Guild Wars 2

World v World v World is an awesome concept that is one of my favorite things about Guild Wars 2. Unfortunately it’s also a fact that Numbers > Skill. Doesn’t matter that I can out play four people at once when there’s 60 people knocking on the door and I’m by myself. That magic find from the Outmanned buff is not going to help me kill them. Server WvW population and server coverage dictates who wins, not strategy. Higher tier servers are not as bad as everyone can field full maps, but then when you have a 6 hour queue for your main play time, that’s not really playing anyways.

What I propose is a pretty massive change, but one that can introduce variety to World vs World and make it competitive for ALL worlds rather than the most populated ones:

Red vs Green vs Blue

Each color is represented by 8 servers for NA and 9 servers for EU (which works out evenly for each color). World rankings by server will still exist as how many points a server contributes is still tracked. This plus their new seed used for current wvwvw will dictate the new groupings.

WvWvW would now be held on separate servers like PvP and overflows. It would also have separate instances or “rankings” so everyone can play, however these will be weighted to keep fights heavy. These instances would be selectable so you can queue for the top rank instances that affect your war the most, or lower ranks so your whole guild can make it into a single map and be able to work together (which coincidentally opens the lower ranks to PvE map explorers or GvGs or role play wars that could even be hosted by anet).

So how would your World still matter? Server bonuses would now be win based instead of point based. Each week your server helps your world (color) win, your bonus accumulates. WvWvW would have seasons, so at the end of the season, the world bonuses reset (along with a personal wvw point refund for strategy changeups). This also means that wins matter more as they would be something that affects your server for the whole season

So what would this change do:
- WvWvW matches would always be new and dynamic. Your allies and your enemies will be different each week.
- Strategy, team work and guild play will become more important. This would be from a combination of the more even fights at top instance ranks as each world/color can always field full teams, but you can pull your personal groups together to swipe a few points on lower instance ranks.
- It doesn’t matter what your server population is, your contribution now matters. This also means that every server can participate in massive world combat instead of stare at empty maps (unless you purposely search for empty map at lower instances).
- Matchups can actually be more fine-tunely balanced as you have multiple pieces to work an algorithm against instead of single servers.
- Classes in WvWvW can now be balanced separately from PvE – which is a pretty big deal.

Is this a solution that can be implemented overnight? No – probably not even the best solution, but a direction I hope Anet looks at. It’s impossible to have a dynamic and competitive WvWvW under the current system as it’s too population dependent. Sharing that population seems like the best solution to me.

I was about to suggest the same thing. Also, you should be able to guest on the servers within your league color. Blue able to help any blue server, green guest to green, etc.

Interesting 12345

Prime.8792:

I was about to suggest the same thing. Also, you should be able to guest on the servers within your league color. Blue able to help any blue server, green guest to green, etc.

As they would be their own instance, guesting to servers would not make a difference as you would be joining the instance under your own server. You would still be able to party with friends/guilds no matter their server anyways just like you can for dungeons/overflows/pvp.

I think someone suggested the option for players in queue to act as “mercenaries” guesting on other servers, but this solution seems far more interesting and viable.

You said “- Classes in WvWvW can now be balanced separately from PvE – which is a pretty big deal.”

What stops them from ballacing in the current system?

Probably nothing… not sure of what mechanics are behind how PvE and WvW are hosted. Though separating them like this would assure that they’d be apart and thus could be individually manipulated.

The suggestions to fix WvW matches continue to roll in. I was lucky the last two weeks and had competitive WvW matchups where coming to WvW made a difference as to who won or not. Old static matchups may allow to keep that, but a single population swing would be all it would take to throw that away. I personally am still hoping for them to bring WvW together and share the population like they do for PvP. It’s obviously difficult to tell what Anet has read or not, but giving it a single bump to increase chances.

Another magnificent suggestion for replacing the WvW imbalance with a working PvP cycle.

Anet please just listen to this guy and hire him to work it out, thank you!

This is a pretty good idea.

Just don’t put in pvp gear, I like being able to mix and match trinkets and eat food.

I hope Anet reads this incredible post!

OK, seems everyone love that suggestion, but I will take the time to critic it…

So, you basically replace 24 worlds in NA and 29 worlds in EU by 3 in NA and 3 in EU. Everything seems fantastic in your post but…

What happen when 1 color get stacked and win all the time?

You don’t fix the problem you just move it around. For some odd reason, RBG seems to be the new thing but as for 1Up-1Down match making system, where when you win you move up and when you lose you move down, everyone say it’s fantastic without even taking the time to think about it. 1Up-1Down is an horrible system and so is random match up. RGB would be in that category too.

Here is my own suggestion to fix population imbalance : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/How-to-Fix-Population-Imbalance/first#post3015734

I don’t want an half think change to ruin WvW like random match up did.

Gudradain.3892:

OK, seems everyone love that suggestion, but I will take the time to critic it…

So, you basically replace 24 worlds in NA and 29 worlds in EU by 3 in NA and 3 in EU. Everything seems fantastic in your post but…

What happen when 1 color get stacked and win all the time?

This is a good counter argument, but I don’t think the OP meant for the winning servers to be placed together in the same “team” the next week, so it would be harder /impossible to create a “stacked color”

Menaka.5092:

This is a good counter argument, but I don’t think the OP meant for the winning servers to be placed together in the same “team” the next week, so it would be harder /impossible to create a “stacked color”

Here is something that OP wrote :

So how would your World still matter? Server bonuses would now be win based instead of point based. Each week your server helps your world (color) win, your bonus accumulates. WvWvW would have seasons, so at the end of the season, the world bonuses reset (along with a personal wvw point refund for strategy changeups). This also means that wins matter more as they would be something that affects your server for the whole season

By that I guess he wants the RGB matchup to last for a whole season (so 7 weeks), so for 7 weeks you could get bad match up without any change.

Another problem, how do you determinate server strength after the first RGB season since every server are together? You can’t correctly kitten the strength of a server anymore if they are not fighting separately.

What that means? They won’t be able to make a good match up for next RGB season since they have no idea which server to put together. This means that we will get horrible match up again and there won’t even be the chance to get a good one since there is only 3 mega servers that are always match together.

This change has so many flaws I don’t even get why you are all putting +vote on the OP post.

It’s basically the same as saying :

Everyone transfer to the top 3 servers then we will ask Anet to create overflow map so we don’t wait in queue.

If there is going to be faction based WvW a few things need to happen i think:

1) you have to attune yourself to a team; your account becomes bound and required a gem transfer fee to change teams equivalent to the cost of transferring to a very high server

2) WvW overflows need to be added all with equal affect on PPT, this means that scoring needs to be adjusted to take into account overflows

that’s a start but a change to a system like this has a lot of details that need to be worked over

Issues with this:

Drawing Guy.3701:

- WvWvW matches would always be new and dynamic. Your allies and your enemies will be different each week.

• Extremely hard for guilds to continue to operate
• Server pride non-existent
• Unskilled players unwilling to accept advice and play to win will flood upper tier matches.

Drawing Guy.3701:

- Strategy, team work and guild play will become more important. This would be from a combination of the more even fights at top instance ranks as each world/color can always field full teams, but you can pull your personal groups together to swipe a few points on lower instance ranks.

• Similar to hotjoin PvP, this couldn’t be further from the truth. With the flood of unskilled zerker players streaming into top-tier ranking maps, commanders with have an extremely difficult time attempting to co-ordinate, especially as 90+% of their guild can’t get in.
• Combat would become the unskilled zergfest “numbers = win” that people ignorantly claim is true of T1. Skill and co-ordination out the window.

Drawing Guy.3701:

- Classes in WvWvW can now be balanced separately from PvE – which is a pretty big deal.

Already a thing.

The current set-up allows players who are interested in playing to win, who don’t flee at the sight of greater numbers, who are willing to run synergy builds, who are on teamspeak, who can follow commanders on a dime and who are interested in hardcore large scale tactical PvP have a place to go.

This change risks taking that relatively small portion of the community, spreading it across all servers to the detriment of those players gameplay experience.

That’s not to say that something similar wouldn’t work, but simply that this isn’t an issue with an quick and easy fix. Players create this dynamic not developers and it’s that community that makes or breaks the experience.

For some that would be enjoyable ,but I think you overlook how important to many the server and server community is .Clearly to many Guilds jumping around is nothing it is equally clear that many for various reasons server community brand is important .

Middzz.1490:

For some that would be enjoyable ,but I think you overlook how important to many the server and server community is .Clearly to many Guilds jumping around is nothing it is equally clear that many for various reasons server community brand is important .

I’d bet that guild community is considerably more important to most players than server community, and RvsGvsB matches could be rather easily configure d to allow groups (guild members) to join together. Besides, the great majority of posts I’ve seen since launch have indicated that if a choice had to be made, playing in a balanced match with strangers would be preferable to playing in a blowout with friends.

Brew Pinch.5731:

Issues with this:

Drawing Guy.3701:

- WvWvW matches would always be new and dynamic. Your allies and your enemies will be different each week.

• Extremely hard for guilds to continue to operate
• Server pride non-existent
• Unskilled players unwilling to accept advice and play to win will flood upper tier matches.

Drawing Guy.3701:

- Strategy, team work and guild play will become more important. This would be from a combination of the more even fights at top instance ranks as each world/color can always field full teams, but you can pull your personal groups together to swipe a few points on lower instance ranks.

• Similar to hotjoin PvP, this couldn’t be further from the truth. With the flood of unskilled zerker players streaming into top-tier ranking maps, commanders with have an extremely difficult time attempting to co-ordinate, especially as 90+% of their guild can’t get in.
• Combat would become the unskilled zergfest “numbers = win” that people ignorantly claim is true of T1. Skill and co-ordination out the window.

Drawing Guy.3701:

- Classes in WvWvW can now be balanced separately from PvE – which is a pretty big deal.

Already a thing.

---

The current set-up allows players who are interested in playing to win, who don’t flee at the sight of greater numbers, who are willing to run synergy builds, who are on teamspeak, who can follow commanders on a dime and who are interested in hardcore large scale tactical PvP have a place to go.

This change risks taking that relatively small portion of the community, spreading it across all servers to the detriment of those players gameplay experience.

That’s not to say that something similar wouldn’t work, but simply that this isn’t an issue with an quick and easy fix. Players create this dynamic not developers and it’s that community that makes or breaks the experience.

• Server pride IS non-existent
• Match results (PPT) aren’t important, guild or team victories are
• WvW is auto-attack, zerg at this moment… nothing can do worse

While this would be better than the current system, this still relies on some nebulous affiliation (red, green, blue) which most players won’t give two poops about. if they overhaul the system I think the guild approach is better.

IMO, guilds should be able to create alliances with other guilds and declare war on other guilds. At reset guild alliances, guild war declarations, typical guild play times, typical guild play hours and other factors would be mixed together to create X number of WvW match ups that are as balanced as possible. The system would never repeat the same guild match ups and would never put warring guilds on the same side. This allows for a nice variety every week. All rewards and points would be guild based and would be reflected on a scoreboard both weekly and all time.

This system solves most balance issues, creates variety in the system and allows guilds to strut their collective stuff against all other guilds in the world.

The problem as I see it, is that instead of the zergs maphopping between 3 different maps, they would be hopping (guesting) between 100 different maps. So that all blue map, yes green zerg will go there and steamroll it. Will blue zerg be there? No they will be steamrolling an empty red server.

You’d basically make it improbable, that one zerg ever ran into another zerg.

Quite a few good rebuttles – time to address them! First Gudradain.

Gudradain.3892:

…snip…
So, you basically replace 24 worlds in NA and 29 worlds in EU by 3 in NA and 3 in EU. Everything seems fantastic in your post but…

What happen when 1 color get stacked and win all the time?
…snip…

It would still change EVERY WEEK. Every server still has its own stats, which help determine the team. But now that they have a pot of 8 or 9 to mix, if any trends that show any consistant stacking, they can adjust matchups instead of what we currently see of 90% map control from poor matches.

Gudradain.3892:

So how would your World still matter? Server bonuses would now be win based instead of point based. Each week your server helps your world (color) win, your bonus accumulates. WvWvW would have seasons, so at the end of the season, the world bonuses reset (along with a personal wvw point refund for strategy changeups). This also means that wins matter more as they would be something that affects your server for the whole season_

By that I guess he wants the RGB matchup to last for a whole season (so 7 weeks), so for 7 weeks you could get bad match up without any change.

Another problem, how do you determinate server strength after the first RGB season since every server are together? You can’t correctly kitten the strength of a server anymore if they are not fighting separately.

What that means? They won’t be able to make a good match up for next RGB season since they have no idea which server to put together. This means that we will get horrible match up again and there won’t even be the chance to get a good one since there is only 3 mega servers that are always match together.

This change has so many flaws I don’t even get why you are all putting +vote on the OP post.

It’s basically the same as saying :

Everyone transfer to the top 3 servers then we will ask Anet to create overflow map so we don’t wait in queue.

As I stated, RvGvB matchups change every week still – the “season” would only really apply for your world bonuses and WXP points. As for determining the stats – they would be recorded the same. Caps, stomps, etc. that your own server garners affects the server ranking. The only real issue for stats would be point ticks wouldn’t be able to count for a specific server – but if they make successful defenses count for points, that would resolve that.

Lastly regarding “mega servers” – essentially it would be mega groups against each other, but as your groups are always changing, it wouldn’t ever be “stuck” or stale.

Now Brew Pinch

Brew Pinch.5731:

• Extremely hard for guilds to continue to operate
• Server pride non-existent
• Unskilled players unwilling to accept advice and play to win will flood upper tier matches.

- How would this stop guilds from operating? If anything, it would more easily allow guilds to get together on WvW instead of being split or stopped by map queues.
- This would be subjective, but then determining a feeling would be anyways. Yes, it’s true that the fight isn’t just your server anymore… but it’s for your server still. Your stacking wins would be tracked for the season and reflect in server bonuses. Sure you may not be on your own, but would allies stop you from being proud of your server? Of course is also the fact that people ditch their server if they’re on a losing streak to go where the win is… now you can stick to your server and every week have a chance of winning if you go in and fight.
- How is that even remotely different than it is now? Besides, if all three sides are keeping the upper tiers flooded, it is far less likely to have lone blobs roaming unmolested, making it where the unskilled will be squashed.

Brew Pinch.5731:

• Similar to hotjoin PvP, this couldn’t be further from the truth. With the flood of unskilled zerker players streaming into top-tier ranking maps, commanders with have an extremely difficult time attempting to co-ordinate, especially as 90+% of their guild can’t get in.
• Combat would become the unskilled zergfest “numbers = win” that people ignorantly claim is true of T1. Skill and co-ordination out the window.

- This would be the biggest issue is if all top ranks were full and you’re trying to get your guild in – an issue that’s already faced now on higher WvW participating servers, but exasperated with a bigger pool of players. Really this comes to a few points – one is the traffic of WvW – you want to weight servers to concentrate population, but leave enough room in the weight classes to allow most people to get in the fights that count. If being top tier matters most to your guild and all have a queue, you can pick one and queue with your commander. If just getting together and fighting now is what you care more about than point impact, you can go where there is room. Hard to form an argument against “noobs” clogging upper wvw… 90% of wvw is that anyways. If anything, noobs are less willing to wait on a queue and just blindly follow any blue Dorito. Hopefully over time, the more skilled sides will squash the others sides that the noobs look for other instances for easier fights and the more skilled can get into the real fights.

Brew Pinch.5731:

The current set-up allows players who are interested in playing to win, who don’t flee at the sight of greater numbers, who are willing to run synergy builds, who are on teamspeak, who can follow commanders on a dime and who are interested in hardcore large scale tactical PvP have a place to go.

This change risks taking that relatively small portion of the community, spreading it across all servers to the detriment of those players gameplay experience.

That’s not to say that something similar wouldn’t work, but simply that this isn’t an issue with an quick and easy fix. Players create this dynamic not developers and it’s that community that makes or breaks the experience.

Unfortunately you are right – players create the dynamic. However the “majority” always just wants the win, not the effort. Every MMO I’ve ever played that has had mass race or server based PvP people quit their side and go to the winning side. Eventually once enough quit or the skilled switch sides, it swings to that new side and the cycle repeats. Under the current mechanic as it’s single server it’s small enough that if you have solid guilds or groups that are strong enough to counter a skill-less blob, you can win that server. But then you also place that server on the whim of that group – if the guild or group decides to quit or change servers, that server plummets with hopeless stomped sessions — It’s happened to multiple servers.

These groups can and will still exist under a shared WvW model – will it spread or get drowned, I can’t really say. I hope the player dynamic will go towards learning and gaining skills to fight if all sides are fielding similar amounts of blobs and roaming parties.

Felix.2613:

The problem as I see it, is that instead of the zergs maphopping between 3 different maps, they would be hopping (guesting) between 100 different maps. So that all blue map, yes green zerg will go there and steamroll it. Will blue zerg be there? No they will be steamrolling an empty red server.

You’d basically make it improbable, that one zerg ever ran into another zerg.

That would be the point of weighted instances. Sure, there can be blob rolls on lower weights, but they wouldn’t count for nearly as much. The main instances would hope to have all maps queued for all groups – so there would never be empty map steamrolling where it counts.

Obviously my solution isn’t the perfect end-all solution, just a direction that may work.

Thanks for the input, and keep poking holes or improvements!