Guild Wars 2

No complaints just a question really.

Linking T1 and T8 puts the two extremes of the game together. I would imagine this causes the greatest culture shock, and that things are a little less polarised in T4/T5 links. Just as an observation, as a T8 player our solo and small group play has been rather swallowed in T1 where what was an unstoppable zerg last week is now about right for a havoc group this week. This change takes a little time to absorb.

These BETA links have been made to even out population and from this point of view they make the most sense. Bear in mind, one of the main complaints on these forums was about WvW population and the need to balance it so I understand Anet trying to do what we (overall) asked them to do.

In a previous post I suggested linking T1/T5, T2/T6, T3/T7 and T4/T8.
This does not even out population nearly as well. It was suggested in order to match play styles better.

Q: Would the T1/T5 type of link have been better overall?

hmm t4/t8 can you imagine the ques and lag for that im fine with the way the did it the bottom tiers are not cause most of them never even seen close to what ive seen when CD was at the top of tier 3 i would rather it stay with keeping the matching as equal as possible

Yuffi.2430:

In a previous post I suggested linking T1/T5, T2/T6, T3/T7 and T4/T8.
This does not even out population nearly as well. It was suggested in order to match play styles better.

I fail to see how that would create better balance between servers. That would only increase the gap between combined T1+T5 servers and T4+T8 servers. Meaning there would probably never any reason to go up a tier as you just get blobbed down again.

The purpose of changes is not simply reduce number of servers, or to create servers with very high population that will forever sit together in tier 1. In the end it should achieve that every server has fairly similar population and can fight any other server. We not there yet, only first steps toward it.

LordCody – not sure what you meant. Wouldn’t the queues for a T4/8 combo be less than a T4/5 or T1/8 combination? I’m also not sure how matching T1 and T8 servers together counts as keeping the matching as equal as possible… I don’t think you get a more extreme combination in WvW.

FogLeg – while I’m thinking of matching play styles rather than balancing matchups I do take your point. Perhaps the route Anet chose, although it will tend to force a common play style, will lead to more varied match ups in the future. Or perhaps players will “server” stack again and we will end up back where we were a few weeks ago but with less players due to the loss of some long standing communities. I don’t know.

I just wondered which factor people thought was more important – overall population parity between servers or play style (large groups or small / solo).

The main problem I am seeing with full maps is that when the main zerg blobs clash, it is still a"biggest blob wins" scenario – if havoc groups have broken off from the main blob, that means the main blob is going to have a rough time whenever runs into another blob.

Meanwhile blob #3 is free to take whatever they want when the other 2 are clashing.

The solution to this is more tweaking to the CC and AOE to allow for skilled and organized fight groups to survive against larger ones.

In a previous post I suggested linking T1/T5, T2/T6, T3/T7 and T4/T8.
This does not even out population nearly as well. It was suggested in order to match play styles better.

Just sitting imaging the queue’s of T1+T5 servers, that would be a legitimate problem. And the size difference between those combinations would be severe. And would make it near impossible for different tiers to fight one another, thus no match-up variation.