Guild Wars 2

Keeping the pop. cap high for the few servers in T1 is no better than lowering it for many other servers outside of T1. Half of the mechanics in WvW aren’t even used because it is blobs and flipping paper. If the unfairness is somehow fine because it is “war” then it should obey conditions of an actual war.

In actual war, it takes a MASSIVE amount of supply to maintain a large army, from rations, to ordinance, down to the very boots your troops wear through. There is an actual population cap when it comes down to it in real life, and when you exceed that cap, your troops starve, their equipment breaks, their ammo runs out.

There absolutely has to be some sort of diminishing return on having a massive number. If not a cap, like logic dictates, there should be some sort of debuff or equipment limitation increasing over time. If this is just a GAME, then balance the teams with a cap. If this is “WAR” then a massive MARCHING army should be weakened by hunger and barefoot from crossing the rough terrain.

“War” is not fair, but there are still natural laws that govern it. Honestly, I have no idea how to implement something other than a population cap, but if SUPPLY played a role in maintaining troop numbers, at least lower population servers could limit the amount of enemies to something reasonable.

Maybe If Supply had a base generated amount, and respawns consumed supply, a better army could actually whittle down the number of a larger, less skilled army. Supply camps would play a more important role, and would actually be defended, spreading people out more. Eotm supply drop would be more important as well.

As it is now, nobody cares about WvW outside of T1, blobs make the game unplayable for many, and the massive overpopulation makes lower pops not even care about trying. Even if the imbalance could be solved without a cap, I would STILL be in favor of it because more servers blobbing is just as lame.

Menaka.5092:

I don’t think we have enough details to give proper judgement.

How does the alliances work? I’m confined on one server? What about representing different guilds that may be in different alliances?

I wonder to see such questions quite often in this thread.

As I understood it, this is a brainstorming about balance and alliances as a way to reach it. no one (not John, not ANet, not us) knows at moment if alliances will ever come! and how they would look like should they come the sense of this thread is to find out

• how you could imagine them to be
• how you would like them to be
• what would you dislike
• how could they be made to contribute to balance
• how could they be made to avoid unwanted disturbance of player communities.

Gudradain.3892:

John Corpening.9847:

• We want a thriving and vibrant WvW community in each world. That is to say, we want people to play with and against.
• We want to continue to play with our friends and the communities that we have developed already.

So… Alliance!

I really like your alliance idea. Also, you are dead on that we want to continue to play with our friends and that we want balanced/active wvw population.

….

Here is my vision of your alliance idea.

Player managed dynamic alliance

Think of alliance as super WvW guild. There would be the normal guilds that we have currently and then the super WvW guild, that we call an alliance.

…..

TLDR

Alliance = Group of players that want to play together edit: initial alliances are current servers
Coalition = Group of alliances and/or players that are put together for a week. edit: I called them team, but coalition sounds better
Match up = 3 coalitions that fight it out for 1 week to see which coalition is the best.

But really, take the time to read it

Looks like our conception how alliance and their grouping into teams/coalitions could be is quite similar https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance/4443728

Gudradain.3892:

Benefits of that solution

• Players are assured to continue to play with their friends week after week if they want.
• Each week you will be with new allies and face new enemies which bring diversity.
• Each week new coalitions will be formed in order to make each match up as balanced as possible.
• It gives the control to the players.
• It’s a long term viable solution. It will fix population imbalance immediately and permanently.

You can’t give the players the option otherwise you’ll have stacked alliances. No one wants random allys each week, if you actually think about it. You simply can’t have co-operative, organized play when you randomly rotate who you play with every week. Everything in this concept would entirely depend on locked and balanced sorting, completely out of the players hands. This also doesn’t address coverage issues (which isn’t a separate topic), you’ll still have alliances that have poor coverage being paired up. Some have spent the better part of 2 years cultivating our server communities.

If we can’t introduce mechanics and scoring that gives lower populated servers a fighting chance to, at the very least, not face a blow out, then we mine as well not have a discussion. Leave it as it and call it “working as intended”.

munkiman.3068:

You can’t give the players the option otherwise you’ll have stacked alliances. No one wants random allys each week, if you actually think about it. You simple can’t have co-operative, organized play when you randomly rotate who you play with every week.

How good it works depends likely on how the scoring is done and how easy it is to distribute tasks.

• if a 100 person alliance needs to score 100 pts per hour to be equally good than a 1000 people scoring 1000 pts per hour, then I do not see a need to concentrate.
• if there is a split of individual scoring of an alliance (for permanent community building) and a common scoring of the whole team (for cooperation of random community) then having different alliances in a team and having a cooperation of the alliance I. The team make sense.
• if you think that a match consist of maybe more maps than today, an abstract task assignment could be: this small alliance is responsible for this map, this large alliance is responsible for these maps. You do not need strong coordination for different maps, but you need strong coordination on a single map.

SleepingDragon.1596:

Sorry, didn’t read everything here but after reading what one of Anet’s staff mention about “Alliances”, I’ll put my two cents in. It’ll probably be the deathblow like it is to “GW1’s Alliance Battles”. What purpose does a server have with Alliances and matches are based on Alliances? Servers will become meaningless even for PVE since there’s something called megaserver. Renaming the servers to the Alliances? Sounds good in theory, but it is basically just hitting the reset button and recreating new dominating servers. It’s like going back to the beginning where there are alliances formed by various guilds for WvW dominations. TA vs AA, but in this case… it’ll be different alliances. It’s going to be hard to try and promote something that is fair for all. Only way Anet can try to make this right is to auto/forced server pairings during WvW fights in which the server that outnumbered the other servers to the extreme are allied and can’t target each other at all. Example: BG vs TC & SOS this week. TC & SOS although gets different colors, they are not going to be “red” for each other and cannot be targetted or killed by one another. They’ll collectively be allowed to attack BG until the score is within 100 points or less. They can turn on each other and their territories can be taken by one another once the gaps are within 100 points. BG’s land can be taken by either SOS or TC. This will balance the matches out best and retains the existing servesr without having to redo the entire renaming of servers based on alliances.

You might be on to something here. Like you could still have 3 servers but force the bottom 2 to fight the top 1.

Dayra.7405:

munkiman.3068:

You can’t give the players the option otherwise you’ll have stacked alliances. No one wants random allys each week, if you actually think about it. You simple can’t have co-operative, organized play when you randomly rotate who you play with every week.

How good it works depends likely on how the scoring is done and how easy it is to distribute tasks.

• if a 100 person alliance needs to score 100 pts per hour to be equally good than a 1000 people scoring 1000 pts per hour, then I do not see a need to concentrate.
• if there is a split of individual scoring of an alliance (for permanent community building) and a common scoring of the whole team (for cooperation of random community) then having different alliances in a team and having a cooperation of the alliance I. The team make sense.
• if you think that a match consist of maybe more maps than today, an abstract task assignment could be: this small alliance is responsible for this map, this large alliance is responsible for these maps. You do not need strong coordination for different maps, but you need strong coordination on a single map.

If you are going to change the scoring system, then why not just focus on that? If you go on about alliances then you’re just changing the system for the sake of it.

A server can have a couple guilds that win every fight they face, but it doesn’t matter much. Bloodlust, while great for huge battles, when it comes to point tally, smaller group fights against numbers have to be mobile and will simply tap the downed instead of stopping for the stomp. I tend to agree (and this has been talked about ad nauseum since day one) that downed should either be heavily kitten (maybe the health bar drops a lot faster) or completely removed from WvW. While that’s another conversation to be had, there is no doubt in my mind that even when you win all your fights, you still lose to PPT. Which is why almost anyone that avidly plays WvW on my server doesn’t care at all about winning matches, it’s all about bags and enjoying a challenging fight. Which is totally because of the scoring system.

Edit: i shouldn’t say that. They do kinda care since they want to keep having good fights, which are fewer to be had on lower pop match-ups.

Sube Dai.8496:

SleepingDragon.1596:

Sorry, didn’t read everything here but after reading what one of Anet’s staff mention about “Alliances”, I’ll put my two cents in. It’ll probably be the deathblow like it is to “GW1’s Alliance Battles”. What purpose does a server have with Alliances and matches are based on Alliances? Servers will become meaningless even for PVE since there’s something called megaserver. Renaming the servers to the Alliances? Sounds good in theory, but it is basically just hitting the reset button and recreating new dominating servers. It’s like going back to the beginning where there are alliances formed by various guilds for WvW dominations. TA vs AA, but in this case… it’ll be different alliances. It’s going to be hard to try and promote something that is fair for all. Only way Anet can try to make this right is to auto/forced server pairings during WvW fights in which the server that outnumbered the other servers to the extreme are allied and can’t target each other at all. Example: BG vs TC & SOS this week. TC & SOS although gets different colors, they are not going to be “red” for each other and cannot be targetted or killed by one another. They’ll collectively be allowed to attack BG until the score is within 100 points or less. They can turn on each other and their territories can be taken by one another once the gaps are within 100 points. BG’s land can be taken by either SOS or TC. This will balance the matches out best and retains the existing servesr without having to redo the entire renaming of servers based on alliances.

You might be on to something here. Like you could still have 3 servers but force the bottom 2 to fight the top 1.

This kind of happens now with uneven match-ups, servers sometimes band together to compete. the difference is, that it’s the players choice to do it. I’m not sure how well that would fare when you force it to happen.

munkiman.3068:

Sube Dai.8496:

SleepingDragon.1596:

Sorry, didn’t read everything here but after reading what one of Anet’s staff mention about “Alliances”, I’ll put my two cents in. It’ll probably be the deathblow like it is to “GW1’s Alliance Battles”. What purpose does a server have with Alliances and matches are based on Alliances? Servers will become meaningless even for PVE since there’s something called megaserver. Renaming the servers to the Alliances? Sounds good in theory, but it is basically just hitting the reset button and recreating new dominating servers. It’s like going back to the beginning where there are alliances formed by various guilds for WvW dominations. TA vs AA, but in this case… it’ll be different alliances. It’s going to be hard to try and promote something that is fair for all. Only way Anet can try to make this right is to auto/forced server pairings during WvW fights in which the server that outnumbered the other servers to the extreme are allied and can’t target each other at all. Example: BG vs TC & SOS this week. TC & SOS although gets different colors, they are not going to be “red” for each other and cannot be targetted or killed by one another. They’ll collectively be allowed to attack BG until the score is within 100 points or less. They can turn on each other and their territories can be taken by one another once the gaps are within 100 points. BG’s land can be taken by either SOS or TC. This will balance the matches out best and retains the existing servesr without having to redo the entire renaming of servers based on alliances.

You might be on to something here. Like you could still have 3 servers but force the bottom 2 to fight the top 1.

This kind of happens now with uneven match-ups, servers sometimes band together to compete. the difference is, that it’s the players choice to do it. I’m not sure how well that would fare when you force it to happen.

I rarely see it happen. It could be an interesting dynamic if it changes throughout the match as well. You’d have to time the point when you go solo to try and stay ahead on points, or something like that.

munkiman.3068:

If you are going to change the scoring system, then why not just focus on that? If you go on about alliances then you’re just changing the system for the sake of it.

Because changing only scoring will never enable a fight between 2 diverse alliances to be fun. If you leave alliances (server) alone, you better never match an alliance that fields 200 in prime (only 2 maps) against one that fields 400 in prime (all 4 maps).

But if put the alliances into overal teams, such that the total team-man-power is equal,
The small alliance can fight against a large one, as it fights it on two maps only, which it is able to fill (where as its coalition-alliances take over the other maps)

Dayra.7405:

munkiman.3068:

If you are going to change the scoring system, then why not just focus on that? If you go on about alliances then you’re just changing the system for the sake of it.

Because changing only scoring will never enable a fight between 2 diverse alliances to be fun. If you leave alliances (server) alone, you better never match an alliance that fields 200 in prime (only 2 maps) against one that fields 400 in prime (all 4 maps).

But if put the alliances into overal teams, such that the total team-man-power is equal,
The small alliance can fight against a large one, as it fights it on two maps only, which it is able to fill (where as its coalition-alliances take over the other maps)

My point is basically this. The server system isn’t broken (aside from having no PvE place to call home anymore), all we are doing is talking about changing something for the sake of it. There is still population that stays on lower pop servers, by choice, so why remove that?

The OP posted the imbalance forces repetitive “stale” match-ups, when from my PoV it’s not the repeating of match-ups that makes it stale (red is dead, and mostly anonymous), it’s the mechanics and scoring. The meta doesn’t change all that much either. It’s 2 years now with mostly minor changes, it’s going to feel stale, it’s only more glaring in lower populated match-ups. Folks from BG came in here and posted how they don’t mind fighting the same worlds over and over, that’s because the way the game mode is designed, doesn’t take into account smaller match-ups. But, there are ways they could “fix” it that would ultimately make the mode more fun for everyone while taking the focus away from only having more numbers on the field.

While i can’t speak for all players on NSP, they do seem overall happy with the server system in WvW and very often have really good fights, but the rest is really just flat out broken. The suggestions we need to address is improving the system, so it doesn’t feel stale, not forcing communities to play together for the sake of a more populated match-up. If i had issues that stemmed from being on a lower pop server, i’d move to a higher pop one.

It may not even be in ANets wheel-house to consider making such drastic sweeping changes like the ones i’ve suggested, and it’s likely quicker and easier to just talk merges at the expense of player frustration. The reality is though, as long as they keep the status qou, WvW will continue to lose players and they most definitely will if they if they further damage already established communities.

munkiman.3068:

My point is basically this. The server system isn’t broken (aside from having no PvE place to call home anymore), all we are doing is talking about changing something for the sake of it.

The system is not broken? How do you want to call a mean-balance of 3:1 and a actual balance of 13:1 between 2 server that are just 2 ranks apart? I can only call that broken. (see picture below)

munkiman.3068:

There is still population that stays on lower pop servers, by choice, so why remove that?

No one removes them. No one proposed to remove them. John asked what do we think if current servers would be named alliances from now on. And several alliances would be put together to play a match on the same side.

In my posts I tried to imagine solutions where they could play a better role, than they play in the current system when matched against a server 2 ranks higher. Currently they are only a gnat facing an elephant! How can they be turned in David facing Goliath (or a mice facing an elephant)?

Dayra.7405:

munkiman.3068:

My point is basically this. The server system isn’t broken (aside from having no PvE place to call home anymore), all we are doing is talking about changing something for the sake of it.

The system is not broken? How do you want to call a mean-balance of 3:1 and a actual balance of 13:1 between 2 server that are just 2 ranks apart? I can only call that broken. (see picture below)

munkiman.3068:

There is still population that stays on lower pop servers, by choice, so why remove that?

No one removes them. No one proposed to remove them. John asked what do we think if current servers would be named alliances from now on. And several alliances would be put together to play a match on the same side.

In my posts I tried to imagine solutions where they could play a better role, than they play in the current system when matched against a server 2 ranks higher. Currently they are only a gnat facing an elephant! How can they be turned in David facing Goliath (or a mice facing an elephant)?

I said the server (world) system isn’t broken. I clearly state that the scoring mechanics however are. You’re example also shows that very glaringly, which has a lot to do with matchmaking being broken to the extent that the scoring system simple won’t ever support it in it’s current form. Population isn’t the root of the problem, the scoring, the fact that peak times are scattered for players (coverage), the mechanics that cater to offense over defense, are all the issues we have with a scoring system that doesn’t scale well and doesn’t factor in anything about winning fights or population discrepancies, and coverage gaps. Add on top of that very little movement in the meta, and we get a stale and often times more frustrating than fun WvW. Until they tackle those things no amount of server merges or alliances is going to fix it, unless they force movement and lock players in, which would be an extremely temporary fix, since i’d bet half the population would just quit.

Sir Arthur.8905:

Keeping the pop. cap high for the few servers in T1 is no better than lowering it for many other servers outside of T1. Half of the mechanics in WvW aren’t even used because it is blobs and flipping paper. If the unfairness is somehow fine because it is “war” then it should obey conditions of an actual war.

In actual war, it takes a MASSIVE amount of supply to maintain a large army, from rations, to ordinance, down to the very boots your troops wear through. There is an actual population cap when it comes down to it in real life, and when you exceed that cap, your troops starve, their equipment breaks, their ammo runs out.

There absolutely has to be some sort of diminishing return on having a massive number. If not a cap, like logic dictates, there should be some sort of debuff or equipment limitation increasing over time. If this is just a GAME, then balance the teams with a cap. If this is “WAR” then a massive MARCHING army should be weakened by hunger and barefoot from crossing the rough terrain.

“War” is not fair, but there are still natural laws that govern it. Honestly, I have no idea how to implement something other than a population cap, but if SUPPLY played a role in maintaining troop numbers, at least lower population servers could limit the amount of enemies to something reasonable.

Maybe If Supply had a base generated amount, and respawns consumed supply, a better army could actually whittle down the number of a larger, less skilled army. Supply camps would play a more important role, and would actually be defended, spreading people out more. Eotm supply drop would be more important as well.

As it is now, nobody cares about WvW outside of T1, blobs make the game unplayable for many, and the massive overpopulation makes lower pops not even care about trying. Even if the imbalance could be solved without a cap, I would STILL be in favor of it because more servers blobbing is just as lame.

Yeah I am pretty sick of people making that comparison. I’ve been to war, this isn’t war, it’s a kittening GAME
Now it can either be a competitive game or a sandbox, this half kitten mix of both is just stupid. Rewarding the “winners” with more rewards when the only thing required to win is paying for a transfer is what makes this broken and is what keeps throwing the population further out of balance.

I ll give you a tip about WvW balance.

Matching the “T1 second place” with T2 servers after they already lost by FAR vs the “T1 third place.” is NOT the way to a balanced match up.

munkiman.3068:

I still wonder why they thought that wasn’t a good defense mechanic. I think a lot of people even in the lower tiers felt like that was a good thing. Maybe now that they are playing mano e mano it might make a difference? It feels like they take all the good bits out.

No, me and most of the people I talk to (on my server and in my tier) are pretty happy that bannering the lord is gone. Sure, we used it when it was there, but by and large we’re happy that the big pitched battles have been moved out of the lord’s room and over to the walls.

Sir Arthur.8905:

As it is now, nobody cares about WvW outside of T1, blobs make the game unplayable for many, and the massive overpopulation makes lower pops not even care about trying. Even if the imbalance could be solved without a cap, I would STILL be in favor of it because more servers blobbing is just as lame.

Speak for yourself, please. We have servers full of people, on all tiers, that care about WvW very much. This isn’t a T1 thread, either.

Despite your ignorance, I’m still in favour (as I’ve said in previous posts) of a lowered map cap and the locking of upward transfers to level out the average population.

The alliance model is an interesting one, and I like the general idea. ANet, would you consider trying some of these ideas between tournaments? Maybe do an alliance type setup for a couple of months and interpret the data, and then play with other things (mechanics, populations, buffs, debuffs, et cetera) and see how people respond? Having some non-speculative data can only help when trying to ultimately decide what to do, and it will also give the players a chance to see what works and what doesn’t. You have a huge population of playtesters here that are eager to try something, anything.

Put us to use.

Well, I know this subject is a bit taboo on the forums, but 1 fix for the WvW population imbalances would be to simply introduce something people have been asking since AT LEAST mid-Beta: GvG. REAL GvG, with leaderboards, some type of scoring (not based on “Conquest” mechanics, please), and team sizes that are more realistic than 5-man parties, or 8-man, or whatever the sPvP max size was for a while.

This would do a lot of things for people whining about WvW imbalance. GvG arenas would have to pit evenly matched teams in terms of numbers (10v10, 15v15, 25v25, etc), and if it were its own game mode, who you fight wouldn’t have to be based on the Tier your in; since Jim Hunter believes that

With relatively equal numbers ET would absolutely destroy BG.

We could finally TEST that theory in GvG~! Also, a real, competitive GvG mode, with winners, losers, and an Official ranking system, would pull a LOT of guilds out of the Top Tiers of WvW, and decrease the size of the zergs there probably from Day 1. It would also make it much, MUCH easier to spread sizable WvW guilds around throughout the servers with far less tears, since hardcore Fighter Guilds would be able to get their fights in GvG no matter where they; you can speculate all you want about the “quality” of the fights/guilds/zergs in Tier 1, but the majority of the organized guilds who moved to Tier 1 moved there for FIGHTS, not wins. This would allow these guilds to get good fights against similarly-ranked guilds anytime, no matter what server they were on, and “stacking” servers at this point would be something only considered by true “bandwagonners”, who generally add much more to a server’s que-times than they add to their PPT score, anyway.

This would also satiate a lot of people’s need for “diversity” in fights, since you could challenge other guilds to official (and hopefully, even “practice”) GvG matches, without the stifling limitation of having to “meet in Obsidian Sanctum”, which limits you to ONLY challenging guilds in your current matchup, and then hoping that no one else is there GvGing already, and beyond that, hoping that no one trolls the match (1 troll player can ruin a GvG solo) that the other guild runs the agreed upon numbers, etc. Obsidian Sanctum has been a compromise that no one is happy with so far.

But I honestly think this would solve a lot of the problems with WvW Imbalance, and provide a safe-haven for those who want a more even-numbered matchup (and one that doesn’t last a whole week, encompassing several different timezones, etc).

The downside would be that much of the competitive atmosphere of WvW would be eroded by this over time, and it’s likely that WvW would eventually become the more casual, PvE player-friendly PvP zone that Anet originally described many times before the game’s release. This seems to be what a lot of people want anyway, however, and an actual GvG zone would give highly competitive guilds and groups an arena within the game to test themselves against others with the same numbers! If this were in the game, a lot of these “Alliance” ideas would be just fine, as people would be a lot less worried about being able to control the PPT score without having to worry about how good or bad the other 2-8 servers they got paired with are doing. You could blend bunches of servers together EotM-style (as many have advocated here), evening out the distribution of players in WvW, with far less tears if there were an official, competitive GvG mode to the game.

Now at this point, someone will probably say “what about people who don’t want to join a Guild?” Those people have a tough time in any game of this type. They can still go out an solo WvW, and will probably have an easier time of it at that, but they’ve CHOSEN a hard road, no one forced them to stay guildless for their entire tenure in a game called “GUILD Wars”. So this is kind of like asking “How do you balance Counter Strike for players who don’t like guns?” There’s really no reason, imo, to even try to balance things around players who are actively trying to avoid the something that is, essentially, the entire basis of the game.

TLDR: adding an official (good) GvG mode would make it easier to spread out guilds across servers/alliances, and would likely reduce the number guilds Tagging up to lead massive forces, with guilds playing WvW just for fun a lot more.

Rimmy.9217:

Sir Arthur.8905:

As it is now, nobody cares about WvW outside of T1, blobs make the game unplayable for many, and the massive overpopulation makes lower pops not even care about trying. Even if the imbalance could be solved without a cap, I would STILL be in favor of it because more servers blobbing is just as lame.

Speak for yourself, please. We have servers full of people, on all tiers, that care about WvW very much. This isn’t a T1 thread, either.

Sorry Rimmy but T1 is fine with their matchups, nevermind the fact they went 16 weeks in a row without seeing another server before the tournament. It’s not stale because they payed good money for their winning positions. Clearly everything is great, if it wasn’t the 1st page of WvW discussion might be littered with threads like this..
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/So-Swiss-style-tournament/first#post4449375
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/This-weeks-match-ups-are-a-joke/page/2#post4446735
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/You-have-got-to-be-kidding-me/first#post4449314
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Matchup-Feedback-merged/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/WvW-matchmaking-needs-work
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/How-did-DAOC-deal-with-population-coverage/first#post4442870
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/why-won-t-Maguma-drop-rank-faster

The more I think about Alliances, the more I can’t really see it addressing the core issues, and, even more concerning, the problems it will create are probably insurmountable.

As far as I can tell the Alliance system seems to be based around evening out numbers, so a heavily populated Server could (warning, all numbers have been plucked from thin air) find itself facing one side consisting of two lower population servers and another side of four or five very low population servers. That could work during primetime, no problem, but what about at off-peak hours? The high population server will almost certainly have good off-peak coverage, the medium population servers might, between them, or just on the one server, have one half-decent off-peak coverage, and the low population servers probably don’t have any off-peak coverage at all. In other words, once off-peak hours hit all the problems that should have been solved are back: stale gaming, same old maps, one server dominating everything, very few players from the non-dominating servers on the maps to provide any kind of competition. If you are a player who wants to see the serious WvW issues sorted out, and you come along after the update and you see that outside of primetime, nothing’s changed, are your feelings going to be, “Ah well, that’s a shame, I’ll carry on playing for another 2 years,” or are they going to be, “I see the deckchairs have been re-arranged, but there’s still icy water lapping around my feet, so I’m heading for the lifeboats.”?

And then there’s the small matter of the non-English speaking servers. How would forcing servers into Alliances where individual players can find it difficult or impossible to talk to or communicate with a server based around a different language actually work? Is the idea that language specific servers should be scrapped (“sorry, I’ve no doubt Spanish is a wonderful language, but everyone must speak English”), or is it the plan that players who don’t have a second language, or do have a second language but don’t have the particular language needed for this month, are going to be relegated to second-class players?

It’s been said before in this thread in a much better manner than I’m about to, but I think the biggest issue with wvw imbalance is coverage. Having more people from a non-NA time zones shouldn’t be what dictates a win. There’s nothing skillful about that.

The PPT contribution shouldn’t be 24/7, but rather windows of opportunity. Objectives should still be able to be captured outside of the window. This still leaves open a strategy of coverage teams taking things for a big PPT boost when the window begins.

It really sucks to go to sacrifice sleep, go to bed at 2am with all the servers within a few hundred points to wake up to a deficit of a few thousand points that turns into 10s of thousands as the week goes on.

GvG. Support it. See your player base come back from the dead. Incorporate Mega Servers in a GvG sense. Allow guilds from other Tiers to fight your Tier 15v15 20v20(NOT SPVP).

DO away with Season Tournaments everyone knows who will win before they even happen. Pointless.

The population imbalance is coming from WvW becoming very stale.

STOP with this living story crap and focus on things that will keep your player base playing consistently.

EoTM was a terrible idea. You guys put so much effort in that map. It’s literally insanity because it serves very little purpose. Overflow map? what queues? More like Karma Train map.

Obsidian Sanctum was a band aid to pad a niche community of WvW outlaws that broke the PPT meta. Now it’s time to lift the band aid and support what the community is dying for.

Guild Wars 1 was so successful because of the varying types of PvP. GvG, Heroes Ascent, Team PvP, Random Arenas, Alliance Battles. The variety created balance and not over population. There weren’t even servers just instances in that game yet the vast amount of PvPers where spread and had the ability to do different things without creating their own game type that ArenaNet didn’t support.

Now everyone is suffering. The lower tiers sub Tier gets it the worse because when there is attrition it effects the lesser populations greater than Tier 1. Everyone now wants to move to Tier 1 where the fights are happening and the GvG scene is still trying to kick off. BG, TC and JQ are perma full with Tier 2 collapsing this will only get worse. Increase server capacity will help stabilize Tier 1 while further draining the life of the lower Tiers because it’s like the great depression. These lower Tier servers still have the will to compete in a different meta other than PPT which is decided by the server with the most Coverage and Overtime. Because of this, it’s pointless to even have a tournament. Before and after every Season you will notice a huge shift in player base which causes guilds to implode, servers to die, and the attrition rate greatly increases.

BTW, ArenaNet I’m server leader of Blackgate. I deal with the community greatly on all Tier 1 servers and even Tier 2 servers. Before Season 3, Tier 2 collapsed slightly and is still collapsing because the GvG scene imploded. Now, all the Tier 2 guilds are starting to look for a new home in Tier 1 because their guilds are dying the fights are becoming stale and YOU ARE NOT SUPPORTING WHAT THE COMMUNITY WANTS again this is yet another band aid invoked by the community itself. This will never be sustainable till ArenaNet helps us.

The game needs variety even SPvP is the same game mode with a new gimmick….

^this guy gets it
……………………………..

^ also agreed! It’s too stale at the moment to enjoy. I came back for all of about 2 days before I got bored again.

I would like a proper response from ArenaNet. I feel like I will not get one.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone official from Anet posting on the forums on Saturday or Sunday (which I really do understand), so you’ll have to wait until at least Monday, Mal.

That’s fine I figured as much.

Apparently, there aren’t any ecologists that play/program in this game.

The slow polarization of WvW servers is inevitable because the system doesn’t mimic reality and is being played by real people. There is NO incentive to move to lower populated areas because right now More Population = More Kills = More Rewards. Its not rocket science…….its ecology.

Scale Magic Find, Drop Rates and Experience based on simulating a limited resource (Bags) rather than an infinite one (because its computer game) and the problem solves itself.

The result would be that high population servers have a severely impaired Magic Find, Drop rate, and Experience bonus in WvW. WHY?….Because in reality bags don’t drop out of thin air, they are a limited resource. So if there’s only a thousand bags to be had, I would much rather be after them with only 50 ppl rather than 2000. Making these stat bonuses inversely proportional to population mimics the reality that when you have lots and lots of people good stuff is harder to find. Exp would scale also because fighting on lower populations is simply more challenging. If it wasn’t people wouldn’t be leaving. If yer always the underdog why shouldn’t their efforts be considered more difficult? Isnt experience related to the difficulty of the task…ect.

So….the solution is really simple. Limit rewards in a way that mimics the consequences of actual population size.

The details of this idea were already submitted via Adopt-A-Dev. Would welcome some criticism.

PabbyGaul.9682:

Apparently, there aren’t any ecologists that play/program in this game.

This is awesome. I too suspect it has something to do with rewards, but I was looking at it wrong; blaming the higher EOTM rewards with taking players away from WvW.

Otokomae.9356:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone official from Anet posting on the forums on Saturday or Sunday (which I really do understand), so you’ll have to wait until at least Monday, Mal.

Josh posted awhile ago. I think some of the dev team troll the forums on the weekends. I’d love to see this get the attentions it’s deserved for well over a year now.

PabbyGaul.9682:

Apparently, there aren’t any ecologists that play/program in this game.

The slow polarization of WvW servers is inevitable because the system doesn’t mimic reality and is being played by real people. There is NO incentive to move to lower populated areas because right now More Population = More Kills = More Rewards. Its not rocket science…….its ecology.

Scale Magic Find, Drop Rates and Experience based on simulating a limited resource (Bags) rather than an infinite one (because its computer game) and the problem solves itself.

The result would be that high population servers have a severely impaired Magic Find, Drop rate, and Experience bonus in WvW. WHY?….Because in reality bags don’t drop out of thin air, they are a limited resource. So if there’s only a thousand bags to be had, I would much rather be after them with only 50 ppl rather than 2000. Making these stat bonuses inversely proportional to population mimics the reality that when you have lots and lots of people good stuff is harder to find. Exp would scale also because fighting on lower populations is simply more challenging. If it wasn’t people wouldn’t be leaving. If yer always the underdog why shouldn’t their efforts be considered more difficult? Isnt experience related to the difficulty of the task…ect.

So….the solution is really simple. Limit rewards in a way that mimics the consequences of actual population size.

The details of this idea were already submitted via Adopt-A-Dev. Would welcome some criticism.

Limiting rewards is completely counter-intuitive to the goal of this game type, but it’s typically ANets answer to things. We would actually want to bring more players to the mode and in turn not isolate higher pop servers “as the root problem”. More than anything, the migration has a lot to do with the modes design, there is simply more action and balance when maps are populated, not to mention people typically enjoy winning. It doesn’t have to be that way. I’m vehemently opposed to “punishment” as a tool to force people to move. You limit things you introduce, not things that are already there. It highly uninspired to simply nerf one system, while neglecting others.

While there is a time when something needs to be lowered (exploits, high yield farming spots, etc.), rewards in WvW are definitely not one of them. While i agree, EotM is a bit to out of balance vs WvW, it’s really a design flaw, more than a need to purge EotM of rewards (not that you’re particular post is speaking to EotM). Players want rewarding content (rewarding can mean more than just loot, you know). The reward in top tier has far more to do with the design of the game mode, then the mostly junk that drops from loot bags.

I’d actually argue that top tier servers aren’t getting near as much champ bags as mid tier, since there’s more contest when they roll to an objective, slowing the income, I certainly don’t know this for a fact, however.

I personally would like to stop thinking terms of imposing limits on an already tightly monitored, fairly unrewarding (besides winning good fights) system. Caps that cause longer queues on highly pop servers, things that focus on high pop servers rewards, in order to “force” balance are simply crappy solutions, they are “one click fixes”. I think most of us are growing tired of those.

PabbyGaul.9682:

Apparently, there aren’t any ecologists that play/program in this game.

The slow polarization of WvW servers is inevitable because the system doesn’t mimic reality and is being played by real people. There is NO incentive to move to lower populated areas because right now More Population = More Kills = More Rewards. Its not rocket science…….its ecology.

Scale Magic Find, Drop Rates and Experience based on simulating a limited resource (Bags) rather than an infinite one (because its computer game) and the problem solves itself.

The result would be that high population servers have a severely impaired Magic Find, Drop rate, and Experience bonus in WvW. WHY?….Because in reality bags don’t drop out of thin air, they are a limited resource. So if there’s only a thousand bags to be had, I would much rather be after them with only 50 ppl rather than 2000. Making these stat bonuses inversely proportional to population mimics the reality that when you have lots and lots of people good stuff is harder to find. Exp would scale also because fighting on lower populations is simply more challenging. If it wasn’t people wouldn’t be leaving. If yer always the underdog why shouldn’t their efforts be considered more difficult? Isnt experience related to the difficulty of the task…ect.

So….the solution is really simple. Limit rewards in a way that mimics the consequences of actual population size.

The details of this idea were already submitted via Adopt-A-Dev. Would welcome some criticism.

Well, this was a nice try, but most of your argument is inaccurate. First of all, bags don’t drop out of thin air in WvW, and the number of bags in WvW is limited… by the number of players ON THE OTHER SERVER. So if, say, BG went down to T8 for a week and fought Eredon Terrace and Anvil Rock, most of Blackgate’s players would already be getting FAR fewer bags than they’re used to, even without your Magic Find scaling, while the players from ET and AR would likely get more bags that week (at least, the bags would there, running around on the maps ready to be killed.)

Second, this isn’t really a solution to anything. I’m on Blackgate, which according to these forums is the stackiest of stacked servers in any game anywhere ever, and I’ve never known or even heard of anyone transferring here for the easy XP! lol
The players who “stacked” the top servers level outside of WvW because it’s faster, and no one really appreciates having the rally-bait tag along during competition. And it’s pretty well-known that WvW is probably the WORST place in the game to farm for bags or gold, especially when you consider that much of WvW is already a gold sink. If you look at this thread, you’ll see many people are even advocating that we RAISE Magic Find on EVERYONE in WvW, just to get more people out there! I don’t agree with that, but you could make all of WvW a “No-Drops Zone”, with absolutely no loot at all, and it wouldn’t have much affect on the Population Imbalance that this thread is here to discuss, because server populations are not based on the “Awesome Loot” found in WvW, the population difference in WvW at the moment are based on people moving around looking for a competitive environment that they enjoy (large-scale, small-scale, easy-wins, underdogs, etc) and/or people not moving for the sake of server-loyalty or simply wanting to stay put and play with their friends. People go to EotM for Loot, if they’re really trying to avoid PvE (they run dungeons if they need Loot in a hurry).

So feel free to scale Magic Find, Experience, Karma, whatever, or even remove rewards in WvW altogether, it won’t have any real effect on Population Imbalance.

Otokomae.9356:

PabbyGaul.9682:

Apparently, there aren’t any ecologists that play/program in this game.

The slow polarization of WvW servers is inevitable because the system doesn’t mimic reality and is being played by real people. There is NO incentive to move to lower populated areas because right now More Population = More Kills = More Rewards. Its not rocket science…….its ecology.

Scale Magic Find, Drop Rates and Experience based on simulating a limited resource (Bags) rather than an infinite one (because its computer game) and the problem solves itself.

The result would be that high population servers have a severely impaired Magic Find, Drop rate, and Experience bonus in WvW. WHY?….Because in reality bags don’t drop out of thin air, they are a limited resource. So if there’s only a thousand bags to be had, I would much rather be after them with only 50 ppl rather than 2000. Making these stat bonuses inversely proportional to population mimics the reality that when you have lots and lots of people good stuff is harder to find. Exp would scale also because fighting on lower populations is simply more challenging. If it wasn’t people wouldn’t be leaving. If yer always the underdog why shouldn’t their efforts be considered more difficult? Isnt experience related to the difficulty of the task…ect.

So….the solution is really simple. Limit rewards in a way that mimics the consequences of actual population size.

The details of this idea were already submitted via Adopt-A-Dev. Would welcome some criticism.

Well, this was a nice try, but most of your argument is inaccurate. First of all, bags don’t drop out of thin air in WvW, and the number of bags in WvW is limited… by the number of players ON THE OTHER SERVER. So if, say, BG went down to T8 for a week and fought Eredon Terrace and Anvil Rock, most of Blackgate’s players would already be getting FAR fewer bags than they’re used to, even without your Magic Find scaling, while the players from ET and AR would likely get more bags that week (at least, the bags would there, running around on the maps ready to be killed.)

Second, this isn’t really a solution to anything. I’m on Blackgate, which according to these forums is the stackiest of stacked servers in any game anywhere ever, and I’ve never known or even heard of anyone transferring here for the easy XP! lol
The players who “stacked” the top servers level outside of WvW because it’s faster, and no one really appreciates having the rally-bait tag along during competition. And it’s pretty well-known that WvW is probably the WORST place in the game to farm for bags or gold, especially when you consider that much of WvW is already a gold sink. If you look at this thread, you’ll see many people are even advocating that we RAISE Magic Find on EVERYONE in WvW, just to get more people out there! I don’t agree with that, but you could make all of WvW a “No-Drops Zone”, with absolutely no loot at all, and it wouldn’t have much affect on the Population Imbalance that this thread is here to discuss, because server populations are not based on the “Awesome Loot” found in WvW, the population difference in WvW at the moment are based on people moving around looking for a competitive environment that they enjoy (large-scale, small-scale, easy-wins, underdogs, etc) and/or people not moving for the sake of server-loyalty or simply wanting to stay put and play with their friends. People go to EotM for Loot, if they’re really trying to avoid PvE (they run dungeons if they need Loot in a hurry).

So feel free to scale Magic Find, Experience, Karma, whatever, or even remove rewards in WvW altogether, it won’t have any real effect on Population Imbalance.

+1,000,000 to you sir. You said it, from a really well received perspective IMO.

I AM NOT reading all of this.. but as a wvwer (HATE pve).. i am so discouraged from wvw with this contant blobbing.

I brought up some suggestions to keep us going in wvw and not move away from wvw.

1. The server that is outnumbered should have some kind of buffing to help us along. Shorter and less supplies building sieges, walls and gates. Give us some advantage/help to keep wvw going.

2. Siege should be put on a skill bar (when entering wvw) SO WE DONT HAVE TO LEAVE OUR BAGS OPENED when we are blobbed on.

3. There are ways Anet can tally and see how many people enter wvw (yes its an inconvenience to Anet, but what the heck). rather have Anet inconvenienced than leave WvW.

All i know is that we are all discouraged when it comes to WvW lately. This is great if you are in a higher tier, but all the lower tier servers are getting wipped. Hate to start looking for another game to play BECAUSE I HATE PVE…..

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Guild Wars 1 was so successful because of the varying types of PvP. GvG, Heroes Ascent, Team PvP, Random Arenas, Alliance Battles. The variety created balance and not over population.

This plus it was just a much better game. The PvE was better too. I still can go in and play some PvE in GW1 and enjoy it. I can’t stand the PvE in GW2.

Back to your point and another posters – I don’t see how an official GvG is going to help with WvW population imbalance?

Johje Holan.4607:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Guild Wars 1 was so successful because of the varying types of PvP. GvG, Heroes Ascent, Team PvP, Random Arenas, Alliance Battles. The variety created balance and not over population.

This plus it was just a much better game. The PvE was better too. I still can go in and play some PvE in GW1 and enjoy it. I can’t stand the PvE in GW2.

Back to your point and another posters – I don’t see how an official GvG is going to help with WvW population imbalance?

The idea of a long deserved GvG system, actually would pull highly organized WvW guilds out of the system, for times when GvG is in play. It’s completely a wanted system, beyond the band-aid we have now. As a matter of fact, if ANet implemented a flat map (similar to what we have now) it’d be a far better GvG system than we have now.

It’s very hard to actually gauge the impact, but some thoughts about it is, a more focused Guild Experience, which in general would move the groups that focus on this type of battle system out of the WvW system, helping spread out the pop. NSP has one really sizable group that would absolutely love a GvG system. It’s a nitch group, but one that could actually be catered to by providing an arena (flat map) so they can extend the battle beyond WvW opponents.

Johje Holan.4607:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Guild Wars 1 was so successful because of the varying types of PvP. GvG, Heroes Ascent, Team PvP, Random Arenas, Alliance Battles. The variety created balance and not over population.

This plus it was just a much better game. The PvE was better too. I still can go in and play some PvE in GW1 and enjoy it. I can’t stand the PvE in GW2.

Back to your point and another posters – I don’t see how an official GvG is going to help with WvW population imbalance?

Well, I’m basically about to make bullet points from my previous “Wall of Text” post, since I doubt most people will read it, hopefully this will help:

1.) A lot of the stacking problems in this game are a DIRECT RESULT of GW2 having no official GvG game mode. This means that, not only is WvW people’s only option for “Unofficial GvG”, but people can only GvG with other guilds IN THE SAME TIER. This means that if you want to have a good GvG scene to fight in, you currently MUST stack just 1 Tier with as many GvG guilds as possible. This, in turn leads to massive numbers in WvW as well, since there is an enormous crossover between these game modes for most guilds.

2.) There is already a TON of resistance in this thread to any ideas of creating “EotM-style Battle Groups”, sometimes called “Alliances” in this thread, where several (or all) servers are lumped together in groups, hoping that across so many servers, the numbers will sort of “even out”, even in off-peak timezones. I believe the resistance to this kind of change would be FAR LESS if GvG were an official game mode, since that would give people an outlet for full-on competition, as lumping all the servers together would make WvW far less competitive for many people.

3.) As mentioned above, much of the massive stacking was caused by Guilds all congregating to a single tier in an effort to create a better GvG environment. If GvG were an official game mode which was INDEPENDENT of the Tier you are in or the server you play on, then it would be FAR EASIER to convince guilds to “de-stack”, and move around to less populated servers, and any changes made to WvW to promote spreading the population out would be received with far less crying from the current WvW community, since we would have another outlet for competing and even just hanging out with our friends from other guilds.

This is only part of my point, but I hope that gives you a few ideas of the benefits of adding GvG as a separate game mode, and how it could ease the transition from WvW’s current state to one in which the population is more evenly spread throughout the game.

Does anyone from EU want to weigh in on this? What do people over there think of GvG as a separate Game Mode, and how it might affect WvW?

Johje Holan.4607:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Guild Wars 1 was so successful because of the varying types of PvP. GvG, Heroes Ascent, Team PvP, Random Arenas, Alliance Battles. The variety created balance and not over population.

Back to your point and another posters – I don’t see how an official GvG is going to help with WvW population imbalance?

Well, I don’t know that it solves the issue by itself, but I think it’d help get more people involved in the WvW scene in general. Instead of trying to stuff everyone in one tier, GvG guilds could spread out. There is no guarantee they would do it or do it quickly, but it would be a way to invigorate WvW. I think without a doubt it’d bring some people back to the game, and it would keep some people who are still here but maybe bored, playing. Having more people to play, and it not being super important which tier they were one, would help balance things out a little bit because people would be more willing (and with T1’s constant full status, more inclined) to go to different servers.

Like I said at first, GvG wouldn’t solve everything by itself, but it’d be a big step towards keeping existing players/bringing back some old players, as well as making it a lot easier to be on servers other than the top few tiers and still play how you want to play.

Otokomae.9356:

Well, I’m basically about to make bullet points from my previous “Wall of Text” post, since I doubt most people will read it, hopefully this will help:

1.) A lot of the stacking problems in this game are a DIRECT RESULT of GW2 having no official GvG game mode. This means that, not only is WvW people’s only option for “Unofficial GvG”, but people can only GvG with other guilds IN THE SAME TIER. This means that if you want to have a good GvG scene to fight in, you currently MUST stack just 1 Tier with as many GvG guilds as possible. This, in turn leads to massive numbers in WvW as well, since there is an enormous crossover between these game modes for most guilds.

2.) There is already a TON of resistance in this thread to any ideas of creating “EotM-style Battle Groups”, sometimes called “Alliances” in this thread, where several (or all) servers are lumped together in groups, hoping that across so many servers, the numbers will sort of “even out”, even in off-peak timezones. I believe the resistance to this kind of change would be FAR LESS if GvG were an official game mode, since that would give people an outlet for full-on competition, as lumping all the servers together would make WvW far less competitive for many people.

3.) As mentioned above, much of the massive stacking was caused by Guilds all congregating to a single tier in an effort to create a better GvG environment. If GvG were an official game mode which was INDEPENDENT of the Tier you are in or the server you play on, then it would be FAR EASIER to convince guilds to “de-stack”, and move around to less populated servers, and any changes made to WvW to promote spreading the population out would be received with far less crying from the current WvW community, since we would have another outlet for competing and even just hanging out with our friends from other guilds.

This is only part of my point, but I hope that gives you a few ideas of the benefits of adding GvG as a separate game mode, and how it could ease the transition from WvW’s current state to one in which the population is more evenly spread throughout the game.

Does anyone from EU want to weigh in on this? What do people over there think of GvG as a separate Game Mode, and how it might affect WvW?

Can we move this to a GvG thread? But i’d be very curious on how GvG should look. Does it resemble GvG of GW? Sadly, i think we are putting to much on the plate of devs, which i personaly think are already over worked. meaning there are a lot of demands, in pvp, wvw and pve. the some point we have to decide i GvG is within the focus and hkps the wvw balance? i would venture a guess how ppl are confused. least in this thread..

You are correct in that the number of bags is only limited by how many people you can kill…that’s why I used the expression More Players = More Kills = More Bags. And yes the bags come out of thin air, electrons I suppose. Where exactly was your character storing all the bags he has dropped over his time in WvW? Quite the warehouse that would have to be and so the problem is that the source of the loot is infinite. The bottleneck is simply population size, which doesn’t require a genius to figure out that if I make the bottleneck to the infinite source of loot wider, I will get more bags. So the fact that an infinite source exists and is only limited by population it drives people to higher population servers, not just BG. Its simply. More Players (not just on Blackgate) = More Kills(Not just on Blackgate) = More Bags(Not just on blackgate). I understand that IF BG went against ET there wouldn’t be enough bags for BG but that’s because the bottleneck would still be tiny (source would still be infinite), servers are matched by bottleneck naturally because scoring is largely a function of population.

It would be silly to transfer to BG for the purpose of gaining Xp, since like every other server (not just blackgate) EoTm is far easier to level in. The increase in Wxp could be an incentive for some but really it just represents a natural consequence of being on a lower population server. WvW is simply more difficult down there. Not sure that’s up for debate. Everyone knows that WvW is not a great place for making money. Most commanders barely support their commanding habit and profit. I have no doubt that many people would still play WvW even if ther was No Drop or Experience. The point is not to EMPTY the top servers, that would be silly. Its to provide incentive to adjust population. Because the Majority of people want to get Rewards WHILE they Have fun. If it was just loot/rewards we would all be playing PvE, doing champ trains. So after the dust settles the kind of players I would imagine be in the higher tier servers would be people that are > 2000 wvw rank, have mostly ascended gear on all their toons, have their legendaries, and could care less about getting bags. Those are the kinds of people I would think would end up at the top, where people that want stuff while they have fun will be in the middle, and people that want lotsa stuff and be rewarded for the challenges will be in the bottom tiers. This diversifies the population and should spread out the population unless people really hate bags, exotics, ascended drops, ect as much as you think they do. In which case at least the lower tier servers will have more reason to enjoy WvW.

“the population difference in WvW at the moment are based on people moving around looking for a competitive environment that they enjoy (large-scale, small-scale, easy-wins, underdogs, etc) and/or people not moving for the sake of server-loyalty or simply wanting to stay put and play with their friends.”

True people move for those reasons. So, the current situation (5 full Servers out of 24) suggests that the majority of people flooding the upper tiers are looking for what? Underdog situations and small scale fights?

Imposing some reality to let people make their own decisions is far better than forcing people to join with other larger servers in EoTM like matchups or directly scaling map caps in lower population servers. Rather than continue to add unjustified artificiality, why not take a page out of nature’s book. After-all its been doing it quite well for a very long time.

There are a number of other changes, about 30 we suggested and submitted, many of which are related that deal with coverage and tournaments ect.

Otokomae.9356:

TLDR: adding an official (good) GvG mode would make it easier to spread out guilds across servers/alliances, and would likely reduce the number guilds Tagging up to lead massive forces, with guilds playing WvW just for fun a lot more.

The problem you have by adding a GvG mode as a hypothetical wvw population fix is that the more stacked a server is like BG/JQ/TC the less of an impact it would have on them as it would on say a less stacked server. Its a numbers game and the only real fix with the least amount of impact is still IMO battle groups.

With caps you create ques where big servers with mega guilds that will fill wvw instantaneously forcing others to either stop wvw or transfer.

With technical changes to the scoring system or buffing or nerfing objectives you create a punitive system in essence you’ve taken the “unfair advantage” and flipped it you know “two wrongs don’t make a right”.

Closing servers and migrating the players to a predetermined server is always painful something no company wants to do but sometimes attrition is the best cure.

Which leaves grouping servers together as alliances where they share ques with others in there alliance so hypothetically you would take the top 6 servers and devide the remaining 18 based on internal metrics so maybe the top 3 servers only take the 2 of the lowest tier servers and the other 3 take the higher tiered.

In this scenario I can see increased wvw participation and a chance to grow communities the others not so much.

munkiman.3068:

Limiting rewards is completely counter-intuitive to the goal of this game type, but it’s typically ANets answer to things. We would actually want to bring more players to the mode and in turn not isolate higher pop servers “as the root problem”. More than anything, the migration has a lot to do with the modes design, there is simply more action and balance when maps are populated, not to mention people typically enjoy winning. It doesn’t have to be that way. I’m vehemently opposed to “punishment” as a tool to force people to move. You limit things you introduce, not things that are already there. It highly uninspired to simply nerf one system, while neglecting others.

While there is a time when something needs to be lowered (exploits, high yield farming spots, etc.), rewards in WvW are definitely not one of them. While i agree, EotM is a bit to out of balance vs WvW, it’s really a design flaw, more than a need to purge EotM of rewards (not that you’re particular post is speaking to EotM). Players want rewarding content (rewarding can mean more than just loot, you know). The reward in top tier has far more to do with the design of the game mode, then the mostly junk that drops from loot bags.

I’d actually argue that top tier servers aren’t getting near as much champ bags as mid tier, since there’s more contest when they roll to an objective, slowing the income, I certainly don’t know this for a fact, however.

I personally would like to stop thinking terms of imposing limits on an already tightly monitored, fairly unrewarding (besides winning good fights) system. Caps that cause longer queues on highly pop servers, things that focus on high pop servers rewards, in order to “force” balance are simply crappy solutions, they are “one click fixes”. I think most of us are growing tired of those.

I don’t think high-population servers are the root of the problem. I think the imbalance is simply human nature, playing the game against the rules they are given. Its all artificial. If you want it function in verisimilitude yer gonna have to simulate it.

Well “punishment” is necessary in any balanced system. Pick any naturally balanced system and you will find that something pull in the opposite direction, generally something that directly counters that which is pulling in the other direction and is related to the consequences for doing so. Just how it is. rarely do things people want come without a price, there are natural consequence for practically everything worth having, doing ect. In essence we are really just taking the “bonus” from the higher tier servers and giving it to the lower tiers. So, it snot just a punishment, someone gets a Bonus! And the point would not be to force anyone, simply put the stuff in place and let it work itself out.

As many have mention, Overpopulation, Coverage, Rewards, Tournaments, all related. We submitted about 20-30 different changes. Its like 7 pages of stuff…If people are interested I could post I suppose.

Who had that idea…a “Megaserver” for GvG….Awesome Idea…Seriously awesome idea.

PabbyGaul.9682:

munkiman.3068:

Limiting rewards is completely counter-intuitive to the goal of this game type, but it’s typically ANets answer to things. We would actually want to bring more players to the mode and in turn not isolate higher pop servers “as the root problem”. More than anything, the migration has a lot to do with the modes design, there is simply more action and balance when maps are populated, not to mention people typically enjoy winning. It doesn’t have to be that way. I’m vehemently opposed to “punishment” as a tool to force people to move. You limit things you introduce, not things that are already there. It highly uninspired to simply nerf one system, while neglecting others.

While there is a time when something needs to be lowered (exploits, high yield farming spots, etc.), rewards in WvW are definitely not one of them. While i agree, EotM is a bit to out of balance vs WvW, it’s really a design flaw, more than a need to purge EotM of rewards (not that you’re particular post is speaking to EotM). Players want rewarding content (rewarding can mean more than just loot, you know). The reward in top tier has far more to do with the design of the game mode, then the mostly junk that drops from loot bags.

I’d actually argue that top tier servers aren’t getting near as much champ bags as mid tier, since there’s more contest when they roll to an objective, slowing the income, I certainly don’t know this for a fact, however.

I personally would like to stop thinking terms of imposing limits on an already tightly monitored, fairly unrewarding (besides winning good fights) system. Caps that cause longer queues on highly pop servers, things that focus on high pop servers rewards, in order to “force” balance are simply crappy solutions, they are “one click fixes”. I think most of us are growing tired of those.

I don’t think high-population servers are the root of the problem. I think the imbalance is simply human nature, playing the game against the rules they are given. Its all artificial. If you want it function in verisimilitude yer gonna have to simulate it.

Well “punishment” is necessary in any balanced system. Pick any naturally balanced system and you will find that something pull in the opposite direction, generally something that directly counters that which is pulling in the other direction and is related to the consequences for doing so. Just how it is. rarely do things people want come without a price, there are natural consequence for practically everything worth having, doing ect. In essence we are really just taking the “bonus” from the higher tier servers and giving it to the lower tiers. So, it snot just a punishment, someone gets a Bonus! And the point would not be to force anyone, simply put the stuff in place and let it work itself out.

As many have mention, Overpopulation, Coverage, Rewards, Tournaments, all related. We submitted about 20-30 different changes. Its like 7 pages of stuff…If people are interested I could post I suppose.

Very well said.

People keep saying that there is some kind of reward besides loot and experience for being on a high population server….I would challenge you to try an uncouple that from gold, money, karma, experience,…..ect. Good luck…..It cant seriously be the chest thumping for that Pug that zerged his way through tournament. I doubt his sense of server pride was inflated to such a degree it would dissuade him from the other rewarding aspects of the game…like loot.

To the people posting about increased rewards…before eotm wvw had already descended into nothing more than a karma train. The term karma train came from wvw where servers would agree to do nothing more than circle around the map avoiding each other, since the match was already decided.

Eotm actually saved wvw in that regard, by giving the k-trainers a dedicated area…so no, increased rewards wont do anything.

GvG has to do with Imbalance in Tier 1 and Tier 2 because of the implosion of the GvG scene after the community held T2 GvG tournament. Now, all the GvG guilds are looking for new homes on Tier 1 servers and their players. Hence the Tier 1 imbalance and the reasons why JQ, BG and TC are full status with 50+ GW2 players still trying to move over.

Supporting GvGs would stabilize communities not willing to take part in the coverage Wars. by giving rebirth to a new game meta that is currently struggling because of lack of support.

Asglarek.8976:

Otokomae.9356:

TLDR: adding an official (good) GvG mode would make it easier to spread out guilds across servers/alliances, and would likely reduce the number guilds Tagging up to lead massive forces, with guilds playing WvW just for fun a lot more.

The problem you have by adding a GvG mode as a hypothetical wvw population fix is that the more stacked a server is like BG/JQ/TC the less of an impact it would have on them as it would on say a less stacked server. Its a numbers game and the only real fix with the least amount of impact is still IMO battle groups.

With caps you create ques where big servers with mega guilds that will fill wvw instantaneously forcing others to either stop wvw or transfer.

With technical changes to the scoring system or buffing or nerfing objectives you create a punitive system in essence you’ve taken the “unfair advantage” and flipped it you know “two wrongs don’t make a right”.

Closing servers and migrating the players to a predetermined server is always painful something no company wants to do but sometimes attrition is the best cure.

Which leaves grouping servers together as alliances where they share ques with others in there alliance so hypothetically you would take the top 6 servers and devide the remaining 18 based on internal metrics so maybe the top 3 servers only take the 2 of the lowest tier servers and the other 3 take the higher tiered.

In this scenario I can see increased wvw participation and a chance to grow communities the others not so much.

If you’re going to quote someone, PLEASE don’t read only the “TLDR” at the end, read the whole post, and re-read it if you didn’t understand it the first time. Here is the bullet points version covering only a few of my points, since the admittedly “Wall of Text” version is probably overwhelming: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance/page/18#post4450064

One of those points was that, contrary to what you’ve said here, Tier 1 would be heavily affected by a decent GvG game mode, since so many of the guilds in T1 came here essentially for GvG purposes. They tried making Tier 2 into the “GvG Tier”, but that effort fell apart, so many of the GvG guilds are now in Tier 1, since there is a diverse group to fight here, and you can ONLY GvG with other guilds in the same matchup as you. It would also ease the transition into something like the “Battle Groups” you’re suggesting, since turning all of WvW into a casual, EtoM-style affair would likely cause many players to leave WvW and/or the game altogether, unless they had a more competitive alternative for guilds within GW2 already in place.

Is there any server pride? Should it influence changes to world vs world? No. Server’s need to be merged. If this means some people have to queue, so be it. This happens in other online games. The three colors we see in edge of the mists would work, surely.
Once again people avoid rounds when the matched against much higher ranked sides & it’s understandable.

There are many great suggestions in this thread, but I say the alliance idea and the server merges are probably the best ones. However, if it’s not going to be controlled by Arena net (e.g. locking transfers), people will still stack on a certain battlegroup/Alliance/whatever new servers are merged. Obviously increasing the cost of transfers is not working.
I’m not sure which idea will be going forward and which one will actually will be implemented in the game, but whatever is done, I think there should be a population cap.

Let’s say EB has a player cap of 50.

- No match should be started until there is a minimum of players like let’s say 20, and if more than 5 players join on one side, there should be a queue for that server until the other server also reaches 25 players.
The population cap. and the queue system should be dynamic so neither side will be extremly powerful and stomp the opponent due to number advantage.

I think this is a good suggestion but if it’s not, please let me know.