Guild Wars 2

First of all this is not supposed to be a QQ thread. Congratulations to all the winning servers. You played well and thus you deserve to win.

Anyway, I think most people will agree that this season was extremely unbalanced. Imo the main reason for this were high population servers playing against small servers.

Population imbalance usually means the bigger server has 2x your War score after a few days which means there is barely any reason to fight for the rest of the week. Small servers (which is the majority of servers) are frustrated, less players will play, bigger servers have no competition and are bored.

Coming from Gold league [EU] there were only 2 different situations after a few weeks:

• Our server stomping the other 2 because we have more players
  or
• Our server being stomped by a bigger server

Here is an easy solution though:

Make the points per tick dependent on the average amount of players per server.

Here is a short example:

Server 1:
100 players
10 camps
=> 50 points

Server 2:
50 players
10 camps
=> 100 points

Bigger servers will need to split their zergs to be more effective at capping while small servers still get enough points per tick to stay competitive for the whole week. Small group roaming might become more popular as well.

I think this solution would help WvW to be more balanced.

What do you think about this solution? Would you support it or do you think there might be some problems?

[Short edit for those who are interested in the implementation]

3 Servers
1 Tick = 15 mins

1. Check the amount of players every minute for each server (15 per tick)
2. Add up all those numbers
3. Divide by 15

Formula for server 1:

(server 1 + server 2 + server 3)/server 1 * camps * points

For server 2 and 3 you only need to change the numbers for the 2nd “server 1”. Formula can be extended for towers etc.

When do you poll the population numbers?
What about when huge guilds who leave the server?
What about when the server with a huge primetime population has nobody playing overnight?

In my opinion, the solution should be based on the current Tick. Therefore the more you have, the less more is worth – diminishing returns.

The problem with these formulas is that players (a million) are always better than the devs (200?) at exploiting the rule set, and the more complex the rule set the more it can be exploited. So these accounting solutions sound good, but I am dubious.

I would love to see the while EU/US server thing dumped – to me coverage/lack of coverage is the thing I find most annoying. Smaller servers in particular do great during primetime, and spend literally hours building supply and capping. And then someone runs in 6 hours later and takes it all back in 20 mins. OK, and exaggeration, but you get the idea. If we can’t just trash the whole EU/US split then maybe partner – servers NA primetime and EU primetime at least for WVW. That way we dont have huge gaps in coverage.

Generally with coverage also comes competent commanders, which is my #2 thing. Without players and commanders you may as well go kill Jormag or something.

One more thing about this league thing – its too long. Around Tuesday it starts feeling like WW1 trench warfare or has devolved into a boring Karma train.

@Svarty.8019
Forgot to mention that.
1 Tick = 15 mins
Check amount of players every minute, add up and divide by 15. If a big guild leaves at minute 14 they can only use 1 out of 15 minutes to their advantage which means it would be more effective to keep playing. I don’t see any overnight problems. They would still dominate during primetime (although the difference would be less) and would get some extra points during the night.

@foggy.2856
So far I couldn’t think of any huge exploits. If there is any way to get an advantage the system could be changed in the future. It’s definitely better than the current one imo.

I don’t know if you’ll ever see this simply because you could figure out populations from ppt and what points the servers own at the time.

It’s a good idea but I don’t know if it’ll happen.

Blackhat.4016:

Population imbalance usually means the bigger server has 2x your War score after a few days which means there is barely any reason to fight for the rest of the week. Small servers (which is the majority of servers) are frustrated, less players will play, bigger servers have no competition and are bored.

You are mixing up two related issues: population and (timezone) coverage. Your server may have a million people, but if they all play during NA hours, the other server might field 10 people when no one is on from your side and you’d still get creamed in points.

Without forcibly moving people I think there is zero chance this will ever balance out on its own. Even having three servers compete isn’t enough, because you don’t always get the two lower serves teaming up on the big guy, and because of timezone coverage, that might not even matter.

A solution would be to break the day up, have matches run for a few hours and tally points up at the end. Then, it wouldn’t matter if the other server dominates other timezones because it doesn’t influence your score. You also don’t feel like your efforts are wasted, because all your shiny T3 stuff will get rolled 30min after you hit “log off”. Every time slot starts out with a clean slate, which avoids facing a map of fully supplied T3s. Every time slot match would be like reset day.

Mattargul.9235:

Blackhat.4016:

Population imbalance usually means the bigger server has 2x your War score after a few days which means there is barely any reason to fight for the rest of the week. Small servers (which is the majority of servers) are frustrated, less players will play, bigger servers have no competition and are bored.

You are mixing up two related issues: population and (timezone) coverage. Your server may have a million people, but if they all play during NA hours, the other server might field 10 people when no one is on from your side and you’d still get creamed in points.

Without forcibly moving people I think there is zero chance this will ever balance out on its own. Even having three servers compete isn’t enough, because you don’t always get the two lower serves teaming up on the big guy, and because of timezone coverage, that might not even matter.

A solution would be to break the day up, have matches run for a few hours and tally points up at the end. Then, it wouldn’t matter if the other server dominates other timezones because it doesn’t influence your score. You also don’t feel like your efforts are wasted, because all your shiny T3 stuff will get rolled 30min after you hit “log off”. Every time slot starts out with a clean slate, which avoids facing a map of fully supplied T3s. Every time slot match would be like reset day.

I like that fix – just have PPT stuff count during a few “server primetime” hours.

Its simple, it might be a fix, and it might also help that trench warfare feeling. Without the complex accounting system. Just be on your server in a BL from 6-10 or some part thereof if you want to play in the league.

I wouldn’t want to have WVW closed or down on off hours however. Just reset it at X prime-time hour daily during the league, for Y hours. Business as usual in the off hours.

Horrible idea, it does not even account for a 3 team system.

Lets entertain this idea like server population is WvW population, because there are very few servers that would not be able to fill WvW queues if they all participated at any given time.

So what happens when server 1 has 1000 players, server 2 has 500, and server 3, has 250?

They tick at 1x, 2x, and 4x? Do you not realize server 1 would have to own nearly all the map to keep even with server 3, not even accounting for server 2 being there as well? It just doesn’t work mathematically and is not in the interest of fairness when one team scores count more than the others. It pretty much requires big servers to control much much much more of the map than normal.

Putting servers that have guilds and leaders that put in the effort to make their server competitive to attract more people at a severe disadvantage is not “balancing” or “fixing”.

You are pretty much asking Anet to nanny small, low participation servers into competitiveness. Who is going to want to play in a highly fixed game where you are punished for the success of attracting people to your server?

If WvW is important to you, you need to move to a server where it is viewed as important. Not every server will be WvW competitive, its not realistic as not everyone participates and it is one area in a very big game.

The game rules need to stay the same for everyone, and need not to nanny servers that don’t participate. You have to play to win, if your server is not playing you wont win…. simple concept.

Mireles Lore.5942:

Horrible idea, it does not even account for a 3 team system.

Lets entertain this idea like server population is WvW population, because there are very few servers that would not be able to fill WvW queues if they all participated at any given time.

So what happens when server 1 has 1000 players, server 2 has 500, and server 3, has 250?

They tick at 1x, 2x, and 4x? Do you not realize server 1 would have to own nearly all the map to keep even with server 3, not even accounting for server 2 being there as well? It just doesn’t work mathematically and is not in the interest of fairness when one team scores count more than the others. It pretty much requires big servers to control much much much more of the map than normal.

Putting servers that have guilds and leaders that put in the effort to make their server competitive to attract more people at a severe disadvantage is not “balancing” or “fixing”.

You are pretty much asking Anet to nanny small, low participation servers into competitiveness. Who is going to want to play in a highly fixed game where you are punished for the success of attracting people to your server?

If WvW is important to you, you need to move to a server where it is viewed as important. Not every server will be WvW competitive, its not realistic as not everyone participates and it is one area in a very big game.

The game rules need to stay the same for everyone, and need not to nanny servers that don’t participate. You have to play to win, if your server is not playing you wont win…. simple concept.

Why shouldn’t it work for a 3 team system? You just gave a good example of how it would work with 3 teams.

If 1 server has more players than the other 2 combined you probably already control the majority of the map. And this is where the system would help. Instead of punishing small servers (because they have less WvW players) it would help them to stay on a competitive level instead of both servers being completely stomped. Big servers would need to cap and defend more to stay ahead instead of steamrolling camps over and over again. The match would be more interesting and not one-sided anymore.

You call it unfair for big servers, I call it fair for both small and big. The rules would be the same for everyone. Currently there is only an advantage for the big servers which isn’t fair.

Btw I’m playing on a high participation server as well (Gold league EU) but even there it’s not balanced at all.

Blackhat.4016:

Mireles Lore.5942:

Horrible idea, it does not even account for a 3 team system.

Lets entertain this idea like server population is WvW population, because there are very few servers that would not be able to fill WvW queues if they all participated at any given time.

So what happens when server 1 has 1000 players, server 2 has 500, and server 3, has 250?

They tick at 1x, 2x, and 4x? Do you not realize server 1 would have to own nearly all the map to keep even with server 3, not even accounting for server 2 being there as well? It just doesn’t work mathematically and is not in the interest of fairness when one team scores count more than the others. It pretty much requires big servers to control much much much more of the map than normal.

Putting servers that have guilds and leaders that put in the effort to make their server competitive to attract more people at a severe disadvantage is not “balancing” or “fixing”.

You are pretty much asking Anet to nanny small, low participation servers into competitiveness. Who is going to want to play in a highly fixed game where you are punished for the success of attracting people to your server?

If WvW is important to you, you need to move to a server where it is viewed as important. Not every server will be WvW competitive, its not realistic as not everyone participates and it is one area in a very big game.

The game rules need to stay the same for everyone, and need not to nanny servers that don’t participate. You have to play to win, if your server is not playing you wont win…. simple concept.

Why shouldn’t it work for a 3 team system? You just gave a good example of how it would work with 3 teams.

If 1 server has more players than the other 2 combined you probably already control the majority of the map. And this is where the system would help. Instead of punishing small servers (because they have less WvW players) it would help them to stay on a competitive level instead of both servers being completely stomped. Big servers would need to cap and defend more to stay ahead instead of steamrolling camps over and over again. The match would be more interesting and not one-sided anymore.

You call it unfair for big servers, I call it fair for both small and big. The rules would be the same for everyone. Currently there is only an advantage for the big servers which isn’t fair.

Btw I’m playing on a high participation server as well (Gold league EU) but even there it’s not balanced at all.

It isnt fair, because one server puts in more effort for a win than smaller servers…. IE if server 3 has 1/5th of the map server 1 must hold 4/5th while competently snubbing out two opponents JUST TO STAY TIED. That isnt balanced thats rigged.

Applying this system means that server 1 will have to maintain a minimum 5/8ths of the map at any given time to keep up. Not only do the other servers gain more, they gain at a fast rate. So best not lose any positions for very long. Lets say server 3 only gets 1/8th of the map… that means server one only need 4/8th or one half… but wait if Server two controls only 3/8ths of the rest of the map, its pulling ahead of the other two servers! So server 1 needs to maintain 5/8th ownership to stay slightly ahead or even with the other servers…. This makes zero logical since and only serves to nanny some servers into a victory while they are still getting stomped on the field.

To fit your definition of fairness lets just reward all servers with 1st place trophies and only make objectives able to be captured when its the servers turn to have them…. you know for fairness. Gawd forbid any server have any self created competitive edge over other servers, because you know, thats not fair.

Lets do the same thing to football… if one team is 0-5 and the other team is 5-0… the 0-5 teams touch downs should count for double… because you know to make it fair because the other team is obviously to good to be allowed to compete un-hindered.

Winning should be for the servers that participate and put the most effort into building and coordinating their WvW community… not being nanny-ed by slanted rules into a victory.

Not everyone can or should be a winner, and the rules shouldn’t be slanted to support such an idea… It is a game I would not be willing to play because my side is being handicapped for being more effective. Why even try to make ur server better and more populated if the rules will just win for you?

Blackhat.4016:

First of all this is not supposed to be a QQ thread. Congratulations to all the winning servers. You played well and thus you deserve to win.

Anyway, I think most people will agree that this season was extremely unbalanced. Imo the main reason for this were high population servers playing against small servers.

Population imbalance usually means the bigger server has 2x your War score after a few days which means there is barely any reason to fight for the rest of the week. Small servers (which is the majority of servers) are frustrated, less players will play, bigger servers have no competition and are bored.

Coming from Gold league [EU] there were only 2 different situations after a few weeks:

• Our server stomping the other 2 because we have more players
  or
• Our server being stomped by a bigger server

Here is an easy solution though:

Make the points per tick dependent on the average amount of players per server.

Here is a short example:

Server 1:
100 players
10 camps
=> 50 points

Server 2:
50 players
10 camps
=> 100 points

Bigger servers will need to split their zergs to be more effective at capping while small servers still get enough points per tick to stay competitive for the whole week. Small group roaming might become more popular as well.

I think this solution would help WvW to be more balanced.

What do you think about this solution? Would you support it or do you think there might be some problems?

cant you sack everything and then leave the battle area? Through your method it would give that group 100x the points

The reason this would not work is that it would create situations in which it would be more beneficial for people to not play. Any system the Dev’s come up with will be exploited. That’s a given. They would not (and should not) create a system in which the optimal play style means that a person new to WvW would be shouted off the map because they want a higher multiplier.

“Fixing” the score doesn’t solve the crappy fights. Most players want fights that are fun. The current score system is just an indicator to how out of balance the fighting is.

Simply put, I don’t care if I am ticking more points if I am getting run over by 3 to 4 times the number of players.

Mireles Lore.5942:

Blackhat.4016:

Mireles Lore.5942:

Horrible idea, it does not even account for a 3 team system.

Lets entertain this idea like server population is WvW population, because there are very few servers that would not be able to fill WvW queues if they all participated at any given time.

So what happens when server 1 has 1000 players, server 2 has 500, and server 3, has 250?

They tick at 1x, 2x, and 4x? Do you not realize server 1 would have to own nearly all the map to keep even with server 3, not even accounting for server 2 being there as well? It just doesn’t work mathematically and is not in the interest of fairness when one team scores count more than the others. It pretty much requires big servers to control much much much more of the map than normal.

Putting servers that have guilds and leaders that put in the effort to make their server competitive to attract more people at a severe disadvantage is not “balancing” or “fixing”.

You are pretty much asking Anet to nanny small, low participation servers into competitiveness. Who is going to want to play in a highly fixed game where you are punished for the success of attracting people to your server?

If WvW is important to you, you need to move to a server where it is viewed as important. Not every server will be WvW competitive, its not realistic as not everyone participates and it is one area in a very big game.

The game rules need to stay the same for everyone, and need not to nanny servers that don’t participate. You have to play to win, if your server is not playing you wont win…. simple concept.

Why shouldn’t it work for a 3 team system? You just gave a good example of how it would work with 3 teams.

If 1 server has more players than the other 2 combined you probably already control the majority of the map. And this is where the system would help. Instead of punishing small servers (because they have less WvW players) it would help them to stay on a competitive level instead of both servers being completely stomped. Big servers would need to cap and defend more to stay ahead instead of steamrolling camps over and over again. The match would be more interesting and not one-sided anymore.

You call it unfair for big servers, I call it fair for both small and big. The rules would be the same for everyone. Currently there is only an advantage for the big servers which isn’t fair.

Btw I’m playing on a high participation server as well (Gold league EU) but even there it’s not balanced at all.

It isnt fair, because one server puts in more effort for a win than smaller servers…. IE if server 3 has 1/5th of the map server 1 must hold 4/5th while competently snubbing out two opponents JUST TO STAY TIED. That isnt balanced thats rigged.

To fit your definition of fairness lets just reward all servers with 1st place trophies and only make objectives able to be captured when its the servers turn to have them…. you know for fairness. Gawd forbid any server have any self created competitive edge over other servers, because you know, thats not fair.

Lets do the same thing to football… if one team is 0-5 and the other team is 5-0… the 0-5 teams touch downs should count for double… because you know to make it fair because the other team is obviously to good to be allowed to compete un-hindered.

Having more players doesn’t equal being better at the game which means your whole post doesn’t make any sense. If you consider having more players means you’re also better then you would be right.

It seems like you’re more interested in the actual formula though:

The formula would be something like this:
For server 1
(server 1 + server 2 + server 3)/server 1 * camps * points

Server 1 has ~58% of the total WvW population, server 2 ~28% and server 3 has ~14%.

=> 58/28 = ~2 which means server 1 needs 2x camps to stay tied with server 2
=> 58/14 = ~4 which means server 1 needs 4x camps to stay tied with server 3

14 camps in total (to keep it simple)
Server 1 needs 8 camps to stay tied
Server 2 needs 4 camps to stay tied
Server 3 needs 2 camp to stay tied

Considering server 1 has more than 50% of all WvW player this seems fair to me.

Straegen.2938:

“Fixing” the score doesn’t solve the crappy fights. Most players want fights that are fun. The current score system is just an indicator to how out of balance the fighting is.

Simply put, I don’t care if I am ticking more points if I am getting run over by 3 to 4 times the number of players.

That’s indeed a good point but I think if the score is somewhat even players will stay and fight instead of ignoring WvW for the rest of the week. This is what usually happens on the other 2 servers if they have a bigger server playing against them:

Reset = All 3 servers are about equal
1 day = Server 1 is slightly ahead in points
2 day = Server 1 has a bigger advantage now
3 day = most people start ignoring WvW for the rest of the week

The system might prevent this since the fight would be closer after reset day. No more “the other server has more players” since you actually have a decent chance to win the match even if the enemy has more players.

I might be wrong but imo it’s worth a try.

You’re essentially encouraging welfare PPT to those who haven’t been able to earn it otherwise.

You’re also implicitly disrespecting the efforts of those servers who take active and effective measures to be fully competitive. This would remove the server competition meta that adds an EvE-like (extra-lite) flavor to the game.

WvW population is, to a large extent, the players’ problem.

Does your server’s WvW leadership recruit to cover gaps?
Does your server WvW leadership take steps to cooperate and manage internal issues?
Are you encouraging and training PvE/PvX guilds to participate more in WvW?

If the answer to these is “no”, then move to a server that cares about WvW or reconcile yourself to the fact that your server is not doing what it needs to in order to remain competitive.

Cuddlepie.8109:

You’re essentially encouraging welfare PPT to those who haven’t been able to earn it otherwise.

You’re also implicitly disrespecting the efforts of those servers who take active and effective measures to be fully competitive. This would remove the server competition meta that adds an EvE-like (extra-lite) flavor to the game.

WvW population is, to a large extent, the players’ problem.

Does your server’s WvW leadership recruit to cover gaps?
Does your server WvW leadership take steps to cooperate and manage internal issues?
Are you encouraging and training PvE/PvX guilds to participate more in WvW?

If the answer to these is “no”, then move to a server that cares about WvW or reconcile yourself to the fact that your server is not doing what it needs to in order to remain competitive.

EVE is one server for the world, or was when I played. I would love for GW2 to do this, but it makes a comparison pretty difficult. Coverage is a sticking point in GW2 by design because the devs created NA and EU servers and then melded this WvW event onto that framework. Its not the best fit in my opinion.

In GW2 its frustrating to have to choose between queues or losing. Go to the servers you describe and stand around LA, or go to a “lesser” server and get stomped. This has been my GW2 experience and it is kitten.

I like the idea of limiting the league play to shorter periods of time – either a few hours a day or in 12 hour shifts or something. Outside these hours play would be as normal, server resets at the beginning of league stuff to make it consistent and reward the effort made. For instance when the next league session starts the devs could reset it to how it was at the end of the last league session so as to reward planning and upgrades.

Your idea might work if it is based on a 5 to15 minute tic, and if it is based on the total population currently in WvW for each server at each tic.

You’re missing the point about the EvE comparison.

Corporations and alliances compete for members. The meta of EvE involves – among other things – people who actively ’play, outside the game to build or destroy their competition. Google Mittani, for one example.

Again, I’d argue that you can’t expect coverage if you’re passive in this aspect. Do more.

RiWiJo.7502:

Your idea might work if it is based on a 5 to15 minute tic, and if it is based on the total population currently in WvW for each server at each tic.

That’s exactly what I was trying to say. My first post simply wasn’t good enough to explain it.

My answers afterwards should make it more clear though:

“1 Tick = 15 mins
Check amount of players every minute, add up and divide by 15”

“The formula would be something like this:
For server 1
(server 1 + server 2 + server 3)/server 1 * camps * points”

I hope this is a better explanation.

This is a game. A game by definition means the sides are relatively equal. There are many things in existence that can make a game equal, handicapping, minimum requirements, weight rules you name it but every sport, every game tries to balance the sides to make the game fun, fair and interesting. As it is now because there is no mechanism in place to balance the sides and you have people flocking to winning servers, improper population distribution, servers that don’t have a chance against servers that just walk all over everyone. Hardly a fun game.

You could argue that it is part of the game to stack servers, etc. But if it is not fair, in a game, something should be found to curb the appeal.

The only solution I can see with balancing out the population is to eliminate WvW as we know it. Turn it faction based (there are already 3 factions in the game), and have people join a specific faction on whatever map they desire.

Players should be able to see exactly how many players per faction, per map are playing at a time. Old school example here; Battlefield 1942 and Counterstrike, you log on, and you can clearly see how many players are on each side (and map) at once, and you join accordingly.

I don’t see why this cant work for Gw2. You either knowingly walk into an outnumbered situation or you join an even fight. To even further the incentive, give each faction it’s own set of achievements and siege weapons to use so players have further incentive to try all factions.

This would eliminate the uneven fights, this would also eliminate que times (create overflow maps): For Example: Red Borderlands is full (100v100v100) so Red Borderlands 1 is created.

Edit – Adding in something else… new titles (faction) champions, for completing whatever crazy achievements needed for that particular faction. Make faction specific weapons and armor (much like the cultural sets). Give these sets a few buffs if your wearing it and the faction is the victor for that particular week.

This can be done so many different ways.

There are too many options to exploit this system.

One scenario:
Server A has more active players than the other two servers, so A is able to cap the most objectives of the map. Then the majority of server A logs out and now all three Servers have approximately the same numbers. But B and C still aren’t able to recap the objectives fast enough to create an equal PPT, because A still has some defenders => Server A wins because the majority of their players went to bed, after capping the entire map.

I posted another suggestions in the CDI-Topic, no idea if someone’s seen it, therefore I’ll post it here again:

Multiply the points per tick by a factor representing the number of all players of all three servers during one tick. So if each server has all four maps filled, there should be something about 1,000 players. Therefore the points per tick would be multiplied by (let’s say) 10 and if one server is roaming against 20 defenders with 80 karma trainers the PPT would be multiplied by 1 (1,000 / 100 =10 and 100 / 100 = 1).

This would make the primetime more important, but won’t give servers more points only because they’ve less players.

Yes, outnumbered servers will still loose, but i think, that’s fair. The point here is, that servers, which are able to compete during prime time, will have it easier to compete during the whole match.

BUT: The most important thing is balancing wvw-populations, because different calculation of points won’t really help with imbalanced match-ups. In my opinion (and I think in ANets opinion) it’s not fair to press players to join other servers, if they don’t want to. Therefore it should be easy to join to servers with lower wvw population.

Cuddlepie.8109:

You’re missing the point about the EvE comparison.

Corporations and alliances compete for members. The meta of EvE involves – among other things – people who actively ’play, outside the game to build or destroy their competition. Google Mittani, for one example.

Again, I’d argue that you can’t expect coverage if you’re passive in this aspect. Do more.

I don’t want to hijack with the EVE bickering, I totally get your point about working harder and I agree with you. I really enjoyed EVE for the in and out of game aspects you describe.

The problem is the reward for winning the quest for more and better players in GW2 is a gigantic queue, preventing people from playing WvW at all. Even really good commanders hit this queue, and get to sit in LA waiting. This seems fairly broken to me.

I hope the devs do some more out of the box thinking and at least listen to some of these threads, like the “log in to your preferred faction” one above. Because I am not super excited for WvW league round two as it stands now. I also hope they avoid solutions that require hugely complex rulesets, we all know where that goes in games – the law of unanticipated consequences applies to the detriment of everyone but exploiters and hackers.

Blackhat.4016:

1. Check the amount of players every minute for each server (15 per tick)

I think the rolling average period needs to be longer than 15 minutes and should probably be in the 30 to 60 minute range. I also think the effective population count should be the greater of either the rolling average or the current population. The idea is that a server should not be able to get a benefit by either quickly dropping it’s population or by quickly increasing it. A longer rolling average period would reduce the benefit of quickly dropping in population and using the greater of the average or current population would eliminate the benefit of quickly increasing in population.

Berk.8561:

Blackhat.4016:

1. Check the amount of players every minute for each server (15 per tick)

I think the rolling average period needs to be longer than 15 minutes and should probably be in the 30 to 60 minute range. I also think the effective population count should be the greater of either the rolling average or the current population. The idea is that a server should not be able to get a benefit by either quickly dropping it’s population or by quickly increasing it. A longer rolling average period would reduce the benefit of quickly dropping in population and using the greater of the average or current population would eliminate the benefit of quickly increasing in population.

Good point. I didn’t think about increasing it to 30 or 60 mins.

Here are 2 more links which I think are interesting:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Collaborative-Development-World-Population/first
(sadly closed)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Keep-the-positive-momentum
(the “Server Populations” part)

Thanks everyone for all the feedback.

Blackhat.4016:

That’s indeed a good point but I think if the score is somewhat even players will stay and fight instead of ignoring WvW for the rest of the week. This is what usually happens on the other 2 servers if they have a bigger server playing against them:

In my experience people start logging out after they had their teeth kicked in a few times. The score probably has some influence but so long as another server has turned another server’s keeps to paper and keeps them backed up to legendaries players simply won’t join in.

Not meaning to sound racist at all but this is what this proposed system makes me think about.
In a city there are 50,000 people
The city population is made up of 3 different races.
Green people are 60% of the population
Yellow people are 30% of the population
Orange people are 10% of the population

In this town there are a limited number of jobs; therefore, to make it fair to everybody instead of going based on job skill, we are going to base who gets the jobs on their skin color.
Although 60% of the population is Green people we are only going to give 1 person per 4 people green people a job. For every 3 yellow people we will give 2 yellow people a job, and all orange people are guaranteed to get a job. Not really fair, right?
——
What does this mean? When we think about whether this is fair or not, it really isn’t. Maybe Green people are more effective workers, or maybe Orange people have more skilled workers. It is never accurate to say that all of one of these races should be guaranteed a job just because they are outnumbered.
What does this have to do with WvW population? When you think of World VS. World don’t think about just the population, what about the actual skill of the players on the realm. I’ve seen lower population realms beat higher population realms many times. You aren’t guaranteed to win with numbers, coordination and skill of your players is huge. This system wouldn’t work because it doesn’t balance for the skill of players. This could also break the server ranking system too, imo. Some realms are the type to win using numbers, some are winning using skill. It varies too much to really create a system like this.
I’d love to make an example of what I mean but there are too many hypotheticals involved.

Switch WvW to 3x 8 hour matches in 24 hours. Turn it into a ranking based system.

Match a server at each specific time zone with 2 other servers that have similar populations at that timezone.

Speed up upgrades.

Each win / loss / draw earns your server points counting towards the total score.

Profit.

Snorcha.7586:

Switch WvW to 3x 8 hour matches in 24 hours. Turn it into a ranking based system.

Match a server at each specific time zone with 2 other servers that have similar populations at that timezone.

Speed up upgrades.

Each win / loss / draw earns your server points counting towards the total score.

Profit.

Population does not equal skill, that’s the whole problem. They could all be even in populations but that doesn’t mean they will be equal in term of skill. For example, you could put a tier 3 realm against a tier 1 realm but it wouldn’t matter if populations are the same skill. There are many realms in tier 1 that are not all the same population as each other, so you can’t just take tier 1s against each other with that idea because their populations may not be similar.

Alyrian.2490:

Snorcha.7586:

Switch WvW to 3x 8 hour matches in 24 hours. Turn it into a ranking based system.

Match a server at each specific time zone with 2 other servers that have similar populations at that timezone.

Speed up upgrades.

Each win / loss / draw earns your server points counting towards the total score.

Profit.

Population does not equal skill, that’s the whole problem. They could all be even in populations but that doesn’t mean they will be equal in term of skill. For example, you could put a tier 3 realm against a tier 1 realm but it wouldn’t matter if populations are the same skill. There are many realms in tier 1 that are not all the same population as each other, so you can’t just take tier 1s against each other with that idea because their populations may not be similar.

I understand what you mean, you could look at the average population over a 7 day period for each timezone, as well as the amount of points they have gained by winning, then start formulating matches on that.. I dunno, anything’s better then what they currently have lol.

Mireles Lore.5942:

Horrible idea, it does not even account for a 3 team system.

Lets entertain this idea like server population is WvW population, because there are very few servers that would not be able to fill WvW queues if they all participated at any given time.

So what happens when server 1 has 1000 players, server 2 has 500, and server 3, has 250?

They tick at 1x, 2x, and 4x? Do you not realize server 1 would have to own nearly all the map to keep even with server 3, not even accounting for server 2 being there as well? It just doesn’t work mathematically and is not in the interest of fairness when one team scores count more than the others. It pretty much requires big servers to control much much much more of the map than normal.

Putting servers that have guilds and leaders that put in the effort to make their server competitive to attract more people at a severe disadvantage is not “balancing” or “fixing”.

You are pretty much asking Anet to nanny small, low participation servers into competitiveness. Who is going to want to play in a highly fixed game where you are punished for the success of attracting people to your server?

If WvW is important to you, you need to move to a server where it is viewed as important. Not every server will be WvW competitive, its not realistic as not everyone participates and it is one area in a very big game.

The game rules need to stay the same for everyone, and need not to nanny servers that don’t participate. You have to play to win, if your server is not playing you wont win…. simple concept.

Sounds like someone who likes being on a server that outnumbers the other server as long as it means winning.

As it is now the wvw of this game is broken because of how offset the servers are. You can not say they are not.

The problem about this possible solution is that the more elitist servers will only allow their best guilds to fight during certain time zones. This will severely discourage PuGs and new players from playing WvW.

For example, if a server knows it is weak during SEA, then it will try to only allow best guilds in during that time because those guilds will be able to get more PPT then a militia at that time.

How will servers keep PuGs from playing?
For starters commanders won’t turn their tags on to allow PuGs to easily follow their group (already done by some elitist guilds). They might use server TS or other voice coms and only communicate with their guild. They could allow PuGs to die and grief them so they will stop playing WvW during those times. Many other ways that I probably don’t even know about.

foggy.2856:

The problem is the reward for winning the quest for more and better players in GW2 is a gigantic queue, preventing people from playing WvW at all. Even really good commanders hit this queue, and get to sit in LA waiting. This seems fairly broken to me.

If your players and server leaders set things up right, you won’t have very long queues because your leaders would have a pretty good idea of what you can field when you can field them. Fill in the gaps after that.

The idea is to get just enough to get a short queue on all maps. Some players find a queue intolerable, that is their problem. In a game like WvW where some players want to also play the PPT game, a short queue is not a bad thing to have because it means we have a force on each map that can and will defend the upgraded stuff. It isn’t like we have long queues outside of reset night.

Some may say just play for fights instead of PPT. You can still get good fights while playing the PPT game. Matches where the 3 servers are pretty much equal in coverage are fun matches as the points come down to a few hours before reset instead of karma train friday. Gasp, some players want to play the game that was offered, oh my.

I do think the system as is be a bit broken.

I don’t like the idea in the OP. It can be abused way to easily.

My idea is to make it so no server can have more than 10 players more than the lowest server of the three (in one area, not worldwide). fix the queue so it’s first come first serve, and don’t post the match-ups so no one knows who they will fight next.

Example:
Server A – 60 players
Server B – 60 players
Server C – 50 players

If 1 person from server C leaves, then 1 person (whoever has been playing the longest) gets kicked from servers A and B. This will keep the coverage even, and in theory would make people transfer to lower servers to be able to play. I don’t know how this would work in practice, but it sounds good in my head.

Arcuss.6457:

My idea is to make it so no server can have more than 10 players more than the lowest server of the three (in one area, not worldwide). fix the queue so it’s first come first serve, and don’t post the match-ups so no one knows who they will fight next.

Example:
Server A – 60 players
Server B – 60 players
Server C – 50 players

If 1 person from server C leaves, then 1 person (whoever has been playing the longest) gets kicked from servers A and B. This will keep the coverage even, and in theory would make people transfer to lower servers to be able to play. I don’t know how this would work in practice, but it sounds good in my head.

That’s horrible, imagine playing (after some long duration of waiting) just to get kicked, because some other guy is annoyed of losing! DCs are bad enough, don’t implement designed kicks.

AND: Somewhere in the CDI-thread (regarding a similar suggestion) ANet said they won’t implement ideas which include blocking players from playing. I said it already and I’ll say it again: No one should be forced to change a server, there must be other ways to balance populations.

I have a better solution. MERGE THE SERVERS.

McWizey.5203:

Arcuss.6457:

My idea is to make it so no server can have more than 10 players more than the lowest server of the three (in one area, not worldwide). fix the queue so it’s first come first serve, and don’t post the match-ups so no one knows who they will fight next.

Example:
Server A – 60 players
Server B – 60 players
Server C – 50 players

If 1 person from server C leaves, then 1 person (whoever has been playing the longest) gets kicked from servers A and B. This will keep the coverage even, and in theory would make people transfer to lower servers to be able to play. I don’t know how this would work in practice, but it sounds good in my head.

That’s horrible, imagine playing (after some long duration of waiting) just to get kicked, because some other guy is annoyed of losing! DCs are bad enough, don’t implement designed kicks.

AND: Somewhere in the CDI-thread (regarding a similar suggestion) ANet said they won’t implement ideas which include blocking players from playing. I said it already and I’ll say it again: No one should be forced to change a server, there must be other ways to balance populations.

well like i said, you would only get kicked for playing the longest. so when you immediately join, you’d still have 50 or so people to get kicked first. Or just take away the kicking entirely and just make it so no one else can join until the servers level out.

There already is a queue which blocks players from playing so that’s just silly. No one is being forced to change server with my idea, they should just be motivated to chance in order to play more.

I honestly don’t see them finding balance any other way. So good luck.

QueenEtna.3580:

I have a better solution. MERGE THE SERVERS.

I don’t think the servers could handle the numbers.

thefirstlazydude.2408:

The problem about this possible solution is that the more elitist servers will only allow their best guilds to fight during certain time zones. This will severely discourage PuGs and new players from playing WvW.

For example, if a server knows it is weak during SEA, then it will try to only allow best guilds in during that time because those guilds will be able to get more PPT then a militia at that time.

How will servers keep PuGs from playing?
For starters commanders won’t turn their tags on to allow PuGs to easily follow their group (already done by some elitist guilds). They might use server TS or other voice coms and only communicate with their guild. They could allow PuGs to die and grief them so they will stop playing WvW during those times. Many other ways that I probably don’t even know about.

Good point and to be honest, I can’t think of a solution for that problem if it would occur. It already somewhat happens right now which is just sad.

Arcuss.6457:

My idea is to make it so no server can have more than 10 players more than the lowest server of the three (in one area, not worldwide). fix the queue so it’s first come first serve, and don’t post the match-ups so no one knows who they will fight next.

Example:
Server A – 60 players
Server B – 60 players
Server C – 50 players

If 1 person from server C leaves, then 1 person (whoever has been playing the longest) gets kicked from servers A and B. This will keep the coverage even, and in theory would make people transfer to lower servers to be able to play. I don’t know how this would work in practice, but it sounds good in my head.

What do you do about intentional disconnects exploits? Example:
Server A – 30 players
Server B- 30 players
Server C- 20 players

Scout from Server A: Oh my! Omega golem rush incoming into Hills, 10+Golems and about 30+ from server B!
Meanwhile, Server A is fighting Server C

Guild Commander from server A: kitten! We’re out of position, let’s disconnect and hope for the best lolz.

30 Players disconnects from server A
Server B has 10 players left (And some empty golems from disconnected people)
Server C has 10 players left (Huh! Where did they go?)

An easier way to make the “season league” more balanced is to assign servers static colors and allow guesting on “your colors” servers. If your bronze team is slacking allow gold guilds to guest there. Not only will this improve gameplay by lowering all queue’s it will make for interesting choices! Anyways this is an idea take it or leave just if you disagree come up with a better idea and post it with your comments!

Alyrian.2490:

Snorcha.7586:

Switch WvW to 3x 8 hour matches in 24 hours. Turn it into a ranking based system.

Match a server at each specific time zone with 2 other servers that have similar populations at that timezone.

Speed up upgrades.

Each win / loss / draw earns your server points counting towards the total score.

Profit.

Population does not equal skill, that’s the whole problem. They could all be even in populations but that doesn’t mean they will be equal in term of skill. For example, you could put a tier 3 realm against a tier 1 realm but it wouldn’t matter if populations are the same skill. There are many realms in tier 1 that are not all the same population as each other, so you can’t just take tier 1s against each other with that idea because their populations may not be similar.

This is the best idea out there imo. It has nothing to do with population not equaling skill.

All you do is give the servers a seperate Glicko rating for each timezone. And then match up each timezone based on its own seperate Glicko rating.

So for example a server strong in NA time, medium in Ocn/Sea time but weak in EU time would have 3 seperate matches going on in a given week.

I’ve been thinking of ways while I’m on a break from GW2, but it’s difficult to find an fair solution for everyone. Simply put, I don’t think active population balancing is the right way to try and balance things, by punishing those who want and can play during certain hours; whether it’s prime time or not.

During Prime Time when it’s usually balanced in terms of players on each map, you usually see your Home Borderlands under pressure from opposing servers.
Then by the late evening, unless at least one of the other servers can sustain the same number of players as the other other servers, even if you’ve lost a key structure like Garrison you can just cap it later and the whole map usually for the PPT.

I think one of the fundamental issues may be down to the fact that: There is not enough incentive towards Defending and Scouting, apart from Pride.

It’s far too forgiving when you can just cap stuff especially wooden, with superior numbers using mass amounts of offensive siege like an Army of golems and ram users with mastery.
Never-mind defending against numbers, there is so much AOE that you can’t even stand to man defensive siege, unless placed carefully.
It’s also the fact there’s that 30s contest timer, which makes alot of difference to whether you successfully defend a structure.

Of course this all comes down to Match-Ups which end up being blowouts, no wonder it ends up being One Big Karma Train.

Population balancing is such a delicate issue.
It is easy enough to transfer and stack on a server, I don’t know how you can make it worth transferring to a lower pop server to balance out the wvw population, especially with National Servers.

I think it is something that perhaps should have been discussed during the beta, especially the way World Transfers are handled.
WvW has ended up so popular, as it’s so unique and as an end-game of sorts, people bandwagon alot and Guilds move around alot causing these imbalances.

With Season One they’ve tried to bring some competition to lure players in, but in the end it’s just given a short-lived boost to many a servers wvw population, leading to longer queue times.

The fair way to address things is perhaps by slowing down the wvw metagame, make it so outnumbered isn’t such a deterrant, and maybe there should be a restructure to how Points are gained from Camps, Dolyaks, Keeps, Sentries and Towers.

wvw is such a game-type where momentum is important, whether you are wiping opposing zergs on a map or leading a matchup by a healthy lead, Server populations are Dependant on that kind of positive momentum and community pride.

CrimsonNeonite.1048:

I’ve been thinking of ways while I’m on a break from GW2, but it’s difficult to find an fair solution for everyone. Simply put, I don’t think active population balancing is the right way to try and balance things, by punishing those who want and can play during certain hours; whether it’s prime time or not.

During Prime Time when it’s usually balanced in terms of players on each map, you usually see your Home Borderlands under pressure from opposing servers.
Then by the late evening, unless at least one of the other servers can sustain the same number of players as the other other servers, even if you’ve lost a key structure like Garrison you can just cap it later and the whole map usually for the PPT.

I think one of the fundamental issues may be down to the fact that: There is not enough incentive towards Defending and Scouting, apart from Pride.

It’s far too forgiving when you can just cap stuff especially wooden, with superior numbers using mass amounts of offensive siege like an Army of golems and ram users with mastery.
Never-mind defending against numbers, there is so much AOE that you can’t even stand to man defensive siege, unless placed carefully.
It’s also the fact there’s that 30s contest timer, which makes alot of difference to whether you successfully defend a structure.

Of course this all comes down to Match-Ups which end up being blowouts, no wonder it ends up being One Big Karma Train.

Population balancing is such a delicate issue.
It is easy enough to transfer and stack on a server, I don’t know how you can make it worth transferring to a lower pop server to balance out the wvw population, especially with National Servers.

I think it is something that perhaps should have been discussed during the beta, especially the way World Transfers is handled. WvW has ended up so popular, as it’s so unique and as an end-game of sorts.
With Season One you’ve tried to bring some competition to lure players in, but in the end it’s just given a short-lived boost to a servers wvw population or just longer queue times.

The fair way to address things is perhaps by slowing down the wvw metagame, make it so outnumbered isn’t such a deterrant, and maybe there should be a restructure to to how Points are obtained from Camps, Dolyaks, Keeps, Sentries and Towers.

I understand your point. My suggestion was a way to at least provide semi balanced matches in each of the time zones, and if you’re getting run over, at least it’s not for 7 days in a row, just 8 hours meaning you can always try again tommorrow.

The problem with so many of these ideas is that they want to take the contributions of other timezones out of consideration and have them make less of an impact.

It is a pain when a NA server gets EU transfers or vice-versa; but that’s part of how the game is played as well (server recruitment is a fickle mistress, but it helps).

Chris.3290:

The problem with so many of these ideas is that they want to take the contributions of other timezones out of consideration and have them make less of an impact.

It is a pain when a NA server gets EU transfers or vice-versa; but that’s part of how the game is played as well (server recruitment is a fickle mistress, but it helps).

Yep, at the very least my idea removes the complaints of “Night capping” etc as your always up against similar numbers in the various timezones, and it still count towards server performance.