Guild Wars 2

Am I the only one who doesn’t think closing the xfers will stop this crap? People have more money than sense — just look at the legendary weapons popping up everywhere. Trust me, after seeing so many people jump to JQ I want them to go away as well, but to think ‘this will fix everything’ is off the mark. It may fix one thing; WvW will remain a bit busted after. People will always flock to the number one server. If they have to pay gems to do this, what makes you think they won’t?

As for the rest: Not fussed on removing downed; when I’m ‘downed’ it’s usually only a few seconds before someone has stuck a flag in my face.

Siege at spawns… Don’t care either way. Spawn camping is pretty lame, and I don’t generally partake in it. If the map is to the point where we can spawn camp, there’s nothing to do and it’s time to find something else to do. That said, something similar to the siege masters around Kourna in gw1 (if you got close enough to them, you’d eat a ‘catapult’ like attack) would work.

Supply inside… Eh. How would that even work? Magically refilling supply? Dolyaks that couldn’t be killed coming from… where? I want to say that this should be tied to outmanned, if it were to exist. If you’re not outmanned on a map, you should be able to get supply from anywhere with a little effort.

If a transfer costs about £20 in gems then yes it would dramatically reduce the number of people who keep monkey-hopping their way to the winning team time and again.

Currently Gandara is up against Ring of Fire and Underworld, because we’re in the lead we’ve had an influx of new commanders, guilds and players. The commanders coming across are a joke, they’re much worse than our natives and many of the players are not jelling with the existing community well either so we’ve got some social problems :I

griffdog.3927:

Mangarrage,

You have too narrow a view. Think bigger picture. Think cause and effect. Think snowballing. This is purely psychological.

Consider Server A,B,C

Server A has a score of 150,000 and has +400 / tick
Server B has a score of 60,000 and has +175 / tick
Server C has a score of 30,000 and has +120 / tick

Think about it from the perspective of a casual player (not one of us who login regardless) from server B or C during this time. If you see the above server scores what is your motivation to join? You’re getting destroyed already so you’re not going to join. If each casual player thinks this, than NONE of them join. If there were 30 of these casual players on at this time, which is a quite modest figure, they could be the difference between forming a big enough group to tackle some of the bigger objectives and not. So the downward spiral continues.

I know why people don’t play but you arent understanding what I am saying with no scores shown and no ticks being shown if a person logs in and sees a map dominated they still wont play, so showing the score and not showing it won’t make a difference

Scores also assist in stragedy if you need to make up ground on green you have to take on green. No score you just flail about and what at the end of the week everyone holds their breathe to see how they did?

Seems like you want to play kids little league baseball “where everyone has fun and everyone is a winner” not WvW
I play to win, to beat the servers I play. I play to get #1 rank. I play to maintain #1 rank when obtained.

And according to the rate and destination of all these transfers they transfer to win

Good points, Man.

However, I think they would play even with a majority of the map dominated by one team. As long as they cannot see that there is no hope of ever coming back to win people will play. I’ve logged in to see a map completely flipped in > 2 hours before. If one team completely controls the map they can’t hold all the points indefinitely. You just can’t. The ONLY way each point can be held by one server is if no one even attempts to join from the other two, and that’s where the score causes such a large issue.

I also think like you. I play to win and to defeat the other server. I join WvW regardless of the score. I’m not talking about guys like me and you. I’m not talking about anyone on this forum. I’m talking about the other 99% of the GW2 population. The casuals. The players who will make or break the success of WvW. We, as a WvW focused community here need to think outside the box a bit and think about what’s best for the game as a whole, not what we want for ourselves.

Unfortunately we are facing the human condition here. People want to play and have fun. People want to think they are making a difference or can make a difference. The snowballing score completely destroys this notion.

And you are right players transfer to the side with the highest score. But, they do not transfer to the side that controls the most territory at any point in time. That is very fluid. And I’m confident it would be much more fluid if no score was present. I also advocate that server transfers should come with some baggage, like no WvW for the current and next matchup ect.. but that’s for another topic altogether.

In a perfect world, where we were all like minded, yes I would advocate to keep the score. As you say, it causes certain strategies to come into play based on time remaining and score to attain. But, alas that is not our situation. And we’re finding this out one blowout at a time.

Removing the score is the lesser of the two evils, imo.

I’m on Maguuma, and really only recently got involved in WvWvW… I don’t know if this makes any difference to the conversation, but when I log in and see we are getting totally destroyed (similar numbers to those being tossed around in here), it gets me more fired up to join and try and make a difference. There comes a point when you know the war may be lost, but that doesn’t mean you can’t lose with pride.. I’d rather die trying than not try at all. You’re still gonna get individual points either way and at the very least you’re giving the server a more accurate read on scoring. If people simply don’t join WvWvW because they don’t want to lose.. Then they don’t deserve to join WvWvW at all. The fact is, a lot of people who are serious about WvWvW will play win or lose.

If you were ever involved in sports did you give up because the opponent had a big lead? No. A true competitor fights to the end. If someone can be demoralized by looking at numbers like that.. They’ll never be a winner anyhow. The casuals are just sheep. They’ll follow the herd. The people winning the battles are the ones out there win or lose. Zergs CAN be effective, but I’ve seen HUGE numbers fall or be denied entrance to a keep by a small but effective force. Someone will always be outnumbered and two worlds will always lose.

People give up often in sport if they don’t have any change win. Best players might get hurt and so on. Need to think future, not just one game.

Kendu,

You’re preaching to the choir brother. I’ve played competitive sports from the time I could walk. I’m a competitor to the core. Like I said above, I’m not talking about my personal desires, I’m talking about what’s best for the game.

I fought vs Yak’s Bend when it was 695 / 0 / 0. And rallied 10 of us (Yes there were only 10 of us in the entire BL) and went on to take 3 supply camps. I have no fear, never back down and never give up, much like a majority on this board.

But we are not why I’m advocating removing the score. See what I mean?

This whole score thing is dumb.

WvW needs alot of work, has potential but not there yet.

WvW is a gold sink mechanics for Anet, that part works great…

Their total inaction and lack of communication to the complaining CUSTOMERS about WvW is gonna quickly kill it, personally I saw so much potential and was hyped
to come play this, am from a pure FPS background, well it’s the biggest deception of
gaming career, been playing since the 80s…

A huge company like that should have taught this out a bit more, to me it’s so obvious
that giving +10% HP and +15 to all stats to the side that’s winning while allowing anyone
to transfer at will would help create this current unplayability. I can keep going, most
points have been brought forward by smart players already, but to me the fact that Anet
goofed this extensivly only points to their lack of caring about WvW and to me
thats a direct insult to my gaming devotion and intelligence.

Am finding less and less reasons everyday to play WvW and this game altogether and
when I realized they pretended to fix the invisibility bug with lowering sight and
drawing ranges I came to the conclusion they will just sweep stuff under the rug
and move on. Last night, many time, I saw groups of 30 ennemy invaders suddenly
appear 10 meters in front of me even tho I had carefully been watching all approaches
to my location.

I guess once you have a 90 out of 100 review, you don’t care about making CUSTOMERS HAPPY…

Shame on you Anet

griffdog.3927:

Kendu,

You’re preaching to the choir brother. I’ve played competitive sports from the time I could walk. I’m a competitor to the core. Like I said above, I’m not talking about my personal desires, I’m talking about what’s best for the game.

I fought vs Yak’s Bend when it was 695 / 0 / 0. And rallied 10 of us (Yes there were only 10 of us in the entire BL) and went on to take 3 supply camps. I have no fear, never back down and never give up, much like a majority on this board.

But we are not why I’m advocating removing the score. See what I mean?

I do.

I think a lot of the suggestions here are valid, and I also think to utilize the three world mechanic that some implementation of a diplomacy mechanic would be helpful as well. To what extent is another question, but I think the ability for two realms to lay down their weapons between one another would allow for these numbers to even out more. It would also even populations in my opinion because it would become common practice for the top team in the tier to be conspired against and probably worn out enough that the lower ranked servers could compete once the alliance was broke. It would add an interesting mechanic, that would also provide a new set of tactics and play-styles to be utilized.

There are probably faults within that suggestion, but I think it is valid.

Dware,

Do you mean having a score is dumb, or my argument to remove it? If you think removing the score is more harmful than keeping it, why?

Yes, it’s fun. No, I’m not on a winning server. Fun is what you make of it, not something that’s handed to you. If you insist on getting all worked up over the score, you’re preventing yourself from having fun.

The score isn’t the demoralizing part, it’s just the most obvious symptom of the problem.

We log in during prime time, one team holds everything. We fight, we claw, we scratch our way back into the game, we take plenty of territory and even up the periodic score. Through force of will we manage to take the tick lead, knowing we’ll never catch up in score but refusing to go out quietly. We spend a lot of money on siege, on upgrades, on repairs. We invest heavily into our claimed territory to help defend it.

Prime time ends, we go to bed. The overnight crew takes over. Except we have a very limited overnight crew, but the other team has a large overnight force.

All that siege sits unused as there are no defenders. The upgrades to the keep ultimately make no difference, because the late-night Zerg will just roll through undefended gates. All that time, gold, and effort expended to get ourselves back in the game all gone when we aren’t around to do anything about it.

All of us love the fight. We love to take things from our enemy, we love to prevent our enemy from taking our things. We love to be the victor.

And you win by having the highest score.

If there was no score, nothing to be gained by taking all the objectives and holding them overnight to get as many points as you can, this wouldn’t be as big of a problem. If a keep wasn’t worth points, there would be a strategic advantage to letting your enemy hold it – it would encourage them to come out and fight. You could invite them to fight you at one of your towers by allowing them a base to launch attacks from. The action would be better because the map wouldn’t appear so overwhelming for the non-24 hour team.

Hide the score, change the score to be something more meaningful than simply holding objectives, and watch the gameplay increase significantly. People want to feel they have a chance to succeed, and right now that just doesn’t happen.

I totally agree with the OP. These changes would make WvW tenable, at the moment these mechanics only create greater differences between the leading server and the other 2.

I would also add:
- Siege engines should only disappear when destroyed by an enemy player (not auto-despawn after a period of unuse).

Ho and BTW, imo, once transfer cost money, people who don’t wanna PAY to be on
the winning side will just LOG OFF and NOT PLAY…

Leaving us with: Winning team = No one to fight = bored = LOG OFF
and: Losing teams = Owned 24/7 = Bored = LOG OFF
and: GW2 WvW = BUSTED = Forgotten like 1000s of games before it

No, im all for removing the score.

I play on Jade and everyone just talks about the stupid score, there is no need for it.

If your on the losing end, who wants to go play WvW when you are losing?

Not very many people.

Kendu Kuzal.3985:

<snip>
If you were ever involved in sports did you give up because the opponent had a big lead? No. A true competitor fights to the end. If someone can be demoralized by looking at numbers like that.. They’ll never be a winner anyhow. The casuals are just sheep. They’ll follow the herd. The people winning the battles are the ones out there win or lose. Zergs CAN be effective, but I’ve seen HUGE numbers fall or be denied entrance to a keep by a small but effective force. Someone will always be outnumbered and two worlds will always lose.

For most people – computer games are way different than competitive sport and therefore share very little similarities. Therefore lessons from one is rarely applicable to the second.

Also because of the computer game mechanics, numbers will always have the large advantage and while it is possible to overcome, then if quality of players the same – numbers matter. And in this game, numbers behind fortified walls spawn camping you matters even more.
Sure you can move around and try to hope you can cap a supply camp before being run over, but from the look of it – many don’t find that fun, and when people don’t find entertainment fun, they opt out of it. It’s not competitive sport for them.

I love being the under dog so yes I think it is fun to be outnumbered or outmatched. Makes me play harder/smarter.

Joey.3928:

I love being the under dog so yes I think it is fun to be outnumbered or outmatched. Makes me play harder/smarter.

Joey, I think pretty much everyone on this forum is of the same mindset. The issue with WvW isn’t the players that post on this forum.

It’s the VAST majority of players that don’t come here and don’t have that mindset. The VAST majority of players simply look at the score and close the WvW window, never to open it again till next week. This is human nature guys. I’ve seen professional sports teams “mail it in” when they get down by huge margins.

We aren’t even close to talking about professionals here. We’re talking about Joe Schmo who has 2 hours to play and wants to have some fun. WvW is very fun, provided the numbers are out there for each team. We need to remove every single possible barrier to the average player wanting to come play. If we don’t the future of our beloved game mode is very much up in the air.

If Joe Schmo get’s into his BL and almost every point is taken by the other server that could be a problem. But what if Joe is joined by 20 or 30 other Joe’s who have no clue what the score is and, like our original Joe, wanted to see what was up? Now we have the beginnings of a possible group on our hands. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a commander out in the field that could do great things if he just had 10-20 players to follow him. They just weren’t there. Discouraged by the score, the Joe’s never even gave it a chance.

I’ll probably get flamed for this..

TBH, I don’t care about Joe Schmo playing.. He will just end up being a targeting dummy for the opposition and probably won’t offer a whole lot of help. His idea of fun isn’t being competitive.. It’s winning with little to no effort.

The problem isn’t even that Joe Schmo is a coward and doesn’t play. The problem is in the shortcomings of the system itself. Better design would account for unbalanced populations. It’s an inevitability and it was a huge oversight if they honestly thought they would have the perfect population numbers for every tier. There are elements missing or that could be improved upon to alleviate a lot of the numbers problems.

Anyone that knows anything about war, knows that many wars are often won by a single battle or event. The value of an undermanned server taking a keep is as huge a victory as the overpopulated server taking half a map. The relative value is a big problem.

Its not the first time an MMO has been encountered with the issue of unbalanced populations. It’s just the first time an MMO has done it on a server level. (this might even be innacurate)

There are TONS of options that could be used to help nurse this system into shape. It has all the potential it just needs some tweaks. I honestly don’t believe the problem would be alleviated or even helped a whole lot by the points system being removed. Perhaps more emphasis on World Points earned, even for the losers. Perhaps points themselves would count for something.. So simply gaining points for your world offered incentive. Winning the whole enchilada might provide a bigger reward, but all world’s would have an incentive to earn points.

Lot of rambling in this post. Sorry.

Kendu,

No flames coming from me man. It’s ok to have opposing views. I feel that the WvW system is wonderfully designed. At the same time I feel like score completely undermines the point. As I understood the original design, it was meant for casual PvP at a large scale. Something for servers to come together and bond with.

Right now what we have is a large majority playing or not playing based on the score. (which is exactly what’s happening for both the server that’s up HUGE and the server that has no chance to “win”)

To me, that’s counter intuitive to the intended design goals. Players have allegiance to the score, and not their server. Hence the transfers. If we remove the real time scores, (but continue to rank servers based on a hidden metric) we remove the incentive to make a knee-jerk transfer. If we remove the incentive to transfer we start building communities. We start building communities and server pride starts to come into play.

Our nature is to be selfish so I don’t blame anyone for chasing the score to a winning server. Right now the system (with unlimited transfers) encourages this, in fact.

I’ll tangent just a bit here, but stick with me. I’m fine with transfers staying free actually, but ONLY if you transfer to a server that’s in a lower bracket than your current server. Transfers should not be allowed to any server in your current pairing. Transferring should mean you give up the right to play WvW for the entirety of the current match and possibly the following match. Transferring should be a decision that should not be taken lightly. Transferring for PVE reasons should be a non factor as I understand it, due to the guesting feature. Although, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

I am on JQ, and no, it is not fun for me. I have stopped logging into WvWvW because of this. I have been scouring the forums looking for a good server to transfer to that will have even battles and “good fights”. I do not want to dominate entirely, or be dominated entirely. I just want fun back and forth PvP, but as the OP stated, I don’t think this utopia of PvP exists.

peeps should pick their server for what they want 6 months from now .. not by an influx that has been 1-2 weeks old and likely to shift with the next big thing. Those who xfer off a full server because of queue times, are not much better as it doesn’t allow for settling. The xfer zerg will go to what they want, and you either ride it out or become part of it.

Our server is also fighting a largley populated night cap server that wants to get to t1.

As a result the other servers just stopped playing and let them take it to get them out of our tier as fast as possible. They now fight no one in WvW

I gotta say, while it is still fun…… There are some massive improvments that could be made by anet to make this game legendary.

So far alot of what they have done is great. But they are missing out on some polish in the pvp aspects, WvW and spvp

The decisions on free server transfers is a good one, as it allows players to find the home for when it closes and it allowed for people in full servers to join less full servers. However it had a massive knock on effect to WvW and only WvW. It is time now to close those transfers. You dont see PvE guys complaining about server transfers

Ive kinda stopped playing so hard until the issues are addressed and some balances are made. I only come and play gw2 if I havent got things to do such as washing up and vacuum cleaning. Recently Ive found myself in a position where I rather be doing those things

Yours isn’t the only WvWvW matchup where this is happening. There’s really no point in playing WvWvW when the balance is this messed up.

I’m sure ANet will introduce some mechanism that will fix it, but in the mean time I and about 2/3rds of the PvP population are going to either be ignoring or hating WvWvW.

There’s a lot of other content to enjoy but at some point, the balance issue will have to be addressed. This is the only seriously “broken” part of the game that I’ve encountered so far, (kudos to the design teams) but that fact should make it a high priority fix.

looks like they’re done their jobs, all the noteworthy guilds on jq seem to be gone and all that you still see playing are the xfers and trash zerg guilds.

Is this fun?

Its all relative. Sure many people (myself included) roll out regardless of the score and find “fun”. But WvW is about numbers, and frankly the health of any MMO longer term is about numbers as well. This translates to joe average gamer’s experience. And if my experience (FA) is representative of many (most?) servers I am seeing participation levels go down – which is prolly the best measure of Joe averages “fun”. I don’t spend enough time PvEing to know if the game pop overall is dropping by a large amount or its just restricted to WvW participation, or is just the WvW pop is just consolidating on certain servers at the expense of the other servers. /shrug – prolly all of the above.

I do agree that the score has an impact on player participation and perceptions. Tons of posts, lots of chat about it in game channels….and the reality is that even the “hardcore” guilds that move servers seeking “competition”, or “more active participation” or “24hour coverage” are in reality a nod to looking for a server that can get a higher score. This is even true moving to a mid/low pop server with a large guild/alliance as that is currently prolly the easiest way to ensure several weeks of dominance as currently none of those servers field anywhere close to full maps, so if one of the servers in that bracket now has 2x the numbers on the field…it quickly results in a runaway score…….sure those servers will rise and fight stiffer competition…but then; queues will go up (bandwagoners, etc)….alliances/guilds will break-up/move again and the cycle will repeat…../yawn.

The question is…is that healthy for the game overall? We all benefit the most from large participation on all servers longer term. I do like the concept of the scoring (promotes competition and server unity), and it is a method to balance matches via the ladder – the problem atm though seems to be that the populations are too transient (ie currently ladder is almost meaningless). Hopefully populations become more stable over time and we get closer matches across all tiers. In today’s – I want everything now, and make it dead easy mmo world though, I’m not sure it will without some coaxing by Anet (ie make xfers more difficult)

No its not fun. I doubt I’ll be playing much longer unless they fix it.

griffdog.3927:

I’ll tangent just a bit here, but stick with me. I’m fine with transfers staying free actually, but ONLY if you transfer to a server that’s in a lower bracket than your current server. Transfers should not be allowed to any server in your current pairing. Transferring should mean you give up the right to play WvW for the entirety of the current match and possibly the following match.

Good points all of them and anet should really look at these sort of changes if transfers are to remain free for the time being.

I actually find it fun when I am outnumbered.

Why?
Its easy to get a fight.
You can test your skills against multiple opponents.

I for one feel that this is not fun and it is just isn’t very fun to fight in wvwvw this week. Thank you to all of those on SBI who are not backing down though, I know I’ve cursed at you guys a few times the past few days while playing on our borderlands. Keep up the good fight, hopefully Henge will drop next week and we can get a more balanced match.

As an added bonus, it appears our npcs keep getting moved around in LA, probably due to the influx of wonderful people we have received recently.

Arenanet needs to learn from planet side 2 on how to handle matches against big groups.

1 Limit the server, kitten it that some people can’t play with friends, make them join a less populated one for a fee.

2 stop kittening giving users free transfers to other servers, this is what is killing the kittening WvWvW right now.

3. Make a script that checks which was the first server choice for everyone or mostly everyone that server hops and make sure you stick them in their first choice… screw them.

EDIT:

forgot to add to: give bonuses to servers that don’t have as many players as the other servers so they have a fighting chance.

Arani.9057:

peeps should pick their server for what they want 6 months from now .. not by an influx that has been 1-2 weeks old and likely to shift with the next big thing. Those who xfer off a full server because of queue times, are not much better as it doesn’t allow for settling. The xfer zerg will go to what they want, and you either ride it out or become part of it.

Anything you say now is of no importance after reading another post where you admitted moving to JQ to get into a ‘good wvwvw community’. That is pretty much saying; I went to JQ to win all the time with no effort. But I am comforted in the knowledge that if JQ starts to decline, I am certain you will move to the next best thing like everyone else does.

Give me a reason to stay on to play against a mob that would otherwise cut me like butter and you will fix WvWvW. Right now +exp +karma are the last things I want when I log in. I want a fighting chance.

I want free siege equipment or carry dolyak sized supply with me. I want dynamic events for outmanned sides that reward you with a sizable amount of money OR maybe siege equipment with an expiration on it that requires no supply. These are simple suggestions that would keep me playing if I log in to see an outmanned debuff and 90%+ of the map taken over.

fixit.7189:

Arani.9057:

peeps should pick their server for what they want 6 months from now .. not by an influx that has been 1-2 weeks old and likely to shift with the next big thing. Those who xfer off a full server because of queue times, are not much better as it doesn’t allow for settling. The xfer zerg will go to what they want, and you either ride it out or become part of it.

Anything you say now is of no importance after reading another post where you admitted moving to JQ to get into a ‘good wvwvw community’. That is pretty much saying; I went to JQ to win all the time with no effort. But I am comforted in the knowledge that if JQ starts to decline, I am certain you will move to the next best thing like everyone else does.

I have xfered once, and picked a server only “2 ranks” higher than my own on a random choice that 5 of us picked. All 5 of my primary crew decide we were not on a good server fit and each picked a server at random/liked server name etc… my server choice won the dice roll… we picked JQ when it was #4 and no where near #1 and only 2-3 ranks above what we were on.

The server we were on was WvW community nonexistent and degrading into bullying and derogatory comments to all who wanted to input more than just throw thyself at random door. We all came from end game environments ad desired more collaboration more pvp community less you are all dumb because clearly he who buys 100g is the only one who knows anything about pvp…

JQ will lose, like everyone else, and I will be there throwing my clones at whatever target the CMD has called emphatically. We specifically ruled out HoD and SBI at the time because of how high ranked they WERE at the time… everyone loses. we moved for community not ranking. I appreciate your point of view but wvw community is different than wvw ranking.

I picked the server I want for 6 months from now… the one that people trust the known commanders who donated to get them pins who put up with drama quietly to keep the peace, who intelligently herds the masses and who will outlast the ranking dramas… IMO of course.

I’m having fun in WvW.
When my server is getting steam rolled I play PVE if no one want to try.
Its only a game.
Relax.

Arani.9057

The server we were on was WvW community nonexistent and degrading into bullying and derogatory comments

Wow, you just described what HoD has become which only took a few days.

Tell me, should I move? Sure as hell aint fun to be on a dead server that has more bots than players and getting royally stomped. Which, I might add, by some of the SAME guys that I was fighting beside a few weeks ago…

we didn’t go from number 1 to suffering through issues… we went with he server the clan picked for us tried to participate, tried to offer contributions to the community but never fit in.. we didn’t move to a number 1 server… we went to a near random server.

I’m not saying HoD members have no right to xfer.. just don’t say I’m a #1 server hopper. We did it for months not a week…

Coming from IoJ,

I’ve just become a commander for my guild at the start of this week,
and me and a lot of my guild mates were having heaps of fun running around in WvW when the match up was even at the beginning of this reset.

But now that the score is what it is, CD and ET not pushing us back, WvW has lost all of its fun, and i, nor a lot of my friends wont be logging back into it for the rest of the week.
I really hope that when IoJ move up to tier one next week, and we start getting thrashed again, that all the bandwagoners move off to other promising servers, I just want our core members, who have been with IoJ from the start, through thick and thin to stick it out and not have to be forced to move.

Over and over we keep seeing how server transfers really just hurting the game. Needs to start costing so people stop bunny hopping to the winning server for luls.

Fights were actually better during the beta and 1-day matchups because people didn’t just stop turning up – apart from the initial mismatches that is.

I still keep jumping into WvW for some reason, but particularly during the Oceanic primetime there’s less and less to do every time. Fortunately, without a subscription fee, I’m not in any hurry – I have a couple other games I was going to play more of eventually. And there’s still stuff I want to see in GW2 PvE at some point.

From my view point being on the stomping side would suck far more then being on the losing side. When my server is losing they all bail and stop WvWing, so I get a target rich environment with no ques… how much more fun can WvW get then that? If your on the winning side you have a target low environment and long ques, that is not fun.

Not to say it is is all peaches to be on the losing team, but if you recognize the errors with the point system, transfer system, etc the fact that you are not winning a faulty scoreboard means what? Nothin. So go out and enjoy the fights, because at the end of the day what you will remember about GW2 is not the score, but the battles, the wins and losses that left you smiling.

Oh yeah! I am on HoD and it is FUN. We are jumping maps and doing hit and run non stop all night. It is very easy since the map is too big for them to guard every point and by the time their zerg arrives, we are already hitting another spot.

Easy 1 gold earned in 2 hours. IT IS GOOD FUN!!!

Nope, not fun.

It’s not fun to be killed repeatedly 20 feet from your spawn point.
It’s not fun to have 0 supply and no supply camps.
It’s not fun to be forced to change maps just to grab supply to bring back (if you’re lucky)
It’s not fun to have to repair a full set of armor for the 8th time today
It’s not fun to have your entire population defend a point, only to still be outnumbered
It’s not fun when any work you do during the day is negated because everyone on your server sleeps at the same time

So I was going to make a separate topic about this subject, but having found someone with a similar notion I suppose I’ll drop it here (though its doubtful anyone will see it).

To begin with, I’m a Stormbluff Isle player. I’ve been one since day one and I’ve fought against many of the players who will probably read this. I’ve found great joy in camping the jumping puzzle so if any JQ players have ever had to jump to the top of beast room under a storm of 3-6 Arrow Carts….that was probably me! haha.

With that aside their are many solutions presented here, but we have to identify the key problems first.

1.) Inequal level of “skill” in certain server match-up’s.
2.) Inequal levels of participation from certain servers in your matchup (partially related to #1)
3.) Imbalance due to time zone differences.
4.) No way to encourage losers to fight back.

I consider these the larger problems with World Versus World combat right now. Lesser issues would be things like Tower durability or siege efficacy. The major issues will cause ghost towns in WvW and evidence for this is the matchup Stormbluff Isle is going through right now.

I submit evidence item A
!http://www.scree.org/workspace/serverscore.jpg!
and B
!http://www.scree.org/workspace/serverscore2.jpg!

Early this week, Henge of Denravi suffered a significant setback in terms of losing a significant portion of its WvW playerbase. I don’t really care about the reasons why, server political issues have little to do with the key problem. Some people say cancelling free server transfers would solve the problem. The issue here isn’t that players interested in hardcore WvW action transferred to these servers for free, in fact many of them are being penalized by high queue times. Free transfers, having or removing them, wouldn’t solve any of the issues. I’ll leave that issue in the dust.

1.) Inequal level of “skill” in certain server match-up’s. *
&
*2.) Inequal levels of participation from certain servers in your matchup

Players like to win. Its hard to overcome that psychology. Players don’t like to lose. Its even harder to motivate your team to fight when your down as much as HoD is this week in my matchup. At one point HoD had +5 to their point totals. Thats pretty stunning, and anyone logging in certainly isn’t going to login to WvW this week seeing that.

So how do you fix it?

The only solution I can think of is to minimize the rewards for stacking talent on one server. Rewards (from Events in WvW or from loot bags), could potentially be eliminated as a result of the “Potential Points” scoreboard imbalances. For example, any server having a combined total over the other two servers would receive zero benefit from events or loot from players.

Why so harsh? Anything less would encourage the same behaviors. The question your asking is how does this solve the server “talent” imbalances. Well, that’s almost impossible to achieve without ArenaNet logging in and forcibly transferring guilds. So you have to encourage change by not rewarding the band-wagon-ing behavior.

Another major oversight, in my opinion is the lack of rewards for winning a week. Participating players and guilds should have their overall “influence” contributions for WvW cataloged, ranked and displayed. To prevent “zerg-like” organizations from always winning, only the top 25 players influence would contribute to the standings for guilds. These players and organizations would receive badges, influence, blueprints, awards, or whatever, as a result of contributing to the overall victory for the week.

The reason for listing the highest contributors is that people like to see “high scores” and who did the most. Its a reward for a particularly embarrassing amount of time spent playing the game. The catch is that the top scores and rewards would only go to a specific limited quantity of participants. Guilds and players would be incentivized to transfer to lesser populated WvW servers so that they can get top honors. Don’t underestimate a gamer’s (or organized guilds) Ego.

Additionally, the earlier mention of swapping the Undermanned and Orbs bonuses is an excellent solution to motivating underpopulated servers to fight back (and have a shot at it as would be the case this week with HoD/SBI/JQ). Undermanned, however, should look purely at the scoreboard and the impending point awards. You shouldn’t receive a bonus for owning the entire WvW realms and then purposely log off for the evening so your night crew can get a further advantage to hold it all.

By swapping the bonuses, you also reward the “winning” servers by encouraging the victors to farm the enemies and stay on the battlefield longer. They have the potential for increased loot and badges for participating. You could also increase experience awards so players would level new characters and keep the leveling zones active with players in them during queue times.

3.) Imbalance due to time zone differences.
This really is sort of hypocritical of me to talk about, but it needs to be addressed. To be considered a “top tier” WvW server, it is in your interest to recruit Europeans or Asians to your US server. This is due to the fact that when your US population logs off for need of sleep or work, your foreign-allies can login to continue the domination.

A few nights ago, we fought back hard against JQ. We were exchanging towers and supply camps all afternoon and well into the evening. At one point we had lost our primary keep in EB and my guild along with the teamwork of our servers commanders were able to take it back. At one point we had our “third” of the pie back in EB. So we stepped to controlling it. My guild claimed our Overlook keep, popped all of our buffs and went about upgrading and constructing siege to help during the night hours in holding it. I logged off with reinforced walls moving to fortified, and siege engines placed at all of the key doors and wall points to prevent sneak attacks. Safe right?

Then we went to bed.

Morning came around and JQ’s european allies had decimated the entire WvW realms. EB and all of its borderlands were completely green.

The solution to this is easy. Very very easy. You either restrict the strongpoint exchanges during certain hours (making it impossible to cap anything from 3am-10am in US servers) or you eliminate the ability for European and Asian players from playing on US servers. I know it sucks. People will whine because blabla I want to play with my mates from Europe. The problem is the imbalance is completely game breaking.

4.) No way to encourage losers to fight back.

The biggest issue right now is that what motivation does HoD have to even come to fight? To be honest, why does SBI even bother? These lopsided engagements promote a desolate battlefield where one server runs around doing nothing against nobody. SBI had instant queues for the last two nights and I KNOW HoD did (i’ve seen none of them even in the Eternal Battlegrounds as of late).

Promoting the solutions I provided above is one part of the answer (increasing stats to underscoring servers, increasing . I believe the second part relies in creating a means by which HoD could win. This is a more difficult solution and one I won’t promote a solution to. I feel most of the issues could be dealt with some of the above issues, and I’m a believer that small incremental changes should be implemented before anything massive is done about the problem.

Nope. Anet needs to pull their collective arses out of their heads and fix this crap — not too mention all the cheaters. I’ve been on a server that gets rolled every single week, we lose people by the day (thanks for the kittenING FREE SERVER TRANSFERS), my server will be a ghost town before Thanksgiving or forced into a server merge.

This is what happens when you let people transfer whenever and whereever they want daily.

They had a good plan but they didn’t think it through to well.

People by nature are nasty, greedy, and want to win. Thus you have what you see here. People flocking to winning servers from losing servers. And its not just a few people.

Even with transfers not free they are dirt cheap….. so really it wont even matter when they end. Transfers need to cost a good amount of gems…. not just a few hours worth of farming to have enough for transfer.

And you should be limited to like 1 transfer a month.

Have said it a couple times, will say it again:

Give a 2 week grace period warning that free/unlimited transfers will end.
After that 2 week period lock transfers. Then the following day unlock transfers with the the limitation of once per month and charge for them.

And for the folks that think that this will not “fix” wvw an addition:

Reset server ranks on the day that free/unlimited server transfers end.

Leave the current combat time at one week though. Two weeks is a bit extreme in my opinion. Less than a week will create periods with the duration will not include weekends. Seven days is fine as is.

Orbs also need to be disabled BEFORE this happens. Unless they can fix flyhack/wallhack/geometry exploiting/portal exploiting/insert the kitten currently going on to obtain orbs by foul.

Also needing to be implemented BEFORE this occurs is coding to eliminate siege placement funny business. No more dropping trebs in invulnerable zones. This “home field advantage” shouldn’t exist.

No supply at zone in point, that’s just silly. Possibly give npc’s personal siege equipment though to lessen spawn camping. I.e. siege equipment manned by npc’s that players can’t hop on. Give them extended range but not one shot ability, but two shot basically.

Another point on transfers. If they are limited to once a month there will be no need to lock out the person transferring from wvw.

tl;dr version:

Anet anounces “2wks and transfers are changing!!”.
2wks later Anet locks transfers for 24hrs and during that time resets server standings and disables orbs and ability to drop siege in invulnerable/unreachable zones.
24hrs later transfers are reactivated with 1 transfer per month limit and now cost.

Why all this? Simple. Resetting the server standings erases the mess of the server hopping bullkitten, orb/wall/portal/geometry hacks/exploiting.

It also removes the flawed data of the 24hr matches from the system. (using one hit walls, fighting under floors, glitching through walls next to doors, etc…, and it avoids the affects of attrition.)

Sorry for the length of this. =/

Jorm

Lock them now. No warnings so people can transfer to wherever they like.

We have this Pac-Man issue on our server as well, because people are all transferring away. Here is the state of the war in our game at the time of writing: