This worries me. I don’t WvW with a guild, so I rely on the bigger guilds to be commanding. If those guilds decided to move to a new server, it could seriously gut WvW for me.
Is it not possible to match servers based on WvW participation? If a server is 50% full, but only 5% of people play WvW, matching them with a server that is 70% full wouldn’t necessarily make for an unfair matchup for a server that is 80% full, but has high WvW participation (for example).
Again, server population is based solely on WvW participation and has been for about a year and a half.
If they’re going to try and balance matchups in a granular way, they need to use granular data. Player participation is not a good heuristic at all given the nature of WvW.
A couple points.
First, guilds aren’t looking for space to expand, they’re looking for PEOPLE to recruit. There is a reason that most of the surviving large WvW guilds are in the upper tiers, because that is the only place they can replenish numbers and maintain themselves. WvW guilds die on lesser populated servers. You’re not going to get WvW guilds to move of their free will unless you can guarantee them a population to recruit from. These new empty servers would be the death knell to an already dwindling supply of WvW guilds.
Second, reading between the lines and looking at Tyler’s post, and remembering the leaked notes on Reddit before world linking went in, the conclusion is pretty obvious.
This is an oblique way to bring Battlegroups into the game. You might still call these 50% smaller servers “servers”, but they’d in practice just be a couple guilds(maybe approaching that 1000 man cap that Battlegroups were rumored to have) and would essentially be Battlegroups.
Now, I am all for Battlegroups, anything to make WvW more alive and less stale. But if the Reddit leaks were accurate Battlegroups were going to go in with a couple other features. Battlegroups(or small servers if we want to call them that) would be able to shake up their rosters every 8-12 weeks without costing gold or gems(Very crucial to creating new match-ups and recruiting new players). And more importantly the existing server structure would disappear and be replaced.
Creating these small servers without these other features would not be ideal at all.
Don’t be afraid to shake things up. WvW needs a shake up.
This, a thousand times this.
Especially the part about guilds, the ability to recruit was a major part of my guilds recent decision to move servers and in the choice of server. Why would guilds move to smaller servers with less ability to recruit?
We wouldn’t force players to move worlds but stacked worlds would have a high chance of never opening for transfers again since we would be lowering the population player cap on all worlds. So for example in NA worlds like Blackgate and Jade Quarry would stay “Full” and wouldn’t be open for transfers unless player started to transfer off.
Why don’t you just do that now with existing servers?
Also, would you consider doing this in NA only, and reverting EU back to the old system of what it was before linking?
If it’s both NA and EU, then no thanks. As someone already said, this will be a short term fix and we will have the same situation as we have now —- only more fragmented.
Why is Anet suddenly looking at new worlds, and not working with the linking system they have introduced, fights have been a lot better since it was done, ( I cant speak for NA as I haven’t played WvW on NA for 2 years ) but on EU the battles have been great, lowering population will revert WvW back to the boring K-Train maps that we had before.
3. Would you be interested in transferring to a new free world?
NO, but if you make it that I can no longer play with the guildies/commanders/community I have been playing with, what’s my incentive to continue playing WvW.
It really seems like your going to gut something and rip WvW communities apart and force people to make new ones just for the sake of it,
So….. why would i move my guild to a much smaller new world with less players to recruit from if I want to expand it as opposed to a full server?
So that you have huge coverage gaps during the time zones your guild isn’t playing of course…….
wait…..
I don’t know if this is possible but if its stupid I’ll delete the post.
Why not have one world where there is no wvw, there should be enough room on each server for the people stuck on the wvwerless sever to transfer if they want to wvw. This is just a thought that crossed my mind.
Current worlds:
• World 1: 95%
• World 2: 82%
• World 3: 81%
• World 4: 60%
• World 5: 30%
• World 6: 10%
Linked worlds:
World 1: 95%
World 2&6: 92%
World 4&5: 90%
World 3 would be no wvw.
(edited by Eddbopkins.2630)
Can’t we instead do away with worlds altogether?
Split players into smaller ‘alliances’ that guilds and individual players can join, with much smaller groups that are way easier to balance and matchup, and between which is much harder to switch because of longer lasting ‘treason’ penalties.
Sounds good tbh, I’d be up for it.
I would vote “no” on this idea. For one, I like who I play with on my existing server quite a bit, and this has potential to bring about external fragmentation (that is, fragmentation introduced by ANet and not by choice). Second, the population doesn’t need to be balanced across more servers, but rather balanced within WvW, even if that causes 4+ server blobs. I’d like to see a system where the worlds were linked based on the population of the previous link during the world’s average peak time. If we peak in NA prime, pair it with other smaller worlds that peak WvW activity during NA prime to get as close to 100% as possible — or alternatively, pair smaller worlds with a ‘host’ servers non-peak time, and for CD that would be any timezone but NA prime, to bring about a more round-the-clock coverage.
What I do not like about the current system is that the population is simply based off of who could potentially log into WvW, and not who actually logs into WvW.
That said, outside of prime time coverage, T4 is a lot of fun as-is with the links. We lose some and win some. Our server pairings have generally been with nearly unpopulated servers, WvW-wise, which isn’t the best, but it hasn’t stopped us from having fun and being semi-competitive.
From my point of view this is a systemic problem not based in the player population but also how the system rewards the numbers instead the skill set and the player organization:
Once we solved the problems with the binary blobs (melee train or pirate ship) and players are somehow rewarded fo using more coordinated way to fight closer to a raid than to pve open world we may think about balancing the population:
You as company can not control the amount of players that goes to each server and making smaller pieces will not balance anything as the players will quickly shift to fill up any server that are defined as the strongest because they have the wvw home guilds. My suggestions will make the game will reward better the difference of player population between servers without the feeling that they did nothing and got everything.
What about national servers ?
Why not just open up free transfers for a week or 2 for everyone to see where everyone goes and then change things from there. See what servers die as a result and delete them or merge them permanently. This gives big guilds a chance to stay together on a new server.
(edited by Aitadis.8269)
Established wvw people are not going to move to new worlds without incentives; between bandwagoning and nostalgic server identity, people are going to stick with the status quo unless they’re forced to change. Sadly, server identity has come to mean nothing now except to hardcore wvw people and early adopters; it would be better to start a new type of identity altogether for wvw matching.
It’s a legitimate concern to be worried about fracturing social groups, but at the same time, there is so much imbalance in world matchups now that there needs to be a big shakeup or else we’ll continue to see these runaway problems. Finding a way to balance the different types of players in WvW – the strategic PPT and fight-oriented types, for example – is also a part of this.
I’d prefer to see temporary (1-3 week) matchups that are reassigned based on guild/friend alliances so clusters of people get to be together, but have to work with fresh people for a bit. Kind of like how Dragon’s Stand maps get reshuffled, but if you’re already in a squad, you have a higher chance of being able to reassemble together on a new map. There should be some player input, but there should also be enough changing up of things to keep this imbalance problem from becoming entrenched. Add in PvP-style matching so large guilds who would basically be one team in wvw get matched up with something similar – they will probably have similar large-scale tactics and comparable levels of coordination. This allows people who want to be in a big wvw guild to have a certain style of play and lets smaller guilds avoid the zergfests.
You would need strict quotas for the new servers. If a server is full it has to be closed and stay closed. Who is late can not enter anymore.
The new servers would be more or less WvW server. Except for WvW players they are not alluring.
In the long run I think Arenanet has to give up thy idea that a homeworld can only have one WvW team. Would it be possible to decouple home worlds and WvW worlds? What if WvW players had to register for the world they want to play. Areanet could use the number of players for each to create WvW teams fighting for their servers. Bigger server would send more than one team and smaller servers would send one.
I think we need a dynamic system that can address fluctuations in population and prevent stacking on certain severs that rule everything by sheer masses, The curent very static system can’t do this.
From my point of view this is a systemic problem not based in the player population but also how the system rewards the numbers instead the skill set and the player organization:
- for the hundred time: reduce dramatically the damage to players from all the siege.* This only benefits the bigger blobs as they have more supplies. The siege should apply CC to incapacitate players so they are not able to damage but it must not do more damage than any AA. That way the siege will benefit al group sizes and will depend on the organization.
- Modify effects to affect players around a target over time. There is an skill in game from a vampire something that affects players around the target. We need skills like this to avoid staking blobs in one spot. While this is not done we will have pirate ship or melee train.
- Some boons should not stack in duration or potency. They are too strong to be designed to act 100% of the time.
Once we solved the problems with the binary blobs (melee train or pirate ship) and players are somehow rewarded fo using more coordinated way to fight closer to a raid than to pve open world we may think about balancing the population:
- the average population during at the end of a encounter (2h) will be calculated to find the difference multiplier of the points. The math could be like this: (lower population population server / higher population partcipation server) * 100 and that will be the extra percentage points the lower population server will get. Participation could be the total amount of wvw reward track points the total players of that server have earned during that encounter.
You as company can not control the amount of players that goes to each server and making smaller pieces will not balance anything as the players will quickly shift to fill up any server that are defined as the strongest because they have the wvw home guilds. My suggestions will make the game will reward better the difference of player population between servers without the feeling that they did nothing and got everything.
Finally someone else with a bit of sense. I’ve been saying this for the longest. Anything other then nerfing zergs, would be a mute point and keep the game mode completely non competitive at best.
Why not just open up free transfers for a week or 2 for everyone to see where everyone goes and then change things from there. See what servers die as a result and delete them or merge them permanently. This gives big guilds a chance to stay together on a new server.
At least a dozen guilds would just go to BG, creating even more imbalance.
Why not just open up free transfers for a week or 2 for everyone to see where everyone goes and then change things from there. See what servers die as a result and delete them or merge them permanently. This gives big guilds a chance to stay together on a new server.
At least a dozen guilds would just go to BG, creating even more imbalance.
True, guess that server should stay full, and a few others should only be opened until they reach a certain capacity. I think it’s just ridiculous to add more servers atm, when server linkings are currently required to even keep things interesting.
World Linking would still exist in the new world system. For example, maybe the current world links for EU would be the same but now Kodash, Jade Sea, and Seafarer’s Rest are now linked with a new empty world (we would probably have done different links but just to give everyone an idea).
1. How do you feel about this proposal?
I don’t know if it will work out well. The new worlds will only improve linking if a significant number of active and experienced wvw players transfer to them.
2. What, if anything, would you change about this current proposal?
Instead of multiples worlds you could add an option so players can choose to be part of a “mega server”. The mega server would allow you to link individual players to whichever server needs them, rather than just linking the whole server.
3. Would you be interested in transferring to a new free world?
Not without any incentives, a mercenary needs to get paid. =P
From my point of view this is a systemic problem not based in the player population but also how the system rewards the numbers instead the skill set and the player organization:
- for the hundred time: reduce dramatically the damage to players from all the siege.* This only benefits the bigger blobs as they have more supplies. The siege should apply CC to incapacitate players so they are not able to damage but it must not do more damage than any AA. That way the siege will benefit al group sizes and will depend on the organization.
- Modify effects to affect players around a target over time. There is an skill in game from a vampire something that affects players around the target. We need skills like this to avoid staking blobs in one spot. While this is not done we will have pirate ship or melee train.
- Some boons should not stack in duration or potency. They are too strong to be designed to act 100% of the time.
Once we solved the problems with the binary blobs (melee train or pirate ship) and players are somehow rewarded fo using more coordinated way to fight closer to a raid than to pve open world we may think about balancing the population:
- the average population during at the end of a encounter (2h) will be calculated to find the difference multiplier of the points. The math could be like this: (lower population population server / higher population partcipation server) * 100 and that will be the extra percentage points the lower population server will get. Participation could be the total amount of wvw reward track points the total players of that server have earned during that encounter.
You as company can not control the amount of players that goes to each server and making smaller pieces will not balance anything as the players will quickly shift to fill up any server that are defined as the strongest because they have the wvw home guilds. My suggestions will make the game will reward better the difference of player population between servers without the feeling that they did nothing and got everything.
I agree. Work with the servers you currently have. And no .. I wouldn’t leave my server, been on it since day 1.
You guys need to realize timezone coverage is more important for fun than anything else.
Right now BG and Mag both lost their biggest SEA commanders to EU server because there is no fight if we don’t roll each other. From map queue on both server to no queue, sometimes no players all because of your stupid linking system forcing servers away from each other.
If you look at the statistics you will realize OCX/SEA barely have enough population for 6 servers let alone 12 and you should let us all play together instead of ‘making new worlds’ which solves ZILCH.
New worlds don’t automatically mean new population, new commanders, new guilds. Especially for OCX/SEA which has been dwindling in population since 2013/2014.
1. Well it’s something i guess, not particulary hyped or anything. I wonder what would cause people to join these new worlds?
2. I don’t realy know, but linking is making hard to recruit people into a guild, since everyone is aware that that person is going to have to transfer to next linking server or host server. I think just merging servers or some entire new mechanic should be in order.
3. No. What does it offer me? No people, no guilds, no infrastructure (website, TS,…),…
Honestly, i have no idea how to make this better. Massive overhaul maby, but that would take years and if you make a slightest mistake, people will hate you.
If you look at it WvW doesn’t offer much to veteran player, exept for fights(combat system is fantastic, best i’ve ever played), which makes WvW a sandbox without any particular goal.
(edited by SloRules.3560)
World Linking would still exist in the new world system. For example, maybe the current world links for EU would be the same but now Kodash, Jade Sea, and Seafarer’s Rest are now linked with a new empty world (we would probably have done different links but just to give everyone an idea).
Why not test this out on NA, which seems to have greater support as issues in NA are not the same in EU. Revert EU back to the old system, and see which format players migrate to?
This would provide you with a safety net if one system becomes obviously preferred over the other. Plus it gives you greater variables with which to test.
The only real issue I can see is for servers like FC, who have clearly defined server attachment (which I think is awesome).
I’m curious how the % for each worlds population is determined… Because it really affects just how accurate all this theory is.
For example:
Is it based of people that actually enter the world on a daily/weekly basis? Or is it people that actually reach a new level? or achieve an objective? What determines a player that adds to a worlds active WvW population.
From experience i know of people that come and go occasionally that may add to a population but with minimal actual contribution over a long term period. What if a server has more of these? giving it a 80% pop but the 65% pop of a “smaller” server has a more core and dedicated group.
Fundamentally there’s a lot of variables i’d want to make sure where covered before we base a new linking system like this on.
We could achieve more balanced competition in a world-versus-world setting if we had more pieces to join together with the World Linking System. It currently is not possible for us to establish an “equal” number of players on each link/world with the current world sizes. You may recall this initially was mentioned by Tyler a few months ago.
For example, world populations currently look something like this:
• World 1: 95%
• World 2: 82%
• World 3: 81%
• World 4: 60%
• World 5: 30%
• World 6: 10%Since our final world total needs to be divisible by 3 because we need a team for each color—Red, Blue, and Green—we either need to avoid linking any of the worlds, or link some worlds even if the result is that they have the advantage of a larger population.
• Worlds 1+6: 105%
• Worlds 2+5: 112%
• Worlds 3+4: 141%After linking, the difference in population between the highest and lowest teams is much narrower, but the third rank server still has significantly more population than the server that previously was ranked first. Also, the result of this theoretical world linking is that all worlds are now above our goal population cap, and probably have moderate to heavy queues.
If we instead had twice as many worlds, but if each had about half the population, it would be much easier to create linked teams with similar populations. This would lead to better matchups for everyone, and encounters would be less predictable. In this scenario, we would allow players free transfers to the new empty worlds for a period of time. These worlds would start out linked so that they wouldn’t begin in an empty state in a match-up. We would lower the player population cap on all worlds so that more worlds would become and stay “Full.” The result would be that guilds that want to expand would have an excellent option to do so with a move to these new open worlds.
Having outlined some of the thinking behind this proposal, we’d like your feedback on these three topics.
1. How do you feel about this proposal?
2. What, if anything, would you change about this current proposal?
3. Would you be interested in transferring to a new free world?
The idea to create more worlds is OK but you have to built in some limitations in order to make it running smoothly and not getting rigged like it is going on currently.
- Free transfers on start: only allow free transfers OFF current worlds to newly created worlds. Better close old worlds for transfers in that time frame.
- Population cap: needs to response faster then nowadays (at least in the free transfer periode) otherwise some “VIP’s” will call out the new fotm server and mass transfers will happen.
- Transfer costs after free transfer periode: linked worlds need to share costs with the highest populated world in that specific link. No cheap backdoor option please.
Saying that I never have and never will move to another server (to answer your last question).
Be very careful with those free transfers. If you bodge this you might blow out that game mode finaly.
I think this could be done without making new servers to be honest. Just set the population cap on the servers that you want even if its lower than it is now. Those that fall above can be designated full, everything else can be free to transfer.
I think that would end up having the same effect as making new worlds except anet wouldnt get the gems from transferring to those other worlds. If they can put that aside from being a problem then they can deal with the other problem incentivising players to move.
This I really think could be as simple as giving a buff to people who take the transfer. (I don’t know exactly the balance of what it should be, that’d have to be worked out between what anet is willing to give and what players would take to move, but an example of what that could be is a month long buff to reward track gain.
Why isn’t straight up killing other players rewarded more?
Just on this there’s really no way to tell what amount of skill was involved and it could really vary based on if it was a 1v1 or 5v1 for example so the reward can’t be too good or it would incentivise lopsided matchups but you do still get stuff for killing other players and the satisfaction of making them unable to participate in taking objectives for the time it takes them to get back to the fray.
Also, the result of this theoretical world linking is that all worlds are now above our goal population cap, and probably have moderate to heavy queues.
Moderate to heavy queue = me not entering WvW ever. I am a light WvW player, mixing my time between PvE & WvW, but when there is a queue I don’t/won’t bother. I won’t say that I speak for all other casual WvW players, but I would expect that I am not alone in that.
Also, if you (ANET) create a situation in which there is a perpetual queue for WvW, you had better rethink the PvE only daily options, because some days 2/3 daily options are garbage, and if you make WvW dailies difficult to access you will alienate a possibly significant portion of us who split between modes for dailies.
Having outlined some of the thinking behind this proposal, we’d like your feedback on these three topics.
1. How do you feel about this proposal?
2. What, if anything, would you change about this current proposal?
3. Would you be interested in transferring to a new free world?
Anything that makes queues for WvW worse than they already are is BAD, plain and simple. Casuals won’t want to wait, and dedicated WvW players will have longer wait times stuck in PvE as a much less desirable (to them) game mode
I would look at anything that might change the numbers to keep them below population caps to keep queues down.
I would be open to possibly transferring to a new world, however my biggest concern is that as a gaming family with multiple accounts, we would end up with half the family moved and the other half unable if the world became full, with no option for those who moved to revert back. It is more important to me for our family accounts to remain together on the same server than pretty much any incentive you might offer to move. The same concern would be for guilds. Is there a way to link multiple accounts or guild members so that a family or guild might make the migration together without the concern that half would be unable to make the move? Somewhat like the megamap population assignment is supposed to work?
I’ve been hearing people claim server pride is dead for months. Now suddenly it’s being used as an excuse not to attempt to improve things?
if transfers are free, people will attempt to bandwagon onto the current winning server..
then they will get moved.. but that’s what happens now anyway.
There are queues in wvw? I’m on JQ.. apparently one of the most full servers.. What queues? I have not seen more than 2 maps queued in months, and that is only during the weekend.
Ultimately, on an individual level, I don’t think we as players will see or feel much change, initially.
However with more shards to put together, and potentially better matchup balance (this needs to be weighted by timezones, not just a simple "server X has Y players and server a has B players) it should be easier to create more balanced, therefore more fun matchups.
Also what anet is proposing would not require anyone to move. While giving us the freedom to choose to move if we want ( people may try to form new alliances, or simple bandwagon to an empty server that has known good allies, which happens currently anyway).
tl;dr:
+1, lets try it!
Worst that can happen is nothing really changes.
(edited by Artemis Thuras.8795)
Servers need to be completely reset; reset the cap of population, add a tier to reduce volatility. Let guilds move together by guild and (or) individuals to the servers of their choice for an allotted time. Add a server for people that are inactive for more than 60-90 days to purge population- when they re-log they can choose a server with open population (to keep the population true of the server). Delete WVW server names or permeant link of current servers with current names to total population cap combined to be same as the others not linked.
Renaming the servers would reset and renew communities to begin again without the stigma of being a blob server or be a PVE server or be T1 server or T5 server. Reset GLICKO (or make a new system). Restart, revive and renew the game. Trying to fix the problem is as simple restarting after all the modifications to the game play and population flux, it is time to reset servers, and your communities are the people that are in them, not the name of the server of where you are. Plan and organize the group of people you want to be with or join a guild; and you can keep your community or make it even better after the change.
Okay that something need to change is obvious and i like this idea, but what if we do it the other way around.
For me one Question is: Do we want an equal population on every server? Or have X server with high pop, Y server with medium pop and Z server with low pop (so everyone has a matchup size he likes).
Then: Why not just close/clear every server and open only so many servers, that this goal is reached. I mean you have some approximation of the player base. And when the max cap of the server is reached, it will just switch to “full” on a hardcap. So one server has 120% is not possible, because 100% switches to full (for different matchup sizes, the cap is different and is shown on world transfer).
Okay that something need to change is obvious and i like this idea, but what if we do it the other way around.
For me one Question is: Do we want an equal population on every server? Or have X server with high pop, Y server with medium pop and Z server with low pop (so everyone has a matchup size he likes).
Then: Why not just close/clear every server and open only so many servers, that this goal is reached. I mean you have some approximation of the player base. And when the max cap of the server is reached, it will just switch to “full” on a hardcap. So one server has 120% is not possible, because 100% switches to full (for different matchup sizes, the cap is different and is shown on world transfer).
They tried to do that but people wanted to see instant results, rather than realizing it would take time, through attrition.
Then a bunch of T1 folks came on the forum yelling at Anet to open up their servers, and Anet caved and gave them a window to stack again, instead of sticking to their guns.
Less than a week later we had threads from people complaining about population imbalance.
As a long time WvW player in roam and zerg field, most players know Time Coverage is a main issue to win the match. Therefore, Anet established the World Linking and Skirmish systems to balance it.
In order to answer all three questions, we must use SWOT analysis first. Since people like to try the new stuff, some guilds will allocate the spot in the new servers to recruit new members. Most people like to join the bigger server and follow familiar commanders to win the match as social behaviour. However, there are some afkers, troll accounts and hackers can waste the server population to block, full and queue the WvW access, which including players always say the enemy has bigger zergs etc. They dont contribute any benefits to WvW communities. And we know we cant avoid them, because they are in every game.
What’s the opportunities in current reward, do players want legendary WvW Back-piece for participation? If We wanted better rewards we would play pve question. Or if a player has more than 5K Spirit Shards, 10K Proof of Heroics and 50K Badges of Honors to earn this legendary WvW honor. Better than just some random pve players log in WvW few hours and get the reward track back-piece.
Anet should consider the server costs and transfer costs, tier 1 server lags and old empty servers. Other question likes class balance leave it to class balance team. If all the situation can be solved partially. I dont mind to join the New Worlds.
First of all: adjust the transfer prices for the linked servers to the highest of the linked ones to at least try to make bandwagoning harder.
Secondly: you say you have problem in balancing populations. Yes we can see that right now in the EU where you linked FSP with 2 servers the last linking and you liked Abaddon and Dzago again who won most of there MUs by having the largest number of active wvw players.
To be honest, i don’t believe the numbers you are giving us or if they are true you draw the wrong conclusions. What you need are more developers ON the servers who play there regulary and are integrated in the server community.
Maybe more servers are a good thing, but i highly doubt it.
We could achieve more balanced competition in a world-versus-world setting if we had more pieces to join together with the World Linking System. It currently is not possible for us to establish an “equal” number of players on each link/world with the current world sizes. You may recall this initially was mentioned by Tyler a few months ago.
For example, world populations currently look something like this:
• World 1: 95%
• World 2: 82%
• World 3: 81%
• World 4: 60%
• World 5: 30%
• World 6: 10%Since our final world total needs to be divisible by 3 because we need a team for each color—Red, Blue, and Green—we either need to avoid linking any of the worlds, or link some worlds even if the result is that they have the advantage of a larger population.
• Worlds 1+6: 105%
• Worlds 2+5: 112%
• Worlds 3+4: 141%After linking, the difference in population between the highest and lowest teams is much narrower, but the third rank server still has significantly more population than the server that previously was ranked first. Also, the result of this theoretical world linking is that all worlds are now above our goal population cap, and probably have moderate to heavy queues.
If we instead had twice as many worlds, but if each had about half the population, it would be much easier to create linked teams with similar populations. This would lead to better matchups for everyone, and encounters would be less predictable. In this scenario, we would allow players free transfers to the new empty worlds for a period of time. These worlds would start out linked so that they wouldn’t begin in an empty state in a match-up. We would lower the player population cap on all worlds so that more worlds would become and stay “Full.” The result would be that guilds that want to expand would have an excellent option to do so with a move to these new open worlds.
Having outlined some of the thinking behind this proposal, we’d like your feedback on these three topics.
1. How do you feel about this proposal?
2. What, if anything, would you change about this current proposal?
3. Would you be interested in transferring to a new free world?
1- You guys are complicated matters for yourself. It’s time for a Reset switch.
2- Make guilds the center of every decisions related to WvW gameplay. Merge all servers in 3 alliances and let guilds or players choose their server
3- No
We need fewer worlds, not more. Merge the smallest ones together and be done with it.
Then, set transfer costs to be relative to each server’s active WvW population.
Bam, done.
As I posted many times 2-3 years ago.
The only way you are going to balance populations for WvW is to kick everyone from all servers, and then control how many WvW players join each server.
Guild can register to a server to make sure guilds arent split.
Anet can then also review all the guild applications and then spread those guilds evenly.
We just need 3 Tier. not4 not5
Can’t we just merge servers once and for all instead of having these flimsy links for a few months? Playing with rotating servers, losing previous bonds, switching TS every second week… This just feels wrong honestly. Just take a stand, merge servers permanently, close the ones where the population is already too high and players use to bandwagon to, wait a few weeks to let people transfers and see how things settle down. We can’t rebuild a community to appeal players to play WvW again if you keep mixing servers and splitting players that just starts to know each other. Let’s be honest, you have done very little to improve WvW over the past (four) years and having a good server community, good friends on TS, good commanders, is a far better incentive to play WvW than any changes you have done since HoT (that is to say tens of polls but few actions). So let us help you bring back players into WvW by giving us the opportunity to rebuild a community on each amalgamated servers and stop shuffling players, please.
You should have just merged servers gradually from the start to regroup empty servers with other medium servers.
Why do you think that if total of linked server 1+6 is similar to the population of linked server 2+5 and the linked server of 3+4 that you would have a competitive matchup.
the total population of each server doesn’t play at the same time
Years ago there were graphs of each NA server’s WvW activity and it mostly showed 4 humps in 24 hours. 1 for NA, 1 for OCX, 1 for SEA and 1 for EU
Why can’t you make matchups where NA populations are close, OCX populations are close, SEA populations are close and EU populations are close?
You just want to add new linking material. Who would transfer into such things and why, and even if some would do for a while, the rest will remain the same problematic mess as it is.
The only way to solve it is by creating teams anew, focused around WvW guilds: 2-3 NA guilds, 1-2 OCX, SEA, EU at least. Then allow each new team to recruit additional players to fill up their numbers (with non-guild players). This would be a start, then work together with the teams and they will tell you what can be done next to help most.
you would need to pair it with some sort of incentive to transfer to lower-pop worlds.
Who would transfer into such things and why, and even if some would do for a while, the rest will remain the same problematic mess as it is.
That’s the question that’s being asked in this thread.
I’d suggest alliances of guilds would transfer into such servers, particularly those who have no attachment to the rest of the server they’re currently on. It’s a space they can play together and get more diverse matches at the same time. Recruitment wouldn’t be too bad because of free transfers to their worlds/alliances.
This system is essentially a way to better balance matchups by having some guilds declare that they don’t mind being moved every two months.
There won’t be any balancing if you let people transfer where they want to. It’s obvious after all these years that the majority of players don’t want to fight vs equal numbers.
If that was the case there wouldn’t be worlds with stacked NA, stacked OCX, stacked SEA.
So it’s your job, dear Anet, to force people to stay where they are to avoid creating stacked worlds and destack everything. Players will not destack their servers as long as they have an advantage because of it.
You have to create a balance for every timezone not a balance for “this server has a total of 1000 wvw players” if these 1000 wvw are 90% NA (this will be total different for EU)
In the end it will end in having maybe 2 or 3 tiers which may offer fair fights in most of the timezones.
To achieve that goal:
- lower population caps for the worlds which will end up in ridiculous queues for stacked worlds in some timezones
- check the transfer numbers more often and lock servers – you will need to talk with your customers (and guilds) to avoid killing guilds here
- limit transfers to 1 per year or make them more expensive if the player has a transfer history and likes to transfer often (check for linked accounts here to avoid alt transfers)
- measure participation of players in wvw more often
- create a system that rewards winning against superior forces and rewards transfering to underperforming worlds. So if server placed 9th is in a match up with 3rd and 4th give them more loot, more ranks, more stuff which makes them want to show up and fight.
(edited by gebrechen.5643)
I’m already having enough trouble getting friends, friends of friends, etc starting the game and joining the same server; this would just be the final nail in the coffin. We struggle to WvW with each other as it is, this would basically force people to buy a server transfer just to play with newer players. Not a fan at all.
Here is a left field, outside of the box, genius idea, why don’t you make LESS worlds…
After running 4 years on HoD, I don’t like the thought of losing or diluting our server identity. Maybe the population imbalance can be mitigated by dynamically adjusting the scoring contribution, somehow?
1. ppl who care about wvw wouldnt move to smaller server so they get random link every month
2. there is already no server pride this will make it even worse.
3. might as well go with 3 factions easier to control population.
Why not just offer those heavily populated servers free transfers out? That way, it’ll allow servers to re balance itself.
Why not just offer those heavily populated servers free transfers out? That way, it’ll allow servers to re balance itself.
The problem is there is no incentive for anyone on a heavily populated server to give up established community etc to move off of the the heavily populated server and on to a new server.
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