Guild Wars 2

So there are constant posts at the moment about how oceanic and SEA population imbalance is destroying certain match-ups but people are missing key pieces of data and choosing to simply ignore others.

There are things that we as a playerbase can do to mitigate these.

So taking my bracket as the example (I`m a HoD oceanic) we have HoD / SBI / ET and supposedly HoD has a massive oceanic zerg that far outnumbers the others servers.

The facts however are slightly different, AA recruited the largest Australian guilds:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/36676-ascension-alliance-together-we-rise/

These guilds together far outnumber in pure population terms those HoD can field in this timezone

Similarly SBI has huge numbers via Evil and WarMachine in this time zone and are constantly cleaning house. From what I have seen they can basically fill a map each with numbers to spare.

So if potential population isn`t causing the score disparity then what is? I`ll suggest a few things from my perspective along with some player driven fixes. Whether or not my perception is valid only we as players or A-net with actual mined data can say for sure but I encourage people from all server to speak honestly about their numbers, playtimes, organisation and play styles so we can get a clearer idea of the actual problem without all the emotion and passion that comes with winning or losing.

1) Population != W3 population

HoD while having smaller numbers overall in the oceanic / SEA timezone seems to have a far higher ratio of W3 focussed players and guilds. (I would love to see graphs of W3 queue times vs online population for each server to see if this is actually the case or not but that data is pretty key to A-nets business so I don`t ever expect to see it).

- Possible solutions, encourage more W3 amongst your server populations. I suspect this will change over time as more and more people hit 80 and get fully geared but gentle nudging of your realm mates is good.

2) Large difference in play styles and player aims

HoD oceanic timezones has some very W3 focussed guilds that operate independently but coordinate together. The result is that you have multiple fronts being pushed or defended at the same time. I know US time SBI and ET have this but come oceanic times even when the maps are full ET / SBI seem to roll around in large zerg balls from one objective to another which is not an efficient use of resources and is not sustainable.

Possible solution – alter your playstyles and spread out across the map. This will not only keep your opponents on the back foot it will facilitate more skill based, small group play, it will eliminate the render problems people are complaining about and provide variety to all players in W3 instead of running back and forth between 2 locations.

3) Server Transfers

We all (including my alliance) need to take responsibility for the longevity of the game if we want GW2 to succeed and be sustainable. As such we need to consider splitting / merging and transferring where appropriate. I would love A-net to provide more data to help us the player base make meaningful choices and I think they have to do one time guild influence transfers, but even now there are some really clear choices available but people would rather complain and hope A-net fixes it via some band-aid mechanic than make a move themselves.

I am guessing that these issues are showcased to varying degrees on all servers so data from anywhere is welcome.

Bad news… all of the servers are at basically the same overall skill level. It all just boils down to coverage. Bummer, I know.

Hope that helps.

Give it up. You win because of your nite time zerg.

I’m sure you have a decent daytime crew and they are a lot of fun to play against. But there isn’t any point in being in a match with you when your nite time zerg just rolls over our empty maps.

Imbalanced zergs always win in PvP and always destroy PvP mmo’s. It is no different in GW2.

Thanks for the constructive comments.

I agree regarding skill, the way W3 is constructed means it is not overly dependent on individual skill and I don`t see it a major factor in the disparity.

Grim, i`m asking why your map is empty because all of the data I`ve been able to find says that actual population is not imbalanced, just the W3 population and varying times.

So for example does AA`s oceanic player base have set PvP / PvE nights? (they had massive showing on Monday night but nothing on Tuesday). Has MoP launch hugely effected potential W3 populations?

unless we get some data we don`t actually know what the problem is and cannot fix it.

It doesn’t matter why SBI and ET have so little WvW players during the night, just the fact that they do is important.

You can’t get PvE players to suddenly become PvP players, they don’t like PvP and most never will. That has always been true and always will be.

The only relevent fact is that you have the majority of off hour WvW players on one server dominating every other server because of this imbalance. Untill that is rectified then GW2’s WvW will be considered a joke.

WvW is still fun. But not against HoD, there isn’t any point to it.

You are looking at it wrong, we all want competitive play, my guild (TRF) rolled with TA because we though being placed in the top bracket would ensure we had good PvP in our playtimes.

If that doesn`t occur then things will need to change one way or another. What i`m after is some actual data ideally from other guilds in the oceanic and SEA timezones as to what their expectations are, what can they field, how often etc.

With that data we as a playerbase may be able to do something, if that means Oceanics transferring, US guilds transferring to SoS or IoJ or alliances breaking up it is better than the game dying on itskittenbecause we all wait for a non ideal mechanical solution.

Isomyr.6319:

You are looking at it wrong, we all want competitive play, my guild (TRF) rolled with TA because we though being placed in the top bracket would ensure we had good PvP in our playtimes.

If that doesn`t occur then things will need to change one way or another. What i`m after is some actual data ideally from other guilds in the oceanic and SEA timezones as to what their expectations are, what can they field, how often etc.

With that data we as a playerbase may be able to do something, if that means Oceanics transferring, US guilds transferring to SoS or IoJ or alliances breaking up it is better than the game dying on itskittenbecause we all wait for a non ideal mechanical solution.

I laughed. Good PvP is setting up rams at undefended doors and killing Tower Lords? You’re confusing PvE with PvP.

Ok, I see where you are coming from. Well maybe ANet can help you out with that. I’m sure it is also in their best interests to facilitate some competitive WvW play that everyone feels they can be a successful part of.

I am also be very curious as to what ANet plans to do about this issue. I love WvW, so do most people. But nobody enjoys feeling all their efforts are wasted by an obviously flawed system.

melchiz.7182:

Isomyr.6319:

You are looking at it wrong, we all want competitive play, my guild (TRF) rolled with TA because we though being placed in the top bracket would ensure we had good PvP in our playtimes.

If that doesn`t occur then things will need to change one way or another. What i`m after is some actual data ideally from other guilds in the oceanic and SEA timezones as to what their expectations are, what can they field, how often etc.

With that data we as a playerbase may be able to do something, if that means Oceanics transferring, US guilds transferring to SoS or IoJ or alliances breaking up it is better than the game dying on itskittenbecause we all wait for a non ideal mechanical solution.

I laughed. Good PvP is setting up rams at undefended doors and killing Tower Lords? You’re confusing PvE with PvP.

Do you just quote random posts without reading them or something?

The guy you quoted is saying if you want people on your server to play during NA offpeak hours, you need to get Oceanics to play on your server, or transfer your US guild to the main Oceanic servers. Really kitten simple.

The facts however are slightly different, AA recruited the largest Australian guilds:

GJ… On using a dead thread from May 2012 as your source. Obvious you don’t know the facts.

melchiz.7182:

Isomyr.6319:

You are looking at it wrong, we all want competitive play, my guild (TRF) rolled with TA because we though being placed in the top bracket would ensure we had good PvP in our playtimes.

If that doesn`t occur then things will need to change one way or another. What i`m after is some actual data ideally from other guilds in the oceanic and SEA timezones as to what their expectations are, what can they field, how often etc.

With that data we as a playerbase may be able to do something, if that means Oceanics transferring, US guilds transferring to SoS or IoJ or alliances breaking up it is better than the game dying on itskittenbecause we all wait for a non ideal mechanical solution.

I laughed. Good PvP is setting up rams at undefended doors and killing Tower Lords? You’re confusing PvE with PvP.

Again thanks for your input. However if you logged on at oceanic times what you would see isn`t a PvE-fest at all. vs SBI they have an awesome night crew with massive numbers but their playstyle wins them battles but not points, maybe somebody on SBI could talk to Evil and WM about this and try to get them to split up bit.

on ET they go from one extreme to the other with huge numbers (of oceanic guilds not stay up late US folks) to literally nothing. Why is that and can anything be done about it?

Currently you folks complaining about HoD night capping are doing a huge disservice to your own night-time populations who were all very much there on Monday night and kept things remarkably close. Maybe work with them to see what can be done to make their life easier so they keep logging on to W3 each night?

edited by moderator, as the quoted text has been moderated

I`m not arguing with you, I don`t want to PvE in a PvP zone, i`m asking why it happened because the night before you oceanic and crews held us pretty even then yesterday ET simply failed to show up in that timezone even though they have greater potential numbers. SBI were there but with no ET we could focus on them and keep them bottled up. This is a problem from both ends not just one.

I never realized how bad the HoD guys really are until this matchup. The server reset happens and you all of a sudden have a full force in SBI and ETI to take advantage of SB logging in and the non-existence of ET at all for the hours leading up to it. Just to compete.

Face it. You aren’t anything without that wee hour ninja crew. In my experience you’ve had tons of people exploiting bugs and glitches in prime-time, and you exploit Oceanic populations in the off-time.

You guys are going to cause reaction from ANet, and it won’t be to HoD’s advantage, but carry on as you will.

ET basically shut out IoJ and SoS (both heavy Oceanic pop) on the scoreboard in the last matchup during off peak hours and now ET suddenly has no night crew?

Seems to me that the people making these claims have zero knowledge of what happens after they log off.

Icytears.2647:

From what i can see here is just you are trying to find a reason to win in this arguement that HoD ‘exploits’ ‘zerged’ everything that you can think off. So.. After a patch, should ANet put a 10 mins wvw lockdown before anyone can go in? Or put a lockdown until YOU can go in? It’ll be the same result. I don’t get what are you argueing about? Like what happened in wvw when it was 24hr per lineup, people zerg after each resets each day. Why didn’t you bring this up at that time? Let me make this clear, EVERYONE goes out to patch, EVERYONE logs in the same time, EVERYONE rushes into wvw. So are you trying to say HoD has a advantage of going into WvW after every patch?

I feel like I’m talking to a magic box that takes my logical arguments, distorts them, and then prints out a predictable and inane response.

HoD has thus far zerged after every server reset (in the week-long format matches), pushing to ~+600 tick thanks to keep defenders being kicked from the game. If you’re going to make any attempt to defend that tactic you should probably just stop talking to me because I’m not crazy.

ET doesn’t have any European guilds that is the problem.

thankyou gank thats a really valid point, I know TA has a single Euro guild in Ginnunga (will check on numbers but I know its far from being a zerg) and in that time zone it could really make a difference if the opposition is do not have any clear leadership.

Gin though will be playing in the evening Euro time which is ~ 5 hours in front of East coast US.

Do we know what east coast weekday daytime (9am- 5pm) populations are like? maybe there is a major disparity there and not in the oceanic time as everything thinks is the case?

Killjagood.7830:

I never realized how bad the HoD guys really are until this matchup. The server reset happens and you all of a sudden have a full force in SBI and ETI to take advantage of SB logging in and the non-existence of ET at all for the hours leading up to it. Just to compete.

Face it. You aren’t anything without that wee hour ninja crew. In my experience you’ve had tons of people exploiting bugs and glitches in prime-time, and you exploit Oceanic populations in the off-time.

You guys are going to cause reaction from ANet, and it won’t be to HoD’s advantage, but carry on as you will.

WvW goes down 2 min before the first server restart announcement. Any sane person will not wait for the full 3 minutes and restart the client immediately. Your server and SBI have ppl on the SBI BL before the server restart. Is it our problem that you guys didn’t log back into the game right after? So, we are suppose to wait for you guys to come online and send us an okay message? Get real.

i still don’t understand why people whine about their servers get beaten up while they are asleep…..

they said it is because HoD have night crews… so can you .. ! GO GET SOME !