Guild Wars 2

We have a ton of smart folks on this forum. Let’s open it up for discussion, since without a resolution to bandwaggoning, we are stuck perpetually in Dante’s first circle (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_ ).

I think it’s reasonable to say that most avid fans of WvW would prefer a close matchup each week vs a steamroll. It leads to greater attachment of the game, a sports-esque feeling of contributing to your “team,” win or lose, and engagement that even when you’re not playing, you’re checking the score while at work.

What then do you think will fix the issue of bandwaggoning. No remake of factions, server reset, mergers or linking will resolve issues with this much-beloved game mode until we find a solution.

So how do we do it?

My thoughts are you raise the cost of transfers to $50 real money, not gems, and then hard cap all servers at X. Once X is reached, a server is closed until someone transfers off. No exceptions (yes, even if only half your guild managed to transfer). Those over the X amount are removed from the server and given the choice of other servers. Account history/seniority determines the cut off.

Want to be in Tier 1 (not that that matters anymore, but perhaps this will show others)? Recruit and power your way up. Of course the glicko will have to be made more responsive, so that a strong push yields rewards.

Any other ideas?

Because this is the core of the problem.

The next expansion could introduce a trial system where the conviction of any players who been accused of bandwagonning would be sentenced to Obsidian Sanctum and not allowed on Borderlands or the Eternal Battlegrounds.

$50 is very absurd. 20$ is even a bit much and is the current gate.

The only real way to stop it is, to make it too pricey to change. A lot of people that bandwagon are in for the ktrain/easy bags. If you make the cost of transfer higher than the ktrain rewards, then you bleed out the band-wagoners

This is why people wanted frequent relinks, because it would balance out the populations more often, and raise the costs to jump frequently substantially(goes from 250g to 500g a month). Making it not cost effective to bandwagon, but obtainable to join a server that has friends on it.

The whole limit X dealio is problematic because people come and go. The active player base rises and falls, even in tier 1. You could be X limit and then have a fall off in interest leaving a server decimated because it cannot get new blood. In the same note a patch could stir up interest and cause a surge in players. If you tie it to the active base, then you could have servers go dark or to sleep as some people put it to gain more players.

It is not an easy problem to solve, because people look to game the system.

Do we have bandwaggoning on EU? (genuine question) I know it has been a huge problem on NA where things are differently.

Jana.6831:

Do we have bandwaggoning on EU? (genuine question) I know it has been a huge problem on NA where things are differently.

Yeah, we’ve been infected for the past six months.

1) scrap wvw in its current form.
2) make it a hotjoin 3 faction map not based on server, can only join the team that has the least players, teams of upto 5 will que same side.
3) forced player reassignment if a team becomes -5 population, volunteer rewards. Teams that qued kitten will be moved together if calculator dertermines their current side can lose 5 and enemy team needs those 5.
4) use ebg map as is.
5) who ever caps stonemist wins.
6)close map 60min after victory or if all players have left.
7) 50 players per team.
8) que for map but at 30 a new map will open (previous map locks) and places them there.
9) sorry blob guilds.

People don’t like losing and certainly not from Friday night, through the next 7days to Friday night again. The type of player who bandwagons will never be discouraged no matter how many stipulations you place on them.
People who don’t care about ppt play wvw because of being able to fine tune their gear/build, random open world format encounters and guild wars combat gameplay.

Eval.2371:

$50 is very absurd. 20$ is even a bit much and is the current gate.

The only real way to stop it is, to make it too pricey to change.

Then what’s the right price?

Jayne.9251:

Jana.6831:

Do we have bandwaggoning on EU? (genuine question) I know it has been a huge problem on NA where things are differently.

Yeah, we’ve been infected for the past six months.

Then play worse, Piken!
I get the problem. My first server partly died due of it – too many strangers who think they knew it all.. No easy solution, I guess, but I’ll think some more about it.
Do you still have any gvg guilds left? Ash is still on Deso, right?

Justine.6351:

1) scrap wvw in its current form.
2) make it a hotjoin 3 faction map not based on server, can only join the team that has the least players, teams of upto 5 will que same side.
3) forced player reassignment if a team becomes -5 population, volunteer rewards. Teams that qued kitten will be moved together if calculator dertermines their current side can lose 5 and enemy team needs those 5.
4) use ebg map as is.
5) who ever caps stonemist wins.
6)close map 60min after victory or if all players have left.
7) 50 players per team.
8) que for map but at 30 a new map will open (previous map locks) and places them there.
9) sorry blob guilds.

People don’t like losing and certainly not from Friday night, through the next 7days to Friday night again. The type of player who bandwagons will never be discouraged no matter how many stipulations you place on them.
People who don’t care about ppt play wvw because of being able to fine tune their gear/build, random open world format encounters and guild wars combat gameplay.

This sounds like EoTM.

There’s a reason why folks prefer WvW to EoTM.

Not trying to discourage discourse, I think it’s an important issue that needs to be addressed, but hotjoin would erode the whole value of “team” and ultimately the reason why many play WvW vs PvP/EoTM.

Jayne.9251:

Recruit and power your way up.
…
Because this is the core of the problem.

That is pretty much it. Servers stacking their way up the tiers is the problem. And it isn’t individuals moving, but guilds. Tie guilds to a single server. If you move a guild, start all over in building a guild hall and gaining advancements. And make transfers cash only as you suggested, so trading stacks of ectos for guilds stops.

Thelgar.7214:

Tie guilds to a single server. If you move a guild, start all over in building a guild hall and gaining advancements. And make transfers cash only as you suggested, so trading stacks of ectos for guilds stops.

That is a pretty smart approach actually

Thelgar.7214:

Jayne.9251:

Recruit and power your way up.
…
Because this is the core of the problem.

That is pretty much it. Servers stacking their way up the tiers is the problem. And it isn’t individuals moving, but guilds. Tie guilds to a single server. If you move a guild, start all over in building a guild hall and gaining advancements. And make transfers cash only as you suggested, so trading stacks of ectos for guilds stops.

Pretty sure that’d benefit the game and ANet.

Jayne.9251:

Justine.6351:

1) scrap wvw in its current form.
2) make it a hotjoin 3 faction map not based on server, can only join the team that has the least players, teams of upto 5 will que same side.
3) forced player reassignment if a team becomes -5 population, volunteer rewards. Teams that qued kitten will be moved together if calculator dertermines their current side can lose 5 and enemy team needs those 5.
4) use ebg map as is.
5) who ever caps stonemist wins.
6)close map 60min after victory or if all players have left.
7) 50 players per team.
8) que for map but at 30 a new map will open (previous map locks) and places them there.
9) sorry blob guilds.

People don’t like losing and certainly not from Friday night, through the next 7days to Friday night again. The type of player who bandwagons will never be discouraged no matter how many stipulations you place on them.
People who don’t care about ppt play wvw because of being able to fine tune their gear/build, random open world format encounters and guild wars combat gameplay.

This sounds like EoTM.

There’s a reason why folks prefer WvW to EoTM.

Not trying to discourage discourse, I think it’s an important issue that needs to be addressed, but hotjoin would erode the whole value of “team” and ultimately the reason why many play WvW vs PvP/EoTM.

eotm is based on server color.

As for teams, you can que upto 5. What does that mean for large guilds? It means you could potentially be squaring off against your own server mates or even your own guild members. Who knows? WvW suffers from not enough gene pool. There needs to be a more varied composition from hour to hour to keep competition from growing stale after the 2nd night of rolling over the same uncoordinated enemies. Would also give people, playing at bad times for their server, an opportunity to be playing with players who can show how its done.

Jayne.9251:

We have a ton of smart folks on this forum. Let’s open it up for discussion, since without a resolution to bandwaggoning, we are stuck perpetually in Dante’s first circle (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_ ).

I think it’s reasonable to say that most avid fans of WvW would prefer a close matchup each week vs a steamroll. It leads to greater attachment of the game, a sports-esque feeling of contributing to your “team,” win or lose, and engagement that even when you’re not playing, you’re checking the score while at work.

What then do you think will fix the issue of bandwaggoning. No remake of factions, server reset, mergers or linking will resolve issues with this much-beloved game mode until we find a solution.

So how do we do it?

My thoughts are you raise the cost of transfers to $50 real money, not gems, and then hard cap all servers at X. Once X is reached, a server is closed until someone transfers off. No exceptions (yes, even if only half your guild managed to transfer). Those over the X amount are removed from the server and given the choice of other servers. Account history/seniority determines the cut off.

Want to be in Tier 1 (not that that matters anymore, but perhaps this will show others)? Recruit and power your way up. Of course the glicko will have to be made more responsive, so that a strong push yields rewards.

Any other ideas?

Because this is the core of the problem.

Sure, let’s use financial “punishment” on those looking for a better wvw experience…

The players are not responsible for the shaky state wvw is in… or the low development investment over the years that drove away players… or the lack of decent reward incentives to drive up interest and retention… but your first thought is to “charge the players” who already support the game?

Stop playing and find a new hobby.

Dump everyone into one population pool and set to pve mode.
Allow guilds to go to war with other guilds, guild leaders can /guildwar guildname, it will automatically flag both guilds as enemies.
You can flag multiple guilds, you can only hurt players from those guilds.
Individual players can also do /duel to other players, you will be permanently flagged to that person.
Once set you cannot reverse these choices.
Everyone else who doesn’t want to use those commands can sit on a wall and spectate.
“But then who wins?” No one, there’s no point system, there’s no glicko, there’s no servers. You play to take over structures for bonuses, capture 3 keeps and get a teddy bear backpack, whatever the hell for all I care.

There, bandwaggoning countered….. XD

On a more serious note, I barely want to pay $50 for an expansion that has $30 worth of content, sure as heck wouldn’t pay $50 to transfer. Also… free accounts.

People move for one of these reasons, they want to win, they’re bored and want different opponents or allies, they want to get to more populated servers to find more interesting wvw experiences.

Bandwaggoning isn’t the only thing that brought the game to it’s current state, having glicko walls and same lopsided matches for months at a time, chased players to servers they thought would be a better experience. It’s still going on to this day and players are still fleeing to the higher tiers or leaving. Not to mention the boring stale ppt scoring system on the same maps we’ve had to play for 4 years. GvG guilds have given up as anet will not help cater to their game play.

Guilds stuck in mid-low tier servers that had no way to get to the top tiers to face guilds up there because their server wasn’t good enough for coverage to ppt higher, had no choice but to move up. Asking someone to pay $50 to transfer is as good as asking them to go buy another game.

• Players are moving around because their server isn’t progressing.
• Much of this is down to the ratings/ladder/scoring system.
• BUT not every server CAN progress.

So… what is acceptable failure for guilds that doesn’t make them want to move to a higher tier for a better experience? Does that depend on individual taste?

Generally speaking, bandwagoners are all bad players that can’t fight for kitten. Wipe them repeatedly and they go bandwagon somewhere else

Why are you worried by " bandwaggoners " when there are no servers that can queue 4 maps even at reset (Eu) . Most of T1 servers got arround 2 active commanders at prime time , and 1 map jump for the rest of 20 hours.
that beeing saiyed , wvw need more active players, not force the active ones to play on certain servers.

There is no resolution to bandwaggoners……a game company can control/manage it somewhat, but as long as real people play wvw, and those real people have money…in game or otherwise, it can never be solved.

Rayya.2591:

Why are you worried by " bandwaggoners " when there are no servers that can queue 4 maps even at reset (Eu) . Most of T1 servers got arround 2 active commanders at prime time , and 1 map jump for the rest of 20 hours.
that beeing saiyed , wvw need more active players, not force the active ones to play on certain servers.

Agreed. If you try to restrict people too much, they’ll just leave and play another game.

No one cares about server pride any more.

All WvW players and WvW guilds want now are fights.

You get more fights in the top tier servers.

So they are moving up to those servers.

Simply put it’s another nail in the coffin of WvW.

Buy Some Apples.6390:

No one cares about server pride any more.

All WvW players and WvW guilds want now are fights.

You get more fights in the top tier servers.

So they are moving up to those servers.

Simply put it’s another nail in the coffin of WvW.

FA and DB seem to be different IME. Not that people don’t like to fight, and not that there aren’t people who just want to fight. But both have people that are trying to win the match rather than uniblob against the competing servers in the middle of an open field for no reason. I know there is server pride on FA. It might not be server pride on DB, but it feels like it.

Most serious wvwers left want to fight. There are still those like mentioned above that want to ppt and win the match, even though at this stage winning means nothing but two extra floaty chests. The actual prize for winning needs to be significant to actual get people trying to win on most servers.

But those floating chests obviously prove too much for some people and they have to bandwagon to the winning servers.

In all seriousness though, it saddens me that server pride is dead, I’ve never moved servers and don’t ever plan to but I know most don’t care. It’s a really tough problem to fix. Server moves were a new concept to me when starting this game as my old mmo you chose a server and that was it. So everyone knew everyone and the community was great. After I’d say 5-6 years yes population declined so they merged servers into permanent pairs which then allowed more years of fun. But it would be just a band aid fix in a game like this. Plus if they were to take away transfers having offered them in the past that would just cause anarchy.

Jana.6831:

Then play worse, Piken!
I get the problem. My first server partly died due of it – too many strangers who think they knew it all.. No easy solution, I guess, but I’ll think some more about it.
Do you still have any gvg guilds left? Ash is still on Deso, right?

Piken is more active than most servers below it, and the rest is national servers, your prolly better off in T1/2 until they relink. At least there’s fights during prime, just not many queues, apart from EB pugs and anyone who bothers tagging and the rest of the day if people tag, otherwise it’s pvd and ktraining.

@OP:

Agreed that Band-wagoning is the core of the problem, especially in the “fun” part of the game. You want to run around and find roughly same amount of people to fight from all sides at as many times as possible during the day. That is when the most players generally find it fun.

Unfortunately it seems these BW’s doesn’t like this type of fun, and find more fun in karma-train and PvD or something, possibly also running over lone roamers with 40 players and shouting about growing chest-hair.

Anyway, I think that the game should reward less, the more you rely on others for the job. Aka, divide the rewards on the amount of players around you. This would gut the ones that BW’s for the rewards, reward-tracks, karma-train etc. And rewarding people to split up into smaller groups and take things for yourself. It would sort of be a way to teach players to be more independent, and risk vs reward, to find a “size” that works for you.

Never going to happen though, because of ANet game design philosophy. Also, there are probably a dozen other problems with this that I can’t think of right now, that I’m going to get peppered for.

But basically, find their motivation to BW, and gut it.

The entire idea of punishing people into submission with money/gems is flawed. Thats not how you retain a population. Thats not how you get a happy community.

Anet already have the solution – server links. Slap together multiple groups for 3 faction warfare without being crippled by glicko rankings.

Once we unhook servers from tiered matchmaking, server bandwagoning is solved by design instead of the spiked whip.

Encouraging people to stick with their servers by giving loyalty bonuses the longer you are on that server wouldnt hurt either.

CrimsonNeonite.1048:

Piken is more active than most servers below it, and the rest is national servers, your prolly better off in T1/2 until they relink. At least there’s fights during prime, just not many queues, apart from EB pugs and anyone who bothers tagging and the rest of the day if people tag, otherwise it’s pvd and ktraining.

I’m a bit uncertain what you want to tell me.
1) Piken is T1
2) Deso is T1 and an international server
3) I don’t want to transfer
4) I have been to Piken briefly
5) Lower tiers on EU aren’t dead
6) Piken is nice but not that special, in fact no one can be special nowadays
7) Bandwagoning can become a problem – that’s why I wrote here.

Bangwagoning is real. I have in recent weeks seen a big influx of people to Desolation + Ring of Surmia. I am quite certain that the other top tier servers in EU have experienced in the same. I don’t think most of the players have actually transferred to Desolation, but instead went to RoS, as the transfer costs are cheaper. One way to fix this problem is to use the highest populated server costs for all linked servers. Now it is simply too cheap to transfer to EU rank #1 server. Yet, I do NOT think it is good idea to make transfers cost more than 1500 gems.

I know all want even match ups. We also want the same and I sometimes we intentionally let people to capture our tier 3 Stonemist Castle or keep just to trigger some good fights. If you oppress enemies too much, they might just rage quit and then there is less fun for all.

What people don’t realize is the importance of having decent and good commanders at all hours. Desolation is very good server for this. We almost always have a PuG commander online, 24h7. Most of my fights occur against enemy of equal force or bigger group or then just small roaming groups or solor roamers, but I see that many enemies are not organized at all.

Couple of good PuG commanders who tag up also outside prime time can make a big difference in score. I consider myself only as a mediocre commander. I have never managed to gather full 50 player squad, I usually only have 10 people in my squad, generally 25-35 is good number for me. I mostly play ranged character, without any stability, evades, blocks or invulnerability, so I need to play hit & run to not to die myself, but I can push hard if needed. Yet, I often see equal sized enemy groups wipe. Maybe it is better PuG quality or then their commander is just even worse than me?!

Yesterday evening prime time when I tagged up at EBG for 2 hours I saw our EBG tick go up and same when I was later tagged up at borderlands at night time (yes, we did night capping). So commanders clearly make a difference when it comes to points per tick. SOme commanders value points less than others.

So you need to take into account: how your commanders play, what kind of PuG commanders you have.

Deniara Devious.3948:

One way to fix this problem is to use the highest populated server costs for all linked servers.

Free accounts start out on the low populated servers. So you can just set up another free account and delete it until you are on the server you want (I’m not saying that I know someone who does this all the time).
Even if they transfer their accounts to the linked server because of the lower costs they will have to transfer to the next linked server a few weeks afterwards if their goal is to stay on the “big” server. So actually what you proposed is already there – it costs them a lot.

The root cause of bandwaggoning is man-power rules everything in WvW.

There is only one way to stop bandwaggoning: Make quality more important than quantity, e.g.:

• at every tick, divide the ppt of a server by the man-minutes people of that server spend in WvW
• at every fight: count the number of people in the area, kill-score is no longer just enemies killed, but enemies killed/friends there.
• anti-blobbing: e.g. everyone in the area of a squad, but not in the squad largely reduces his stats and that of everyone else by a small amount or every friend counts against AoE limit (if you AoE an area with 5 friends, the enemy cannot be hit by it), …
• …

Then bandwaggoning will have the following effect: The more come the worser will be the result and the calls for closed alliances will increase.

Dayra.7405:

The root cause of bandwaggoning is man-power rules everything in WvW.

You’re right and I’d love that to change buuut
I have been on IoJ, 2,5 years ago – we ranked up from 16 or 17 to 9 within 2 or 3 months. And that attracted more bandwagoners than we could handle.

ETA: If numbers weren’t that important anymore we’d see an influx on lower servers, because “zerg busting guilds” would try to make a name for themselves. The problem with that is that it’d still need good/very good commanders and those are rare. So maybe bandwagoning will be a problem, no matter what.

Dayra.7405:

The root cause of bandwaggoning is man-power rules everything in WvW.

This is WvW – the intent is massive groups fighting other massive groups. It’s not roaming, it’s not havoc – it’s large group versus large group.

Bandwagons happen because people get tired of being in very uneven matches for months at a time or they want more action. The only way to counter this is to spread the population out. It’s been seen that players won’t do it on their own.

The only solution (abet a very unpopular one) is to put everyone into a pool and Anet allocates to the severs. No transfers allowed. Then, every few months, everyone goes back into the pool and gets re-allocated to smooth out the populations.

Jana.6831:

CrimsonNeonite.1048:

Piken is more active than most servers below it, and the rest is national servers, your prolly better off in T1/2 until they relink. At least there’s fights during prime, just not many queues, apart from EB pugs and anyone who bothers tagging and the rest of the day if people tag, otherwise it’s pvd and ktraining.

I’m a bit uncertain what you want to tell me.
1) Piken is T1
2) Deso is T1 and an international server
3) I don’t want to transfer
4) I have been to Piken briefly
5) Lower tiers on EU aren’t dead
6) Piken is nice but not that special, in fact no one can be special nowadays
7) Bandwagoning can become a problem – that’s why I wrote here.

They don’t belong below T1 basically, yeah, maybe T2 if they try, I don’t think many can really ‘challenge’ them below where they are, fight wise and ppt wise, national Servers are boring most of the time too.

I’ve heard AG is dying though, means people moving elsewhere, they can move RoS because it’s 500 gems only.

atticus.5284:

The only solution (abet a very unpopular one) is to put everyone servers into a pool and Anet allocates to the severs factions. No transfers allowed. Then, every few months, everyone servers goes back into the pool and gets re-allocated to smooth out the populations factions.

Fixed, while maintaining server communities. The size of the server become irrelevant.

From reading others suggestions and with my own thinking i believe there are a few possible realistic things can be done to help with bandwaggoning:

1. Transfer costs to linked worlds must be based on either the host worlds population or the tier
2. Full/High etc status must be based on the combined population of the link
3. Matchmaking system should produce more variety/easier movement thus helping to prevent one server from dominating a tier

Also, another problem equal or greater to bandwaggoning is fairweathers. And sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. When a server starts dominating more people appear; some of them are bandwaggoners, some are fairweathers. My #3 solution would help with fairweathers too.

atticus.5284:

Dayra.7405:

The root cause of bandwaggoning is man-power rules everything in WvW.

This is WvW – the intent is massive groups fighting other massive groups. It’s not roaming, it’s not havoc – it’s large group versus large group.

That’s fine and that’s not what I was talking about. I like 50vs50, if ANet-servers would be able to do it without laag, I would like 100vs100 even more

BUT I do not like 60vs30 and that more people guarantees you the victory, completely irrelevant how good or bad they are, it just need to be more than the others.

And this more people than the others rules is the cause of bandwaggoning and has nothing to do with massive group fights vs small scale.

If you want a cost function (it only slows down band-waggoning, it doesn’t hinder it), make it to cost time not money, e.g.: World-EXP is World bound. Each time you transfer you reset WEXP to 0.

Further possibilities are:

• commanders are gone on transfer
• BoH are gone on transfer
• you need to make X-WEXp ranks in EotM on the new world before you are allowed to enter WvW
• all wvw related guild hall builds are gone on transfer
• …

If you want to enter a highly populated server an other person with the same WvW activity has to leave the server and has to enter your old server.

All the bandwaggoners will make their server go to T1. The way to counter? Don’t be on a T1 server. Join one that has been T3 or T2 at the most. Blobbing isn’t fun and neither is the lag or lame comments coming from people hiding in 50+ man zergs.

Blackarps.1974:

All the bandwaggoners will make their server go to T1. The way to counter? Don’t be on a T1 server. Join one that has been T3 or T2 at the most. Blobbing isn’t fun and neither is the lag or lame comments coming from people hiding in 50+ man zergs.

That was a perfect strategy for NA as long as T1 was Glicko separated from the rest, but now it isn’t any longer, so they break out to run over T2/3 (currently in EU even rank 10 got a T1 server) as well.

Even tier 1 servers don’t have 24/7 all-maps-full coverage and commander presence.

Since coverage and commander presence are so important, it seems that these need to be factored into Arenanet’s changes for WvW. Thus far they have been extremely reluctant to touch these factors and I think we can all understand why. How do you think they should do this?

Ban wagons…:)

Sylvyn.4750:

Ban wagons…:)

Cheers! And hopes this doesn’t get deleted by a humorless mod…

Someone want to log into EBG on server 1 and their were already 50 people in EBG.
MapQueue = ((TotalMatchPeopleLoggedIn / ( servers + maps)) + offset. we will say the offset is 20.

Server 1 has 90 across all maps
Server 2 has 40 across all maps
Server 3 has 80 across all maps
MapQueue = (210/(number of servers + number of maps))
MapQueue = (210/7) + offset
MapQueue = 30+20
MapQueue = 50

The would be in the first spot in queue to join when someone left.

So the other two servers would stand a chance with map hopping because the other two servers would be forced to spread out their populations to the other maps in real-time because they would be forced to do so via map queue. Thus bandwagon servers would be punished and it would help the other two servers.

In response to the commander coverage, commander reward path for a commander having 20+ people in his squad capping and defending objectives.

Bandwagoning is not the core of the problem. Linking was designed to boost low-pop servers.

If no one wants to get into a low-pop server, it will remain low-pop. The solution is first, to close down low-pop servers and THEN go from there. And then things get more competitive.

And raising the xfer fee to $50 isn’t going to do a thing. If a guild wants to move badly enough they can farm/make multiple legendary weapons, sell them, get gems and move.

And at the end of the day, if the option to transfer is taken away entirely, the game mode will implode with most of the vets moving on to other games.

There is only 1 method to stop it and the community would be outraged.

Delete all server names, make everyone choose between 9 servers, lock the server selection once they get to a certain population forcing people to go to the other 8, keep locking them until populations are relatively close. When it’s all done, do not allow transfers ever again.

That is the only real way to stop it.

Edit: Before anyone freaks out, I am not suggesting this happens, I’m not suggesting this is a good idea, I’m only pointing out that this is the only true way to not only stop bandwagoning but also fix the damage done.

Nuzt.7894:

There is only 1 method to stop it and the community would be outraged.

Delete all server names, make everyone choose between 9 servers, lock the server selection once they get to a certain population forcing people to go to the other 8, keep locking them until populations are relatively close. When it’s all done, do not allow transfers ever again.

And what if x players of server y decide to have a break, if x players of server z quit and so on. You can’t solve population issues by blocking transfers. I would have quit altogether had I been forced to stay on any server I didn’t want to be on anymore. We could replace players who quit the game with npcs though.

There were some good “solutions” here. Locking guild upgrades to the server the guild was created on would be one – but after a while each guild would have multiple fully upgraded guilds on several servers, but then again most guilds have a rather short lifespan. The other thing is, make skill count again, that should happen anyway, in my opinion.
But I have to add that I’m glad one guild left us. I still kind of like them but they were just too huge and blobbed/blocked everything. And no one was allowed to run with them.

Jana.6831:

Nuzt.7894:

There is only 1 method to stop it and the community would be outraged.

Delete all server names, make everyone choose between 9 servers, lock the server selection once they get to a certain population forcing people to go to the other 8, keep locking them until populations are relatively close. When it’s all done, do not allow transfers ever again.

And what if x players of server y decide to have a break, if x players of server z quit and so on. You can’t solve population issues by blocking transfers. I would have quit altogether had I been forced to stay on any server I didn’t want to be on anymore. We could replace players who quit the game with npcs though.

There were some good “solutions” here. Locking guild upgrades to the server the guild was created on would be one – but after a while each guild would have multiple fully upgraded guilds on several servers, but then again most guilds have a rather short lifespan. The other thing is, make skill count again, that should happen anyway, in my opinion.
But I have to add that I’m glad one guild left us. I still kind of like them but they were just too huge and blobbed/blocked everything. And no one was allowed to run with them.

Did you just decide not to read the last thing I typed ?