.

I’m installing panda land as we speak. Our guild of about 50 people are doing the same. Logging on tonight to see 20 people in EB in what used to be an hour que has showed me that they’re just another Bioware.

Best off doing 3 factions ..DAOC and Planet side fricken rocked with 3 faction WvW. untill DAOC made it more carebearish with sieges making them easier to zerg and take keeps in 10-15 min. before they nerfed keeps it would take a hour or 2:))

@Zanther
HAHAHAHA you and your 50 people have fun being Pandas and paying a monthly fee in World of Botters.

You are wrong. Calm down. The sky isn’t falling.

Democracy didn’t work plenty of times in the past, but the United States tried it again. It’s about what goes into it. DAoC was outstanding PvP even back when home realm maps were always 2v1. It was the balance of layout and vast opportunity for party tactics due to the assortment of player abilities.

DAoC worked so well because of an emphasis on balance and feedback loops. One big thing people missed about DAoC that acted as a self-regulating part of PvP gameplay was actually PvE content embedded into PvP areas. Darkness Falls (a PvE/PvP incentive) was outside the main PvP area, but was most effective at splitting population areas. It was a raid area the dominant realm won by owning the most PvP objectives. That is a feedback loop caused by player incentive. It effectively reduced the population to allow the other two realms to win back territory. The larger keeps used in DAoC along with the surrounding terrain also helped to spread out players even during objectives battles. That made highly skilled groups worth playing, rather than zerging up into a “mez ball” just waiting to get AoEd down.

@Columba
Its raining outside, so the sky IS falling.

A three faction system works great in theory. It allows the two losing factions to gang up on the winning faction and act as a balancing system. In practice, this never happens in WvW. Why? Because the scoring mechanics make it easy for those with more points to pick on those with fewer points. Here’s a practical example. Your team could go and attack the team that controls all 3 orbs and has heavily fortified keeps and towers and outnumbers you two to one, or you could attack the guys who have the same number of people as you, with the same stats and does not have heavily fortified keeps. It’s an incredibly easy choice to make. Once one team gains an advantage all teams tend to beat on the team in 3rd simply because they are the easiest to get points out of them. The real culprit is the scoring system that encourages those that are ahead to stay ahead and punishes you for getting behind.

If the system was changed to give an actual advantage to the losing teams, making it harder for both teams to gang up on the losing team you can bet there would be a lot more fair matchups. It would discourage people from going after the underdog and increase the odds of the bottom two servers joining forces to take down the lead server. To this end I think they need to rework the orbs. Instead of having them give a stat buff, which tends to only help the winning team, they need to have the orbs give additional points each score tick. I feel each orb should give an extra 10 points, which would make owning a keep with an orb in it be worth the same as owning Stonemist Castle.

Then it needs to be tougher to take the towers and keeps of the team that is losing. This can be accomplished either by giving the losing team the current orb buff if they fall too far behind, giving buffs to the walls and gates of places they own, or just making their siege weapons do more damage to enemy players. All of those would discourage attacking the team in last place and make it easier to go after the team in 1st place. When it becomes less advantageous to pick on the losing team than it does to attack the team in first place then we will see two losing teams gang up on the winning team.

Enenion,

your text seems incredibly well thought-through and on first read makes perfect sense. I think it’s a great idea to give the losing team a buff to make it easier for them to defend and/or comeback.

Thumbs up!

Give it some time. New things always need to be ironed out.

There was no way for Anet to have WvW fully tested and fleshed out prior to release.

The biggest problem in WvW is the score. Strategic choices are based less on what targets are ideal and more on what targets will get us the biggest point shift before the next tick.

If there was no score, there were no “winners” and “losers” of the matches, the focus would be on the battle. Without the score there would be no bonuses, so you wouldn’t see half the realm-hoppers out there waiting for each match to end to go play for the dominant side.

If there was no score you’d see the action extend past Sunday, where in most match-ups the winner is already decided and everyone starts to lose interest.

My solution to the problem: get rid of the score! Let the fight be about the fight, make all of the rewards come from fighting the enemy factions and not from PvEing keeps with your 24-hour zerg.

PS – Did I mention I hate the score?

3 factions are better than 2 factions.
5 might be better than 3.
Nothing is worse than 2 faction combat, though.

Where GW2 went wrong was the scoreboard. Whereas Planetside had no scoreboard and it was always about the breakout and then beating down whoever was #1 on map coverage, GW2 is more about “holding second place” by beating on 3rd place. In Planetside there was no reason to do that. There was no scoreboard. You went after whoever was closest, which was usually team that owned the most stuff.

The scoreboard broke the 3-team dynamic.

Extra true when the second place team decides there’s no way they can catch up to first, so they “give up” on ever getting first and just focus on making sure 3rd place stays there. The game needs some sort of bonus, or accelerating point totals or something that can enable a 2nd place team to potentially recover 1st place rather than the game being basically over by Tuesday.

2 factions – DUH! Wonder who would be attacking us.

What GW2 has proven is that the best intentions are generally always scuppered and undermined by greed, selfishness. people taking advantage of a situation in the worst way, and a lack of honour – be this as individuals or as a group.

ANet certainly has the option to simply stop server transfers, free or otherwise. They choose to let people play the game rather while they try to fix cross realm dungeoning.

So no, GW2 has not proven that tri-faction does not work. In a gaming community where honor to a server and its community is paramount, things would be fine.

Tri-Faction rocks and DAoC was the 1st to prove it.

Raffie.7865:

1. the game has not even been out 2mo.
2. I remember them saying it will take 3-4mo to gather data to get WvW balanced
3. DAoC was great PVP due to 3 factions.

It’ll be fine and fixed.
Gotta give them time.

Look at the brightside. NO MONTHLY FEES….

So in 6 months when the problem still is here what will you say? Because ive heard the same song and dance from hopeful players in the past 5 years each time a new hyped mmo comes along….

“Its new guys dont worry, it will be fixed just give them time!”

Not a single one of those mmo’s turned around major problems.

Just pointing out what should be obvious to everyone here thats played any other mmos in the past 5 years.

Anet said they would have super advanced anti hack/botting things in place….. uh no they dont, hackers are all over the place same with bots. Faith is good…. blind faith however is a fools faith.

To kind of extend the idea that Enenion put forward, I was thinking maybe a relitve score for taking and holding keeps would perhaps keep people interested in playing and turning the tables. I’m no maths wiz, but should imagin the good folks at Anet (or some of you forum goers) would be able to come up with a scoring system based on your score and the difference of points between the 3 teams, and perhapse give lower scoring worlds a bonus to the things they can take. For instance giving the 3rd placed team a bonus based on score difference for “x” amount of scoring time, then reduce it based on continued scoring to be competitive.

@Namu
I like the game despite a few issues.
Will be playing GW2 for a long time.
its all good. relax.

WvW would be fine if they ended free transfers when they said they would. All of the data they are gathering from WvW is pointless until they stop transfers. Every week servers that lose matches are losing guilds, even some winning servers are losing guilds looking for greener pastures. Until this stops WvW will never be balanced.

3 faction is a stepping stone to FFA which is what pvp games should be.

I wonder what some of those popular servers have to say about their new found popularity?

From a recent thread in this same forums:

Huge Queues that run 24 hours day.
Recent influx of W3 guilds (NA and Asia/Pacific regions)
We win by night capping, were not good at W3
75% of our commanders are useless with good for nothing stratergies (where good at zerging)
Absolutely no coordination
Personally waited 3 hours tonight to get into EB which we owned the entire map for the entire time. That wasnt because were good either, the enemy has given up due to our nightcapping so we have no competition.

Seems all is not well on some of the “server flavors” of the week.

Well, a score may be fine, but the same mechanics that increase score should decrease power, not increase it. Holding an orb should give you more points at the location it’s at, but in return make you weaker, or the other two teams stronger.

Same as holding more resources on the maps. If you control more towers and more keeps your supply lines should be stretched thinner. Upgrading should cost more, they receive less supply per dolyak, or doors or walls should have less health when you start to control more and more places on the map.

Would make it more of a challenge when you think, “well if we try hard to take those last 2 keeps on the map it will increase our supply burden that much more and may not be worth it if we cant hold it, is there another place we can focus our efforts?” Or if you do have the people to capture everything, it at least gives the other teams a chance to take some of it back. Instead of just “Yay we got all 4 maps, 3 orbs, and it’s all 100% upgraded!, The other teams are screwed now, lets go PVE and log in again next week.” Should be an accomplishment to have that kind of control and be a hard fight to keep it.

DirtyDeeds.6075:

I wonder what some of those popular servers have to say about their new found popularity?

From a recent thread in this same forums:

Huge Queues that run 24 hours day.
Recent influx of W3 guilds (NA and Asia/Pacific regions)
We win by night capping, were not good at W3
75% of our commanders are useless with good for nothing stratergies (where good at zerging)
Absolutely no coordination
Personally waited 3 hours tonight to get into EB which we owned the entire map for the entire time. That wasnt because were good either, the enemy has given up due to our nightcapping so we have no competition.

Seems all is not well on some of the “server flavors” of the week.

I’d ignore QQer’s like that. They are few and far between.

If you want a more accurate depiction of what IoJ players think of their server; ask them in game. Most reports I’ve witnessed from people moving to IoJ, as well as IoJ originals; have stated that it’s a very friendly community with a sense of pride and loyalty.

Don’t be fooled by the outspoken minority that are preaching doom and gloom on Janthir.

Enenion.8127:

A three faction system works great in theory. It allows the two losing factions to gang up on the winning faction and act as a balancing system. In practice, this never happens in WvW.

Another problem is lack of practical lines of communication. It’s hard to stage a joint attack against the winning faction when you can’t express your intentions or make any sort of plans with the other losing faction.

Personally, I think it would be great if they added a WvW ‘Commander Chat’ function that came with the Commander Title. A sort of specialized channel where Commanders could plot and scheme with the other faction’s commanders. I think it would add a fun new layer to WvW, what with the possible subterfuge and backstabbing, while also giving more purpose to the Commander title.

On top of other fixes, you know?

As long as there are instant transfers three way realm vs. realm will not function properly.

They need to change transfers to once a month to change the current ebb and flow of populations from once server to another.

Jorm

MikeRocks.9243:

Enenion.8127:

A three faction system works great in theory. It allows the two losing factions to gang up on the winning faction and act as a balancing system. In practice, this never happens in WvW.

Another problem is lack of practical lines of communication. It’s hard to stage a joint attack against the winning faction when you can’t express your intentions or make any sort of plans with the other losing faction.

Personally, I think it would be great if they added a WvW ‘Commander Chat’ function that came with the Commander Title. A sort of specialized channel where Commanders could plot and scheme with the other faction’s commanders. I think it would add a fun new layer to WvW, what with the possible subterfuge and backstabbing, while also giving more purpose to the Commander title.

On top of other fixes, you know?

In addition to that, there should be a way to forge an alliance (at least temporary) between the two loosing factions, so you will not accidentially AoE your allies in battle. The “Forge Alliance” could be made available depending on the scores of the three factions.

I don’t want to see any coded alliance mechanics like you’ve described Kepas. Temporary alliances should be as simple as possible. We should attack the guys with the most advantageous position. We shouldn’t be rubbing shoulders with our enemies, they’re still the bad guys after all, but we can stop pushing into their turf for a while as we all fight off the other bad guys.

Adding mechanics for alliances that result in two opposing factions being, essentially, the same faction is not a good idea because it’s too formal and would upset the triangle of balance.

In closing, being ganged up on is great when you’re winning, but it sucks when you keep getting ganged up on after you’ve lost the lead.

The number of factions is irrelevant.
It’s the game’s mechanics in total which makes or break it.

DAoC wasn’t good because of 3 factions. It was good because of the overall concept of RvR. Siege, keeps, relics, room for solo, group and zergs.
Could have been 2 factions (in effect it often was; because like here you fought both other factions so they might as well have been one), could have been 4 or 5.
RvR worked in DAoC, the number of factions are irrelevant.

Being spawncamped in GW2 it does not matter whether there’s two, three or four factions. Seeing many jump servers, then it does not matter. Repair cost without being able to gain any rewards, factions does not matter.