Guild Wars 2

I think relational population ceilings should be added to each WvW map so a single server cannot have significantly more people than another in each map. For instance, say the lowest population server only has 100 people on a map, maybe the other two servers can only have 150. There could be a ~100 player floor so that servers couldn’t play the system by intentionally cutting off the other servers. This way all the people who flocked to a winning server will be forced to sit in queues or move. I would like it if ANet also made moving to low/medium population servers free so there is no penalty for being apart of the solution. Moving to high population servers could cost a significant amount (~50 USD) to discourage additional stacking. This would also ensure that several large guilds couldn’t stack into a single low population server as they would have to wait weeks before every member could play as other lower population servers would field less players. The server imbalance problems would solve themselves because people will want to play rather than sit on a winning team’s bench. I also think this would shift the focus of WvW from a numbers game to skill as a server with a lower population would be able to remain competitive with one with better coverage. Thoughts?

Agreed
The highest pop in a map should not be more than the two lowest combined.

Agree, but Anet pretty much implied that WvW is a numbers game. “It’s about the world, not the individual” or something along those lines. If you want a skill matchup go sPvp.

WvW is about zerg, who can field more men, and coverage. It’s frustrating because these are out of any individuals control. Not enough players on your server? Too bad, just hope someone bandwagoned to your server.

I like this idea.

Another idea might be to give significant buffs (power/prec/vit/toughness/etc) to servers fielding a lower number of players. The amount of the buff would be dependent on how outnumbered they are.

Yenn.9185:

Agree, but Anet pretty much implied that WvW is a numbers game. “It’s about the world, not the individual” or something along those lines. If you want a skill matchup go sPvp.

WvW is about zerg, who can field more men, and coverage. It’s frustrating because these are out of any individuals control. Not enough players on your server? Too bad, just hope someone bandwagoned to your server.

This may be what ANet will do but I’m just making a suggest on how I would go about fixing the problem.

style.6173:

I like this idea.

Another idea might be to give significant buffs (power/prec/vit/toughness/etc) to servers fielding a lower number of players. The amount of the buff would be dependent on how outnumbered they are.

While this would fix some of the imbalance, I don’t think it would solve the issue of Superservers. People would still stack on servers and beat down the buffs with superior numbers.

They would have to implement a “floor” though – “gaming” your proposal by only sending in an “elite squad” of 5 to artificially cap your opponents at 10 would be rather lame as well.

They have also already said that transfer costs will be determined by Server population (though I doubt at the costs you are suggesting).

Another thing they can do is add Average WvW Population for the week to the Ratings calc – that way the Servers that truly can accomplish more with less will be rewarded.

Rackhir Tanelorn.9123:

They would have to implement a “floor” though – “gaming” your proposal by only sending in an “elite squad” of 5 to artificially cap your opponents at 10 would be rather lame as well.

They have also already said that transfer costs will be determined by Server population (though I doubt at the costs you are suggesting).

Another thing they can do is add Average WvW Population for the week to the Ratings calc – that way the Servers that truly can accomplish more with less will be rewarded.

I agree, a ~100 player floor per map would be reasonable.

*If your server is outmanned in a BL go to another.
*If it’s because your server doesn’t WvW much then transfer to a server that does.

Other people shouldn’t be denied fun because of your server’s laziness/low population. That’s not their fault.

No.

You want equal numbers, go to SPvP.

You stuck on a low pop server, transfer now. You’ve had ample time to move to a high pop server.

Zuer.2814:

*If your server is outmanned in a BL go to another.
*If it’s because your server doesn’t WvW much then transfer to a server that does.

Other people shouldn’t be denied fun because of your server’s laziness/low population. That’s not their fault.

I feel that a similar argument could be used in reverse.

*If your server is capped in a BL, go to another.
*If it’s because your server is inflated with WvW players, transfer to a server that isn’t and become part of the solution rather than the problem.

Other servers shouldn’t be denied fun (not able to compete) because of stacked server populations.

I think they should do something about this or go back to rotating the servers every week. I am tired of going against the same server every week. each week I see that we are going against one server in particular who is always the biggest zerg I have ever seen and I go in and there might be 20 ppl max from my server. The 3rd server, you wont see at all, because of this I am tempted to quit trying to WvW all together. I already know people that have because of this problem and I am not going to switch servers just to be on the winning team and leave my friends behind.

I think the idea of a good WvW game is that it should be about skill and tactics. Not numbers beats all. I was playing a few days ago and we were overun by a massive zerg for 24 hours. Not sure how they got their numbers that high and that consistent. The zerg had the worst tactics I’ve ever seen but they were still winning. I saw them throw down Alpha Siege Gols in the middle of AOE covered choke points so we could easily destroy them. Or build rams against walls. Or get trapped in crevices of our keep under canon fire. It was sad to watch, but they still dominated because of the high numbers. Something wrong there.

Funny that this was started by a guy on a T2 ranked server. If you’re in a T2 server how are you having population problems. Come to BP and complain then. We’re not even the worst off. Also, you’re battling the same servers week after week because you fall into the same category, based on your rating. Once they implement paid transfers and remove the free ones I think you’ll see WvW improve. Fairweather guilds won’t be so quick to head for greener pastures. They’ll stick it out.

Zuer.2814:

Funny that this was started by a guy on a T2 ranked server. If you’re in a T2 server how are you having population problems. Come to BP and complain then. We’re not even the worst off. Also, you’re battling the same servers week after week because you fall into the same category, based on your rating. Once they implement paid transfers and remove the free ones I think you’ll see WvW improve. Fairweather guilds won’t be so quick to head for greener pastures. They’ll stick it out.

I made this post because I believe this would improve the longevity of GW2 WvW and it should have nothing to do with my server. I have been on both sides of the scenario and can attest to it being less fun for all parties for a single server to vastly outnumber others or vice versa.

OutspokenAardvark.9781:

Zuer.2814:

*If your server is outmanned in a BL go to another.
*If it’s because your server doesn’t WvW much then transfer to a server that does.

Other people shouldn’t be denied fun because of your server’s laziness/low population. That’s not their fault.

I feel that a similar argument could be used in reverse.

*If your server is capped in a BL, go to another.
*If it’s because your server is inflated with WvW players, transfer to a server that isn’t and become part of the solution rather than the problem.

Other servers shouldn’t be denied fun (not able to compete) because of stacked server populations.

Very well articulated

OutsspokenAardvark has a good point and good advice.

But only Zuer’s advice actually works in practice.

Taking the high road, doing whats best for the game as a whole, becoming part of the solution etc.. it isn’t what most people do — as such if you want to have even fights for the most part you just have to hop on the bandwagon.

I’m in tier 3 and on every day that isn’t Friday 1-2 borderlands are completely vacant of people from my server. It gets even worse the lower you go. Too many servers, not enough wvw players imo.

In my opinion Anet should drop this whole server pride nonsense. When i bought this game i thought i was buying " Guild "Wars 2 not " Server " Wars 2.

If they really want to fix WvW it basically needs to be scrapped and made into something else… What i have no idea lol. All i know is that for a lot of servers WvW is dull, stale and not much fun. If they could some how get the lower WvW pop servers in with the larger WvW pop servers it would make things a lot better and more fun but that’s just my opinion.

Allow only transfers to the 2nd & 3rd in each tier in the hope of balanced match-ups.
The ranking system is only a tool to find them.

Blix.8021:

I’m in tier 3 and on every day that isn’t Friday 1-2 borderlands are completely vacant of people from my server. It gets even worse the lower you go. Too many servers, not enough wvw players imo.

I agree that there are top many servers. They should probably merge the last two tiers.

fivekiller.1432:

OutsspokenAardvark has a good point and good advice.

But only Zuer’s advice actually works in practice.

Taking the high road, doing whats best for the game as a whole, becoming part of the solution etc.. it isn’t what most people do — as such if you want to have even fights for the most part you just have to hop on the bandwagon.

ANet would be to make the first step here and I believe the player base would (slowly) follow.

OutspokenAardvark.9781:

I agree, a ~100 player floor per map would be reasonable.

reasonable for what tier? 100 player per map is ludicrous in T7 and T8 may as well not even have one

and why merge the bottom servers so ALL WVW can be ZERG BALLS stop it already make the map caps tiered with 8/9 having the lowest

I suppose the tiers could have different floors. I’m not saying ANet should use the arbitrary numbers I spit out as examples. They have the statistics to make a much more informed decision than anyone else could.

Good idea but flawed, here is few reasons why.

In lower tiers its common for one server to have a much lower WvW population, and the other two still do not have a Que. So now your suggesting those other two already low population servers should have to wait in Que, because the one server doesn’t put any effort into getting people into WvW. At this point, your hurting the lower tiers even more so then they already are.

Next you have the people who give up, they were there on reset but for whatever reason they weren’t first place, so they quit for the week, leaving their population smaller. The other two servers get punished for this.

The ranking system, we all know its flawed but how would those lower tiers move up with 50 people only on a map ? It wouldn’t happen they would be stuck in that tier forever.

Now lets look at the free transfers to lower pop servers, hello Kaineng, remember them ? You know the server that has destroyed balance as we know it on their way to the top. This idea, i do not agree with at all, zero, zip, no thankyou.

I don’t think your idea was bad, but there is to many scenario’s that would hurt game play using it. You can not punish servers in a tier because of one servers lack of paticipation.

Do I have a better Idea ?

Not really, I do however think servers like Kain should be jumping multiple tiers based on performance, while other servers should be dropping multiple tiers based on performance. I can’t offer any idea how to gauge this, but I’m sure someone could.

This was not meant to insult. I know I for one would quit WvW if I had to wait in Que with only 50 ppl in WvW based on another servers participation.

Nobody likes being grossly outnumbered but I don’t think the OP is the solution to the problem. I’m pretty sure that a good way to kill WvW would be to prevent motivated people from playing it.

Basing anything on server populations isn’t the answer either, because that doesn’t necessarily correlate to WvW interest or competency. The only real solution, in my opinion, is for Anet to come up with a better ranking system for tiers that responds more quickly to current server dynamics. The Glicko-2 system was never intended for a tiered environment, and it assumes a much more stable level of competency for each entity than currently exists in WvW.

ANet simply needs to fix how they determine matchups. Introducing the equivalent of culling is not the solution to server imbalance.

This would not work because there is too much fluidity in transfers. Last week we played IoJ, and they barely field 10 people on several maps even in busy time periods. Were the other two servers, that did still have healthy populations, then supposed to be locked at only 20 per map too or something? That’s hundreds of people not being able to play the game they paid for in the way they want.

The way to solve it is easy, point scaling. You take objectives when its easy, due to huge number imbalances, you get less points. Harder the objective is to take (more resistance) should be worth more.