Guild Wars 2

Here’s my thought on this, after my own experiences and reading through the Reddit thread.

1. PvE-nish – remove the “fancy mechanics” in DBLs where possible.
2. Mobility – return uncontested waypoints when holding zones to make it easier for players to find their way to the group.
3. Enable EB, 3xDBL and 3xABL at the same time. This keeps both lovers and haters happy. Iit also helps with…

4. Megaserver fix:
a) track average population for each server over the week. Over time, add in population during different time periods to improve 24-hour balance for …
b) at reset, group servers into only the three colours, like EoTM has, by taking the stats learned in “a” to have 3 unique, balanced “Megateams,” each week
c) don’t use the overflow map system. Seven maps with queues is a better problem than empty T1 maps.
d) retain the current week long progression to avoid the mercenary feel of EoTM.
e) Create additional WvW maps as necessary to ease queues and keep interest.

If we’re already jamming people from all the servers into a single PvE experience, why not follow a similar path in WvW?

This avoids needing to amalgamate quieter servers, and potentially mixes things up to ensure one of the three colours doesn’t just dominate each week.

Seriously, look beyond T1 please.

Jayne.9251:

Seriously, look beyond T1 please.

Thanks for the completely useful reply. I have two alts in CD and one in FA too.

Enable EB, 3xDBL and 3xABL at the same time.

Yikes, I have no idea what kind of fairy tail server you’re on, but I want a piece!

I understand that you’re taking this in perspective with a EotM/MegaServer style of play. But even within that I think this would be a bad idea. You have 1 EBG and 6 borderlands, and if looking back these past 3+ years, EBG has been the definitive most popular map. So you should have more copies of EBG than of the borderlands combined.

To exaggerate slightly: I’d doubt there is enough players through all tiers in NA that be willing to fill out 6 borderland maps at the same time. Instead of sitting in Queue for EBG.

Then there is the whole thing about me not wanting to be on a higher tier level populated server/alliance whatever. Sorry, I just don’t find zerging engaging or fun. And with every server lumped together into a "alliance" system like that, I don’t see how I’m going to be able to play how I like.

PS: Well technically, with 3 DBL I could probably get plenty of low-pop roaming done there... but that isn’t the point :p

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

Here’s my thought on this, after my own experiences and reading through the Reddit thread.

1. PvE-nish – remove the “fancy mechanics” in DBLs where possible.
2. Mobility – return uncontested waypoints when holding zones to make it easier for players to find their way to the group.
3. Enable EB, 3xDBL and 3xABL at the same time. This keeps both lovers and haters happy. Iit also helps with…

4. Megaserver fix:
a) track average population for each server over the week. Over time, add in population during different time periods to improve 24-hour balance for …
b) at reset, group servers into only the three colours, like EoTM has, by taking the stats learned in “a” to have 3 unique, balanced “Megateams,” each week
c) don’t use the overflow map system. Seven maps with queues is a better problem than empty T1 maps.
d) retain the current week long progression to avoid the mercenary feel of EoTM.
e) Create additional WvW maps as necessary to ease queues and keep interest.

If we’re already jamming people from all the servers into a single PvE experience, why not follow a similar path in WvW?

This avoids needing to amalgamate quieter servers, and potentially mixes things up to ensure one of the three colours doesn’t just dominate each week.

That is waaaaaaaaaaaaay too many maps dude, 7 maps…. you’re kitten meh right?

what this game REALLY needs is several modes of pvp.

I mean seriously, everyone found a fun way to enjoy the wvw pvp sandbox , and trying to find a one size fits all way to play is not really an option.

I’d like to try a blob one day……but my fav maps are strategic modes without the meatshields quick killing everything before i even get to target it.

what wvw REALLY needs is different cap sized maps running weekly, so everyone can play the modes we’ve adapted ( mal-adapted ? ) to for the last few years. What I’m getting from all these posts is that there are many ways to enjoy wvw., and trying to fit it neatly into one box is a crime!

what if instead of a mega-server, each player gets a pick of 3 different wvw modes they can join and represent their server ?

-a 250 player cap – where servers can share a map to keep ques full, has new wvw borderlands – never resets and the score is whatever color has most control at the moment.
– a 100 player cap – where mid and lower tier servers can compete with “server pride” – has old borderlands, weekly resets
- and a 50 player cap – where guilds can do a gvg type mode, not server specific – more like a guild starts a game, and waiting for opponents to enter match thing…, old borderlands or no borderlands! – 24 hour games. scores from this match could be used to rank wvw guilds. – ie – one guild challenging the world – if it wins, it gets some sort of wvw rank to their guild. Open World Guild Challenge!

or something along that line.

ok, just my opinion (by saying that you can’t get mad at me or you will cross the PC line and burn in Hell).

Megaservers will kill WvW once and for all for a few simple reasons, having said that, they are probably the smartest move for the money hungry kittenlords that control Anet.

On the surface a Megaserver will be a band aid on a gaping wound by making the game type seem vibrant and active by combining what little players are left into EOTM meaningless match-ups. So they, essentially, become WoW battlegrounds. Just a time filler or a guild-building exercise.

Why it would kill WvW as I see it… (see I said that and you can’t get mad at me without seeming like an kitten) is without a Server to fight for most of the guilds will just go away. One can never underestimate what server pride has lent to this game mode. It was so strong and heavy that even A-Net couldn’t handle it and got rid of the Server Match-up forum. The heat was too hot for the likes of Mikey O-Whatshisname and that charming Colin guy (I miss him). A Server is a focal point and a Rally point for so many of us that do WvW.

I am Maguuman (don’t hate) and one of the only reasons I keep logging on and fighting the good fight day after day is because I love my server, warts and all. If I wake up tomorrow and all I am doing is somehow deciding if I want red, blue or green for a small amount of time, well.. it just won’t be the same. I honestly don’t think I’d play near as much if I didn’t have something to fight for.

My 2 cents.

maguuma are our bestie foes, i wouldn’t want to see them broken up either – they are fun to fight :p

what we need is a way to make a meaningful score. so wvw can become more competitive overall, and we can get more great pvprs back in game. less of that yakky-blob stuff – more of that strategic game play.

i get the impression the larger servers like the pve / big map / autoloot stuff – so they could be more of a grouped server thing – mid sized servers like strategy so 100 players per server is a ball park of keeping a game relatively strategic, and a small sized match 25-50 man match – would be a gvg type match – which is how the lowest tiers are basically playing now…. – if we had those 3 choices of matches to join, then it would not have to be a mega-server ….with a play as you like option. – everyone can keep their ‘server pride’

there would be no more tier 1 ranking because now – 1st set of fights would be gold vs silver vs bronze in one set of matches as grouped teams to keep the attendance high in that category. which actually equates to different strategies of wvw fighting each other – which could be interesting. ie – maguuma and dh fighting together in the blob category could be yak bends worst nightmare.

2nd fight would average out to mid server vs server size – large servers wouldn’t have to wait have to wait in long ques – they can simply join another category of pvp – BUT they would have to compete on a strategic level / cap to have a meaningful score in a match size most servers can cover.

A one size fits it all concept for NA and EU would kill most if not all EU servers and lead to a mass exodus.
I really think that not megaservers are the solution but scoring. Right now smaller servers have little chance and as soon as it’s not “the bigger the better” anymore smaller servers might become more interesting again.

ETA: And Ricky: We have it all on nearly all servers on EU – from 7 to 12 PM CET there’s blobs all around, the rest of the day it’s havoc and roaming.

sorry, the top servers have no clue what it’s like to fight severely outnumbered ….
pound for pound, t1 wouldn’t stand a chance if the rest of the servers teamed up.

and I’m not talking mega-server here, I’m talking about the survival methods we were forced to learn as lower tier servers to have fun in wvw. it would be delta force vs cub scouts.

Are you talking to me, Ricky?
Servers I’ve been to: IoJ (NA), rank 17 or 16 when I started, 9 when I left them 3 months later, Miller’s Sound (EU), rank 20 or even lower when I joined, 18 or 17 when I left, SBI (NA) – too short to even count, Gunnar’s Hold (EU) 15 when I joined, 15 when I left 10 months later, Desolation (EU) 3 when I joined, 1 when I left a month afterwards, Piken (EU) no idea, have been there for too short. Now Gunnar’s again, rank 17.

ahh, so you know what i mean about what the lower tier servers would do to the …say – top 5 servers if the lower tiers banded together.

I’m trying to tell (all of) you that things are different between NA and EU – what’s bringing you guys on NA down is your obsession with having a 24/7 coverage – probably due to the fact that you have oceanic players – so all of you are stacking on the server that has got the best coverage.
A lot of what makes the difference in ranks on EU is down to whether or not a server has got night karma trains, so basically also “coverage”. But as far as I know no one really tries to buy guilds from NA to cover any time zones – unlike NA.
That’s why I think the scoring should be adjusted to how many players on each server are online, so that karma trains aren’t as effective, PPT wise, anymore. That would buff all smaller servers. The scoring then has to be further adjusted and it might be a lot of work to do that but I don’t think you’ll ever achieve a 24/7 coverage. And by merging servers on EU you’d create hour long queues during prime on the lower tier or every server – we’re fine as it is (with some exceptions), the only problem we have is actually night cappers.

ETA: As you can see we moved up with IoJ rather quickly (it was 2 months from 16 or 17 to 9) – We could because we beat zergs twice our size (it was rare that we faced an equal zerg) – it was still zergs though. That was 2 years ago, before the ferocity patch. Also siege worked a lot better when defending – I know a lot of people call siege too effective – I don’t really think so, but nowadays I’m not facing zergs anymore but blobs. Also teh range of the classes has increased, the camera has changed, so it’s very unlikely that an AC will last longer than 2 mins max). Long story short: Back then the smaller group could outplay the bigger which is very hard nowadays. If you buff smaller servers so that skill counts again and not just their size, then you’ll make these servers more interesting again so people might transfer/stay there. I guess you get what I’m trying to explain.

that would be the blob servers though – the people who complain about coverage are the ones who take the score seriously – the lower tier servers in na – from what i’ve seen …don’t make a big fuss about a score ……as much as simply being matched up vs obnoxiously unbalanced fights ….. u know …those fights where there is a group of about 30 people ..and suddenly you see this ocean of red and things get laggy ….. those matchups are a mess …0therwise , the score is pretty meaningless to us in lower tiers it’s more of a predictor of what next week match up will be like – like if we get into a high profile match and severely outnumbered this week, we know next week it’s usually us out numbering the next match up. unless the matches get stuck and we are stuck in the same matches for months at a time. coverage isn’t an issue in dh, our guys know how to score insanely fast when they need to ( and the option is available of course – it’s hard to score fast when there’s a blob everywhere all the time )

What’s blob servers now?
You have to take the score at least halfway seriously if you don’t want to face the same opponents for months. I still have friends on IoJ and they’re not happy, they like to see “blobs” again.
Try to get my point, ok?

you can’t , that’s a mal adjustment …taking a score serious in such a bad numbers matchup ? – to us it’s just an opportunity to develop stronger strategies, so we still fight hard, but the score doesn’t change our drive. taking down as much blob as we can in record time gets us excited, otherwise we know we are not going to win because some matches are like fighting roaches that are just everywhere. they are simply going to score more from sheer size, we’ve accepted that and moved on long ago. but that kind of makes wvw just a scratching post, we practice …..but practice for what ? ….for fun i suppose.

And what do you want now? server merge or no server merge- everything as it is or megaservers?
And I doubt you’re really fighting blobs (35+) if you say the situation on your server is dire.

ETA: I think you didn’t really get my point.
The problems on NA are because everybody is obsessed with having a 24/7 coverage – we were on IoJ as well. Those who can do that best is gold, yes.
If you now change the score to count per players online/playing on each server, then there wouldn’t be a need to have a 24/7 coverage. (it’s a bit more complicated as this could easily be abused but just as easily be forseen and worked against by the devs). Not only that but smaller servers would be buffed during both their servers (equal) prime time. That would solve a lot of the problems both EU and NA have.
(That is the essence of my points – I said a lot more but you’re probably too tired or confused to understand that right now)

honestly, I figure if people understood what I’m trying to say, maybe others might make an effort to see our side and keep the fights balanced. Part of what has to make this work is the community. so much is placed on anets lap but the community can instantly make things more fun by loving their enemies <3

first thing to do , is recognize that all of us have adapted to different shades of wvw / pvp. 2nd thing to consider is how we can share our different game modes, as opposed to picking a favorite one. if the community can work together and agree, then maybe anets position will be easier in helping us get what we agreed to.

Unless anet is trying to covertly be borg and assimilate us into how they want us to wvw, then that’s a whole other kitten.

our coverage actually scales, tonight there were just a few players in eternal grouping up to have fun and match the other server group size, the rest spread out to borders. we obviously won this match, but we are keeping it relatively balanced to keep it fun with skirmishes.

I hope I got your point:
We have solo roaming, havoc, small scale, zergs and blobs on nearly every EU server from rank 1 to rank 24, depending the time. We really have one prime time in which nearly every server manages to get a blob (50-80) together.
If you change it so that servers don’t “have to have” a 24/7 coverage, you open up these choices (roaming, zerg, blob) as servers don’t have to be stacked anymore to be able to compete.

ETA: The differences in our rankings are often because of night capping – PPK works against that which is a great change.
But I think you somehow won’t get my point, no matter what I say – it’s ok.

we rarely have blobs, not because we can’t muster one up, but more because of the way we play , we have spontaneous groups form, like if a popular commander comes on with their guildies, our roamers join them. other times small man guilds are doing their own thing – and for the most part, we don’t blob smaller servers despite that sometimes a 20 man zerg can be overwhelming to a smaller server as is…, and vs larger servers we can’t match their numbers …..so attempting to blob is a waste of time when everyone could be scoring in smaller scattered groups.

That’s great and what has that got to do with anything? =)

different styles of play, and keeping the game fun for everyone. do we really need a mega server for that ? this isn’t about a winning score anymore, because currently the score is rubbish, meaningless. this is about having fun for everyone.

So and now you think a bit and realize that adjusting the scoring would likely preserve servers as they are (except a few) and everybody can keep what they’re used to.

I think my goal is to have some semblance of balance, even if it means that all three teams have periods when no one is one, so roamers and solos have a time to hone their skill area of preference.

It’s definitely not about “T1 FTW” as much as there not being the segregation of population levels.

I have 2 CD alts and one in FA, in addition to my BG main.

The main story I am hoping to share is, “give everyone equal opportunity to experience the joy of wvw.”

For me, WvW is the ultimate “casual” PvP experience.

Ricky.4706:

different styles of play, and keeping the game fun for everyone. do we really need a mega server for that ? this isn’t about a winning score anymore, because currently the score is rubbish, meaningless. this is about having fun for everyone.

Totally.

The concept of having 7 maps alleviates the potential for queues which arise from bringing all the servers into 3 groups.