Guild Wars 2

I am considering to transfer back to FoW, for many guildies are there and we might wanna do some raid nights in WvW together.

I checked the transfer cost and was like: “WHOAAAAAAAHHHT?!!?!?!?!”

Why is the price for the lowest ranking server a full 1800 gems. Maybe there are many ppl on there. But they apparently don’t play WvW. For PvE servers don’t matter any more. So why not link the transfer cost to the actual average amount of players in WvW or WvW performance?

Transfering to a server which is below the server ranking you are on should always be free.

Malediktus.9250:

Transfering to a server which is below the server ranking you are on should always be free.

Not sure about that. It would make match manipulation by stacking on a certain lower ranking servers way easier.

T1 servers should be more than 1800 gems I feel, below that the cost of gems should gradually drop Tier to Tier; to incentivize players to spread onto lower populated servers rather than bandwagon onto the most populated servers. But I feel the damage is already done, and no Tournament will help because players will just stack to win the best rewards.

Heck it even feels like Piken has less to fight and they are Gold, I’ve heard one Guild has left to SFR..

The only reason people have any reason to transfer anymore is WvW (PvP and PvE are megaserver) and nobody is willing to pay that much for a game mode which hasn’t been updated since 2013. I spend my time in TPvP nearly all the time now because my WvW server is utterly dead.

TyPin.9860:

Malediktus.9250:

Transfering to a server which is below the server ranking you are on should always be free.

Not sure about that. It would make match manipulation by stacking on a certain lower ranking servers way easier.

At first yes, but it would balance out over time because people can only transfer to servers with lower ranking for free and pay full price for better servers.

Server system is

• senseless since mega-server,
• broken since wtj-transfers before season 2
• corrupted since a growing amount of people have accounts on several server

It’s overdue to get rid of servers. Just that ANet seems to have no idea.

We also have to consider what the servers might look like if there were no cost..

- extremely stacked servers
- Major spying & trolling. Imagine whole guilds transferring to troll another server

What about adding a cool-down for transferring? Once transferred, you have to wait 1 month before transferring again.

DeadlySynz.3471:

We also have to consider what the servers might look like if there were no cost..
- extremely stacked servers

We have that, that’s no change.

- Major spying & trolling. Imagine whole guilds transferring to troll another server

Irrelevant since many people have accounts on every server of a tier.

1800 gems

or

10$ for a new account…..

yep, i see a problem already.

TexZero.7910:

1800 gems

or

10$ for a new account…..

yep, i see a problem already.

+

Transfers should be $15 to T1, 10 to T2, 5 in t3, 2 the rest.

Anet is straight up scamming on all the tiers below T1. There is basically no wvw down there.

Toxicity.5392:

There is basically no wvw down there.

Lol.
T7 here and we get que’s on EB to prime-time.
and outside of prime it’s a roamers’ paradise with many solo-cappers & havoc groups running around, without having to fear to get steam-rolled by zone-blobbs.

Arantheal.7396:

Toxicity.5392:

There is basically no wvw down there.

Lol.
T7 here and we get que’s on EB to prime-time.
and outside of prime it’s a roamers’ paradise with many solo-cappers & havoc groups running around, without having to fear to get steam-rolled by zone-blobbs.

Think it depends if you’re EU or NA, I think the lower tiers are much more dead in EU due to 3 more servers and a smaller playerbase.

Anet, plz.
A look into such problem is long overdue.
We are not asking for a complete fix on the population imbalance . But some easier improvement can definitely be done.

L Step.8659:

Arantheal.7396:

Toxicity.5392:

There is basically no wvw down there.

Lol.
T7 here and we get que’s on EB to prime-time.
and outside of prime it’s a roamers’ paradise with many solo-cappers & havoc groups running around, without having to fear to get steam-rolled by zone-blobbs.

Think it depends if you’re EU or NA, I think the lower tiers are much more dead in EU due to 3 more servers and a smaller playerbase.

I’m from T7 EU…
edit: And I have no idea where to look up the actual population statistics.
Would be interesting to get a link to it tho, since the Server flags “full”, “high”, a.s.o. are not really that specific.

Arantheal.7396:

Toxicity.5392:

There is basically no wvw down there.

Lol.
T7 here and we get que’s on EB to prime-time.
and outside of prime it’s a roamers’ paradise with many solo-cappers & havoc groups running around, without having to fear to get steam-rolled by zone-blobbs.

solo capping and havoc groups sounds terribly boring to me. Basically the definition of dead WvW. I feel like in T1 there is not enough going on, cant imagine how it is in T7.

Malediktus.9250:

Arantheal.7396:

Toxicity.5392:

There is basically no wvw down there.

Lol.
T7 here and we get que’s on EB to prime-time.
and outside of prime it’s a roamers’ paradise with many solo-cappers & havoc groups running around, without having to fear to get steam-rolled by zone-blobbs.

solo capping and havoc groups sounds terribly boring to me. Basically the definition of dead WvW. I feel like in T1 there is not enough going on, cant imagine how it is in T7.

It’s more fun and skillful then zerging all the time. All i do is roam and havoc. But each to their own.

Offair.2563:

Malediktus.9250:

Arantheal.7396:

Toxicity.5392:

There is basically no wvw down there.

Lol.
T7 here and we get que’s on EB to prime-time.
and outside of prime it’s a roamers’ paradise with many solo-cappers & havoc groups running around, without having to fear to get steam-rolled by zone-blobbs.

solo capping and havoc groups sounds terribly boring to me. Basically the definition of dead WvW. I feel like in T1 there is not enough going on, cant imagine how it is in T7.

It’s more fun and skillful then zerging all the time. All i do is roam and havoc. But each to their own.

I wouldn’t exactly call it more skillful, the majority of roaming/1v1 builds are typically cheesy/easy to play. Although I don’t understand why people prefer small scale fights in a large scale fight game mode. The balanced game mode is PvP, and people normally just whine they don’t like the scenery or they can’t break or cheese their build in PvP. But yeah being a guard in most blobs I wouldn’t say is very skillful either.

L Step.8659:

I wouldn’t exactly call it more skillful, the majority of roaming/1v1 builds are typically cheesy/easy to play. Although I don’t understand why people prefer small scale fights in a large scale fight game mode. The balanced game mode is PvP, and people normally just whine they don’t like the scenery or they can’t break or cheese their build in PvP. But yeah being a guard in most blobs I wouldn’t say is very skillful either.

Neither will ever be seen as skill from the others perspective.

Zerging will always be mindless, and Roaming will always involve your FOTM cheese builds.

That said i enjoy both sides of the coin, though i find terrorizing zergs tons of fun when roaming.

By this time, on NA it’s 18 very high and 5 Full.

IF anet didnt change they migh have a good reason for that, also price being based on server rank, would lead to server manipulation prices for easy stacking.

Aeolus.3615:

By this time, on NA it’s 18 very high and 5 Full.

IF anet didnt change they migh have a good reason for that, also price being based on server rank, would lead to server manipulation prices for easy stacking.

The reason has long gone with the introduction of mega-servers. Unfortunately at that time it lost any meaning for PvE, just has meaning for WvW left, that’s why it never changed to something meaningful for WvW.

Here an old post about it’s defenition: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Free-Transfers-to-Seafarer-s-Rest/1817469

Why would they change the cost of transfers when people are constantly paying to transfer? That doesn’t make a good deal of business sense. You cannot argue that it would make customers happy, when the customers are proving they are completely happy with it by doing it over and over again.

Do ppl pay? Would ppl pay more, if the price model would be adapted? I am at the point where I personally most likely won’t transfer. If the price would be lower, I would. Mind you, I wanna change to the lowest ranking WvW server.

If it would be free I would likely do a world-tour, a week here, a week there, getting a better impression of the overal state. But no gems for transfer, I do not believe in greener grass somewhere else.

In ESO transfers are free, just saying. Asking people to pay on top of the initial payment just to change servers is not generous at all.

I agree they don’t make sense, but personally I don’t care about how active people think a tier is or isn’t. t7 NA ques confirmed here as well.

Reckon the biggest thing thats a bummer about the transfer costs is stale match ups. Tired of X server rallying at X time, etc. Maybe if xfer costs were scaled, there wouldn’t be such a difference in pop between tiers and one week you’ll fight a “t3” server and another a “t7” server.

The prices seem about right to me. Moving servers should cost at least a week or two of gold farming.

If you pay money for gems to do it there should be some kind of discount probably… something like a transfer token for $5 – $15 instead of buying gems.

But it is more money atm. 1800 (or 1500, forgot the exact number) gems to transfer to the LOWEST RANKING server. and, btw, I am almost exclusively roaming, scouting and upgrading in WvW… So I have only expenses and nearly no income. How do you expect me, to ever get the gold for this?

DeadlySynz.3471:

We also have to consider what the servers might look like if there were no cost..

- extremely stacked servers
- Major spying & trolling. Imagine whole guilds transferring to troll another server

What about adding a cool-down for transferring? Once transferred, you have to wait 1 month before transferring again.

All they need to do is to add rewards for sticking to your server.

To make an extreme fantasy scenario, you get a free precursor of choice if you have gathered say 100 WvW “server loyalty dailies” which consist of getting as much points as 1 rank or something. After that, it will tick up to 250 dailies, giving you a free legendary of choice. 500 dailies after that, you get a full legendary armor set (we all know its coming…). Etc and so on. If you transfer server, it take 3 months before you can start doing these dailies again and of course it all reset.

But it doesnt really matter, of course Anet will keep the transfer cost. Only WvWers suffer it so its free money for little to no effort for Anet. I cant imagine any sane Anet boss would ever agree to remove it or reduce costs.

Dawdler.8521:

But it doesnt really matter, of course Anet will keep the transfer cost. Only WvWers suffer it so its free money for little to no effort for Anet. I cant imagine any sane Anet boss would ever agree to remove it or reduce costs.

I am not so sure of that.

• ANet was very lazy about introducing transfer costs at the beginning, their development was speed-up by massive player-wish in the forum, after we had some cases (e.g. Blacktide in EU) of massive movement of people to a low-rank server, crushing it’s slow way up, crashing after some weeks at the top, being crushed on it’s slow way down.
• massive player protest against free transfers to specific servers before season 2. (In EU these transfers turned Gandara from a bad silver-league server into a dominant silver-league winner, that’s still middle-gold due to that free-transfers.)

Of course, both where problematic at that time, as we had some balance that got disturbed.

But now transfer costs only preserve imbalance, still a lot of people here want this preservation of imbalance. Do they want to keep the few that still follow them and fear that they will loose them as well? Do they fear they loose their dominant position? I don’t know.

I think transfer-costs were good when we had some balance. But currently, where we don’t have any balance, a total mixup by free transfer would be better.

TyPin.9860:

I am almost exclusively roaming, scouting and upgrading in WvW… So I have only expenses and nearly no income. How do you expect me, to ever get the gold for this?

Your not expected to have such a huge gold income that you can transfer every week or two. Raising 1800 gems is on par with crafting ascended gear, or working on a legendary, meant to be expensive and time consuming.

If you never tap a lord for bags or do any kind of large scale in WvW you may have to bite the bullet and K-Train somewhere like silverwastes or EoTM, if you really need to leave your server.

displayname.8315:

TyPin.9860:

I am almost exclusively roaming, scouting and upgrading in WvW… So I have only expenses and nearly no income. How do you expect me, to ever get the gold for this?

Your not expected to have such a huge gold income that you can transfer every week or two. Raising 1800 gems is on par with crafting ascended gear, or working on a legendary, meant to be expensive and time consuming.

If you never tap a lord for bags or do any kind of large scale in WvW you may have to bite the bullet and K-Train somewhere like silverwastes or EoTM, if you really need to leave your server.

So basically I have to grind. Something ANet specifically stated GW2 was not about. ‘Play the game you want to play the game’. How is this possible, when certain play styles are definitely encouraged and others (like mine) aren’t. Negative and positive reinforcements are nothing but limitation that force you into a certain play style: In this case grinding.

You may be okay with this model. But I am not and if ANet values it’s statements, it shouldn’t be either.

BTW: I do not want to transfer “once a week or two”. I would like to transfer one time in 2 years. I repeat: I wanna transfer to the kittening lowest ranking server and have to pay the same price as I would like to bandwagon the top server. Oh and btw, if I was a little mindless zergling, I would be able to transfer several times within a few months. Or even as a dungeon farmer would make funding such things way easier… I have guild mates, who talk about their 5th or 6th legendary… while I struggle to pay WvW upgrades.

TyPin.9860:

displayname.8315:

TyPin.9860:

I am almost exclusively roaming, scouting and upgrading in WvW… So I have only expenses and nearly no income. How do you expect me, to ever get the gold for this?

Your not expected to have such a huge gold income that you can transfer every week or two. Raising 1800 gems is on par with crafting ascended gear, or working on a legendary, meant to be expensive and time consuming.

If you never tap a lord for bags or do any kind of large scale in WvW you may have to bite the bullet and K-Train somewhere like silverwastes or EoTM, if you really need to leave your server.

So basically I have to grind. Something ANet specifically stated GW2 was not about. ‘Play the game you want to play the game’. How is this possible, when certain play styles are definitely encouraged and others (like mine) aren’t. Negative and positive reinforcements are nothing but limitation that force you into a certain play style: In this case grinding.

You may be okay with this model. But I am not and if ANet values it’s statements, it shouldn’t be either.

BTW: I do not want to transfer “once a week or two”. I would like to transfer one time in 2 years. I repeat: I wanna transfer to the kittening lowest ranking server and have to pay the same price as I would like to bandwagon the top server. Oh and btw, if I was a little mindless zergling, I would be able to transfer several times within a few months. Or even as a dungeon farmer would make funding such things way easier… I have guild mates, who talk about their 5th or 6th legendary… while I struggle to pay WvW upgrades.

You appear confused. You do not have to grind. You do not have to tranfer. Your choosing to do both. Do not try to twist this into a disingenuous concept, by claiming anyone is forcing you to do anything.

But I am forced (in the sense of encouragement and discouragement, context is everything sometimes^^). Either I suffer from queues and lags in high tier WvW, am overrun with zergs on every corner of the map on prime time and such issues or I transfer to a lower tier server.

Atm there are times, where I simply can’t play and so I log off. Of course, it’s a game and if I don’t like it, I can just not play it. Applying that logic to all areas of the game but leads to the conclusion, that no change, desired by players, ever has any ground. Cuz they can log off. Nobody forces them to endure anything.

But this is not, what this thread is about, and if you wanna go there… well… then we can just stop any discussion here. For playing GW2 entirely is a choice. And if the thing you wanna do, is not possible or has a too high content/money gate for you, well then just leave the game. I shall remember this approach for further discussions with you

TyPin.9860:

BTW: I do not want to transfer “once a week or two”. I would like to transfer one time in 2 years. I repeat: I wanna transfer to the kittening lowest ranking server and have to pay the same price as I would like to bandwagon the top server. .

So 2 years and never transferred? Not sure what you spend all your money on but 2 years you should be fine on gold/gems. Unless you collect legendarys or craft new sets of ascended constantly.

If you exclusively roam/scout and are not making any loot at all you might try a build with more movement. Good roamers should be making it to decisive fights and getting action too.

IF some day transfer cost is actually based on active WvW population on that server… Expansion could be a really nice point in time to fix some unbalanced things about WvW, but sadly (as usual) we hear almost nothing about it, aside of the new map being added.

displayname.8315:

TyPin.9860:

BTW: I do not want to transfer “once a week or two”. I would like to transfer one time in 2 years. I repeat: I wanna transfer to the kittening lowest ranking server and have to pay the same price as I would like to bandwagon the top server. .

So 2 years and never transferred? Not sure what you spend all your money on but 2 years you should be fine on gold/gems. Unless you collect legendarys or craft new sets of ascended constantly.

If you exclusively roam/scout and are not making any loot at all you might try a build with more movement. Good roamers should be making it to decisive fights and getting action too.

Traveler Runes and alts. Ofc, if I’d solely safe money for a possible future transfer, I would be able to. However, I never had more than 150g on my character ever…

I would also buy gems for the transfer with real money, but not at the same price for a transfer to tops serves as for bottom server.

EDIT:
To clarify, traveler runes for 1st mesmer were still relatively cheap, for 2nd mesmer I bought gems. Other than that I bought some gear for some alt characters. But that money was mainly from non WvW activities. Ofc you can make money roaming. But being one that regularly upgrades and buys siege and rarely zergs, I do not make much money and nearly enough for a transfer.

EDIT2:
But this is not, what this thread is about and some ppl try to divert it’s purpose. The point is that it doesn’t make sense to me to tie the transfer cost to a population, that doesn’t say anything about the actual WvW population or performance.

I want to transfer to the lowest ranking server and would do so, if wouldn’t have to pay the same price as if I’d transfer to the #1 server. I would even buy gems for real money… but as I said, not for the current prices, which do not make sense.

TyPin.9860:

Traveler Runes and alts. Ofc, if I’d solely safe money for a possible future transfer, I would be able to. However, I never had more than 150g on my character ever…

I know those expensive rune sets can set you back especially if you switch builds often.

How much Karma, Laurels, and badges of honor do you have? You can put that stuff to good use too. T6 mats building up? Pricecheck some in-demand exotic gear and craft it for the TP.

TyPin.9860:

The point is that it doesn’t make sense to me to tie the transfer cost to a population, that doesn’t say anything about the actual WvW population or performance.

Thats probably why they made the cost the same for all servers. Whether you want higher populations or lower your still server hopping. The cost of moving seems about right to me in terms of how many gems I can make just playing. As to being $20 yeah that seems a little high maybe.

Too bad they don’t do bonus gem sales that I’ve seen. SOE loved doing that for their station cash.

Malediktus.9250:

TyPin.9860:

Malediktus.9250:

Transfering to a server which is below the server ranking you are on should always be free.

Not sure about that. It would make match manipulation by stacking on a certain lower ranking servers way easier.

At first yes, but it would balance out over time because people can only transfer to servers with lower ranking for free and pay full price for better servers.

But what happenes when everyone transfers out of the “better” servers for free and brings up the new servers ranking?
So those “bad” servers, suddenly become “good” servers, and the “good” servers that everyone transferred from are now “bad” servers.
When that happens, everyone just transfers again, for free, and starts the process over again.

So yeah it doesn’t really work…

I think Anet gave up on this problem long ago. It’s not easily solved and any solution will cause problems. Likely just picked the one with least problems… hence the ridiculous price to move to low pop being the same as the high pop.

I don’t think transferring should ever be free of cost. Those who were around in WvW in the early days likely remember the damage that free transfers caused. It was very difficult to form any sense of community on a server; alliances were fickle since anyone could easily transfer away at a moment’s notice.

That said, the current implementation where every server has the same (high) transfer cost has its own problems. It has created server populations that are stale, especially in the higher tiers. The players in these tiers can be assured that, despite any action on their part, their server will not likely change tiers, nor even likely shuffle around within a tier. This has led to a perception of “boring” matchups for many players, as well as an accompanying carelessness toward the weekly score and a lack of competitive zeal on their part. Thus, ironically, by raising significant (and equal) barriers to transferring to all servers Anet has also unintentionally degraded server communities by degrading the competitive aspect of the game.

I think the ideal solution lies somewhere in between free transfers and a flat fee for every transfer. There needs to be a middle ground that encourages more frequent shuffling of server populations; just not the kind of insane, community destroying shuffling that happens with free transfers. One possible solution is to set a base transfer fee for servers in the lowest tier (such as 800 gems) and scale it up from there (ie, 1000 gems for T7, 1200 for T6, etc). I would still keep some kind of a cap on total population, to prevent over stacking and keep queues reasonable, but I would make this cap specific to active WvW population.

This way, for a server to rise in ranks and stay there, they couldn’t just rest on their laurels and rely on a player base that is essentially locked in due to high transfer costs to every other server. They would have to foster an active, fun community that was competitive, knowing that it would be vulnerable to player attrition to lower priced servers otherwise.

TL;DR: The extreme amounts of population movement during free transfers was too much, and was community destroying. The relative lack of transferring and server movement during the current period of high, consistent transfer pricing is competition destroying (and thus, also tangentially community destroying). There is a happy medium somewhere in between that Anet really needs to try and find.

Hexin.5603:

I think Anet gave up on this problem long ago.

It’s not a problem in Anet’s eyes because people are still paying to transfer. They don’t care where the players go, as long as they are still prepared to pay to transfer, which clearly they are.

Grav.3568:

Hexin.5603:

I think Anet gave up on this problem long ago.

It’s not a problem in Anet’s eyes because people are still paying to transfer. They don’t care where the players go, as long as they are still prepared to pay to transfer, which clearly they are.

I read this statement all the time. However, other than assumptions, I never saw anything conclusive for this. The only time I transferred, when transfer costs existed, was through a friend giving me the gold to turn it into gems. And I know that guilds also have such “programs”, where they help others to transfer by giving you gold.

TyPin.9860:

Grav.3568:

Hexin.5603:

I think Anet gave up on this problem long ago.

It’s not a problem in Anet’s eyes because people are still paying to transfer. They don’t care where the players go, as long as they are still prepared to pay to transfer, which clearly they are.

I read this statement all the time. However, other than assumptions, I never saw anything conclusive for this. The only time I transferred, when transfer costs existed, was through a friend giving me the gold to turn it into gems. And I know that guilds also have such “programs”, where they help others to transfer by giving you gold.

True, but they are still paying.
Plus all that gold means that people had to play the game, which is their main goal anyway. But in order to do that, they had to buy an account.
So in the end, Anet gets money and people playing the game. Which is exactly what they want.

pdavis.8031:

TyPin.9860:

Grav.3568:

Hexin.5603:

I think Anet gave up on this problem long ago.

It’s not a problem in Anet’s eyes because people are still paying to transfer. They don’t care where the players go, as long as they are still prepared to pay to transfer, which clearly they are.

I read this statement all the time. However, other than assumptions, I never saw anything conclusive for this. The only time I transferred, when transfer costs existed, was through a friend giving me the gold to turn it into gems. And I know that guilds also have such “programs”, where they help others to transfer by giving you gold.

True, but they are still paying.
Plus all that gold means that people had to play the game, which is their main goal anyway. But in order to do that, they had to buy an account.
So in the end, Anet gets money and people playing the game. Which is exactly what they want.

This approach is extremely flawed, because by this logic it is impossible to determine the cause of buying the account.

However, going on a stretch here, it might mean that the current transfer system encourages to buy more accounts. To a part this might be even true, when someone realizes that sometimes it’s cheaper to buy a new account and start on another server than the actual transfer costs. But again we are only assuming. No1, who claimed that the system actually works, has provided thus far anything conclusive. It might be a reasonable assumption, but it is not more than that. So presenting it as fact is not honest.

Also, a change to the transfer system might even encourage more players to pay the transfer costs and thus possible increases revenue. This could the same way go into addressing partly the population issues. Make it cheaper to transfer to lower tier servers, and ppl who are not satisfied with their current server might more likely transfer down instead of up. Which in the long run would help spreading out players through the different servers.

I am assuming here too. But I haven’t seen any testing from ANet on this issue, with experimenting with transfer costs more. Thus, I believe, they simply don’t care about that issue. A lack of market research is as likely as the system actually working.

TyPin.9860:

I am considering to transfer back to FoW, for many guildies are there and we might wanna do some raid nights in WvW together.

I checked the transfer cost and was like: “WHOAAAAAAAHHHT?!!?!?!?!”

Why is the price for the lowest ranking server a full 1800 gems. Maybe there are many ppl on there. But they apparently don’t play WvW. For PvE servers don’t matter any more. So why not link the transfer cost to the actual average amount of players in WvW or WvW performance?

The lower tiered servers are being decimated by transfers and the larger ones like FA are reaping the rewards of buying – literally – guilds.

It’s wrong and the “balance” is gone.

If a server has “population” but most don’t login to play WvW, they should not be counted as WvW population at all.

I don’t know if this is possible, but i’m suggesting it anyways..

Can’t they make an algoritm that measures a combination of standards?

Firstly it could measure unique account log-ins in World vs. World during last match-up. <> problem: some people log in long some only play 5 minutes and don’t log in rest of week

Secondly: Add in average time spent in World vs. World by individuals, so you don’t have high rates even when there’s nobody online for long. <> problem: some people afk in the war zones.

Thirdly: average events completed by players (on this server). <> problem: some people are just sieging up towers → okay but those people will be involved in events when the battle comes to them, so shouldn’t influence it too much.

Now if they combine all of these (rate A, B, C) and compare these rates for all the different servers, they could make transfer prices relative on them.

The transfer cost is meant to be gold sink, the server population status is broken for more than a year since mega server.

I think these things should be regulated. Like I said, in ESO it is free to change servers, why does it cost 10$ in GW2? I’ve already wasted over 50$ in transfer fees just because the servers were dying due to lousy matchups repeating months after months.