Guild Wars 2

There is one thing every competitive sport and/or game has in common: even number teams. Here is a quote to a running conversation that needs to be read by the dev’s.

I welcome all feedback on this idea except for “WvW isn’t meant to be balanced”
That is something that bandwagon scrubs tell themselves so that they can feel good about winning at the expense of what could be a fantastic game mode.

Deli.1302:

]Anet knows this is broken and CAN’T do anything to fix it. They have no idea how to fix it.

\:

That’s because it cannot be fixed.

Fluffball.8307:

No it definitely can

Deli.1302:

ok pls tell me how

Jim Hunter.6821:

Lower the population limit so each server could only field 50 per map. The servers will balance themselves out and the game would turn into skill>population.

I like this idea too, make the limit of how many can be on map MUCH lower, something obscenely lower like fifty! I like it – I vote yes![/quote]

Jim Hunter.6821:

Fluffball.8307:

Only T1 servers can get anywhere close to fielding 50 people per map, and we’ve already seen the queue times are not enough to get people to move to lower ranked servers rather than being carried to a win on a high ranked server.

50 was just a number grabbed out of the air. You could easily say 30 or 40. The idea is to put everyone on a level playing field. If people would rather sit in queue than transfer that is their choice to make. Once the servers start balancing themselves out the population limit can be incrementally raised.

An added bonus is this would probably reduce lag and skill delay.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Fluffball.8307:

I think we’re talking a realistic limit of like 8 people per map. Most servers have a single small zerg that bounces between maps based on threats.

It would have to be a limit per all 4 maps I guess to not break that playstyle.

Lol I don’t think it’s that bad just yet. Even in tier 7/8 the servers could field around 30 per map. I personally think bringing a little balance to WvW and forcing people to use a bit of strategy instead of just outmanning the other servers might get a lot of people playing again.

Even if your server doesn’t have 50 people on the map and another one does, it will still limit the massive zergs that can just melt down towers and keeps. If a server wants to get in a 50 man blob they will likely lose everything to smaller groups that cap things around them.

sparc.3649:

^ this ^

I think the lower the number allowed on the maps the better. This will likely help force people to split up into smaller groups just as Jim stated. Split up into different groups or face losing all your stuff to the server that does!

Think about how much more fun it would be if you were facing every other server and the rankings were actually based on skill rather than population. Sorry if I misquoted anyone above, it was sloppy cut and paste work.

No. Reducing map population cap is not the way to go.

Just to clarify, I also don’t support reducing map population. Even though my server is getting wafflestomped right now, on reset we fill all the maps and have some really fun big scale fights.

My solution in the quoted thread was to somehow encourage or force people to move to non BG servers.

Personally I don’t think lowering the maximum number of players that can be on a map is a good idea. This will only hinder higher tier servers and won’t help lower tier servers much.

Currently each map can support up to 80 players per server which means each server can have up to a maximum of 320 players in WvW at anytime.

A system which can limit the total number of players each server can have on across all maps which change dynamically in relation to the other servers might work for everyone. As an example, if green has 30 people and blue has 35 people on across all four maps, red can only have a maximum of 45. Even though none of the servers have a queue on any maps, the next person who tries to join WvW on the red server gets placed into a global queue which works much like the individual map queue system. Even though the red server currently has a “global queue” all the players already on a WvW can freely move between maps.

Of course, some type of fail safe would need to be put in place so a losing server can’t decide to log out in order to render the winning server unable to play out of spite.

U do realize that there r guild capable of fielding 40 by them self right? What r they suppose to do?

The answer is rather simple…World Alliances aka Battle Groups. Take the top 3 populated servers and divide the rest equally among the 3.

Details to follow.

Crius.5487:

Personally I don’t think lowering the maximum number of players that can be on a map is a good idea. This will only hinder higher tier servers and won’t help lower tier servers much.

Currently each map can support up to 80 players per server which means each server can have up to a maximum of 320 players in WvW at anytime.

A system which can limit the total number of players each server can have on across all maps which change dynamically in relation to the other servers might work for everyone. As an example, if green has 30 people and blue has 35 people on across all four maps, red can only have a maximum of 45. Even though none of the servers have a queue on any maps, the next person who tries to join WvW on the red server gets placed into a global queue which works much like the individual map queue system. Even though the red server currently has a “global queue” all the players already on a WvW can freely move between maps.

Of course, some type of fail safe would need to be put in place so a losing server can’t decide to log out in order to render the winning server unable to play out of spite.

I think that’s a very interesting and good idea.

Something like Standard 30 cap.

Once each team has 20+ on the map the cap raises to 40. Once each has 30 on map raises to 50, etc till it reaches the current caps.

This could help alleviate population and coverage issues by limiting the top dogs to a level closer to the lower population/coverage servers but still having the freedom for the system to scale up if both sides have the numbers. The lower end minimum cap of 30 and the largish gaps of 10 before the cap would prevent manipulation that you point out.

/shrug, it could work. I could see people complaining though.

Valik Shin.9027:

U do realize that there r guild capable of fielding 40 by them self right? What r they suppose to do?

I do realize this. They could do what my guild does and split into smaller groups and hit multiple objectives while coordinating attacks on TS.

Or they could transfer to ET. They have the space.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Valik Shin.9027:

U do realize that there r guild capable of fielding 40 by them self right? What r they suppose to do?

I do realize this. They could do what my guild does and split into smaller groups and hit multiple objectives while coordinating attacks on TS.

Or they could transfer to ET. They have the space.

So ur gonna force guild to change the way they enjoy playing? They are the life blood of gw2. If they cripple them then gw2 will collapse

Valik Shin.9027:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Valik Shin.9027:

U do realize that there r guild capable of fielding 40 by them self right? What r they suppose to do?

I do realize this. They could do what my guild does and split into smaller groups and hit multiple objectives while coordinating attacks on TS.

Or they could transfer to ET. They have the space.

So ur gonna force guild to change the way they enjoy playing? They are the life blood of gw2. If they cripple them then gw2 will collapse

This. Also, there are guilds that field 70+ on their own

Valik Shin.9027:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Valik Shin.9027:

U do realize that there r guild capable of fielding 40 by them self right? What r they suppose to do?

I do realize this. They could do what my guild does and split into smaller groups and hit multiple objectives while coordinating attacks on TS.

Or they could transfer tgoo ET. They have the space.

So ur gonna force guild to change the way they enjoy playing? They are the life blood of gw2. If they cripple them then gw2 will collapse

Look at the scores right now. Server stacking is what is killing WvW. With equal numbers you would actually get to fight every server instead of the same 3 or 4. People would be less likely to rage quit because they are tired of fighting vastly superior numbers every time they log on.

If you win it would be due to skill, not just boots on the ground. I play on bronze and I’ve hopped on a friends account and played on BG. With relatively equal numbers ET would absolutely destroy BG.

The problem is your posting “a solution” to something that the majority of players and Anet do not think is “a problem that needs to be resolved”.

nirvana.8245:

The problem is your posting “a solution” to something that the majority of players and Anet do not think is “a problem that needs to be resolved”.

You think so? Because I don’t think I’ve ever looked at these forums without seeing several threads complaining about stale matchups, population imbalance and how WvW is dying.

I can’t count how many times that I’ve seen the same “merge the servers” thread. This offers a solution to what they are looking for in those threads, while at the same time offering an increased chance of fighting more servers, rather than stuffing everyone into 6 mega blob servers.

Clearly the anet solution is for everyone to congregate in the top servers and if you choose to stay in the bottom tiers they don’t care about the imbalances, but they don’t want to be seen as forcing the players to move.

Jim Hunter.6821:

There is one thing every competitive sport and/or game has in common: even number teams. Here is a quote to a running conversation that needs to be read by the dev’s.

The problem I see here is I feel your looking at it wrong. If you want a sport, go to sPvP or tPvP. If you want easy fun, go to PvP………………………..If you want a trophy for everyone on your team even if they lose, you do not go to war. WvW is war. It is not a sport, or a fair game. And pouncing on unsuspecting prey or smaller numbered groups, is the name of the game.

Jim Hunter.6821:

I welcome all feedback on this idea except for “WvW isn’t meant to be balanced”
That is something that bandwagon scrubs tell themselves so that they can feel good about winning at the expense of what could be a fantastic game mode.

Cute. You assume you can demand what we are allowed to speak of within the context of the topic. Well no scrub or bandwagoneer said that . More then one arena net dev has stated it. You do not have to like it, but it is a fact of the situation.

What does strike me as odd, is that many posters suggest they want to make WvW better, yet are willing to suggest changes that harm the experience of everyone else. Such as lowering the server population limit. That will force longer queues for the rest of us for your own personal convenience. If that is an approach your willing to take, then you are willing to hose others who already have daily map queues, even further, for your own personal gain. That is not a conducive approach to someone who want to truly solve a problem.

As well, why is this Anets, or anyone else s fault? They gave you the tools. All of the room is there. You simply do not have the players on your server who wish to play. You should do as the rest of us. Make a push to recruit, educate, and assist new players.

Jim Hunter.6821:

nirvana.8245:

The problem is your posting “a solution” to something that the majority of players and Anet do not think is “a problem that needs to be resolved”.

You think so? Because I don’t think I’ve ever looked at these forums without seeing several threads complaining about stale matchups, population imbalance and how WvW is dying.

I can’t count how many times that I’ve seen the same “merge the servers” thread. This offers a solution to what they are looking for in those threads, while at the same time offering an increased chance of fighting more servers, rather than stuffing everyone into 6 mega blob servers.

I agree, your “assuming” it is an issue with so many and “requires a solution”. With no actual information to support it. Stale match ups are not the problem you made this thread for so it is irrelevant.

The same 100ish people mull over the belly aching on this matter and the same group of them make and remake the complaint threads. Yet around 7 million people bought this game. I hardly feel you could even begin to claim the few thousand that ever use the forums as any type of representative of any sort of majority. Much less the same 100 complaining that they want more of their server to play WvW, yet never step up to do anything about it themselves, and expect Anet to wave a magic wand and “make them play” simply to appease the rest of the servers true WvW players with population in the game mode.

In my opinion EoTM should only open up to players with WvW map queues, because I personally few that is where a lot of players go on a casual bases that would be in WvW otherwise. That is a wild yet partially educated guess, based on my experience. I do not claim to have any metrics to support that though.

only 2 solutions :

either MERGE SERVERS or REDUCE MAP CAP.

only those not tried by ANET yet.

Jim Hunter.6821:

nirvana.8245:

The problem is your posting “a solution” to something that the majority of players and Anet do not think is “a problem that needs to be resolved”.

You think so? Because I don’t think I’ve ever looked at these forums without seeing several threads complaining about stale matchups, population imbalance and how WvW is dying.

I can’t count how many times that I’ve seen the same “merge the servers” thread. This offers a solution to what they are looking for in those threads, while at the same time offering an increased chance of fighting more servers, rather than stuffing everyone into 6 mega blob servers.

I see the same thing. Just like every other game: Vocal forum posters do not equate to a majority of players. Things will never change. Just stop trying to suggest how the game should be and see and play it as it is. Anet is set in stone on this. Your wasting your energy. I realised this 1.5-2 years ago, but some seem to be taking their time figuring it out.

John Corpening.9847:

You guys beat me to it. After last week’s positive discussion on siege trolls I wanted to bring up the topic of population imbalance and ideas that you have on it.

There are a couple of ideas already going in this thread:

• population caps
• merge servers
• Battle Groups

I’d like to join in this brainstorm with some questions on these. For merging servers, how do we determine who gets merged? Where would we merge them to? How do we maintain any sort of world pride or identity they have? How do we handle potentially merging with your mortal enemies?

For population caps, how do we deal with the longer queues on the worlds that can field enough people? If it is dynamic, would players be able to manipulate it? For example, our world is ahead so we all agree to not play WvW so the other worlds are capped down and can’t counter us.

For Battle Groups, Asglarek mentioned more details are on the way. I’d love to hear more.

I’m approaching this as a brainstorm. The topic is “Approaches to correcting overall population imbalance”. I know there is a related topic of 24 hour coverage but I’d like to keep that as a separate conversation for now.

Please keep this friendly, constructive and on topic. We had a really good discussion on the siege troll thread I’m hoping we can kick around some ideas and have another great discussion here. Feel free to add additional ideas that I didn’t list out but please make sure they are on topic.

Thanks,
John

I created a thread a while ago about population caps that saw a fair amount of discussion (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Proposal-decrease-the-player-cap-on-WvW-maps/first). I still support the idea for all of the reasons listed there.

Alternatively, server merging is probably the best bet, but you’re likely to get a ton of lower-tier pride members crying foul in the process. I think the reality is that 24-27 servers is just too many for the current game population.

If you were to merge servers, the best way to do it would be to get rid of X number of servers (preferably the T1/T2 servers) and then open up free transfers across all the remaining worlds.

Right now there are 4 servers with any decent sized OCX population, SoS/BG/TC/JQ. If the mergers were to create anymore than 6 servers there would be so little fights during this timezone it’d be like the current T2 and be boring as hell.

However, to merge into 6 servers would mean massive queue times for NA prime players.

I don’t really see any solutions tbh.

You have servers out there who have invested a lot of time and energy to build tight-knit wvw communities. So how do you keep those server communities intact if they are negatively impacted by population caps or just getting rid of their server identities? A solution that would work should also consider existing communities and give them an opportunity to stay together.

Please, not something like we currently have in EotM.

Even though it is the simplest solution, server merges run the risk of just making a bad situation worse – and destroying a server’s identity (which some people – even in T3 – still care about).

Battle groups, on the other hand, would work.

This could work in one of two ways -

1. Similar to EOTM where there are only 3 teams for the entire region (eg, NA), with an aggregate weekly score that includes all matches. This would require figuring out how many versions of the current maps would be needed to accomodate everyone, but that shouldnt be hard using recent historic data. Then simply have the three teams fight over 20 maps (not a real number) instead of 4. This would allow for easy addition of future maps. I know the bigger servers (T1) would probably not like this idea though.

2. The other way would be to keep the matches the way they are now, but simply temporarily merge lower population servers week to week for the sole purpose of WvW. The downside would be organized servers would still be prefered over the lower tiers, but at least the numbers/coverage should look better.

There are probably other ways this would work as well.

The only thing I will say for sure is that something needs to be done – badly – and, imo, it MUST be done before the next season starts. Especially at lower tiers, WvW is becoming extremely tedious and unfun (and if they are going to suspend releasing PVE content during seasons, WvW needs to be fun for EVERYONE).

John Corpening.9847:

You guys beat me to it. After last week’s positive discussion on siege trolls I wanted to bring up the topic of population imbalance and ideas that you have on it.

There are a couple of ideas already going in this thread:

• population caps
• merge servers
• Battle Groups

I’d like to join in this brainstorm with some questions on these. For merging servers, how do we determine who gets merged? Where would we merge them to? How do we maintain any sort of world pride or identity they have? How do we handle potentially merging with your mortal enemies?

For population caps, how do we deal with the longer queues on the worlds that can field enough people? If it is dynamic, would players be able to manipulate it? For example, our world is ahead so we all agree to not play WvW so the other worlds are capped down and can’t counter us.

For Battle Groups, Asglarek mentioned more details are on the way. I’d love to hear more.

I’m approaching this as a brainstorm. The topic is “Approaches to correcting overall population imbalance”. I know there is a related topic of 24 hour coverage but I’d like to keep that as a separate conversation for now.

Please keep this friendly, constructive and on topic. We had a really good discussion on the siege troll thread I’m hoping we can kick around some ideas and have another great discussion here. Feel free to add additional ideas that I didn’t list out but please make sure they are on topic.

Thanks,
John

Population caps: Don’t do it. Reducing the caps on WvW maps will not solve any issue because coverage is where the issue stems from. People want to be on a server that has coverage so their population inadvertently rises, thus creating the imbalance. Even if map caps are reduced, off-peak population is not big enough that the queues would be a problem anyway, especially with EotM now in the picture.

Merge servers: Could certainly work but it won’t solve the issue either. First you must understand that higher populated servers have more coverage (eg. Jade Quarry is known for their very large Taiwanese playerbase) than low populated servers (eg. Ferguson’s Crossing and Ehmry Bay don’t have a non-NA playerbase). So merging 2 low populated servers will only just create a larger populated server, which still lacks coverage.

I think there is certainly a lot of benefits to server mergers, but it won’t solve the problems in WvW unless the number of servers are severely reduced. If just a couple of server are merged, you’ll still have the same problems as now, but with less servers. Only if the number of servers are severely reduced to the point that there will be around ~12 servers for each region, will the effects of coverage be lessened on population imbalance. Because at that point I think that there will be enough active players in the game that any remaining imbalance won’t be so extreme like it is now.

If servers do get merged: I don’t think anyone would really care about having to play with their “mortal enemies”. I’ve seen plenty of former rivals eventually winding up on the same server and dropping any of the bad blood they used to have. We all play the game to have fun.

Choosing which ones to merge is easy, just take the lowest ranked ones. They have the lowest active wvw population. I’d say get a fresh start with some new servers (new names) to merge the old ones into. Perhaps let the people from servers that are about to get merged choose which of the new servers they would go to?

Battle Groups: Since it’s been stated by Anet sometime last year that WvW maps could not possibly be bigger than they currently are (due to technical reasons), you won’t be able to fit the entire game’s WvW player base into 4 maps

I would rather see the rating system adjusted to something that provides better matches than any kind of merge.

For instance, look at Maguuma right now. The problem isn’t they lost a bunch of guilds, the problem is they are still in T2 and have been there way, way longer than they should have been. It looks like this week will finally drop them to T3, yet the tournament will artificially keep them in gold league for another 2 weeks. Hopefully glicko doesn’t bork them over again before the tournament is over, last week their rating went up!!

http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/history/209

I saw the same thing when I was on SoR – it took 18 straight weeks of losses before we finally fell out of T1 – that’s 4.5 months! Four and a half months of continual losses to drop 1 tier because the glicko rating system kept us there much longer than we should have been. Then it took another month to fall out of T2.

I implore you to address the rating system first – not every server needs or wants Blackgate numbers, we just want fair matches.

John Corpening.9847:

You guys beat me to it. After last week’s positive discussion on siege trolls I wanted to bring up the topic of population imbalance and ideas that you have on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHcO6Xo8eJ8&feature=youtu.be

Pair servers together based on ranking and allow for WvW guesting between the paired servers. Simple. The only thing the video doesn’t cover is that servers rarely need, or want that much help, so something like a 20-30 limit on WvW guests would probably do. One thing I really like about the idea is that it allows for small groups to play with or against new players more often, which is something I feel WvW could really benefit from.

I wasn’t going to touch this post, but since it got a red stamp on it, here is my thoughts.

Population caps: Bad idea no matter how you look at it. Preventing people from playing isn’t going to make WvW more fun.

Merge servers: Could possibly work, but I won’t advocate the destruction of communities that have been built by any server no matter how big or how small.

Battle Groups: Can’t comment with out some idea of what is actually meant by this.

On a side note: We don’t need needless complicated systems on trying to manage the game mode, or anything that converts our current system into anything like the Karma train that EoTM became will do anything other then kill the game mode completely.

Sharpoon.8197:

I think there is certainly a lot of benefits to server mergers, but it won’t solve the problems in WvW unless the number of servers are severely reduced. If just a couple of server are merged, you’ll still have the same problems as now, but with less servers. Only if the number of servers are severely reduced to the point that there will be around ~12 servers for each region, will the effects of coverage be lessened on population imbalance. Because at that point I think that there will be enough active players in the game that any remaining imbalance won’t be so extreme like it is now.

I agree with this, merging serves may be the best option but it has to be drastic and it will cause a huge outcry. Plus there has to be free transfers along with it.

Free transfers may also have a positive effect just used on their own but the ranking would have to be made a lot more flexible to account for sudden changes in WvW pop.

Just on battle groups I don’t think it would work because there’s nothing to give a battle group a sense of identity, colours as used in EOTM do not cut it. If you do look to this as some sort of solution you would have to look very carefully at how to give each ‘faction’ an identity, and obviously it can’t really be racial.

John Corpening.9847:

I’d like to join in this brainstorm with some questions on these. For merging servers, how do we determine who gets merged? Where would we merge them to? How do we maintain any sort of world pride or identity they have? How do we handle potentially merging with your mortal enemies?

Here’s the thing about world pride, enemies etc. -

It’s gone. Communities used to be more of an influence drawing everyone together for PvE back when we were all on separate worlds, but for better or worse we can all play together there now. Mostly for better, I might add – can you imagine 51 different communities all left to organise Tequatl runs on their own?

WvW has always been a much more fluid scene despite the transfer costs, because a sizable portion of players will just leave a server if they don’t like it anymore. The result is 3 fully-populated servers in NA, 5-6 marginally populated, and 15 ghost towns.

People transfer to worlds they’re playing against all the time, even (perhaps especially) in the very week they’re playing them.

I think we can rule out merging anyone into BG, JQ or TC at this point – their populations are fine (and most people saying “but the community…!” are on those very servers, ironically). For the other servers, look at their peak populations in WvW – with megaservers, PvE doesn’t matter anymore – the week after the tournament ends (to cancel the ‘shinies’ effect) and use those to inform how to level out the curve. Try to take servers from entirely different tiers in the merger, for example SoS, BP and ET, who haven’t seen each other at all for a very long time.

Owing to the fluidity of movement and the fact that all players are people drawn from the same populations, while there may be some initial disappointment in isolated communities being merged, they’re quite capable of getting along and in the end they will.

There are people out there who prefer playing on low-pop/dead servers, and mergers might drive them off. I must confess I don’t quite get that – if the only thing keeping them playing WvW is that they’re barely playing with anyone else, the game mode needs help badly. And from that standpoint it’s much easier to improve the game mode in future when you’re not trying to make changes that will have a much different effect on fully-populated servers compared with those who see only 20-50 players at primetime.

John Corpening.9847:

For population caps, how do we deal with the longer queues on the worlds that can field enough people? If it is dynamic, would players be able to manipulate it? For example, our world is ahead so we all agree to not play WvW so the other worlds are capped down and can’t counter us.

Short answer is players on overpopulated servers would have to transfer. It could be manipulated, but if you don’t kick people who are already logged in, worlds wouldn’t be able to force opposing worlds’ players out of a map that way.

However, on lower tiers, server A could send players over to a map on which they own nothing to start a golem rush, forcing server B to move players over to counter it or risk losing their stuff. The golem rush wouldn’t have to succeed – it would just have to get opposing players off the map to force the cap down. And then server A’s players can log off to go to bed, leaving server B with all their players on their own borderland with nothing in need of defense and no other map to go to, because they’re all queued.

So that’s the long answer – it can and will be exploited.

Apologies for the over-long post. I’ll have to throw my suggestions into a new one.

What I think should be done is consideration of server merges, and scaling PPT. I’m not saying merges should go right ahead, just that we should have a hard look at whether keeping 24 NA servers and 27 EU servers is doing more harm than good at this stage. The WvW tournaments would work fine if each league was approaching even, but there is no way in hell you’re going to get an even matchup out of a T3, a T4 and a T5 server no matter how hard players try. We need populations to be evened out more for this to even be fun, let alone winnable.

Scaling PPT is always going to be a curly one because of the compromise between rewarding players who play outside primetime and not penalising those who don’t. I suggest multiplying it by a scalar of the mean population of the three servers at the scoretick. This means a server playing with 250 players against 0 and 0 (to use an extreme example) is getting a third of the points they would if both other servers had 250. It means that outnumbering servers doesn’t reward you as heavily, but it’s still stupid not to defend if you have the people to do it.

Finally, if server merges ever did happen, I’d like them to coincide with some expansion of the WvW arena. Consider adding some smaller maps with low population caps that are aimed more at the people who want to be rewarded more for fighting other groups than capping structures. Consider also how GvG combat could be integrated into WvW through challenging guilds for the possession, at a set daily time, of guild keeps / halls (probably also on new maps).

Variety is the spice of life – you’ll find future WvW tournaments to be more compelling after the first week if there are a number of different ways to help your server out.

[Edit: One more thing. Thank you for listening. At least if we know you’re aware there’s a problem, there’s some hope for the future beyond looking for the next game to try the WvW mode.]

Sharpoon.8197:

Population caps: Don’t do it. Reducing the caps on WvW maps will not solve any issue because coverage is where the issue stems from. People want to be on a server that has coverage so their population inadvertently rises, thus creating the imbalance. Even if map caps are reduced, off-peak population is not big enough that the queues would be a problem anyway, especially with EotM now in the picture.

They could also lower the population cap even more during off hours. Teach some of these oceanic players how to fight other players instead of doors.

Sharpoon.8197:

Merge servers: Could certainly work but it won’t solve the issue either. First you must understand that higher populated servers have more coverage (eg. Jade Quarry is known for their very large Taiwanese playerbase) than low populated servers (eg. Ferguson’s Crossing and Ehmry Bay don’t have a non-NA playerbase). So merging 2 low populated servers will only just create a larger populated server, which still lacks coverage.

Ehmry Bay actually has a pretty strong Oceanic crew (unless they lost it right before the tourney) and FC recently got their own crew.

Sharpoon.8197:

I think there is certainly a lot of benefits to server mergers, but it won’t solve the problems in WvW unless the number of servers are severely reduced. If just a couple of server are merged, you’ll still have the same problems as now, but with less servers. Only if the number of servers are severely reduced to the point that there will be around ~12 servers for each region, will the effects of coverage be lessened on population imbalance. Because at that point I think that there will be enough active players in the game that any remaining imbalance won’t be so extreme like it is now.

If servers do get merged: I don’t think anyone would really care about having to play with their “mortal enemies”. I’ve seen plenty of former rivals eventually winding up on the same server and dropping any of the bad blood they used to have. We all play the game to have fun.

Couldn’t disagree more. All the regular WvW players on my server have had this discussion in the past and they agreed that they would quit the game before being merged with certain servers.

Sharpoon.8197:

Choosing which ones to merge is easy, just take the lowest ranked ones. They have the lowest active wvw population. I’d say get a fresh start with some new servers (new names) to merge the old ones into. Perhaps let the people from servers that are about to get merged choose which of the new servers they would go to?

It would make a lot more sense to remove the top tier servers since they have the largest population and make them spread out among the rest. The majority of the players on the lower tiers have been there since they started playing. Can BG say the same?

Still the better solution would be to lower the population limits instead of destroying servers all together. This would have the same result of evening out the population but it would leave us with more opponents to fight.

Ben K.6238:

Scaling PPT is always going to be a curly one because of the compromise between rewarding players who play outside primetime and not penalising those who don’t. I suggest multiplying it by a scalar of the mean population of the three servers at the scoretick. This means a server playing with 250 players against 0 and 0 (to use an extreme example) is getting a third of the points they would if both other servers had 250. It means that outnumbering servers doesn’t reward you as heavily, but it’s still stupid not to defend if you have the people to do it.

I agree some sort of PPT scaling is another option that should be considered. Something along the lines of what you have proposed is definitely worth considering.

I had a discussion with one of my co-workers this is a really difficult problem to solve.

The problem is three fold.

1. Everyone wants to be on the winning team so they will all pick the group that they expect to be on the winning team. You can’t force a winning team either. This is called the population problem.

1. Everyone plays on different times this is called the coverage problem. Players will naturally try to find groups that play at about the same time as they do.

1. You have 3 maps. I don’t think any server populates all three maps all the time. This spreads a small population to be even smaller.
   
   I will first discuss the ones proposed so far:

Lower Population caps
You install lower population caps you have people upset about not being able to play WvW especially during the weekend. This also only solves the population problem. You could adjust the population dynamically depending on how many players of the apposing team is on the map however some maps(Borderlands) however you will run into a deadlock until the apposing team decides to join the map.

Server Merges
You can do server merges. But also has it’s problems. One being it is not a future proof solution. You will continue to have to preform server merges as the game dies down until you have just 3 servers. You may also be forcing some servers together that might not play well together. It will also cause communities to crash. I may be wrong on this matter. This is one of the more viable options.

Battle groups
You need to look no farther then the data acquired in Guild Wars 1 to determine how well that worked. In short it didn’t. People still picked the winning side and the poor luxtons rarely caught a break. They did win sometimes but not frequently enough. This also destroys the current communities. And this also brings up a social problem the game so far has been built on servers. If you completely remove that you will basically be starting the game over and you may split some social groups.

These problems also ignore any technical issues with needing larger bigger maps. But they may be solvable.

My suggestion
Start by getting rid of the borderlands and shorten the time-frame of matches to solve the coverage issue. This is mostly because adjusting PPT to take coverage into account may not seem fair to the oceanic/sea groups. Create a new single map like Eternal Battlegrounds only with better and more interesting mechanics like Edge of the mists. Then install dynamic population caps that increase as more players join the maps. These servers must have excellent back end performance and it may require some more optimization to handle larger groups. But my solution has the same problem of lowering the population caps.

These problems also ignore any technical issues with needing larger bigger maps. But they may be solvable.

My suggestion also has many problems that many of the other ones do.

TL;DR

In short I don’t see a really viable solution.

Why not just make the buff you get when there are more of the enemy around stronger? Like if one server fields 70 people on the map, while the other side only fields 25, then the 25 players are all the equivalent of Vet+2 mobs or something, each capable of taking on 2-3 enemy players. Likewise, bases and such would have stronger NPC defenses, meaning you don’t need to keep them all manned. Maybe even have special WPs all over the map that become contested based on how many players are on the map, allowing an outmatched team to bop around the map freely and be wherever the action is, while the ones with the significant numerical advantage would move much more ponderously.

Obviously characters inside the main forts, just using the facilities would not be counted towards the total number of players active on the map.

Some classes might scale better off that than others. Can you imagine a Lich Form necro on Maguuma being scaled to 84?

That’s how you do a PvP worldboss.

If a server merge were to even be considered, I would be vehemently against any way about it that “deletes” the most populated servers and redistributes the players on them, or any way that would otherwise break up server populations as a whole.

I like my server. I don’t want to lose my server identity – the only place we have server identities now is in WvW, so please don’t ruin that.

I think some lower tier servers would do well with a merge, but how many servers to merge together, and which, is the question. You don’t want a stacked server that has literally no non-NA players, just as you wouldn’t want an OCX-SEA-only server.

About population caps…no. Just no. I have been outnumbered on maps before, and yes, it sucks to not have enough people on to take on an enemy zerg that’s attacking your keep, but it would be the worst change in the world for tier 1 to have population caps.

Maybe this would be viable in lower populated servers, but it would ruin us. I like that servers have their strong time zones and weak time zones (and yes, this is coming from someone on TC who regularly goes up against JQ. Both servers have certain well-known weak periods in coverage). It makes the fight that much more fun.

anzenketh.3759:

Lower Population caps
You install lower population caps you have people upset about not being able to play WvW especially during the weekend. This also only solves the population problem. You could adjust the population dynamically depending on how many players of the apposing team is on the map however some maps(Borderlands) however you will run into a deadlock until the apposing team decides to join the map.

I’m curious what you mean by deadlocked? If you have roughly equal numbers you can take just about anything on the map if you are good enough. From my experience playing against lower pop servers (often during off hours), this is when you find the best fights. If you build a cata outside of ac range and in a spot where a bali can’t hit, they have to run out to fight you because they don’t have the numbers to spike build a counter treb.

This means the tower/keep goes to whoever wins the open field fight. During prime time, especially against certain servers who will go unnamed, there is nothing you can do to get them to fight outside of their sup ac range.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Ehmry Bay actually has a pretty strong Oceanic crew (unless they lost it right before the tourney) and FC recently got their own crew.

If you look at it outside of the singularity of their server, and as a whole across all servers, it’s certainly not a population substantial enough because if it was they’d be in the top half of the NA tiers.

Couldn’t disagree more. All the regular WvW players on my server have had this discussion in the past and they agreed that they would quit the game before being merged with certain servers.

Everybody says this. People said they’d quit the game if ascended gear was introduced. People always say that yet they will almost certainly still be here. I’m sure there have been guilds on your server that said that but have since transferred off, as well.

I think if Anet wants to have a clear understanding on the players opinions on server mergers, they’d implement an ingame survey/questionnaire (which they’ve done in the past) to gather that sort of information as forum posts are an unreliable source for raw data.

It would make a lot more sense to remove the top tier servers since they have the largest population and make them spread out among the rest. The majority of the players on the lower tiers have been there since they started playing. Can BG say the same?

This is pretty anecdotal.

Here’s My idea about population caps. My english is not that good to explain, but I believe you can understand this enough.

Base cap : 50 (wvw population is limited to this)
Cap increase: 10
Cap meet: 15

This base cap is increased by 10 when all servers meet “base cap – 15(cap meet)”

examples below

BG: 50
JQ: 45
TC: 30
= There’ll be still 50 of base cap becuase TC’s cap is below 35 of the population.

BG: 50
JQ: 50
TC: 35
= Now their base cap will be increased by 10 cause all server meet 35 of the population.

BG: 60
JQ: 52
TC: 45
= Again, their base cap will be increased by 10.

BG: 70
JQ: 53
TC: 49
= because of JQ and TC’s population, No more base cap will increase.

BG: 34
JQ: 57
TC: 29
= Oh, It’s asian time. JQ is capped over 50. JQ guys can leave, but can’t join until BG and TC meet 35.

Though this is just an idea. I’m not sure this can be helpful for this situation…

storiessave.3807:

If a server merge were to even be considered, I would be vehemently against any way about it that “deletes” the most populated servers and redistributes the players on them, or any way that would otherwise break up server populations as a whole.

I like my server. I don’t want to lose my server identity – the only place we have server identities now is in WvW, so please don’t ruin that.

I think some lower tier servers would do well with a merge, but how many servers to merge together, and which, is the question. You don’t want a stacked server that has literally no non-NA players, just as you wouldn’t want an OCX-SEA-only server.

About population caps…no. Just no. I have been outnumbered on maps before, and yes, it sucks to not have enough people on to take on an enemy zerg that’s attacking your keep, but it would be the worst change in the world for tier 1 to have population caps.

Maybe this would be viable in lower populated servers, but it would ruin us. I like that servers have their strong time zones and weak time zones (and yes, this is coming from someone on TC who regularly goes up against JQ. Both servers have certain well-known weak periods in coverage). It makes the fight that much more fun.

The lower tiers feel just as strongly about their server identities. That is why I suggested lowering the server cap, that prevents us from completely losing any servers.

I’m sure there are some players on tier 1 servers that have been there since launch and would never want to leave, but I know there are a ton more that hopped on the bandwagon at the start of each tournie that don’t have the same loyalty. These would be the players that would end up moving when faced with the option of playing somewhere else or sitting in queue.

Maybe the population problem can be fixed without actually doing anything to server populations. That is, develop tools that permit players or small teams to employ guerrilla warfare tactics – stealth, surprise attacks, speed and supply route control.

Ohoni.6057:

Why not just make the buff you get when there are more of the enemy around stronger? Like if one server fields 70 people on the map, while the other side only fields 25, then the 25 players are all the equivalent of Vet+2 mobs or something, each capable of taking on 2-3 enemy players. Likewise, bases and such would have stronger NPC defenses, meaning you don’t need to keep them all manned. Maybe even have special WPs all over the map that become contested based on how many players are on the map, allowing an outmatched team to bop around the map freely and be wherever the action is, while the ones with the significant numerical advantage would move much more ponderously.

Obviously characters inside the main forts, just using the facilities would not be counted towards the total number of players active on the map.

I can take on 2-3 players now. The problem is the rally mechanic make it a pain in the kitten . What would really make the outmanned buff effective is if the higher number server lost their downed state and instantly ressed at spawn. That would really even the odds for skill groups to take out much larger groups.

The thing about lowering the map population cap is that there are big guilds that will go into WvW. If the server population is to low they will just lock down the whole map and no one else can get in.

Or the map gets full of randoms and servers can not get their commanders in to lead. You have to make the cap big enough to allow guilds, randoms, scouts and commandors to be able to join in.

The Pied Piper.9827:

The thing about lowering the map population cap is that there are big guilds that will go into WvW. If the server population is to low they will just lock down the whole map and no one else can get in.

Or the map gets full of randoms and servers can not get their commanders in to lead. You have to make the cap big enough to allow guilds, randoms, scouts and commandors to be able to join in.

Lowering map populations takes away the best thing about WvW (basically all those things you listed in the last sentence, and huge fights.) IMO the discussion should be on leveling active WvW playerbases.

Maps in megaservers do it by first rewarding you to go to a new map and then finally at the bitter end just booting you off the map.

A lot of players farm dungeons because its worth it. Players play fractals because they need ascendeds and also a good money. Tons of players farm bosses because free yellows!
We, wvw players can buy cheap armor but to farm the badges we need much more time as a pve player to farm the money.
First reduce eotm badge drop ( or add more to wvw) and give us real rewards (Tx material bags, equickment boxes, new fancy skins etc… For badges)
Merging servers just a hotfix. Players need motivation to play (heroes weapons are not enough, sorry) complete 5 events is not a motivation to play a full week.
Repeatable achivements, funny titles for less then 1kk dolykill and so on… Just qol changes mostly, you dont need to reprogram the whole game
And btw remove normal xp pls and add lvling tomes.
Thx

Honestly as someone who started WvW just recently with the Spring tourney I’d be up for anything. I play on Fergusson’s Crossing late night. Sometimes there’s 20 of us. But then sometimes there’s so few of us I can’t find anyone.

Right now we’re matched up against Gate of Madness, who have so many more players than us it feels all but pointless to try.

Any of the three proposed solutions would be nice in my opinion. I’m sure folks here have better ideas than I do, but the way I look at it is if you don’t want to wait to jump into WvW then move to a smaller server. On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind mergers either but then I don’t have the same attachment to other players that some folks have. I just want to crush my enemies and siege keeps.

Edit: On second thought, Battle Groups seems the least attractive option. I don’t particularly like the formless mass that is EotM. It’s a shame to see a really brilliant Commander only once.

The Pied Piper.9827:

The thing about lowering the map population cap is that there are big guilds that will go into WvW. If the server population is to low they will just lock down the whole map and no one else can get in.

Or the map gets full of randoms and servers can not get their commanders in to lead. You have to make the cap big enough to allow guilds, randoms, scouts and commandors to be able to join in.

Yeah the point is to make them spread out. Once the population starts to even out the limit can be raised a little bit at a time. Guilds can still work together they just have to break into squads and coordinate attacks.

The game mode is stagnant right now. Everyone is facing the same few servers and the outcomes are rarely surprising . Putting all the servers on an equal footing will add some much needed variety to WvW.

Make sense. Force the big guilds to transfer out of T1 so they can get all their members in WvW.

Yenn.9185:

Make sense. Force the big guilds to transfer out of T1 so they can get all their members in WvW.

Exactly. Adapt or find a server where they can all hop in a map together (which helps balance the population)

No servers are being destroyed and no one is being forced to do anything. Heck this might even lead to people using EotM for what it was supposedly designed for, giving us a place to fight while waiting in queue.

Completely abandon the concept of worlds and servers for WvW and replace it with Alliances.

To start with, let players create their own alliances. These alliances would probably start as guild alliances but there shouldn’t be any reason why an individual couldn’t join one. These alliances would then be registered as WvW participants. After alliances are registered, retire the world servers.

Alliances would have a tiered registration.
*Tier 1: less than 500 members.
*Tier 2: 501 – 1000 members.
*Tier 3: 1001 – 1500 members
*Tier 4: 1501 – 2000 members
Have a cap of 2000 members forcing people to create other alliances and stopping stacking/bloating of an alliance. Members will belong to 1 alliance at a time. Have no cap on the number of alliances possible in the game.

Match ups will be based on tier first, then either by leaderboard score or a round robin rotating selection. I believe there would be enough alliances to make a round robin selection possible and effective.

Current world bonuses from WvW would instead be alliance bonuses.

All existing players would have an option to join an alliance, either with a guild or individually.

New players would never get an option to select worlds, their data would just be stored on a random server. The server at this point would be irrelevant. New players would then get to pick an alliance via game play from recruiters just like guilds do. This would allow for a much more informed decision about it as compared to now and allow for better development of “identity” in an alliance as opposed to world servers.

Problems may occur with individuals belonging to different alliances than their guilds belong to. However, this was also true of people belonging to different worlds in the same guild. That issue seems to have had only minor problems and I wouldn’t anticipate alliances creating significantly more in that respect.

This may also make a use for the team chat channel and differentiate it from map chat.

In short, this would level populations, increase the number of “players/alliances” in WvW, create a better sense of identity post megaserver, and still allow people to keep playing as they have been.

It’s going to have to be a harsh measure one way or another. Next to no one is ever going to leave the bigger team to join the smaller one unless someone makes them do it. Especially if those smaller teams are perceived as “loses often” regardless of how well they do in their individual arena.