Guild Wars 2

It’s become completely insane how at every shuffles, whole guilds just transfer to other servers every time. Anet tries to balance it out, yet every time, those guilds just screw everything up. It’s come to a point where servers are losing players and others are getting so many players that they can almost queue up every BL. What’s not helping is “rich” servers paying for guild transfers. Seems everything Anet tries is just slowly killing WvW. Seriously, when you have to merge 4 servers together just to get enough players to fight, it’s going from bad to worse. How long till WvW is just 5-6 servers and all the rest are empty ?

People transfer for activity. The current population can’t sustain 4 matchups. Further restricting transfers would only exacerbate the problem as more and more people get stranded in matchups with no action during the hours they play.

Here’s something to consider: off-hour coverage (non prime time) on NA servers is near non-existent outside of T1, yet it accounts for roughly half the total activity (in terms of kills) across all the servers.

Bandwagoning, night-capping, coverage issues.. it all stems from a core system (static “servers”) that simply doesn’t work for a 24h gamemode with regional servers. The people who transfer after every relink are simply trying to get the most out of the game. You can’t fault them for Anet’s failures.

I wouldn’t transfer at this time due to the state of the game. Give it a month or two and I believe we will be in two scenarios: a 3 faction system or three tiers. The DBL will be the cause.

They need to shorten the links to 1 month and switch to a winner up, loser down system.

This makes transferring with every new link impractical and encourages players to fight to improve the server they’re on since they aren’t glicko locked in a stale match up the entire time.

RodOfDeath.5247:

The DBL will be the cause.

People still think DBL is a problem? You’ll still have 2 ABL there and I bet my left arm there will be several servers holding the outnumbered buff in these maps.

I will be amused if there are guilds really spending golds every single relink to transfer.

SkyShroud.2865:

I will be amused if there are guilds really spending golds every single relink to transfer.

All you have to do is look at the gold:gem rates compared to changes in matches, linkages. Servers and guilds have huge warchests of gold that they use to help move people, based on whatever criteria they deem important.

Gem cost for transfer needs to increase per account each time a transfer is made.The time wait to get in to WvW needs to increase per account each time a transfer is made.After one year reset.
These fair weather guilds and people have little to no skill and only move to the highest ranked for easy pickings.
Low WvW populations need to start boycotting WvW stacked servers .I f they have no one to kick around for easy bags then maybe some of these fair weather guilds and individuals will move on.

Mokk.2397:

Gem cost for transfer needs to increase per account each time a transfer is made.The time wait to get in to WvW needs to increase per account each time a transfer is made.After one year reset.
These fair weather guilds and people have little to no skill and only move to the highest ranked for easy pickings.
Low WvW populations need to start boycotting WvW stacked servers .I f they have no one to kick around for easy bags then maybe some of these fair weather guilds and individuals will move on.

I’ve moved accounts out of T1 several times because the roaming there is pathetic. Not everyone transfers on to the bandwagons.

With the way linking works any of the lower pop servers can get thrown into a blobby match that they hate. Your suggestion would likely make them just quit playing.

JFLaliberte.5749:

Seems everything Anet tries is just slowly killing WvW.

Seems everything you describe is players leaving the game naturally and the remaining players actually trying to play the game. Do you think guilds would be happy if you jack up the costs of transfers? No, they will just leave instead because they dont find their server fun anymore.

Or what, did you plan on forcing players to play WvW? I’m interested in hearing how you would achieve that.

I’ve transferred twice recently and may transfer again. I’m not bandwagoning. I’m looking for fun. If I’m not allowed to find it there’s no reason for me to play. I suspect you’ll find much the same for many others.

Home server was in T4 hell. Stuck it out a long time but just not worth it. Second server was great but not near enough in my timezone. Third server lots of people run into fights and just get one shot. People dropping in 5v2s and such. Giving it more time as I’ve seen some skilled too and probably don’t know the tags.

Until population balance/coverage is at least improved, trying to force people to stay in terrible matchups, servers, server cultures will likely backfire.

Transfer to a staple server that is guaranteed to stay where they are.

These are Maguuma, BG, TC, and JQ. They will always stay in the upper tiers due to the main servers having enough population

JFLaliberte.5749:

Seriously, when you have to merge 4 servers together just to get enough players to fight, it’s going from bad to worse. How long till WvW is just 5-6 servers and all the rest are empty ?

I’m looking forward to merges, I think it will put WvW in a far healthier place.
I am hoping that WvW survives the upcoming MMOs with “massive battles” in them.

Reh.5986:

Until population balance/coverage is at least improved, trying to force people to stay in terrible matchups, servers, server cultures will likely backfire.

Servers will never be balanced if you don’t put limitations on pop caps.

It’s oddly hilarious the ones crying for balance also want to be able to transfer where they want.

In this game mode, it’s either/or. Not both.

Svarty.8019:

JFLaliberte.5749:

Seriously, when you have to merge 4 servers together just to get enough players to fight, it’s going from bad to worse. How long till WvW is just 5-6 servers and all the rest are empty ?

I’m looking forward to merges, I think it will put WvW in a far healthier place.
I am hoping that WvW survives the upcoming MMOs with “massive battles” in them.

TBH I don’t because the market is too small to have many competing products and anet have completely lost my trust that they know what they’re doing.

Jeknar.6184:

RodOfDeath.5247:

The DBL will be the cause.

People still think DBL is a problem? You’ll still have 2 ABL there and I bet my left arm there will be several servers holding the outnumbered buff in these maps.

oh, here we go again…Jeknar and his DBL
They might not be the nail in the coffin, but they sure are like salt in the wound…they certainly won’t ‘help’ the situation.
It’s like being a psychic watching a train wreck…it hasn’t happened yet but you know its gonna be bad

-greenland turn
-ehm c hammer

Akkeros.1675:

Jeknar.6184:

RodOfDeath.5247:

The DBL will be the cause.

People still think DBL is a problem? You’ll still have 2 ABL there and I bet my left arm there will be several servers holding the outnumbered buff in these maps.

oh, here we go again…Jeknar and his DBL
They might not be the nail in the coffin, but they sure are like salt in the wound…they certainly won’t ‘help’ the situation.
It’s like being a psychic watching a train wreck…it hasn’t happened yet but you know its gonna be bad

-greenland turn
-ehm c hammer

I’m sorry that nobody ever came with a convincing argument about why the map is bad. For me, there is too much unjustified hate directed to DBL. It was terrible prior the april changes, sure. But it was much more enjoyable after these changes that I felt a shame that they threw back that 4 year old BL map in the game.

Well, you know where to find me after tuesday.

Jayne.9251:

Reh.5986:

Until population balance/coverage is at least improved, trying to force people to stay in terrible matchups, servers, server cultures will likely backfire.

Servers will never be balanced if you don’t put limitations on pop caps.

It’s oddly hilarious the ones crying for balance also want to be able to transfer where they want.

In this game mode, it’s either/or. Not both.

Doesn’t have to be balanced. Just has to be better. People who know what they’re looking for don’t cry. They just go find it.

I was happy on GoM but it became apparent that anet wasn’t interested in helping out with T4. Until anet does something to help, raising transfer prices is suspicious.

In reality everything should be blown up and redistributed intelligently into 9 servers. We’re just burning through bandages atm and raising transfer costs is just another bandage.

Reh.5986:

In reality everything should be blown up and redistributed intelligently into 9 servers. We’re just burning through bandages atm and raising transfer costs is just another bandage.

How do you prevent the whole scenario we have now from repeating itself? Hegel wasn’t wrong.

Jayne.9251:

Reh.5986:

In reality everything should be blown up and redistributed intelligently into 9 servers. We’re just burning through bandages atm and raising transfer costs is just another bandage.

How do you prevent the whole scenario we have now from repeating itself? Hegel wasn’t wrong.

You could jack up transfer costs. It really wouldn’t bother me at all as long as they took steps to try and fix this current mess.

I’m not really sure it’s possible to fix without some anet genius miracle though. 9 servers would be 9 stuffed servers in 3 tiers. That might be a terrible idea as people could leave just getting sick of queues. Friends wouldn’t be able to transfer at all many times.

However it is done, it really feels like it needs blown up. Merged. Something. If they manage to massively improve it some other way than great. Not seeing increased transfer costs as making any kind of difference without other, big steps though.

At the very least, people in T4 deserve a medal, free transfers for life and a million dollars.

SkyShroud.2865:

I will be amused if there are guilds really spending golds every single relink to transfer.

It’s very common on NA. Every single relink there is a server guilds and people will bandwagon to just for the sake of out-numbering I mean overpowering their oppisition and getting a bunch of bags by KTraining. You can blame the whole mess on ANet making it super easy for players to Transfer sever if they shell out some gems. WvW in NA has pretty much devolved into he who is richest gets to curbstomp others.

The only way to stop bandwagoning is for ANet to stop profiting off of server transfers. At this point and time with the state of WvW and sPvP I don’t see it advantageous of ANet doing that. So the standard of bandwagoning will continue.

Reaper Alim.4176:

The only way to stop bandwagoning is for ANet to stop profiting off of server transfers. At this point and time with the state of WvW and sPvP I don’t see it advantageous of ANet doing that. So the standard of bandwagoning will continue.

The problem is: these guilds don’t give profit to Anet as most of the time they convert gold to gems, or are paid gold from some server warchest. The only profit Anet get is from unhappy desperate players that aren’t affiliated to a WvW guild who dig their pockets to transfer up. Honestly, the only time I bought gems for a transfer I ended up using to buy Phoenix Armor skin…

Allow people to transfer for 500 gems. The trick is, when you transfer, you don’t get to pick where you go. Its random.

Now that would be interesting. (Guild leaders would be able to transfer and then have their guild mates be able to follow. I’m not a complete animal.)

Araphelbliss.4016:

Allow people to transfer for 500 gems. The trick is, when you transfer, you don’t get to pick where you go. Its random.

Now that would be interesting. (Guild leaders would be able to transfer and then have their guild mates be able to follow. I’m not a complete animal.)

What the kitten would be the point of that?

All anyone would have to do is temporarily join a guild to transfer to whatever server they want. This is just a terrible idea that serves no purpose.

Jim Hunter.6821:

They need to shorten the links to 1 month and switch to a winner up, loser down system.

This makes transferring with every new link impractical and encourages players to fight to improve the server they’re on since they aren’t glicko locked in a stale match up the entire time.

I think this is outdated thinking using the old model. My preference would be to continually unlink and relink a server here or there between full linking resets to balance out tiers.

Had they moved BP from CD and linked it to FA after the first week, it is likely all three lower tiers would have been competitive for far longer. Instead they overloaded CD, locked them into T4 for too long then locked them into T3 for too long.

Straegen.2938:

Jim Hunter.6821:

They need to shorten the links to 1 month and switch to a winner up, loser down system.

This makes transferring with every new link impractical and encourages players to fight to improve the server they’re on since they aren’t glicko locked in a stale match up the entire time.

I think this is outdated thinking using the old model. My preference would be to continually unlink and relink a server here or there between full linking resets to balance out tiers.

Had they moved BP from CD and linked it to FA after the first week, it is likely all three lower tiers would have been competitive for far longer. Instead they overloaded CD, locked them into T4 for too long then locked them into T3 for too long.

In a winner up/loser down system CD would have moved up after the first week and rotated in and out with SoS who has a much smaller NA population.

This would have kept a lot of people from transferring off of the T4 servers. That and the fact that they would relink soon enough.

Jim Hunter.6821:

In a winner up/loser down system CD would have moved up after the first week and rotated in and out with SoS who has a much smaller NA population.

This would have kept a lot of people from transferring off of the T4 servers. That and the fact that they would relink soon enough.

T4 was getting crushed by CD for weeks. Moving them up just made it worse as a stronger server moved into T4. This also unbalanced T3 which was very competitive before CD got locked into it. Your system wouldn’t have fixed anything as T4 would have been getting crushed by stronger populations just as it is today.

ANet should have balanced out the T2 and T4 in week 2 by unlinking a server or two from CD. This would have made T4 competitive and brought T2 into a closer match as well.

There was no downside to tweaking the links in week two or three.

Straegen.2938:

Jim Hunter.6821:

In a winner up/loser down system CD would have moved up after the first week and rotated in and out with SoS who has a much smaller NA population.

This would have kept a lot of people from transferring off of the T4 servers. That and the fact that they would relink soon enough.

T4 was getting crushed by CD for weeks. Moving them up just made it worse as a stronger server moved into T4. This also unbalanced T3 which was very competitive before CD got locked into it. Your system wouldn’t have fixed anything as T4 would have been getting crushed by stronger populations just as it is today.

ANet should have balanced out the T2 and T4 in week 2 by unlinking a server or two from CD. This would have made T4 competitive and brought T2 into a closer match as well.

There was no downside to tweaking the links in week two or three.

Shuffling servers around on a weekly basis is just to short.

Before people started abandoning t4 due to the kittenty glicko locked match, those servers could have been competitive with SoS for 3/4 of the day. They wouldn’t have won PPT wars but the match would have been a lot more enjoyable.

If they relinked after a month like I suggested they would have ended up with 2 bad weeks instead of 2 bad months.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Araphelbliss.4016:

Allow people to transfer for 500 gems. The trick is, when you transfer, you don’t get to pick where you go. Its random.

Now that would be interesting. (Guild leaders would be able to transfer and then have their guild mates be able to follow. I’m not a complete animal.)

What the kitten would be the point of that?

All anyone would have to do is temporarily join a guild to transfer to whatever server they want. This is just a terrible idea that serves no purpose.

I’m kidding. It is a horrible idea. About the only way I ever see Anet getting out of this mess is to create factions. Which is also awful in its own way.

Jeknar.6184:

Akkeros.1675:

Jeknar.6184:

RodOfDeath.5247:

The DBL will be the cause.

People still think DBL is a problem? You’ll still have 2 ABL there and I bet my left arm there will be several servers holding the outnumbered buff in these maps.

oh, here we go again…Jeknar and his DBL
They might not be the nail in the coffin, but they sure are like salt in the wound…they certainly won’t ‘help’ the situation.
It’s like being a psychic watching a train wreck…it hasn’t happened yet but you know its gonna be bad

-greenland turn
-ehm c hammer

I’m sorry that nobody ever came with a convincing argument about why the map is bad. For me, there is too much unjustified hate directed to DBL. It was terrible prior the april changes, sure. But it was much more enjoyable after these changes that I felt a shame that they threw back that 4 year old BL map in the game.

Well, you know where to find me after tuesday.

I think because of the old saying about “first impressions are the most important” on top of watching lots of wvw server-mates leave because it was so awful at first on top of lots of HoT changes which were not so popular….buy yeah, i am just giving you a hard time. I will be sure to send Biff to find you if we are the red borderland though….i just can’t let it go I am getting old and grumpy.

Back on subject….do something to prevent fair-weather transfers +1

Straegen.2938:

Jim Hunter.6821:

In a winner up/loser down system CD would have moved up after the first week and rotated in and out with SoS who has a much smaller NA population.

This would have kept a lot of people from transferring off of the T4 servers. That and the fact that they would relink soon enough.

T4 was getting crushed by CD for weeks. Moving them up just made it worse as a stronger server moved into T4. This also unbalanced T3 which was very competitive before CD got locked into it. Your system wouldn’t have fixed anything as T4 would have been getting crushed by stronger populations just as it is today.

ANet should have balanced out the T2 and T4 in week 2 by unlinking a server or two from CD. This would have made T4 competitive and brought T2 into a closer match as well.

There was no downside to tweaking the links in week two or three.

CD during the first 2 weeks of this current linking was a LOT stronger than it is currently, before all the guilds moved off those 4 servers into the upper tiers. It could’ve been comfortable being the 2nd or 3rd server in T2 in fact, back then. CD should’ve been moved up, but the glicko cliff was just way too massive.

Reverence.6915:

Straegen.2938:

Jim Hunter.6821:

In a winner up/loser down system CD would have moved up after the first week and rotated in and out with SoS who has a much smaller NA population.

This would have kept a lot of people from transferring off of the T4 servers. That and the fact that they would relink soon enough.

T4 was getting crushed by CD for weeks. Moving them up just made it worse as a stronger server moved into T4. This also unbalanced T3 which was very competitive before CD got locked into it. Your system wouldn’t have fixed anything as T4 would have been getting crushed by stronger populations just as it is today.

ANet should have balanced out the T2 and T4 in week 2 by unlinking a server or two from CD. This would have made T4 competitive and brought T2 into a closer match as well.

There was no downside to tweaking the links in week two or three.

CD during the first 2 weeks of this current linking was a LOT stronger than it is currently, before all the guilds moved off those 4 servers into the upper tiers. It could’ve been comfortable being the 2nd or 3rd server in T2 in fact, back then. CD should’ve been moved up, but the glicko cliff was just way too massive.

Yup, a lot of people transferred off of it because they were bored as kitten and they were going to be stuck in that match up for 2 months. It would have been interesting to see how far the quad server could have climbed in a winner up/loser down system.

The quad server is what messed t4 up to begin with. It showed ANET’s utter inability to link servers properly (which gave the impression that putting servers together was a bad idea overall). It also gave a single server too much credit and will likely screw up the next linking because of that.
While glicko can take much of the blame….at the end of the day it was 100% ANET’s absolute laziness and fault that allowed such a bad move to persist while they should have been examining more data.