Guild Wars 2

You will never have a perfect population balance and ever if you could you do realize there are some other things to take into acct.
Let say there are 100 people and they get on for 30 mins average. Then on the another server 100 people get on for 4 hrs. To these 2 server they won’t be able to see they have equal people because to them they don’t have the same amounts of player activity on other time zones.

Different players put in different amounts of playtime. So even if you balance population somehow some players just go into wvw for dailies, some go into wvw for just on weekends, and other players are more hardcore and do many hrs a week. Anet needs to stop worrying about population balance because it won’t ever happen.

Also some people can troll server populations by making free to play acct leveling them and being active a bit on them to cap populations, so basically there is no for sure fix for populations issues.

^^^ Yes, thank you for saying it! The players can figure this out! Each guild will find the tier that best suits their interests in WvW.

Your absolutely correct.The players define the populations at a given time of the day.But we have a transfer system that produces population imbalance.Server stacking by players looking for easy wins is a real problem and only ANET has the ability to address that.They’ve introduced server locks which doesn’t work when they keep a server locked after people transfer to a different server .Linking has turned out to be a mess for underdog servers as they loose their identity’s.Mashing servers together will only cause an even greater problem with server saturation leading to high queues ,high latency and crashes.
Probably the only way to fix this is to drop the transfer system all together and run WvW as a mega server with districts similar to the district system of Guild Wars 1.each district showing the current population and queue times.Then a guild or individual player can decide where to play.This will spread players out reducing queue times. Latency issues and crashes would reduce because guilds and individuals can go where they get the best connection. Severs and guilds would still get the benefits from the work that they do in WvW do because they will still represent their home server regardless of where and who they play against. Not saying that this proposal is perfect but it could solve some of the biggest issues plaguing WvW now.

Need to remember that many many players only play WvW when their server is leading.

In order to get closer to “competitive balance” is that you have to ditch persistent world, and the 1v1v1. Those are the two biggest game mechanics that go against balance.

I don’t think either one of those is an option right now…

Before eotm is brought up…
Eotm’s biggest issues is a map catered to ktraining (too spread for fights), and non-intuitive method of getting your group in the same zone that isn’t devoid of enemies.

There are ways to do it, it just steps on a lot of toes.

Just to mention, when ANet changed the world population method to only work for WvW, they mentioned how they did it (briefly with little details). But from what I understood of it, they count “man hours” in WvW, not how many people logged on. So this is already done.

Junkpile.7439:

Need to remember that many many players only play WvW when their server is leading.

This however, is the biggest problem when it comes to balancing population.

I am pretty sure they can easily track each active WvW players’s average playing time over a period of time.

They simply multiply that number of hours to each player and sum up the total to estimate server activity.

I’m not sure what happend, but SFR used to be one or the most populated, same one of the leading or rather dominant in WvW server (EU) Something happend a (year) ago? And after that it’s just gone bad, or well, was a period it went better but after the link “bang” alot just fled to other servers.

Today it’s a medioker server.

I don’t think anyone is suggesting “perfect” balance.

SkyShroud.2865:

I don’t think anyone is suggesting “perfect” balance.

I don’t think it will ever happen and I sympathize with anet on it. The large guilds and band wagoners will never allow it.

BG is always going to be massive and that server who likes to k-train like no tomorrow to get a massive lead, then they disappear the entire week after a comfortable lead is established with a core of “roaming guilds”<—lol. Then we have JQ, who is pptin their brains out to get to T1 and SBI/TC just can’t keep up with the night/back capping.

I’m also convinced if TC/SBI had a solid nightcrew they’d be hanging with JQ easily. So not sure why people in the forums are pushing so hard for JQ to be matched up with BG. I think the outlook would be different from what they are wishing. BG would just destroy them and they’d be stuck with the same boring lower pop servers.

Was I the only one expecting a joke and a punch line?

not to mention u can go hybernation for a while then when there is some new competition everyone shows up and u got 4 maps queue 24/7 like BG.

A few things that come into mind atm. could resolve some issues:

- offering server transfers to entire guilds once in a while free of charge to prevent abuse
- but mainly, coding a proper algorithm to match people based on active (online) numbers
- eliminate the possibility to constantly hop from server to server, sort of you transfer now, you cannot for at least 3 months, or even more. sounds insane? sometimes you have to take drastic measures if you want to achieve something.

Why would you think Anet just balances on raw number of players in WvW or even man hours? They would be able to just add the WvW participation numbers for a time slot.

They already have the data for reward tracks.

You mention hibernate , what if ANET automatically transfer an account if not used for a month to the lowest tier server, will this solved an instant over stacking of servers?

swellercross.3974:

You mention hibernate , what if ANET automatically transfer an account if not used for a month to the lowest tier server, will this solved an instant over stacking of servers?

Lmao at least would manipulate data to show to players they are fixing the “problem”.

The issue is not population itself, it is the mess the WvW server system is, its a ktrain design to pretend to gratiffy pve players when they cap empty structure.. so cool so much effort cata a wall.

Could we just reset whole frigging WvW and add some rewards and statistics for example? I want new start that makes me feel like there is some point to play WvW. Making population balance better won’t bring players back because WvW still feels totally pointless.

swellercross.3974:

You mention hibernate , what if ANET automatically transfer an account if not used for a month to the lowest tier server, will this solved an instant over stacking of servers?

id just de-link allowing the player to choose a new server, but then would people sit a month for a free transfer? maybe the time out needs to be 6-8 weeks.

Inoki.6048:

A few things that come into mind atm. could resolve some issues:

- offering server transfers to entire guilds once in a while free of charge to prevent abuse
- but mainly, coding a proper algorithm to match people based on active (online) numbers
- eliminate the possibility to constantly hop from server to server, sort of you transfer now, you cannot for at least 3 months, or even more. sounds insane? sometimes you have to take drastic measures if you want to achieve something.

GW2 is aging, WvWvW is stagnant and the combat has arguably deteriorated. If they start nailing down people to servers for months at a time then expect another population dip. If you want to be radical then get to the meat of the issue and talk about the viability of the core systems instead of slapping a new coat of paint on a house with a crumbling foundation.

gennyt.3428:

Inoki.6048:

A few things that come into mind atm. could resolve some issues:

- offering server transfers to entire guilds once in a while free of charge to prevent abuse
- but mainly, coding a proper algorithm to match people based on active (online) numbers
- eliminate the possibility to constantly hop from server to server, sort of you transfer now, you cannot for at least 3 months, or even more. sounds insane? sometimes you have to take drastic measures if you want to achieve something.

GW2 is aging, WvWvW is stagnant and the combat has arguably deteriorated. If they start nailing down people to servers for months at a time then expect another population dip. If you want to be radical then get to the meat of the issue and talk about the viability of the core systems instead of slapping a new coat of paint on a house with a crumbling foundation.

And its an overall inconsistent experience…even from the beginning with the idea of persistent, massive, while blending PvE+PvP was probably too much of a stretch to maintain an audience.

Easiest fix would be to force all worlds to have no more than +5 players on any map. It would stop zerg map hopping and would fix imbalances in time zones. Over populated servers for a time slot would have long queues forcing people to swap to lower pop servers.

RodOfDeath.5247:

SkyShroud.2865:

I don’t think anyone is suggesting “perfect” balance.

I don’t think it will ever happen and I sympathize with anet on it. The large guilds and band wagoners will never allow it.

BG is always going to be massive and that server who likes to k-train like no tomorrow to get a massive lead, then they disappear the entire week after a comfortable lead is established with a core of “roaming guilds”<—lol. Then we have JQ, who is pptin their brains out to get to T1 and SBI/TC just can’t keep up with the night/back capping.

I’m also convinced if TC/SBI had a solid nightcrew they’d be hanging with JQ easily. So not sure why people in the forums are pushing so hard for JQ to be matched up with BG. I think the outlook would be different from what they are wishing. BG would just destroy them and they’d be stuck with the same boring lower pop servers.

But….no1 is suggesting perfect balance

what people want is…..not having that outman buff between any two/three servers

Yes what you said makes sense. But this is only true to the very small servers or those with very few active players.

But this is 100’s of players we are talking about, not 10.

What this means is that on average all the server will have relatively the same activity times per player. The the players that plays 30 min will be balanced by those who play 12 hours. This is the case on every major server that has a large enough player base.

Still waiting for my punch line….

heres my punch line then

Norbe.7630:

heres my punch line then

the same. Today I received an infraction for not saying anything wrong, just saying that the game is in a messed up state. No vulgar words, nothing.

I would advise we take these discussions to reddit where they are even so read by a larger amount of people and where ANet can’t do a thing about it.

To think, yesterday I threw 20 EURO at the game and today they treat me like crap. That’s their “customer service”.

They “encourage” us to support the game yet we can’t even voice our opinions. Democracy at its finest.

Inoki.6048:

Norbe.7630:

heres my punch line then

the same. Today I received an infraction for not saying anything wrong, just saying that the game is in a messed up state. No vulgar words, nothing.

I would advise we take these discussions to reddit where they are even so read by a larger amount of people and where ANet can’t do a thing about it.

To think, yesterday I threw 20 EURO at the game and today they treat me like crap. That’s their “customer service”.

They “encourage” us to support the game yet we can’t even voice our opinions. Democracy at its finest.

Well to be honest ANet is one of the most know for the negitive forum control. I even got a 3 day suspension for defending myself from some kittenter who thought it’ll be funny to attack thru text on the forums. I’ll bet you a lot that he didn’t even get a infraction. Truth be told ANet is pretty much done making Thousands of USD a year off of me and no longer wants my business. So they give me subtle whispers as such

http://imgur.com/a/prGWs

Most GW2 forum users know that ANet have more tight selective censorship then the Chinese government does. Lol and that’s actually fact.