Guild Wars 2

This thread is for positive and constructive brainstorming on ways in which to (1) create WvW population balance or to (2) prevent the further imbalance.

Remember: Although the game designers would LOVE to implement certain processes, the dev team will often step in to let them know that their solution isn’t viable for technical reasons. We are black box brainstorming, but consider the technical side to the ideas you’re presenting. Even the most simple of ideas can turn out to be quite complex or impossible.

All ideas will have some downside, be it that the problem isn’t solved with the proposed solution (even the best of designers can fail to predict how their idea will play out when presented to thousands of players), and it is good to point out the flaws you see in your own ideas so that they can be addressed or solved by others in the community. Benefits are also important to highlight, as they’re sure to be missed by someone.

Here’s one of mine:

Scrap paid transfers. You cannot pay gems to transfer from server A to server B. Instead, each new account is given 2-3 free transfers that they can use. Once these transfers are used up, the player can no longer move. Each year, on the account’s birthday, the account is rewarded +1 transfers. There is a hard cap at +3 transfers, so any additional earned would go to waste.

Benefits:

• Players can understand the game before they figure out where they want to live.
• Players who join the game and find out that they have friends playing the game already, can transfer to be part of the same server as their friend.
• Players can experience a couple wvw communities before choosing one to stay in.
• Guilds are discouraged from mass-transferring: People in the guild may have already run out of their transfers, and so they would need to decide if they’re going to stay or going to leave people behind. Most guilds that I’ve been a part of wouldn’t dream leaving their guildies behind.
• With the +1 transfer a year, you do have a “get out of jail free” card, so to speak.
• A hard cap would mean less transfers by virtue of the inflexibility of the system. You cannot jump ship due to some drama—be it internal server drama, or external system-causing drama (ie, leagues). Instead, you’ll have to tough it out and then decide if you still wish to transfer.

Disadvantages:

• Transfers will still happen. Imbalance is not solved, only dampered.
• $$->Gems->Transfer is one method Anet employees get their paychecks from. This system would eliminate the need to pay. Alternative methods would be that you’d buy your transfer passes and still be limited to one a year, or you could buy as many transfers a year as you would like, but you couldn’t Gold->Gem it, only $$->Transfer.

Your turn!

1. Lower map cap to force players away from stacked servers

2. Implement a scoring system where coverage/population doesn’t guarantee victory

3. Automatic Alliance between the two losing servers if the PPT of one server is over 350.

4. Give better rewards to players on servers with lower coverage/population.

5. Allow for “Teams”, where players on green servers can “WvW guest” to any other green server

6. Change transfer fees from PvE population to WvW population. Deny tranfers to stacked servers.

7. Stat boosts to players on servers with low PPT AND outmanned.

8. Change NPC’s on servers with outmanned AND low PPT from vet—>champ—>legendary—>immortal

Only thing that pops into my mind is that the Outmanned buff should actually be helpful in the wvw enviroment.

ie. You get the buff and while under the influence of it your side gets a bonus to help you out dealing with the opposition, building siege costs less, repairing costs less and so on.

Just my 2 cents

While I do not have a specific idea good enough to share right now, I think WvW imbalance should not be solved by encouraging/discouraging server transfers. It’s just way too damaging to both communities and individual players, and is hardly a long-term solution. As long as ‘being on the right server’ impacts WvW experience, people will keep transferring from places to places, and the problem will forever repeat. (that’s why I think the current server transfer sale is not to be viewed as an attempt at fixing wvw issues, at least I hope it was not supposed to be…)

As WvW is set up right now, there will always be population/timezone imbalance, and I do not see a realistic method to balance it reliably in the long run. Instead, the game mode should be built to work even in such imbalance. It could either take a form of…

• A system that tries to balance out population by changing how teams are set up, such as grouping multiple servers into one team and enabling wvw-guesting between teamed servers. Not my idea, saw it somewhere on youtube Admittedly, it’s still not a perfect/reliable enough solution, but it’s just an example.
• A feature that impacts the actual fight, kinda like outmanned buff/breakout events but better.
• something that changes the whole dynamic of the game so that smaller numbers actually have some advantage(we need a wizard to design this, so no examples here. I think BL ruins and bloodlust(points for stomp) is in this general category of changes, but I can’t say it’s helping the balance, nor do i have any idea if it was intended to).

I personally think the third category is the ideal way to go,(I’d be reasonably content with second category as well) but I realize it’s also the hardest to get right. It will also take a sizable amount of work to even attempt. But in order for WvW to reach its potential I believe something big needs to happen.

And sorry for the lack of a specific suggestion, but I wanted to just get out what I feel is the appropriate general direction