Guild Wars 2

I was convinced of ensigns proposal till February 2014, but the concentration afterwards (enabled by eotm’s queue reduction and enforced by seasons 2 skins rewards for only the better servers) cannot be handled by that any longer.

Look at current NA T2, just 3 ranks between TC and FA and a 3.5:1 score imbalance, that’s out of the scope of any reasonable handicap. I am also in doubt that anyone has fun in this match.

The defensive aspect of being outnumbered should be addressed. When a group of 5-10 defending a keep facing a group of 25+ during non prime time. The problem is not being outnumbered, it is what can we possibly do to have a chance at winning. You can look towards your PvE aspect of the game for a simple solution, add a timer for the attacking group, say 12.5 minutes to take the keep before NPC reinforcements in the form of legendary defenders are summoned to the keep at which point the keep will be renewed, all enemy players inside will die and all structures become invulnerable for 2-3 mins which is enough time to reorganise and cap camps back. However, the attack would not be in vain and the defensive team will lose say a third of their supply. To make it clear, this timer should only activate when the defensive team has the outnumbered buff. It gives an incentive to defend knowing that reliable reinforcements are on the way and it provides a challenge for the offensive team. There are still many holes to this idea such as trebbing and potential exploitation but at the moment we constantly find ourselves asking what next when a zerg of 25+ show up and PvD.

Hamster.4861:

Theftwind.8976:

Tie any rewards for WvW, including Karma, coin and loot drops to the server population balance at any given moment, a modifier to multiply your chances. To maximize reward you will want to play during non-peak times or against a force larger then yours. Once the large, highly populated servers realize that they get more bang for the buck on the lower populated servers they will move. Over time it will all balance out. No need to change population caps.

Now that’s a decent idea

how would that differ from this? Asside from the fact that I love charzookas n all …

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Outnumbered

Tspatula.9086:

I am surprised more people aren’t jumping on this idea. The other big plus is that it is a small change to the existing structure and would be doable with the existing menus and megaserver code already written… They could even limit the maps you could look at based on whatever set of BLs and EBG you are currently on, and just use a drop down menu to move to another set.

It would be my favourite solution but I’m concerned ArenaNet would never finish it. The problem with those drop-down menus etc. is you can’t really see what’s going on in most of those maps without using an external website to get a better view. They’d have to put all 32 maps on one overworld display – even the existing WvW dialog doesn’t compare with the map for quickly seeing where the action is.

In my view WvW should always have been one huge campaign comprised of several maps, but they’re simply too slow at level design post-release to fix that now. Would need to streamline the process or get more hands on deck.

I’m not talking just about the randomness of matchups, but the randomness of fights, server strategies and tactics…
Simply the randomness that you don’t know what you will face until you see it.

Everybody need to put the idea in their heads that it’s not possible to have similar people in all servers, unless you severely limit the map cap and the duration:
- If you want to keep zergs, you need at least 30-40 people per server. That is big enough to produce huge coverage imbalances. If you don’t like zergs, you have PvP.
- If you want to limit the time, long matchups don’t have a place (a 5 hour matchup is already long).
And that friends, is just changing the core of WvW.

John Corpening.9847:

I’m approaching this as a brainstorm. The topic is “Approaches to correcting overall population imbalance”.

Wow, well this is a big issue. Any change is likely to have a huge impact on WvW, which I think most veteran players would find welcoming.

Just some ideas off the top of my head:

Give a higher “War Score” the longer an objective is held
For example, If you capture a tower you get 10 points every 15 minutes. After 30 minutes the PPT for that tower would go up to 20, after 60 minutes up to 40.

The idea here would be that a server that is outmanned or suffers a population disadvantage can ‘bunker’ inside what they already control and still be competitive in the War Score for the week. This would also discourage a server with a population advantage from ‘spreading out too thinly’, i.e. if you can hold a single tower for an hour then you get the same PPT as if you were constantly flipping multiple towers.

Increase the hitpoints of all walls & gates
As it relates to population the speed at which a medium sized group can completely flip an undefended borderlands is shocking. If capturing objectives became harder then the value of holding and defending those objectives increases. What also increases is the opportunity for big battles to take place. If a battle for Briar takes 30 minutes instead of 3 minutes then more people have a chance to show up and take part in the action.

It’s also worth mentioning that the offensive WvW abilities that were added make capturing go quicker (e.g. Catapult/Ram Mastery), but no abilities were added for defense. Maybe we could take a look at that in another brainstorming thread.

-

Lastly, just to weigh in on the issue of population caps and server merging. I think at this point both of those ideas should be tabled for later discussion. I believe the mechanics of WvW are what allow population and coverage to have such an influence on the outcome of the weekly matchups. If we can fix the mechanics such that an under-populated server has an equal chance at victory then we can start to look at the distribution of players on the servers.

-Tekyn

Virtute.8251:

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.

Your argument was partially valid (but no map ever reserved capacity for all 70000 people on a server) before mega-servers, but now with mega-servers it is complete non-sense. Servers only concern WvW anymore, and whoever does not play WvW, doesn’t need capacity in WvW, before he (re-)starts playing WvW. Or which WvW-capacity do you want to reserve for the 70000 people register on any server?

I think that with EOTM you were actually closer to a potential solution than you realized. My idea: make WvW matches much shorter – like 2-4 hours long – and divide server rankings by timezone. For example my server, Fort Aspenwood, can compete with our most common enemy (Sea of Sorrows) in NA time but not in OCX/SEA time. So you would keep the same server communities but have separate rankings according to timezone.

An example of what this would look like: between 5pm and 9pm pacific (or thereabouts) there would be a mini-WvW match with whichever servers were near FA in glicko for that timezone – it would probably be tier two in this case. Then, between 9pm to 1am pacific (or thereabouts), another match with whichever servers were near us in glicko for that timezone (for the sake of the example let’s say it’s tier three). Again for OCX and SEA time, in the appropriate tier. This means each timezone gets a competitive matchup. Since the stakes are lower for each individual match (they’re short), you could introduce more variance in matchups without a bad matchup lasting an entire week too.

What’s more, it allows you to do something new with seasons – for four weeks, seasons go back to weeklong matchups. This means higher stakes and can preserve some unpredictability as people will be less able to predict the outcome of a season. (In the current system there isn’t much. From day one FA knew we were gonna place fifth in the current season).

Strengths of this approach:

-Keeps current server communities, no need to merge or split.
-Each timezone gets a vaguely competitive matchup.
-Seasons are a real change instead of just (mostly) more of the same.
-Removes the frustration of one timezone seeing all their hard work erased after they log off.
-I’m not a programmer or anything, but it seems to me that the system I’ve described would be easier to implement than many of the suggestions listed in this thread.

Weakness:

-You’d have to adjust some game mechanics for a shorter match. Like, maybe upgrades would cost less in supply for example.
-Having different timezones on the same server fighting different servers could have an unexpected effect on server communities. I’m not exactly sure what it would be, but it’s something to consider.

Things that seem like weaknesses but aren’t:

-Lower stakes: for many people the PPT stakes are nothing, because they can’t control what happens when they’re asleep. This puts control of the outcome of the match in the hands of those playing.
-“This will turn WvW into EOTM”: IMO no it won’t. WvW players are competitive and they’ll keep trying to win even with shorter matches. The difference in culture between WvW and EOTM is down to the players moreso than the format.

Magi Pendragon.7042:

John Corpening..
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.

You are aware that EU-sleeps when NA has evening and NA is at work/school when EU has evening, aren’t you? Have a look here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/World-Versus-World-suggestion-1/4086126 for a slightly more detailed discussion.

IF NA and EU can be combined merge 1 EU and 1 NA server together to build a new league of 24 servers with overall better coverage.

EU 1 with NA 24
EU 2 with NA 23
…
EU 24 with NA 1

EU 25-27 drop, let the people choose one of the 24 server.

BooDuh.2841:

Theftwind.8976:

Tie any rewards for WvW, including Karma, coin and loot drops to the server population balance at any given moment, a modifier to multiply your chances. To maximize reward you will want to play during non-peak times or against a force larger then yours. Once the large, highly populated servers realize that they get more bang for the buck on the lower populated servers they will move. Over time it will all balance out. No need to change population caps.

how would that differ from this? Asside from the fact that I love charzookas n all …
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Outnumbered

Outnumbered is based on the odds of one map in one match.

The proposal above should be based on comparing all servers population at a time.
NA 1 has currently 200% of the mean population, it gets everything halved, NA 24 has currently only 10% of the mean population it gets everything multiplied by 10.

Ansau.7326:

I’m not talking just about the randomness of matchups, but the randomness of fights, server strategies and tactics…
Simply the randomness that you don’t know what you will face until you see it.

Everybody need to put the idea in their heads that it’s not possible to have similar people in all servers, unless you severely limit the map cap and the duration:
- If you want to keep zergs, you need at least 30-40 people per server. That is big enough to produce huge coverage imbalances. If you don’t like zergs, you have PvP.
- If you want to limit the time, long matchups don’t have a place (a 5 hour matchup is already long).
And that friends, is just changing the core of WvW.

That randomness will only increase when fighting different opponents. Right now I know the strategies of my servers regular opponents. I know a good chunk of their commanders and regular players and can pick them out in a fight.

This weeks tournie shows the huge differences in population even if servers just a few ranks apart from one another. If they balanced it out a bit more the tournaments would actually mean something.

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.

• 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).

Boris

Maybe our servers can rebrand ourselves as alliances and Anet can create a new matchup system to pair server alliances together as the same color.

This will retain imminent domain of server identity.
Raise server populations that get paired servers together with mobility to experience allies in many servers.
A chat interface to rally our alliance together. (Alliance is wvw only chatbox where everyone who chooses to align themselves to a server at implementation of the system can chose which alliance to belong to a.k.a. free transfers at outset.)
A use for “team chat” in wvw as a means of communication between server alliances.

Every other alliance competes to improve their rating/coverage. Alliance that work well together merge guilds at leisure (Free transfers to different alliances of same color matchup).
Top 3 alliances wont get free transfers. Smaller alliances have opportunity to gravitate towards bigger Alliances if they like. Limit of 1 free transfer every 3 months.
Having Alliance mega-guilds competing against each other will add new flavor to the mix.

This must also be accompanied by the ability to make “new” alliances that can only enter the pool of matchups once the alliance reaches a threshold of a 1000 people.
Allow us the opportunity to recreate our own identities. Let us bring back identities that the megaserver has stolen from us.

This will require new maps to get people back into stagnate matchup/strategies. When other games needed to solidify the healthiness of a changing meta, they needed to add more maps. Starcraft did this. Put manpower on this. Get that Living Story Team in on this! Grow or Die, WvW will change greatly regardless of what system is implemented.

The simplest way I could image a solution would be to pair Servers.
For the duration of a turnament find pairs of two so that the wvw population of both servers adds up to the population of the other pairs.

My idea is simple in theory, get rid of servers (everyone will have to adapt it’s the only way)

What we do now is have 3 sides the Order of whispers, Durmand Priory, and Vigil.

this allows people to pick whatever side they want just depends on the toon. and if you are new or have a problem with doing storyline, you can go into EoTM until you complete the Story step (level 30ish I think?)
this wouldn’t take long at all and ties GW2 core with WvWvW (rename it to fit if you must) now if people want to play a certain side they just need to log on the toon that has the matching order picked.

now the problem is balance on all 3 sides, well….if T1 can que all the maps at reset for 5 hours then I would say a safe option would be to have multiple WvW Maps about 4 or 5 “overflows” and get rid of the option to taxi over in another map.

in PVE we are all playing together to kill bosses etc, now we can all play together as actual “order” the hatred of server identity is gone, mortal enemies in a pixelated world is ludicrous, we all play to have fun and kill stuff/people. people can now RELAX and kill for fun not because you hate a certain server AND THEN maybe there will be an official forum for the 3 orders to poke jabs at in fun and not get all mad at because we can now all pick and choose a side whenever we want.

of course each Order would get a specific Buff kinda like EoTM to have fun with.

time to evolve people and stop the “server identity insanity” enough of holding onto the old school thinking of server vs server v server LET US DECIDE Via STORYLINE!.

how’s that?

How about the idea of balancing uneven matches with uneven maps. This is just a take on how EB sides are different. Red can treb SM, Green is difficult to assault, etc.

Perhaps if they just emphasised this more we might get more even matches? It still means all sides have to field some players, so maybe not the best solution for things like nightcaps.

Jim Hunter.6821:

That randomness will only increase when fighting different opponents. Right now I know the strategies of my servers regular opponents. I know a good chunk of their commanders and regular players and can pick them out in a fight.

This weeks tournie shows the huge differences in population even if servers just a few ranks apart from one another. If they balanced it out a bit more the tournaments would actually mean something.

First, it’s really really difficult to manage server populations to be pretty more or less equally, unless you force people who already play wvw to move, and limit the newcomers.
And second, nowadays coverage prevails because we have a system of score that promotes stacked servers and coverage. If the way score is gained is changed, it’ll mean people won’t feel useless when they’re in a map full upgraded or when there’s a big blob around.
If you get rid of ticks and base PPT on taking/defending/upgrading/damaging structures you change the way it needs to win. People will defend structures till the end, and not till the tick is over. Wasting money into upgrades will be meaningful, having roamers hurting enemies structures will be useful…

PD: One reason I’m against of hurting server pride is EU will eventually become like NA, where coverage differences are a serious problem. A server can stomp its immediately lower position server, and you fight the same servers for months.
Server pride somehow mitigates the coverage issues. Players stay to their server and try to fight for it, waiting to see if it raises again (what happens in Baruch, for example).

The only fair matchup in my eyes, is a matchup in which all 3 servers have (close to) all maps queued. I don’t think overly full maps are a bad thing for that matter, as a good queue system is in place, and EOTM is always available for guilds to start off their raids while they are queued up.

A viable solution to the problem needs to address both (1) initial rebalancing, and (2) a way to maintain this balance. I will share my ideas for these two points below.

(1) Initial rebalancing
I would suggest to merge servers based on their active WvW population. There are some ideas above on how to do this. In general this would be done on a per server basis, based on where the specific server spikes in population. Merged servers would have to be renamed, to avoid resentment within the playerbase.

(2) How to maintain a balanced population
A. Get the average amount of players in WvW during every hour of every day. (Amount of players only in the main WvW maps)
B. Create a 3 week rolling average of the number of WvW players per server, and split this up in the different timezones: NA, EU, SEA and OCX (for North America, Eurole, South East Asia and Oceanic timezones respectively). E.g. from 8-12PM PST over these 3 weeks the average amount of players in WvW is 360, then this is the Population|NA
C. Let players self-identify their timezone during server selection from either NA, EU, SEA and OCX. Depending on what timezone the player identifies, different servers are shown as Full/Very High/ High population.
(You could probably also grab this from the system time on the players computer, but I thought it might be better to let players self-select, to give them the choice.)
D. For population|timezone >95% of total map capacity over the timezones prime time, set that server to full. For 80-95% average population, set that timezones server status to Very High. For population 50-80% of map capacity set server status to high for the timezone. For <50% set status to normal.
E. Incentivize players to join Normal servers by putting these at the top of the list when first selecting a server.
F. Incentivize players to join lower population servers, by making transferring to high population servers relatively more expensive.

Came out a bit longer than expected, hope its still readable! This is just an idea Id like to throw out there, obviously Im open to any feedback you might have.

lol people wants balance but don’t want to leave their stacked world

Franke.8147:

Maybe our servers can rebrand ourselves as alliances and Anet can create a new matchup system to pair server alliances together as the same color.

This will retain imminent domain of server identity.
Raise server populations that get paired servers together with mobility to experience allies in many servers.
A chat interface to rally our alliance together. (Alliance is wvw only chatbox where everyone who chooses to align themselves to a server at implementation of the system can chose which alliance to belong to a.k.a. free transfers at outset.)
A use for “team chat” in wvw as a means of communication between server alliances.

Every other alliance competes to improve their rating/coverage. Alliance that work well together merge guilds at leisure (Free transfers to different alliances of same color matchup).
Top 3 alliances wont get free transfers. Smaller alliances have opportunity to gravitate towards bigger Alliances if they like. Limit of 1 free transfer every 3 months.
Having Alliance mega-guilds competing against each other will add new flavor to the mix.

This must also be accompanied by the ability to make “new” alliances that can only enter the pool of matchups once the alliance reaches a threshold of a 1000 people.
Allow us the opportunity to recreate our own identities. Let us bring back identities that the megaserver has stolen from us.

This will require new maps to get people back into stagnate matchup/strategies. When other games needed to solidify the healthiness of a changing meta, they needed to add more maps. Starcraft did this. Put manpower on this. Get that Living Story Team in on this! Grow or Die, WvW will change greatly regardless of what system is implemented.

The goal for anet is to keep the impact tight, they know this, which is why WvW gets incremental updates to not shock the wvw pop.

There are a lot of good ideas here, ones that don’t totally fubar WvW.

Giant changes are bad, we all know that.

my personal opinion is we should stay away from mergers or ideas that force rivalries to work together. it’s WvW its as designed.

My opinion is we can do a ton of this without merging, separating or otherwise turning WvW upside down. Take it for what it is but changes to PPT would go way farther then %90 of the ideas proposed here, period. I don’t really understand the benefit to PPT as it stands right now, maybe someone can tell me the benefits beyond anet not wanting to invest in a different system. What are we, like 140 posts after a red post?

Map cap – I didnt like the idea at first, but a slight map cap could go a long way. I’m thinking from 80 to 60 people. It would give outnumbered servers an actual chance to fend off the map queue rather then the queue just facetanking any organized defensive force. Siege should be toned down in this scenario.

Merging – Merging the lowest population servers is something that has been done in previous games, this wont be some end of the world event. People will adjust, and the fact that its for the better would make it easier. It would make sense to create a completely new server.

Buff defense – Not only is it impossible to actually apply pressure from the walls, but the npcs are close to useless and map queues can melt doors via pvd, so this creates a siege spam mentality that isnt fun for anyone not on siege. Right now its pointless to defend a structure against a vastly larger force.

How about after seasons you do something like this:

1st place gold tier, 2nd in silver, 3rd in bronze
2nd place gold mix with 3rd silver, 1st bronze
3rd place mix with 1st silver, 2nd bronze

that way there will be a decent mix of servers, and hopefully avoid any arch enemies being put together. All lower tier servers will be able to play with, and learn from, the gold servers. the reason for this being… outside of seasons, we play the same 2 servers over and over and over again. its a constant 3 way battle with the same people, the only time it changes is when seasons come, and you’re either playing someone from a different tier and face roll them, or get run over, there’s no middle ground. so… why not just have 3 mega servers? other wise, just merge:

Silver 1 and Bronze 3
Silver 2 and Bronze 2
Silver 3 and Bronze 1

then they will have hopefully close to the numbers we have in gold tier.

as far as the Queues… yeah, they’re pretty bad NOW at times, adding several thousand people per server will only make it worse. you’d almost HAVE to find a way to expand the player cap per map.

Edit: holy crap, didn’t realize how many servers there were… yeah, that will need some major overhauls.

1. Create new BL/EB maps on a regular schedule so that WvW won’t be as stale. More people will play, and that will alleviate the population issue.
2. Change ranking system so that winner receives the great majority of ranking points. That encourages the two smaller servers to team up and fight for first instead of 2nd. That way unless the winning server has much more population than the two other servers combined, it becomes more even.
3. Delete the top 6 servers. Spread the population out to the rest.
4. Fix trolling, griefing using GMs (like in dungeons). People stop playing/caring when they know all their work is for naught because of trolls/griefers. This fix brings people back in the game.

27 servers in EU just seems a tad dated now. Could easily cut that down to at least 15 servers through merging or scraping the current servers and simply creating a number of new servers for players to affiliate themselves with. WvW is pretty stagnant at present and is in serious need of some mixing up, so I welcome the chance to build new communities within a different infrastructure.

retsuya.4708:

Decrease WvW Map Cap,
Sorry but you have to spread out or play EotM while on Queue.

Off hours coverage might still be there but, 30 vs 80 (assumes 80 is the cap) is still a lot better than 30 vs 150

Staleness of match-ups.
If players are a bit spread out, the gap will be smaller and we can have a variety of match ups every week

This but the current map population caps are probably more around 80 already on the borderlands, so take them down to 60 and see how it goes. It solves so many problems at once. There is no real good reason we need fights bigger than 50v50v50 to feel like an MMO.

I don’t really get all the lower WvW map population caps hate I see in this thread. I don’t think most people are looking at as a destacking incentive which is the most important thing it should be used for. Now that guilds can take their unlocks with them there is nothing to hinder spreading the player base back the heck out. I would also be in favor of maybe some in game ways for guilds to earn world transfers or some tools to make it worth while for guilds to make a home-world declaration. And the mega guilds could decide to take over more than world if they wanted. Hopefully not ones that face each other regularly but maybe some guilds would like that?

Darkhaven player here, I’ve read the beginning and end of the thread. I see Blaeys put into words what I’ve always wanted: there’s a single matchup of all servers, each world has its own borderlands. Still server pride, still going to run with people on VOIP.

Some concerns:

• My personal, solo contributions will feel lesser.

• I love T3 because it’s possible to solo camps and even take towers with little resistance. I don’t think it’s entirely fair how it is now, sometimes only winning because it’s a ghost town, so I’m open to being able to do this less.

• You really would need to brand this as a major WvW update and push the epic feel, because I think people are going to be very hesitant at first.

• Maybe it will mean even more battles of population or just simple luck… zerging may be almost required to do anything of value.

Jester.6293:

as far as the Queues… yeah, they’re pretty bad NOW at times, adding several thousand people per server will only make it worse. you’d almost HAVE to find a way to expand the player cap per map.

this is because bg still getting transfers even if your world says its full because of ‘blackouts’ and anets kitten system

Apokriphos.7042:

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.

Everyone doesn’t want to be on the Largest server. That is just one of those insults people throw around. I will admit there are some bandwagons who only want to move to the Servers who win, I remember this
thread well enough

Most players want to be on a server where there are people to play with and people to fight against. However WvW doesn’t always allow for this to happen.

Some people get tired of losing so they come here to complain, often putting forwards crazy overly complicated ideas that punish those who play differently then I do.

I can’t count the amount of threads about Night Capping or similar ones.

As for the Free Bags? Are you kidding, the Loot factor of WvW isn’t anything to write home about, never will be. It certainly isn’t what I log in for everyday.

The most balanced matchups are in T1 were the population has distributed itself rather evenly. In a non season the winner will change depending on who is pushing harder. Sometimes rolling with one of the three servers for several weeks only to change hands. I know don’t want to have my game and fights destroyed because someone stacks in the Silver or Bronze league and goes on a rolfstomp spree.

But Nirvana, is right. The majority of the posters on this thread are the vocal minority who have been throwing out idea after idea. Which the majority of the WvW community has by and large rejected. If there hadn’t been a red stamp on this thread I am sure it would have sank to the bottom of the WvW forum along with the rest of them. Because the OP ideas weren’t any better then the ones before it.

I do understand that there are people who want changes to the game mode that will improve their experience. Just because a good idea hasn’t been put forwards doesn’t mean we need to settle for any of the bad ones that have. And I don’t think that there will be a single one that will make everyone on every server happy.

I do not doubt that if the some of these were put into effect it could be the death of the game mode.

1. Population caps for the Lower Servers might make them happy, but it won’t make those who have planned on and enjoy the large fights happy. I have heard even smaller servers can que for rest.

2. Merging servers might fix some coverage issues, but many people from the top server to the bottom don’t want this to happen.

3. Adjusting PPT based on the population? These lead to alot of crazy math debates. perhaps the only possible one that makes sense, likely would be harder to implement, but I don’t think it would make everyone happy.

4. Alliances these can only be done one of two ways. EoTM styles or based on a kind of group membership. EoTM wouldn’t work, it would just make for a never ending karma train. While the other way would just change Name without really doing anything Alliances would still have to have coverage for all areas or they would suffer the same issues we have now.

5. Removing PPT and going just off stomps would be even worse then what we have now.

I will admit a good solution when I see one. But so far, that hasn’t happened.

If people think lowering caps from 80 to 60 will solve something, really don’t know what is to be in a map during hours and seeing not a single enemy. The problem is not when it’s like 35vs40vs70. You can still defend or taking structures if you play smart.
The real problems start when things like 0vs5vs20 or 10vs15vs60 happen. Then it’s just PvD. If a single group of 5/6 people can flip half a map in about 1 hour, do you really think 60 max is much different than 80 or 100?

Scrubs who died/stomped should respawn automatically may help the skill vs numbers issue.

I think it would be one of the best anti blob mechanic.

decrease wvw map cap
decrease world cap
transfer cost based on glicko rating not on server status

Hello, im from EU ladder, i currently play for SFR. I have friends on many servers (Fort Ranik, Jade Sea, Riverside, Augury Rock, Desolation…)
So i can gather many opinions about WvW in EU.

Here are currently 27 servers in EU. 3 leagues of 9 servers. For GW2, a 2 Years old MMO and its population, it’s too much.
For exemple in the gold league, Jade Sea has absolutely no chance to win a single match up, even if they all dont sleep for 5 days.
Everybody complains that SFR is over stacked with many players from SEA time and NA time.
Germans server have big troubles when they are out of hollidays time.

In other words, current servers have trouble to have a good coverage according to the current Points Per Ticks system.
The main problem is here; PPT = Overall pop + coverage.
If a server wins, it’s because it has good population AND good coverage.
Peoples are talking only about the coverage. I will try to bring another topic in this “imbalanced” system.
I think players involved in WvW are loving their community, their servers. They have friends, guilds, things. You know, the famous “Server Pride”. Some people have the habbit to play with low numbers, and actually, they love it.
Some other people love to play with big numbers.
People wants win
1: for the reward, according to the massives transfers we got during the Season on SFR, for exemple.
2: for the server pride, according to some people

I will take as exemple the gold League in EU ladder, cause there is my best experience. But I am pretty sure my experience can be adapted for other leagues.
SFR is godlike cause offpeaks crews are strongs. SFR is #1.
Jade Sea is weak cause offpeaks crews are weak in number. JS is #9.

In my opinion people will enjoy more if the #9 can win to the #1.
Gold lead is
SFR
Desolation
Kodash
Baruch Bay
Elona’s Reach
Riverside
Gandara
Far Shiverpeak
Jade Sea

Kodash, Baruch, Elona, Riverside have quite the same number, and quite the same coverage. They got the label High. They are in gold league but they cant win SFR. First of all, they should have the label Medium. Because they are medium in their own League.
SFR and Desolations are on top cause they have high population, they have amazing coverage. They deserve the High label
Gandara, FSP and Jade Sea can’t play at all in this league. They have very bad coverage and during they respective prime time they are in trouble to gather people. They should have the label Low cause they are low in their own league.
With these label, and so the price for transfer according to these label, maybe more people would try to join these servers.
Actually, for the same price of gems, you have the choice to get on Gandara or on SFR. Why choose gandara when you know you will have 100 tickets/ weeks when for the same prince you can have 200?
Changing the price transfer according to the ranking on the league can helps to balance population by itself.

Then, a low populated server will often have the Outmaned buffs on map when the opponent zerg will jump. This buff is totally useless. Change it. Really.
Make it something like. A server with the outmaned buff will tick like 50% stronger (50% valor as exemple, it can be more to gives more challenge) on this map as long as they have the buff. It will force the zerg to flip faster objective otherwise they will lose points.
That means a server with low population able to defend a keep for 2 ticks with the outmaned buff, or a bad timed attack by a zerg on an empty map, will have consequences on the score.
Good organised low numbers got a nice reward if they are succesfull.
Brain dead big numbers are penalised it they fail.
If a big zerg fails an attack, they will want to change map for no bonus on the tick. SO make the bonus apply on the keep/tower/camp until the end of the tick to avoid these brain dead counter. A big zerg has to fight until the end of the tick.
It can change the way people are used to nightcap. Nightcap is a problem since the launch of the game. Changing this buff, make it something usefull and maybe it can change the nightcap problem into something very strategic.

You can also change some things in the currents mecanic. For exemple, a structure dont give point for the tick if the lord is buffed. Or a tick last 1 hour instead 15 minutes. It can bring epic battle and epic defense “until the end”, “for the PPT”, if it’s added to the “new Outmanned” buff.

With these solutions, everyone will be free to play how they like. Big zergs, small skirmishing numbers, guild raids,… And it can in my opinion, in a very simple way, helps the WvW to find its own balance without changing map cap or kitten like that

1. every WvW map starts at a 10 player cap.
2. if 2 servers are within 10 players of the cap on the map, the cap is increased, (up till the current max cap).
3. nobody is kicked if the cap drops, but no new people are allowed on the map until their server is below the cap.

Examples:

• Server A fields 48 people.
• Server B fields 40 people.
• Server C fields 0 people.
  The cap is 50.

• Server A fields 75 people.
• Server B fields 85 people.
• Server C fields 95 people.
  The cap is 95.

• Server A fields 10 people.
• Server B fields 2 people.
• Server C fields 0 people.
  The cap is 12.

On Eternal battlegrounds:
cap = population of 2nd highest server on map +10 ( with a minimum of 10 and a maximum being the current max)

On Borderlands:
cap = population of home server on map +10 ( with a minimum of 10 and a maximum being the current max)

Why 10 minimum?
To counterbalance nightcapping. You can nightcap, but only with a 10 player advantage.

Why different for home border?
So both enemy servers won’t raise eachother’s cap and nightcap a home border with 100 people.

silvermember.8941:

Blaeys.3102:

Fairly simple solution (from a player’s perspective) that takes server pride, griefing and 24/7 coverage into account -

Right now, in North America, we have eight matches spread across 32 maps (3 borderlands and one EBG per match).

Instead, give us one huge match every week that is basically 8v8v8 (evenly split servers – can adjust if populations dont match up well).

And, have that match on the exact same 32 maps. Every server would still have a “borderlands map” named after their server.

Players could queue for any of the following three: any enemy borderland, their own borderland (no other server in their battlegroup could), or any of the 8 EBGs (which would need unique names). This would give every player a total of 16 possible maps to play on each week – at any given time – with access to players from 8 different servers (which should fix the coverage problem as well).

To retain server identity, rewards would be two tiered. First, the servers in the winning battlegroup would get the same rewards winning servers get now.

Second, servers should get slight advantages while holding their own borderland, giving them something to hold/brag about. By limiting queues to server borderlands, it would retain server identity and reduce griefing. Griefing on other maps would be a non issue because guilds or server groups could simply move to another map to get away.

This seems like it would be easy to implement from a dev side as well – all we would need is a new interface (with new scoring) and player access to multiple maps.

This is probably the best idea. So have an 8v8v8 but instead on 32 maps have it about 16 to 24 (so 1 borderland for each server and 6 eternal battlegrounds) maps to allow for increased population on certain maps that are underutilized. This will allow for over flowing servers to go support others in their league that are under populated while keeping the bigger server’s imaginary “community” in tack.

Agree with the above. Unlike every other proposal, I don’t see any major downsides here. I do wonder about epic levels of map hopping – with so many vulnerable objectives, a blob could train around 16 maps forever finding weak spots to break open. Moreover, if home borderland participation is limited, you’re bound to face a multi-server queue-blob at a bad time and come out hurting. The asymmetry seems to favor attacking, which the game already does.

Perhaps extend the pseudo hub-and-spoke layout of EB and the borderlands like GW1 did with Hall of Heroes? The three t1 borderlands connect to EB and each other, but each also connects ‘outward’ to multiple other BLs and you have to actually travel to an adjacent one to use the portal to the next. A ‘web’ and not just spokes, so you can travel to other BLs in your ring/tier and still have more opportunity to spread out than there is now. Also I assume free ports to EB, the center, for all. You could also put the EB clones at the outer perimeter, so there’s a ‘true’ center and other big/stonemist objectives easily accessible to those in the outer BLs. But, nobody likes travel time. Brainstorming, I still like the original idea however we lay out the worlds – in an actual map, or just a drop-down list.

Outnumbered buff: Yes, improve it. Problem is that getting an extra 25%, 50% loot… Doesn’t matter when you aren’t getting any loot because you’re facing groups 3x bigger than you. Similarly, even if you penalize the ‘overstacked’ side, at 50% drop rate, stacked team is still getting more loot/wxp farming dozens of bags than outnumbered team is from picking off yaks and roamers.

One aspect of the existing system I don’t see under discussion – 2v1. Much of the reason for having a 3-way matchup (on my view) is so 2 weaker servers can team up to defeat the stronger. This should provide a natural balancing effect, and keep matches more dynamic and fluid but has largely failed to do so. Exception being Season 2 T1 NA, which caused so much drama that even though the strategy succeeded it wasn’t worth repeating.

As-is, the three-way matches are all 1 server dominating, and 2 others fighting for scraps. Further distorts the imbalance, because it’s easy to stay #1 once you have the help of the #3 team focusing on #2. Once in that spot, it’s generally all #2 can do to fend off attacks from both ends, and keep their position.

Bloodlust: Not sure why people are calling for removing it in this thread. I like bloodlust, but it’s only tangentially related to the coverage/imbalance issues.

I think something very important to remember when discussing the merger of servers is that server population =/= wvw population. Uneven distribution of wvw players compared to pve players may lead to further imbalances in active wvw population if not accounted for.

Hmm so alot of this thread boils down to nerf zerging and force people to play the way they deem skillful.

Varible map caps based on the others servers population are a complete fail and so easily abused.

Ansau.7326:

Jim Hunter.6821:

That randomness will only increase when fighting different opponents. Right now I know the strategies of my servers regular opponents. I know a good chunk of their commanders and regular players and can pick them out in a fight.

This weeks tournie shows the huge differences in population even if servers just a few ranks apart from one another. If they balanced it out a bit more the tournaments would actually mean something.

First, it’s really really difficult to manage server populations to be pretty more or less equally, unless you force people who already play wvw to move, and limit the newcomers.
And second, nowadays coverage prevails because we have a system of score that promotes stacked servers and coverage. If the way score is gained is changed, it’ll mean people won’t feel useless when they’re in a map full upgraded or when there’s a big blob around.
If you get rid of ticks and base PPT on taking/defending/upgrading/damaging structures you change the way it needs to win. People will defend structures till the end, and not till the tick is over. Wasting money into upgrades will be meaningful, having roamers hurting enemies structures will be useful…

PD: One reason I’m against of hurting server pride is EU will eventually become like NA, where coverage differences are a serious problem. A server can stomp its immediately lower position server, and you fight the same servers for months.
Server pride somehow mitigates the coverage issues. Players stay to their server and try to fight for it, waiting to see if it raises again (what happens in Baruch, for example).

I’m all for server pride. That’s why I proposed this idea rather than destroying all or some of the servers. A lower server cap wouldn’t force anyone to move, but I’m sure there are plenty of guilds that would decide to move to avoid queues.

These would be the same guilds that transferred to the servers for tournament rewards and don’t have a long standing relationship with the other players on that server. I don’t want to lose any of the servers, what I want is the chance to fight against a few more of them.

I can’t count how many times I’ve seen people in tier 1 talk about how that’s where the real WvW players and the skill is. I think it would be interesting to see how they fair against other servers in a more even match up.

John Corpening.9847:

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

The topic of population balance is an issue because of the way scoring works. To try things like server merges or pop limits is treating the symptom rather than addressing the cause.

So my advice is to drop the population “fixes” discussion entirely and focus on changing your PPT scoring method.

Here is the actual problem: 24/7 Coverage is the meta to win. That’s what you need to beat everyone else. This creates the need to stack on the same server and doing so pulls players from other servers. This creates a stronger server, and so the competition does the same thing. Top tier servers suck up players from servers below to keep fighting against the PPT wall. Players burn out from lack of updates and changes to WvWvW and from fighting the 24/7 PPT wall. The servers then have to recruit more players from elsewhere to replace the burnouts. This creates a cycle that continually shrinks the passionate WvWvW playerbase.

So even if you merge servers, you aren’t fixing the problem as populations will continue to drop and activity will drop as well, causing your mergers to become only temporary solutions.

So you address the problem: The Current PPT scoring system.

Following is how I would fix the PPT problem.

First, let’s look further in on why PPT creates problems and why coverage is the meta.

One of the major reasons that night coverage and PVDooring is a running joke within the community is because zerging during off-hours is the most effective means of securing victory. Points do not account for who you are fighting or what sort of resistance you meet. Due to this, fighting against zero resistance will allow you to take more objectives and gain more PPT. This means that the current meta dictates that off-hours and non-primetime hours are more valuable than primetime hours. Heavy populations during those off-hours means more than strong population during prime time. Most servers can manage a mixture of hardcore, casual and PVX sort of players during prime time to garner a decent if not astounding PPT tick. Servers that can gather that sort of population during off-hours can accumulate a significant PPT tick.

cont…

continued

My solution is to break up the 7 day match into several mini-sets. You already have a four hour timer for EotM. This creates short bursts of play and a reset of the map. Because of this, EotM always feels like a fresh match. Regular WvWvW doesn’t feel this way. By Monday or Tuesday many matches are decided and people give up or take a break.

So let’s change the week long match-up with one final large sum score into a Match divided up into 21 different eight hour sets. The initial set begins at 6pm server reset time and lasts until 2am. From 2am until 10am is the next set. From 10am to 6pm server is the next set. This divides each day into three sections that closely resemble important coverage spans. The scoring during each set is done much the same way as it’s done now. There is a running PPT score. After the 8 hours are up, the PPT score of that set determines a 1st, 2nd and third placing for the set. Each server gets a Win Point for their placing in that 8 hour set. (For example, 1 Win point for first, zero for rest or 2 win points for first, 1 win point for second, zero for third.) After the 8 hour set finishes, the PPT total is reset but the map is not. A new tally of PPT begins for the next 8 hours, creating the next 1st, 2nd and 3rd place finish and the subsequent Win Points.

At the end of the week, the win points from every 8 hour set is added up to determine a winner. The server who has the most win points then wins the match. A week long PPT score will be held as well, the same as the WvWvW mode operates now, but only exists to serve as a tie-breaker. In the case of a system that awards 1 win point for 1st and no other points, a total of 21 win points would exist within a matchup, with a tie-breaker via week long PPT. In the 2 points for first and 1 point for second system, there would be 63 total win points during the week to be earned by any of the three servers. Again, week long PPT would act as a tie-breaker.

How does this change things?

In the current system, things get out of hand. Let’s say at reset, things are tough but one server jumps out ahead a bit. After the first 12 hours, they have a 500 point lead. Then during off hours, the third place server has overwhelming coverage advatange. By mid-day and 20 hours into the match. third place has jumped ahead to 2nd. By the third day of this pattern, the night coverage server has a 2000 point lead. By Tuesday this lead is 20,000 and growing. Soon, there is no interest in the match as it is already decided. The other servers can not make up the point difference from off-hours because they have to fight actual people during the rest of the day.

Let’s take that same coverage example and apply the new scoring system to the situation. During the first 8 hours, Server Blue wins total PPT and gains 2 points. Green gets 1 win point for second. Red has zero Win Points. In the next 8 hours, Red wins the PPT handedly and gains 2 win point. Blue barely hangs to second in that period of time and gets 1 win point. Green gets zero. In the next 8 hours, Green manages to secure 2nd for 1 win point while Red rides their off-hour coverage to a second first place finish. In the following 8 prime time hours, Blue gets 1st for 2 win points, and Green 2nd for 1 win point. So in the first 32 hours the score would be Blue 5, Red 4, Green 3.

So rather than a lead for red that grows expotentially over every day cycle, the match remains close, feels close because of the smaller numbers, and even allows for comebacks by any server pulling an all-nighter to win better positioning during a time period where they are normally weaker. If that same ratio holds for 3 days straight, the score would be Red 12, Blue 9, Green 6 . There’s some space being made, but Blue can win 1st in one set to quickly jump back in. If a set goes not according to the same pattern, You could have Red 12, Blue 11, Green 12. Everything tied up and close within one day cycle.

So with the new system, matches can stay tighter and comebacks are more plausible. As well, getting night zerged isn’t as damaging to your chance of winning, and because of that fighting over 24/7 coverage isn’t as important. If you can win 2/3rds of a day or even always win 1/3rd of a day and split the other two-thirds, then you’re able to be in competition to win the match. No longer do you absolutely need 24/7 coverage. You just need to win enough times of day to get your win points. This creates less need for full, constant coverage and less demand on the community to provide that coverage. This means less server stacking due to less need to server stack. Of course, you can still stack like crazy to dominate 24/7, but I have a feeling the scoring change would lighten the impetus to do so. As well, I am not sure there is a way to make extreme server stacking not work without breaking the entire game mode. The goal should be to make matches interesting outside of that phenomenon.

So you fix the PPT scoring issue and the population imbalance issue isn’t so much a problem anymore. You break the server hop, stack, and burnout cycle. You don’t have to merge servers or destroy server identities. You tear down the PPT wall and things will begin to resolve themselves.

Grimm.3972:

Population caps: Don’t change it. As is, it can already become a problem when a guild is trying to get their players on a queued map, and it can create a toxic environment for pugs.

Merge servers: Regardless of “server pride”, this is an option, but it in and of itself does not solve the primary issue of 24/7 coverage.

Battle Groups: May be a viable option, but would need to see how maps would be handled. EOTM style overflow would not be an option, as that would not fit with the PPT mechanic. (EOTM as a competitive map is pointless, as the creation of additional overflows always preferences the team with most players.)

Scaled PPT by population: I see variations of this proposed often, but I do not see it as a viable solution. The PPT mechanic should be fixed regardless of number of players, or otherwise it would also lead to a toxic environment as people try and manage the population on maps to favor the scaled mechanic.

Battle Groups has the benefits of merging servers without the actual merge, it keeps server communities intact and could ultimately lead to increasing wvw scale and scope.

John Corpening.9847:

Hey Guys,

Normally I like to summarize the discussion as it is happening but today I’ve been away from my desk for most of the day and just popped on to see that we are at 6 pages! YIKES! It’s going to take me a bit to catch up because I read every post in a thread that I’m engaging in. I’m making this post to let you know that I am reading this thread but I’d like to absorb everything everyone is discussing before I make my next response.

Thanks,
John

The conversation has generally been around the pros/cons of fixing population imbalance and PPT scores.

Suggestions for population balance have been for server mergers, gvg alliances, population caps (dynamic and static), and ppt handicaps.

I’ve just been casually reading. I’m sure someone else has a more in depth summary than I could do.

Catchlove.2189:

I think something very important to remember when discussing the merger of servers is that server population =/= wvw population. Uneven distribution of wvw players compared to pve players may lead to further imbalances in active wvw population if not accounted for.

ANET could use the meta data on per server wvw participation to form battle groups.

I haven’t read through the thread, so I’m sure someone has mentioned this before…

…but it’s not that a server has more people wuving than the other sides, but when that server can have a sizable number of people on when the others can’t.

I’m in Fort Aspenwood, right at the point of the top-tier servers become everyone else, and when we get grouped with those top-tier servers, the result is always the same; we make a good showing during NA primetime, even winning in PPT by the end of it as often as not, and when come back the next evening, find that we’re behind by (another) 5-6k or more because those servers have a sizable number of people who either live in a different timezone and/or have a different daily routine than the average person who come on when most people are asleep or at work and take everything the other severs had when there is a fraction of the normal numbers to defend them.

It’s coverage, steady numbers over the entire day/week, that separate the dominating servers from the rest of us, and frankly, changing the wuv pop caps isn’t really going to change that. It isn’t going to persuade people to change servers because hey, they aren’t winning because they can hit map cap on primetime, they’re winning because after they get off, their buddies in Asia and Europe, the kids home sick, the people who work night shifts, and the hapless between jobs are going to pick up where they left off, and while they might feel a pop cap of 40, other side isn’t even going to have close to that many.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that, at least alone, you aren’t going to promote more parity between servers by making harsher map caps. You are also going to have to change the scoring system so that coverage during downtime is not immeasurably more important than skill during primetime.

Population caps.
What about having mercenaries?

• Players would be able to call for mercenaries by talking with a certain NPC (e.g.: Mercenary Agent) in the protected location of each Mist War map.
  • As long as there’s empty slots in the map, a player would be able to call for up to 4 mercenaries that will be added to their party. If kicked from the party, these mercenaries are also kicked from the map, so they’ll have control over what these mercenaries can do.
  • They’ll use player slots, so if players want to enter their own maps and there’s no space, mercenaries would be kicked out.
• These mercenaries would be AI-controlled NPCs or players from different leagues (worlds that will never compete against this), or maybe both.
• Players could volunteer to become mercenaries by talking to a certain NPC (e.g.: Mercenary Recruiter) in the Edge of the Mists.
  • Players can only volunteer to become mercenaries as long as their own maps are full, or their own worlds are winning, so being a mercenary is an alternative to going to the edge of the mists, not to go to your own world’s maps.
  • Mercenaries would have no control over which world they are sent to help. It will be completely random.
  • The system will check if their world is losing or outnumbered in any of their maps every time they are defeated. If there’s room in that map, they’ll be sent there instead reviving as mercenaries. Mercenaries can only stay helping in another world as long as both they stay alive and their own worlds do not need help.
• Player Mercenaries would have the “mercenary bonus” that gives the same bonus as outnumbered, specially WXP and extra chances for Honor Badge drops.
• Mercenaries would appear as “<Mercenary’s world’s> Mercenary <WXP rank title>” instead “<Current side’s World> <WXP rank title>”
  • For example, a mercenary from Gandara hired by a Vabbi player who is a Gold Major would appear as “Gandara Mercenary Gold Major” to someone from Whiteside Ridge currently fighting him, instead “Vabbi Gold Major”

That’ll get people to help other worlds while the can’t help thier own worlds.

My idea is quite long and convoluted, so bear with me as I write it out. As I begin writing this, the idea is still developing in my mind. Basically, what I considered in formulating this idea is
1) My initial expectations of WvW from when it was announced (pre-GW2)
2) Aspects of GW1 I miss in GW2 (FA/JQ/AB)
3) The numbers imbalance

Now, my personal opinion, and obviously the simplest solution to the WvW problem is to cut max numbers to a lower number so that it isn’t a matter of 5/10/15 defending against 50/60 etc. But there would be ALOT of complaint regarding this. So here is my suggestion.

WvW would be broken down into 5 or 6 elements all of them, apart from Eternal Battlegrounds will be formed in the citadel (like the old AB pugging grounds) from where you enter your selected ‘skirmish’ of various styles. Across all of these skirmishes, points are awarded per kill, and for attaining objectives, which are specified per style.

Element 1: Siege: This is a Squad V Squad battle on a map, with 3 supply points (one close to the attackers spawn, 2 close to the defenders spawn but outside their walls). There could be 3 potentials for this Garrison, Hills, and Bay with varying population caps. These are 1v1, not 1v1v1. Garrison would be 20v20, Hills 12v12, Bay 8v8. For this, there would be ppt for supply camps. Points for siege built. Points for walls broken/repaired. Points for kills. There is no waypoints in this version, no respawn. If you die you must wait for res by teammates. Match duration is 30 minutes.

When a world has formed a team for an attack and starts it, if there is no defending team prepared, an announcement goes out across the server (similar to the scarlet events) “Blackgate is marching on your Garrison/Hills/Bay. Head to the citadel to prepare a defence”. Matches start on the half hour, and require 10 minutes notice to force the match. If no defenders turn up, it is considered a win for the attacking team in regards to points. If they call the match at 21 past for example, there is no match up at half past. However the :00 match will either award a win or a loss.

Element 2: Capture the flag. This is a 1v1v1 match, with teams of 5. Pretty self explainatory, its capture the flag/orb/whatever. You get significant points for a successful capture, points per kill, and it goes for 10 minutes. This can have 10 instances running at max, with one starting every minute. In the case of 2 teams waiting for the 3rd team to join, after 1 ‘restart’ it matches them in a 1v1, without a 3rd world competing. Same points apply to the world.

Element 3: Deathmatch. This is a persistent 10v10v10 arena. You die, you get sent to citadel. One instance of this per world. Its a medium sized map (eg the area between Hill/Bay/Garrison). No downed state. When someone dies, the next player in the queue enters. If 10v10v10 is a little bit high could be whatever number suits those servers. Points per kill, and killstreak multipliers.

Element 4: King of the hill. Basically a match up devoted to ruins. 5v5v5. Match goes for 10 minutes. Points every 10 seconds if you are alone/more numerous on the point. Points for kills. Respawn every 20 seconds.

Element 5: GVG. This is a Keep v Keep style of match, with a new form of seige called a Ladder which allows a player to climb over a wall. Ladders cost 10 supply to build, have 1 HP, and when used are a 10 seconds easily interuptable cast. 1 use only. 8v8, goal is to kill the Keep Lord. Points for gate destruction, player kills, holding the flag, npc deaths, and victory. This could also be adopted outside of WvW as an option so that you can GVG players outside of your current matchup.

Element 6: Eternal Battlegrounds. This is similar to the way it currently is, however you gain slight benefits based on how your team is performing in other skirmishes. If you have unsuccessfully defended your borderlands keeps, you have less NPC’s helping to defend your facilities. Every time a capture the flag/supply match ends, for each flag/supply captured you get some supply at your spawn. Every 10 minutes the current ruins buff transitions to whichever team won the King of the hill matchup.

For EB possibly remove the NPC spawns, although that is something that may or may not be worthwhile.

Continued next post:

How does this look for numbers? Well currently, considering roamers, havoc groups, zergs/blobs, afker’s/crafters etc there is a max of (if I understand correctly) 320 players in wvw at any one point.

Under this style you can have
40 defenders,
between 40 and 80 attackers depending on what the other worlds are doing, but you can guarantee a minimum of 40 through prioritization of battles between worlds based on positioning. (IE bottom left spawn has priority to attack bay and garri, whilst bottom right has priority to attack hills. Obviously there are no bottom spawns now, but the principle can be applied. IE Green = reds bay, and blue hills, red = blue bay & green hills, blue = green bay and red hills.)
Capture the flag Max 40
Deathmatch 10
King of the hill: 5 (could possibly scale this to 10v10v10 for top leagues)
GVG: potentially unlimited, but requiring presence on other servers. Lets argue 30 for now.
Eternal BattleGrounds: 80

So we have 250 total players in wvw at once right now. According to what I read on this thread, there is really very little of queues the majority of the time. There is a very quick cycle of players through the deathmatch as people are dying quite often, so quite small queues there. This also means that groups forming up are not depleting from the total, and neither are the crafters/afkers/etc. I personally am of the opinion that this is enough people, especially since it can spread to 290 if you are performing full attacks but these numbers/extra instances can be added as appropriate.

This also makes it easier to add new features to wvw as it can be a new style of skirmish, or adding more players/more instances to the deathmatches.
How does this help with coverage issues. The only “persistent” world is Eternal Battlegrounds. 60 or 70% of the point distribution comes from here, and the other instances both support this instance whilst supplying more points to the overall total. If you are heavily outnumbered during OCE times for example you can hold on successfully by focusing your efforts on EB and whilst the other teams will do better, it wont be as significant as during other times.

However, I believe that the other combat styles will pull people out of pve/spvp and rekindle interest in WVW as it has more variety, which will increase population contributing to wvw from across the board, and give more options within the game.

One last suggestion I would like to see in this. Commander tags remain as is for pve, and EB but squads are no longer limited to commanders in citadel/skirmishes so that you aren’t prevented from defendning/attacking because of a lack of a tag.

Quick note regarding the numbers and timing. These can be adjustable if they don’t quite work out.

TL;DR: Get rid of individual persistent borderlands and create a variety of skirmish style battles that contribute points and rewards to the single persistent open world in EB. Styles include capture the flag, deathmatch, king of the hill, defend/siege and GVG. Limits uneven coverage abuse due to being able to focus on EB alone, whilst also allowing contribution, and variety to allow all players to duke it out in various levels of team organisation levels.

if servers are to merge, make the total number of server to be 9 as well. easy for ANET to organized tournament later.

on the other hand if they go for reducing map the cap, that would be good for their servers as well, less stress on the server—> less lag.

Is useless to try to balance servers in a competitive match, more if that servers involve PvE population.

Factions: Easiest to balance, and you have identity too. You can introduce it by Living History.
Don’t ignore WvW community: And you don’t going to lose to many users in hands of the competence.

Any change is risky. Factions or Merge servers. But WvW is pretty dead even in T1 now.

John Corpening.9847:

Hey Guys,

Normally I like to summarize the discussion as it is happening but today I’ve been away from my desk for most of the day and just popped on to see that we are at 6 pages! YIKES! It’s going to take me a bit to catch up because I read every post in a thread that I’m engaging in. I’m making this post to let you know that I am reading this thread but I’d like to absorb everything everyone is discussing before I make my next response.

Thanks,
John

The problem I see with most of the suggestions (especially population caps) is that they don’t address the root issue. The root issue is that WvW doesn’t scale well with player count. Server population is the most important metric for server success. I think we should take a look at WvW mechanics to make WvW fun at a wider range of populations.

GW2 gameplay really is group focused. Most of the game content is possible to solo, but really designed for multiple players working together. This extends from combat mechanics to content design. When there aren’t enough players around, the game is more difficult. Also, WvW maps have a certain number of objectives, and a certain size. This means that there is a minimum number of players to effectively attack and defend a single map. These players also need to be sufficiently organized.

This all makes WvW much harder below a certain concentration of players. While server merges to boost player numbers and population caps to limit zergs are tempting, they don’t solve the issue of WvW design being essentially unfriendly to small groups.

I used to play on Henge of Denravi, which was heavily outnumbered and suffered badly during that period. Here are some things I would have liked to see, and some things that I’ve noticed on high pop servers that I think could be replicated for lower pop servers:

1) Man Up When Outmanned
There’s a village on each borderlands map. When players are few, spawn more NPC guards and villagers to defend their homes. The NPCs should act semi-independently in their server’s home area to replicate the feeling of PCs. They could also offer to accompany players to replicate some of the feeling of a group. Players still have the option of solo play, but they can also be backed up by helpers when wanted. A population-dependent NPC cohort also helps keep a few PCs PvDooring overnight from decimating a server’s score, which can be very depressing.

2) Shout For Help
Make it easier for outnumbered players to coordinate and fight together by providing more communication. Treat commanders from the outnumbered server like a POI and have the minimap point players to them. Popup an event when a player from the outnumbered server gets into combat. Try to provide some of the communication an organized WvW guild would.

3) Tune the Outmanned buff
Weight or tier the Outmanned buff so that it scales more effectively with the population difference.

4) Siege the Suckers
If a server is heavily outmanned, maybe they should get more siege, or get easier access to other WvW assets. Provide a counterweight to the higher population so that fewer players can still effectively defend the large WvW maps.

5) Downed But Not Out
Make the downed state less of a certain-death experience for players on an outnumbered server. Right now, going down when outnumbered is very hard to recover from. Make this less of a hurdle to players who don’t have allies in WvW to back them up. Grouped NPC revivers could work (and wouldn’t impact other areas of the game).

6) Shiny New WvW Gameplay
Make WvW specific mechanics and gameplay that people can access when they’re outnumbered. This would also reignite interest in WvW.

7) Shiny New Small Group Gameplay
Guerilla warfare has a long and storied history. I would love to be able to play a small group raider in GW2, but zergs are so powerful that other grouping options aren’t fun for most players (including me). New party or small group features would change WvW to make high population and constant coverage less important. It could also be an interesting new feature for PvE. 2 birds, 1 stone!

I think the basic problem of WvW is that a certain number of players is needed to play effectively. Having a coherent WvW strategy (or even surviving a play session) below that threshold is frustrating. Population caps and other stopgaps won’t fix the design issue of not scaling well with player populations. I know they’re probably easier right now, but I think they’d make the WvW population problem worse in the long run and cause many complaints in the short term. I hope my suggestions are a good starting point for how WvW could be tweaked to disconnect server success from server population.

I would like to suggest something different, related to my opinion directly:

I think that after the introduction of megaservers, server identity is broken. Since then I’ve made new friends and most of the time, I end up with groups of people from different servers. I can’t play wvw with them, I can’t even consider transfering because of how diverse is my friend list now.

I think this change is good, but old systems need to change too with this new setting.
My suggestion is making “servers” (aka Jade Quarry or Tarnished Coast) not be servers any more, but represent “sides” or “factions” on the mists, and we can join this factions with a cooldown that can be a week or a couple of weeks. This way old “servers” won’t be locked on tiers, and if you add a maximum of people to the amount that can join the factions, the sides will start to fill evenly (perhaps…) making more diverse and interesting encounters for each week.

I would also shift the rewards.
Current bonuses for ppt would be personal (depends on your faction), and I would add a permanent “weekly reward” similar to what we have now with the tournaments.
If you would like an even more complex system, this factions could record personal progress that won’t transfer when you change factions. Meaning, you will be rewarded for staying on the same faction. This could mean that current wvw ranks (wvw lvl) could be associated to the faction you earn them on.

I know this might mean a loss on sales of gems for Arena net, but I can’t think of a solution that would have at the same time, playing with your friends from “other servers” and having to pay 1000+ gems each time you want to transfer.

Thanks for reading.

edit: sorry, factions was already suggested, I’m guilty: I didn’t read the entire thread before posting.