Guild Wars 2

The game is called Guild Wars, not Server Wars. Dump the idea of servers and replace them with Guild Alliances. Having Guild Alliances that battle against other Guild Alliances would allow everyone to play exactly the way they want to play.

• Allow any guild create an Alliance (that Guild leader is now the Alliance leader).
• Allow the Alliance leader to invite other guilds to join their Alliance.
• Create several Arenas based on Alliance population cap and allow the Alliance leader to enter their Alliance into any Arena as long as they don’t exceed the Alliance cap. If you only have 200 people, but you want to play in the 800cap Arena just to prove a point, then go for it. There definitely also needs to be a 114cap arena. That’s only 2 people per building and 1 person per camp. Now, FIGHT!
• Before a person is eligible to battle in the Guild Wars, that person must be marked by their guild as eligible and only eligible players count against the Alliance cap. (that way you can still have PvE friends in your guild without them counting against your Alliance cap and Bob can go on vacation without needing to leave the guild).

The other amazing benefit of this… NO TROLLS! Everybody on your map would be a member of your Alliance. If they’re a troll either their Guild leader boots them or the Alliance leader boots that Guild.

No, you can’t join an alliance as an individual and no you’re not allowed to belong to two different guilds that are part of different alliances. Stop asking. You’re just trying to spy.

Even if Alliances doesn’t happen:
~ ~ Please don’t lower the map population caps too much. Dropping the cap by a bit would be ok, but some people really love big brawls.
~ ~ As someone else said, this also looks cool, but seems like it would be complicated for Anet to implement. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHcO6Xo8eJ8&feature=youtu.be
~ ~ The Outnumbered buff! Make it matter. If you’re downed by somebody who’s Outnumbered, then you’re fully dead. Perhaps even impossible to res.

Boris

Also, why in the heck isn’t PPT tied to population? That’s such a ridiculously easy way to reward people who are busting their butts while horribly outnumbered.
X = number of people on the map
Y = max allowed on map
PPT * (Y/X) = amount added to War Score

If you’re outnumbered 2:1, then everything you’re able to defend is worth twice as much. Is this “unfair” to the big servers in T4/T5? Does anybody really care?

Boris

edit: yes, dirtbags will try to game the system by logging out 15 seconds before PPT is counted. No big deal. Just determine the value for X at some random time during the 15 minute countdown.

Boris Losdindawoods.3098:

The game is called Guild Wars, not Server Wars. Dump the idea of servers and replace them with Guild Alliances. Having Guild Alliances that battle against other Guild Alliances would allow everyone to play exactly the way they want to play.

I don’t agree with destroying our server communities just to rebuild it with guild alliances which would end up being the same thing with a different name is the way to go. It’s not going to solve any type of population imbalance. With mega server for PVE, your server is pretty much already a guild alliance. The main reason why T1 servers have such a high population is because of their strong communities which attract people.

ketchup.2783:

How about having the tournament, or just daily rankings takes place only on Fridays for a designated 3 hours, for one month? Get the reward at end of each month.

Or mix servers for each world (red, green, or blue) each week.

It’s a bit off-topic, but have a look at: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Proposal-combine-the-best-of-WvW-and-EotM

Truth be told a lot of WvW issues would probably be resolved with the introduction of a structured GvG game mode:

• Preferably one that allows use of PvE gear as the PvP selection is rather limited and there will be disappointment if guilds can’t run what they currently run
• Keep it simple such as an open arena last man standing game mode, after you’re fully dead you go spectator mode on your team only
• Allow the 20v20 playstyle that people are already doing themselves in borderlands.

This would alleviate the queues to maps where nothing is being accomplished because its skirmish day. This would also allow for people to disperse across different servers without the worry of not being able to fight with their guilds. I realize the last point is counter intuitive, if you’re in a guild you will more than likely want to raid with them as well. This is moreso the option for entire guilds to disperse and not have to be in a certain tier to fight certain guilds, which may help with the population distribution as many currently use their numbers to manipulate the outcome for the rest of the server to stay in said tiers.

Not all population issues would be solved with a GvG mode but it would definitely help. Many guilds transfer to a specific server for the sole purpose of being able to GvG against a guild that’s on another server in the same tier.

Personally think details about how a GvG mode should be done is best left for another thread. However, I do agree that has been needed for a long time.

Crius.5487:

Not all population issues would be solved with a GvG mode but it would definitely help. Many guilds transfer to a specific server for the sole purpose of being able to GvG against a guild that’s on another server in the same tier.

Personally think details about how a GvG mode should be done is best left for another thread. However, I do agree that has been needed for a long time.

O for sure I doubt it will fix it completely, but it could be a start. Also, I agree details should be saved for another thread I just figured I’d toss out the basics of what I’m sure many would be content with.

rashkin.9530:

I think the best way to try and resolve imbalanced matches is instead of glicko rating determining the match ups, use active population. Measure the amount of people logging in over the past week (or 2 weeks?) and at what times and match up servers with similar patterns.

The biggest and the smallest servers will still always be together.

Tiers rankings don’t need to be changed, the fullest servers will continue to be T1.

Bandwagons/implosions can be detected and corrected within a couple of weeks. Instead of taking 3 months to go from where you are to where you should be it could take 3 weeks.

Lopsided coverage would be avoided as much as possible. This mostly only applies to OCX and SEA. Meaning those servers with said player base will be in the top third of the tiers. I think they pretty much all are anyway. Instead of being spread out across 3 or 4 tiers it could be 2 or 3.

This might lead to prolonged periods of identical match ups. You can put in a fail safe after a set amount of weeks that forces a server to go up or down tiers based of points/performance. It might still end up being a blow out match but it will still be corrected the next week.

There can still be a weighted scoring system to put a buffer on possible blow out weeks. If a server doesn’t belong in the tier from coverage there doesn’t have to be 400k-100k-50k score board. The next weeks match up can correct this. Everyone still has a meaningful contribution to their servers performance during the week. Weighted scores would also mean you can still win, or not lose, a match up even if you have less people. Thus, promoting high quality play instead of playing more hours.

Servers can still have their communities. No-one is forced anywhere with anyone. No-one or groups of people are locked out of their match ups with capacity restrictions.

I’m not sure about bad things, I’m sure there is some.

Matching by population isn’t a bad idea but some servers with low numbers but high skill would absolutely crush people

Boris Losdindawoods.3098:

~ ~ As someone else said, this also looks cool, but seems like it would be complicated for Anet to implement. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHcO6Xo8eJ8&feature=youtu.be

Guesting isn’t a solution, it’s the opposite, it cements population imbalances. People over-stack even more, knowing they can freely guest somewhere else at will, when they aren’t needed at the “home-front”.

Balanced Alliances are a good solution in my view as well (also to grief play/trolling), but I left them out as a common response is “We don’t want elitist groups”.

And to all: Keepping it as it is (especially all freedom that broke it) and repairing it at the same time doesn’t work

And yes, if we don’t want to end as shown in sminkiottone’s video discovery https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Matchup-Feedback-merged/4435605 T1 over-stacking has to be ended, if T1 likes it or not.

stonedtestbunny.2617:

Truth be told a lot of WvW issues would probably be resolved with the introduction of a structured GvG game mode:

• Preferably one that allows use of PvE gear as the PvP selection is rather limited and there will be disappointment if guilds can’t run what they currently run
• Keep it simple such as an open arena last man standing game mode, after you’re fully dead you go spectator mode on your team only
• Allow the 20v20 playstyle that people are already doing themselves in borderlands.

This would alleviate the queues to maps where nothing is being accomplished because its skirmish day. This would also allow for people to disperse across different servers without the worry of not being able to fight with their guilds. I realize the last point is counter intuitive, if you’re in a guild you will more than likely want to raid with them as well. This is moreso the option for entire guilds to disperse and not have to be in a certain tier to fight certain guilds, which may help with the population distribution as many currently use their numbers to manipulate the outcome for the rest of the server to stay in said tiers.

I mostly agree with what you are saying…my spin is: We do NOTHING to WvW while GvG is still there. Once GvG is removed only then can you get true numbers of people who are actually playing the WvW portion of the maps. GvG should have been in place a long time ago. This is not my preferred method of play, so i won’t pretend to know how to set this up, that should be another thread anyway. The GvGers have been begging for this for a long time so have the people who are playing for the WvW portion. We would like GvG to be elsewhere as well.

I don’t want EOTM style in my WvW. This just makes it blob wars which isn’t why some of us play. I do know some people like this sort of play and that’s fine but that’s what EOTM is for.

I don’t like rewards based on server population either this is prone to exploits. Like currently there are servers who “tanked” prior to season just so the could get cherry MU’s to get the best rewards. Rewards tied to population is too easily manipulated.

Next I don’t want my community destroyed over mergers. Mergers seems like the best solution even though I hate the thought of us losing our communities. But if mergers were to happen I think it should be done after the GvG thing is in place and we have a few months to see what the “true” WvW population is. Secondly, merging of servers isn’t going to be the solution no matter what, in the end people will move around and 5 to 6 months later we will have a coverage issue all over again. So if mergers were to happen how are we going to prevent the moving around and changing the population all over again? No free transfers won’t work, they mean nothing. If guilds/people want to move they find a way to move.

Anything based on someones playtime over another person’s play time is totally wrong. No one person play style or play time should be more important than anothers.

While I know I didn’t come up with a solution (I am still pondering the solution), I felt it necessary to at least address some of the proposals here.

Why don’t we use this idea?

20% rules ?

Exemple :
Server A : 40 players
Server B : 44 players (10%)
Server C : 48 players (20%)

If 5 players disconnect from A server, then for B and C server the condition is disabled. So no one can join the B and C server in WvW game until the A server come back to 40 player or above.

a fight 40vs48 can be win and forced player to dispatch on others server than staying in the top ten.

It equilibrate server and work on every server with a big population and it work for the low population server.

And it give new potential to the borderlands map

hmsgoddess.3869:

stonedtestbunny.2617:

Truth be told a lot of WvW issues would probably be resolved with the introduction of a structured GvG game mode:

• Preferably one that allows use of PvE gear as the PvP selection is rather limited and there will be disappointment if guilds can’t run what they currently run
• Keep it simple such as an open arena last man standing game mode, after you’re fully dead you go spectator mode on your team only
• Allow the 20v20 playstyle that people are already doing themselves in borderlands.

This would alleviate the queues to maps where nothing is being accomplished because its skirmish day. This would also allow for people to disperse across different servers without the worry of not being able to fight with their guilds. I realize the last point is counter intuitive, if you’re in a guild you will more than likely want to raid with them as well. This is moreso the option for entire guilds to disperse and not have to be in a certain tier to fight certain guilds, which may help with the population distribution as many currently use their numbers to manipulate the outcome for the rest of the server to stay in said tiers.

I mostly agree with what you are saying…my spin is: We do NOTHING to WvW while GvG is still there. Once GvG is removed only then can you get true numbers of people who are actually playing the WvW portion of the maps. GvG should have been in place a long time ago. This is not my preferred method of play, so i won’t pretend to know how to set this up, that should be another thread anyway. The GvGers have been begging for this for a long time so have the people who are playing for the WvW portion. We would like GvG to be elsewhere as well.

I don’t want EOTM style in my WvW. This just makes it blob wars which isn’t why some of us play. I do know some people like this sort of play and that’s fine but that’s what EOTM is for.

I don’t like rewards based on server population either this is prone to exploits. Like currently there are servers who “tanked” prior to season just so the could get cherry MU’s to get the best rewards. Rewards tied to population is too easily manipulated.

Next I don’t want my community destroyed over mergers. Mergers seems like the best solution even though I hate the thought of us losing our communities. But if mergers were to happen I think it should be done after the GvG thing is in place and we have a few months to see what the “true” WvW population is. Secondly, merging of servers isn’t going to be the solution no matter what, in the end people will move around and 5 to 6 months later we will have a coverage issue all over again. So if mergers were to happen how are we going to prevent the moving around and changing the population all over again? No free transfers won’t work, they mean nothing. If guilds/people want to move they find a way to move.

Anything based on someones playtime over another person’s play time is totally wrong. No one person play style or play time should be more important than anothers.

While I know I didn’t come up with a solution (I am still pondering the solution), I felt it necessary to at least address some of the proposals here.

I’d like to see a non intrusive approach of fixing WvW first, and then take appropriate actions afterwards which is what I was aiming for with my suggestion.

I believe this idea would go a long way towards making the game fun again:

• Incentivise two losers to attacking whoever is leading at any one time. It must be possible
• replace the ability to build waypoints with something else – golem siegeworks or something. Big blob thrive on mobility
• give each server a set number of guards at any one time. This number should be as it is now- BUT when a side captures another objective, they have to lose some guards from other objectives to guard the new one. This way, the more things you have, the fewer guards at each thing. The fewer things you have, the more guards at each thing. This makes it more and more difficult for enemies to capture objectives — The point I would make is that we haven’t seen how effective guards can be in massive numbers.

I would love to just see us embrace the megaserver reality completely. I believe we could have a set amount of teams and that guilds could chose to represent or express a preference for a team (they cant switch too often). Guilds then get sorted into these teams based on preferences while the guilds that dont express a choice get auto-sorted. The team allegiance can be changed by guild leaders but sorting is only done on resets, these new teams become the groups that go into WvW and have to assume team queues for BL’s. A downside to this is no server nationalism which help make the WvW experience enjoyable in my opinion, on the other hand the experience would be a lot more fluid and encourage guild loyalty and player movement, Oh we didnt get along this season ? your guild doesnt like how we command ? See you on the battle field we’ll be on purple team next season.

Also, player kills should count for a significantly larger portion of score. Skill>coverage

A sort of 2v2v2 could be interesting among servers. That way you wouldn’t only get different opponents, but different allies. The system could then pair complementary rank servers together, which should reduce the urge for people to abandon low ranked servers.

- Set one of the 3 colors to each server everyweek. (Randomize it if you like)
- Connect all 4 maps and map it one massive map also adding more real estate if possible.
- NA ( 24 servers split into 2 Tiers with 12 server each and those 2 Tiers broken down into 2 instances each with 6 servers on each )
- EU ( Haven’t quite figured that one yet ) Because one set of servers will be left out.

I don’t think it’s possible to implement a reduced population cap that is fair to everyone and doesn’t involve forcing some people to change how they want to play. Some people enjoy the blobfest and want to be on those servers. I don’t think it’s right to try and force them to split up to rebalance WvW populations.

By the same token these people won’t want to transfer to lower population servers unless you create some really unbalanced incentives to do so.

It seems there’s 3 types of solutions to this. Alliance/GvG, PPT handicaps, and restructuring WvW.

Alliance/GvG pairings based on populations would solve several “problems”.
*Each group would be based on people who actually WvW instead of high pop PvE worlds.
*GvG groups would create a much higher number of participant units than server worlds.
*More participants would create better weekly pairings.
*Everyone finally gets the GvG they keep harping about.

PPT handicaps would allow the current structure to remain in place and involve the least amount of change. However, trying to create a balanced handicap based on population that wouldn’t invalidate some forms of play would be difficult at best. This also brings up the issue of how effective/meaningful is PPT at measuring how a world is doing in WvW? It definitely favors larger populations over smaller ones.

Restructuring WvW similar to what Blaeys was talking about might be a fair middle ground to everything. It would help spread out population in each tier and foster adhoc alliances between same color worlds without creating the problems EoTM suffers. However it wouldn’t necessarily create for better weekly pairings and it would rely on the generosity of higher population worlds to help out the lower population worlds for no benefit to themselves. Perhaps if there was a WvW XP/Karma/MF bonus to fighting alongside lower population servers it would help? Something like a 10% bonus wouldn’t be overpowering but it would still be a noticable buff.

Svarty.8019:

I believe this idea would go a long way towards making the game fun again:

• Incentivise attacking whoever is leading
• remove waypoints
• give each server a set number of guards at any one time. This number should be as it is now- BUT when a side captures another objective, they have to lose some guards from other objectives to guard the new one. This way, the more things you have, the fewer guards at each thing. The fewer things you have, the more guards at each thing. This makes it more and more difficult for enemies to capture objectives — The point I would make is that we haven’t seen how effective guards can be in massive numbers.

Great ideas, especially the 3rd point. Logically, in terms of NPCs and guards, the more you hold the more stretched your resources should be. Conversely the less you hold, the more concentrated your resources should be. It just makes sense.

Perhaps tweak siege caps and supply capacities, correspondingly, as well… as much as I dislike siege.

Fighting NPCs is boring and pales in comparison to fighting other players. But – if it helps even a little bit to address imbalances, I’m for it. Also, the NPCs should be made A LOT stronger. They can’t really help when they melt pretty much instantaneously.

If outmatched servers in Alamo type situations could have a little (or rather, a lot) defensive help, they would have more capacity to threaten the attackers elsewhere where they are weak. This would make the game better for all.

My opinion, anyways.

ntx.2976:

I would love to just see us embrace the megaserver reality completely. I believe we could have a set amount of teams and that guilds could chose to represent or express a preference for a team (they cant switch too often). Guilds then get sorted into these teams based on preferences while the guilds that dont express a choice get auto-sorted. The team allegiance can be changed by guild leaders but sorting is only done on resets, these new teams become the groups that go into WvW and have to assume team queues for BL’s. A downside to this is no server nationalism which help make the WvW experience enjoyable in my opinion. Also, player kills should count for a significantly larger portion of points.

The queues would be insane. I’m pretty certain something like this would make a lot of people just uninstall.

Planetside 2 had a great idea for merging servers. They had a massive battle to determine the new name of two servers that were going to merge.

I think one problem why its so hard to find a good solution for server balancing is because Anet makes money from selling gems for server transfers.
So the question is, would Anet be willing to accept less profits from gem sales for server transfers in favour of better population balance?

ntx.2976:

A downside to this is no server nationalism which help make the WvW experience enjoyable in my opinion, on the other hand the experience would be a lot more fluid and encourage guild loyalty and player movement

All I know is, if servers lose their identity any more than they already have, I seriously doubt I’ll continue playing GW2.

I kind of like the 2v2v2 idea someone else posted. It mixes things up a bit, gives WvW a purpose for lower tier servers, and lets servers remain as they are. However I can see a lot of blame going around (i.e. “you only won because you got paired with a better server”). Not sure if it might also complicate the ratings system (what if server A is paired with server B, and they both win despite server B basically not showing up at all?
They could go up in rank despite not deserving it?). But still… it’s an idea.

Is it possible to offer free server transfers for people on high-population servers to ones with low-population? Well, I know that would be possible, but how possible would it be to specifically target WvW players?

I know Eredon Terrace has absolutely abysmal numbers of people participating in WvW, which is why we always end up bottom of the list. Yet, this has been my home server since the beta, and I don’t like the idea of my server being merged with another just because of low occupancy.

I think just shifting the population around would do amazing things for WvW balance, without having to resort to something as extreme as a server merge.

So when tour own server is giving you the queue, how about allowing people to guest on low-pop servers (into a tier that has to be lower than your own)?

This way people could “PUG” to boost some life into “empty” server WvW. You would never face your direct competition. It would be more casual that gold and silver tier WvW, and could be more fun for everybody.

How about server alliances or something similar?
For example – Gold League – 3 Different colors, 6 servers.
BG/FA – Green , SoS/TC – Blue, JQ/Mag – Red.
Servers earn points together and can send reinforcements to ally servers – for example, There are no Sea players on FA, BG can send (certain) number of people to FA to hell the ally server.

Just an idea.

I would be kind of sad to see more and more merging and pairing happening. With the megaservers implementation a lot of communities kind of already took a hit and it makes it a lot harder for servers to talk en mass about WvW tactics without 3rd party software. I stand by the fact that an introduction of something that people have been complaining about since launch could make leaps and bounds to fix the issues at hand. As someone that was on a server that most guilds wouldn’t PPT unless we dropped in pairings only because of the GvG fights they wanted I wholeheartedly welcome a GvG feature. If people were guaranteed the fights that they want I feel they would be more inclined to go to lower population servers where they could be top dog and actually make a difference if/when they wanted to PPT.

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

Merging Servers won’t work.

Players want to join the server that provides the most wins for the least effort. Unless the newly merged server does that, players will simply hop somewhere else as things are.

Battle Groups (GvG) could work in its own game mode with pre-enforced player limits, such as teams of 50 going at it.

WvW is too dynamic, and its open world join/leave layout directly conflicts with organized, balanced GvG in any sort of rated scale.

If we are going to keep the current structure unchanged, what we need is the third option.

I have written my idea before and see variations of it in this thread, so I will link and repost again for convenience.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Balance-in-WvW-Who-likes-1-vs-Zerg

In World vs World, Balance is nonexistent.

Some players may like it that way. Perhaps because they enjoy greatly outnumbering their foe(s) and dancing on their poor, sword-ridden corpse. Or perhaps because they like the feeling of decimating, with certainty, whomever they come across that is of less number then they.

However, I don’t feel this is the way it should be. Players stack servers during “tournaments” so they can be on the most populated, guaranteed a high position and reward. Is that how you want your game to work?

ArenaNet, why not auto-balance WvW? You already do it to some extent with Hotjoin.

The idea will work like this:

Autobalance occurs when one color outnumbers the lowest by 10 or more.

Then all players on the large population sides are notified that – if they remain in this map they will be moved to EoTM or placed in Queue. They will have 1 minute to decide which to choose, and then forced to EoTM.

This is the idea.

The benefits of this change would greatly reduce server stacking, off-hours PvDooring, and make WvW a more balanced and also more challenging game mode – requiring more skill and less simple numerical advantage.

Example:
Green: 45
Red: 40
Blue: 38

No change.

Green: 55
Red: 40
Blue: 38

After 2-5 minutes like this, 8 random Green players would get a pop-up telling them to please queue for another BL or move to EoTM. They could then move to another map if they so choose.

Numbers become:

Green: 47
Red:40
Blue:38

The result of this change would also allow massive groups of players to be challenged because they would know that there are almost their number on the map somewhere.

This would promote stronger organization among the servers.
It would promote more skillful gameplay.

Guilds would still be able to face off on eachother, but there would be less of an imbalance when they do so. Individual players in WvW would feel like their presence is more impactful.

This system is flexible.

It would work during resets when massive numbers of players flush each color (during the 2-5min ‘adjustment time’ the populations can change) while simultaneously addressing the night-cappers/coverage problem that occurs in off-hours.

So many terrible ideas that would screw over WvW dedicated players and guilds that have spent the last 2 years building upon their servers and communities. How can yall throw out such rediculous ideas to Anet? Are you trying to destroy this game mode and its dedicated players?

ntx.2976:

I would love to just see us embrace the megaserver reality completely. I believe we could have a set amount of teams and that guilds could chose to represent or express a preference for a team (they cant switch too often). Guilds then get sorted into these teams based on preferences while the guilds that dont express a choice get auto-sorted. The team allegiance can be changed by guild leaders but sorting is only done on resets, these new teams become the groups that go into WvW and have to assume team queues for BL’s. A downside to this is no server nationalism which help make the WvW experience enjoyable in my opinion, on the other hand the experience would be a lot more fluid and encourage guild loyalty and player movement, Oh we didnt get along this season ? your guild doesnt like how we command ? See you on the battle field we’ll be on purple team next season.

Also, player kills should count for a significantly larger portion of score. Skill>coverage

I agree with this almost completely, but in my opinion the downside outweighs the positives. This said, I do think the megaserver could have a place in a population balance solution.

I think the “always the same guys” aspect is extremely important – perhaps the colours can be turned into a pool of players… so you never end up fighting worldmates, but could end up in a different matchup? Obviously, all guilds always go together.

I do not like that people are speaking for me when they say wvw communities are dead with the arrival of megaservers. While megaservers sure as hell did not help, my own server still has a core of original players and I would miss them deeply. Get on a voice channel with us, do a roll-call and you’ll still get 75% of players on that channel are original or early transfers from pre- T1 days.

I do play wvw for the community. I like my people, I love cooperating with them, I cannot imagine playing without them. I cannot imagine being accepted this way by another group of people who appreciate a non hardcore odd-jobs defender like me. Some of us do identify deeply with our servers and would be heartbroken to see it go.

Apokriphos.7042:

In World vs World, Balance is nonexistent.

Some players may like it that way. Perhaps because they enjoy greatly outnumbering their foe(s) and dancing on their poor, sword-ridden corpse. Or perhaps because they like the feeling of decimating, with certainty, whomever they come across that is of less number then they.

However, I don’t feel this is the way it should be. Players stack servers during “tournaments” so they can be on the most populated, guaranteed a high position and reward. Is that how you want your game to work?

ArenaNet, why not auto-balance WvW? You already do it to some extent with Hotjoin.

The idea will work like this:

Autobalance occurs when one color outnumbers the lowest by 10 or more.

Then all players on the large population sides are notified that – if they remain in this map they will be moved to EoTM or placed in Queue. They will have 1 minute to decide which to choose, and then forced to EoTM.

This is the idea.

The benefits of this change would greatly reduce server stacking, off-hours PvDooring, and make WvW a more balanced and also more challenging game mode – requiring more skill and less simple numerical advantage.

Example:
Green: 45
Red: 40
Blue: 38

No change.

Green: 55
Red: 40
Blue: 38

After 1 minute like this, 8 random Green players would get a pop-up telling them to please queue for another BL or move to EoTM. They could then move to another map if they so choose.

Numbers become:

Green: 47
Red:40
Blue:38

The result of this change would also allow massive groups of players to be challenged because they would know that there are almost their number on the map somewhere.

This would promote stronger organization among the servers.
It would promote more skillful gameplay.

Guilds would still be able to face off on eachother, but there would be less of an imbalance when they do so. Individual players in WvW would feel like their presence is more impactful.

What do you guys think?

This was my original thought but I’m afraid this would end up with people manipulating the score by getting a good lead and just logging off for the week. That’s why I feel a temporary hard cap is a better solution. It might suck for some people at first but in the end it would improve WvW.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

So when tour own server is giving you the queue, how about allowing people to guest on low-pop servers (into a tier that has to be lower than your own)?

This way people could “PUG” to boost some life into “empty” server WvW. You would never face your direct competition. It would be more casual that gold and silver tier WvW, and could be more fun for everybody.

a bunch of pugs without any loyalty to the server would lead to a ton of trolling.

nirvana.8245:

So many terrible ideas that would screw over WvW dedicated players and guilds that have spent the last 2 years building upon their servers and communities. How can yall throw out such rediculous ideas to Anet? Are you trying to destroy this game mode and its dedicated players?

Don’t like our ideas? Then provide your own.

Imbalance in player population is a huge issue in WvW, as the Devs have acknowledged in this very thread.

Take a look at the current matchups. My server is utterly smothering the other two servers in with it, which causes less random players to log into WvW.

This is of course because everyone wants to be on the Largest server, because – easy wins, ego boosting, and free bags.

PPT isn’t a scoring system that promotes good fights, you have Karma trains that run around playing PvDoor, which to me is far less fun then engaging enemy players in the field.

The trouble with Tier 2 NA is that for quite some time has been that no matter how hard you play during “prime time” you’ll come back & everything will be wiped & upgraded to T3 by the stacked oceanic server & EU time zones are slower for us too because most people that play then are on EU servers. I’d like to see the number of times Mag has been able to hold a waypoint overnight in the last year. Its not that we’re unable to win fights, it’s that we mostly have people that play in NA time zones on an NA server.

If server merges & leaving PPT are the way you decide to go with this you should really get rid of server regions, maybe host maps in the EU when the bulk of the players in the zone are from there & NA when the population changes later. If WvW needed a 5min scheduled break for this to happen I don’t think anyone would really mind as long as they knew it was coming. It would be great to get China on the maps too, but I’m not sure if you could make that happen. The language thing the players could figure out, I’d rather have to deal with a couple of languages than an empty map with a small group from one server flipping everything while it’s undefended.

I guess the other option would be having the day split up to 8h chunks independent of each other so that server player base region had less of an effect on the score.

Rimmy.9217:

-snip-

What about guilds that can field more people than a given population cap? Split up and go to different maps, you blobby monsters.

-snip-

Honestly, the stack is the big main factor of why WvW is the way it is. I’ve seen guilds transfer to lower tiers, they could field 20+ alone plus a few pugs that would join them and a few weeks or months later would transfer to another tier complaining there are no real fights.

The problem is, there are more than enough fights in a lower tier server but the stack mentality, in a way, ruins it. If the tier you are fighting against can summon a max of 15 to defend their border but you insist to bring 25-30 and blob all, of course won’t find a fight until their main zerg hop borders to crush you.

Those guilds could very well adapt to the situation and unstack, play more tactically, create a few squad groups and split up with different objectives between them and still being each others backup if a situation arise. Would be more efficient and for sure more balanced during fights until backups are called from each side. Instead they keep transferring from server to server trying to find one that fits their play style and eventually quit the game.

Humor: Friendly fire would, no doubt, fix the stack problem. :P

Jim Hunter.6821:

This was my original thought but I’m afraid this would end up with people manipulating the score by getting a good lead and just logging off for the week. That’s why I feel a temporary hard cap is a better solution. It might suck for some people at first but in the end it would improve WvW.

Players, or servers, can feel free to get a good lead and then log off. However, I don’t think that will happen.

As a fellow WvW player, you should know:

We play for the challenge.

We play for the fun of randomly encountering an enemy in different places every time that you must outsmart to beat.

We play for the Sandbox PvP aspect of it, where you can mine nodes, do quests, use siege and duel all in the same place.

In addition, doing as you say would be much less important if individual player kills were incorporated into the PPT system.

Good luck winning if your lead is whittled away every time someone on your artificially empty server dies.

Apokriphos.7042:

In World vs World, Balance is nonexistent.

Some players may like it that way. Perhaps because they enjoy greatly outnumbering their foe(s) and dancing on their poor, sword-ridden corpse. Or perhaps because they like the feeling of decimating, with certainty, whomever they come across that is of less number then they.

However, I don’t feel this is the way it should be. Players stack servers during “tournaments” so they can be on the most populated, guaranteed a high position and reward. Is that how you want your game to work?

ArenaNet, why not auto-balance WvW? You already do it to some extent with Hotjoin.

The idea will work like this:

…

What do you guys think?

I completely agree with the preface.

The idea is a capacity reduction based on the smallest team in the match, and as such it is very susceptible to exploitation. Let me make an example server A is in danger to loose it’s keep because a strong force of B is at it’s doors, and A’s force is to far away (or in Battle with C or …) to reach it in time. A moves all but the 5 scouts in the keep away from the map enforcing a reduction of B to 15, a now very comfortable odd to defend an upgraded keep with preinstalled defensive siege. A could even go back to the map with now with 20 people and crush B, before they are able to sort out, where their people are now. (And even if B manages to bring the people back fast, they are now at spawn and not at the keep)

If you want to make the capacity reduction match-based, you need at least base it on the mean of all three teams. A has 40, B and C have 10 that want to play, sum is 60, mean 20, half of A’s for is able to play. If one server leaves the map, the capacity of the other teams is only reduced to 2/3. Better (because it helps to balance teams of different matches, and because it is even more imune to manipulation) is a capacity reduction based on all teams demand.

How to Merge Servers Properly

John Corpening.9847:

For merging servers, how do we determine who gets merged? Where would we merge them to?

This is the easiest part to answer. We discussed it in detail this past April.

First, rank your servers by the population count you use internally to set the world population status on World Selection screen. Then do the following:

Virtute.8251:

• Lock transfers for some short period before the merger.
• Sort tiers 3-8 into tiers 1-2 in reverse order.

This means:

• Rank 6 receives Rank 7-9
• Rank 5 receives Rank 10-12
• Rank 4 receives Rank 13-15
• Rank 3 receives Rank 16-18
• Rank 2 receives Rank 19-21
• Rank 1 receives Rank 22-24

Now, on to the harder topics.

John Corpening.9847:

How do we maintain any sort of world pride or identity they have?

This depends upon the depth of your database records, regarding what servers we have been on. I do not see much value in you rewarding me for having played on multiple servers for the past 2 years, but others may disagree.

There will be no satisfying some people on this. It has to be taken as-is.

John Corpening.9847:

How do we handle potentially merging with your mortal enemies?

You allow people a window of opportunity, perhaps an entire month, to select a server to be moved to when the merger is done. In that selection process, you leave the server statuses alone so that people can only willingly move to servers that aren’t “Full” status.

After that time ends, everyone else is distributed as I outlined above, and you include “Full” servers in that pool. At that point, they will all be full by today’s numbers.

Haven’t read all the posts but what about opening up the chinese servers to EU and NA servers? Their queue times are horrid compared to ours. I don’t know if opening the NA and EU servers to china is even possible but it would certainly balance some of the problems.

This is going to be totally thinking out of the box:

What if Anet decides to reward people transferring(for free) to lower populated servers during a time period to boost the WvW population?
If we could get WvW guilds to transfer to other servers and be rewarded for it in some way some of the imbalances could go away.
Or non-permanent transfers.

The rest of the ideas are good, but are already discussed in their pro’s/con’s situations

Perhaps we should think about this a different way.

I’ll suggest that perhaps we should stop focusing so much on making it fair, and focus more on making it competitive.

When I play golf (I am bad at golf) with players much better than myself, we do not have a ‘fair’ competition; my opponents take a substantial handicap, spot me several strokes, in a way that makes the game fundamentally unfair – but makes it much, much more competitive.

Along those lines, here are some ideas to consider:

- What if servers with a lower rating at the start of the match were granted a point-per-tick ‘handicap’ that scaled with the size of the disparity?

- What is the value of holding objectives depended on the number of players a server had in WvW – if each tower, each keep was worth much more to an outmanned server than to the population capped server?

- What about points from kills, from yaks? What if stomps on a high population server were always worth more, while stomps on an outmanned server worth nothing?

- What if supply deliveries and/or supply costs depended on population?

On the rewards side:

- What about WXP? Maybe WXP rewards should scale harsh with population. Maybe taking a keep with 5 people on the map while your opponent has 50 should be worth more than taking one with 50 while your opponent has 5.

- Perhaps the rewards from kills should scale really, really hard with population. Maybe killing players when you severely outman them shouldn’t be a fountain of bags, while picking off players on a stacked server should give more, higher quality loot.

- Perhaps the rewards for winning a week, or winning a season, should depend on these handicaps. Maybe the most stacked server shouldn’t simply be gifted the best WvW rewards every season simply for having the most people – maybe the server that performs the best, compared to their handicap, the one that performs the highest above expectations – should be given the highest in-game rewards.

Maybe we just accept this is not a fair game, and stop rewarding it like it is a contest of skill. Forget fair. Make it competitive.

I think the lower initial cap with a variable upward scaling is the way to go if ANet is serious about this.

Merging I would HATE, I’d have to coordinate with all my friends and guildies and ugh… no.

You could manipulate a scaling system but with a say 30 static cap you’d still have plenty to be able to do what you need.

As soon as all teams are within 10 of the current cap the cap is increased by 10.
A:20
B:25
C:30
cap remains 30
A gets 1 more person, now cap goes to 40 and so on till it reaches the current cap.
Players cannot join but will not be kicked once in.

I think this would address the population issue well, while also addressing the coverage issue as it scales for that given situation.

Virtute.8251:

First, rank your servers by the population count you use internally to set the world population status on World Selection screen.

No please, do not use this population count at all for WvW!

I don’t think it changed, and pre-mega-server it was:
Everyone that has it’s current domicile on this server, maybe inactive since month or even years (likely the majority) maybe totally uninterested in WvW (a large part), the people that play WvW (a small minority in the whole number).

With over 3.5mio copies of GW2 sold in the last 2 years it is probably around 70’000 per server. The few transfers (compared to 70’000) that already made WvW imbalanced slipped unnoticed due to the inadequacy of this number,

The usage of this number (to tax or restrict transfers for WvW) is one of the main failures in the past that lead to he current imbalance.

Better numbers would be

• player join the last match
• played hours in the last match

I think it would be best for GW2, if ANet merges all EU/NA Servers together as good as possible and rebrands all of the servers with new names
NA has 24, EU has 27 – both sides should have maximum 15 servers equally.
If thats not enough ,the amount of Servers can then be later still be again increased then to 18 for on both sides.
Thats just somethign totally common for MMos, you start first with a low amount of servers and when you see, you neede more, than you add first new ones.
I never understood, why Anet started the game already two years ago with so much servers, when a smaller amount would have been totally fine.

Once we have then new servers all, WvW needs to get redesigned.

• WvW needs a new Point System, that doesn’t give Servers with a massive overpopulution such increadible advantages. Quality > Quantity.
  A side that plays qualitative alot better, than an other side that has the number advantage, should earn more points.

• It needs also a new Point System that takes play times into consideration, where all 3 sides can gain points only, if all 3 sides have a certain threshold of player activity

• Does the activity of 1 side fall down too drastically, then the Match Up Point counter will go into a Break Phase and it becomes nighttime in WvW, where you can still play WvW on the overpopulated sides, but capping stuff and killing enemies in that Break Phase won’t count towards your sides total points, until the activity of all 3 sides is again high enough to let the game consider the situation as fair enough for all sides, so that the Break Phase will end and it becomes again daytime in WvW.

• This way Population of Servers will regulate itself, because people surely don’t want to be in Match Ups, where it is permanently nighttime, because of them surpressing with their overpopulation the other two sides 24/7.
  In an ideal Match up, there would be only rarely nighttimes because the coverage of all 3 sides would be ideally constantly on nearly the same niveau to guarantee, that you will find everyone epic encounters and not basically dead ghost maps with no enemies on

• Merging the Servers will also have advantages for PvE and SPvP, as you will find there then naturally also alot more people to play with suddenly, what will make the Maps in PvE alot more full of live if you see suddenly alot more players running around, than before. Finding Groups should become also easier for anythign you like

• WvW needs alot more diversity. merge the Borderlands and redesign them as 1 single new map, use the space of the deleted obsolete doulbe and triple borederland maps and implement two completely new WvW Maps, so that WvW should have 5 different big maps, so that the player popolution can split up among them and each of those 5 Maps should count equally towards the total point sum of each side.

• Eternal Battle Grounds
• Borderland
• Edge of the Mist
• New Map 1 generated out of removed Borderland 2 Space
• New Map 2 generated out of removed Borderland 3 Space

EBG, BL and the two new Maps would have Population Caps, while EotM would stay as it is without one, so that Players will always have 1 Map, where they can go, if the other 4 should be unreachable due to waiting queues.

its just common sense, that if you reduce the amount of servers, that the plus of population must get shifted somehow to other new players, so that not everyone wants to go onto the same map.
WvW is lacking new maps. All we got is only EotM within the last two years, while on the other hand Anet was able to give SPvP within that time alot more completely new Maps

First apologies if someone might have already mentioned this,
But a alternate suggestion to maybe alleviate some issues is to penalize the zerg mentality, which will in some way give the perception of a better balance. This may not so much help underpopulated servers as a whole, but it can maybe help other places.

Basically, when a group of players reach a certain number in a area (say 1,200m) debuff them, make it so running large zone blobs against smaller populated servers isn’t as viable.
So say a server runs a 40 man zerg against a server who has 2 × 20 man groups, the 40 man group receives a small debuff of say 3% damage decrease, 3% health… whatever.. not being specific but a general idea, the more guys the more it scales upwards.
This can help in a way where servers with no large regular groups now have a fighting chance.

Ensign you couldn’t be more right. People here is obsessed with the idea of making WvW fair, which cannot be fair unless you change the core of WvW: 24/7, sandbox pvp world and not structured fights.
And because of thatobsession , they are willing to sacrifice the beauty, liberty and randomness of WvW just to win a massive pvp sandbox 24/7 game-mode in a more fairly way.

Sorry guys, but all I see is: Punish these servers, force those players, prioritize these timezones, deny this thing, cap here, cut there…
Is really what you want for WvW? To become the big brother of Hot-Join sPvP, but instead of points we capture structures and instead of 5vs5 we have 50vs50?

PD: Don’t, for a single second, forget that there are people who like playing in zergs, people who have server pride and they’re not keen on letting that behind, and people who play searching challenges (quality zergs, big blobs, fighting outnumbered, soloing towers…).

Ansau.7326:

Ensign you couldn’t be more right. People here is obsessed with the idea of making WvW fair, which cannot be fair unless you change the core of WvW: 24/7, sandbox pvp world and not structured fights.
And because of thatobsession , they are willing to sacrifice the beauty, liberty and randomness of WvW just to win a massive pvp sandbox 24/7 game-mode in a more fairly way.

Sorry guys, but all I see is: Punish these servers, force those players, prioritize these timezones, deny this thing, cap here, cut there…
Is really what you want for WvW? To become the big brother of Hot-Join sPvP, but instead of points we capture structures and instead of 5vs5 we have 50vs50?

The randomness went out of WvW a long time ago. Everyone is being paired up against the same few servers every week and unless a server takes a break or decides to stay up all night, the outcome of the matchups is never surprising.

Relatively equal numbers means you will start facing different servers. This gives you different roamers to fight, different GvG matches, different zerg and defense strategies, etc.

Why would anyone not want this?

Dayra.7405:

Virtute.8251:

First, rank your servers by the population count you use internally to set the world population status on World Selection screen.

No please, do not use this population count at all for WvW!

Absolutely yes. It has to be that way.

The reason: Server status (Full or not) is irrelevant to WvW. It’s only reason for existing is a matter of logistics for provisioning computational resources on the network.

The only reason we are being asked this question inside the WvW sub-forum is because if this is to be done, ANet would like to keep WvW-focused players happy in the process. You can not, however, have a WvW-centric server merger.

Sorry.

John Corpening..

Instead of implementing population caps/reductions/merging of servers etc, which all have their merits and de-merits, perhaps the solution can be found in the tried and tested system of two opposing Worlds, i.e NA v EU

For tournaments, two or three RANDOM servers from NA would battle together under one NA flag, against three RANDOM EU servers who also battle together under their EU flag.

Rinse and repeat the above on each WORLD so everyone gets an equal opportunity to fight in a busy and fun tournament.

This is a similar format to the old GW1 of FA v JQ.

The merits for this system that I see is:-

1. Over ‘stacking’ of a single server becomes irrelevant since the overall winning score will now depend on which WORLD has won the most battles across ALL its tiers/servers.

2. Each server keeps its present identity. Each server would fight for the pride of it’s WORLD.

3. With each tier becoming important for the success of winning the overall NA/EU tournament, this will encourage a more balanced system of players in EACH tier/server, thereby giving new life to ‘dead’ WvW servers.

4. This would also reduce siege trolling to a point.

5. By reducing the cost to transfer to a lower populated server the quicker each server will become more balanced.

6. Uneven match-ups such as the present and last tournament should now be properly addressed and fair to everyone, regardless of what server they are on.

Of course there are no doubt other considerations I have not touched upon or addressed, like there are 24 NA servers compared to 27 EU servers, however, this is my contribution towards finding a solution that I believe is worth considering..