Guild Wars 2

SixFPCs.9840:

John Corpening.9847:

Let me know your thoughts and thanks again for all the great and constructive discussion!
John

John, I think that the implementation of alliances on a large scale would severely reduce community building in WvW as a result of chilling effects on how guilds interact overall. Since server communities are one of the primary draws for WvW players, I think alliances are a poor idea.

Servers bring together a wide range of guilds. The large WvW-focused guilds team up with small havoc squads from PvX guilds and individual players. We all get together and talk and plan, because we are fighting as a server. We are all fighting together for some indeterminate amount of time (in technical terms, this is an infinite length cooperative game unless other conditions are imposed). As a result, we learn to work together and communicate, despite having different interests and priorities and strengths.
Once alliances are introduced, the threat of being moved to another server on any given week, or being reorganized entirely if we change the system more drastically, means that I have much less reason to invest in building a relationship with a non-alliance guild. If you are outside the alliance, I have to be afraid of the fact that I might not be on your team again for a long time. Thus, there is less relationship-building, because relationships are perceived as more transient. This creates a chilling effect where I am less likely to befriend a non-alliance guild, unless I intend to recruit them into my alliance. They are simply outside of the effective “server”.

To take an extreme example, compare alliances to sPvP hotjoin. I don’t really care much about learning to work as a team with these particular players (despite the fact that it will help me win), because these guys likely won’t be on my team again. In fact, it’s possible for them to get shunted over to the other side to balance out the teams during that same game. There is no reason to build an effective team, or even any kind of connection with them, because there is no future benefit. Alliances will shift WvW play in this direction.

Certainly a lot of good people will still help to build communities, and perhaps large alliances will result and replace the server identity. But on the whole, the sense of community will be lowered as a result of alliances, and as such I can offer no support to the idea of alliances as you currently describe it.

That’s an excellent point. I know I personally communicate with my server almost entirely through TS and it’s unlikely I would invite temporary allies into our TS. I don’t see much organization or bonding occurring between temporary allies. We might loosely support each other but I think everyone would slowly start to lose their sense of community.

NevilleDevil.4530:

Before you say all I like is winning. in PTT. I hate PPT; I am in a fighting guild that has fun finding other zergs and killing them. I enjoy the 24/7 coverage because I always can find a zerg to fight, and there many more in T1 that agree with me, all of T1.

Then you should really try to understand John’s proposal and some of my interpretations of it: The population and coverage in such future matches are HIGHER than in current T1, as current T1-server will be only PARTS of the future teams.

munkiman.3068:

NevilleDevil.4530:

"
I feel like there are a scary number of people in that thread who seem to think T1 is the problem rather than the goal, which scares the crap out of me.

Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels

PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!
"
We want to stay in our coverage and tier for a reason. Anyone who did’t like it left T1 already. Why can’t you see things from other’s perspective.

Before you say all I like is winning. in PTT. I hate PPT; I am in a fighting guild that has fun finding other zergs and killing them. I enjoy the 24/7 coverage because I always can find a zerg to fight, and there many more in T1 that agree with me, all of T1.

I personally don’t mind one bit that t1 exists and we aren’t part of it. So at least some of us are on your side. Some of us actually want to improve the mode, for everyone.

It’s been said since almost day one, the scoring system is horrible for this game mode. We’ve lost so many to that issue on top of the lack of updates, rewards and changes to WvW. ANet keeps saying they need to work on the fundamental issues of the game, yet here we are arguing over band aid solutions which will only get people riled up if implemented.

My exhaustive posts stem from this long standing problem, one that pushes people away from wanting to play WvW and causes sever burn-out. It’s completely frustrating that fixing the fundamental problems is not the focus.

We typically end up bleeding players to a lot of the design decisions ANets made and i’m pretty sure if they keep doing it this way, there won’t be much left in a year and they will have no choice but to merge the remaining top 6 servers.

With the quotation fixed. The idea to lower map caps to T8 standards is NOT REALISTIC. It is estimated that each map can hold 100 people, so let’s do some math. That is 24*4**100 = 9600 people. That is the amount of people that can be in WvW across all the servers at any given time. Reducing this number is not the solution, forcing kitten break up and across all of the other 21 servers.

While there is a problem, which is what I’m not denying. The solution that Jim, in particular, is pushng so hard for is NOT FIXING THE PROBLEM. It is creating problems, and relationships to break apart.

I want there to be a solution for T2 and below, don’t get me wrong, but I will not support a “solution” that creates more problems and destroys server communities. For Jim right now, has to think harder for a solution that does not affect the current T1 scenario because that is not broken. Don’t fix what is not broken and that is T1, you need to fix T2 and below.

Dayra.7405:

NevilleDevil.4530:

Before you say all I like is winning. in PTT. I hate PPT; I am in a fighting guild that has fun finding other zergs and killing them. I enjoy the 24/7 coverage because I always can find a zerg to fight, and there many more in T1 that agree with me, all of T1.

Then you should really try to understand John’s proposal and some of my interpretations of it: The population and coverage in these future matches are HIGHER than in current T1, as current T1-server will be only PARTS of the future teams.

However you seem to misunderstand a part of the point of why I am against breaking up T1. I like my community now. How would you feel if you were told, your server has been broken up your not allowed to play with all of your friends, only a part of them; and by part of them, the one that your guild chooses.

Not speaking for you, but I would imagine a lot of people would not be happy with that. I am not going to let someone destroy my server because I found one that I can call home again.

NevilleDevil.4530:

munkiman.3068:

NevilleDevil.4530:

"
I feel like there are a scary number of people in that thread who seem to think T1 is the problem rather than the goal, which scares the crap out of me.

Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels Don’t send me back to T2 coverage levels

PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!
"
We want to stay in our coverage and tier for a reason. Anyone who did’t like it left T1 already. Why can’t you see things from other’s perspective.

Before you say all I like is winning. in PTT. I hate PPT; I am in a fighting guild that has fun finding other zergs and killing them. I enjoy the 24/7 coverage because I always can find a zerg to fight, and there many more in T1 that agree with me, all of T1.

I personally don’t mind one bit that t1 exists and we aren’t part of it. So at least some of us are on your side. Some of us actually want to improve the mode, for everyone.

It’s been said since almost day one, the scoring system is horrible for this game mode. We’ve lost so many to that issue on top of the lack of updates, rewards and changes to WvW. ANet keeps saying they need to work on the fundamental issues of the game, yet here we are arguing over band aid solutions which will only get people riled up if implemented.

My exhaustive posts stem from this long standing problem, one that pushes people away from wanting to play WvW and causes sever burn-out. It’s completely frustrating that fixing the fundamental problems is not the focus.

We typically end up bleeding players to a lot of the design decisions ANets made and i’m pretty sure if they keep doing it this way, there won’t be much left in a year and they will have no choice but to merge the remaining top 6 servers.

With the quotation fixed. The idea to lower map caps to T8 standards is NOT REALISTIC. It is estimated that each map can hold 100 people, so let’s do some math. That is 24*4**100 = 9600 people. That is the amount of people that can be in WvW across all the servers at any given time. Reducing this number is not the solution, forcing kitten break up and across all of the other 21 servers.

While there is a problem, which is what I’m not denying. The solution that Jim, in particular, is pushng so hard for is NOT FIXING THE PROBLEM. It is creating problems, and relationships to break apart.

I want there to be a solution for T2 and below, don’t get me wrong, but I will not support a “solution” that creates more problems and destroys server communities. For Jim right now, has to think harder for a solution that does not affect the current T1 scenario because that is not broken. Don’t fix what is not broken and that is T1, you need to fix T2 and below.

The problem is stale matchups. Besides for the complete joke of a matchup this week because of the tournament, how many months has it been since you fought someone that wasn’t JQ and TC?

NevilleDevil.4530:

That is 24*4**100 = 9600 people. That is the amount of people that can be in WvW across all the servers at any given time. Reducing this number is not the solution.

Should only 7000 want to play at reset …
Should only 5000 want to play at a normal prime-time …
Should only 1000 want to play at a normal off-time …

Then of course it is time to reduce the 9600.
The question is when and where!

• reduce the 24, i.e. servers, e.g. till capacity of a normal prime-time matches the space
• reduce the 4, i.e. the number of maps, e.g. freeze a map in the off-time, only let it be playable in prime-time
• reduce the 100, i.e. the cap per map, e.g. reduce the cap of map in the off-time such that it is closer to the actual demand.

NevilleDevil.4530:

Dayra.7405:

NevilleDevil.4530:

Before you say all I like is winning. in PTT. I hate PPT; I am in a fighting guild that has fun finding other zergs and killing them. I enjoy the 24/7 coverage because I always can find a zerg to fight, and there many more in T1 that agree with me, all of T1.

Then you should really try to understand John’s proposal and some of my interpretations of it: The population and coverage in these future matches are HIGHER than in current T1, as current T1-server will be only PARTS of the future teams.

However you seem to misunderstand a part of the point of why I am against breaking up T1. I like my community now. How would you feel if you were told, your server has been broken up your not allowed to play with all of your friends, only a part of them; and by part of them, the one that your guild chooses.

Again, John did not talked about breaking T1-servers, he explicitly said, servers will be preserved as alliances, so your home will be an alliance and not a server.

The difference he proposed is: you do no longer fight alone against another lonely alliance, but your alliance can also be part of a team of alliances (or it will stand alone, because it is large enough to be the only alliance in the team) and your opponent team will also consist of a team of alliances.

Dayra.7405:

NevilleDevil.4530:

That is 24*4**100 = 9600 people. That is the amount of people that can be in WvW across all the servers at any given time. Reducing this number is not the solution.

Should only 7000 want to play at reset …
Should only 5000 want to play at a normal prime-time …
Should only 1000 want to play at a normal off-time …

Then of course it is time to reduce the 9600.
The question is when and where!

• reduce the 24, i.e. servers, e.g. till capacity of a normal prime-time matches the space
• reduce the 4, i.e. the number of maps, e.g. freeze a map in the off-time, only let it be playable in prime-time
• reduce the 100, i.e. the cap per map, e.g. reduce the cap of map in the off-time

So your going to limit tatics? Pulling people off of maps to stop them focusing an attack? That is kinda nonsense.

NevilleDevil.4530:

Dayra.7405:

NevilleDevil.4530:

That is 24*4**100 = 9600 people. That is the amount of people that can be in WvW across all the servers at any given time. Reducing this number is not the solution.

Should only 7000 want to play at reset …
Should only 5000 want to play at a normal prime-time …
Should only 1000 want to play at a normal off-time …

Then of course it is time to reduce the 9600.
The question is when and where!

• reduce the 24, i.e. servers, e.g. till capacity of a normal prime-time matches the space
• reduce the 4, i.e. the number of maps, e.g. freeze a map in the off-time, only let it be playable in prime-time
• reduce the 100, i.e. the cap per map, e.g. reduce the cap of map in the off-time

So your going to limit tatics? Pulling people off of maps to stop them focusing an attack? That is kinda nonsense.

I would call it PvD not tactics, but I did not said it should be stopped, I only said it should be reduced.

So e.g. instead of 1 100 people zerg jumping between 4 maps of 100 capacity you will be forced to break it up into 2 50 people zergs jumping between the 3 maps (one is frozen) as each map could have only 50 capacity in off time.

Input of a “retired WvW commander”

I’ve stuck around PvE to play with friends but more or less went cold turkey from WvW for various reasons which I’m 100% ok with. Even this suggestion is welcome to fall on deaf ears cause it seems WvW isn’t meant to be the game I’d want it to be, enough people like it (or at the time seemed to) so it was fine.

On the theme others have been putting in of wanting to play with friends, guilds, alliances, etc over necessarily wanting to play for a server. Why not put more focus and reward on interactions with guilds. Taking a page from the first person shooter genre (say Team Fortress 2), why not have something akin to the Domination system?

A way of tracking a slew of various ways groups on competing servers interact, with a reward pool that goes right back into the beast…

• Knowing which guild knocked over your tower / keep / etc -> knowing what points they (or their allies?) control -> and knowing that your group would get a reward for destroying / taking over / defending said points.
• Being a small vs large staffed server is rough but maybe a hidden modifier calculating your alliances average player activity compared to your competitors would grant you a bonus to rewards when hitting depots and towers.
• For groups that don’t cap and just do large player battles, why not have something akin to a banner the commander can summon (ever X minutes?). While they’re holding it any kills within its range get added to a string, every… say 50 kills a point value is added to the reward system. Killing said commander and breaking the banner would also give points to that guild.
• Fighting on non-reset days could still lead to taking the fight to a certain enemy akin to doing a daily. (Find their point and knock it down, maybe getting a message in your chat when your point is taken (by them?))

Rewards could be anything from chance of gear/ siege/ wxp/ etc on the individual scale. On the Guild/Alliance scale it could be a weekly progression tiered or a ranking of which group has been the… most competitive?

I feel like this system redesigned for GW2 could improve a lot of different things players have complaint with in the game. While it seems to just be a bunch of rewards for doing stuff the intent is they would only show up or become a multiplier when facing off against repeat opponents.

This system probably has more holes in it then swiss cheese and may not end up fixing the imbalanced server fights or inactive servers but maybe those interested can find some way for it to work

Good Luck and Have Fun!

Dayra.7405:

NevilleDevil.4530:

Dayra.7405:

NevilleDevil.4530:

That is 24*4**100 = 9600 people. That is the amount of people that can be in WvW across all the servers at any given time. Reducing this number is not the solution.

Should only 7000 want to play at reset …
Should only 5000 want to play at a normal prime-time …
Should only 1000 want to play at a normal off-time …

Then of course it is time to reduce the 9600.
The question is when and where!

• reduce the 24, i.e. servers, e.g. till capacity of a normal prime-time matches the space
• reduce the 4, i.e. the number of maps, e.g. freeze a map in the off-time, only let it be playable in prime-time
• reduce the 100, i.e. the cap per map, e.g. reduce the cap of map in the off-time

So your going to limit tatics? Pulling people off of maps to stop them focusing an attack? That is kinda nonsense.

I would call it PvD not tactics, but I did not said it should be stopped, I only said it should be reduced.

So e.g. instead of 1 100 people zerg jumping between 4 maps of 100 capacity you will be forced to break it up into 2 50 people zergs jumping between the 3 maps (one is frozen) as each map could have only 50 capacity in off time.

So which server gets the advantage of the frozen map? Red, Blue, or Green? Frozen anything is bad.

My idea to fix population in WvW:

• Don’t touch servers, no need to merge.
• Reduce tiers to only two:
• Tier 1 will be as it is right now, the top 3 servers.
• Tier 2 will be temporally merged servers as it is in EotM map.
• Every week, the 3rd place of T1 will go to T2, and the best performing in T2 will go to T1.
• If the queue is too big in T2, a new instance could be created, etc. (there are multiple solutions to this problem)

NeHoMaR.9812:

My idea to fix population in WvW:

• Don’t touch servers, no need to merge.
• Reduce tiers to only two:
• Tier 1 will be as it is right now, the top 3 servers.
• Tier 2 will be temporally merged servers as it is in EotM map.
• Every week, the 3rd place of T1 will go to T2, and the best performing in T2 will go to T1.
• If the queue is too big in T2, a new instance could be created, etc. (there are multiple solutions to this problem)

EotM Map is bad. It does destroy many communities which is also bad. I like the idea of not touching T1 because T1 doesn’t need to be “fixed”.

I’m not sure if it’s been addressed, but all server merges/alliances are going to do is decrease the current rate of WvW’s demise. We’d see full maps for a short time, but as population decreases, even those will slowly but surely empty.

The real problem is total lack of new content, making the game mode stale. And by content I mean maps. No matter how you move population around, in the end, it’s still the same maps from 2 years ago.

A new EB and BL every 6 months (put into rotation with the old maps) will keep people around. In fact, that would likely remove the need for merges/alliances.

Just like the case with siege trolls, you really need to address the root cause of the problem.

Jim Hunter.6821:

The problem is stale matchups. Besides for the complete joke of a matchup this week because of the tournament, how many months has it been since you fought someone that wasn’t JQ and TC?

Yeah but you’re basically asking that servers that already face queues to endure longer ones. In the hopes that it does what? Motivates through contrived inconvenience to switch to servers that don’t experience queues. You like your server, you don’t want to move, why would you want to force that on T1-T2?

I’m highly sure if ANet actually put time into fixing the fundamentally broken scoring, built in mechanics that mostly affected the the population imbalances that allowed for lower pop servers to compete, we wouldn’t keep beating this same dead horse. Mix up the mode add new interesting worthwhile features to it and you might see more people coming back to play and definitely more movement in the ladders. For one thing, if they did away with PPT and lowered score tallies, you’d see the ladders move a lot faster than the cluster we have now.

NevilleDevil.4530:

So which server gets the advantage of the frozen map? Red, Blue, or Green? Frozen anything is bad.

No one. While it is frozen no one can enter it and it’s state doesn’t count in the tick.
It could be frozen when no team has more than 250 people in the match, i.e. all fit on the remaining 3 maps, and waked up when the first team reached queue on all 3 maps, i.e. there is a real demand for it.

NevilleDevil.4530:

NeHoMaR.9812:

My idea to fix population in WvW:

• Don’t touch servers, no need to merge.
• Reduce tiers to only two:
• Tier 1 will be as it is right now, the top 3 servers.
• Tier 2 will be temporally merged servers as it is in EotM map.
• Every week, the 3rd place of T1 will go to T2, and the best performing in T2 will go to T1.
• If the queue is too big in T2, a new instance could be created, etc. (there are multiple solutions to this problem)

EotM Map is bad. It does destroy many communities which is also bad. I like the idea of not touching T1 because T1 doesn’t need to be “fixed”.

If EotM map is bad or not, it’s an opinion. In my opinion, there are no “communities”, at least not WvW ones, to be “destroyed” by this system in the unpopulated servers, if any, they can still play together as a guild, and the game could use the already implemented system in PvE to prioritize the people of same server/guild to go to the same instance. There are multiple solutions to the problems that could appear implementing my idea, but I tried to be as simple as possible.

Dayra.7405:

NevilleDevil.4530:

So which server gets the advantage of the frozen map? Red, Blue, or Green? Frozen anything is bad.

No one. While it is frozen no one can enter it and it’s state doesn’t count in the tick.
It could be frozen when no team has more than 250 people in the match, i.e. all fit on the remaining 3 maps, and waked up when the first team reached queue on all 3 maps, i.e. there is a real demand for it.

What I think Neville means here is, will it be a Borderland map that is frozen? If so, whose HOME MAP will it be, because that server can easily be put at a disadvantage by this, since most servers tend to do better on their Home BL.

Dayra.7405:

NevilleDevil.4530:

So which server gets the advantage of the frozen map? Red, Blue, or Green? Frozen anything is bad.

No one. While it is frozen no one can enter it and it’s state doesn’t count in the tick.
It could be frozen when no team has more than 250 people in the match, i.e. all fit on the remaining 3 maps, and waked up when the first team reached queue on all 3 maps, i.e. there is a real demand for it.

You’d have to freeze EB then, because each BL has a team at an advantage, if you freeze one of them out of their BL they don’t get a map that’s built in their favor. Thus it’d be imbalanced. THen is there some announcement that EB is reoppened? Will people have to watch their wvw windows to rush back to defend their stuff before the opponants can rush in and take it? Seems like a terrible idea honestly.

Scrap the bloodlust and make all kills (not just stomps) count for points.

This makes prime-time quality more or less equal to off-hours quantity.
Yes, servers with off-hours populations will continue to have a leg up (and they really should, it’s not fair to punish them for wanting to play); but it won’t be the only deciding factor anymore.

John Corpening.9847:

Anyway, this discussion made it clear it is who you play with that’s important and a number of ideas in this thread preserved that without restricting the number of people who could play at a time. These have had a number of names but for the sake of discussion I’ll go with Alliances. The idea that I liked for Alliances is that it is a group of guilds and people that are guaranteed to stay together no matter how things are rearranged. There would probably need to be a size limit on Alliances and several of you pointed out that whatever limits are put in place it should be based on WvW participation.

I kinda like this idea.

With a few caveats.

-Absolutely the only way I can get behind it is if size limits are based on WvW participation. Preferably WvW participation while representing a guild/alliance. I do not want to have to kick members from my guild that only log in occasionally, or those that do mostly PvE just so my guild can fit in an alliance. It also cuts both ways – I don’t want to get kicked out of secondary guilds that might want to be part of a difference alliance because I only do PvE type stuff with them.
-I do not want to deal with queues. I’m perfectly happy playing on a medium populated server that only has queues on reset night and on a focused map during prime time. I want to play on my schedule, and I accept that I won’t be on one of the top ranked servers because of that choice.
-If at all possible, keep existing world designations for PvE/Megaserver prioritization. There’s no sense breaking those communities up because of this. SBI til I die!

Chris.3290:

Scrap the bloodlust and make all kills (not just stomps) count for points.

This makes prime-time quality more or less equal to off-hours quantity.
Yes, servers with off-hours populations will continue to have a leg up (and they really should, it’s not fair to punish them for wanting to play); but it won’t be the only deciding factor anymore.

I’d rather they left bloodlust and simply added kill points as an addition. 3 ways to score, kills , stomps and PPT

Having played a number of other open world pvp games, here are my suggestions to improve population balance in GW2. Mind you, some of them would require significant changes in the game mechanics, but I believe that they are at least worthy of discussion. IMO, at this point, significant upgrades to game mechanics are necessary to fix WvW.

There are a number of different problems that cause popluation imbalances, so I will categorize them by the problems I perceive:

1. Realm discouragement: Underpopulated realms become discouraged which has a snowball effect, exacerbating the population imbalances. In GW2 this is caused by some of the core mechanics. That means three things:

(1) eliminate the downed state, or at a minimum, the rally mechanic, in WvW. This is the single largest problem that prevents zerg busting. The core rally mechanic heavily favors the side with the larger group. It is not designed for fights where one side has more players, it is designed for sPVP. Now matter how many get downed, they end up getting rallied by one downed player on the underpopulated side. This discourages attempts to fight larger groups. There are different ways this could be accomplished (ie. permanently getting rid of it, or just getting rid of the rally for sides that don’t have the outmanned buff). This one change alone would re-invigorate the game;

(2) make WXP gained by your contribution to the fight (either in the form of damage, mitigation or healing) a.l.a. successful games like DAoC or WAR. There is no reason a person who has contributed a single hp of damage should get full WxP for a player kill while another who has done 90% of the damage receives the same WxP, and is not rewarded for their larger contribution. With the current mechanic, there is absolutely no incentive not to zerg. You get the same WxP for minimal contribution, so why not run in the safety of a large group, knowing that you get the same WxP for essentially making a minimal contribution. This would discourage zerging, and encourage small group play – i.e. larger contribution. Most people want to run in smaller groups and this would encourage people to get out and fight even when their realm is outmanned.

(3) Reduce the PPT contribution for all objectives when the map is relatively empty. In other words, make PPT scale down when the map has a low population (generally in the middle of the night for the server). This would make the underpopulated servers able to compete with the servers that have night shift (PVdoor) players. Prime time will once again matter. As it currently stands, many servers do well, or better than the highly populated servers in prime time, but simply cannot compete during the off hours. Make PPT scale down significantly during hours where the map is severely underpopulated.

2. Server Transfers: The problem here is players and guilds jumping servers to the flavor of the month server because it has a higher population:

(1) Make transfers from high population servers free, and/or incentivize movement from high population servers to lower population servers. This could be done in the form of WXP bonuses, consumables, abilities, etc.

(2) Prohibit or severely limit movement to high population servers. Make a longer delay from when a player moves to a higher population server to when that player can enter WvW for that server.

3. WvW Rewards: The problem here is that WvW rewards simple cannot compete with the rewards players get from participating in the PVE side of the game. They simply don’t come close. Implement exclusive WvW skins, better drops, more gold per hour, better titles, etc. Its simple economics, you have to incentivize WvW better.

Chris.3290:

Scrap the bloodlust and make all kills (not just stomps) count for points.

This makes prime-time quality more or less equal to off-hours quantity.
Yes, servers with off-hours populations will continue to have a leg up (and they really should, it’s not fair to punish them for wanting to play); but it won’t be the only deciding factor anymore.

This is separate from the issue of Population Imbalance, but I AGREE, the idea that holding Bloodlust determines whether or not you get points from Kills just doesn’t make sense! I mean, you can keep Bloodlust in the game, with the same small stat buffs it has now, and maybe you could even keep it tied to Stomp Points (make all Stomps worth 1 EXTRA point when you hold Bloodlust), but really, ALL KILLS should count for 1 point, independent of Bloodlust.

NEW THREAD TIME!!!

I think John left his proposal a little vague to foster more discussion. By doing so he’s leaving the community here to brainstorm more ideas and variations of the concept. As we give him and each other our ideas it’ll help him refine what he’s thinking. Eventually we’ll refine to the point where he can take a solid idea, that the majority of the community supports, back to the other devs and see how they can make it a reality.

I also think a conversation about PPT changes will be coming later.

Otokomae.9356:

Chris.3290:

Scrap the bloodlust and make all kills (not just stomps) count for points.

This makes prime-time quality more or less equal to off-hours quantity.
Yes, servers with off-hours populations will continue to have a leg up (and they really should, it’s not fair to punish them for wanting to play); but it won’t be the only deciding factor anymore.

This is separate from the issue of Population Imbalance, but I AGREE, the idea that holding Bloodlust determines whether or not you get points from Kills just doesn’t make sense! I mean, you can keep Bloodlust in the game, with the same small stat buffs it has now, and maybe you could even keep it tied to Stomp Points (make all Stomps worth 1 EXTRA point when you hold Bloodlust), but really, ALL KILLS should count for 1 point, independent of Bloodlust.

NEW THREAD TIME!!!

This is the type of stuff i’ve been talking about. Let’s hope more people jump on the fixes to WvW so we can get back some of our lost and bring about the robust experience WvW was on release.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Hi John

I’m a bit confused on the alliance idea. Are these “new worlds” solely for the purpose of a stress test? If so, how would alliances fit into normal wvw? If not, then I’m wondering why you think its a good idea to stretch population even further.

My hopes would be to solidify populations so at most given times you can find people to fight. The alliance sounds like a solution to that. From what I remember from a youtube video I saw a while back, this is how I see things:
- people are given the option of participating in the alliance. The alliance is across any server that shares the same color (green, red, blue).
- said participation cannot occur unless the server in question has the outnumbered buff on at least one of the maps, and only for an alotted amount of time during each week.
- thats all I remember. Basically you just opt to help out another server and thats that.

I think when he said “new worlds” it was both a place holder for a concept and a means of separating the WvW structure from the server structure the game had at launch. He didn’t seem to imply any kind of stress test for the idea. Alliances would almost replace the worlds so instead of WvWvW we’d have AvAvA.

Otokomae.9356:

Chris.3290:

Scrap the bloodlust and make all kills (not just stomps) count for points.

This makes prime-time quality more or less equal to off-hours quantity.
Yes, servers with off-hours populations will continue to have a leg up (and they really should, it’s not fair to punish them for wanting to play); but it won’t be the only deciding factor anymore.

This is separate from the issue of Population Imbalance, but I AGREE, the idea that holding Bloodlust determines whether or not you get points from Kills just doesn’t make sense! I mean, you can keep Bloodlust in the game, with the same small stat buffs it has now, and maybe you could even keep it tied to Stomp Points (make all Stomps worth 1 EXTRA point when you hold Bloodlust), but really, ALL KILLS should count for 1 point, independent of Bloodlust.

NEW THREAD TIME!!!

I always figured bloodlust was a good mechanic to make individual or small group efforts in borderlands important to the overall score. But yeah, again, totally agree on points on kills PPT could surely use some watering down and that would do it quite well.

I agree with the posts saying that we need to fix the issue of stale wvw – alliances and mergers are bandaids. I mainly play because I like the people I play with and I do have server pride BUT I understand that most other players won’t play for that one reason.

- More maps for BLs! Keep EB as a hub and just change the BLs each week. Just a bit of novelty will draw people in.

- better rewards and ones that reflect on contribution.

- Titles that can actually be achieved. My one ambition is to have the Yakslapper title but I know it’s not possible within my lifetime.

- Unique rewards for wvw. Well MORE of them. I know we have some but pretty please I want to earn more shinies that show I am a wvw regular.

- More guild tools. Someone mentioned having a warning system that tells you when something your guild has claimed is under attack. Something like that yellow message that used to come up whenever Scarlet was in PvE? Yeah? A guild ranking that shows the best guilds in wvw doing what they do best, per server and worldwide

storiessave.3807:

Very large response to the latest proposal incoming~

I can’t see a guild-based alliance working tbh. What happens with guilds that aren’t WvW focused? One of the guilds I’m in mainly only does WvW on reset nights, aside from very small havocs two other nights a week…but that isn’t even half the active playerbase that participates. How could you count an entire guild of close to 300 people as part of the cap for an alliance, when only 50 of those, possibly less, ever step foot in WvW? There are PvX players who do both WvW and PvE, of course, but there are many more that only do PvE or PvP.

You’d also have to decide how big the cap is. The size of BG’s WvW population now? Smaller? Personally, I love Tier 1 WvW right now. Aside from the coverage balance issues, we can always find fights 24/7. I love those large-scale battles. I have played on a low tier server before, and I didn’t have much fun with it compared to what fun I’ve had on TC. I really don’t want to see WvW populations diminished to the point where there are large gaps of time where you can’t find fights. Lower tier servers may like that, but I love the fast-paced nature of T1.

Honestly though, it should be server alliances, not guild alliances. Doing it by guilds is way too messy, and you will ruin server communities doing it that way. Guilds work together in WvW. We’re used to running with the same other guilds day in and day out, for months or, for some, more than a year. We learn how to move together. We communicate well together. We know the usual strategy or crazy antics of all the regular commanders, so we know how to work with them.

TC has a server-wide Mumble that’s used for both PvE and WvW – something that would not be possible if half of us were in an opposing alliance. Most, if not all, other servers have a VoIP server as well. How can you say that alliances would keep server communities intact, if it does not actually include the entire server community as a whole?

You break up these guilds so we can’t play together anymore, and you will have a bunch of new guilds that don’t know how to work with those of us left from the remnants of our server, and thus will be less effective in WvW.

On the other hand, if it was server alliances, you’d already have communities intact, so learning how to work with a new community wouldn’t be as much of a hardship. We’d still be effective from the start, because we’d still have all of our server’s guilds playing together.

Server alliances is the only way I can see an alliance system working out. Otherwise you are destroying the communities we’ve come to know and love.

The biggest issue right now, though, is that you have to differentiate between PvE players and WvW players. If you did an alliance at all, regardless of whether it’s server or guild based, you can’t count PvE-only players toward that cap. That’s just not fair.

That’s the trouble that JQ’s EU/NA and TC’s OCX/SEA have had for months – our servers being listed as full, preventing most people from transferring, yet a large amount of that supposedly full population never steps foot in WvW, causing gaps of low coverage. This is a glaring issue that would have to be fixed for any alliance system to work.

I think that with some tweaks, perhaps an alliance system could be an improvement, but not if it breaks up servers. A guild isn’t a server. All the guilds on a server are a server, together. It’s not the same if we’re not playing with the guilds we’ve come to enjoy running with.

What my TC brother says!!

All I see alliances doing is ruining T1, I’m sorry if other tiers aren’t having fun but I don’t see that as justification to break what T1 players love. Coverage may be unfair (TC has been on the receiving end of servers with better coverage many times) But it allows me to jump into wvw at any time I like and know I will find a fight. After seeing the state of T2s coverage I can honestly tell you I would quit the game if T2 coverage levels were the best I could hope for.

The only reason me and most of my guild still plays GW2 is wvw, break that and as far as we care you have broken GW2.

So which alliance are we all going to stack guys? I’m just sorting out my options now so I am ready to stack when the time comes. Did someone come up with a solution to population imbalance yet?

Jerus.4350:

Dayra.7405:

NevilleDevil.4530:

So which server gets the advantage of the frozen map? Red, Blue, or Green? Frozen anything is bad.

No one. While it is frozen no one can enter it and it’s state doesn’t count in the tick.
It could be frozen when no team has more than 250 people in the match, i.e. all fit on the remaining 3 maps, and waked up when the first team reached queue on all 3 maps, i.e. there is a real demand for it.

You’d have to freeze EB then, because each BL has a team at an advantage, if you freeze one of them out of their BL they don’t get a map that’s built in their favor. Thus it’d be imbalanced. THen is there some announcement that EB is reoppened? Will people have to watch their wvw windows to rush back to defend their stuff before the opponants can rush in and take it? Seems like a terrible idea honestly.

Yes, with the current available maps it has to be EB.
You remember the fat text in the middle of the screen that was used in PvE?
Could be used to say “Send scouts to EB, it will open in 5min”, and open it for 5 people per team immediately, and 5min later for all 100 per team.

Again, I will make the point that off hour coverage needs to get reduced PPT across all matchups, especially with Chinese servers up now.

It’s seems unfair that 20 players in Taiwan or Singapore can determine who wins WvW in tier 1. Montana has less electoral votes than California for a reason.

I can only wonder what happens in tier 8. 1 guy who works the night shift and 1 player in Hong Kong determines who wins the matchup. And if he gets a day job they lose again!

NevilleDevil.4530:

All in the people in T1 want the 24hr coverage. It’s what we enjoy, and the follwing is quoted from the TC community website:

We want to stay in our coverage and tier for a reason. Anyone who did’t like it left T1 already. Why can’t you see things from other’s perspective.

Before you say all I like is winning. in PTT. I hate PPT; I am in a fighting guild that has fun finding other zergs and killing them. I enjoy the 24/7 coverage because I always can find a zerg to fight, and there many more in T1 that agree with me, all of T1.

So much this. I came from SF last year, and the constant action in T1 has been so much more fun than the small-scale (and scattered) fights we had there.

I would be very sad if the goal was a smaller active WvW population than T1 has right now. I know some lower tier servers wouldn’t want the large-scale and constant battles that we have in T1 (the “T1 blobs” are often criticized), but at the same time, those of us in T1 don’t want to lose those.

Alright. Let’s try something different.

My 3 step programm to fix WvW- tl:dr version:
- Get rid of the ranking system and tiers. Match server by average population.
- Limit WvW to level 80 characters. EotM will still be available for all levels.
- Increase the Rewards of WvW and lower those of EotM (Keep Exp gain rate.)

Longer version with reasoning:

Many of the Ideas in this thread are great but wont make it into the live version for many reasons. Server merging is bad for the communities. This whole alliance system has a lot of flaws aswell that have been mentioned already.
Altering the way points are being earned by the number of players is not the worst idea but can be absued to easily.

Why not grab the whole system by its core and scrap the idea of ranking servers and putting them into tiers.
What really needs to be done is monitoring the average amount of players online per hour. Thus its important to lock the content for level 80’s only because upleveld players are not scaling accordingly and usually being trampled down.
If the number of serious participants in WvW would be monitored and the average be calculated you could match servers according to their population.

I realize that this will inevitably match the same servers against each other again and again, but is that really a problem if its balanced? No.

A quick example. (Average player count/hour in bracets)

Results of First Week:
Server A (~500) vs Server B (~300) vs Server C (~60)
Server D (~290) vs Server E (~450) vs Server F (~70)
Server G (~315) vs Server H (~525) vs Server J (~75)

Matchmaking of Second Week:
Server A (~500) vs Server E (~450) vs Server H (~525)
Server D (~290) vs Server B (~300) vs Server G (~315)
Server C (~60) vs Server F (~70) vs Server J (~75)

This system is solid and works for everyone. Serverpride will still be a thing, people wont suffer from loosing all the time. Servers like Maguuma wont stay on higher tiers for ages that they dont belong to etc.

A system difficult to abuse
Of course a server could refuse to play WvW for the first 5 weeks to get matched with low-pop servers and then stomp them like crazy. But for what? People want to play the game at some point, no?

And the longer this system is present the more balanced it will get.
The only problem I see Is guilds mass transfering server to get a guaranteed win.
In the first few weeks this would be no problem, the system would easily catch up and match them accordingly again after 2-3 weeks. Once this system has been around for a year things get more difficult.

This is why two seperate statistics would need to get monitored.
-The average amount of players online per hour.
-The average amount of players online per week.

In case of a large guild transfering servers the second statistic would immediatly display other results than the weeks prior and be of priority over the first one – thus matching the server accordingly the week after.

I think this would be the way to go.

Minor things thats would need to get changes in general to further help WvW
The normal WvW needs to yield more rewards.
Many people spend so much gold on WvW for siegeweapons, upgrades, expensive bufffood etc but they earn so little that it forces them to play PvE at some point even if they dont want to.
A guild member of mine had this problem today. We are playing on Dzagonur which is having a tight battle where every man counts atm.

He said: “I really want to play some WvW now, but I am absolutetly broke after last week. To a point travelling gets expensive and bufffood non-buyable. Ill run some dungeons now. see ya later.”

This needs to stop. We should be able to have a decent gold income in WvW to keep up with the expenses.

On a related note, the EotM rewards need to be towned down to motivate players more the play actual WvW and stop mindlessly grinding EotM.
I like EotM as an alternative to level up a character and it should certainly stay that way, thus keep the current exp gain rate. But town down the rest of the rewards.

Thanks for reading.

Maybe I am missing something but wouldn’t people be free to just stack alliances like they have servers?

For alliances to balance the population the distribution of players would have to be automated…

Which I have absolutely no problem with.

munkiman.3068:

Jim Hunter.6821:

The problem is stale matchups. Besides for the complete joke of a matchup this week because of the tournament, how many months has it been since you fought someone that wasn’t JQ and TC?

Yeah but you’re basically asking that servers that already face queues to endure longer ones. In the hopes that it does what? Motivates through contrived inconvenience to switch to servers that don’t experience queues. You like your server, you don’t want to move, why would you want to force that on T1-T2?

I’m highly sure if ANet actually put time into fixing the fundamentally broken scoring, built in mechanics that mostly affected the the population imbalances that allowed for lower pop servers to compete, we wouldn’t keep beating this same dead horse. Mix up the mode add new interesting worthwhile features to it and you might see more people coming back to play and definitely more movement in the ladders. For one thing, if they did away with PPT and lowered score tallies, you’d see the ladders move a lot faster than the cluster we have now.

I would love for them to fix some of the issues that caused this problem in the first place but I’m trying to be realistic here. It took 2 years for friggin colored commander tags, how long would it take them to admit certain things like the downed state and the rally mechanic need a change? I mean just take a look at our newest changes, did anyone really think Omega Golems weren’t powerful enough?

This is why I proposed something that would be simple to implement and effective. I understand why T1 players don’t like this idea but this idea would actually work, where server merges would not.

They say T1 is fine but they are getting less variety in their matchups than anyone. I’ve seen countless posts on this forum from T1 players complaining how they are bleeding players. Just look through every “merge the bottom servers” threads.

Sube Dai.8496:

Maybe I am missing something but wouldn’t people be free to just stack alliances like they have servers?

For alliances to balance the population the distribution of players would have to be automated…

Which I have absolutely no problem with.

Yeah it will not change anything. The thing that no one has pointed out that is clearly obvious is there is no solution that will not negatively impact a portion of players in WvW. What people need to get there head around is the fact that if we are insistent upon balancing the populations then we need to find the solution which negatively impacts the least amount of players. An alliance is not that solution, if a solution at all.

Jim Hunter.6821:

munkiman.3068:

Jim Hunter.6821:

The problem is stale matchups. Besides for the complete joke of a matchup this week because of the tournament, how many months has it been since you fought someone that wasn’t JQ and TC?

Yeah but you’re basically asking that servers that already face queues to endure longer ones. In the hopes that it does what? Motivates through contrived inconvenience to switch to servers that don’t experience queues. You like your server, you don’t want to move, why would you want to force that on T1-T2?

I’m highly sure if ANet actually put time into fixing the fundamentally broken scoring, built in mechanics that mostly affected the the population imbalances that allowed for lower pop servers to compete, we wouldn’t keep beating this same dead horse. Mix up the mode add new interesting worthwhile features to it and you might see more people coming back to play and definitely more movement in the ladders. For one thing, if they did away with PPT and lowered score tallies, you’d see the ladders move a lot faster than the cluster we have now.

I would love for them to fix some of the issues that caused this problem in the first place but I’m trying to be realistic here. It took 2 years for friggin colored commander tags, how long would it take them to admit certain things like the downed state and the rally mechanic need a change? I mean just take a look at our newest changes, did anyone really think Omega Golems weren’t powerful enough?

This is why I proposed something that would be simple to implement and effective. I understand why T1 players don’t like this idea but this idea would actually work, where server merges would not.

They say T1 is fine but they are getting less variety in their matchups than anyone. I’ve seen countless posts on this forum from T1 players complaining how they are bleeding players. Just look through every “merge the bottom servers” threads.

Your proposal would work for you maybe, but not for me at all. Smaller populations would simply push me out of WvW, but you know what, that’s fine if it’d make most people happier. However, reading this thread it sounds like I’m not the only one thinking this.

Why don’t we approach it from a different angle, if you were to design WvW from the ground up, how would it function?

If you were to design it from from scratch, how exactly should it function so we avoid:

- Population Imbalances
- Over-Zerging
- Siege Trolls
- Skill Lag

How could WvW possibly be done to avoid these things? I mention these because they seem to be ongoing problems that warrant thread creation.

Maybe if a decent answer is given, maybe Anet can work from that. We have to keep in mind though; not everyone will be happy, but at least the majority of us need to be.

It sounds like alot of people are in favor of alliances/battlegroups (or whatever you want to call them.

If done properly, it would have a positive impact on everyone. All they would need to do is make sure enough maps are available for the larger groups that server alliances would create. That would help reduce/eliminate queues for the current bandwagon servers (making it easier to get guild groups on the same map – leading to better/easier coordination) and ensure coverage/access to fights for the lower population servers.

I personally am in favor of WvW being separated into 3 alliances. There are more than enough servers to handle the overflow style maps.

Basically once say EB 1 is qued (or close to qued), EB 2 opens up for players to join, and so and so on. Once EB 2 gets enough players on each side (say 20 per side), the PPT score will tick), anything below a certain number, the score doesn’t tick.

If this were done, I personally think there would be enough players logged on at any given time to que each map 2x over.

DeadlySynz.3471:

I personally am in favor of WvW being separated into 3 alliances. There are more than enough servers to handle the overflow style maps.

Basically once say EB 1 is qued (or close to qued), EB 2 opens up for players to join, and so and so on. Once EB 2 gets enough players on each side (say 20 per side), the PPT score will tick), anything below a certain number, the score doesn’t tick.

If this were done, I personally think there would be enough players logged on at any given time to que each map 2x over.

They already have this. It’s called EotM and it is terrible.

DeadlySynz.3471:

I personally am in favor of WvW being separated into 3 alliances. There are more than enough servers to handle the overflow style maps.

Basically once say EB 1 is qued (or close to qued), EB 2 opens up for players to join, and so and so on. Once EB 2 gets enough players on each side (say 20 per side), the PPT score will tick), anything below a certain number, the score doesn’t tick.

If this were done, I personally think there would be enough players logged on at any given time to que each map 2x over.

I dont even think we would need overflow maps. All they would need to do is make sure we have a few more maps in the match than we could possibly fill up – even on reset night. This would elminate queues, give us places to fight in any style (large or small groups), ensure that organized groups could play together (which seems to be the biggest complaint from T1 about the idea) and give the devs a way to more easily grow the WvW aspect of the game (new map types).

Like some others have said, using an overflow system may make it too much like EOTM. Its better to go with more persistent maps with tangible objectives.

A fixed set of maps will have the coverage problem as today. A dynamic system that adapts capacity to demand will have coverage mostly solved, as on 4 empty maps you can reach 695:0:0 on only 1 empty map you are limited to ~200:0:0 not even counting that possessions only only 1 map are easier to defend for an outnumbered team than possessions distributed over 4 maps.

Jim Hunter.6821:

The problem is stale matchups. Besides for the complete joke of a matchup this week because of the tournament, how many months has it been since you fought someone that wasn’t JQ and TC?

Here’s the thing. The matchups aren’t stale. One red tag replaced by another doesn’t make a difference. What would make the matchup stale is if a lesser populated server got matched up with us and couldn’t/wouldn’t show up to fight. It seems you want ‘diverse’ but balanced matchups, but with WvW being set up so that you’re essentially anonymous to the other server besides some different letters, what difference does it make?

NeHoMaR.9812:

My idea to fix population in WvW:

• Don’t touch servers, no need to merge.
• Reduce tiers to only two:
• Tier 1 will be as it is right now, the top 3 servers.
• Tier 2 will be temporally merged servers as it is in EotM map.
• Every week, the 3rd place of T1 will go to T2, and the best performing in T2 will go to T1.
• If the queue is too big in T2, a new instance could be created, etc. (there are multiple solutions to this problem)

Just to be clear, you’re advocating leaving T1 alone, with 3 servers… and merging all the rest to the second “tier” where they fight it out in multi-instance EotM style matchups???

I need to make sure that I’m actually reading that right…

Asquared.4091:

NeHoMaR.9812:

My idea to fix population in WvW:

• Don’t touch servers, no need to merge.
• Reduce tiers to only two:
• Tier 1 will be as it is right now, the top 3 servers.
• Tier 2 will be temporally merged servers as it is in EotM map.
• Every week, the 3rd place of T1 will go to T2, and the best performing in T2 will go to T1.
• If the queue is too big in T2, a new instance could be created, etc. (there are multiple solutions to this problem)

Just to be clear, you’re advocating leaving T1 alone, with 3 servers… and merging all the rest to the second “tier” where they fight it out in multi-instance EotM style matchups???

I need to make sure that I’m actually reading that right…

I believe he’s just making fun of the people who are calling for kitten be broken up and spread out and pointing out how absurd that is

Reverence.6915:

Jim Hunter.6821:

The problem is stale matchups. Besides for the complete joke of a matchup this week because of the tournament, how many months has it been since you fought someone that wasn’t JQ and TC?

Here’s the thing. The matchups aren’t stale. One red tag replaced by another doesn’t make a difference. What would make the matchup stale is if a lesser populated server got matched up with us and couldn’t/wouldn’t show up to fight. It seems you want ‘diverse’ but balanced matchups, but with WvW being set up so that you’re essentially anonymous to the other server besides some different letters, what difference does it make?

The difference is in the diversity of various playstyles which are largely influenced by server culture. Your server has exactly one playstyle, and this is not a problem we experience with many other servers.

Will a merge of t2-t8 into 1 match of 3 teams really result in teams larger than current t1?
I am in doubt for NA, if I look at current NA matches.

It looks like wvw-population approximately halves from tier to tier.
50% of T1 in T2
25% of T1 in T3
12.5% of T1 in T4
….
Would mean if you merge them all you nearly reached the size of T1.

And even, if this is a bit pessimistic, I am quite sure that if you merge t2-t8 into 6 teams, they will be all smaller than BG.