Guild Wars 2

Yesterday the World vs World maps reset, and supposedly there was a pretty good battle. I wouldn’t know because I was asleep when the reset happened, and right now looking at the statistics it looks pretty much the same as before, except the server controlling everything is now red and called Sea of Sorrows instead of Blackgate.

For me, nothing has really changed because the World vs World is already at the point again where you really can’t do anything.

So what is the problem?
The problem is, quite obviously, snowballing. As one side gains momentum they get bigger and bigger, to the point where its competitors really can’t do much of anything anymore. In a game like Defence of the Ancients this might be, for example, one character getting so many kills that he can solo the entire enemy kill. In World vs World, it effectively means that two servers are unable to do anything for the next week.

Snowballing in World vs World
Snowballing is something you want to avoid, especially in a persistent setting like the World vs World. While it doesn’t really matter if a champion snowballs out of control in a MOBA, World vs World lasts a week, not twenty minutes. This effectively “reduces” the lifespan of the World vs World from weekly to a few hours at best.

Snowball #1: Orbs / Outnumbered
The concept of the orbs is mindboggling, to say the least. Here you have an outmanned buff that gives you extra experience and karma, and a buff for being on the winning side that gives you 150 to all stats and 15% health.

Does this make sense to you?
I hope it doesn’t, because it really does not. If you are already on the losing side in numbers, you don’t care about karma or experience, you want to be stronger individually so you can fight a bit better against the larger swarm of enemies. Instead what happens here is that the side who is already winning is made even stronger.

This needs to be looked at. A simple solution would be to swap the two buffs around, but you really want some sort of scaling solution. If one side is 10 people and the other is 100, you want to make the 10 people feel like there’s a reason for them to play other than seeing all their money disappear in thin air from repaircosts.

Snowball #2: Resource system
Thinking about it, it makes perfect sense. A catapult requires resources, a farm produces resources, so you need to capture a farm before you have the resources to make a catapult. However what happens when server #1 controls everything on the map, and server #2 controls nothing? Server #2 can’t siege anything, they have to take the easiest camps, which are now being defended by people with catapults.

The resource system makes it pretty much impossible to come back from a loss. One side is now in control of castles full of cannons and the other side is armed with sticks and twigs. As a result of this the losing side gets demotivated and people start leaving, putting them in an even weaker position. As a result they can hardly hold even the smallest camps because this will instantly be responded to by the winning side flooding there in large numbers looking for the tiny bit of action left on the map.

The problem here becomes a bit of a vicious circle. You need resources to make siege weapons. You need control points to get resources. You need siege weapons to get these control points. You need resources to make siege weapons. This is a circle that never ends and you simply can’t get into, if you have no resources and no siege weapons, you basically have no chance.

Now while you can in theory take over a camp and then build up siege weapons, you simply can’t keep a camp long enough when you’re already on the losing side. The solution?

Give other ways of getting resources. Why not have the yak’s give you resources when you pillage them? Why not get some resources for completing the neutral events? Basically we need some way of getting resources to start building up a good siege, without having to defend a camp against an overwhelming force of enemies.

Snowball 3: Map Control 1: Teleporters
Simply controlling the entire map at once is a ridiculously good snowball effect, for various reasons, all of which make it far too difficult for an attacking force to get a solid footing.

For starters, if you control the entire map, you have access to each and every teleporting node on the map (excluding the two inside your opponents’ bases, obviously.) This means that you can get from one end of the map to the other end extremely quickly.

Meanwhile the attackers can’t actually warp out of their home base, they have to walk. This means that they have to attack something close to their base. If they attack something far away it means that if they die they will never be able to get back in time before the fight is over after all.

This limits the places where they can effectively attack. The defenders on the other hand have access to an entire map full of teleporting nodes, so no matter where an attack happens, they can be there and respawn over and over nearby until the fight is done.

A way to solve this would be to add a few “guerrilla” teleporting pads; neutral teleporters spread out over the map that can only be used by the two servers who do not control the majority of that map. This allows them to get around easier to mount attacks or to aid in defense.

Snowball 4: Map Control 2: NPC Assistance
You’re on the losing side. The enemy has more players, your own players are losing their motivation because they don’t have any access to siege machines. What more do we need to add to make this whole ordeal more frustrating? Oh, right! Let’s add veteran defenders to all the control points.

I am not really certain who came up with this idea, but it is simply another kick while the weaker side is already down. They couldn’t win the fight and now they face not only a stronger foe, but a stronger foe and a lot of veteran NPCs.

Even a simple supply camp has a good dozen veteran NPCs, preventing a small guerrilla force from quickly capping it. I understand why this is done, you do not want to force players to defend every point on the map because they can’t be everywhere at once. But when you are on the losing side, you really don’t want to have to deal with a 5 minute fight with a whole bunch of veterans while the enemy team gets ample time to respond to the conflict.

On the other hand, the losing side really deserves some slack when it comes to defending, you want them to have an easier time defending their last few points with what limited forces they have. They are already in a pickle, they could use some champions on their side to even the odds.

The solution, if you ask me, is to make scaling NPC forces. If you already control the entire map, you only get a basic NPC force of normal mobs, or maybe one veteran. Something which buys you some time to respond, but could easily be taken out by one or two players. This will allow the weaker side to perform guerrilla attacks on supply camps. Give the side that hardly controls anything a champion or two in their camps, this way it will take significant effort for the stronger side to take them back.

Yes, this means that the attacking side will need to muster a large force to take back stuff stolen by a small force. However, this does prevent the entire map from going completely stagnant. If the weaker side manages to cap several camps quickly this way they slowly level the playing field and the champions can be scaled down to veterans, etc.

—————————————————————————————-

Yes, this has quickly grown out into a far too long topic, I realize that. However, I hope this helps point out some of the problems the current world vs world system has going for it. Right now there are simply too many factors that allow the winning side to win even easier, where as any and all motivation to keep playing is taken away from the losing side.

Some might complain that it is unfair that small groups of players would be allowed to take back supply camps and try and get some sort of larger-scale assault going, but is the current way really better? If you don’t happen to be online during the reset, you basically can’t World vs World at all. Either your side already controls everything on the map and you sit around all day hoping that the enemy team will finally try to cap something, or you’re stuck in your base wondering how you’re ever going to take something without getting annihilated by the team controlling the entire map.

You missed the biggest snowballer: Fickle Players

Radiodread.8469:

You missed the biggest snowballer: Fickle Players

While this may be true, this is not actually something arenanet can do much about. You can change the system to give more incentive for players who feel that they are on the losing side to keep playing, but you can’t exactly tell losing players that they should keep playing a system that is stacked against them. It doesn’t work that way.

A lot of great points here, though you didn’t speak too much on the subject of tower/keep upgrades, which is one of the biggest sources of snowballing.

Once the winning team controls the entire map, all of the supply camps and the orbs.. they have ample supply going to every single fortification. These forts are quickly upgraded to the point where the losing team has no hope of mounting an offense. Reinforced walls, gates, cannons, oil, extraneous siege weapons, upgraded guards, siege vendors.. etc. Even if the losing team controls a couple of supply camps, breaking into a fully upgraded tower may be nearly impossible because there are no safe positions to build trebuchets to attack from a distance.

Should this be changed? Not necessarily.. but it’s just another reason that WvW tends to snowball.

Radiodread.8469:

You missed the biggest snowballer: Fickle Players

haha true……this is an mmo after all! ….game design/mechanics should prolly account for a large (majority?) of the playerbase falling into this camp.

Grit.9061:

A lot of great points here, though you didn’t speak too much on the subject of tower/keep upgrades, which is one of the biggest sources of snowballing.

Once the winning team controls the entire map, all of the supply camps and the orbs.. they have ample supply going to every single fortification. These forts are quickly upgraded to the point where the losing team has no hope of mounting an offense. Reinforced walls, gates, cannons, oil, extraneous siege weapons, upgraded guards, siege vendors.. etc. Even if the losing team controls a couple of supply camps, breaking into a fully upgraded tower may be nearly impossible because there are no safe positions to build trebuchets to attack from a distance.

Should this be changed? Not necessarily.. but it’s just another reason that WvW tends to snowball.

I did indeed forget to mention that one. I was going to make a mention of it as well, but the post was already getting so long that I had to split it up into two posts just to be able to post it. This is indeed yet another snowball effect that makes it impossible to turn the tides around.

There are clever ways to take pretty much anything, even without a “safe” treb spot. Catapults are a losing teams best friend. This does go right back to the fickle players point I made. You are correct in saying that you aren’t going to take a fully upgraded bluelake tower with 8 people as long as its manned. Provided you have a population on the server you can throw up defensive seige on the hill south of it, defend it with 20-30 people and catapult the gate and/or wall and the tower seige placed on the front. The losing team spawns right there, so the advantage in a brawl there lies in drawing the enemy out in such a fashion. Make sure to finish off everyone you put down and soon you’ll see that every one of your kills is worth as much as 5 of theirs. People get sick of running long distances.

well done on your points theik. I would hope that Anet takes a look at this post and some of the points you have made

Daish is on Sea of Sorrows and Daish already explained how to fix wvw

there should be a limit on how many players can join

3 servers Red Blue Green

100 player cap on each server thats what currently exists

say
40 players from Green Queue up
20 players from Red Queue up
100 players from Blue Queue up

Blue should have a cap placed on them of 60 because 40 Green +20 Red = 60 Blue

Blue team is capped at 60 based on the other 2 servers in the 1v1v1

if another player queues up on Red or Green Blue’s cap will be raised by 1 player

this makes the 1v1v1 system much more enjoyable for everyone and players will stop stacking servers

if there are even half the players on the other 2 teams there will be no cap placed at all 50+50 = 100 other then the default cap that has existed the whole time

as the numbers go up and down the cap placed on the team with the most players will adjust

Daish has spoken

@Radiodread
Then you need supply and if you are on a losing server you cant get that.

If you take a supply the winning server just attack the supply and take it back but for you its be much harder to take it back because you dont have so much peoples.

And even if you are good on the day and take alot of castles can the other servers have all maps at night, that is very annoying. Only be able to spawn in one corner of the map when the other server attack your castle on the other end of the map is annoying too, i use to quit play then, because running in 5 min or something only to lose the castle and die isnt fun. This game wants to be a fast rpg but for me anyway is it very slow, i played perfect world before and it was alot faster then this game.

Reapair cost’s should be free from lvl 1-20 or 30 then more new players should play i think.

As someone who’s seen all of what WvW has to offer and the horror that was WG/TB in a server with factional imbalance, I can agree with the OP that snowballing is a curse that has to be dealt with swiftly and diligently.

More than anything, I just don’t want to see WvW go the way of GvG – most of the player base slowly getting alienated early only to never come back once things get fixed/put in place. More crushing than the snowballing going on is the very real threat that people WILL and HAVE left GW2 over the lack of competitiveness in some of these WvW matches. And in the long run, that’s no fun for anyone.

Organize your server if you want to win WvW. Snowballing exists because arenanet wants clear cut winners. It would suck if you fought for 7 days and felt like you didn’t actually achieve anything. I’ve been on a losing server for months and were finally winning match ups, and it isn’t because server transfers gained us anything, it’s because we organized to the point where we can win.

nephilim.9357:

As someone who’s seen all of what WvW has to offer and the horror that was WG/TB in a server with factional imbalance, I can agree with the OP that snowballing is a curse that has to be dealt with swiftly and diligently.

More than anything, I just don’t want to see WvW go the way of GvG – most of the player base slowly getting alienated early only to never come back once things get fixed/put in place. More crushing than the snowballing going on is the very real threat that people WILL and HAVE left GW2 over the lack of competitiveness in some of these WvW matches. And in the long run, that’s no fun for anyone.

My guild started with 40 active people and got to 5 after 4 weeks and 3 after 5 weeks. Numbers keep dwindling everywhere.

Hymnosi.5928:

Organize your server if you want to win WvW. Snowballing exists because arenanet wants clear cut winners. It would suck if you fought for 7 days and felt like you didn’t actually achieve anything. I’ve been on a losing server for months and were finally winning match ups, and it isn’t because server transfers gained us anything, it’s because we organized to the point where we can win.

You know what sucks even more?

A world vs world that is over in three hours tops and is a dead zone for the rest of the week. These changes could help make a clear-cut winner a clear-cut winner that actually has to keep PvPing to keep their winnings.

Right now the system allows a group of 1000+ players to just zerg the whole deal to create a massive snowball effect, and then a group of 10 players can hold the entire map for the rest of the week because the other team is at such a major disadvantage from that point on.

Even servers that are relatively evenly matched end up in this position if one of them makes an extremely strong showing in the first couple of days. Then the rest of the week is just snooze-ville.

Of course, there are very few tiers that actually have evenly balanced matches right now.

Isn’t the per map per team player cap about 70? Not quite 1000+.

Theik.9340:

Give other ways of getting resources. Why not have the yak’s give you resources when you pillage them? Why not get some resources for completing the neutral events? Basically we need some way of getting resources to start building up a good siege, without having to defend a camp against an overwhelming force of enemies.

Killing a Yak does give resources to the players around the Yak.

Killing a Yak does give resources to the players around the Yak.

Really!? If this is true, then I’ve missed that aspect for the last 2 months.

Radiodread.8469:

Killing a Yak does give resources to the players around the Yak.

Really!? If this is true, then I’ve missed that aspect for the last 2 months.

Yep! It’s pretty nice too, you can go over the normal 10-suppy cap with the 5 supply yaks drop.

Radiodread.8469:

Isn’t the per map per team player cap about 70? Not quite 1000+.

Is it that low? I was under the impression it was much higher than that…

A couple of things:

Dolyaks do have a chance to drop supply. If you take out a caravan and get a bag, pick it up. If the bag contains only copper, you will also receive 5 supply from looting it.

I can also see their reasoning in the outmanned buff. WvW relies heavily on numbers, so when your numbers are low ideally you want some sort of buff that encourages people to come to your help. Thus the outmanned buff is there to lure people back with the promise of extra loot, karma and experience. In practice though there are several problems with this idea. First of all, the outmanned buff only appears when there are no replacement players to be had. When the majority of your server is asleep the promise of extra loot does nothing because there aren’t enough players that can join your side. Also, as I said before, WvW relies heavily on numbers. If your side lacks numbers, you won’t get as many kills or take as many objectives so the outmanned buff ends up doing nothing until the new players join, at which point the buff goes away. The theory is there, but in practice the bonus does not work.

@Daish:
That is a bad idea for two reasons. First of all, how are you going to raise and lower the cap with people in WvW? Are you going to just kick people from the larger team out as the cap becomes smaller? “You have been kicked because all the enemies left” sounds like a great message to get. And if not, what’s stopping the winning team from just not leaving WvW? Who cares if the server now has a cap of 60 players if the large server has 100 players still in WvW, new players may not join but the large server still has the numbers advantage.

Secondly, your system disregards the fact that there are non PvP objectives in WvW. What happens if the winning team wants to do the jumping puzzles to stockpile siege for the next matchup or kill the champion mobs or just gather the mineral nodes that spawn in WvW? Are you just going to lock out the guys who are winning from all of that just because the enemy team doesn’t have numbers? Seems like a good way of punishing the winning team.

Personally, I think the Outmanned buff should increase damage dealt by siege weapons. This is because siege weapons should be at the center of both attacking and defending objectives. It would make it easier to hold objectives and attack objectives despite having low numbers, making taking over the entire map much much harder than it currently is. Taking the last few towers and keeps a team owns in a map should be incredibly hard, while in the current system it becomes easier and easier to take the last few towers.

Enenion.8127:

A couple of things:
…

Personally, I think the Outmanned buff should increase damage dealt by siege weapons. This is because siege weapons should be at the center of both attacking and defending objectives. It would make it easier to hold objectives and attack objectives despite having low numbers, making taking over the entire map much much harder than it currently is. Taking the last few towers and keeps a team owns in a map should be incredibly hard, while in the current system it becomes easier and easier to take the last few towers.

That’s a great idea, I hadn’t thought of that. I’ve been preaching about the Outmanned buff all over this forum recently. My previous case was that the Orb buff and the Outmanned buff should be switched. That way, the winning team is encouraged to go farm and stop spawn-camping the losing team, while the losing team got a bit of a boost. Adding +siege damage to that would be an excellent balancing mechanism.

A very good write up! +2 to you!

Um, what do these +1’s do exactly? Oh well, I can pretend Arena net will see your post and I can dream. I love WvW and it will keep me playing GW2 for years, if it gets some love.

Hymnosi.5928:

Organize your server if you want to win WvW. Snowballing exists because arenanet wants clear cut winners. It would suck if you fought for 7 days and felt like you didn’t actually achieve anything. I’ve been on a losing server for months and were finally winning match ups, and it isn’t because server transfers gained us anything, it’s because we organized to the point where we can win.

This is complete bull-kitten. Tactics and playing organized will mean very little if you do not have population to back it up. The top servers all have queues at many parts of the day. This is hardly a coincidence. The lowest ranked servers in WvW hardly ever have a wait time, this is also, hardly a coincidence.

It is great that you guys are playing together in a more structured manner and yes it does allow you to “punch above your server’s weight class” but in the long run if you don’t have bodies it gets harder and harder to play. More so if the other team has double your numbers at all times of night and day!

I agree with Urrid.4593 completely. My guild specializes in small-scale surgical strikes and guerrilla warfare, and that’s something we can’t do if we don’t have 20-30 person zergs keeping the enemies distracted elsewhere. If they have enough people to cover everything and you don’t have enough people to distract them, you’re not going to get a foothold on offense, no matter how well organized you are.

Excellent points, OP! My only contribution is to say, “Ew” to the name of the thread. Carry on.

Klawlyt.6507:

Excellent points, OP! My only contribution is to say, “Ew” to the name of the thread. Carry on.

I see what you did there.

Klawlyt.6507:

Excellent points, OP! My only contribution is to say, “Ew” to the name of the thread. Carry on.

Thank you Clerks…

(bump for a good post!)

Agree with your points, disagree with your solutions.

Instead of adding more teleports and more ways to get supply I think we need to reduce what we currently have.

The current waypoints when constructed already cut the size of the map for the winning team to a fraction of their original size. Instead of just decreasing the size of the map for the losing team as well it would just be better to force the winning team to play on an increased field like the losing team by getting rid of the waypoints.

This may unfortunately increase the natural snowball of morale since people are more likely to stop playing after they die because some people can’t bother spending 2 minutes to walk across the map. It also might put additional emphasis on zerging since when there are less waypoints reviving people becomes even more important. (though the zergball reviving each other despite 5 arrow carts raining down on a corpse is a separate issue that at some point absolutely does need to be addressed.) It will ultimately give a strong advantage to the losing team since when they are getting shoved off the map they can get to their towers like 3x faster then the winning team because their waypoint is so much closer.

Instead of increasing ways for the losing team to get supply I think it would be more effective to just decrease how much supply the winning team has, or more accurately decrease their stockpiles. When a losing team has to enter the map they generally take a camp and get 100 supply from it to then have to assault places with at least 10x as much stocked up. Now it’s not like the winning team had to carry all that supply over by hand and slowly build up that stockpile by hand 10 at a time. The each and every Dolyak that drops supply in a tower or keep can give the wining team up to about a supply camp and a half. The supply snowball for the winning team is ridiculous. Reducing the winning teams keep stockpiles to be more in line with supply camps would be a better option in my opinion then trying to give the losing team the supply of a keep.

Ultimately, they need to come up with some way for maps to scale with population size.

Great points

I really hope Arenanet is working quickly on this… one sided battles are frustrating and really hurts my enjoyment of this otherwise great game

Those are some well thought out ideas.

But here’s the basic premise to all of your proposed solutions (…yes even Daish…) is ‘…help us Anet, we’re losing, so give us free unearned stuff…’

And anyway you formulate that to some kind of in game npc/buff/give every losing team commander a legendary spawn anywhere on the map advantage over those that are winning is really not a very good idea.

Yes, free uninhibited server transfers are an issue, agreed. Some sort of time out system, even after paid, needs to be there. 2 or 3 weeks of no wvw seems reasonable to most folks threads that I’ve read and posts that I’ve seen.

The other issue is the automated match up system. There was a very well written out post about Anet/human intervention in the matchups so that approriate match ups are actually being set up.

But I just can’t see how any ‘…sniff-sniff xyz server is beatin us so buff the crap out of us and give us free stuff…’ will work without completely making doing all the…you know, having your players actually play wvw and you know, capture and hold stuff…hugely devalued.

IMO giving losing players an advantage would have a much, much more negative consequence.

@Zen Later.6475

…as opposed to giving winning players the advantage the current system gives them?

@aaron

Ummm, yeah cuz you know, the winning team is going out and you know, playing the game, capping and holding in numbers.

My own combined game experiences have been when we’ve lost, it’s because we haven’t had the numbers and/or we’ve been disorganized versus a superior force. I didn’t feel the need for the magic wand to be waved and some sort of unearned advantage to be given to my losing side. It sucks losing and even losing badly, I’ve felt it & seen it.

If you read through the entire post you’d see I don’t disagree with some underlying issues such as transfers and the way the auto match up system is ranking matches together.

Anets failure to fix these things in a timely manner is mind-boggling when they can repeatedly fix Halloween themed events and items.
The thing that sets this game apart from others is the potential to have full on server V server wars on an epic scale (see promotional material post-release) whereas at the moment it’s becoming less appealing for myself and many great players I’ve met ingame.
I have constantly sang the praises of this game, especially the WvW aspect but lately I feel less inclined to do so.
Still too many very basic bugs and exploits even after an extensive beta that uncovered these potential issues.
More frustratingly perhaps is the silence. To keep your player-base you MUST at the very least assure us that you’re investigating things. People are leaving and will continue to leave.
Silence is the door to consent.

Zen Later.6475:

@aaron

Ummm, yeah cuz you know, the winning team is going out and you know, playing the game, capping and holding in numbers.

My own combined game experiences have been when we’ve lost, it’s because we haven’t had the numbers and/or we’ve been disorganized versus a superior force. I didn’t feel the need for the magic wand to be waved and some sort of unearned advantage to be given to my losing side. It sucks losing and even losing badly, I’ve felt it & seen it.

If you read through the entire post you’d see I don’t disagree with some underlying issues such as transfers and the way the auto match up system is ranking matches together.

The game already waves a magic wand for the winning side :/

While I do believe that massively overwhelmed sides need a little help I have to say that 90% of the problems is the fault of fickle players.

When your side is winning you might have full ques every prime time. When your side is losing you may never see a que. I’ve been on both sides of it and during the times we have lost we would have done 50 times better if all the people hadn’t given up and gone home to suck on their pacifier.s.

Likewise server transfers is an extension of this. People that cannot handle fighting a challenge bail for an easy win. Because winning is all that matters right? As they end up bored enough to camp you at your spawn.

No, poor matchups will happen and there needs to be some help given in those cases. But again, 90% of this is the fault of the players normally.

I agree with you about resources – players should get resources for killing a dolyak. I also could’ve sworn that we also got 1 supply point when we gathered nodes.

I feel that sPvP should carry over to WvW in some way. You have people dedicated to PvP yet stuck with a level 2 toon in WvW. I don’t they should be better than a fully leveled 80 but some sort of incentive would help. I will say it takes a lot longer to get to glory rank 80 than just level 80.

I don’t quite understand, if you’re calling for fair sided teams because one or more servers lack numbers (such as they have 10 or 20 inside the whole borderland), and you want the teams to be even, controlled and fair, doesn’t that form of PvP already exist? sPvP is the right area for you if that’s what you are after, it already exists.

World vs World vs World is about whole servers, in all their masses attacking each other relentlessly around the clock. Solutions such as added in NPC’s to the losing team doesn’t make sense, World vs World is a form of Players vs Players and we do it to face real people, not mindless computers. If you enjoy fighting against NPC’s then PvE is what’s best for you. (you haven’t suggested this, but lots of other people have)

As for orbs and upgrades, you should be rewarded for your hard work, not punished. Anything on the map is easily takeable with the right planning. 3 Orbs or no orb, 5 arrow carts on top of the tower are going to make short work of the army attacking the gate with their buffs. If you’re the attacking side, the 15% health for the defenders makes no difference for you, you organize the rams/catapults, receive heals and shields, do it quickly and you’ll win.

I agree that there is a problem with 1 sided contests, half of that problem is the nature of server transfers, it’s like a merry go round where the bandwagon stack onto the winning server, the core community get disgusted at what the server has become, they then transfer off, the competitiveness of the server falls apart, everyone jumps off, before you know it you’re ET or HoD, and the cycle continues.

This is killing WvW and we should be having balanced match ups, the point of the free server transfers is so that friends can play on the same server as each other, it’s been now 2 months since release, and if people still haven’t figured out which server they’re playing on by now, they’re never going to figure it out. Server transfers are the core of the problem and it keep imbalancing everything, it’s a never ending cycle.

Server communities are suppose to be forged through WvW, not exploited, pillaged and destroyed. On sea of sorrows the majority of the oceanian players are the same ones that have been there since release, we all know each other and have been forming strong bonds through adversity and heavy losses, the only thing that has changed is the NA presence on SoS, some well organized guilds including an elite one transferred over because they were tired of long queues and they wanted to start something and make a difference. SoS was a unique server in that it was the only North American server without a North American WvW community.

I agree that it’s a problem, however these solutions are not dealing with the core of the problem in the first place. SoR, SoS and IOJ should all be in tier 2 and we’d be having one of the most thrilling server match ups to date, instead we are dealing with a ghost server (HoD) and another that has easily given up despite it’s vast numbers (IOJ). Had SoR been here, SoS would not have been allowed to dominate so easily.

I agree with a lot of what was said. My big draw to this game was WvW. I think there are a bunch of issues with it right now (looking at you orbs), but I keep playing because I like the concept. Right now tho its boring. For the reasons stated above.

My server was trying to be organized…and doing ok’ish…still needed work etc. But this week several active wvw guilds bailed on us.

One thing I really think should be done away with is repair costs in wvw. There is another thread that goes into detail on this forum. If I didnt worry about money, I would be more inclined to try stuff (maybe crazy desperate stuff) if my server was losing. Right now I look at the score, the maps…zone in…look if ppl are doing stuff….and then think forget it…will cost too much to even try.

I dont mind losing. I mind getting slaughter with no hope of fighting back.

EU servers need to have WvW reset in EU primetime… Free transfers either need to be stopped or given a WvW lockout for at least the duration of the current match resets (be that 1w, 2w or whatever) then let it continue for 4 resets to allow the tier system to actually work. After this period is the time to assess what if any changes are required in the WvW core mechanics.

A lot of this “snow-balling” isn’t actually snow-balling. It’s just one server steam rolling another. A lot of the imbalance is due simply to Free Transfers screwing up the ranking system, causing weak servers and strong servers to match up. Once rankings are straightened out, and servers of relatively equal strength fight, a lot of this snow-balling will end.

As for the OP, I disagree with pretty much all of it. Too many buffs on the losing side and too many handicaps on the winning side is unfair to the winning side. It’ll be even more unfair if the winning server has actually earned their points. I say this from SF, a rather pathetic WvW server.

**A rather ~unrefined~ idea;

I would like to see more emphasis placed on the Home Borderland. I believe there should be more benefits to protecting it. After all, it is our home zone. As it is, there is nothing special about the borderlands. They are just another battleground.

An idea of mine would be a Morale buff, naming conventions are not my forte. If a server’s ownership of their Home Borderlands drops below a percentage, a debuff will be placed on all players, of that server, in enemy Borderlands. This debuff will strengthen as the percentile of ownership of the Home Borderland drops. At a point of loss, the debuff will grow to include players in the Eternal Battlegrounds

And on the contrary, any players fighting in their Home Borderlands will receive a buff for defending Home. This buff will strengthen as less of Home is owned.

This idea will concentrate the players of a weak server, as well as strengthening them. This will allow for a better WvW experience all around. It would also helping with the snow-balling effect. If players see their own Borderlands doing well, they will be encouraged to help out.

Of course, this is taking into account that the strength of the servers aren’t eons apart. If Server A is 10x as powerful as Server B, then Server B should be crushed. This should never happen though, once rankings are stable.

**

I’m not sure, in previous wvwvw we got stomped at the first day by SoR controlling pretty much the entire map. Sole reason is that most of the players in SoS enjoyed playing the halloween event. SoS was downed for like 40k points people in the server felt despair but then PRX never gave up in trying to take points and tried to talk to other guilds to cooperate with them to attempt to try to take control of EB and borderlands.

We are downed by 40k points, SoR has 3 orbs but then we still manged to defeat them because the major guilds in SoS talked to each other and cooperated with each other. Sure there are dramas going but in the end, they worked together and thus gave us a victory towards the end of the week.

So I think it’s not fair to blame everything in Arena Net and their wvwvw mechanics as to why your server sucks. Just because a server overtake you during the first few days of the battle doesn’t mean you don’t stand a chance anymore because believe me you can.

Without PRX, SoS was basically strong only during oceanic peak times and with our off peak times, we pretty much get stomped enemy servers taking 3 orbs etc etc but when our prime guilds logged on they take back everything. This only proves that your point in the orbs is dead wrong. Sure having 3 orbs makes you superior but it doesnt equate to instant / sure win. In fact, we even overtook SoR’s score while they have 2 orbs on their server and we only got 1.

If you want to win the wvwvw , you just need to rally your server talk to the major guilds to cooperate with each other.

In your other arguments you do have a point. But I completely disagree with your orb mechanic suggestion.

Besides if arena net do implement your suggestion, Then I think it will break the wvwvw more than it will benefit it. All your suggestions only gave buffs to the losing server and doesnt have an advantage on the winning one. If this has been implemented then other servers will just lose on purpose to get those buffs and dominate WvWvW when their prime time comes. Seriously, I think wvwvw right now is good as it is. Each server just needs to know how to organize their major guilds and just needs to have a good leader.

SoS just got lucky that we got PRX transfered to our server and they pretty much took lead in EB. Before without PRX, SoS is just strong during oceanic peak times but with them backing up our NA time slot, WvWvW just got pretty interesting 24/7

A few of these are not really that hard to overcome. However, in my opinion the outmanned buffs and orb bonuses should be altered.

If they just switched orb and out-manned buffs or got rid of combat stat boosts entirely, I’d be happy. Overranked servers to due transfers is a stickier issue. Orb buffs are an easy an obvious fix that everyone seems to support. I’m not sure why Anet hasn’t addressed it already.

Implement Diminishing Returns on supply generation based on how many camps a team already has such that the team’s net supply generation goes up but each individual camp’s generation goes down. It encourages organization, because gaining a camp on one borderland will influence battles on the others. It makes camp taking an actual decision, rather than a no-brainer. It also gives a quasi buff to the losing side, since losers will have far more supply generated at one specific location than their opponents, thus favoring guerrilla attacks.

Modifying one of OP’s suggestions a bit, I’d say that each team should have a constant amount of NPCs per map.

Let’s take a look at Eternal Battlegrounds. Say your team has 70 NPCs that can be spread around automatically – if you hold your own Keep, four Towers and 2 Supply Camps, you’ll have 10 NPCs per place (1 of whom would be a Champion – he goes to Stonemist if you capture it, otherwise he says in your Keep).

If you dominate the entire map, those 70 will be split between 22 places, or around 3 NPCs each, which makes Supply Camps particularly easy for small groups of enemies to re-take.

Conversely, if you’re getting dominated and you only have your own Keep left, it will be filled with 70 NPCs making it an extremely tough place for the dominating side to invade.

Should you then lose your Keep, those NPCs would respawn at your own spawn and make constant assaults on your local Keep. This would stop (or at least severely hinder) spawncamping, and even a handful of players would feel like they’ve got a small army on their side. If they re-take it, a group of NPCs can go and assault the nearest tower, and the amount changes depending on what you’ve re-taken. So if you only hold your Keep, 35 would stay behind and you’d get an assault force of 35 NPCs assaulting the nearest structure. Re-take a Keep and a Tower and around 47 NPCs defend, and the other 23 start a new assault somewhere else.

All of the above means that if you want to dominate a map, it’s a constant battle to do so. Conversely, if you’re heavily outnumbered by the opposition, at least you’ll have a small army on your side trying to restore some balance, and it should never get boring.

Disable server transfers or make that if you transfer you must pay 2000 gems for access to WvWvW.

It’s all true. good post.

I’m seeing a lot of replies along the lines of:

“You’re penalizing the winning side for winning.”

and

“You want to be handed free stuff because you can’t win.”

That really is not the point behind these suggestions. The point was to make the World vs World a place where you want to go after you’ve taken the entire map. As it currently stands you could most likely leave the map after taking it over and it’ll be days before the enemy team has taken the majority of it back without any resistance.

The problem is not that the losing side isn’t being given free stuff, the problem is that the winning side is giving free stuff, simply because they are winning. “Oh, you control the entire map, that’s nice. Have 15% extra HP, 150 to all stats and enough supplies to withstand seven different servers attacking you at once.”

They are being given such a massive advantage that there has to be something to compensate for it, the losing side needs to be given a chance to fight back.

Let’s take a different example, we have a gladiator arena where you fight until one team has been defeated. This goes on during the entire week. Each side is allowed to bring ten warriors, and they’re armed in leather armor and wield swords.

Side A wins the first fight and they may now wear chainmail. This advantage makes them win the next fight as well, at which point they’re allowed to wear platemail. At some point side A is wielding machine guns, and side B is still stuck with their leather armor and flimsy swords. While you could argue that “if side B works together and comes up with a plan they could win”, there’s no real way that is ever going to happen. Eventually side B is going to have difficulty finding people stupid enough to even try to go up against side B, and the arena sees no action anymore.

Now this might sound like a pretty silly analogy, but this is pretty much what is currently happening. An early win by one side pretty much guarantees that they get such a major advantage that side B will see no option but to simply give up and wait for the reset.

Then there’s the argument that people would lose on purpose, only to then dominate with their buffs. This is, of course, ridiculous. The buffs are not “there to stay”. If each side controls half the map (yes there’s three sides, but for the sake of simplicity let’s pretend there’s only two) then there are no buffs for either side, they’re on even grounds. If side A decides to stop fighting and lets side B take everything, yes, they will get some buffs to make up for it when people decide to play again.

If they then get everybody to play again and use those buffs to quickly take back half the map, the two sides are on even grounds again. It’s not like the fact that they were losing at some point is going to give them champions for the rest of the week. Whatever side is losing at that point should be given some slack, to keep people interested.

You can say what you want, but the current system is not interesting for either side. I’ve seen how the World vs World currently looks. If I attack a camp with some friends, hundreds of players from the other side show up.

Why? Because it’s the only action going on on the entire map. Because the system is stacked so heavily against one side, the other side gives up.

One side has nobody to fight, the other side has no real chance to win a fight with the other side. As a result side A is bored all day and side B refuses to leave their safe zone. Spawn camping happens because people still need their monthlies and nobody is truly enjoying World vs World at that point.

Yes, it might feel “unfair” to you that the losing side is given a chance to fight back. But at the very least it will result in some actual world vs world action happening. Or would you rather keep on spawn camping for your world vs world monthly kills?