I play on the Isle of Janthir server. We’re not horrible at WvWvW. We do occasionally get steamrolled. Ok, lately, it might be more than occasionally. This is where the problem is, I think.
We did not too bad at the beginning. We were at least marginally close for most of the games we didn’t win. As time went on, we started getting decimated. Now, it seems like we’re always going up against servers that roll over us with no problems. I ask myself why, and the only answer i can come up with is “Free Transfers”.
I understand that everybody wants to be on a winning server. I don’t understand the desire to be on a server that has control of the map within an hour or two of restart, pushing the other servers out of every zone. There can’t be much to do after that.
We all understand the Alliances that make up great servers. They work hard to get everybody together, working together, and controlling the map. But that often leads to imbalances in population as the other servers feel the futility of trying to control even a small portion of the map. People start quitting when they realize they can’t win, which is unfortunate.
The other issue is the servers with high “Night time” population (us night time). The population imbalance at night can often swing the score so far onto one server, that you cannot make up the difference during the day. that’s because few servers will control everything during the day, the way some servers can at night. Is this a problem that should be forced onto those “night time” players on the high end servers? yes and no.
It’s not fair to punish them in their point tally. It’s a convoluted system that creates too much confusion, and makes that particular server feel… discriminated against? I’m not sure how to explain that. No players want to be treated differently because they (or their server) is good at WvW.
If the biggest problem in WvW is population imbalance, couldn’t we somehow start “forcing” servers to balance our their populations at a given time by making each borderland/EB have a population ratio based on the lowest pop server? Not a 1:1:1 ratio, but something like 0.7/0.9/1.0 for #1/#2/#3 server? or a max of 1.3 or 1.4 of the lowest pop server? I imagine then that larger guilds that want to concentrate on WvW would transfer servers to ones without large queue times?
As guilds transferred, and the population at particular times (mostly night U.S) evened out amongst servers, wouldn’t WvWvW become more competitive?
I love WvWvW, and would love to see it succeed. As it stands, with so many lopsided fights, it’s certainly not as entertaining as it could be. I much prefer the close fights, where there are great battles raging across all 4 maps. Way more fun than when we steamroll the competition. I like being able to jump into a map and knowing that i can make a difference somewhere. I despise jumping into a map and knowing that at most, I can take a guard out, maybe a supply camp. Only to watch control of it revert right back.
Or maybe make keeps/towers/camps that have been under control by 1 faction for a long period of time automatically give a certain amount of points towards your server score? Much like the bonus xp from mobs that haven’t been killed in a while.
I’m just throwing ideas out there, none of my numbers are concrete, simply placeholders. I don’t do math for stuff like this. This is more of a brainstorming session than anything.
