Mike and the crew have continually said that once they have the servers balanced many issues people have will be negated, which is incorrect.
People making statements about ‘free transfers’ and ‘Night Capping’ is actually more of a symptom rather than the problem.
I posted on this during the BWE and the issues haven’t been addressed, certain problems we are facing now are a result of this:
When WvW becomes 1 zerg beats all!
SoPP.7034
This topic has been covered in part elsewhere from what I’ve read but not specifically.
People have stated that the problem is free transfers, bad match ups etc. That if a side is dominating your side should change strategy and go fight somewhere else etc. While important to consider I think the problem needs to be explored a little deeper.
If sides are lucky enough to remain balanced it should make for good WvW. However, as 1 side reaches a certain level of dominance a number of things will happen.
The other 2 sides will struggle against the trend. They will inevitably still compete and maybe 1 will even turn the tide but all that will happen then is you will replace 1 who perhaps was going to dominate with another that will dominate.
As this dominance builds up a snowball affect ensures.
The losing sides will start to bleed players, seeing there hard work go to waste they will no longer participate. The people that have just logged on will be less inclined to join WvW seeing the work to come back from that critical mass is too great.
Concurrently the side dominating will retain its player base better and additionally encourage others to keep joining, seeing their positive stature within WvW.
Then we see the inevitable failures start to bleed through as people stop playing or look for ways to join the winning side.
With this in mind there has to be a way to stop a side from completely dominating the map. A way that keeps all sides motivated to keep playing irrespective of if they are winning or losing.
A way that will encourage the other sides to keep competing even though they may be losing while ensuring that the side winning is not being punished for having done so. This balance must be struck because unless a side is in some way a “professional” WvW server, most people looking to have fun wont join if their side if is losing or getting punished unfairly and opt to do something else.
We must remember too that ‘WvW is designed to accommodate players that would not normally participate in PvP’, according to Anet. In sPvP noobs should be owned, obviously, in WvW there must be systems in place to attempt to maintain some form of balance.
Ideally if the worst WvW server were to be matched against the best WvW server, the best one will win (obviously), but not to the extent that they can dominate 100% of the map with no capacity for the other server to reply.
Ideas?
- Review the types of under-dog bonuses.
- 2 sides join against one when a certain threshold is met.
- Home borderland areas are easier for home team to take and hold.
Its something that needs to be considered otherwise the end result of each match up is in most cases going to be one side that has crushed 2 others.
Your thoughts?
A warrior, a guardian, and an elementalist walk into an open field…
The Warrior turns to the guardian and says, “Did you hear something?”
Guardian replies, “No, but how’d the elementalist die?”
