Guild Wars 2

They need to work out a 3-6 match rule where if you lose for that many straight, you get to drop down.

This can create a “rotating chair of death” scenario but there are servers stuck in places they don’t belong thanks to the incredibly slow pace of the glicko system. Glicko, which was never meant to be used in bracketing; but versatile in that it’s not supposed to punish someone for facing someone who’s better; is meant for a large tournament scoring.

condense the wvw servers merge 12 of them to make 5 “tiers” top 2 servers get to play against themselves 1v1

Anything would be nice at this point. Clearly the issue isn’t going to fix itself.

Wvw population does not reflect the pve population, so simply combining server would fix the wvw problem but create other issues. Eotm is an example of why server identity is important, no one cares to defend. It is just a karma train instead of how it was at the beginning and fun.

The winner up and loser down system was similar to what happen in s2. Either you get a blow-out match or get blown out. The server in the middle of a league would blow-out out by one of two servers. The bottom servers in the league never win. That is why some t2 server are trying to get into silver league before the next season. People prefer to be able to roam the map with few objective, than be spawn camped. Not much you can do to help the t8-9 servers. Even if you encourage pve to wvw that would effect all servers.

Combining them wouldn’t create many issues for PvE since the new megaservers merge all of the servers and create infinite instances for maps when they are full of people.

3 people on the homelands during prime-time in T8, really?

ANet should really have an eye on the state of WvW.

Capacity of WvW in EU is 7 days * 24 hours * 3 Maps * 100 people * 27 Server = 1.36 MILLION PLAY HOURS per week.

I would really wonder how much of them are actual used. How much hours do you spend in WVW usually per week? 14? i.e. 2h every day? Would give space for 100’000 people in EU or 4000 per server or 28 hours per week i.e. 4h every day, would give space for 50’000 people or 2000 per server. How many do we have? 1000 in T1, 50 in T9?

And I would also be interested to hear, why they think that so much overcapacity = empty maps is needed?

This has been the #1 issue with WvW since the game launched.

It’s so frustrating that arenanet knew this YEARS ago and did NOTHING. Literally NOTHING whatsoever.

When a viable alternative comes, I’m gone.

Am already gone, unfortunately there is no viable alternative, not currently on market (ESO kinda blows) and not in the near future. Only game coming close is Archage but its too much construction, raising crops, grinding based and its set in an atmosphere like Eve Online, except fantasy world, so very bad. I played the beta some and already quit and decided I won’t be getting it either. Ended up going back to Rift for a while just for some casual PvE, since at least that’s decent over there.

Tongku.5326:

Am already gone, unfortunately there is no viable alternative, not currently on market (ESO kinda blows) and not in the near future. Only game coming close is Archage but its too much construction, raising crops, grinding based and its set in an atmosphere like Eve Online, except fantasy world, so very bad. I played the beta some and already quit and decided I won’t be getting it either. Ended up going back to Rift for a while just for some casual PvE, since at least that’s decent over there.

Expansion there too in October…

psizone.8437:

Seriously, fix this.

+1 fix pls

How are they supposed to fix this? Force players into certain servers? Merge server communities that hold animosity towards each other? WE made these unbalanced matches, not anet. WE chose what servers to play on, creating these stacked servers.

Telemin.7380:

How are they supposed to fix this? Force players into certain servers? Merge server communities that hold animosity towards each other? WE made these unbalanced matches, not anet. WE chose what servers to play on, creating these stacked servers.

Just stop it.

Telemin.7380:

How are they supposed to fix this? Force players into certain servers? Merge server communities that hold animosity towards each other? WE made these unbalanced matches, not anet. WE chose what servers to play on, creating these stacked servers.

They should have separated WvW servers from PvE server the moment they decided to include tournaments and rewards in the gametype.

They need to place a cap on each servers WvW population and entice players and guilds to spread out, and no, I have no guaranteed suggestions for doing this. Probably the easiest way is:

After the tournament all servers are empty, everyone chooses a server just for WvW (since they don’t matter in pve anymore) and the servers are all soft-capped so you can’t join a server that has more than 50 active players more than the others.

Not logging into WvW for a fortnight removes you from the server (reducing the servers population). If you go back to WvW, you have to reapply for that server or choose another.

That would give players the chance for free transfers or you can pay gems to change server immediately just as they have it set now.

With this system, since no server would have should have no more than 50 more active players than any other server, it would allow tournaments and matchups to include all servers and not have to be split into tiers, allowing more matchup variety and make fights more evenly spread instead of people being rewarded for stacking.

Something a little drastic I know but what about taking the decision away from the players somewhat? Reallocate guilds to random servers in even number distribution. Then at the end of each tournament do the NFL draft thing. Servers that performed the lowest get the top guilds draft of new players and higher servers the least. Repeat each tournament and we get a pretty level playing field.

Yeah they really need to fix tier 2, any seen the scores lately in the past few weeks??

MoonT.6845:

Reallocate guilds to random servers in even number distribution.

That doesn’t really work because even if all the WvW servers had a set, equal number of players bound to them, there’s still no way to guarantee they all participate in even numbers at a given time.

you simply cannot balance player activity.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

MoonT.6845:

Reallocate guilds to random servers in even number distribution.

That doesn’t really work because even if all the WvW servers had a set, equal number of players bound to them, there’s still no way to guarantee they all participate in even numbers at a given time.

you simply cannot balance player activity.

If you read my suggestion above, I laid out a way of letting players choose their server whilst keeping each servers population relatively close together.

I agree with psizone. A complete reset of WvW. And a restart with fewer team where only people that play WvW are counted and where imbalance is hard-limited is probably the best.

The only alternative I see is a reducing of match capacity: half teams, half map capacity in prime time (200 ppl max instead of 400) and a quarter in off-time (100 instead of 400). Then more man-power isn’t an advantage, but just more people in queue as in the beginning of WvW-

Detether accounts from specific servers, instead let players choose (upon entering WvW) where they wanna fight.

Chris.3290:

They need to work out a 3-6 match rule where if you lose for that many straight, you get to drop down.

Since they cannot fix the current broken system, a mercy rule would be nice. If a server gets pummeled by X percentage of points, it should get to move down a week.

Winner move up loser move down still is the best suggestion to me even 2 years later.

Telemin.7380:

How are they supposed to fix this? Force players into certain servers? Merge server communities that hold animosity towards each other? WE made these unbalanced matches, not anet. WE chose what servers to play on, creating these stacked servers.

You on ET? Do you not remember the 13 straight weeks of SF’s complete blowout of ET and FC or how Anet manually intervened?

psizone.8437:

If you read my suggestion above, I laid out a way of letting players choose their server whilst keeping each servers population relatively close together.

I read your suggestion and soft/dynamic caps have been discussed plenty of times on here.

they simply do not work as they inevitably force participation/activity downwards, unless the allowed gap is so wide that the cap itself becomes meaningless.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

they simply do not work as they inevitably force participation/activity downwards, unless the allowed gap is so wide that the cap itself becomes meaningless.

I disagree. I firmly believe levelling the playing field would entice players into WvW rather than push them out. Players in stacked servers are bored, players in underpopulated servers are fed up.

With even servers, players would log into WvW knowing that they have a chance at victory and with the greater range of servers that you could fight against, people would be less likely to get bored (playing against the same servers constantly gets stale)

I think you’re missing the issue.. when I mention participation going downward, it’s a mechanical result, not a player motivation one.

a dynamic cap only limits ppl from entering, not leaving… so as one servers starts losing players, the cap lowers. It would only go back when all servers in the match have parity, which is pretty unlikely outside of primetime.

edit to add: there’s also problems with dynamic caps allowing servers with a lead to drop participation once they’ve built up their defenses, lowering the cap to make it harder for other servers to take their objectives.

I think you misunderstood. The servers would be capped at, say, 500 players with a +/- of 50 players. Once a server has 50 players more than the least populated server, it cannot allow other players in, once the other servers catch up, people would be allowed to transfer to that server again.

The cap isn’t for players online at the time, but rather overall players allowed on a server for that given week, it would be up to the players themselves to decide when to log in etc.

So players that stop playing are booted from the server, lowering the population and if it gets to 50 players less than the other servers, then those servers cannot increase their numbers until that server makes up it’s playerbase.

This fix is for an overall population fix, not a fix for nightcapping.

dynamic caps for population would be much much worse than ones for activity.

it’s all the same problems only with more permanency.

Ulion.5476:

That is why some t2 server are trying to get into silver league before the next season.

Mag isn’t tanking, they don’t exist anymore. FA and SoS both have zero desire to drop to silver. That would be a terrible result for both those servers as well as the silver league (not that it would be even remotely possible for FA or SoS to drop.)

Chris.3290:

They need to work out a 3-6 match rule where if you lose for that many straight, you get to drop down.

This can create a “rotating chair of death” scenario but there are servers stuck in places they don’t belong thanks to the incredibly slow pace of the glicko system. Glicko, which was never meant to be used in bracketing; but versatile in that it’s not supposed to punish someone for facing someone who’s better; is meant for a large tournament scoring.

The problem is that the op’s Server is exactly where it “belongs” due to their strenght.

It’s just that it’s one of the tiers/level where it’s borked :
- FoW and Bt are roughly the same strenght now, but FAR stronger than the last 3 servers (specially with the numbers they show for now) wich means they seldom get to play with them, and when they do, they are the server stomping people with no chance to fight them, while one of the last servers is stomped to Death in the tier where FoW should be
- FoW and Bt are really weaker than the next server (RoS right now).
- On top of that, with RoF and Dzag crumbling quite some (they are a shadow of themselves, specially Dzag who seems to have lost all their night and morning numbers, and a good chunk of their prime time numbers too), we have RoS getting up enough for it to be faced with T8 servers sometimes.. and when it happens (like this week), it means a T8 server getting down against FoW/Bt, stomping them and blobbing them even more than RoS can do

It’s not a fun place to be (RoS has been there for months/years to be honest, most of the time), but it’s a direct consequence of :
- 3 way MU’s.
- Glicko rating
- the fact that there is huge gaps in population/numbers/coverage at some levels, and when it happens the mu’s are still the “best possible” but that doesn’t make them fun.

Only way to “solve” it is, adopting a totally different system, or find a way to forcibly balance numbers around all the various periods of play(won’t happen).

Because it’s something that happens at every level now and then. Take RoF/MS/Dzag. Basically they were for quite long, between far stronger servers (the rest of silver) and far weaker (the rest of bronze, RoS in lead). Right now it’s “better” because they are closer, but that doesn’t solve anything, because the imbalance can be elsewhere.

In NA it’s T2 that is like that with 2 strong servers, and a 3rd getting destroyed, to the point nobody in T3/4 want to get there, specillay since they have 5/6 servers in T3/4 that are roughly the same level and balanced.

We have the same in top silver, a lot of servers around the same strenght, that are quite weaker than the ones in Gold, and the first 3/4 in gold destroying the rest.

It’s pretty much hard to “solve” without getting the players to drop the whole “let’s stack up servers to get easy wins” and the human mentality that pretty much 99% of the people prefer a challenge less easy victory than a really hard fight that can go both ways….

Telemin.7380:

How are they supposed to fix this? Force players into certain servers? Merge server communities that hold animosity towards each other? WE made these unbalanced matches, not anet. WE chose what servers to play on, creating these stacked servers.

Actually Anet made most of that with their politic of Server Transfert Pricing and Season Rewards.

They amplified it to no end by giving FREE transferts to Silver/Gold servers that were already on the rise for S2, and having pretty much all the Gold/Silver servers the same price or CHEAPER than the dying bronze servers in T8/T9….

On top of that they are borking and screwing around with the populations levels, and still use PvE population levels for transferts when it has no meaning now with the MegaServers.

They can’t change much due to the human nature, but they can at least stop making it worse and worse.
Anet is mostly responsible by opening servers that should have never been opened in the first place, not closing them months ago when it was needed (you could close them and offer a free transferts to every single player on those servers to choose where they would go instead of merging), and added the problem of the server transfert pricing to get as much money possible from it, to the detriment of game experience for the players.

You cannot pretend it’s not Anet’s fault, it’s mostly their fault. Player’s responsability in it is minor.

Transfer prices based on the population ANet is using are

• 66% based on totally inactive player rotting In the cellar of your server since month or years.
• 30% based on the server PvE population that has to choose a server, but hates to enter WvW and only does for map-completion and achievement/season reward hunting.
• 4% active WvW player which are the only reason why these server still exist and transfers are made.

They realy should only allow Transfers to Lower Tier servers Not up.
so if you want to get to T2 , you’ll have to join a t2 server thats doing well . and if it gets into T1 , you can Trasnfer Between the T1 servers .

so you can never jump from T3 , straight to t1 . you’ll have to work your way up.
that would solve the Guild hopping problem.
if you want to Trasfer you can always Transfer downwards but not up.

for a chance to get into T1 they would have to work with that server get them into T1 and then Transfer.

it might help slow the guild/people stack wagoning too Fast and it stops any Tier higher than them getting overstacked.

and Stacking a lower Teir server will only Raise it to the point where they can Transfer back to where they came from , its a never ending Circle.
so it kind of enforces a loyalty to their current server since it would be near to pointless to transfer for server score.

the only reason to go down a tier in this method would be for Equal fights , guild Challanges or just a change of Pace.

Learn to match up the worlds, A-Net. If a server got placed third with less than half of the second place’s points, then, in the next round, don’t put them up against the very same people they just drastically lost to alongside the strongest server in the whole game. It’ll just ensure that the world fails over and over again, and therefore creates an unfun and annoying (as sh*t) experience for the players of aforementioned defeated world.

Consequently, it makes it so that everyone floods/switches/joins the servers that are already crowded, therefore only leaving the crippling world at a -HIGHER- disadvantage, and only increasing the gap between the powerful servers and those which are not.

Come on.

I will be putting this post in several threads. I just want to say that I really think it should be cheating that a server is allowed to tank for a few weeks to be taken down to bronze lvl just so they can dominate. I am speaking of GoM. They were Silver then just before the Tournament then tanked really bad a few weeks to be taken down to Bronze and it is obvious in their last 2 weeks in this league. The week before the tournament they completely Zerged and out numbed every on on the maps and won so bad that the first week of this tournament they had to hold back till the last 2 days and then come out in force. By allowing a server to do this The ppl that run the game have allowed then to set the deck in their favor. and as far as I am concerned that is cheating, and it is being allowed by ArenaNet and NCSorft.

HoD here. Wtf. My server hasn’t came in first since Tourny S2(silver). Fast forward; this week we are matched up against Dragonbrand and IoJ. I don’t claim to know all the aspects of matching, but this is kitty kat! Dragonbrand (x-gold 1 of five full servers) against us, Henger of Denravi (a PvE shell of a silver warmachine that hasn’t placed first in 5 months). One of their guilds is close to our entire server population that play in WvW consistently. I know… lets lower the achievement requirements per week this tournament to 1hr’s worth of playtime, that way more people will leave sooner.
If your goal was to loose long term players holding out for the tournament in servers barley keeping their numbers in WvW, congrats. So Disappointed.

I fear that that these unfair matchups will drive players from game.When I enter the battlefield and see one army have 90% of 2 battlefields and 50% of the other 2 battlefields like tonight,I take a break and come back at another time.If i see this too many times, I look for another game to play ,I am about to buy Divinity Original Sin because of this issue.I am only mentioning this because usually I would just start playing the other game and tell no one.However this game has provided me a lot of entertainment, so I hope the developers can improve this aspect of the game.If generating more revenue is the issue , I as a player would be willing to pay for new expansions packages with the cost approximately 60.00 dollars.This would be like me buying a new entertaining video game . Arenanet generates revenue,players get great new expansion content and players still do not have to pay monthly fees.

IPheerNoOne.5608:

I will be putting this post in several threads. I just want to say that I really think it should be cheating that a server is allowed to tank for a few weeks to be taken down to bronze lvl just so they can dominate. I am speaking of GoM. They were Silver then just before the Tournament then tanked really bad a few weeks to be taken down to Bronze and it is obvious in their last 2 weeks in this league. The week before the tournament they completely Zerged and out numbed every on on the maps and won so bad that the first week of this tournament they had to hold back till the last 2 days and then come out in force. By allowing a server to do this The ppl that run the game have allowed then to set the deck in their favor. and as far as I am concerned that is cheating, and it is being allowed by ArenaNet and NCSorft.

GoM tanked? When tourny was announced we took 3rd place that week (and tourny was announced on a Thursday so that gave us a day and half to lose) 2nd place the week after that(wait shouldn’t we be 3rd if we are tanking?) and we took first place the next week(1st! dang we are going up to silver, shoulda tanked more). Its more like we were rebuilding. GoM got hurt in Silver and the PVE’ers went back to PVE!! Now they are somewhat back for the new tourny. Holding back till last two days? NAH I was out there fighting for very long hours each and everyday.. Get your facts straight cause right now you look like a poor sport..

I know what sounds fun! A rank 9 server playing a rank 15 server! Let’s see what happens!

Eshady.9146:

HoD here. Wtf. My server hasn’t came in first since Tourny S2(silver). Fast forward; this week we are matched up against Dragonbrand and IoJ. I don’t claim to know all the aspects of matching, but this is kitty kat! Dragonbrand (x-gold 1 of five full servers) against us, Henger of Denravi (a PvE shell of a silver warmachine that hasn’t placed first in 5 months). One of their guilds is close to our entire server population that play in WvW consistently. I know… lets lower the achievement requirements per week this tournament to 1hr’s worth of playtime, that way more people will leave sooner.
If your goal was to loose long term players holding out for the tournament in servers barley keeping their numbers in WvW, congrats. So Disappointed.

100% agree. You keep pushing this kittenty system into our faces. It dose not work, it’s not fun being outnumber all week long. And it’s not fun playing a server 6 ranks higher.

WvW is broken. That’s it.

It started with the removal of the queue by EotM as the only balancing factor that ever existed, got out of control by season 2 rewards and is now gone.

If 4 ranks difference is a blow out there is nothing left to play.

Dayra.7405:

WvW is broken. That’s it.

It started with the remove of the queue by EotM as the only balancing factor that ever existed, got heated by season 2 rewards and is now gone.
If 4 ranks difference is a blow out there is nothing left to play.

I agree, I’m done getting upset about this game over and over and over again. It’s not fun, it’s punishing and I’m sick of it.

It’s entirely the player base that made these matchups exist.

If people understood that you are supposed to loose objectives and loose fights from time to time, ET would on occasion face blackgate and stale matchups would be no more.

Dano.5298:

It’s entirely the player base that made these matchups exist.

Yes, it’s the players that move, but it’s ANet that make the rules.

And the rules are: More people win, and there is no penalty to concentration and a reward for winning.

Result: rather sooner than later all will be gone or concentrated on one server.

If you design a game, you have to foresee and counter that.

And if you are not able to foresee it, you should notice and correct it while it happens!

But all ANet seem to be able to do is: “WvW is so great lets make another competition”

Dayra.7405:

Dano.5298:

It’s entirely the player base that made these matchups exist.

Yes, it’s the players that move, but it’s ANet that make the rules.

And the rules are: More people win, and there is no penalty to concentration and a reward for winning.

Result: rather sooner than later all will be gone or concentrated on one server.

If you design a game, you have to foresee and counter that.

Except that there are no rewards to winning anyways and you are wrecking a superb game by concentrating. It’s not anet’s fault for people getting worked up over meaningless things.

In seasons there are these tickets and season 2 said first place get more than last place.
Season 3 said, the more you win the more you get. And always including off season, you get the WEXP bonus boxes, more for winning than for loosing.

Not much, but obviously already enough to to speed up the natural concentration process, originating in people’s preference to win and not to loose.

Dayra.7405:

In seasons there are these tickets and season 2 said first place get more than last place.
Season 3 said, the more you win the more you get. And always including off season, you get the WEXP bonus boxes, more for winning than for loosing.

Not much, but obviously already enough to to speed up the natural concentration process, originating in people’s preference to win and not to loose.

Touché. Valid point and well stated.

And the worst thing:

The longer the concentration (or exit) process isn’t countered, the faster it will run. No longer driven by the rewards, but simply by: being able to play.

If you stay where you are, you will either do not find enough friends to play with or you do not find enough enemies to fight against.

ANet is already sleeping with respect to that for half a year, time is running out.

Dano.5298:

It’s entirely the player base that made these matchups exist.

If people understood that you are supposed to loose objectives and loose fights from time to time, ET would on occasion face blackgate and stale matchups would be no more.

Can’t tell if serious. The only time you’re supposed to “lose” any objective is if the enemy can take it. Losing to massage your enemy into keep playing is a sign that something is very wrong.

Hard to find motivation to even try WvW this week when one server so heavily outnumbers another. Forget rank etc., just the numbers make any kind of reasonable contest virtually impossible. If this is the new and improved system it needs help.