Guild Wars 2

Now that the server full system is actually tied to WvW activity, it’s a good chance to try to shuffle players around a bit to balance server populations.

However, open free transfers lead to too much stacking and bandwagoning, and server merges upset those who are quite happy with their existing server, and it’s not right to force them to give up their server.

Similarly, splitting top tier servers is distruptive to communities and again, it’s not right to force people to give up their server.

One solution might be free transfers available only in certain situations.

Problem 1 – Empty bottom tier servers
There are some players who are unhappy being stuck in empty lower tier servers. Ideally they want to move up to a more populated server, but they feel insulted that they are being forced to pay for a problem that’s not really their fault.
Also, whilst it’s good overall for the game to condense some players into the middle tiers, we don’t want to allow free transfers because it might cause all players to stack on one middle tier server and unbalance populations even more.

Solution – soft-merge servers
Permanent free transfers along the following pattern:
[Tier 8 #3] + [Tier 7 #3] -> [Tier 6 #1]
[Tier 8 #2] + [Tier 7 #2] -> [Tier 6 #2]
[Tier 8 #1] + [Tier 7 #1] -> [Tier 6 #1]
(similarly for EU, add Tier 9)

In other words, players from the least populated Tier 7 and 8 servers (and 9 for EU), can transfer for free to the most populated Tier 6 server, etc.

People who want to stay on their servers are happy.
People who want to transfer up are happy.
People who want to force others to stay on their server are unhappy, but I dont think we need to cater for this desire.
People who already paid for a transfer are unhappy. Sorry.
Server communities are mostly preserved – entire lower tier communities can move together to their designated server
Population shifts are fairly balanced, spread evenly amongst the Tier 6 servers

Problem 2 – overfull top tier servers
Now that all upper tier servers are full and completely closed to transfers, we don’t have the risk of additional stacking anymore. But, some of those servers are more full than others, with population and coverage problems that are now more locked in because most people won’t want to give up their upper tier server with no hope of returning.

There might be some players that want to transfer to another high-tier server (but with fewer players), to avoid queues or whatever, which could balance things out. But currently the system prevents that – full servers are full, even if they’re less full.

Solution – Free transfer ticket lottery

• ANet chooses an overfull server (ignorant example – Jade Quarry?)
• ANet calculates a certain amount of players that need to transfer to make things more balanced (eg. 100)
• ANet chooses some Full servers that could still benefit from more players, to even out their tier. (ignorant example – FA and SoS?)
• ANet announced a “Free Transfer ticket lottery”. Any player who participates in WvW for a few hours that week, will be in the running to win one of 100 free transfer tickets.
• Free transfer tickets can only be owned by players in JQ.
• If you use the ticket, you can transfer for free to FA or SoS, or any non-full server.
• Tickets can be mailed/given to others, or sold on the marketplace.
• ANet can wait and see the effects, then hold more lotteries if needed.

This allows ANet to modify the population in top tier servers in a controlled way.
RNG is the only fair way to distribute a limited resource.
People who want a ticket can beg, buy or trade tickets from winners who don’t want one.

This all looks like an attempt to heavy-hand force population to spread out just for the sake of speeding up a process that will naturally occur over time due to the world population calculation change.

Just not seeing the necessity, especially with HoT release upcoming.

Chaba.5410:

This all looks like an attempt to heavy-hand force population to spread out just for the sake of speeding up a process that will naturally occur over time due to the world population calculation change.

Just not seeing the necessity, especially with HoT release upcoming.

It’s not heavy-handed, since it’s entirely voluntary and limited.

As for speeding up the process, if the final destination is a desirable one, wouldn’t you want to reach it as soon as possible? Why suffer from a poor situation longer than you have to?

The HoT release is a dangerous time – new players might not understand the consequences of their server choice, and you’ll risk more players being stranded and unhappy on low-population servers. There’s no guarantee that there will be enough new players to meaningfully fill the lower pop servers.

But yes, when writing this I had the thought that it’s better to wait until after HoT before implementing these ideas.

In the long run, these sorts of systems will absolutely be necessary (since population imbalances will always be a risk unless the entire design of WvW changes.) But better to wait until after the dust settles from HoT.

+1
We’re really suffering from the WvW population on FoW and UW after the BT hackers’ incident who wasn’t taken care of for a good 3 weeks. BT is now a “good WvW server” in the eyes of many who don’t know the story, even though they’re on t9 (hopefully they get to t8 so we could start enjoying WvW again).

The problem is that seeing “Low” and “Medium” in a server, knowing that it’s for WvW, won’t support the server itself, who would like to join a server with a “Low” WvW population?

“Tickets can be mailed/given to others, or sold on the marketplace.”

Um, no? If your idea is to get people off a full server, this doesn’t fit. This is basically saying, if you’re on a full server you get a chance to get some free gold.

Yes. Mergers. yes. They have less servers to keep online. We have more players to play with. Would definitely be a start. Careful tho because there are some up tier servers that are pretty low on population as well, so it’s a bit more complicated than the simple “bottom goes up a notch” scenario

Ofc all of that would require a REAL SURVEY of the WvW population and REAL MONITORING from our Dev overlords.

I agree with the OP that ANet ought to do something to shake up the current match-ups. It’s boring to fight the same groups month after month. It’s not any better in tournaments because T1 dominates T2 which dominates T3 (and same for T4vT5vT6). I agree that natural attrition is too slow.

The very thing that helped create the population stability that was so important in 2013 is now in one of the primary causes of the status quo: the cost of moving to any server is too high for anyone to volunteer to do it, without having a good idea of whether the grass is greener.

So what I’d like to see is ANet creating incentives to encourage folks to move around. I’d like to see glicko scores closer for T1-3 which diverge heavily from the nine worlds of T4-6 that are similarly close. I imagine this will involve:

• A reward system closer to that which we see in PvP now.
• Incentives for moving and staying put. Disincentives for bandwagoning.
• Use of market forces in addition to the current fixed costs.
• Ways to make it easier to move entire guilds quickly, whether sponsored by the destination server or not.
• Regularly scheduled tournaments with predictable schedules, achievements, and rewards.

Chaba.5410:

This all looks like an attempt to heavy-hand force population to spread out just for the sake of speeding up a process that will naturally occur over time due to the world population calculation change.

Just not seeing the necessity, especially with HoT release upcoming.

If you honestly believe it’s going to naturally occur over time then I just shake my head at you. 3 years and nothing has sorted itself out, these changes are to little to late, no one is dumb enough to transfer down to T8 (at least in NA) and sit there with no one to fight. It doesn’t matter what the price ta of the transfer is, its just not practical to expect any large guild to bore themselves to death.

We will probably see some movement within the top 4 MAYBE 5 tiers, but anything beyond that will definitely not sort itself out.

Random.4691:

Chaba.5410:

This all looks like an attempt to heavy-hand force population to spread out just for the sake of speeding up a process that will naturally occur over time due to the world population calculation change.

Just not seeing the necessity, especially with HoT release upcoming.

If you honestly believe it’s going to naturally occur over time then I just shake my head at you. 3 years and nothing has sorted itself out, these changes are to little to late, no one is dumb enough to transfer down to T8 (at least in NA) and sit there with no one to fight. It doesn’t matter what the price ta of the transfer is, its just not practical to expect any large guild to bore themselves to death.

We will probably see some movement within the top 4 MAYBE 5 tiers, but anything beyond that will definitely not sort itself out.

For the past three years we:
1) didn’t have full servers that could not be transferred to
2) didn’t have so many full servers

The system is already voluntary and controlled; just costs some gems. That is a slow process and it should remain a slow process. Full servers at the top need to remain full in order to force new and returning players to go to the mid-tier then lower-tier servers.

Making it free will increase the number of volunteers in a way that won’t be reflective of normal operations. Current full servers, which are now at the top tiers, could open up again for transfers without the mid and lower tier servers seeing the benefit of the new world population calculation. That would just cause a return of players emptying out the lower tiers to go to higher tiers. The full servers need to remain full, especially when HoT is released.

As I said, you will see movement in the top 4 maybe 5 tiers, anything below T5 has had its fate sealed. There is plenty of room in T4 & T5 to accommodate those that will return, I realy think people expectations of how many are going to come back for any length of time or start a new is over exaggerated.

Games, like most things in life, don’t get a second chance to get it right. They have people come and go but there will be no second release. I’m not going to assume to know your gaming history but if you have played MMO’s for any length of time you know what I’m saying is correct. Some players will return and from them some will stay but it’s probable that the majority will once again leave for greener pastures once the new shiny effect has worn off.

T8-T6 will remain Dead/Dying without some kind of drastic intervention from Anet such as merges or what ever the case may be.

So this is another suggestion by a player because they want to freely move from a lower tier to an upper? That would only exacerbate the issue, not solve a thing overall.

The quickest and simplest way to solve the lower tier population problems(NA) is to eliminate the lower tiers. I have never played on EU servers so I have zero idea how the pop is spread over there.

I’m not denying that there are probably players in the lower tiers that enjoy that kind of gameplay, but when you’re talking 20 players per night(example given by low tier players in their own threads) the few that actually enjoy that versus the ones frustrated by the situation are negligible. So merge T7 and T8 with T5 and T6.

T8#3 -> T5#1, T8#2 -> T5#2, T8#1->T5#3
T7#3 -> T6#1, T7#2 -> T6#2, T7#1 -> T6#3

After this is done implement a change in Glicko where the high cap is 2000 Glicko, and the low cap is 1000 Glicko, or if you like make a high cap of 1000 Glicko with a floor of 0. Reset Glicko to zero, and have a round robin series of 1 day matches to find out your initial order(as was done in the beginning).

Gold Bracket T1/T2
Silver Bracket T3/T4
Bronze Bracket T5/T6
Have a set schedule of tournaments, not this haphazard system of, “Hey why don’t we do a tournament?” in order to rerank servers periodically.

Kaiser.9873:

The quickest and simplest way to solve the lower tier population problems(NA) is to eliminate the lower tiers. I have never played on EU servers so I have zero idea how the pop is spread over there.

I’m not denying that there are probably players in the lower tiers that enjoy that kind of gameplay, but when you’re talking 20 players per night(example given by low tier players in their own threads) the few that actually enjoy that versus the ones frustrated by the situation are negligible. So merge T7 and T8 with T5 and T6.

T8#3 -> T5#1, T8#2 -> T5#2, T8#1->T5#3
T7#3 -> T6#1, T7#2 -> T6#2, T7#1 -> T6#1

After this is done implement a change in Glicko where the high cap is 2000 Glicko, and the low cap is 1000 Glicko, or if you like make a high cap of 1000 Glicko with a floor of 0. Reset Glicko to zero, and have a round robin series of 1 day matches to find out your initial order(as was done in the beginning).

Gold Bracket T1/T2
Silver Bracket T3/T4
Bronze Bracket T5/T6
Have a set schedule of tournaments, not this haphazard system of, “Hey why don’t we do a tournament?” in order to rerank servers periodically.

This is imo what needs to be done. I would like to see match ups revolve more, first goes up, last goes down. It might cause some blowouts occasionally but I think it would also encourage a population spread. If you went this route you could technically just get rid of glicko all together once you have established the Brackets.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

So what I’d like to see is ANet creating incentives to encourage folks to move around. I’d like to see glicko scores closer for T1-3 which diverge heavily from the nine worlds of T4-6 that are similarly close. I imagine this will involve:

• A reward system closer to that which we see in PvP now.
• Incentives for moving and staying put. Disincentives for bandwagoning.
• Use of market forces in addition to the current fixed costs.
• Ways to make it easier to move entire guilds quickly, whether sponsored by the destination server or not.
• Regularly scheduled tournaments with predictable schedules, achievements, and rewards.

Totally agree with everything above, those would be huge steps in the right direction to help balance happen more quickly and equitably under the new world population cap system.

Kaiser.9873:

The quickest and simplest way to solve the lower tier population problems(NA) is to eliminate the lower tiers. I have never played on EU servers so I have zero idea how the pop is spread over there.

I’m not denying that there are probably players in the lower tiers that enjoy that kind of gameplay, but when you’re talking 20 players per night(example given by low tier players in their own threads) the few that actually enjoy that versus the ones frustrated by the situation are negligible. So merge T7 and T8 with T5 and T6.

T8#3 -> T5#1, T8#2 -> T5#2, T8#1->T5#3
T7#3 -> T6#1, T7#2 -> T6#2, T7#1 -> T6#3

After this is done implement a change in Glicko where the high cap is 2000 Glicko, and the low cap is 1000 Glicko, or if you like make a high cap of 1000 Glicko with a floor of 0. Reset Glicko to zero, and have a round robin series of 1 day matches to find out your initial order(as was done in the beginning).

Gold Bracket T1/T2
Silver Bracket T3/T4
Bronze Bracket T5/T6
Have a set schedule of tournaments, not this haphazard system of, “Hey why don’t we do a tournament?” in order to rerank servers periodically.

Not sure if I agree with the merging part but fully second the glicko rating part you mentioned. T1 has been locked for a very long time (unlocks only during season), now T2 is also locked (Thanks to the 4 T2 server fest) and there is difference of ~100 rating points between the lowest ranked T3 server and the highest ranked T4 server. There’s almost a difference of ~1270 rating b/w the #1 server (JQ) and the #24 server (ET) which is too big IMO. Lowering the range (and capping the upper/lower bounds of glicko) considerably will help out a bit.

they need to :

1. remove the lower tier servers. leave only 15. for EU leave only 18.

2. offer free transfer to the non-full remaining servers. allow for one week for players to coordinate themselves. still plenty of servers left even after the removal. status depends on active WvW participation anyway, so mass transfer to a server does not make the server full if they are all PvE players.

azizul.8469:

they need to :

1. remove the lower tier servers. leave only 15. for EU leave only 18.

2. offer free transfer to the non-full remaining servers. allow for one week for players to coordinate themselves. still plenty of servers left even after the removal. status depends on active WvW participation anyway, so mass transfer to a server does not make the server full if they are all PvE players.

Left to their own devices, players will not do what is best for the game, only for themselves.

Free transfers is what caused this problem in the first place and now you want to have it happen again. A system like that could be too easily manipulated by some of these mega-guild associations out there.

No – free server transfers is not the answer.