Guild Wars 2

I’ve been in favour of the idea of lowering the map cap since forever, though I wouldn’t overdo it. You don’t want to lower it to a point where people are still queuing even if the population did actually spread out across servers like we want it to.

I’d start by lowering it to 100 per server, and add other incentives not to blob when in WvW; for example players can’t directly damage gates anymore, proximity debuffs that kick in whenever orange swords are triggered, etc.

This is a horrible idea. The t1 servers have high queue times. If you change anything, keep the cap the same but make the maps far larger.

loquacious.2915:

This is a horrible idea. The t1 servers have high queue times. If you change anything, keep the cap the same but make the maps far larger.

Pretty sure ANET can’t make the maps larger without serious skill lag problems due to limitations of their tech. It would be a different kind of skill lag (too much map load time instead of players firing skills in one spot) but it was mentioned early in beta that they could not make bigger maps without sacrificing performance and we need all the performance we can get.

JQ has only had annoyingly long queues across maps since Season 2 started on reset night, a little bit over the weekend and then on EB and where ever the TS zerg is during prime time which leaves plenty of other places to play most of the time. Before Season 2 queues were pretty much unheard of in 2014 and most borderlands were outmanned. I think you might be overestimating how many people are still into WvW these days with EotM being the karma train destination. I don’t think queues will be as bad as people are thinking and everyone will have a lot more enjoyable experience giving WvW a chance to recover some population slowly while we spread ourselves out and create more dynamic tiers.

As for the concern of forcing some large communities or guilds to spread out, given how the new Megaserver is going to work, is that really going to be an issue for anything other than WvW? And wouldn’t it be sort of fun to battling against some of your former allies at times? I think it would make the game a heck of a lot more interesting in the long run.

You don’t think a ton of players are quitting every week because of the problems this sort of easy solution could quickly address? Many of us have been waiting over a year a now for ANET to address the problems of lag and population imbalance and EotM was suppose to be the first step. I think after Season 2 is over would be the perfect time to do something quick and easy like lowering WvW map caps and which would give us plenty of time to rebalance things well before season 3 starts but ANET is going to be scared of the idea if we continue to be so selfish about change. Some of you need to stop being so short sighted but that is a human nature problem considering all the awful things we as a species are now facing due to that sort of failure.

mango.9267:

Monsteratic.5487:

no way.

I don’t expect everyone (or even most people) to agree with this. But why do you think this is a bad idea specifically?

Because there are already tier 2 servers with hour-long queues on every map. This change would effectively kill off WvW as a game mode.

while i do feel changes need to be done in order to promote less zerging i wouldnt say decreasing the cap is one of those unless it was part of a huge amount of changes that all benefited each other.

one of biggest problem with zerging is how beneficial it is in order to win especially when your just running around capping everything. they need to first make big changes to reward system when defending and attacking points with the defenders getting alot more then attackers do , that would benefit less of the zerg running around capping everything and not bothering with defending because you wouldnt get as much in terms of rewards.

then after making defending more rewarding then capping points add better benefits to the outnumbered buff so that if people was still willing to zerg against small numbers they would severe drawbacks even as far as making those outnumbered drop no lootbags and their keeps not giving any rewards.
also add in a outnumbered buff where their stats get a boost in order to compensate while also making them gain extra points for capping towers/keeps while outnumbered this would give those constantly outnumbered a way back into the fights if they was able to cap a few towers and make up like 10k in points and most likely lead to fights lasting the whole week between these servers.

a server cap is one of the more severe options that can be considered but should be seen as a last resort in order to balance things out.

with the announcement of megaserver i wouldnt be surprised if eventually we moved to a eotm system based on colour and teaming up with other servers of same colour that week it could also benefit the smaller and larger servers at same time, although would need some adjustments in order for it to work for standard wvw maps.

another thing i think is the home server for that bl should never be able to be outnumbered and their is a soft cap on how many of the other servers could be in say the home server has 100 people in their own bl the other 2 servers could only have 70 each or something similar in order to promote that the home bl has the big advantage on that map as it should have.

Carzor Stelatis.9435:

mango.9267:

Monsteratic.5487:

no way.

I don’t expect everyone (or even most people) to agree with this. But why do you think this is a bad idea specifically?

Because there are already tier 2 servers with hour-long queues on every map. This change would effectively kill off WvW as a game mode.

People seem to miss that that’s precisely the INTENT of lowering the map cap. The idea is to (possibly) couple this with free transfers to lower tiers so that guilds feel motivated to spread out across the servers.

I like the idea. But perhaps make EBG the same and only lower cap for borderlands. It would definitely decrease stacked servers.

Lower the map cap will make them queue longer, as a bonus, less lag/skill lag.

Free transfers going out from FULL servers will make the move out and spread

What about adding watch towers which small groups(6-10) can easily flip before zerg come to destroy them? Of course points getting from those aren’t much but it will make zerg focus on bigger objects while small groups have better chance of having small scale fights. Just my thoughts.

Making the populations smaller would cause more people to leave the game (or at least wvw) than to leave their current tier. Compared to other games that have an open rvr type system, GW already has really low map population caps, which really hurts this game mode. Lowering the caps would further damage an already damaged system. As many people have already said making maps larger and removing the AoE limit would help tremendously, sadly Anet can’t do that because Esports.

Actually they can’t do it because the engine already starts to crap itself at the current limits.

And throwing more server clusters into the pile isn’t going to automagically fix a software and infrastructure limitation as some would like to believe.

The only likely way outside of an engine rewrite/new engine to improve performance is to give players and incentive to spread out across the servers and zones instead of gathering into lag-blobs.

The most direct way to do that is via a mix of negative and positive incentives; negative being a lower zone cap and thus queues, positive being a free transfer to a lower populated server.

Just throwing this out there but what about instead of decreasing the cap they add in a debuff if so many people on the same team are in a small area, i.e. zergs? I feel like decreasing the cap is more of a bandaid fix than a real solution.

James.3940:

Just throwing this out there but what about instead of decreasing the cap they add in a debuff if so many people on the same team are in a small area, i.e. zergs? I feel like decreasing the cap is more of a bandaid fix than a real solution.

Adding in extra things for the servers to track when there is already too many people in one spot for good performance would not be an even remotely optimal solution.

With most games the problems of lag are not player related (unless your hardware is unable to run them) but the server hardware and way those servers are connected to the internet .
For example a certain space based game used to have massive lag (it could be 10 minutes for a skill to activate) with huge blobs (1000’s of players) fighting ; the answer was to reinforce nodes and finally using the latest hardware on their servers along with making their software more efficient (took several years to implement but they got there). Now they have no problem!

It took them the better portion of a decade, iirc. They had that luxury of time due to being a niche MMO. I doubt GW2 has that luxury given the slot they are competing in.

mango.9267:

Monsteratic.5487:

no way.

I don’t expect everyone (or even most people) to agree with this. But why do you think this is a bad idea specifically?

Because it punishes the rest of us who do not play on the schedule that suits you. It is a very selfish suggestion.

Only people complaining about queue times are the people that bandwagoned to the top servers to make it even more lopsided than it already is. And people saying it would screw up the community and what not dont even realize that the communities on all the other servers have been kittened up since everyone has been able to stack onto three servers. This mmo has a huge lack pf community imo. You cant even see the names of people youre fighting, you can switch servers whenever you want to ride t1’s coat tails. Idk if people are ignorant of the issues at hand or what. I dont think people realize how dead some servers are. T1 calls "small ""havok"" groups" what t7-8 call huge imba blobs.

T1’s “community” is made up of everyone else original community. I for one think the total amount should be decreased but by spme arbritary number that is “balanced”. Th argument that it would split zergs is a weak one though imo. Its the most efficient way and it will stay like that until anet changes the wvw mechanics. That will probably never happen.

#signed…. hurry up fix it Anet

dancingmonkey.4902:

mango.9267:

Monsteratic.5487:

no way.

I don’t expect everyone (or even most people) to agree with this. But why do you think this is a bad idea specifically?

Because it punishes the rest of us who do not play on the schedule that suits you. It is a very selfish suggestion.

In what way does it punish people who don’t play on my schedule? The idea is to lower the population cap across all time zones; it reduces the influence of coverage over all time zones. (For the record, I play in very late NA/OCX).

Why limit the amount of people? So more people can’t play?

Here is the solution to your problem….transfer to a lower pop tier. Problem solved. If you want to run in wvw where there are smaller zergs, or almost no zergs, then transfer.

Quit trying to make others suffer, for your own selfish reason.

Andrew Clear.1750:

Why limit the amount of people? So more people can’t play?

No, to reduce blobbing, skill lag, server stacking, and the influence of coverage. The intent isn’t to prevent people from playing WvW. I think this solution would go well with free transfers to bottom servers and very low cost to bronze servers. The idea is to make the population spread out so match-ups are more balanced.

Andrew Clear.1750:

Here is the solution to your problem….transfer to a lower pop tier. Problem solved. If you want to run in wvw where there are smaller zergs, or almost no zergs, then transfer.

That’s precisely the problem. No one is willing to transfer to lower tiers in the current system because coverage plays such a large role. Server stacking is the antithesis of transferring down. This is meant to address that problem.

Andrew Clear.1750:

Quit trying to make others suffer, for your own selfish reason.

Again, I don’t see how this is selfish. It’s across the board, and the intent is to address many of the problems that are posted here. Blobbing, server stacking, skill lag, and coverage go hand-in-hand, and if reducing the player cap can reduce blobs, make guilds spread out across servers, and reduce the influence of coverage, then it seems to be the opposite of selfish.

mango.9267:

dancingmonkey.4902:

mango.9267:

Monsteratic.5487:

no way.

I don’t expect everyone (or even most people) to agree with this. But why do you think this is a bad idea specifically?

Because it punishes the rest of us who do not play on the schedule that suits you. It is a very selfish suggestion.

In what way does it punish people who don’t play on my schedule? The idea is to lower the population cap across all time zones; it reduces the influence of coverage over all time zones. (For the record, I play in very late NA/OCX).

Because you selfishly assume your server, its populations, and player activity schedule represents all 56 of them. Your suggested guild cap won’t even let the amount of active players in my guild on one map .

But I guess, that is your point. To hose my guild and make sure were are not permitted to have fun when it is not a convenient “peak” time, as you see it, for your server.

mango.9267:

Andrew Clear.1750:

Why limit the amount of people? So more people can’t play?

No, to reduce blobbing, skill lag, server stacking, and the influence of coverage. The intent isn’t to prevent people from playing WvW. I think this solution would go well with free transfers to bottom servers and very low cost to bronze servers. The idea is to make the population spread out so match-ups are more balanced.

Andrew Clear.1750:

Here is the solution to your problem….transfer to a lower pop tier. Problem solved. If you want to run in wvw where there are smaller zergs, or almost no zergs, then transfer.

That’s precisely the problem. No one is willing to transfer to lower tiers in the current system because coverage plays such a large role. Server stacking is the antithesis of transferring down. This is meant to address that problem.

Andrew Clear.1750:

Quit trying to make others suffer, for your own selfish reason.

Again, I don’t see how this is selfish. It’s across the board, and the intent is to address many of the problems that are posted here. Blobbing, server stacking, skill lag, and coverage go hand-in-hand, and if reducing the player cap can reduce blobs, make guilds spread out across servers, and reduce the influence of coverage, then it seems to be the opposite of selfish.

Not talking about other people transferring, I’m talking about people who want the smaller fights. If you want large fights, go to the higher tiers, if you want smaller fights, go to the lower tiers.

Don’t try to force the higher tiers to become the medium tiers. Plenty of people want to blob. Hell, that is why they transferred up most the time (for the fights…you know…the large scale fights).

Andrew Clear.1750:

Don’t try to force the higher tiers to become the medium tiers. Plenty of people want to blob. Hell, that is why they transferred up most the time (for the fights…you know…the large scale fights).

People don’t transfer up for the fights, they transfer up for the wins.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Because you selfishly assume your server, its populations, and player activity schedule represents all 56 of them.

This has nothing to do with my server or anyone else’s. If anything, this proposal hurts my server more than many others.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Your suggested guild cap won’t even let the amount of active players in my guild on one map .

Many people would object to your guild running 50-60 people. The most common criticism is that at that point, it becomes a blob fest where people mash 1, and there’s no real skill.

dancingmonkey.4902:

But I guess, that is your point. To hose my guild and make sure were are not permitted to have fun when it is not a convenient “peak” time, as you see it, for your server.

Firstly, I play during offpeak hours, so it’s not about peak time bias. It’s about reducing the influence of coverage and population and increasing the influence of strategy and communication, which most people seem to support.

Secondly, this has nothing to do with my server, as I already mentioned. IoJ has a strong Oceanic crew, so if something like this were put in place, it’d hurt our PPT more than many servers around us.

Lastly, this isn’t about your guild. It’s about splitting up blobs so that there’s more strategic play and less skill lag. As already discussed, large guilds could still be viable by hitting two maps at once.

Currently, the middle of the season, T1 servers rarely que all maps at once during prime time. In fact, in some cases you will see the outnumbered buff for a period of time. I’ve heard that T2 can’t even que any maps. I play in NA so I can’t comment on EU’s situation, but it’s my understanding that NA has much larger coverage.

With that said, why can’t Anet reduce the population cap to at least 70 or even 60? People don’t need to have 100 on one map while the rest have like 10 to 20.. it’s completely unnecessary. Even some of the largest guilds out there, never seem to run more than 20-25 at once except on reset night.

Anet could probably knock the cap down to 70 tomorrow and nobody would ever notice the difference.

This shouldn’t be a case of allowing us to run 100 on a map simply because we can, it should be a case of reducing the numbers because it’s better for the overall health of the game. Health meaning both skill lag and coverage.

There you go Anet, that might be your answer to skill lag, reduce the population cap on each map to about 70. It isn’t necessary to have it at 100 (outside of reset night), not even T1 servers que all the maps at once during prime time.

DeadlySynz.3471:

This shouldn’t be a case of allowing us to run 100 on a map simply because we can, it should be a case of reducing the numbers because it’s better for the overall health of the game. Health meaning both skill lag and coverage.

Quoted for truth. I still don’t really understand why guilds of 50+ all need to be in the same map anyways. And how many 50+ active-in-WvW-at-the-same-time guilds are there left in this game? No offense, but ANET hasn’t really done all that much to encourage the larger guild minded folks so I have a feeling a lot of them have left in search of better supported pastures. Maybe GW2 isn’t the game for mega-guilds in WvW. Would that be so terrible?

What? In my opinion I think they should allow MORE players into WvW maps. The map is just way to big to have 40-50 player caps. That’s just not viable. Are you trying to make WvW as empty as PVE zones? If you don’t like it go play sPVP scrub.

Nope.

BulletNG.7069:

What? In my opinion I think they should allow MORE players into WvW maps. The map is just way to big to have 40-50 player caps. That’s just not viable. Are you trying to make WvW as empty as PVE zones? If you don’t like it go play sPVP scrub.

Nope.

For almost all servers below T3, WvW maps have fewer than 40-50 players 90% of the time. Not only is it viable, but it’s also less blobby and less laggy.

BulletNG.7069:

What? In my opinion I think they should allow MORE players into WvW maps. The map is just way to big to have 40-50 player caps. That’s just not viable. Are you trying to make WvW as empty as PVE zones? If you don’t like it go play sPVP scrub.

Nope.

Plz come back with an argument. Mango has stated well positioned reasoning for the proposal

The vast majority of servers do not consistently queue maps, so increasing the player cap would only serve to exacerbate the imbalance of the server population differences, and to increase the amount of load on the server infrastructure and your own machine.

I think that KöMÉ had some very good critique of this proposal, It would affect them, and other guilds of that size very negatively. (although KöMÉ, how epic would it be if you could flip two borderlands at once?)

A part of the problem that creates postings like Mango’s here isn’t just the coverage and population differences, there are also considerable skill gaps.

Servers who have suffered exoduses are short on leadership and well practiced WvW battle veterans. Reducing the map cap, thus increasing the queue times in the higher tiers, would provide some incentive for those high skill groups to move down.