Guild Wars 2

Okay so I’m going to start this off with covering two perceived “major issues” I see with WvW. The first one, which has at least in theory, been a (potential) problem since day one. Population balance also known as “server stacking”. The second one being recruitment. Recruitment of new players wasn’t a problem prior to MegaServers for PvE since all and only players from your server saw the map chat. Now that PvE is one huge cluster-**** of players from all servers, I have found recruiting new WvW players much more difficult if not impossible. I have a “rough draft” idea that, if developed and implemented properly could resolve both of these issues, as follows. Bear in mind this is a “rough draft”, so all concepts and names could of course be changed to something to possibly better suit the actual production version of the game.

First, players would have to chose between one of three “factions” or “orders” (specifically) for WvW. For sake of conversation we’ll say either “Durmand Priory”, “Order of Whispers”, or “Vigil”. This would be a permanent decision and the only way to join one other than the one you initially picked would be to re-roll or roll a new character.

This would basically eliminate “servers” as we know them. For example, now, instead of being on Anvil Rock, Jade Quarry, BlackGate, or any one of the fifty-one servers; you would simply be either “Durmand Priory”, “Order of Whispers”, or “Vigil”. This is also how you would “identify” now, so this part would resolve the recruiting issue. Now when recruiting for WvW your message could look something like this “GuildA recruiting Vigil for WvW”, so everyone on the PvE megaserver would be one of the three factions/orders, much better than potentially trying to recruit for one out of twenty-four/twenty-seven servers. This is also what would determine a teams “color” for the week. For example: this week “Durmand Priory” is Red, “Order of Whispers” is Green, and “Vigil” is Blue. The same system currently in place used to determine “color” could be used for this.

Second would be the bulk of the (new improved) WvW system. Players would have to pick which “campaign”, “mission”, or “server” (whichever you’d rather call it) that they would play on for the week. This would be a choice the player can make/change once per week, and players would not be able to change once they’ve chosen for that weeks battle.

This is where I also think there would be the most room for creativity. This portion of the system should be developed and implemented so that it was truly dynamic based upon how many people are actually playing the WvW game mode that week. For example, there would be “base” campaigns/missions/servers and they would all have hard caps for that week that could not under any circumstance be exceeded, but if more players show up to play in WvW, more campaigns/missions/servers would dynamically be created so that nobody is left out. The creativity part comes in where I believe even different maps could be used for different campaigns. So if a player feels like playing a certain map that week, they could join the appropriate campaign. With this whole new system, EoTM would no longer be needed, as we know it (a WvW “MegaServer”), but, the EoTM map itself could be one of the possible campaigns/missions/servers to pick for the week. I’ll even throw one more in the mix for my big example. I often see people talking a lot about “fights”, so you could even design a map specifically tailored to this play style. Maybe even absent “objectives”. So under this example there would be six base campaigns/missions/servers. Two for the WvW maps as we currently know WvW, one “high pop” one “low pop”. Two for the EoTM maps, again one “high pop” one “low pop”. Then two for the “fight” maps, one “high pop” one “low pop”. This would be akin to two of the current WvW “tiers”, or six of the current WvW “servers”, so they should be easily filled (we do have more than enough people that play WvW to fill six servers/two tiers). As they hit their “hard cap” duplicate versions of any maxed out campaigns/missions/servers would be created for people to join. Although absent a third set of WvW related maps and the “base” campaigns/missions/servers would be just four, two for the WvW maps we know (one high one low), and two for EoTM (one high one low). So for example we’ll say that the limit for low pop campaigns/missions/servers is fifty, and the limit for high pop is one-hundred. These would be hard limits, based on how many people chose that campaign/mission/server for that week and not how many are online at that given moment, as we don’t want a massive problem with queues again! For example: we wouldn’t want fifty people to sign up for a low pop campaign/mission/server, then have twenty-five log out, and while those twenty-five are logged out, permit another twenty-five to join up, then if they all try to play at the same time later on; we’ll have a massive queue problem (again) because there will be seventy-five people signed up for that campaign/mission/server despite an intended limit of fifty! Instead the campaign/mission/server capacity will be based upon how many people sign up for a given campaign/mission/server for that week. Where again, more will be added dynamically as needed. I believe that this would solve the population balance AKA server stacking problem because it would impose hard limits of capacity that would basically reset every week. Which would accommodate for people coming and going (which is always going to happen). If people abandon WvW (or GW2 all together), that’s okay because next week it resets to “base”. If more and more people start playing WvW (or GW2 & WvW), that’s okay too because subsequent campaigns/missions/servers will dynamically be added as needed.

So I’ll attempt to summarize all this with some text based “flowcharts”:

The current WvW system:
PLAYER => SERVER (1 of 51)

Players choose one of fifty-one servers. No real effective way to recruit “new blood” from PvE any longer since PvE no longer uses the “server system” but WvW does. Some servers have/wind up with too many people while some don’t have enough. Static system, with no forced player dispersal, allowing the continued “too many” and “not enough” per server.

My proposed “new and improved” WvW system:
PLAYER => FACTION/ORDER (1 of 3) => CAMPAIGN/MISSION/SERVER (1 of 4 – ?¤)
?¤ = as many as needed – dynamically added

Players would chose one of three factions/orders (which would be permanent). Recruiting or finding a guild that focuses one of the three factions/orders in the PvE MegaServer system would be decently easier as players would be from one of three factions/orders opposed to being from one of fifty-one servers! Players would then chose a campaign/mission/server (weekly), choosing exactly what they want to play (IE: WVW maps HIGH pop, WVW maps LOW pop, EOTM maps HIGH pop, EOTM maps LOW pop, FIGHT maps HIGH pop, FIGHT maps LOW pop). Having some servers/missions/campaigns being overpopulated while some are underpopulated would be a thing of the past because this would be a weekly player choice that dynamically adjusts when and as campaigns/missions/servers reach their hard limit capacity.

To my fellow WvW’ers, please feel free to provide input on this matter. I would also like feedback, whether positive or negative, from someone @ ANet on this. Thank you everyone!

This is how WvW should have been set up from the start, funny that they essentially had 3 factions in the game and didn’t use them for WvW.

Now I think they should move to something similar but based on server alliances.

I think a majority of players who play wvw would disagree with what you’ve suggested, as this is completely different from what makes wvw attractive in the first place as a game mode.. It’s a nice concept though!

The problem is there aren’t that many people that play WvW to begin with. People have deserted that game mode for a reason. Currently if you are on a server that is not well represented in your time zone it is a waste of time playing, unless you are someone that keeps paying for transfers to ride the WvW server stacking bandwagon.

Ali.7041:

I think a majority of players who play wvw would disagree with what you’ve suggested, as this is completely different from what makes wvw attractive in the first place as a game mode.. It’s a nice concept though!

Riddle me this, if i dont make it to the same campaign as the rest of my guild, im not gonna play with them for a week?
if someone selects a campaign and doesnt play the game all week, noone can take his spot leaving the rest of his campaign at disadvantage?
even when im not in a guild atm i like to see the people i know from the server and know what to expect from them
so nah your concept isnt good enough

I agree recruiting in pve might a problem with megaservers, thats about it

btw if you followed the recent news about wow and nostalrius, you might notice that people care about community and breaking server communities isnt a good idea imo

Faux Play.6104:

The problem is there aren’t that many people that play WvW to begin with. People have deserted that game mode for a reason. Currently if you are on a server that is not well represented in your time zone it is a waste of time playing, unless you are someone that keeps paying for transfers to ride the WvW server stacking bandwagon.

Yea, that is why there are so many ques to play wvw since the patch. Because very few people play wvw.

/eyeroll

Neftex.7594:

Riddle me this, if i dont make it to the same campaign as the rest of my guild, im not gonna play with them for a week?
if someone selects a campaign and doesnt play the game all week, noone can take his spot leaving the rest of his campaign at disadvantage?
even when im not in a guild atm i like to see the people i know from the server and know what to expect from them
so nah your concept isnt good enough

I agree recruiting in pve might a problem with megaservers, thats about it

btw if you followed the recent news about wow and nostalrius, you might notice that people care about community and breaking server communities isnt a good idea imo

Entire guilds that WvW together (or the portions of them that do) being able to select the same campaign should not be an issue because guilds have a much lower player limit than what campaigns would allow for. Obviously I don’t have access to ANet’s actual metrics, but this is part of the logistics that they would work out, so that it’s not a problem.

Yes, if people “abandon” a campaign it would be “dead” for that week. I however, consider this a much better option than leaving servers “dead” indefinitely. It would be much better to be stuck on a “dead” campaign for a mere week rather than be stuck on a “dead” server indefinitely. Although even this could be combated, but again, internal logistics to be worked out by ANet. One such possible solution to this would be: if the campaign/mission/server detects that there are (for example) < 25 people for 24/48 hours (more internal logistics – actual numbers to be determined by ANet); then all players in that campaign/mission/server would be allowed to select a new one, where otherwise switching campaigns/missions/servers would not be permitted. Of course, so long as it’s not full and locked. They could also stay if they so desired, nobody would be forced to leave it (even though it was “dead”) unless they wanted to. So I don’t think I understand being okay with a server becoming “dead” indefinitely, but not being okay with a campaign becoming “dead” for only a week. Although as I pointed out even that could be negated so that if you wind up on a campaign that “dies” you could always pick a new one that’s not dead after; not indefinitely, not a week, but something like 24/48 hours.

I fully understand “community” and “server pride”, I myself rolled AR/Anvil Rock on the first day of three-day head-start and have never been off of it since! However, continuing to use this “server” system for WvW when PvE no longer uses it, is quite antiquated. So sure, I may lose my “Anvil Rock”, but people would then be able to take pride in their faction/order. That would be our community going forward. Three factions/orders opposed to fifty-one servers. While I’m sure this may still devastate some, at least at first, I still think it’s the best choice for WvW moving forward. If we keep this system the way it is, the problem(s) stick around for the long term. I think we should move forward with a new system, that will still allow us to have/form “community”, but also be healthy for the future of WvW. Would it really be worth it to continue forward with a problematic system all in the name of “server pride” or “community”?

how would the matchmaking work with so many separate campaigns that change all the time?

If I understand it correctly, there wont be any matchmaking. You belong to one of the 3 factions permanently, each week you pick one of the campaigns to enter. The campaigns are basically “matches” but with different goals and different maps and hard caps on population.

FogLeg.9354:

If I understand it correctly, there wont be any matchmaking. You belong to one of the 3 factions permanently, each week you pick one of the campaigns to enter. The campaigns are basically “matches” but with different goals and different maps and hard caps on population.

Yes that is how every other RvR game is designed and it is a far better design than WvW. However at the current point its clear that the game must be based around server alliances rather than factions.

basically you fight for nothing, with people changing every time, so what you achieved last week says nothing because this week is totally different

RvR games being based on matches like these?
CU doesnt seem to be the case
ESO with campaigns is similar but still different than this suggestion

Neftex.7594:

basically you fight for nothing

i love this quote

Neftex.7594:

basically you fight for nothing, with people changing every time, so what you achieved last week says nothing because this week is totally different

RvR games being based on matches like these?
CU doesnt seem to be the case
ESO with campaigns is similar but still different than this suggestion

You’re fighting for your faction, faction pride is the same as server pride. CU has 3 factions, players and guild will pick a server to play on and their faction.

Crowfall is also the same, 3 factions but also has extended options with 12 gods. Servers can be based on fighting for your faction or a 12 way fight for your god or there is proposed to be a free for all rule set for servers.

yes CU has 3 factions, but its not cross server so pretty much the same problem with low pop can arise there
in CU 1 faction from 1 server loses population, the other 2 will steamroll it and theres no way to recover unless other factions transfer to the loser for “incentives”

in GW2 you lose population on your server, your ranking goes slowly down and you more likely face similar servers (when they fix scoring)/get merged with other server

what will you do if 1 faction is stacked so much that they can open 3 more campaigns than the other 2? you wont let them play? you make them transfer? yea so in order to keep playing i need to throw away my faction pride, might as well keep server merging

Neftex.7594:

yes CU has 3 factions, but its not cross server so pretty much the same problem with low pop can arise there
in CU 1 faction from 1 server loses population, the other 2 will steamroll it and theres no way to recover unless other factions transfer to the loser for “incentives”

in GW2 you lose population on your server, your ranking goes slowly down and you more likely face similar servers (when they fix scoring)/get merged with other server

what will you do if 1 faction is stacked so much that they can open 3 more campaigns than the other 2? you wont let them play? you make them transfer? yea so in order to keep playing i need to throw away my faction pride, might as well keep server merging

This is where the eotm design comes in perfect… 3 individual sides with players pooled together.

Server pride is all but dead, and if you tell me it’s alive then I will point to you all the players who jump servers…

Players want to fight with closer to even sides and they want rewards for it, so if the devs get serious about tournaments and super rewards, then this 3 sided style would work out best. Doing so would also squash population disparities, and if they did something like 8 hour time brackets then we probably never would worry about scoring issues. Each side could get rewarded for winning their time brackets and more balanced tournaments could be had with regularity.

There are issues even with these alliances, and there will continue to be, so the best move would be to 3 sided faction it.

Swagger.1459:

Server pride is all but dead, and if you tell me it’s alive then I will point to you all the players who jump servers…

And I can point you to players who have never jumped servers, and it is these people that keep WvW alive and the guilds that jump around are the ones that are killing it.

Every time a guild jumps servers the following happens:
1) The server they leave takes a hit in numbers and community spirit, performance drops and some of those on the server play less and some stop playing entirely.
2) Some of the guild members decide not to make the jump of these some move to other guilds and others stop playing WvW.
3) Of those that do make the jump some do not like playing on the new server – of these some stop playing and others jump back to the original server or to yet a different server.

The type of complete redesign suggested by the OP would only reduce the player base even more.

One character wrong and most of the post appears blank…..

[quote=6133399;Nidome.1365:]

Neftex.7594:

yes CU has 3 factions, but its not cross server so pretty much the same problem with low pop can arise there
in CU 1 faction from 1 server loses population, the other 2 will steamroll it and theres no way to recover unless other factions transfer to the loser for “incentives”

So you roll a toon on another server/campaign or it may have a guesting mechanic. There are ways around it but I don’t think the details have been documented.

Hrm posted about the concept about the 3 eotm sides under order names instead of green/blue/red a while back.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/To-Those-Who-Think-They-Want-A-Megaserver/first#post5844718

What you seem to be describing is similar to what Crowfall has planned I think, you pick a campaign which you can have different main objectives to it, then you’re in there until it ends for however long it’s set. Which could be interesting, but then pushing more players out into different directions with different campaigns might not be a good idea.

Recruitment has become difficult because of the megaserver, and Anet unwilling to advertise for wvw in quite a while. The last big event they had to advertise was the tournament, yet spvp has their bonus buff up plus the side event notice every other week. The beta stuff for wvw is now being advertised so maybe that helped bring some new players in, now it’s up the wvw players to be nice, recruit, and train them properly, instead of being the rude aggressive grumpy idiots that we usually are.

first you talking about reconstructing WvW radically not gonna happen eliminate transfers not gonna happen you want that kind of structure eotm taking away transfers would be eliminating a source income turning all the server into factions what happens when half a guild gets stuck on one then its full and the other half cant join because they will have to cap in the begining or leave the risk of 1 faction having a population of the other 2 what happens when all the guilds having a falling out because of some of those die hard WvW dictating guild leaders and finally what happens when they do do this and completely destroy WvW all together which was the main selling point of the game in the first place you seen what happened after HoT and the desert borderlands
you forgotten that you are just one person like anet did when they ignored the game community and did what they thought best and as you can see they reverting in part to recover some of the community they lost which i did see some return but very little they are not in a position to even consider a radical change like that nor should they

Hey, first, thank you for putting so much time, effort, and thought into this. I really hope the devs listen to you because this is a great concept and would make WvW a very fun play-mode. Also, I think it would bring a lot of PVE players into WvW, which would make us all happy.

I would add a couple of things to go along with this:

1. Better in-game guild communication and/or private guild message boards provided on these forums for guilds to use for the purpose of game related communication. I think the second would be very easy to add and, btw, I wish they’d do it NOW. If you have a guild in-game, you have a communication thread that is password protected for your guild members to access. This would help so much with guild-based communications, which are practically non-existent at the moment, especially with the very poor in-game email client.

2. Reward track variation – I see a great deal of customization ability available here for reward tracks that would perhaps allow them to coincide with the selected “mode” for that week. For example, maybe the “fight” mode would have access to things that fight guilds might find helpful: pots of food, books/scripts of oils, special armor and trinkets, other fight buff items?? For the “capping” mode – you could have siege, supply bundles, speed buffs and also still armors and weapons but maybe with additional speed stats and this type of thing? I can’t think of a large number of specifics off the top of my head atm, but the possibilities are endless and I would bet the WvW community could come up with a (huge) list.

Love your idea and it would not only revitalize interest in WvW but, I think, Guild Wars 2 as a whole for people who are leaving for other MMORPGs like BDO, CU, and Crowfall. I don’t know about everyone else, but every single friend I have lost has left a huge hole in my gameplay. In addition, ANet is going to see a huge drop in participation soon if they don’t do something to revitalize the game other than just one more expac like all the others.

Thanks again for all your effort here. Please ignore any trolls.

Sadly, no “official” Anet response to even show us they see this yet… maybe you should post this on Reddit, too, as they seem to post there “officially” more than here, on their own message boards. :/

Scamp.5296:

Sadly, no “official” Anet response to even show us they see this yet… maybe you should post this on Reddit, too, as they seem to post there “officially” more than here, on their own message boards. :/

I did post an exact clone on reddit per a recommendation from someone from within ANet in game… I don’t personally frequent reddit, so I wont really be personally following it (and I even hope I posted it in the right place >.<) but yes, same exact post here and over there @reddit…

Definitely thank you for that insight though

Scamp.5296:

Sadly, no “official” Anet response to even show us they see this yet… maybe you should post this on Reddit, too, as they seem to post there “officially” more than here, on their own message boards. :/

Or perhaps they have read it…..

In lieu of a more complete solution how about introducing ‘server chat’ – like party/squad chat but for your server, limited to the map you’re on? Then you could at least recruit/call for help in pve areas?

So basically you think the wvw match system should be similar to Elder scrolls online? That is a reasonable suggestion. The ESO campaign system is just about the ONLY thing that works in that godawful game.

If you don’t want to get involved with a very heavy very convoluted fix for the population issue – here’s the easiest possible fix I could think of from a technical standpoint for you guys to implement:

• make one “server” for PvE – for players who do not wish to WvW – they can join this one (PvE will still be megaserver [even for the WVW servers], don’t get me wrong here [I’m not proposing any PvE changes])

• reset all accounts (during this “update” make all accounts “server-less” or on the “PvE server”)

• allow people to chose their server, people who don’t even WvW can select the sole “PvE” server (heck, call it “PVE ONLY” if you want to) while people that want to WvW can pick their WvW server.

However therein lies the big part – you guys need to (while doing this) implement hard caps, that is, this would be the part you force us to disperse. Make hard caps that cannot be exceeded regardless of how many are online / offline at any given time. This is a number you would have to chose (and possibly play with) since we do not know your metrics.

Now, to combat servers filling up then going “dead” because players go “inactive” or otherwise quit the game – you’ll have to design and implement something that will automatically “kick” people to the “PVE ONLY” server after a certain period of inactivity. I’d think either something like 7 days, or 30 days should suffice. That way, after either 7/30 days anyone not active will be moved back to the PvE server and no longer take up a “user slot” for that server, and someone who wants to be active can take their place!

Then we have to solve recruiting, so, well, since “stacking” wont be an issue any longer, just make server transfers free again. Now we can recruit people in PvE and they can transfer over to come play with us, no matter where (what server) they’re from, because it’ll be free for them to transfer. That is as long as our server isn’t hard locked due to having too many people to have signed up for it.

Scamp.5296:

Sadly, no “official” Anet response to even show us they see this yet… maybe you should post this on Reddit, too, as they seem to post there “officially” more than here, on their own message boards. :/

I can with 100% certainty say that someone from ArenaNet has indeed read this post/thread. The only thing I’m not 100% positive on, is if he or she is on the WvW team.

That’s all I can say at this time