Guild Wars 2

1) Establish a queue system to regulate one server from having more people than another server active in any given zone at any given time within 10 players.

2) Inform your player base of estimated queue times.

3) Increase magic find and exp gain for low pop servers to further incentivize people to make a move.

It’s just that simple. If you want to move to the winning server all the time, you wait in a queue for an hour or more. However long it takes. The problem will fix itself I assure you. Balance in play is more important than ease of access. Let us queue as groups, and let us queue for all 4 maps. Award exp in SPvP for people who are in queue for all 4 maps. When/if they refuse to join, they lose the right to gain exp until they do join.

I’ve worked really hard to sell many a friend on buying this game by filling their heads with tails of epic battles, and touting Arena’s reputation. Don’t make a fool of me. If you institute these policies you will see an ocean of happy gamers with open wallets. If this flawed system stands, you’ll see a lot of Pandas. Your call.

point 1 is just stupid

Point 2 is down to your server’s community

Point 3 is just an encourages people to PvE farm in WvW instead of actually taking part in the battles causing long queues when they bot afk till the next day, i see it happen all the time on the server i am on

Did you actually read the post?
Point 1 establishes a skill game. Not a server transfer zerg fest. You are obviously one of those people. If you had been dominated a few weeks in a row your tune would be much different. This is needed to reduce transfers, and build community on each individual server. Not so you and 40 buddies can roll the the 5 man groups that can’t even take a small keep. If you were a skill player who respected a challenge, you would understand.

Point 2 is not down to my server’s community. The queue time would be based on the minority server of the 3 at war. So join the minority, get into WvWvW quick. This will aid in establishing balanced populations as membership increases.

Point 3 People do that anyway. It would be a blanket increase in PvP and PvE. So, really, who would go out into a borderland to farm when they could do it nice and safe elsewhere? Pretty long walk to get killed for a log don’t you think?

From your baseless, and poorly punctuated troll response I can see perhaps I needed to explain in greater depth for hooples such as yourself. Thank you kindly.

This won’t work. If you want population balance there is only ONE way to do that.

Stop free world transfers to higher population servers. Make those cost gems. You want to even out the population, people will realize, “Oh, I can’t transfer without paying money, I’ll go somewhere with no queue.”

That is what should have happened, but Anet kittened that up.

That doesn’t balance anything. It locks it. Why is everyone so short sighted? Do we really want borderlands with 20 people per server? That’s what the bottom tier will have at present if they lock transfers. Try to look past yourself to the community as a whole, and see creating incentive to migrate, and even out is what’s best for all of us. The faster queues will be like shaking a pile of sand. It will draw from the high pop areas, and even it all out.

What’s best for the game is what’s best for the individual. More happy players, are more people investing in development. Let’s not let kitten, and mock posterity overshadow the need to create a more even footing for everyone. Otherwise everyone will abandon the smaller servers for the busy WvWvW, and we’ll all have terrible queues anyway. Evening out the population only serves to give us more variety in opponent realms, and a much more enjoyable state for everyone. I think deep down we all want an even playing field where we stand out on our merits, and not lame fence hopping.

You guys act like there were no servers chosen from the beginning by people who knew they would want to spend a lot of time in WvW. But there were, and mine is one of them.

I’d hoped to avoid the horrible queues that I knew would go with that, but I couldn’t, and when I tried to get away from those queues, I found out it wasn’t worth it, so I moved back, just hoping the end of yak farming would help (it did, but only a little, the queues are still bad).

Now you want to make my queues worse? But that wouldn’t make me play on a server where I can’t enjoy WvW with a decent population at all hours of the day and night, because I sometimes play at bizarre offpeak times and sometimes during primetime, and I want people to play with!

Nor would I move to a server where there is zero organization and lots of crying in team chat from frustrated players.

I’d just stop playing entirely, and so would most people. I guess that would fix the queues, but not in a good way.

Point one is Horrible. that would honestly kill WvW. forcing a limit based on the lower pop server would extend Q times and just make WvW impossible to get into at times. Sorry if ur server is low pop but capping it isnt going to help the game.

or how about they just mix the servers around? After a few weeks with the same brackets, they put us up against other servers that have been scoring around equal as the server you play on.

@Corvindi.5734
Wouldn’t it be possible, even likely that your dice roll on which server to create a character on landed you on a high population server? Be it a more catchy name, or pure random chance there are obviously more of you on the larger servers. I expect to defend myself against the majority. Power never yields itself without a struggle, and clearly you’ve chosen the option of bad queue times over rolling up your sleeves, and earning something. It’s to be expected. The majority of people once thought the earth was flat and you would fall off the edge. Then they thought it was the center of the universe. I think you can get a sense of the progression. There were always people like me out in front of you burned at the stake for heresy, and yet here we all are alive, well, and orbiting a young star with probes now in space leaving the confines of our solar system. Allow me to caress your cheek in consolation, and whisper it will all be okay. If your server is so skilled and home to the faithful, unified elite you have nothing to worry about. If you’ve invested, and built a server PvP strategy that is the sole cause of your specific domination it will remain. If anything those insolent fanboys you likely hate so much will be the ones who shake lose, thusly improving your queue times, and allowing your murder machine to just barrel down the tracks on all of us unexepecting cry babies.

@Hansiman.4962
Mixing the servers in an arbitrary fashion would would result in a week long gang kitten for 2/3 servers. Their rating system, and tier placement are solid logic. This way as time goes on, the game evolves, and players come and go from servers they will have a dynamic metric for providing each server the best possible chance of even representation, and skill level. I agree variety is the spice of life, but I still don’t put mustard on my ice cream.

Example: On World of Warcraft, which I played from launch through Cataclysm, we Horde were outnumbered 5-1 by Alliance for 7 years. This didn’t matter a great deal until they gave us Wintergrasp. Our record in the Center Keep was all the evidence needed to support my claims on why adjusting challenge towards equality is a smart move.

Horde: Keep Defended: 209
Alliance: Keep Defended: 1251

In Cataclysm we had the queuing system I propose. I don’t take credit for the concept, but as an observer, and participant I can tell you every time the match started it became anyone’s game, and the zones changed hands at a much more middle of the road proportion than we had seen in Wintergrasp. I wish I could provide you those numbers to validate my claim, but Blizzard neglected to provide a record book for Tol Barad as they did in Wintergrasp.

Before you reply to tell me to “go back to wow” let’s remember I’m merely displaying an observation of a dev studio who learned from their mistakes to the delight of the community. While some people will be sore that their stacked deck may be counted, for every one of them I believe there are 4 people who just want to put their shoulder behind something fair, and have a shot. To them, I tip my hat, and defend my position.

@Deathcarlyle.6075
You are short sighted. Day 1, yes, that would be the case. Day 7, that would be half the case. The progression would be to level out the queue times until their were none because the population and interest had been shaken out to equality. Short queue times. They could even provide average queue times for specific shifts. Maybe you want to move a whole guild over to take advantage of fantastic queue times a server has during 3rd shift hours. Maybe they could allow a full guild move, and the schedules would even themselves out. The point is that it creates an incentive towards equality. If you are so fanatically loyal to your home world rest assured others will get sick of the queue times and move to the better timed servers. As those server populations come up, your queue times go down. So just lay back, open up you rmind, and it will only hurt for a moment.

@OG big server people before the swapping began.
After launch it took a while for the server hopping to begin. Things were working very well until word circulated on the cheese method of map clear that has sloped our populations to where they are now. I think we can all agree you’re server’s domination would not be 7 days of 95% if not for this potentially fatal flaw. It’s an exploit holding our communities hostage. Had the door not been opened things would have worked well, but they didn’t, and we as a community need to own that, and look for a solution. Locking the population as is by instituting paid transfers will seal the casket on a lot of the individuals who aren’t interested in paid services. We need those players as well. While those of us paying for micro transactions would be inclined to feel more worthy than these unpaying folks we need them. Without them our mmo wouldn’t be massive. So, let’s just think about how long we would like to be able to keep this game alive. If that isn’t something that concerns you I don’t think your thoughts and feelings are something that concern me. Borderlands 2 is super dope. Squirrel.

@Kefka.9247
Don’t worry, I won’t tell you to back to WoW. I played from launch to early cata, but that’s when I felt enough was enough for that game. I also had the problem where I was alliance on a server completely outnumbered by Horde, and we only held Wintergrasp a few times a week, and usually so late that we didn’t get enough people for a proper raid of the raid that was there (can’t remember the name)

I still don’t like the queue-part which will limit the amount of players one server can have in one of the fields. Simply because if you for instance have two large guilds on each server trying to get ahold of most possible bases in all 4 fields, they will jump back and forth a bit trying to avoid majority of the other servers in an attempt to get caps. Zerging is part of the WvW experience. Sure, big clashes of raids are also fun, and an important part of what WvW is about. But tactics also dictate that you are stronger in numbers.

And while it feels unfair to be on a server that is dominated, which my chars currently are, I still don’t want a limit on the number of opposing people just because my server doesn’t have enough people at that time. It’s the servers own responsibility that their WvW community organizes in guilds and work more together, rather ran running around doing their own things (*cough*WoW pug BG*).

Sure, Blizzard has been through a lot of these problems already with their system, and corrected some issues, but look at their forums. Every time the adresse a problem that players have been crying about, a new bunch of people come in and cry about the new solution. The same thing will be found here. How much do you want to bet that when they close free server transfer (which I believe is aiding in the problem since a lot of people will naturally want to be on a winning server), you’ll get a new group of players crying that they can’t switch around as they please. Especially since it doesn’t seem we can have alts on other servers.

Even if Blizzard solved their problems in one way, doesn’t mean that every game has to copy this solution, because then we’ll just end up with another WoW-clone. It’s better that Arena net solves this in their own way, which will continue to make the game unique.

@Hansiman.4962
It feels to me that the need for a zerg to bounce from zone to zone is more an effect of the current system rather than a desired practice. I understand the logistics of taking objectives without confrontation, and I support the tactic. If we were to mirror reality a bit more those bounces would be caused by scouts and recon. The deployment of forces in life is a very difficult task, and to switch warfronts should be as well. There are dangers and costs in doing so. Given the imaginary geographic seperation of the borderlands the bouncing and taking objectives unchallenged side steps the siege system.

Our guild for example has a preference of militarizing our own border. While an enemy exists at home we prefer to be there to see to it. I’m sure other guilds would develop similar preferences if queues were something to take into consideration. You would develop rivalries within those specific zones, and get that feel of Patton chasing Rommel around the desert in world war 2. You would have smaller warbands working to cut supply lines to effect a siege elsewhere. I think the concept would lead to more strategy, and the best organized faction would stand a greater chance against the larger force. Fairness comes from the ability of the underdog to outsmart the larger enemy with guerrilla warfare. A war of attrition becomes as much an option as a large scale invasion. It would cause adaptation, and unforeseen circumstance. All lending to the excitement of the experience.

A larger force would be possible. As I said originally they don’t have to be even to a man, but if you keep that gap reasonable, within 10-15 for example, there will still be the ability to muster the larger force, but not insurmountable odds. None of us are enjoying the current oppression. Those of us looking to do the work of building community on the servers we are loyal to are really up against the wall as we watch our productive brethren vacate the scene for greener pastures. It’s unfortunate, but given human nature, most people will drag up for greener pastures. Alienation is one of the largest causes of death when it comes to these new games.

I agree the current situation can be blamed squarely on the free server transfers, but in the big picture it’s also a wise move as this game is essentially brand new, and groups of people are picking it up individually only to coordinate servers with friends as they discover who plays. In the big picture this notion fits, and in my opinion trumps the current outcry of rage from us PvP players. They have a whole game to not only support, but market. These people having the ability to join their friends is what enhances the experience of the game, opens the wallets, and pays for the development of new content. The window on these transfers will close at some point. What I’m afraid of is just by force of population the small servers will never be able to cross paths with the larger, and be limited to the small variety of servers within range. I don’t like my merits to be weighed on circumstances beyond the control of intellect and strategy.

This queuing system I propose would even serve to enhance the terrible queue times for the largest servers. As less people are in line to get in your wait decreases. My idea for exp and magic find buffs for people in queue create a rewarding scenario for the inconvenience.

Once a more fair balance has been established, and population shifts settle down we’ll see our standout pvp guilds grow, and be the zerg for the smaller units running support on supply lines, counter siege, and objective defense. I’m in this to participate in the frey. I’m looking to feel like I earned something aside from 2 zergs grinding pvp influence and exp by running clockwise and recapping unhindered. Overthrowing a force on a keep should be difficult, but not undoable. It should be rewarding, and worth while to employ tactics, and engage the enemy.

@Kefka um, wow. Let me tell you how I chose Jade Quarry. I was on the GW2 Guru forum pre-launch asking around finding out where the pvpers were going and also explaining that I didn’t want to join a large guild or feel like an unwanted pugger on a server of very tight knit guilds, but that I did want to be competitive and I did want to be on a server with a lot of people who love WvW and spend a lot of time on it.

Someone sent me a PM about Jade Quarry saying it would fit the bill, and I reluctantly chose it. I say reluctantly because I knew queues would be bad, but queues or no queues, I’m very happy with my choice because our community is great and WvW is incredibly fun.

So please, get your hand off my cheek and simmer down.

@Corvindi.5734
So you researched out before launch which server would give you the easiest free ride.?Cool story bro. Now elaborate on how I’m wrong.

This will ease your queue. Read everything before you troll.

Nice try, Kefka. The more organized a server is, the easier ‘the ride’, if I wanted that, I’d have joined the servers with the largest, most organized guilds, not JQ. I wanted active, and I wanted friendly, and yes, I wanted competitive. I did not want a cakewalk dominated by big guilds. I got what I wanted, minus some queue issues, and I want it to stay that way.

Anyone who doesn’t like their server’s situation is still free to move, and a lot of guilds have picked a server and done so.

Your solution would make queues much worse when going against servers that don’t field a large WvW playerbase. And it’s very exploitable.

Okay I’ve not read the majority of posts but Gandara is getting Zerged from two sides at the moment, one server by day, the other by night..

It’s really demoralising as a player and as a result players leave. I think when servers are outnumbered perhaps a server message could be put out to the server struggling with numbers in certain warzones to say "Hey your server needs you in…. currently outnumbered ? to 1…. "

Possibly offer a mild incentive to get those who wouldn’t normally play WvW to urrr play….

I love WvW but today was just balls to the wall insanity….

@ Kefka
Thank you so very much for this thread. It was a great read and you said it all very eloquently. I agree with all of your ideas.

Your first point would do more to level out populations than anything else. Without the constant ability to overwhelm that high population servers get, the players on them would leave to other servers to ease their queue times. Right now there is an epidemic of WvWers in this game who seek to win at all costs, even if that win comes from nothing resembling skill.

Your second point is fairly obvious and should have already been done, even in the current meta.

Your third point would be unbalancing if not for the fact that once the server populations balanced out no one would be getting the buff anymore. Unless, I read that wrong.

@Corvindi
You got your equation wrong. In the current state of WvW, it is not the server with the more organized guilds that win most of the match-ups. It’s whoever has a higher population. To put an even more finer point on it, it’s the server with the higher population at certain times periods. Sure, when two sides are evenly matched, the one with more organization should win. It’s the EVENLY MATCHED part we want.

@Corvindi.5734
/facepalm

@Tortun.5946
@Varathiel.9128
It’s nice to hear from some other victims, and not be trolled from the top of the mountain. Demoralizing indeed. I’m not the kind of guy to uproot my guild and follow the trend. We made our choice collectively, and we dig our heels in and own it. We work together in WvWvW with the other players we have participating, and we have some skilled players. I haven’t been a part of many evenly matched encounters we’ve lost, and perhaps that’s because we’re so practiced at standing up to the giants we face week to week. The challenge has hardened us, but the skew has just become more pronounced with each week’s matchups. Things are even all day on Friday, and Friday night a server pulls ahead a bit, and the next thing you know everyone is moving there to complete their discoveries, and farm the easy win as that server swells. Who knows, next week my server could see the influx, and we could dominate all week. It wouldn’t make it any more fun. This is a very cooperative game, and with some simple changes we could even this all out, and allow a sense of ownership of our servers to grow. I enjoy the feeling of pride that comes from conquering a challenge. Right now 0/3 servers are basking in that feeling. I have a lot of faith in Arena.net. I played GW1 from launch, and they have always been a company that works towards fairness in competition. I would really like to hear what they plan to do about this situation.

1. This will increase queue times and also punish high population servers. This fits into the common “Your winning so you should be punished”. Solutions should never punish players from either side.

2. They have shared queue times.

3. Encouraging PvE in a PvP zone… This will only benefit gold farmers

WHY would people get sPvP glory for queuing into WvW?!?!?! These are unrelated game types.

@Raydaq

Only a bully would see an evening of the playing field as ‘punishing the winner’. Population balance is the only thing that will make WvW competitive without removing the points aspect of it. As it is now 4 out of 5 matches will be decided by more than 50k pts. Those kind of scores differentials are not caused by servers winning through skill and/or strategy (though they may have both or either). They are caused by population differences.

Wow i just got called a “bully”, not sure why I’m bothering even responding.

The system will set you in a lower tier with other servers that have lower populations. the problem was the week long matches happened before the matches were even, and with the open free transfers guilds constantly moving around continue to mess up the balance. That is why people above said that they need to lock the transfers (especially to winning servers) so that the balancing can happen as intended. Also, the players will get tired of queues and switch down to losing servers where they get more access to play (this is why transfer to a low pop should remain free). This doesn’t “lock” is like Kefka said above, It allows the implemented balancing system to actaully work.

@Raydaq.5421
Why does no one understand the point about evening the population fixing the queue times? It’s not even complicated. Your lower tier theory is flawed in that my server is now in the lowest tier and our competition has us 10-1. The metric is broken, as is your logic. I wouldn’t call you a bully, just short sighted and naive at best. It’s funny how all of you people think we should leave our servers. If your queue sucks, leave your server. That’s how the evening of population works. Live and die on your own merits. Your opinion is worse than wrong. It’s plain invalid.

Really all they need to do is swap the orb bonus & outmanned bonuses around & make it so that the outmanned bonus gives extra stats based on how badly outnumbered you are (within reason of course, you shouldn’t end up seeing people with more then +200 stats no matter how outnumbered they are)

Point 1 is a really bad idea, would make things worse and upset more people than it will make happy.

Point 2 is valid.

Point 3 would bring more PvE into PvP, which I wouldn’t like.

Kefka.9247:

Why is everyone so short sighted?

Actually you are the short sighted one here. Your system only works if you just get matched up with servers from your time zone. As soon as there are servers from different time zones involved the queues they will all suffer from way longer queues during their prime time.

Do we really want borderlands with 20 people per server? That’s what the bottom tier will have at present if they lock transfers.

So, sooner or later all those servers will meet at the bottom bracket and will just fight other servers with only 20 people per map. That’s how the current systems work, if you loose (no matter if you are just unorganized or if you don’t have enough players) you will descend until you meet equal opponents.

What’s best for the game is what’s best for the individual. More happy players, are more people investing in development.

Exactly. But your system will make more players unhappy than happy. In you scenario with 20 people getting steamrolled by two servers only those 20 people will be happy but on the other two servers up to 146-180 (depending on if the current map capacity is 500 or 600) will be very unhappy cause they probably won’t be able to play WvW anymore.

Let’s not let kitten, and mock posterity overshadow the need to create a more even footing for everyone. Otherwise everyone will abandon the smaller servers for the busy WvWvW, and we’ll all have terrible queues anyway. Evening out the population only serves to give us more variety in opponent realms, and a much more enjoyable state for everyone. I think deep down we all want an even playing field where we stand out on our merits, and not lame fence hopping.

The best way to reach that even playing field is to organzie raids on those smaller servers. People don’t enjoy WvW if it’s too chaotic and nobody is there that has at least a rough idea about what’s going on and a plan what to do next.
I’m from Elona and we were not that great at the start since there was no organisation at all, we lost a lot of our daily matchups and so we were mostly outmaned on every map cause nobody wanted to always be on the losing team.
As the weekly matchups began the guilde I’m in started to organize raids on one of the borderlands. We posted our TS and more and more randoms joined us and listened to what our raid leaders had to say. People did what they were told, they started to act in concert and even randoms bought siege blueprints and started to upgrade keeps, towers and supply camps with their own silver.
After the second week players from other servers started to transfer to Elona cause we had organized World PvP. More guilds started to organize their raids and now we have raids for each map and not just zergs of randoms following a commander.
What I’m trying to tell you here is that if someone on your server just needs to step up and organize a raid and peopel will start joining it, even if it’s just 3 days a week during prime time.

The moment they make WvW into sPvP by trying to enforce even teams outside the population cap in effect, is the day WvW dies and sPvP battleground wins.

Sure it can suck when you’re out numbered, but it is however how such PvP works. If you want even teams; sPvP is there for you.

@ Xandax
Arenanet already made it into sPvP by adding a score. Let’s not split hairs. As long as the scoring system exists, sides must be even and I believe that Kefka’s proposition would work to balance server populations as all the bandwagoners flee for less queue times.

@ Nachtnebel
Off peak queue times would balance out in the same way as oceanic players spread themselves to other servers that don’t have a ‘night’ presence to avoid queue times. The point is that this system would encourage people to spread to the low pop servers and thus, hopefully, balance the populations.

There is no fun to be had on either side of the equation of a murder train. I’ve been on both sides of it. Being up by 100k + seems like fun, until you hit ‘M’ and see that there is nothing to do but spawn camp or stare at the map until a symbol changes colors and then haul kitten there with a 50+ zerg. Being on the receiving end of it is even worse. Players just quit playing and there you are with a 5 man team taking a supply camp and just before it flips the entire contingent of the winning team falls on you like rabid wolves. So….much…..fun!!!!! /sarcasm

As most people have already stated in this thread, your 1st point will not fix the current problem, it will add to it.

Let me attempt to explain. As long as 2 zones exist, we will continue to face the challenge of disproportional queues on multiple servers within the one zone.

Example:
Server A : Full queues in American peak hours. No queues in American off-peak hours.
Server B : Full queues in Australian peak hours. No queues in Australian off-peak hours.
Server C : Full queues all the time.

Using your initial point: 1) Establish a queue system to regulate one server from having more people than another server active in any given zone at any given time within 10 players.

If Server A, B and C played against each other this week in WvWvW:

• Server C would expect a significant increase in queue times at all times.
• During American peak hours, both Server A and C would only be able to field small numbers due to the fact that Australian’s on Server B aren’t fielding any.
• Alternatively, during Australian peak hours, both Server B and C would only able to field small numbers due to the fact that American’s on Server A aren’t fielding any.

I understand that this example is overly simplified, but OP, do you understand that this is what you are advocating?

Or do you not understand it?

WvWvW would simply become 10v10v10 (24/7)

@ Ignicity
I think you might be the one misunderstanding what we are saying. Lets use your example, simple as it may be.

C is full queued at all times which means they are going to win almost without fail by virtue of outgunning the other 2 servers. Which is the entire problem. You have Americans and Australians playing on the same server, which is fine, but a server that has all of one and none of the other is going to get rolled. Kefka’s system would virtually force some Americans on server A to move to a server like server B to avoid queue times, and some Australians on B to a server like A for the same reason. C meanwhile would have some of both leave to head for servers with smaller populations. Add all this together and you, in theory, have all the servers with similar populations at similar times and no one has any more issues. Fights become about strategy and organization instead of overwhelming numbers and runaway games.

…and what a wonderful world it would be.

To be honest, we have servers that do have lengthy queue times already. Yes, some people are choosing to move to a different server to avoid these queue times.

However, killing WvWvW to the point where you are limiting WvWvW player participation numbers because of underpopulated servers is not the only viable solution. Sure it may work in the long run, just as the current strategy being applied by A-Net might work in the long run.

Personally, I disagree with the OP’s first point, as it would kill WvWvW in the short-to-mid term.

1. Not only is this exploitable, it encourages losing servers to field no players, encouraging non-participation in WvW. Which is a stupid idea.

2. Why should we move. You guys can organize on this forum right now to pick a server to fill, day or night. I even hear IOJ and SOS needs primetime players to go with their offpeak players.

3. I’m done with this thread, you’re exactly the type of person I play on JQ to stay away from. I bet you call your own teammates names in Team Chat when you’re losing, don’t you?

tluv.5821:

This won’t work. If you want population balance there is only ONE way to do that.

Stop free world transfers to higher population servers. Make those cost gems. You want to even out the population, people will realize, “Oh, I can’t transfer without paying money, I’ll go somewhere with no queue.”

That is what should have happened, but Anet kittened that up.

Or put a time restriction on WvW after a player transfers world. Making us pay $/£/€/Gems/Gold for transfers is another bull microtransaction thing. It’s bad enough that I am region locked to Europe already.

Varathiel.9128:

@ Xandax
Arenanet already made it into sPvP by adding a score. Let’s not split hairs. As long as the scoring system exists, sides must be even and I believe that Kefka’s proposition would work to balance server populations as all the bandwagoners flee for less queue times.
<snip>

It would balance the servers by making people not play. That’s not really a useful suggestion for a MMO. “To play this game, you cannot play”.

And the ‘score’ for WvW does not make it into sPvP. Adding enforced structure and balancing would. Keeping a score for ranking does not make it structured, it just makes it having a score.

Kefka

Stop simply calling everyone short sighted and naive. If you don’t want people to post on the subject don’t post in the forums, you are just making yourself look worse and worse everytime you post.

Considering you didn’t address any of my points I know you didn’t even read the post, and simply jumped to your standard copy past defence.

This thread in summary:
- Someone explains how this will not work to fix the issue

- Kefka: Your wrong short sighted naive and ignorant. blah blah blah

- Another person explains how this will not work to fix the issue

- Kefka: Your wrong short sighted naive and ignorant. blah blah blah

Rinse and repeat.

Learn some respect or don’t post on the forums, this is a place for mature discussion which you may not be ready for.

Only way to fix this is making transfer to an ACTIVE WVW SERVER to cost you money, while the lower tier server cost you nothing. With this, the kittening pugs that keep on hopping to the winning server will stop. They will eventually need to find a lower tier server to hop in, and with that it may help to increase the number of player that will be active in wvw for low tier server.

Point 1 wouldn’t work, say FS has 20 players on a map during the night, that would mean that at most 30 players on VS would be able to login. I know that still sounds good from a FS point of view (I’m also on FS) but each coin has 2 sides and you would prevent other players for which that is the preferred playing time from enjoying the game.

Point 2 they published graphs for and when they make changes to the system I expect they’ll publish the figures again to show what has changed.

Point 3 wouldn’t be a big enough incentive to permanently move to a low pop server (at some point free transfers will be dsiabled and I secretly hope they do it without prior notice so that the server hoppers abusing the system are stuck on what’s basically their enemy’s world).

@ Xandax
I don’t know what post your reading because you must have read it wrong. No where do I say people shouldn’t be able to play. You are using a Strawman Fallacy. If other players choose to not play because they don’t want to transfer servers, that is there business. They can play all they want when they move servers and thus even out the populations.

@holska
I’m going to use your example to show you why point 1 SHOULD work. FS has 20 players and VS has 100 but can only field 30. A guild of 35 people on VS thinks to themselves, ’you know if we transfer to FS and queue for this battleground, not only do all 35 of us get to get in and play, everyone currently in the VS queue will also get to play and we can fight a 65 v 55 somewhat balanced fight. Then maybe they remain there and it stays balanced.

Anet’s current strategy is to let players jump around hoping that they will eventually stop and then they can start having fair matches. I just don’t see it working, especially in the 2nd tier and last tier brackets. Waiting for players to balance the game out themselves will never yield fruit.

This system would force players to balance the servers if they don’t want to sit in queues all day. And it would serve to give each server even strength during the off peak hours.

Its not a hard concept to grasp.

it will take an overt act by anet to redistribute oceanic players across US servers to effect any real change. Anet will not do this, so we are left with this … design … to deal with.

Over time the better PVP players will move to the better PVP ranked servers. You will be left with a two-tier wvwvw – those in the top half who battle for the lead and those without a 24 hr presence in the bottom half to fight over the crumbs

I agree with all points you made the wv3 scene really needs to have balanced populations to work
I also think they need to go to a 3.5 day battle system not 1 week or 2 weeks
i play random hours in the day when i get time and i dont like being outnumbered or outnumbering the enemy both make for bad experience all i want is to have fun working with my server fighting a force vers a force not a force vs gates or outnumbered to the point of only being able to sneak around killing dolyaks and sentrys and maby a supply camp if it snot upgraded

Ah Population balance, the other bane of mmorpgs…

If you want balance you should look to sPvP. WvW is never going to be balanced, and any attempts to make it so will simply fail. Why the obsession with making everything Even Steven? I don’t get it.

@nachtnebel.9168
I respect your perspective on this. You are correct in your need to organize, and coordinate. However, we face insurmountable odds even down here in the bottom bracket. Peak hours are something that is natural, and an opposing faction should have an opportunity to capitalize on our vulnerability. Maintaining claimed objectives, in an even population scenario, during off times is also part of the challenge. This is also a metric they currently take into consideration when matching servers. It’s not a professional boxing ladder. I would go so far as to say being the best server isn’t what’s on our minds. While there are a lot of folks who want to chase the best number, I think the majority of people would settle for a fun, fair, and engaging encounter. The numbers we’ve been left with currently during peak hours in WvWvW are seldom enough to wrest a keep from the NPCs that hold it. I don’t think you understand how badly outmanned we are.

As far as the queue times go, population, and peak hours are metrics that can be weighed and measure on Arena’s end to provide the most appropriate challenge. There is no prize for being in the top tier. The design is there to provide the most appropriate challenge. Shortly after launch, and before the word spread about how to game the free transfers, everything was peachy keen. We had pitched battles, sieges, and used all of the available mechanics to fight our foes. The slope of the population mountain is just too steep, and the free transfers have gone on long enough to cripple the opportunity for us to participate. We still go out and raid caravans and veteran guards, but as soon as those crossed swords appear we have only a matter of moments before a 10-1 force comes down on top of us. While “why bother” isn’t a staple of how I conduct business, please recognize that for the rest of humanity it’s a go to position in the face of those odds. It’s plain not fun.

@Everyone
This thread is moving pretty fast, and it’s the middle of the work day. I will address each of your views in time, but I will not skim them and troll you. So, I will get back to work on this this evening. I feel it’s important we gain all the perspective we can, and entertain all of the ideas we maybe didn’t come up with ourselves. Perhaps as a community we will find the solution, Arena will recognize, and we can all return to enjoyable days of taking up arms against each other in game.

None of the ideas in the OP would fix WvW. Limiting WvW based on the lowest population would punish the other servers and limit overall WvW participation. I agree that the queue system needs to be reworked and it should give players an estimated wait time and/or position in queue. Experience and magic find don’t really incentivize WvW activity. It might get people into WvW that otherwise wouldn’t be there, but so did dolyak farming and that was horrible.

I think better fixes would be adjusting the point tally based on population, and adjustments to the effectiveness of defending against zergs. Zerging in this game is easy, and that’s part of the problem aside from WvW population imbalances.

Honestly there’s a lot of things that need reworked and refined to make WvW more enjoyable and competitive overall. Maps should be bigger, as they’re a zergy cluster at the moment. Most AoEs should not have a five target hit-cap. And the outmanned buff needs to be made relevant to WvW.

You can not lock people out of a part of the game due to opposition inactivity.

To achieve what the OP wants their are much easier simpler and community friendly steps.

1) Announce a date that server transfers will start cost from and announce the lock out of WvW timer for said transfers.

2) Begin work redesigning the scoring system to equally reflect narrow victories in comparison to land slides, to make full population play and low population play times equal in point scoring.

3) continue working (as they are already) on the invisible opposition bug.

4) reward support roles more in WvW

You will never make this fair, but arena net can address those 4 issues and as a result provide open world pvp, where you can login for any ammount of time contribute and have fun.

If someone wants to recruit a super server and play 24/7 they have a greater chance of winning but I would argue they deserve to but it certainly isn’t my style.