Guild Wars 2

I browsed through a lot of the topics to see if any of these ideas have been suggested and didn’t see them…so:

We can whine all we want about the lag fests we’ve been seeing on some maps during certain match-ups (I’m on JQ) but demanding that Anet hire more programmers or upgrade hardware or whatever is, well, unrealistic. What I’d like to suggest may also not be possible (I’m totally unskilled in this field) but I’m guessing it’s possible. Simply put, Anet probably has a pretty good idea at what level a given map becomes unplayable; so, lower the number of players for that map to a manageable level.

Let’s assume that level is 90 players. Limit each server to a third of that number. Hence, 30 per server can be on a given map at any time. That should go a long ways towards eliminating skill lag. The (downside) is some servers with high pops would see extensive wait-times to get onto maps. I say “downside” because this would, I believe, lead to many guilds migrating to lower population servers in order to avoid the lines.

To keep it fair to the guilds wanting to move, Anet should offer the free transfers for a set period of time. Before I start getting slammed, I believe my guild would move voluntarily, although I can’t speak for everyone in it.

The result would be more server balance and a greater balance in the battle for points. If BG, SoR, or JQ truly has the best commanders and soldiers, they’ll remain at the top…but I’d bet we’d see some other servers grabbing top tier spots within a couple of weeks.

I’m sure there are flaws in my ideas but the basic idea of limiting each server to “X” number of players per map seems like a starting point for discussion.

(I’ll be gone for a few hours, so if I don’t respond to things right away, please be courteous.)

Blooper.9765:

What I’d like to suggest may also not be possible (I’m totally unskilled in this field) but I’m guessing it’s possible. Simply put, Anet probably has a pretty good idea at what level a given map becomes unplayable; so, lower the number of players for that map to a manageable level.

Everything you suggest is very doable and has pretty much been done before, we use to have much lower map caps than we do now and devs have stated that world population caps are dynamic to be adjusted on the fly so we have theorized it is the same for WvW map population caps. There has also been tons of threads on the subject lately tho I don’t suppose we’ve been tossing ideas around as much as having kitten fits over it since the idea phase did not see a lot of response.

I’ve been begging ANET to lower the WvW map population caps for more than two weeks now when skill lag started to become intolerable for me (it’s been annoying for awhile but gotten much worse lately) and plan to keep doing so knowing full well that the queue kittenstorm that would result from lower map caps would probably cause my hubby to quit the game or at least leave the server. I’ve stopped playing WvW in our servers prime-time and try to avoid the zergs like the plague but if your map is bogged down with a 3-way fight somewhere it can affect players across the map, although it seems to be worst if you happened to participate in the three-way and then leave the area, it is almost like the skill lag clings on to you like goo and wont let go.

I accept that in order for a solution like lower WvW map population caps to be successful ANET would need to have a few other fixes in line to roll out at the same time that would deal with world population redistribution and incentives so I am hopeful they are just waiting on one of those pieces to be done before taking action. Hopefully they will give us a clue how long we might need to wait soon but in the meantime, go outside and enjoy your summer or find times and ways you can enjoy WvW without as much crippling skill lag. Cheers,