Guild Wars 2

Fair and interesting point

I completely agree with this. Would be nice to hear back from a dev please!

An extremely good point here. It is weird that they haven’t changed the way a servers population is judged since the PvE servers.

Doing it like this means that Blackgate doesn’t show up for a week and the following week is rated “Low Population”?

Doing it like this is too easy to game, sorry.

You already have a pretty good indicator – queue times to zones. No queues at any time, your server is underpopulated no matter how you look at it. 100+ queuing for EB at primetime, it’s probably pretty decent.

Rimmy.9217:

Doing it like this means that Blackgate doesn’t show up for a week and the following week is rated “Low Population”?

Doing it like this is too easy to game, sorry.

very true it is easy to abuse. but he does bring up any interesting point.

though i doubt a dev will say anything or enlighten us. shouldve insulted the HoT expansion in your title to get attention from them.

Not really as simple as you make it seem

Lots of mostly PvE (fairweather) players jump into WvW when their server is dominating to K-Train

Are we going to include EotM population too? Or only “full-time” WvW players? Can’t measure that can we?

Thumbs up from a CoSA Blue officer with 3 accounts.

I see my home, Sorrow’s Furnace, with a “Very High” server population status, as the players there struggle to put together 20man zergs for EB. The transfer cost for a “Very High” population server is too high to re-establish SF’s WvW in any meaningful way.

I see 30-60man deep queues across 2-3 BLs on Fort Aspenwood, a T2 server, as their server population remains a similar “Very High”. Meanwhile, Dragonbrand queues a single BL 30 deep in primetime at “Full”.

For both ends of the server rankings, there is a problem with how the game is currently counting server population, at least for those of us who enjoy WvW. I would love to hear how population is determined, and whether there are plans for a more WvWer-friendly method!

It is interesting that DB is capped out and a server like JQ is not capped. Would like to hear a reason for the cap

Rimmy.9217:

Doing it like this means that Blackgate doesn’t show up for a week and the following week is rated “Low Population”?

Doing it like this is too easy to game, sorry.

It might be better to just remove population as the deciding factor and base transfer fees on WvW rankings. They’ve proven they have access to this data already. This would address the concerns of the OP as well, because obviously the servers with more robust, active WvW populations should have the higher ranking scores.

The tiers could be either be similar to the gold, silver, and bronze tiers they’ve used for tournaments or even further broken down in to groups of 3 as we commonly refer to here (T1, T2, T3, etc.). I’d also like to see the server(s) with the lowest Glicko score to have free transfers. Though I realize ArenaNet may not be too keen on that idea.

As I am currently in T3 I know initially this may not help NSP or IoJ after we’ve been beaten down by over two months of T2 server matches. I’m not sure about NSPs internal situation, but IoJ is undergoing it’s third major exodus. It’ll take awhile for our ranking score to match our servers WvW population. But it would perhaps put an immediate dent in the behavior that has created this situation, be difficult to manipulate and abuse, and create an enduring incentive for people to transfer to servers that need more folks.

Howdy,

I agree, the current server populations do not accurately represent the actual health of a server with regards to all of it’s play styles.

Thanks -Neuro

Tying population to weekly WvW activity will almost certainly lead to abuse of the system.

Regardless of the proposed solution, the problem is huge and needs addressing.

New meta – mass create alt accounts on rival server. Don’t enter wvw at all. When you pass that server, delete chars, and mass move to next target… Rinse repeat…..

Kidding of course…..

I have been curious for a while on how the population is counted. I mean, what if 50% of a servers population is including those accounts of people that haven’t played for 1+ years? It is the same as inactives in a guild. Those people typically get weeded out of guilds should the same not be for servers? i.e. If there are 200 accounts not even logging on does that count on the population scale?

Sadly. inactive accounts probably does count on the population rank. (Sorrow’s Furnance listed as “Very High”) This is the problem. Right now, you can compare the population of Dragonbrand and let’s say Fort Aspenwood. Both of those servers can have the same number of active players but Dragonbrand also has more inactive players which changes the status to “Full”. This blocks dedicated players from transferring or new players from joining said server.

The server status in general is too vague, the only 3 status you see are “High”, “Very High”, and “Full”. It’s a bad representation of a server.

I don’t usually post on this forum, but this is something to consider looking at/ revisiting, I agree. While the solutions may not be a simple ones, it is an issue that has been here for a long time. I look forward to any thoughts/considerations/dialogue from the developers!

Grim is right server population issues need to be addressed and made more transparent.

Totally agree, the metrics aren’t exactly clear. I’ve been trying to get my 2nd account to join my friends on TC for awhile now. Missed an open window earlier this week … now back to logging in at random times to “hope”.

Anet wants to promote an active game, They are never going to agree to TRUE server population statistics.

WvW is failing and PvE is the only profitable End Game.

Sad but true.

If something about this issue is going to change in a few months with the expansion release, there is no point to them doing or disclosing anything.

Dawdler.8521:

You already have a pretty good indicator – queue times to zones. No queues at any time, your server is underpopulated no matter how you look at it. 100+ queuing for EB at primetime, it’s probably pretty decent.

DB has been “Full” for the past two days or so, but our WvW population is much smaller than that of Jade Quarry, a T1 server which is not “Full”. So no matter what your standard, or what issues you have with the suggestions, there is clearly a discrepancy.

Grim is asking for clarification on whether this discrepancy is a result of the megaservers retaining a legacy system for determining population size, and he is suggesting that if the system really is doing things the old way, then it needs an overhaul to bring it in line with the megaserver system. I think that is reasonable, since success in WvW is heavily dependent upon population and coverage.

At this point, I believe their megaserver system still factor in your current server when determining which map to put you in in PvE. So they have to make another step to make your world selection only matter to WvW.

For dragonbrand, from multiple friends on DB, I heard you already have a very large WvW population and will have no problem competing in your current matchups.

From your post, I feel probably you are comparing DB to T1 servers. That would be a different story. It will be indeed hard to compete with them in the next tournament.The same thing happened to SoS as a full server in last season’s tournament

Exciton.8942:

At this point, I believe their megaserver system still factor in your current server when determining which map to put you in in PvE. So they have to make another step to make your world selection only matter to WvW.

For dragonbrand, from multiple friends on DB, I heard you already have a very large WvW population and will have no problem competing in your current matchups.

From your post, I feel probably you are comparing DB to T1 servers. That would be a different story. It will be indeed hard to compete with them in the next tournament.The same thing happened to SoS as a full server in last season’s tournament

Oh, I forgot, in addition, world performance in WvW actually has effect on several PvE stuff at this point.

He brings a good point to the table, its truthfully a good point. Users who are PvE based should be counted separately from WvW users.

Rimmy.9217:

Doing it like this means that Blackgate doesn’t show up for a week and the following week is rated “Low Population”?

Doing it like this is too easy to game, sorry.

What, exactly, would there be to ‘game’? The only good WvW is where servers are evenly matched. I think you would be hard-pressed to find anyone that enjoys t3 in its current state.

I don’t think it is outrageous to want to understand what aspects of a server’s population go in to calculating the difference between “Full” and “Very High”. If PVE population factors in(I think it must) it certainly works against the interests of high PVE population servers in building their WVW community.

The fact that ( as I write this) 3 servers are Full(DB-t3, BG-kitten-t1) and the rest are “Very High” is patently ridiculous. This states that the population of the lowest ranked server SF is considered equal with JQ. Megaservers removed the framework for robust server communities outside of WVW, yet heavy WVW servers still seem to be penalized by PVE populations through various degrees of restrictions on transfers.

I don’t claim to have an easy solution, but there needs to be discussion of a method to accurately reflect a server’s WVW population. Maybe something like aggregate player WVW time, calculated monthly?

I completely agree. ^ Yes ^

this is a great point to bring up

This is definitively something that needs to be looked at, and solved.

Yeah, the way the game looks at how a server is filled needs to be changed. It’s so frustrating trying to get friends onto my server due to its Full status, especially with so many of them interested in the game now that an expansion has been announced. If Blackgate is legit full, then so be it, but it’s still frustrating as hell :x

basing it on things like wvw playtime can be gamed like others mentioned. Much better to just base it on current wvw rankings.

I see a few reasons why Anet hasn’t given any information on this:

1. It’s proprietary technology and they aren’t allowed to reveal how it works even if they wanted to.

2. They don’t think anyone would be interested so they’ve never given any detailed info out in the first place.

3. Simply no one has asked for this much detail about it.

If it’s not reason 1 then you are able to tell us how exactly how this works. If it is option one then you can tell us that it’s proprietary and at least give us some closure.

Nate.3927:

Much better to just base it on current wvw rankings.

This can also be gamed.

tldr;

it is hard to buy guilds when your world is full

retsuya.4708:

tldr;

it is hard to buy guilds when your world is full

Wow, never seen a better summarize than this.

Server population has almost no correlation with WvW.

And gaining a bunch of new players won’t help lower tier servers. They’ll just go up the rankings until they get stomped by the highest tier servers.

Only if a server is ranked dead last week after week should they get any players funnelled to them. And then it would only be a temporary solution, because another server would probably take their place.

Interesting to see which servers are “Full” and which servers are “Very High”. Why do bronze league servers have the same population status as T2 servers?

Yeah had to check this after reading this thread earlier, and 3 servers full, the remaining 21 very high.

I distinctly remember people talking about this in that “balance WvW” joke of a thread. This isn’t the first time this has been brought up. Although it is a new way to present this wrapped up in so much b.s. covering up the fact that OP can’t buy any more guilds after filling the server full of bandwagon karma train players and still is stuck in the T3 treadmill. If he wanted stability, balance and even footing across servers, then he wouldn’t have started a pointless and needless campaign to try and force his server into a tier that had no place or space for it.

Dynamic server population status’ need to be implemented though. Whether it is filters with an inactive period threshold ignored from being counted, or a separate system that measures WvW activity only.

Server population is easy they just count how many accounts are on the server. The active WvW population is tricky to do and can vary from week to week. I think the best metric as was mentioned in the topic already is the server WvW standing. It’s clear and does what we want to move people from stacked top tier servers to lower tier servers. If you want to go to T1 you have to pay going into silver league is much cheaper.

This has been asked since the server transfer stopped being free. ANet changed the pricing based on WvW rank before season 2, but never again after that.

It’s just ridicolous that costs more to transfer to some low-tier servers, than some mid or high tier based on PVE population.

This is a fair point, I just started playing and while choosing my home server I think the majority of them said “Very High”. I didn’t notice any full servers, but I’m sure they were there or hidden since I can’t chose them. I had been told server don’t matter much, so I was confused if servers don’t matter, why am I choosing one and why are they “Very High”? I understand that WvW is one of the reasons to choosing a server, but no where on that server list does it tell me anything about WvW or the servers I’m choosing. It seems odd to me to keep information external. It also seems odd to me that they charge for server transfers when the only reason you’d want to change is WvW. I’m sure it’ll make more sense when I become more experienced. I can see people switching teams constantly becoming an issue, but there are other ways around that.

It’s a good point and one that needs to be addressed. That said, it comes as a surprise to no-one that DB has reached ‘full’ status. If anything, it confirms what everyone has known for awhile: you’re a ridiculously stacked server which doesn’t really accomplished a lot in comparison to the numbers you field. I’ve seen DB field T1-size blobs at times. They tend to be easy farms of mostly PvE fairweathers/casuals, though!

what if ANET made a 1 week free transfer for all, it would be chaos. lmao

You can already transfer for free, you just have to delete all your characters and restart all over again with a lvl 1 on the new server :P

So if you have a scroll of experience and 60 tombs, you’ll be level 80 in minutes on your new char.

Just seperate those, have the servers list get PvE population and WvW population and base the wvw population on the monthly PPK they get each month and make the transferring fees based on the wvw populations … there you go anet I solved your issue

Thank you everyone for your support and more importantly pointing out some other interesting points! Hopefully we can get a reply to help shed light on the situation. I think we would all really appreciate that! I know so many of us who love WvW would love to have a better understanding of important mechanics like this to foster a healthy discussion.

This was my favorite:

DB has a much smaller WvW population, but a larger Legacy PvE population and is marked “full”. Servers with a far larger WvW population such as JQ, FA, YB are marked “very high” the same as Sorrows Furnace or Kaineng. Bronze Tier Servers being treated the same as gold league servers. All very interesting points!

here to bump for the grimreaper