Guild Wars 2

So anet’s mentioned one of their main priorities is population balance, what I really want to know is what their plan is for the update in April. Will it be server merges, or battle groups? I’m assuming they have some sort of idea since its eight days until april. All the other changes sound great but this seems like what will make or break wvw.

It’ll be eotm 2.0
You’ll be thrown in with a bunch of randoms, they won’t bother to set up voice comms, and they’ll wash their hands of the situation until half a year later when some streamer wanders into WvW and comments on how empty it is.

or we get all asuran servers and dominate the #1 spot until the next fix.

as is we already have a conspiracy in place, you will see less asuran on asuran combat in coming weeks. zojja met up with the inquest and agreed that the tall people are ruining wvw. They called a truce to balance things out.

i had a unverified insider information
wvw season will be like pvp season, lasting for months with a short break inbetween.
each season will have pre-made players and random players, this is on a wvw scale so it will be like hundreds of premade players. the random players r the people who didnt chose any team before the season and will be thrown into a team randomly if they chose to join during the season. they will be stuck in that team until season over.

then again, is unverified information, still waiting for that supposedly guild chat about wvw overhaul.

SkyShroud.2865:

i had a unverified insider information
wvw season will be like pvp season, lasting for months with a short break inbetween.
each season will have pre-made players and random players, this is on a wvw scale so it will be like hundreds of premade players. the random players r the people who didnt chose any team before the season and will be thrown into a team randomly if they chose to join during the season. they will be stuck in that team until season over.

then again, is unverified information, still waiting for that supposedly guild chat about wvw overhaul.

That sounds terrible. That would be the death of WvW. A throat slash to an animal that almost bled out

SkyShroud.2865:

information…

If the seasons are a separate thing from normal WvW that is a pretty cool way to do it. Be a nice break from the normal server wars.

Would be cool if WvW ranks factor in for randoms. I know EotM kinda pads your gamer score but ranks are still a way to tell experience.

It could possibly be any of these option that have been proposed in the past

-server merges
-alliance/faction type of matchup system
-megaserver type system
-reduction/removal of transfer fees…either permanent or periodic discounts
-More, and better rewards as an incentive

Guess we just wait and see

X T D summed up a bunch, one they asked about a bit in the CDI threads was a "battle group" system. Think something like the servers being changed into "factions", and then each week different factions got meshed together into a "battle group" for the week.

So 1 large server could fight against 2 medium as a single team, and the last team might be 5 small servers. etc. It retains a little bit of everything, and gives away a little bit of everything at the same time. Sounds like the ultimate compromise.

No idea how I’d like it or not, not the worst of the solutions, but hopefully not the best.

There is always the problem of trying to fit everyone onto maps if the server system were scrapped in favor of something like an alliance/faction type system. There couldn’t be like 3 alliances because you cannot possible fit all those people on a map, increasing the map pop per map would just create a ton of technical problems. Whether or not wvw is in a healthy state regarding population is another issue, because this is a fundamental approach that lays a foundation and they would have to consider potential factors like being able to fit everyone in. If they would create to many alliances, would it really be that much different than the current server system. So idk, it’s a really complicated issue to find a proper solution to.

I have actually been toying around with an idea of changing match ups every couple hours based on server activity. For example when a matchup ends and a new one is created it would be based on activity level from the previous matchup. Therefore if your server had a low activity in the first matchup, in the next matchup it would be placed with 2 other servers with low activity.

Not saying this is something I would like/dislike, just an idea. But if it were ever possible to make something like this work, it could potentially keep the server system, change up matchups constantly so no stale matchups, and keep check on population imbalance because it matches servers based on activity level.

Whatever system they create will have to be Dynamic, and not Static like the server structure. EotM actually does this pretty well, by allowing any number of people and adjust the number of maps etc. Unfortunately it doesn’t dynamically adjust the sides etc.

So whatever solution they pick, will have to handle that as well. the complications complicate themselves further.

This is also why things like Server Merges won’t work, They would need to set up something like a every half year pruning of servers, and then remove 3 servers every time, and forcibly move everyone over to a new server. Lots of people and communities would be kittened at that.

The "dynamic maps" that I’ve suggested a bunch of times wouldn’t fix this, but would sort of be a temp stop-gap fix until something more permanent would be put into place (and would most likely be useful for whatever they fixed).

Alliances!
Just like WoW’s Battlegrounds! Meaningless time gated events like DS.

Jk, I am sure they are smarter than that, megaserver wvw would kill the game mode completely imo.

Trajan.4953:

Alliances!
Just like WoW’s Battlegrounds! Meaningless time gated events like DS.

Jk, I am sure they are smarter than that, megaserver wvw would kill the game mode completely imo.

Depends how they do alliances, EVE Online uses alliances and has a far stronger, deeper community than WvW.

zinkz.7045:

Depends how they do alliances, EVE Online uses alliances and has a far stronger, deeper community than WvW.

No idea about the alliances in other games.. BUT on all servers I’ve been to at least half was not in one of the bigger wvw guilds. So you’d either have to press them into one or get rid of them. That’s ~ half of the wvw population.
And personally: I hate guilds, I’ll leave any guild I’m ever part of and always did at some point – I wouldn’t be comfortable if someone forces me to be in one just to “get back what I had”. And our map cap is too small to have a whole server count as an alliance and then you’d have the problems that the servers come in different sizes and so on.

Don’t know, I still think the smartest way to go would be to fix all the stuff that’s wrong with wvw before fixing population issues (that means: scoring, siege/structure balance, autoupgrades, DBL, rewards).

Jana.6831:

zinkz.7045:

Depends how they do alliances, EVE Online uses alliances and has a far stronger, deeper community than WvW.

No idea about the alliances in other games.. BUT on all servers I’ve been to at least half was not in one of the bigger wvw guilds. So you’d either have to press them into one or get rid of them. That’s ~ half of the wvw population.
And personally: I hate guilds, I’ll leave any guild I’m ever part of and always did at some point – I wouldn’t be comfortable if someone forces me to be in one just to “get back what I had”. And our map cap is too small to have a whole server count as an alliance and then you’d have the problems that the servers come in different sizes and so on.

Don’t know, I still think the smartest way to go would be to fix all the stuff that’s wrong with wvw before fixing population issues (that means: scoring, siege/structure balance, autoupgrades, DBL, rewards).

Maybe that’s why they gave roamers and small guilds the shaft when they introduced the HoT guild upgrades, they are trying to phase them out of the game.

My fear is that they will once again go with dissolving communities even more. Small guilds are already dead or on life support, anet seems to favor massive 400 man guilds with no identity or eotm 2.0, which has no meaning. Grinding towards some stupid idea that it takes a massive guild just to claim a camp and the little working class has no place in wvw.

Anet doesn’t get wvw, they don’t understand what wvw means to the players as far as diversity. You have your solo players who are quite useful to servers in taking camps + vets, you have small time guilds who are capable of being ninjas and stealing towers, and you have your pugs tags and players who are a big part of the ppt game. If they focused on those three aspects I think they would succeed but we all know what route anet will go. BOOM COLORS BOOM PVE!!! HYPE TRAIN ALL ABOARD.

I would think they’d want their solo players to keep playing with the whole twitch tv thing and free advertising. They got some real dumb dumbs not identifying the market lol

Puck.9612:

Maybe that’s why they gave roamers and small guilds the shaft when they introduced the HoT guild upgrades, they are trying to phase them out of the game.

Yes and no – I rather think they have no idea how the communities in wvw look like, so they felt that it was too easy to build up a personal guild (and in fact it was) and they also needed a gold sink. They just assumed that all +5 and stuff was coming from big guilds, so everything has been adjusted with that in mind. Little did they know that most of the buffs always came from personal or roamer guilds. So yeah, I guess they just don’t know.
In fact if you look at the new BL… when I’m auto attacking my way through the barricades I spam say chat with “’cause kitten you, roamers!!” – roamers are officially not part of this game.

Jana.6831:

Puck.9612:

Maybe that’s why they gave roamers and small guilds the shaft when they introduced the HoT guild upgrades, they are trying to phase them out of the game.

Yes and no – I rather think they have no idea how the communities in wvw look like, so they felt that it was too easy to build up a personal guild (and in fact it was) and they also needed a gold sink. They just assumed that all +5 and stuff was coming from big guilds, so everything has been adjusted with that in mind. Little did they know that most of the buffs always came from personal or roamer guilds. So yeah, I guess they just don’t know.
In fact if you look at the new BL… when I’m auto attacking my way through the barricades I spam say chat with “’cause kitten you, roamers!!” – roamers are officially not part of this game.

Think the best point you made is anet assumed everything came from big guilds. My best guess is most devs hung out in the upper tiers mainly the past years and have zero clue what the environment is like down in the lower tiers with multiple small guilds typically consisting of 10-20 players each working together. Even my lame guild long ago on FA was only 5 players, but we still could claim camps and help pug tags for supply runs. Was amazing what a tiny guild could do to a map, all gone now.

RodOfDeath.5247:

My best guess is most devs hung out in the upper tiers mainly the past years

Yes, as far as I remember all but 1 or 2 devs went to NA gold when “adopt a dev” was up ~1,5 years ago. And I think that was the only “real” interaction we had with devs.

RodOfDeath.5247:

Even my lame guild long ago on FA was only 5 players, but we still could claim camps and help pug tags for supply runs. Was amazing what a tiny guild could do to a map, all gone now.

I did this alone on two guilds.
So yeah, it was a bit too easy probably, but it still made wvw to how it was and making things more difficult (and increasing the supply costs) is kind of alienating. And I guess most wvw players feel like that – so maybe it’s a bit too late to change things and start from scratch (guilds, possible alliances). As all they could do with that is hoping for new players who accept wvw as a guild alliance system as the others will very likely leave.
That doesn’t mean I don’t recognize some servers being in need of some serious help when it comes to population, but even then; they’re probably just enough to form a small guild and would be left out anyway.

Puck.9612:

It’ll be eotm 2.0
You’ll be thrown in with a bunch of randoms, they won’t bother to set up voice comms, and they’ll wash their hands of the situation until half a year later when some streamer wanders into WvW and comments on how empty it is.

Ugh, I really hope not. But as I type this it kinda sounds like WvW now for a lot of servers. The one thing I hope for is being able to set up alliances with other guilds and players from across other servers, not full merges with other servers and have no control who you play with. With all this time it’s taking to “fix” imbalance, I’m hoping they are coming up with something unique and not just a quick band-aid like merging and “see you in 3 years” suckers.

I don’t expect pop balance to be addressed at all next month. Pretty sure they said that was a bigger challenge and will take some time…….

Liston.9708:

I don’t expect pop balance to be addressed at all next month. Pretty sure they said that was a bigger challenge and will take some time…….

Oh I see cant wait for it to be playable