Guild Wars 2

For the love of god, don’t cut up matches into small chunks like you did with EotM. I’ve seen that suggestion thrown around a lot in this thread, and that is one of the biggest reasons why EotM is one big karma train – the matches are short, and thus the score doesn’t really matter/doesn’t have time to matter. Please don’t do that to WvW.

I don’t know what can be done to balance populations, but it is clear that Tier 1 is vastly different from Tier 2 and below. It shouldn’t be, but it is. There has to be a solution that doesn’t require turning WvW into a carbon copy of EotM, though, where servers mean nothing and scores mean nothing, because that would guarantee that a large amount of the WvW playerbase would quit. A lot of us play for our server communities more than anything else.

To start with, I play in Blackgate and I transferred there before the end of free transfer, so my view is heavily biased towards how we in BG WvW. Also thanks to the dev guy who spends time looking through these posts, bad idea though

TLDR:
Help servers get organized and improve their WvW. Maybe add a feature to easily rally their existing population.

Server mergers, battle groups/guild(or sever?) alliances, population caps are listed bad to worst for me. Those should be used as last resort, or better yet scrapped altogether.

I have not read ALL of the posts, but browsing through, there’s a lot of negative ideas floating around. By negative, I mean destroying or at the very least damaging what’s already there like T1 servers, and the current WvW model.

So instead, why not try to improve the other servers first?

Looking at the top servers, at least in NA, most people usually says they are over-stacked, high population and whatever. But how did they get stacked with WvW players? Guild transfers in some way, but it is still because the people in those servers organized their WvW population and recruited from PVE.

Blackgate is really fortunate to have had an organized WvW community early in the game. Right now, it’s quite hard to rally your server due to megaservers. Gone are the days of people shouting in chat to get more people in WvW.

Maybe add a sort of chatbox in the WvW window for servers to view, or some feature to help organize.

Regarding population, none of us have any right to comment about it since WE HAVE NO DATA. Though even the low population servers can probably queue WvW if they want to since each WvW map can only hold a hundred players per server.

But since server mergers have been mentioned by the dev, they probably have some idea of actual deficit in players. If you want to merge servers, looking at the huge timezone gaps and try to balance it there is how. Sorry but it’s hard to separate general WvW population and timezone coverage unless you plan to make WvW regional, in which case, that’s boring as hell and we’ll all just play during NA :/

As to how to keep world pride, merging with previous enemies,, WvW is supposed to be competitive, and the thought of fighting other servers in other tiers should help re-build world pride and the enemy of my enemy thinking should apply

Sorry, battlegroups whatever doesn’t convince me that it’s a good idea. That will also counter against world pride and whatnot, that the first question regarding mergers aim to resolve.

Population caps are simply dumb. Just no.

Diem.3529:

I’ve heard countless people, from various guildmates, to friends, to strangers say “Why do WvW this week,” “It’s pointless,” “We don’t have a chance to win, so why try.”…

What we need is: A competitive atmosphere. Something that gives us a will to fight and a reason to try and win every week.

I hate to say it, but this sounds like a Ferguson’s Crossing problem, NOT a WvW problem…

I mean, Blackgate spent all of Season 2 in “Can’t Possibly Win” matchups, and we went from only having ques on Reset during Season 1, so suddenly having ques every night in Season 2, because everybody wanted a crack at that JQ/TC Alliance! Honestly, we knew that we had ZERO chance of winning Season 2 once the coordinated system of weekly win-trading started between JQ & TC, but our ques actually GOT BIGGER as Season 2 went on!

This attitude is one of the main reason why many people are against massive server mergers, and it is a very large part of why Blackgate trounces T1 on a regular basis; our server simply has a very competitive atmosphere when it comes to WvW! I mean, the core of BG’s WvW groups is made up of people & guilds who bought this game primarily JUST to play WvW, and not only to play it, but to WIN it. We don’t play for 2nd. Ever. And as the WvW population has shrunk, and other WvW servers have imploded, lots of like-minded guilds have gravitated towards Blackgate, because after fighting against us, they wanted to be part of that sort of competitive community, one that plays to win and never seems to go away.

I mean, if you’re on a server that doesn’t really care where they place, or doesn’t want to try if it looks like the win will be hard to get, then there’s really not much Anet can do to turn that around.
I mean, does your server have:

— it’s own forums?

— a server-wide TeamSpeak that everyone actually uses for WvW?

— weekly map assignments, to assure that everyone knows what guilds are taking which maps, and prevent your 5 biggest guilds from all queing up on the same map each Friday?

— Commander schedules, so you can see exactly where the gaps are in your coverage, and know who will be Tagged up on what map each day, and for how long?

— Weekly server meetings for guild leaders and officers, to discuss where your server’s weaknesses are and how to fix them?

This is just a tiny part of the system of organization that my server uses, a system that we used in Sea of Sorrows starting in November, 2012, and which we brought over to Blackgate in February, 2013, and which we still use now. If you don’t have things like this going already, then simply adding more players (players you’ve never worked with before, who were FORCED to your server) won’t really solve any of your “Competitive Atmosphere” problems. There have been plenty of servers already who’ve proven that having numbers, coverage, a few great guilds, lots of good individual PvPers, or any of the other things that people seem to THINKshould matter, won’t keep your server from toppling when it hits a wall of server-wide organization & Tryhards (SBI’s brief stay in T1, comes to mind).

So maybe Ferguson’s Crossings problems could be solved by a server-merger, but if so, it won’t be because of the extra bodies out in WvW, it will be because you were lucky enough to be merged with a server that has a completely different mindset from the one you have now, with good Commanders out on the maps EVERY night, leading by example, good communication between guilds and across maps, people willing to scout towers and keeps, and Commanders ready to respond if they call for help. It will be because you were lucky enough to be merged with a group of people who ALREADY PLAY TO WIN, simply adding another 1,000 or so players who give up as soon as they fall behind in score won’t change Ferguson’s Crossings’ fortunes in WvW at all.

Baltzenger.2467:

Another idea that I find interesting, is making queues for wvw maps integrated. Meaning: you maintain the same amount of players on each side at all times. If there is 1 extra player on side Blue, for example, then the max queue for red and green is 1, until those are filled, no new blue player can enter the queue.

And what about guilds? What would happen when 25-30 people want to enter in a map at the same time to do their raids?

Please, everyone, avoid throwing random ideas without first think how thee would affect the game.

Ok, I’m not very good at this kind of thing, and I haven’t read every single comment but I wanted to say something as far as merging and server pride is concerned.

One of the best ways to deal with losing something meaningful to a player is always vanity crap. I’m talking backpack skins, emblems, titles, perhaps even an outfit. If someone had their home server destroyed, it would be their pride and joy to to be able say, fly a banner in memory of it. At least that’s how I see it.

Ansau.7326:

Baltzenger.2467:

Another idea that I find interesting, is making queues for wvw maps integrated. Meaning: you maintain the same amount of players on each side at all times. If there is 1 extra player on side Blue, for example, then the max queue for red and green is 1, until those are filled, no new blue player can enter the queue.

And what about guilds? What would happen when 25-30 people want to enter in a map at the same time to do their raids?

Please, everyone, avoid throwing random ideas without first think how thee would affect the game.

I really wanted to comment on this, and i’m probably getting out of hand in posting in this thread. But, i have to agree. The focus should definitely be improving the overall experience. I shake my head every time i see a t1 or t2 server player suggest merging the bottom tier servers, as if it’s those bottom servers that are the real problem.

I’m hoping we get a red post soon. This is my last-ditch effort for our server community after losing so much of it to the megaserver.

Ok time for more summary response from John before this goes another 5 pages since last time what ideas are plausible so far John?

I think a good idea would be changing the Outnumbered buff to a tiered system instead of a flat buff. maybe a total of 3-5 tiers for the buff depending on how badly a server is outnumbered. For example:

• If you’re outnumbered by 25%, then you get the a buff that gives you 10-15% extra base HP, armor, power and condition damage, and maybe reduced condition duration by 20%

• If you’re outnumbered by 50%, the buff would adjust these numbers accordingly, so now you get say 30% extra base HP and armor along with more power, condi, etc.

• And if you’re outnumbered by 75% then you get buffs that would basically make you an elite monster in PvE terms. Maybe you could even get stacks of defiance. I could see how a thief could troll a full havoc for a long time with this buff though…

This would have to be regulated with an added internal cooldown adjusted at Anet’s discretion so there’s no manipulation, like say a T1 server dominates a map and then have 60% of it’s population leave so that the remainder get a strong Outnumbered buff until the tick. That would be bad since the actual lowly populated server has no chance to catch up because a handful of players from the T1 would dominate each keep, castle and camp. That’s not fair play, but if it’s in the game, players will exploit it. That’s why I don’t think a buff like this should affect siege use so one person with the Outnumbered buff can’t down multiple people with an arrow cart barrage like a legendary defender could. Maybe you could reduce the duration of siege disabler grenades against outnumbered players though.

The whole reason I propose this is because I think merging low populated servers for the sole purpose of more even WvW coverage doesn’t seem like it’ll work. I think it will be an educated push in the wrong direction if it’s pursued. The reason is that some servers mostly enjoy PvE. Though megaserver is helping with population at world events, something like that for WvW will remove server pride and identity, thus making WvW as non-competitive as EotM currently is. With a better buff system (or personal scaling depending on how many are attacking you. That would be good for sPvP as well but might entail a full system overhaul), you can keep dedicated WvW players competitive no matter how active their server is in WvW.

Edit: Also maybe give outnumbered people better drop rates for kills on players and npcs— something that makes their hard work worth it and increases their general wealth for investing time into WvW.

Edit: Edit: munkiman reminded me that a buff like this would be harsh on roamers. I agree which is why I don’t think this buff should apply in a 1v1 scenario (though I don’t know how 2v2 would work or 3v3, etc. I originally intended to write that into the proposal but I forgot. Just an idea though, hopefully we all can come up with a good solution.

johnsonade.9547:

I think a good idea would be changing the Outnumbered buff to a tiered system instead of a flat buff. maybe a total of 3-5 tiers for the buff depending on how badly a server is outnumbered. For example:

• If you’re outnumbered by 25%, then you get the a buff that gives you 10-15% extra base HP, armor, power and condition damage, and maybe reduced condition duration by 20%

• If you’re outnumbered by 50%, the buff would adjust these numbers accordingly, so now you get say 30% extra base HP and armor along with more power, condi, etc.

• And if you’re outnumbered by 75% then you get buffs that would basically make you an elite monster in PvE terms. Maybe you could even get stacks of defiance. I could see how a thief could troll a full havoc for a long time with this buff though…

This would have to be regulated with an added internal cooldown adjusted at Anet’s discretion so there’s no manipulation, like say a T1 server dominates a map and then have 60% of it’s population leave so that the remainder get a strong Outnumbered buff until the tick. That would be bad since the actual lowly populated server has no chance to catch up because a handful of players from the T1 would dominate each keep, castle and camp. That’s not fair play, but if it’s in the game, players will exploit it. That’s why I don’t think a buff like this should affect siege use so one person with the Outnumbered buff can’t down multiple people with an arrow cart barrage like a legendary defender could. Maybe you could reduce the duration of siege disabler grenades against outnumbered players though.

The whole reason I propose this is because I think merging low populated servers for the sole purpose of more even WvW coverage doesn’t seem like it’ll work. I think it will be an educated push in the wrong direction if it’s pursued. The reason is that some servers mostly enjoy PvE. Though megaserver is helping with population at world events, something like that for WvW will remove server pride and identity, thus making WvW as non-competitive as EotM currently is. With a better buff system (or personal scaling depending on how many are attacking you. That would be good for sPvP as well but might entail a full system overhaul) You can keep dedicated WvW players competitive no matter how active their server is in WvW.

I’d personally like to keep away from the individual player buffs like this. When roaming it seems highly unfair to lose (or win) a fight due to an artificial buff.

Summary pretty much comes down to forcing a change in population versus giving the underpopulated servers in a match up a handicap. There’s always going to be players who welcome a change and those who object it. However, forcing a change in population will destroy any established server communities and could cause people to stop playing the game. Adding a handicap to lower populated servers might make the overpopulated server of a tier mad if they start losing even with superior numbers. Who knows, maybe that will cause people to transfer and naturally cause a population balance.

Someone mentioned earlier about how hard it can be to rally your server due to mega-server. Perhaps also making LA instanced to each server instead of being mega-server will also help get your server back into WvW.

This is sad. Most posts are some made up complaint about how T1 servers should be the ones modified rather than the obvious where lower tier servers are the problem.

All tier 1 servers have a healthy WvW population, all the servers cap their maps, make heavy use of TS, have great organization, play constantly and have map blobs. All of these can be reduced to what people really want : an active server population.

I used to play in Ehmry Bay, moved over to blackgate. The reason I moved was the lack of a population in Ebay, WvW was a ghost town except for a few guilds who would do their private raids in their private TS and not invite people. This is different in Blackgate, guilds do run by themselves privately but they communicate between each other, there usually is a large guild running the “map tag” where any PUG can join in TS and listen. I dont even care about the rewards as I play 3 times a week with my guild JUST FOR FUN something that was impossible in Ebay.

And here is the reality anyone in the lower tier servers SHOULD be forced into a t2 or t3 server to “balance” the population. You want more Blackgates and Jade Quarries (the two t1 servers that have survived this long), you want more servers to get bummped up like TC did. Most people are proposing the inverse where you want to destroy T1 through harsher caps when what you want is to be a T1 server? You could probably shoot SoS into kitten compete with JQ/BG/TC right now just by moving a couple of guilds from the lower tiers into it.

I understand any lower tier server players having pride and not wanting to move, but if your complaint is that population is an issue and you dont want to move to a server with better population? thats all on you guys not the other servers…

dtzy.5901:

Population caps are simply dumb. Just no.

Says the guy that transferred to the biggest bandwagon server in NA.

dtzy.5901:

WvW is supposed to be competitive, and the thought of fighting other servers in other tiers should help re-build world pride and the enemy of my enemy thinking should apply

That is the idea behind temporarily lowering the cap to even out server population. I would love to fight some different servers but that won’t ever happen because the servers just above us can easily field triple our numbers.

We are fighting SoR this week and no matter how many times we wipe groups much larger than our own we just don’t have the people to stop the several other SoR zergs from capping our stuff.

If you look at the server scores for this week you will see pretty much everyone is running into this problem.

I believe that incentives to move to lower servers won’t be enough because that would just fill up new servers while keeping large population imbalances among the rest. I’m all for offering incentives to make the transition a little less painful for people but that won’t fix the problem on its own.

A temporary fixed cap is the quickest way to even out the population across all servers and make WvW a real competition.

I’m understand why you, being on BG, would hate this idea, but you’ve moved before, you can do it again or go to EotM while waiting to get in to WvW.

I’m understand why you, being on BG, would hate this idea, but you’ve moved before, you can do it again or go to EotM while waiting to get in to WvW.

OR the guys in the lower tier servers (who are probably far less than the amount of people in the higher tier servers who would get inconvienced) could move to another server and bump up their population so they could compete on equal grounds….

You can’t base the population issues in WvW on this week. Only because of the tournament are you facing against a server who is naturally a tier above you.

munkiman.3068:

johnsonade.9547:

I think a good idea would be changing the Outnumbered buff to a tiered system instead of a flat buff. maybe a total of 3-5 tiers for the buff depending on how badly a server is outnumbered. For example:

• If you’re outnumbered by 25%, then you get the a buff that gives you 10-15% extra base HP, armor, power and condition damage, and maybe reduced condition duration by 20%

• If you’re outnumbered by 50%, the buff would adjust these numbers accordingly, so now you get say 30% extra base HP and armor along with more power, condi, etc.

• And if you’re outnumbered by 75% then you get buffs that would basically make you an elite monster in PvE terms. Maybe you could even get stacks of defiance. I could see how a thief could troll a full havoc for a long time with this buff though…

This would have to be regulated with an added internal cooldown adjusted at Anet’s discretion so there’s no manipulation, like say a T1 server dominates a map and then have 60% of it’s population leave so that the remainder get a strong Outnumbered buff until the tick. That would be bad since the actual lowly populated server has no chance to catch up because a handful of players from the T1 would dominate each keep, castle and camp. That’s not fair play, but if it’s in the game, players will exploit it. That’s why I don’t think a buff like this should affect siege use so one person with the Outnumbered buff can’t down multiple people with an arrow cart barrage like a legendary defender could. Maybe you could reduce the duration of siege disabler grenades against outnumbered players though.

The whole reason I propose this is because I think merging low populated servers for the sole purpose of more even WvW coverage doesn’t seem like it’ll work. I think it will be an educated push in the wrong direction if it’s pursued. The reason is that some servers mostly enjoy PvE. Though megaserver is helping with population at world events, something like that for WvW will remove server pride and identity, thus making WvW as non-competitive as EotM currently is. With a better buff system (or personal scaling depending on how many are attacking you. That would be good for sPvP as well but might entail a full system overhaul) You can keep dedicated WvW players competitive no matter how active their server is in WvW.

I’d personally like to keep away from the individual player buffs like this. When roaming it seems highly unfair to lose (or win) a fight due to an artificial buff.

OMG Munkiman! I forgot to mention that the outnumbered buff wouldn’t affect you in a 1v1 scenario, so that the virtually unkillable warriors with applied buffs and bloodlust stacks wouldn’t be actually unkillable. That was the integral part I left out when I decided to comment. Going to add that to the original, though I don’t know if Anet would like something like this in the first place.

Rasudido.6734:

This is sad. Most posts are some made up complaint about how T1 servers should be the ones modified rather than the obvious where lower tier servers are the problem.

All tier 1 servers have a healthy WvW population, all the servers cap their maps, make heavy use of TS, have great organization, play constantly and have map blobs. All of these can be reduced to what people really want : an active server population.

I used to play in Ehmry Bay, moved over to blackgate. The reason I moved was the lack of a population in Ebay, WvW was a ghost town except for a few guilds who would do their private raids in their private TS and not invite people. This is different in Blackgate, guilds do run by themselves privately but they communicate between each other, there usually is a large guild running the “map tag” where any PUG can join in TS and listen. I dont even care about the rewards as I play 3 times a week with my guild JUST FOR FUN something that was impossible in Ebay.

And here is the reality anyone in the lower tier servers SHOULD be forced into a t2 or t3 server to “balance” the population. You want more Blackgates and Jade Quarries (the two t1 servers that have survived this long), you want more servers to get bummped up like TC did. Most people are proposing the inverse where you want to destroy T1 through harsher caps when what you want is to be a T1 server? You could probably shoot SoS into kitten compete with JQ/BG/TC right now just by moving a couple of guilds from the lower tiers into it.

I understand any lower tier server players having pride and not wanting to move, but if your complaint is that population is an issue and you dont want to move to a server with better population? thats all on you guys not the other servers…

Speaking for myself and a lot of the server players i know, we play for good fights, not to be on the biggest populated/organized WvW servers. We have great organization communication and we know, when we go up against numbers, we have to up our game. So no, we don’t want to be on blackgate. I wouldn’t suggest changing Blackgate anymore than changing NSP. We don’t have a problem being silver or bronze or gold for that matter. We simple want good fair fights, not the Roflstomps we get on either side. We want WvW to reflect good play tactics, not the number of bodies on the field. I’d love to see a WvW that pit us against Blackgate on equal footing, but that’s not going to happen in this current system.

Rasudido.6734:

This is sad. Most posts are some made up complaint about how T1 servers should be the ones modified rather than the obvious where lower tier servers are the problem.

All tier 1 servers have a healthy WvW population, all the servers cap their maps, make heavy use of TS, have great organization, play constantly and have map blobs. All of these can be reduced to what people really want : an active server population.

I used to play in Ehmry Bay, moved over to blackgate. The reason I moved was the lack of a population in Ebay, WvW was a ghost town except for a few guilds who would do their private raids in their private TS and not invite people. This is different in Blackgate, guilds do run by themselves privately but they communicate between each other, there usually is a large guild running the “map tag” where any PUG can join in TS and listen. I dont even care about the rewards as I play 3 times a week with my guild JUST FOR FUN something that was impossible in Ebay.

And here is the reality anyone in the lower tier servers SHOULD be forced into a t2 or t3 server to “balance” the population. You want more Blackgates and Jade Quarries (the two t1 servers that have survived this long), you want more servers to get bummped up like TC did. Most people are proposing the inverse where you want to destroy T1 through harsher caps when what you want is to be a T1 server? You could probably shoot SoS into kitten compete with JQ/BG/TC right now just by moving a couple of guilds from the lower tiers into it.

I understand any lower tier server players having pride and not wanting to move, but if your complaint is that population is an issue and you dont want to move to a server with better population? thats all on you guys not the other servers…

I disagree. The problem is the players that abandoned their servers to go to the “winning” server creating such a huge population imbalance. How strong would Ehmry Bay be right now if every guild that transferred up to T1 was still on it? They have a pretty decent size night crew, with more of a day crew they would be a pretty solid server.

I would like to see how many more players might venture into WvW if they knew they would actually have competetive matches instead of absolute blow outs.

How strong would Ehmry Bay be right now if every guild that transferred up to T1 was still on it? They have a pretty decent size night crew, with more of a day crew they would be a pretty solid server.

This is the issue right here. As much as you say you have anything it is nothing compared to what BG/JQ/TC and to a certain extent SoS and FA have right now. All of you guys would be far more useful stacking into SoS for example and thus giving SoS the boost it needs to fight BG/JQ/TC and in general having a far more active, organized and rewarding WvW experience.

I didnt “abandon” Ehmry bay because I wanted to win. I got out because it was a ghost town, where my WvW guild was a 10 man group that didnt even show up all the time…. 10 man group is the low point of what my guild runs before we go to bed these days.

Crius.5487:

You can’t base the population issues in WvW on this week. Only because of the tournament are you facing against a server who is naturally a tier above you.

This is the 3rd time we’ve faced them in the past month or so.

And you are missing the point of this thread, every server should be able to compete against every other without being horribly mismatched.

The top servers should be based on the collective skill and organization of the server, not by numbers.

Rasudido.6734:

How strong would Ehmry Bay be right now if every guild that transferred up to T1 was still on it? They have a pretty decent size night crew, with more of a day crew they would be a pretty solid server.

This is the issue right here. As much as you say you have anything it is nothing compared to what BG/JQ/TC and to a certain extent SoS and FA have right now. All of you guys would be far more useful stacking into SoS for example and thus giving SoS the boost it needs to fight BG/JQ/TC and in general having a far more active, organized and rewarding WvW experience.

I didnt “abandon” Ehmry bay because I wanted to win. I got out because it was a ghost town, where my WvW guild was a 10 man group that didnt even show up all the time…. 15=0 man group is the low point of what my guild runs before we go to bed these days.

To what end? Stacking servers is what created the problem in the first place. Why continue the slow destruction of WvW by continuing this cycle when we can instead put everyone back on an equal footing?

I would rather have 23 other servers to fight against instead of 5 or 6.

I would rather have 23 other servers to fight against instead of 5 or 6.

except that you will never have 23 servers fighting each other, there simply isnt enough player population in GW as a whole as to make 23 servers fighting each other and be active and not have issues. Simply put you dilude and thin your population way too much.
If you instead cut 11 lower tier servers and force their populations into the remaining 12 (which probably wouldnt include TC/BG/JQ because of server caps) you could have far more balance as the player population would be more stacked as well as evenly divided.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Rasudido.6734:

How strong would Ehmry Bay be right now if every guild that transferred up to T1 was still on it? They have a pretty decent size night crew, with more of a day crew they would be a pretty solid server.

This is the issue right here. As much as you say you have anything it is nothing compared to what BG/JQ/TC and to a certain extent SoS and FA have right now. All of you guys would be far more useful stacking into SoS for example and thus giving SoS the boost it needs to fight BG/JQ/TC and in general having a far more active, organized and rewarding WvW experience.

I didnt “abandon” Ehmry bay because I wanted to win. I got out because it was a ghost town, where my WvW guild was a 10 man group that didnt even show up all the time…. 15=0 man group is the low point of what my guild runs before we go to bed these days.

To what end? Stacking servers is what created the problem in the first place. Why continue the slow destruction of WvW by continuing this cycle when we can instead put everyone back on an equal footing?

I would rather have 23 other servers to fight against instead of 5 or 6.

Yeah, this definitely enhances the problem with this sort of thinking. It’d be really nice if we could step back and post ideas/discussions on improving the current system instead of making it worse. I fear we are heading for changes and not the type that improve things, but keep the status quot moving along to it’s inevitable demise. Aka, taking the most cost effective changes only into account.

munkiman.3068:

Rasudido.6734:

This is sad. Most posts are some made up complaint about how T1 servers should be the ones modified rather than the obvious where lower tier servers are the problem.

All tier 1 servers have a healthy WvW population, all the servers cap their maps, make heavy use of TS, have great organization, play constantly and have map blobs. All of these can be reduced to what people really want : an active server population.

I used to play in Ehmry Bay, moved over to blackgate. The reason I moved was the lack of a population in Ebay, WvW was a ghost town except for a few guilds who would do their private raids in their private TS and not invite people. This is different in Blackgate, guilds do run by themselves privately but they communicate between each other, there usually is a large guild running the “map tag” where any PUG can join in TS and listen. I dont even care about the rewards as I play 3 times a week with my guild JUST FOR FUN something that was impossible in Ebay.

And here is the reality anyone in the lower tier servers SHOULD be forced into a t2 or t3 server to “balance” the population. You want more Blackgates and Jade Quarries (the two t1 servers that have survived this long), you want more servers to get bummped up like TC did. Most people are proposing the inverse where you want to destroy T1 through harsher caps when what you want is to be a T1 server? You could probably shoot SoS into kitten compete with JQ/BG/TC right now just by moving a couple of guilds from the lower tiers into it.

I understand any lower tier server players having pride and not wanting to move, but if your complaint is that population is an issue and you dont want to move to a server with better population? thats all on you guys not the other servers…

Speaking for myself and a lot of the server players i know, we play for good fights, not to be on the biggest populated/organized WvW servers. We have great organization communication and we know, when we go up against numbers, we have to up our game. So no, we don’t want to be on blackgate. I wouldn’t suggest changing Blackgate anymore than changing NSP. We don’t have a problem being silver or bronze or gold for that matter. We simple want good fair fights, not the Roflstomps we get on either side. We want WvW to reflect good play tactics, not the number of bodies on the field. I’d love to see a WvW that pit us against Blackgate on equal footing, but that’s not going to happen in this current system.

Having played in Darkhaven and ET before, I can tell you those servers are not organised at all. They have pugmanders that aren’t in TS karma training and avoiding fights unless they outnumber their opponent because there’s no coordination. There’s little to no use of their public TS even though there may be 50 people on the map (which happened when I was in ET, huge number of people on the maps, total 6 people in the entire TS, no tag up). It’s that lack of organisation that hurts the lower tiers. The lack of team work and team spirit and making an effort to communicate with your teammates.

In T1, there’s very little of ‘wiping pug zergs with guild groups’. Why? It’s not cause the guilds are bad. It’s simply due to the fact that when you have an entire 40-60 man zerg in TS with the pugmander, it doesn’t matter that it’s not a guild group because it’s still going to move like one. In DH, there was a ‘zerg busting’ guild that I followed around for a bit just to observe. That guild could’ve been taken out by havoc squads in T1 and T2 but were killing groups 3 times their size. There’s a simple difference in organisation between the lower tiers and the higher tiers that you simply can’t cross in a short amount of time and is the difference between Gold and Silver league servers.

What sort of thinking? the one where the lower tier servers are complaining about how WvW is “dying” because their experience greatly differs from t1/t2 servers and they lost their active guilds to those servers?

Guess what the people moved to t1/t2 because they are far more content that way. WvW is better, more active and rewarding. If people keep stacking into a server its because they want THAT experience, not whatever the lower tier servers have to offer.

Rasudido.6734:

I would rather have 23 other servers to fight against instead of 5 or 6.

except that you will never have 23 servers fighting each other, there simply isnt enough player population in GW as a whole as to make 23 servers fighting each other and be active and not have issues. Simply put you dilude and thin your population way too much.
If you instead cut 11 lower tier servers and force their populations into the remaining 12 (which probably wouldnt include TC/BG/JQ because of server caps) you could have far more balance as the player population would be more stacked as well as evenly divided.

You really don’t get it? It’s not lower pop that’s a problem, as it is right now it’s either play the same servers each week over and over or get blown out/ have blow outs by numbers alone. What, you think when mid tier servers have evenly numbered matches we don’t have the same experience top tier does? If so you’re absolutely wrong. There’s only so many freight train matches people can take, on either side. This entire thread is about population imbalance, not about why lower tier servers need to be another JQ/BG/TC…

Rasudido.6734:

If you instead cut 11 lower tier servers and force their populations into the remaining 12 (which probably wouldnt include TC/BG/JQ because of server caps) you could have far more balance as the player population would be more stacked as well as evenly divided.

let’s imagine for a moment that GW2 has fewer players playing than they actually do. let’s assume that servers ranked #13 through #24 (or #27) don’t exist at all, and that the players on servers ranked #1 through #12 are the only players that exist.

guess what? ranks 1 through 12 are nowhere close to being balanced. if the players on servers 1-12 right now did not arrange themselves to create balance, then why would you expect new players moving to 1-12 to do so?

moving servers onto fewer servers does not, by itself, create balance. it would certainly make them “more stacked” but the only way you will get “evenly divided” is if you force players to specific servers to create balance. in that case, the ‘fair’ way to do it is to redistribute everyone. no need to reduce the number of servers, just forcibly move people from kitten lower servers until balance is achieved.

-ken

I’d just like to mention that even on BG we’re not regularly queueing maps. We’ll have a queue on EB during prime time, maybe a certain BL if we have a keep being hit or something but that’s it. Of course reset night when everyone rushes in we have 90+ queues on each map, but after that things really die off.

Compared to reset nights WvW is just dead(relatively) any other time, especially outside of seasons.

Just thought it would be worth mentioning that even the big bad BG is not queuing maps regularly.

Personally I can’t imagine staying interested in WvW with smaller populations, that’s not to say I enjoy full maps vs full map zergs. I’d much prefer if they changed things up a bit to promote 10-20 man forces across the map rather than full blobing together, but they haven’t done a very good job of that. I just want people to clash with and even on t1 there are plenty of times when that just doesn’t seem to be happening.

Reverence.6915:

Having played in Darkhaven and ET before, I can tell you those servers are not organised at all. They have pugmanders that aren’t in TS karma training and avoiding fights unless they outnumber their opponent because there’s no coordination. There’s little to no use of their public TS even though there may be 50 people on the map (which happened when I was in ET, huge number of people on the maps, total 6 people in the entire TS, no tag up). It’s that lack of organisation that hurts the lower tiers. The lack of team work and team spirit and making an effort to communicate with your teammates.

In T1, there’s very little of ‘wiping pug zergs with guild groups’. Why? It’s not cause the guilds are bad. It’s simply due to the fact that when you have an entire 40-60 man zerg in TS with the pugmander, it doesn’t matter that it’s not a guild group because it’s still going to move like one. In DH, there was a ‘zerg busting’ guild that I followed around for a bit just to observe. That guild could’ve been taken out by havoc squads in T1 and T2 but were killing groups 3 times their size. There’s a simple difference in organisation between the lower tiers and the higher tiers that you simply can’t cross in a short amount of time and is the difference between Gold and Silver league servers.

And that’s absolutely fine, their score can reflect that there is no organization. Right now though, it doesn’t. It reflects more about who brings more players to the table and has better 24/7 coverage. With the current system in place we wouldn’t even be able to tell how competitive we are to a T1 or T2 server since we’ll never get a chance to fight them, let alone on a level playing field. Fact is, unless we get numbers to totally obliterate ever server in tier, we don’t have the ability to move much in the ranks at all. When we fight BP, we are on fairly even numbers/coverage game. Its a good match-up overall. We know this as even on reset, we don’t get queued, like almost never.

You really don’t get it? It’s not lower pop that’s a problem, as it is right now it’s either play the same servers each week over and over or get blown out/ have blow outs by numbers alone. What, you think when mid tier servers have evenly numbered matches we don’t have the same experience top tier does? If so you’re absolutely wrong. There’s only so many freight train matches people can take, on either side. This entire thread is about population imbalance, not about why lower tier servers need to be another JQ/BG/TC…

No you really dont get it.

The population imbalance comes from smaller servers who like to exist as their own little island doing their own little thing, which is great I dont mind it. The problem is the population is far less stacked and chances are that if anything goes wrong and a guild/group cant make it your active WvW population varies greatly because you have less players that will take those spots. All this is affected by time zone, day of the week, people’s real life issues, holidays, and other releases (like PvE) taking the populations. And like you say after so many matches under unfavorable conditions people stop attending (or worse transfer out of the server) and thus a downward spiral of inactivity/number smashing starts to happen. TC/JQ/BG usually dont have this because their populations are so large even when a portion of them goes on a break/hiatus there are plenty of other players keeping the activity up (and sometimes this means 1+ hour long queues across all 4 maps when they do all show up)

If there were less servers and all around player population was consolidated number blowouts would be far less likely, you don’t get this by thinning out existing server populations.

Rasudido.6734:

This is sad. Most posts are some made up complaint about how T1 servers should be the ones modified rather than the obvious where lower tier servers are the problem.

[..]
All of these can be reduced to what people really want : an active server population.

[..]
I understand any lower tier server players having pride and not wanting to move, but if your complaint is that population is an issue and you dont want to move to a server with better population? thats all on you guys not the other servers…

No.

Here is our situation: we have a server where at prime time we have very small queues and some maps with none.

We don’t want to have huge queues, we don’t want to have to fight against an enormous mapblob multiboxer and few-to-no random people. We LIKE our server, we LIKE our situation. We want to fight other servers in similar situations to our own. Not tanking blob-and-nightcap servers like Desolation and Piken Square.

We have an active population, we don’t want to move.

Rasudido.6734:

You really don’t get it? It’s not lower pop that’s a problem, as it is right now it’s either play the same servers each week over and over or get blown out/ have blow outs by numbers alone. What, you think when mid tier servers have evenly numbered matches we don’t have the same experience top tier does? If so you’re absolutely wrong. There’s only so many freight train matches people can take, on either side. This entire thread is about population imbalance, not about why lower tier servers need to be another JQ/BG/TC…

No you really dont get it.

The population imbalance comes from smaller servers who like to exist as their own little island doing their own little thing, which is great I dont mind it. The problem is the population is far less stacked and chances are that if anything goes wrong and a guild/group cant make it your active WvW population varies greatly because you have less players that will take those spots. All this is affected by time zone, day of the week, people’s real life issues, holidays, and other releases (like PvE) taking the populations. And like you say after so many matches under unfavorable conditions people stop attending (or worse transfer out of the server) and thus a downward spiral of inactivity/number smashing starts to happen. TC/JQ/BG usually dont have this because their populations are so large even when a portion of them goes on a break/hiatus there are plenty of other players keeping the activity up (and sometimes this means 1+ hour long queues across all 4 maps when they do all show up)

If there were less servers and all around player population was consolidated number blowouts would be far less likely, you don’t get this by thinning out existing server populations.

Everything you mentioned can and has happened to t1 or t2 or t3 servers. The entire point is to make the game mode balance out when matched against lower or higher pop servers, that’s the goal, making less about a numbers game and more about what a server is capable of. Forcing people to move, to stack in the top 12 (even if NSP happens to be in that range) is not the solution to pop imbalances, not a long term one anyway. There in lies the crux of the matter. It sounds almost condescending “smaller servers who like to exist as their own little island doing their own little thing” as if smaller servers are somehow outside the meta.

Previously I recommended that there be two instances of WvW…one for casual WvW and another for Hardcore Competitive WvW.

Since then we have gotten EOTM…which I would consider “Casual” WvW

For Hardcore, the only answer I see to help balance population is to create a group of “Teams” or “Armies” or “Factions” and allow people to join them. These should be server neutral…it doesn’t matter what server you are currently “living” on—you should be able to enlist in any army.

munkiman.3068:

Reverence.6915:

Having played in Darkhaven and ET before, I can tell you those servers are not organised at all. They have pugmanders that aren’t in TS karma training and avoiding fights unless they outnumber their opponent because there’s no coordination. There’s little to no use of their public TS even though there may be 50 people on the map (which happened when I was in ET, huge number of people on the maps, total 6 people in the entire TS, no tag up). It’s that lack of organisation that hurts the lower tiers. The lack of team work and team spirit and making an effort to communicate with your teammates.

In T1, there’s very little of ‘wiping pug zergs with guild groups’. Why? It’s not cause the guilds are bad. It’s simply due to the fact that when you have an entire 40-60 man zerg in TS with the pugmander, it doesn’t matter that it’s not a guild group because it’s still going to move like one. In DH, there was a ‘zerg busting’ guild that I followed around for a bit just to observe. That guild could’ve been taken out by havoc squads in T1 and T2 but were killing groups 3 times their size. There’s a simple difference in organisation between the lower tiers and the higher tiers that you simply can’t cross in a short amount of time and is the difference between Gold and Silver league servers.

And that’s absolutely fine, their score can reflect that there is no organization. Right now though, it doesn’t. It reflects more about who brings more players to the table and has better 24/7 coverage. With the current system in place we wouldn’t even be able to tell how competitive we are to a kitten server since we’ll never get a chance to fight them, let alone on a level playing field. Fact is, unless we get numbers to totally obliterate ever server in tier, we don’t have the ability to move much in the ranks at all. When we fight BP, we are on fairly even numbers/coverage game. Its a good match-up overall. We know this as even on reset, we don’t get queued, like almost never.

My point is that even if you give those servers the same population and coverage as BG for example, they will still get roflstomped and call BG stacked. Fact is, most of BG’s guilds have been playing together (or against each other) for close to 2 years now and the teamwork and communication that has risen out of that experience of playing together for that length of time have given us a real edge in organisation, something which pure population can’t overcome without a similar level of organisation

Glicko issues are a whole different thing altogether and I think the old 1 up 1 down system worked better, even with constant roflstomp matchups (we get fairly balanced matchups with the current system but it’s too slow in responding to server population fluctuations).

Rasudido.6734:

I would rather have 23 other servers to fight against instead of 5 or 6.

except that you will never have 23 servers fighting each other, there simply isnt enough player population in GW as a whole as to make 23 servers fighting each other and be active and not have issues. Simply put you dilude and thin your population way too much.
If you instead cut 11 lower tier servers and force their populations into the remaining 12 (which probably wouldnt include TC/BG/JQ because of server caps) you could have far more balance as the player population would be more stacked as well as evenly divided.

You know this how? What is the total number of players that participate in WvW?
I play in Bronze, it’s not the ghost town you make it out to be. We have a blast when we have somewhat even matchups. I would love to face off against more servers but that can’t happen in the current system.

If we did move up we’d still end up fighting a different handful of servers all the time, it would feel fresh for a couple of months and then it would be routine again.

A lot of people here are talking about how T1 is where they are because they are so skilled and organized. Wouldn’t you like the chance to prove that you are more than just numbers? The only way to do this is by balancing out the population.

Smaller servers are their own meta. Same way higher tier servers are another.

Reality is that balance in smaller tier servers and their player activity IS the problem. You can look at the 10 pages of post here and the complaints are ALL from people in lower tiers. And the truth of the matter is that if as solution is to be applied it would happen to the community as a whole not just those smaller servers. I dont get how a large people in lower tiers have complained about how WvW is an issue for them but keep ignoring the one element they all share (low populations in lower tier servers).

A better handicap would be great but then again what do you base it on? using GLICKO rating is terrible as shown by cases like Magumma and SoR who were on higher rating for months than what they trully were. Sever population numbers are just as terrible as not all players in a server accurately represent the active WvW comminity. Also how significant should the handicap be? is it a constantly shifting algorithm that changes with every possible transfer? Should you intead get static matchups so that servers only fight the 3 closest to them in numbers? then youll complain about how boring it is…

while it is true that consolidation is not an absolute solution it is a start.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Rasudido.6734:

I would rather have 23 other servers to fight against instead of 5 or 6.

except that you will never have 23 servers fighting each other, there simply isnt enough player population in GW as a whole as to make 23 servers fighting each other and be active and not have issues. Simply put you dilude and thin your population way too much.
If you instead cut 11 lower tier servers and force their populations into the remaining 12 (which probably wouldnt include TC/BG/JQ because of server caps) you could have far more balance as the player population would be more stacked as well as evenly divided.

You know this how? What is the total number of players that participate in WvW?
I play in Bronze, it’s not the ghost town you make it out to be. We have a blast when we have somewhat even matchups. I would love to face off against more servers but that can’t happen in the current system.

If we did move up we’d still end up fighting a different handful of servers all the time, it would feel fresh for a couple of months and then it would be routine again.

A lot of people here are talking about how T1 is where they are because they are so skilled and organized. Wouldn’t you like the chance to prove that you are more than just numbers? The only way to do this is by balancing out the population.

And you suggest they do this by ripping apart the larger communities rather than combining the smaller ones?

Personally to me even t1 feels like a ghost town much of the time.

Reverence.6915:

My point is that even if you give those servers the same population and coverage as BG for example, they will still get roflstomped and call BG stacked. Fact is, most of BG’s guilds have been playing together (or against each other) for close to 2 years now and the teamwork and communication that has risen out of that experience of playing together for that length of time have given us a real edge in organisation, something which pure population can’t overcome without a similar level of organisation

Glicko issues are a whole different thing altogether and I think the old 1 up 1 down system worked better, even with constant roflstomp matchups (we get fairly balanced matchups with the current system but it’s too slow in responding to server population fluctuations).

And that’s totally fine if BG is a supremely organized server, again though, that’s really not the issue. We have the same deal on NSP, we’ve had a huge amount of stability and guilds that have played together since launch, none of that is the problem.

WvW scoring, it’s mechanics has always been about bodies on the map(s) = win. It doesn’t matter in the least how skilled those bodies are at the end of the day, if you don’t have coverage against the k-train or night coverage against those 25 people that flip the entire map and rot your led away mostly uncontested, you fail. This is actually driving players away and not to t1 servers but away from the game mode entirely or worst case, uninstalling. There is no logical reality in which merging/stacking fixes any of it.

Rasudido.6734:

Smaller servers are their own meta. Same way higher tier servers are another.

Reality is that balance in smaller tier servers and their player activity IS the problem. You can look at the 10 pages of post here and the complaints are ALL from people in lower tiers. And the truth of the matter is that if as solution is to be applied it would happen to the community as a whole not just those smaller servers. I dont get how a large people in lower tiers have complained about how WvW is an issue for them but keep ignoring the one element they all share (low populations in lower tier servers).

A better handicap would be great but then again what do you base it on? using GLICKO rating is terrible as shown by cases like Magumma and SoR who were on higher rating for months than what they trully were. Sever population numbers are just as terrible as not all players in a server accurately represent the active WvW comminity. Also how significant should the handicap be? is it a constantly shifting algorithm that changes with every possible transfer? Should you intead get static matchups so that servers only fight the 3 closest to them in numbers? then youll complain about how boring it is…

while it is true that consolidation is not an absolute solution it is a start.

You don’t get it because you don’t want to see it. Inst because the servers are low pop that means they are balanced. Two low pop servers can have a huge disparity on how many players they are fielding, it is unbalanced, it is as simple as that.

Since we are talking about this, you are praising the JQ/BG/TC match ups but I reckon TC not long ago was complaining how both JQ and BG outmanned them…
So even on your Tier 1, which you consider the ideal model, have problems with balance. Want a prove? Check your latests match up, you will see the unbalaces where TC was ticking for +465 when BG was ticking for +65. If that doesn’t show you that even on your so stacked servers the matches are far from being balanced, I honestly don’t know what can.

Jerus.4350:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Rasudido.6734:

I would rather have 23 other servers to fight against instead of 5 or 6.

except that you will never have 23 servers fighting each other, there simply isnt enough player population in GW as a whole as to make 23 servers fighting each other and be active and not have issues. Simply put you dilude and thin your population way too much.
If you instead cut 11 lower tier servers and force their populations into the remaining 12 (which probably wouldnt include TC/BG/JQ because of server caps) you could have far more balance as the player population would be more stacked as well as evenly divided.

You know this how? What is the total number of players that participate in WvW?
I play in Bronze, it’s not the ghost town you make it out to be. We have a blast when we have somewhat even matchups. I would love to face off against more servers but that can’t happen in the current system.

If we did move up we’d still end up fighting a different handful of servers all the time, it would feel fresh for a couple of months and then it would be routine again.

A lot of people here are talking about how T1 is where they are because they are so skilled and organized. Wouldn’t you like the chance to prove that you are more than just numbers? The only way to do this is by balancing out the population.

And you suggest they do this by ripping apart the larger communities rather than combining the smaller ones?

Personally to me even t1 feels like a ghost town much of the time.

Many people have explained why merging servers won’t fix the problem, it will at best delay it.

Population balance is better for WvW overall.

And the people that really love their servers in T1 can stay and wait out the population shift. They can use EotM for it’s intended purpose instead of the karma farm it has become.

I used to play in Bronze League and let me say this. It is a fricken ghost town. Nobody gets on TS, only EB and maybe Home BL have a decent force on it if it is the weekend. When I say decent, I mean 50 people between the 2 maps. This was 7 months ago, too. I took a visit back to bronze on my Alt account, It it honestly PvD right now. Bronze League is a ghost town, I swore I saw a multiple dust balls rolling through.

To those saying that all of the T1 servers need to be broken up, you messed up. To those that are saying all of the maps need a population cap, you messed up. Why are you trying to limit other’s fun for your benefit? I honestly enjoy the T1 scene because I can hop in anytime and get fights, anytime I want.

We have the different tiers because maybe a 24/7 war zone is not your cup of tea, then fine but don’t destroy other’s cup of tea as well. I am opposed to the idea of breaking up the T1 servers because of offtime numbers, is silly. Maybe if you had the will to win, you would be up to 3 am taking towers, and etc.

Please don’t do the stupid idea of breaking up all of the T1 servers or population caps. Why not try to rally your PvE population or even PvX population? BG does not have 24/7 map q, JQ does not have 24/7 map q, and TC does not have 24/7 map q.

Before you destroy multiple servers, why not trying to organize your server? Why not ask for a server chat? Why not get people on TS? Why not learn from some of the T1 servers about organization? Why “fix” something that is not broken for T1, population? Why try to fix something that is not broken for T1 and some T2 servers? Why don’t you try to fix population from T2 down, so the already pretty balanced population servers can have more fights with one another and future T1 server size maps as well?

Now some people go to lower tier servers want to say because they don’t like zergs all days. They want to have their roaming and if they’re happy – keep them there way. You’re going to destroy 3 or more server communities, and make quite a couple people angry.

Let me conclude on this. I play this game because I like the community I’m in now. I was a community leader/organizer and I was part of “the best community ever, ERP style”. I finally found a server which I can call home (in game of course) and I want it to keep that way.

Sheer numbers won’t solve your problem. If people don’t like the community they’re on they’ll transfer (create imbalance which defeats your solution) or just sheer quit the game (also defeats your purpose and anet’s purpose). What your suggesting is sheerly wrong. If I find myself not on BG and it was the BG I knew yesterday (i.e. you broke up all of T1 and distributed them up between all of the servers), I would probably quit the game. I know I wouldn’t be the only one.

That leaves the Devs with no (good) solution to the non-T1 servers. Well, server merger is a risky idea, breaking up T1 is a bad idea (mass quit or new T1 on 3 new servers), or I don’t know. This is a non-T1 problem which needs to be solved by people who have more insight without destroying T1 or creating a population cap. My advice is think outside of the box.

-Edited for spelling errors
Who knew such a long reply can have a spelling error?

NevilleDevil.4530:

I used to play in Bronze League and let me say this. It is a fricken ghost town. Nobody gets on TS, only EB and maybe Home BL have a decent force on it if it is the weekend. When I say decent, I mean 50 people between the 2 maps. This was 7 months ago, too. I took a visit back to bronze on my Alt account, It it honestly PvD right now. Bronze League is a ghost town, I swore I saw a multiple dust balls rolling through.

To those saying that all of the T1 servers need to be broken up, you messed up. To those that are saying all of the maps need a population cap, you messed up. Why are you trying to limit other’s fun for your benefit? I honestly enjoy the T1 scene because I can hop in anytime and get fights, anytime I want.

We have the different tiers because maybe a 24/7 war zone is not your cup of tea, then fine but don’t destroy other’s cup of tea as well. I am opposed to the idea of breaking up the T1 servers because of offtime numbers, is silly. Maybe if you had the will to win, you would be up to 3 am taking towers, and etc.

Please don’t do the stupid idea of breaking up all of the T1 servers or population caps. Why not try to rally your PvE population or even PvX population? BG does not have 24/7 map q, JQ does not have 24/7 map q, and TC does not have 24/7 map q.

Before you destroy multiple servers, why not trying to organize your server? Why not ask for a server chat? Why not get people on TS? Why not learn from some of the T1 servers about organization? Why “fix” something that is not broken for T1, population? Why try to fix something that is not broken for T1 and some T2 servers? Why don’t you try to fix population from T2 down, so the already pretty balanced population servers can have more fights with one another and future T1 server size maps as well?

Now some people go to lower tier servers want to say because they don’t like zergs all days. They want to have their roaming and if they’re happy – keep them there way. You’re going to destroy 3 or more server communities, and make quite a couple people angry.

Let me conclude on this. I play this game because I like the community I’m in now. I was a community leader/organizer and I was part of “the best community ever, ERP style”. I finally found a server which I can call home (in game of course) and I want it to keep that way.

Sheer numbers won’t solve your problem. If people don’t like the community they’re on they’ll transfer (create imbalance which defeats your solution) or just sheer quit the game (also defeats your purpose and anet’s purpose). What your suggesting is sheerly wrong. If I find myself not on BG and it was the BG I knew yesterday (i.e. you broke up all of T1 and distributed them up between all of the servers), I would probably quit the game. I know I wouldn’t be the only one.

That leaves the Devs with no solution to the non-T1 servers. Well, server merger is a risky idea, breaking up T1 is a bad idea (mass quit or new T1 on 3 new servers), or I don’t know. This is a non-T1 problem which needs to be solved by people who have more insight without destroying T1 or creating a population cap. My advice is think outside of the box.

-Edited for spelling errors
Who knew such a long reply can have a spelling error?

I honestly haven’t read the thought of breaking up T1 servers. Sure some “wish” for more pop and maybe i’m missing those posts somehow.

Me personally would like to fight below my tier or above and still have good fights based on skill level and the ability to organize well, not because we have more numbers. I just don’t see that happening in the current system, it’s to catered to pop and coverage. And i actually want to try an enhance “off-peak coverage” imagine that.

Rasudido.6734:

Smaller servers are their own meta. Same way higher tier servers are another.

Reality is that balance in smaller tier servers and their player activity IS the problem. You can look at the 10 pages of post here and the complaints are ALL from people in lower tiers. And the truth of the matter is that if as solution is to be applied it would happen to the community as a whole not just those smaller servers. I dont get how a large people in lower tiers have complained about how WvW is an issue for them but keep ignoring the one element they all share (low populations in lower tier servers).

A better handicap would be great but then again what do you base it on? using GLICKO rating is terrible as shown by cases like Magumma and SoR who were on higher rating for months than what they trully were. Sever population numbers are just as terrible as not all players in a server accurately represent the active WvW comminity. Also how significant should the handicap be? is it a constantly shifting algorithm that changes with every possible transfer? Should you intead get static matchups so that servers only fight the 3 closest to them in numbers? then youll complain about how boring it is…

while it is true that consolidation is not an absolute solution it is a start.

Sure it’s a start with no end. How far we consolidate keeps growing day by day. How about we start with fixing the meta? instead of drastic push button tactics as a first step. Read and pick it apart.

Remove or cripple the down-state
While blobbing has the ability to help keep players healthy via aoe heals and buffs, it also has the added benefit of quick res, which makes a good blob, that are at least partially aware, fairly indestructible.

Bolster siege fire and NPCs when defending against a blob
Upscale (not drastically mind you) NPC defenders and siege output when a mass attacks.

Change PPT to a kill/successful event completion scoring system
Player kills (similar to how you already calculate drops for bags) tick a point on the score board. Success on Defends and Capture tick points as well. You can keep the high level captures like Stone Mist at a higher value, like it is now, along with the lesser objectives, they just only tick once on flip. Since we already have the system in place to slow down the flip, we keep that as well.

Reward successful defend events
If a group is successful at driving off the offense at an objective, give them equal reward as it is for capture. It’s pretty obvious right now why trains run captures and don’t focus on defense nearly as often.

Neutralize unmanned objectives
This gives the “night-crew” or off-peak groups the ability to earn points, but at a cap. I would also make neutralized objectives scale up as well, making them a bit harder to capture. This would help keep players aware and add a deeper level to tactics. You could start with the siege refresh timer and adjust from there.

All these things are geared to shake up the meta and bring more balance to the WvW population imbalances. Servers that go against high numbers have a really good chance to beat those numbers by simply playing better, more organized. As servers shift in performance, you could bolster movement from servers where lower performing servers get a capped free-transfer (maybe open 100 free slots).

Copying this over here from the OTHER thread
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Nerf-the-domination-of-Coverage/first
about how to address coverage issues.

>>>>
Break up the stupid 24/7 cycle. Follow EotM by making matches 4-6 hours long, call them frames. Your “Coverage” will then be who is playing in your frame.

Match servers based on scores during each of these frames. If you have a strong NA you get matched against other strong NAs, but your weak SEA goes up against other weak SEAs. So, you’ll have a winner for the NA frame, the SEA frame etc.

Break the 24 hours up however you like. Maybe leave a few hours unused (i.e. 4 5-hour matches) and move frames around a bit for people who would fall between static match times.

This way you get much less PvD or steam rolling (if you have 4 strong NAs you’d still get an unbalanced match). No more buying guilds to fill your tier’s off-hour slots to PvD to #1. No more blaming your underpopulated timezones for “losing the lead” and “not pulling their weight”.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Jerus.4350:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Rasudido.6734:

I would rather have 23 other servers to fight against instead of 5 or 6.

except that you will never have 23 servers fighting each other, there simply isnt enough player population in GW as a whole as to make 23 servers fighting each other and be active and not have issues. Simply put you dilude and thin your population way too much.
If you instead cut 11 lower tier servers and force their populations into the remaining 12 (which probably wouldnt include TC/BG/JQ because of server caps) you could have far more balance as the player population would be more stacked as well as evenly divided.

You know this how? What is the total number of players that participate in WvW?
I play in Bronze, it’s not the ghost town you make it out to be. We have a blast when we have somewhat even matchups. I would love to face off against more servers but that can’t happen in the current system.

If we did move up we’d still end up fighting a different handful of servers all the time, it would feel fresh for a couple of months and then it would be routine again.

A lot of people here are talking about how T1 is where they are because they are so skilled and organized. Wouldn’t you like the chance to prove that you are more than just numbers? The only way to do this is by balancing out the population.

And you suggest they do this by ripping apart the larger communities rather than combining the smaller ones?

Personally to me even t1 feels like a ghost town much of the time.

Many people have explained why merging servers won’t fix the problem, it will at best delay it.

Population balance is better for WvW overall.

And the people that really love their servers in T1 can stay and wait out the population shift. They can use EotM for it’s intended purpose instead of the karma farm it has become.

EoTM? you mean golfing practice? where the name of the game is knock eachother off the narrow pathways? No thanks.

Your suggests would turn me away from WvW, simple as that.

azyume.6321:

Rasudido.6734:

Smaller servers are their own meta. Same way higher tier servers are another.

Reality is that balance in smaller tier servers and their player activity IS the problem. You can look at the 10 pages of post here and the complaints are ALL from people in lower tiers. And the truth of the matter is that if as solution is to be applied it would happen to the community as a whole not just those smaller servers. I dont get how a large people in lower tiers have complained about how WvW is an issue for them but keep ignoring the one element they all share (low populations in lower tier servers).

A better handicap would be great but then again what do you base it on? using GLICKO rating is terrible as shown by cases like Magumma and SoR who were on higher rating for months than what they trully were. Sever population numbers are just as terrible as not all players in a server accurately represent the active WvW comminity. Also how significant should the handicap be? is it a constantly shifting algorithm that changes with every possible transfer? Should you intead get static matchups so that servers only fight the 3 closest to them in numbers? then youll complain about how boring it is…

while it is true that consolidation is not an absolute solution it is a start.

You don’t get it because you don’t want to see it. Inst because the servers are low pop that means they are balanced. Two low pop servers can have a huge disparity on how many players they are fielding, it is unbalanced, it is as simple as that.

Since we are talking about this, you are praising the JQ/BG/TC match ups but I reckon TC not long ago was complaining how both JQ and BG outmanned them…
So even on your Tier 1, which you consider the ideal model, have problems with balance. Want a prove? Check your latests match up, you will see the unbalaces where TC was ticking for +465 when BG was ticking for +65. If that doesn’t show you that even on your so stacked servers the matches are far from being balanced, I honestly don’t know what can.

You realize that was at the end of the week when many on BG were making a push to help TC overtake JQ in the last few hours right? Not saying everything is hunky dory perfectly balanced in t1 just had to mention if you’re talking about the situation I think you are that’s what was happening.

I never thought I’d say this, but the 50 person cap for siege is too low. Blobs counter this by bringing loads more than 50.

That’s a nice easy change that can be done by changing one number in the code (I hope).

The way I see it, battle clusters are a good way to go, balanced against the populations of the t1 servers.

Map caps are a bad idea because it actually forces some players to stop playing.

Server merges have the serious consequence of removing what little server identity some people have.

Battle alliances (or whatever you want to call them) seem to be a better bet because, if temporary, they can adjust for fluctuating populations, and can correct for rapid gains in score. Plus, (hopefully) players won’t be forced to play with servers that they just can’t stand.

On organization – I started on ET a year and a half ago and we sat at the bottom because we didn’t have the population. It’s not that PvE players refused to go to WvW; we just didn’t have enough players. Period. If we had had the numbers, maybe there would have been more of an attempt to organize. But you can’t tell me with a straight face that we had the numbers to compete with BG or JQ, even if the organization had been there.

Mattargul.9235:

Copying this over here from the OTHER thread
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Nerf-the-domination-of-Coverage/first
about how to address coverage issues.

>>>>
Break up the stupid 24/7 cycle. Follow EotM by making matches 4-6 hours long, call them frames. Your “Coverage” will then be who is playing in your frame.

Match servers based on scores during each of these frames. If you have a strong NA you get matched against other strong NAs, but your weak SEA goes up against other weak SEAs. So, you’ll have a winner for the NA frame, the SEA frame etc.

Break the 24 hours up however you like. Maybe leave a few hours unused (i.e. 4 5-hour matches) and move frames around a bit for people who would fall between static match times.

This way you get much less PvD or steam rolling (if you have 4 strong NAs you’d still get an unbalanced match). No more buying guilds to fill your tier’s off-hour slots to PvD to #1. No more blaming your underpopulated timezones for “losing the lead” and “not pulling their weight”.

in a word, “no”. If anything EotM should be an intro into WvW and simply just be incorporated into the match-ups. It’s an experiment gone wrong. Done and over, use it as a training ground. An into to wvw as at least as designed in some sense.

Otokomae.9356:

Diem.3529:

I’ve heard countless people, from various guildmates, to friends, to strangers say “Why do WvW this week,” “It’s pointless,” “We don’t have a chance to win, so why try.”…

What we need is: A competitive atmosphere. Something that gives us a will to fight and a reason to try and win every week.

I hate to say it, but this sounds like a Ferguson’s Crossing problem, NOT a WvW problem…

I mean, Blackgate spent all of Season 2 in “Can’t Possibly Win” matchups, and we went from only having ques on Reset during Season 1, so suddenly having ques every night in Season 2, because everybody wanted a crack at that JQ/TC Alliance! Honestly, we knew that we had ZERO chance of winning Season 2 once the coordinated system of weekly win-trading started between JQ & TC, but our ques actually GOT BIGGER as Season 2 went on!

This attitude is one of the main reason why many people are against massive server mergers, and it is a very large part of why Blackgate trounces T1 on a regular basis; our server simply has a very competitive atmosphere when it comes to WvW! I mean, the core of BG’s WvW groups is made up of people & guilds who bought this game primarily JUST to play WvW, and not only to play it, but to WIN it. We don’t play for 2nd. Ever. And as the WvW population has shrunk, and other WvW servers have imploded, lots of like-minded guilds have gravitated towards Blackgate, because after fighting against us, they wanted to be part of that sort of competitive community, one that plays to win and never seems to go away.

I mean, if you’re on a server that doesn’t really care where they place, or doesn’t want to try if it looks like the win will be hard to get, then there’s really not much Anet can do to turn that around.
I mean, does your server have:

— it’s own forums?

— a server-wide TeamSpeak that everyone actually uses for WvW?

— weekly map assignments, to assure that everyone knows what guilds are taking which maps, and prevent your 5 biggest guilds from all queing up on the same map each Friday?

— Commander schedules, so you can see exactly where the gaps are in your coverage, and know who will be Tagged up on what map each day, and for how long?

— Weekly server meetings for guild leaders and officers, to discuss where your server’s weaknesses are and how to fix them?

This is just a tiny part of the system of organization that my server uses, a system that we used in Sea of Sorrows starting in November, 2012, and which we brought over to Blackgate in February, 2013, and which we still use now. If you don’t have things like this going already, then simply adding more players (players you’ve never worked with before, who were FORCED to your server) won’t really solve any of your “Competitive Atmosphere” problems. There have been plenty of servers already who’ve proven that having numbers, coverage, a few great guilds, lots of good individual PvPers, or any of the other things that people seem to THINKshould matter, won’t keep your server from toppling when it hits a wall of server-wide organization & Tryhards (SBI’s brief stay in T1, comes to mind).

So maybe Ferguson’s Crossings problems could be solved by a server-merger, but if so, it won’t be because of the extra bodies out in WvW, it will be because you were lucky enough to be merged with a server that has a completely different mindset from the one you have now, with good Commanders out on the maps EVERY night, leading by example, good communication between guilds and across maps, people willing to scout towers and keeps, and Commanders ready to respond if they call for help. It will be because you were lucky enough to be merged with a group of people who ALREADY PLAY TO WIN, simply adding another 1,000 or so players who give up as soon as they fall behind in score won’t change Ferguson’s Crossings’ fortunes in WvW at all.

In a word “how”??? You cant force people to use vop? Im trying to understand or logic, i really am

but how??

I feel bad for devs that need to catch up but i like where the convo is going…