Solution to fix the population imbalance

Solution to fix the population imbalance

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Posted by: Ansau.7326

Ansau.7326

Please, stop bringing EoTM ideas to fix WvW. Most WvWers hate EoTM. Its a freaking broken design:
- Short matchups means there are no incentives in defending or upgrading, and people cannot play all the matchups, so it becomes less appealing.
- One enormous map that makes the game boring. More time spended walking and serching fights than actually fighting.
- It’s based on some sort of alliances. In the end, it becomes a perma karma train to see who brings more numbers. In any alliance game mode that any game has had, one side has always prevailed, got most of the population and ended wining all matchups. GW2 will not be an exception.
- Too much pve stuff that makes people playing more for killing NPC’s than players.

These are the things to avoid if we want a healthy WvW that suits the majority.

Ansau – Sylvari Mesmer – Exiled Warriors [wE] – Gandara

i7 5775c @ 4.1GHz – 12GB RAM @ 2400MHz – RX 480 @ 1390/2140MHz

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Posted by: munkiman.3068

munkiman.3068

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

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

IMO changing capping siege doesn’t solve imbalance.

[TAO] Founder/Owner and Administrator for the NSP Server Website

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Posted by: Jim Hunter.6821

Jim Hunter.6821

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

Doesn’t force them to do anything. If the wait time to get in to WvW is too long for their liking they have the choice of moving to a server where there isn’t a queue.

This comes with the added benefit of showing off their skill against opponents on equal footing.

Also known as Puck when my account isn’t suspended
LGN

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Posted by: munkiman.3068

munkiman.3068

Please, stop bringing EoTM ideas to fix WvW. Most WvWers hate EoTM. Its a freaking broken design:
- Short matchups means there are no incentives in defending or upgrading, and people cannot play all the matchups, so it becomes less appealing.
- One enormous map that makes the game boring. More time spended walking and serching fights than actually fighting.
- It’s based on some sort of alliances. In the end, it becomes a perma karma train to see who brings more numbers. In any alliance game mode that any game has had, one side has always prevailed, got most of the population and ended wining all matchups. GW2 will not be an exception.
- Too much pve stuff that makes people playing more for killing NPC’s than players.

These are the things to avoid if we want a healthy WvW that suits the majority.

Fine incorp it. mine as well at this point since it’s such a labor on PvD (siege drops) or PPT apparently. You all want new maps? here have EotM as a new map and include dynamics that foster “well thought out behavior”. Seriously guy post 500, get creative. read, talk, done?

[TAO] Founder/Owner and Administrator for the NSP Server Website

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Posted by: scerevisiae.1972

scerevisiae.1972

Personally I think the problem lies in the extent to which GW2 encourages server stacking through design flaws.

  • AOE cap of 5 favours larger groups
  • downed state/rally greatly favours larger groups
  • tournament strongly encourage server stacking (cough blackgate)
  • objectives too easy & too rewarding, encourages stacking

Before going down the more drastic routes of merging or capping, I’d strongly urge Anet to try removing or diluting the incentives you created for people to stack/blob in the first place.

Other things that could be considered:

  • weaker/less numerous side gets free/instant initial upgrade, or auto-spawned ACs, extra cannons etc.
  • guards scaled up across the board (way too easy) and extra upscaling guards on the weaker side(s).
downed state is bad for PVP

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Posted by: Jerus.4350

Jerus.4350

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

Doesn’t force them to do anything. If the wait time to get in to WvW is too long for their liking they have the choice of moving to a server where there isn’t a queue.

This comes with the added benefit of showing off their skill against opponents on equal footing.

Spend some gems and leave your friends behind, no big deal…

Yeah… no. What you’re suggesting is the destruction of communities in a passive aggressive manner.

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Posted by: munkiman.3068

munkiman.3068

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

Doesn’t force them to do anything. If the wait time to get in to WvW is too long for their liking they have the choice of moving to a server where there isn’t a queue.

This comes with the added benefit of showing off their skill against opponents on equal footing.

Spend some gems and leave your friends behind, no big deal…

Yeah… no. What you’re suggesting is the destruction of communities in a passive aggressive manner.

Of course thats the best answer you have. #sofaroutoftouchitssad Please get with the convo, some folks are trying to enhance YOUR WvW experience.

[TAO] Founder/Owner and Administrator for the NSP Server Website

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Posted by: nirvana.8245

nirvana.8245

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

You probably like where the convo is going, because you are being rude and arrogant and completely ignoring other peoples concerns and input whilst trying to take over complete control of the discussion.

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Posted by: rgthree.7510

rgthree.7510

I apologize if this has already been said in this forums(I didn’t read all responses) but from my reading I see common responses to common solutions that we have come up with.
1. Server Merging: I always see people saying they enjoy their community and would not want to leave and that merging servers would make them mad. Also it seems to be a problem on who gets merged with whom.
2. Population Cap: I don’t like this idea because it seems that making ques longer by allowing less people to play is a bad idea. In a perfect world where everyone spread evenly across servers I guess this can work but I don’t see this one working.

So my solution is to make a reduced number of completely new servers. A-net can determine the number of servers that would be appropriate with the wvw population and make, lets say 9, completely new servers. Everyone gets to pick their new server that they want to join and this way all communities will get split up (or coordinate and pick a server together, its up to them). The advantage of these new servers is that, hopefully it will balance all of them to be competitive with each other.

/Cheers

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Posted by: CollectorNL.7934

CollectorNL.7934

easy solution. (speaking for EU servers)

1. less servers (pve = already mega server wide)
2. better siege defence when outnumbered (so when outnumbered the defence is better)
3. during night time. instead of 15min ticks. make it 1 hour or 2 hours. so at night time the more coverage servers dont jump so much higher in score.

this is what i would suggest

Col Lector [BOO] (The Netherlands)
Commander
SeaFarer’s Rest

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Posted by: Downwood.3192

Downwood.3192

Simple solution:

Outmanned no longer counts people who are invulnerable (in spawn/citadel area)

if a server is outmanned, all tower and keep lords are granted Righteous indignation.

This prevents overpopulated servers from ‘rolling’ underpopulated ones that choose to focus on defending/playing/fighting where they can get enough numbers to be competitive. This applies a ‘for the fights’ meta into WvW and removes the advantage of PvDoor against empty maps. It also applies the standard of “rewards commensurate with risk” in that if you’re not fighting anyone, you shouldn’t be getting WvW-level rewards for what is essentially PvE.

Simple, elegant, and gets the job done.

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Posted by: Jim Hunter.6821

Jim Hunter.6821

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

Doesn’t force them to do anything. If the wait time to get in to WvW is too long for their liking they have the choice of moving to a server where there isn’t a queue.

This comes with the added benefit of showing off their skill against opponents on equal footing.

Spend some gems and leave your friends behind, no big deal…

Yeah… no. What you’re suggesting is the destruction of communities in a passive aggressive manner.

Pretty sure that is how we got into this situation in the first place…

Also known as Puck when my account isn’t suspended
LGN

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Posted by: eithinan.9841

eithinan.9841

WvW win = Off Prime Time coverage.

There are simply not enough off prime players to balance a 24 hour game mode. No matter how hard a server gets stacked if it doesn’t get stacked in the timezones it needs coverage in it wont have any effect on the end of week result. You could merge ever server from t2-t8 and none of them would be able to compete with BG or JQ because of their off NA prime coverage. All it would do is create queues during NA and force the “Blob meta” into those servers because of the influx of active WvW participants during that timezone.

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Posted by: fishball.7204

fishball.7204

Even T2 is completely a barren wasteland anything after midnight PST up until like 9am (SEA timeish). I don’t understand why these lower tier people think there’s enough people in WvW in T1/2 to pad 24 hours a day on 24 servers and STILL have WvW be enjoyable for non-NA prime players.

We’re fighting BG/JQ this week and even those guys don’t have insane off hour coverage everybody thinks they do. WvW is very dead compared to a year ago.

FOR THE GREEEEEEEEEEEEN

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Posted by: munkiman.3068

munkiman.3068

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

You probably like where the convo is going, because you are being rude and arrogant and completely ignoring other peoples concerns and input whilst trying to take over complete control of the discussion.

Yeah, i understand that. Maybe i’m just passionate about our server. I’d really like to have a discussion? One that doesn’t disseminate ours or anyone elses server pop? Just a guess, but im definitely biased.

[TAO] Founder/Owner and Administrator for the NSP Server Website

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Posted by: Jim Hunter.6821

Jim Hunter.6821

Even T2 is completely a barren wasteland anything after midnight PST up until like 9am (SEA timeish). I don’t understand why these lower tier people think there’s enough people in WvW in T1/2 to pad 24 hours a day on 24 servers and STILL have WvW be enjoyable for non-NA prime players.

We’re fighting BG/JQ this week and even those guys don’t have insane off hour coverage everybody thinks they do. WvW is very dead compared to a year ago.

This thread isn’t about the overnight coverage issue. This thread is the population imbalance issue. A clue to that was the thread title.

Both issues are important, as are many of the other things that people have brought up in this thread like hard rezzzing, rally mechanic, PPT issue, etc. and all of these will need to eventually be addressed.

But we need to take this 1 step at a time and propose solutions we can realistically expect to be implemented. When I say realistically I want everyone to keep in mind that it took 2 years for colored commander tags.

Also known as Puck when my account isn’t suspended
LGN

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Posted by: Reverence.6915

Reverence.6915

Even T2 is completely a barren wasteland anything after midnight PST up until like 9am (SEA timeish). I don’t understand why these lower tier people think there’s enough people in WvW in T1/2 to pad 24 hours a day on 24 servers and STILL have WvW be enjoyable for non-NA prime players.

We’re fighting BG/JQ this week and even those guys don’t have insane off hour coverage everybody thinks they do. WvW is very dead compared to a year ago.

This thread isn’t about the overnight coverage issue. This thread is the population imbalance issue. A clue to that was the thread title.

Both issues are important, as are many of the other things that people have brought up in this thread like hard rezzzing, rally mechanic, PPT issue, etc. and all of these will need to eventually be addressed.

But we need to take this 1 step at a time and propose solutions we can realistically expect to be implemented. When I say realistically I want everyone to keep in mind that it took 2 years for colored commander tags.

Population and coverage are essentially the same thing: Who can field more people over the 24 hours of the day.

Take a look at Devona’s Rest for example. Strong NA population, gets wrecked due to having very little else.

Expac sucks for WvW players. Asura master race
Beastgate | Faerie Law
Currently residing on SBI

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Posted by: NevilleDevil.4530

NevilleDevil.4530

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

Doesn’t force them to do anything. If the wait time to get in to WvW is too long for their liking they have the choice of moving to a server where there isn’t a queue.

This comes with the added benefit of showing off their skill against opponents on equal footing.

Spend some gems and leave your friends behind, no big deal…

Yeah… no. What you’re suggesting is the destruction of communities in a passive aggressive manner.

Pretty sure that is how we got into this situation in the first place…

So you want to destroy more communities to solve the problem? Your solution only brings pain, and that is not needed.

I swore I left a server with a community destroyer, but now I see a guy/girl who wants to destroy at least 3 communities at the same time. Breaking up T1 won’t solve the problem. Population caps won’t solve the problem.

Stopping players from playing the game mode they enjoy is going to make people angry, but I guess I’ll see you in q spot 10,000 when EB can only have 21 people from all servers at the same time and the BL can have a total of 15 people from all servers.

Why not think of a way of HELPING others and not destroying others?

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Posted by: azizul.8469

azizul.8469

tl ; dr not sure if this was mentioned

ok, on the battle group a.k.a faction war, how about each week a player can decide to be in any on the 3 faction (red,green,blue). to make it interesting make it so that the player cannot be on a same faction for a consecutive week, meaning they have to be on different faction every week. to prevent faction hopping in the middle of the week, make it so that once they enter faction war for the week, they cannot change until the next reset.

the downside on this option i can see is in terms of voice communication. inthe current system , a server have their own voice comm and it is usually opened to the people on the servers only. if people changing faction every week voice comm access management can be a headache.

Cutie Phantasmer/Farinas [HAX] – CD Casual
Archeage = Farmville with PK

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Posted by: Jim Hunter.6821

Jim Hunter.6821

I swore I left a server…

Funny how this is the common theme I see from everyone posting that has BG in their sig.

I hate to break it to you but WvW is more than just your tier. Balanced populations means more servers to fight. This will help reinvigorate WvW, and when I say WvW I mean all of the servers.

Also known as Puck when my account isn’t suspended
LGN

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Posted by: eithinan.9841

eithinan.9841

Even T2 is completely a barren wasteland anything after midnight PST up until like 9am (SEA timeish). I don’t understand why these lower tier people think there’s enough people in WvW in T1/2 to pad 24 hours a day on 24 servers and STILL have WvW be enjoyable for non-NA prime players.

We’re fighting BG/JQ this week and even those guys don’t have insane off hour coverage everybody thinks they do. WvW is very dead compared to a year ago.

This thread isn’t about the overnight coverage issue. This thread is the population imbalance issue. A clue to that was the thread title.

Both issues are important, as are many of the other things that people have brought up in this thread like hard rezzzing, rally mechanic, PPT issue, etc. and all of these will need to eventually be addressed.

But we need to take this 1 step at a time and propose solutions we can realistically expect to be implemented. When I say realistically I want everyone to keep in mind that it took 2 years for colored commander tags.

I was told here
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Population-Imbalance-The-real-issue/first#post4442841

to post in this thread. How can you possibly say that 24 hour coverage is unrelated to population imbalance? That is truly mindbogglingly wrong.

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Posted by: eithinan.9841

eithinan.9841

Balanced populations means more servers to fight. This will help reinvigorate WvW, and when I say WvW I mean all of the servers.

It is impossible to balance the servers because there are not enough OFF prime time players to go around. population balance for WvW in it’s current incarnation is impossible because there are not enough people to spread to all the servers. If t1 had 3 servers with true 24 hour queues everyday then yes it may be possible, but we dont…

We’re fighting BG/JQ this week and even those guys don’t have insane off hour coverage everybody thinks they do. WvW is very dead compared to a year ago.

as was posted from an sos person.

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Posted by: NevilleDevil.4530

NevilleDevil.4530

I swore I left a server…

Funny how this is the common theme I see from everyone posting that has BG in their sig.

I hate to break it to you but WvW is more than just your tier. Balanced populations means more servers to fight. This will help reinvigorate WvW, and when I say WvW I mean all of the servers.

I left my last server because my guild moved. I personally wanted to leave because there was a sadistic person who got to a leadership power in that server. I wanted away from that server. My two previous servers, I was a server leader/organizer. The people of the server and I brought it up a tier, but then I was targeted by the bad apples of the server because they did not organize the events. This so I left for a new home.

The thing you don’t realize is that you only seem to think people move because of numbers and bandwagoning. I am actually a refugee (server-wise), an exile, or whatever people call it, and I think quite acouple people from BG are as well. People who left their home for various reasons and make their gaming life’s better. I do not want to leave because I found a place where I fit in, and we all fit in the BG community.

How would you feel if I tore up AR and all the other servers get equal amounts of your population?

No more WvW with your guildmates (without gems price of course) or friends. Community TS that I hop in almost daily is gone.

I would have no motivation to play, and I’m pretty sure quite acouple of other people are with me – and you’ll get what you were trying to fix. Population imbalance because you alienated a massive population and they quit. So if I was “forced to go to AR” guess what, you would be one guy short compared to the rest of the servers. Think about that, next time you propose you want to destroy a multiple communities.

I have a feeling, that you’re so hellbent on destroying T1 that you don’t even see the arguments against it, and not even realize the consequences from it.

You only quoted 5 words from me, can’t you make it seem like you actually read what I said!

-Edited for Clarity (11:54pm EST)

(edited by NevilleDevil.4530)

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Posted by: SixFPCs.9840

SixFPCs.9840

In the spirit of brainstorming further, I’d like to add an idea—a potentially controversial one.
I suggest that ANet reduce transfer costs, with proper controls against abuse. Monitor trends to determine player wants and needs, and only then close down or merge servers.

I would like to note that, in discussing this idea, I am pointedly ignoring the issue of coverage (as requested).

Background:
WvW means different things to all of us. Some play for the big open-field fights, some play for PPT, some like GvG. Some prefer constant high pop and fights everywhere, some (only a few?) prefer low pop matchups. We all want to do what we enjoy.
Merging servers or capping population or setting up battle groups will push WvW in a specific direction, and several sets of people will be unhappy. The primary issue that these things would address is the currently global lack of WvW players, but they would do so by forcibly removing some players from their current environment, an environment in which they might already be very happy.
WvW has always been a sandbox kind of PvP environment, in the sense that there is very little outside intervention. (This lack of intervention is so extreme that reports of hacking and trolling have gone unaddressed for a long period of time.) As a result, players have learned to find their own solutions as best they can, including full guild transfers when necessary. Thus, out of necessity, WvW communities have become very astute at determining the best way to solve their own problems.

The constant movement of players into T1 servers represents the popularity of the high population WvW dynamic. The inability of many to enter their desired servers indicates that we do not have enough high pop servers. Conversely, the disappointment of many players with their WvW ghost towns suggests that low pop servers are in excess. Since we cannot artificially increase total WvW player population (or, it is outside the scope of the current discussion), we must close servers.

Discussion:
In the short term, a reduction in transfer costs will lower the barrier for WvW-focused players to find the right type of WvW environment for each individual or guild, and allow players a level of control and decision-making in the closure of servers that ensures they find the fight destination server. By making this reduction global, we allow the entire WvW community to readjust as necessary. However, the conservative approach would be to reduce transfer costs only for players on the servers targeted for closure, or those below a certain population threshold.
In the longer term, a reduction in transfer costs will help alleviate problems caused by WvW population imbalance by enabling players to more easily seek and locate the server on which they can best enjoy WvW, without requiring constant or periodic developer monitoring (think of the resources that are consumed in one run of server rebalance! it isn’t sustainable).

There are serious problems associated with reducing transfer costs, primarily in terms of competitive WvW play, but I believe these are by and large mitigated by proper implementation. At the most basic level, transfers should have a cooldown, perhaps a month or longer, and they should be immediately and completely disabled upon the official announcement of WvW tournament dates—this will protect against common and obvious attempts to exploit the system. In addition, transfers could also carry a cost that directly impacts competitive and reward-focused players, who are the most prone to abuse. For example, in a weekly reward format (what we currently have), rewards could be locked to the originating server’s performance for the week during which the transfer occurred, or even for the duration of the tournament, and this could be accomplished simply by having the game check (and store in memory) each player’s home server at week’s start, instead of at achievement completion.
In addition, it is likely only a minority of players that would abandon their server for tickets, as that action should seem cowardly and craven to any player with a modicum of principle. It should also be noted that, in general, these types of abuse would not impact the aforementioned benefits of the system.

Summary:
A reduction in transfer costs will allow players to more easily find a WvW environment that they enjoy. In addition, it will enable us to get a more accurate view of exactly which servers need to be closed or merged, and thus should occur prior to any server restructuring. Reducing transfer costs enables players to maximize their enjoyment, while minimizing developer/staff resources consumed, and also providing sorely needed data on server status and players’ desires.
While this kind of reduction would invite abuse, especially in terms of WvW tournament rewards, the potential for abuse can be mitigated in a variety of ways, including simpler limits on transfers and rewards.

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Posted by: Swamurabi.7890

Swamurabi.7890

Map caps, both static and dynamic as well as server mergers won’t solve the coverage issue in WvW. Battlegroups also presents a different problem.

I don’t have the numbers, but for the NA servers, there’s more NA players. EU, SEA and OCX all have smaller populations than NA. If you merged/capped servers, NA players would be on maps that allowed 80 per side, the other three would be considerably less. SoS has coverage issues and can’t compete against the T1 servers. FA can’t compete with SoS and it gets worse the farther down you go.

Would it be fair to force OCX players to play 20 per map so things would be even for all servers? What if those players wanted to be on a 80 per map match?

No matter how you cap, merge, or battlegroup the players, the lower population timezones will end up playing a different game, think T6 or T7, than the more populated timezones which would be more like T1 or T2

This leaves two possible solutions. Either have time slice matches or change the scoring.

Time slice matches destroys the week long criteria for WvW matches. I can also see where even if you change the scoring, it doesn’t change the fact that 5-10 going up against 80 is never a fun game, especially when it usually ends up with the larger force spawn camping the smaller force.

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Posted by: Wanderer.3248

Wanderer.3248

Most of the obstacles to merging servers (e.g. what to do with PVE populations and cross server guilds) are no longer issues.

It seems that the only objection left is server pride, and with all the bandwagons and stacking that has happened in the last two years, server pride is a bit of a joke.

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Posted by: Jim Hunter.6821

Jim Hunter.6821

Balanced populations means more servers to fight. This will help reinvigorate WvW, and when I say WvW I mean all of the servers.

It is impossible to balance the servers because there are not enough OFF prime time players to go around. population balance for WvW in it’s current incarnation is impossible because there are not enough people to spread to all the servers. If t1 had 3 servers with true 24 hour queues everyday then yes it may be possible, but we dont…

We’re fighting BG/JQ this week and even those guys don’t have insane off hour coverage everybody thinks they do. WvW is very dead compared to a year ago.

as was posted from an sos person.

Okay.. once again.. People have offered suggestions on how to deal with overnight coverage. Feel free to read through this entire thread and you will find many solutions to that problem.

However what I am talking about is the overall population imbalance among the servers. Compare BG to ET, if ET had all of their WvW players on and BG had half of theirs BG would still completely out man ET. This is just a ridiculous situation that was created by people bandwaggoning to the top servers and it gets worse with every tournament.

Now we can carry on with stale matchups, only seeing a new server when 1 implodes and another becomes the new bandwaggon server, until people get completely tired of the same fights and give up on the game. Or we could proactively try to fix the problem that free transfers and tournaments created. That is what I am trying to do.

Also known as Puck when my account isn’t suspended
LGN

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Posted by: Snorcha.7586

Snorcha.7586

Battlegroups, no side can have more then 20% players then the other side, 3 × 8 hour matches per day for the timezones (double the current upgrade speed / half the cost). Each win / loss earns the battlegroup points, at the end of the week whoever has the most points wins. This would help make the battles fast and furious, and still have a goal to work for each week. This stuff is not rocket science.

(edited by Snorcha.7586)

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Posted by: Jim Hunter.6821

Jim Hunter.6821

I swore I left a server…

Funny how this is the common theme I see from everyone posting that has BG in their sig.

I hate to break it to you but WvW is more than just your tier. Balanced populations means more servers to fight. This will help reinvigorate WvW, and when I say WvW I mean all of the servers.

I left my last server because my guild moved. I personally wanted to leave because there was a sadistic person who got to a leadership power in that server. I wanted away from that server. My two previous servers, I was a server leader/organizer. The people of the server and I brought it up a tier, but then I was targeted by the bad apples of the server because they did not organize the events. This so I left for a new home.

The thing you don’t realize is that you only seem to think people move because of numbers and bandwagoning. I am actually a refugee (server-wise), an exile, or whatever people call it, and I think quite acouple people from BG are as well. People who left their home for various reasons and make their gaming life’s better. I do not want to leave because I found a place where I fit in, and we all fit in the BG community.

How would you feel if I tore up AR and all the other servers get equal amounts of your population?

No more WvW with your guildmates (without gems price of course) or friends. Community TS that I hop in almost daily is gone.

I would have no motivation to play, and I’m pretty sure quite acouple of other people are with me – and you’ll get what you were trying to fix. Population imbalance because you alienated a massive population and they quit. So if I was “forced to go to AR” guess what, you would be one guy short compared to the rest of the servers. Think about that, next time you propose you want to destroy a multiple communities.

I have a feeling, that you’re so hellbent on destroying T1 that you don’t even see the arguments against it, and not even realize the consequences from it.

You only quoted 5 words from me, can’t you make it seem like you actually read what I said!

-Edited for Clarity (11:54pm EST)

What I see is you’ve already been on 4 different servers. Sounds like relocating wouldn’t be anything new for you. And if you really don’t want to move you don’t have to, I’m sure others will and the queues will go down.

And I don’t know why you automatically assume it should be pay to transfer is they decide to implement this idea. Ideally they would activally open up free transfers to certain servers at a time to try to help with the balancing but even if they just opened up free transfers to all the servers I think the population would sort it self out to avoid the queues. What would really help is if they could give us a rough idea of the population before people move so they could know a good spot to move as a guild.

Also known as Puck when my account isn’t suspended
LGN

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Posted by: azizul.8469

azizul.8469

when gw2 was launched we had so many servers because we had so many players. now that the number of players has dwindled, together with the introduction of megaserver, there is no more issue for pve.

merging servers would do ANET justice financially (less server to maintain), and would present better scene for players in WvW ( more people to player with for the people from the less populated servers).

reducing the map cap on the other hand would reduce the wvw population gap between competing servers, while at the same time reducing the stress on the server used to handle the WvW. the queue resulting from the reduced map cap would slowly force the players to move to the less stacked server. ANET will need to facilitate the transfer for this to materialize.

battle group already introduced inthe form of EotM, but seems not favoured by the true WvW players. most players in EotM are PvE players.

Cutie Phantasmer/Farinas [HAX] – CD Casual
Archeage = Farmville with PK

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Posted by: Sube Dai.8496

Sube Dai.8496

Most of the obstacles to merging servers (e.g. what to do with PVE populations and cross server guilds) are no longer issues.

It seems that the only objection left is server pride, and with all the bandwagons and stacking that has happened in the last two years, server pride is a bit of a joke.

I agree that ‘server pride’ is no where near as important as some people seem to think…but server mergers will accomplish nothing more than NA time zone queues.

The only realistic option I see for balancing the population is Megaserver R/G/B factions.

That means you then need a new scoring system so that individuals know what group/faction/server they belong to, and how they are performing.

That is what this discussion should be about.

If you want to fix/help/enhance WvW then you have to accept megaservers, and then think about how you would like to be grouped up and who you would like to fight.

Are you happy to just be Green, Red or Blue this week? Or do you want a more niche community like your server or guild within the Green faction? If so then what can those niche groups fight against other groups for?

These are the things we should be looking at.

John Snowman [GLTY]
Space Marine Z [GLTY]

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Posted by: eithinan.9841

eithinan.9841

Balanced populations means more servers to fight. This will help reinvigorate WvW, and when I say WvW I mean all of the servers.

It is impossible to balance the servers because there are not enough OFF prime time players to go around. population balance for WvW in it’s current incarnation is impossible because there are not enough people to spread to all the servers. If t1 had 3 servers with true 24 hour queues everyday then yes it may be possible, but we dont…

We’re fighting BG/JQ this week and even those guys don’t have insane off hour coverage everybody thinks they do. WvW is very dead compared to a year ago.

as was posted from an sos person.

Okay.. once again.. People have offered suggestions on how to deal with overnight coverage. Feel free to read through this entire thread and you will find many solutions to that problem.

However what I am talking about is the overall population imbalance among the servers. Compare BG to ET, if ET had all of their WvW players on and BG had half of theirs BG would still completely out man ET. This is just a ridiculous situation that was created by people bandwaggoning to the top servers and it gets worse with every tournament.

Now we can carry on with stale matchups, only seeing a new server when 1 implodes and another becomes the new bandwaggon server, until people get completely tired of the same fights and give up on the game. Or we could proactively try to fix the problem that free transfers and tournaments created. That is what I am trying to do.

It isnt overnight coverage only. It is also morning(SEA) and afternoon(Russians, <3 ZDs) and early evening(Europe) coverage if you are based in NA. Also know as 24 hour coverage. If you cannot understand that concept then why would I take anything you suggest seriously. The other suggestions fundamentally change the WvW game mode into something else, which is why I don’t acknowledge them as options.

Originally WvW matches were going to be 2 weeks long. That’s what was said at release. Persistent 24 hour warfare, was another tagline or something like that.

You make a point about how ET would get smashed by half of BG, which is true during NA, but the rest of the day from 2AM EST to 6PM EST BG would pvd because BG has off hours. You say you want to " fix the problem that free transfers and tournaments created." but the real problem is inherent to the 24 hour WvW game mode. There are not enough Off prime time players to balance with regards to the number of NA prime time players. the disparity is too great. This has become even more apparent since gw2 china opened and there are less ocx/SEA forces out throughout the day.

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Posted by: PariahX.6970

PariahX.6970

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

But guilds/players on higher population servers will have to destack for any hope of getting into WvW and by spreading out their population across worlds make the above 0vs5vs20 situation very rare. The lower map caps will do a lot of different things at once but might make for a very dynamic few months while things shift around, just that in itself would be pretty interesting to watch.

~Xylla~ [oG] on Ehmry Bay [PiXi]
Xyleia Luxuria / Sweet Little Agony / Morning Glory Wine / Precious Illusionz /
Near Fanstastica /Ocean at the End / Blue Eyed Hexe / Andro Queen / Indie Cindee . . .

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Posted by: Nitross.6987

Nitross.6987

There is already a lot of posts in here so, I hope I won’t be repeating much as I can’t hope to read and remember it all before adding my voice in. I’ll try to keep 24h Coverage out of the equation like John asked but, since we are talking about WvW, it’s bound to be a factor.

I don’t have the pretension of having the complete solution to all our population problems. The ideas shown here only attempt to tweak how the population of WvW players can move from one World to another on their own and to give better options for smaller groups to be efficient. However, some of those ideas would depend on how much data ArenaNet can have on player habits…

Smart World Transfers and Guild World Transfers
I believe the idea of free world transfers to let the players balance the population has merit but, how servers are designated as free to transfer to would need to be revised. The price would need to adjust in real time according to the population’s WvW ability (not numbers) and presence; this could be calculated based upon total or average server WvW experience point and WvW map population statistics for the last week for instance. Having the price change in real time would prevent a massive amount of transfers right before a tournament matchup as it would readjust at a set interval and after a certain amount of transfers to or from the server.

As for Guild World Transfers, it is a concept I suggested in the recent Guild QoL CDI . The idea is to give Guilds a way to regroup – or transfer – their player base to a server using guild resources (proportional to the current transfer cost).

These two systems would encourage players to switch to lower population servers while preventing massive exodus by being more adaptive.

World Alliances – My take on “Battle Groups”
I do not like the idea of server merges as it would be a serious blow to the feeling of community built over the years. Only Anet can tell for sure if the current game population and growth would require a merge but, assuming we can still support the current number of worlds with the player base, we could use the players waiting in queues to bolster lower tier worlds.
When entering the queue for one of your WvW maps, you could have a suggestion to join the same map on a server of the same color as yours for the matchup while you wait for your place. Players who do so could be rewarded with a small buff – possibly to magic find, so it does not give too much of an edge to an already strong server – when returning to their server, as payment for their “mercenary” work. Duration of the buff could depend on how many objectives were completed. Mercenary players would not be able to put a commander tag up.
Should enough players from the server you are guesting on want to enter the map, “mercenary” players would be prompted to leave for another server in need of help if their queue isn’t up, much like you now volunteer to leave empty maps (but with a shorter window, of 5 to 10 minutes).
This would give backup to lower tier servers while preserving the current server structure. It also has the advantage to use systems similar to others in place: EotM server alliances and volunteering for map transfer.
Ideally, along with this change, I would like to see the Borderlands and Eternal Battleground get a slight cosmetic “re-skin” with the Desert/Ice/Jungle theme near the starter areas (or more, if possible), to emphasize this alliance.

AI Backup
A first simple tweak would be to give NPC defenders the same AI as the Edge of the Mists, where I noticed some Kodan manning cannons and oils when players did not take them. This would help servers with fewer players and not be something to unbalancing for servers who are already dominating. Besides, a player with the right WvW abilities will always be better than NPCs.
Another change would be to let players – perhaps, only commanders – assign orders to idle NPC workers such as using supply to repair when available or rebuilding lost keep or tower siege.
More options could also be added to other NPCs: sentries could have a purchasable upgrade to show enemies on the map around it, patrols and dolyaks could have path options to prioritize certain structures? Or, you could also simply buff NPCs when there are less players. The idea here is not to replace players but, to make NPCs better at supporting smaller groups if they know how to organize.

- Fort Aspenwood -

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Posted by: Jim Hunter.6821

Jim Hunter.6821

Balanced populations means more servers to fight. This will help reinvigorate WvW, and when I say WvW I mean all of the servers.

It is impossible to balance the servers because there are not enough OFF prime time players to go around. population balance for WvW in it’s current incarnation is impossible because there are not enough people to spread to all the servers. If t1 had 3 servers with true 24 hour queues everyday then yes it may be possible, but we dont…

We’re fighting BG/JQ this week and even those guys don’t have insane off hour coverage everybody thinks they do. WvW is very dead compared to a year ago.

as was posted from an sos person.

Okay.. once again.. People have offered suggestions on how to deal with overnight coverage. Feel free to read through this entire thread and you will find many solutions to that problem.

However what I am talking about is the overall population imbalance among the servers. Compare BG to ET, if ET had all of their WvW players on and BG had half of theirs BG would still completely out man ET. This is just a ridiculous situation that was created by people bandwaggoning to the top servers and it gets worse with every tournament.

Now we can carry on with stale matchups, only seeing a new server when 1 implodes and another becomes the new bandwaggon server, until people get completely tired of the same fights and give up on the game. Or we could proactively try to fix the problem that free transfers and tournaments created. That is what I am trying to do.

It isnt overnight coverage only. It is also morning(SEA) and afternoon(Russians, <3 ZDs) and early evening(Europe) coverage if you are based in NA. Also know as 24 hour coverage. If you cannot understand that concept then why would I take anything you suggest seriously. The other suggestions fundamentally change the WvW game mode into something else, which is why I don’t acknowledge them as options.

Originally WvW matches were going to be 2 weeks long. That’s what was said at release. Persistent 24 hour warfare, was another tagline or something like that.

You make a point about how ET would get smashed by half of BG, which is true during NA, but the rest of the day from 2AM EST to 6PM EST BG would pvd because BG has off hours. You say you want to " fix the problem that free transfers and tournaments created." but the real problem is inherent to the 24 hour WvW game mode. There are not enough Off prime time players to balance with regards to the number of NA prime time players. the disparity is too great. This has become even more apparent since gw2 china opened and there are less ocx/SEA forces out throughout the day.

It’s more like 2am to 9am. The servers don’t have the same numbers as prime time from 9-6 but they do have people on and fighting. With a lower population cap in place they would have a much better chance of holding their stuff even when they are outnumbered because they can only be outnumbered on on map by so many people.

Also known as Puck when my account isn’t suspended
LGN

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Posted by: Lord Kuru.3685

Lord Kuru.3685

Don’t merge servers. Disband them. Start with the top 6. That probably does more than disbanding the bottom 12 in terms of spreading out population.

Plus, there’s more server loyalty at the bottom than at the top: that’s the only reason people are still in the bottom servers, after all), so the damage done to communities is far less.

(edited by Lord Kuru.3685)

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Posted by: Jim Hunter.6821

Jim Hunter.6821

Don’t merge servers. Disband them. Start with the top 6. That probably does more than disbanding the bottom 12.

This would have the same problem as destroying the bottom servers. It temporarily shakes things up but in the end people will still stack for the win and we will run into the same population imbalance.

If we actually make the game mode competitive we might draw more people to the game. There are plenty of people looking for a good RvR game and this one has the best potential.

Also known as Puck when my account isn’t suspended
LGN

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Posted by: morrolan.9608

morrolan.9608

Don’t merge servers. Disband them. Start with the top 6. That probably does more than disbanding the bottom 12 in terms of spreading out population.

What would happen then is that you would have all the people from each server transferring to an agreed upon new server to keep together.

Jade Quarry [SoX]
Miranda Zero – Ele / Twitch Zero – Mes / Chargrin Soulboom – Engi
Aliera Zero – Guardian / Reaver Zero – Necro

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Posted by: morrolan.9608

morrolan.9608

If we actually make the game mode competitive we might draw more people to the game. There are plenty of people looking for a good RvR game and this one has the best potential.

No it doesn’t the fundamental systems aren’t in place. In terms of potential TESO is better because it has a better RvR design, the issues with TESO are unrelated to the RvR design.

Jade Quarry [SoX]
Miranda Zero – Ele / Twitch Zero – Mes / Chargrin Soulboom – Engi
Aliera Zero – Guardian / Reaver Zero – Necro

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Posted by: JaredKincade.9761

JaredKincade.9761

I see all these people from T2 and lower trying to encourage the lower map cap idea.

Doing this will destroy competitive WvW and turn every map into karma trains.

You guys are complaining you are VASTLY outnumbered by Tier 1. I’d hazard to say that Tier 1 has probably 80% of the weekly WvW logins of the NA servers, if not more.

You are all advocating something that helps the MINORITY (something that you are admitting to being) while destroying the majority of WvW players experiences.

There is also this idea of server pride being dead. The guilds that have held down, organized and build their servers are the ones with server pride. The current tier 1 servers are the last standing servers of over two years of fighting.

BG, JQ, TC, SOR, SOS, MAG, FA, SBI, IOJ, Kaineg, DB, HOD all have flirted with tier 1 and been in tier 2 at one point. You think that the people left on BG/JQ/TC aren’t immensely proud of the fact theirs have survived when so many others have fallen due to lack of leadership, poor leadership or just general game turn over?

These higher populated servers are responsible for keeping WvW going for many many players through the drought of so little feedback from ANET, and as a reward you are advocating destroying their WvW experience.

These servers are successful because they have established an environment attractive to WvW guilds, be they PPT, GVG, havok roaming or any mix.


So what is a good solution that doesn’t punish servers that have been successful at retaining and growing their WvW population?

Several steps:

Step 1:

Merge the bottom 9 servers with the next 9 as ranked by glicko WvW rating. Do it in reverse, so Eradon Terrace gets merged with Yaks bend (and so forth). And merge the server names as well to keep the pride in where everyone came from. Server names would be:

Yak’s Terrace, Dragon Rock, Crystal Crossing, Stormbluff Furnace, Devona’s Kaineng, Isle of Emery, Northern Rall, Henge of Darkhaven, and Borlis Madness. (examples)

Step 2: Open up free transfers to the new 9 bottom servers. Half or reduce by 75% transfer costs to tier 2 servers (SOS, MAG and FA). Lock or keep BG JQ TC server transfers the same price. You could also just have free transfers if your account has reached a certain number of WvW ranks. Say 1,000. That way PvEers aren’t targeted for moving, but WvW players. (Otherwise large PvE guilds on Tier 1 servers would move, freeing up more room on them for WvW guilds).

Step 3: All guild influence and upgrades get moved. (This may have been addressed in last patch, but I’m not super familiar with it) In short make it truly no cost to move servers in regards to your guild.

Step 4: Separate WvW population from server population and make competing in a lower WvW populated server MORE rewarding than higher. Higher magic find, % inc to gold per kill buff, double chests, something.

Step 5: Provide an incentive to move to the bottom nine servers from the top 3. 400 gems one time, 1k gold, an exclusive Team Player badge or something. There would have to be a way to differentiate between a PvE player and a WvWer.

Step 6: Bring back the much higher glicko random number generator that caused matchups to be more varied. Part of why everyone got so stacked is because they wanted to fight different opponents, make it so they have that option, without having to transfer.

Step 7: Reset glicko! This is the most important. It will create an environment that will encourage guilds to go out and seek a new server to bring to the top of the ranking, rather than maintain their hard won rating.

I would also suggest doing the same to EU servers, perhaps the bottom six with the next six.

Then take the money you’ve saved with servers and hire a few WvW GMs that can monitor cheating, hacking and take disciplinary action against them.

You do these things, even most of these things, and WvW will become a fun place to compete in again for all servers.

(edited by JaredKincade.9761)

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Posted by: dtzy.5901

dtzy.5901

Population caps are simply dumb. Just no.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dude, i bandwagoned to BG before it was cool. Free transfer era bro.

Yeah high population servers can field more people in theory,, but there are queues before thay happen. Unless of course you refer to just 10 people so yeah thrice that isnt a problem for hihger tier servers. As I mentioned all servers can queue wvw IF THEIR PLAYERS WANT.

I’ve been on BG for quite some time so Im sorry if I cant emphatize with lower tier servers about wvw, so stop with dumb ideas about server shuffling as you probably have not tried T1 wvw.

Dumb ideas like population capping will just wreck our fun and will not really help servers with little to no interest in wvw. It’s saying you cant get more people in wvw so nobody else should be able to. Again, we need positive ideas not negative.

Btw the mention of Sor brought some fun memories

BG~

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Posted by: Jerus.4350

Jerus.4350

If the goal is to make every server like the lower tier servers in an attempt to “balance” then sure fine… but I’ll lose all interest. Even t1 some nights just doesn’t have enough action. Maybe I’m hoping for too much. But in my opinion I’d rather see more higher population servers than more lower population servers even if that means less servers overall.

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Posted by: Vorpalblade.4376

Vorpalblade.4376

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

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

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

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

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

I think this is the solution! I grabbed this all the way from page 7! everyone talking about aliance vs aliance, Eotm system, guild system, population caps and battlegroups etc etc. IMO it would only curb the problem at best, at the expense of a laundry list of cons.

Looking at this we can preserve the current system of wvw which IMO is working well. To solve the problem of this imbalance we need to buff the server that are outnumbered. This buff should be enough for 1 guy to take a camp with no upgrades! or to take on a 2 vs 1 assuming the 2 guys make mistakes in their rotations etc. because currently there is NO chance for anyone to win in a 2 vs 1 situation assuming all things are relatively equal (build, class, trait, player skill)

What will this change?

1. It will give other servers despite their small numbers a chance to be effective in WvW due to the outnumbered buff given to the whole server currently in wvw.
2. havoc teams with the buff can be a pesky little group against the bigger zerg. forcing the bigger zerg to appropriate more people to deal with recapturing the nearby supply camps or guarding the yaks for supply.
3. it will lower the number of people required to make a difference in wvw. with the outnumbered buff they are still going to be effective in capturing towers or camps slowing the ppt of the bigger server.
4. improve the outnumbered servers ability to defend keeps.
etc etc etc

The way to solve this issue is to give the people with the handicap more of a chance ti fight against the bigger server. I do not think penalizing well organized communities in the t1 tier is the solution to this problem further ostracizing the biggest chunk of your wvw community will only spell disaster! The solution is to temporarily buff the outnumbered servers until they get good enough numbers to fight against the bigger force of the enemy.

Also to debunk the argument about destroying communities in a merger! I for one am against the merger of well organized communities ie the tier 1 servers but i am all for the merger of other less populated less developed communities i believe that these servers need more people to operate effectively and to grow and if your all the way to the lowest tier then im guessing there is only a guild or 2 ok maybe 3 active in wvw. Therefore a merger would give you a bigger pool of people to work on to fill your ranks and create some sort of server organization which will NOT happen when you do not have enough people to work with.

Final note. I see the server tiers as levels of development in their respective wvw communities. The more organized the server is the higher the tier of the server. all the servers should work on this one goal! Building a better wvw community unique to each server! Everyone wants this to happen even te higher tier servers!

I hope the devs read this! its quite long.

(edited by Vorpalblade.4376)

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Posted by: roxybudgy.8205

roxybudgy.8205

Can’t be bothered individually quoting all the people who made incorrect assumptions about what things are like in the lower tiers..

First of all, not all lower tier servers are poorly organised, or lack TeamSpeak, etc… I may not be able to speak for all servers as I have been on Ehmry Bay from day one, Ehmry Bay has TeamSpeak, and people do get organised. Yes, we are small, we have less people, and I’m ok with that. Historically, Ehmry Bay has never done much recruiting, not because we’re “unorganised” but because many of us feel that if people want to join us, great. If not, then whatever, server-hoppers should join a server that suits them. Small and organised, just the way I like it

Ghost town? As an oceanic, yes it tends to be quiet during the times I play, but there are always a dedicated group of players online at any given time, and when we band together, we can flip and defend objectives and still have fun. Or we spread out and solo roam, whatever tickles our fancy. I would much rather play with a small group of like-minded people than a horde that doesn’t give a toss about server pride.

So many ignorant posters proudly proclaim that merging servers is THE solution! But to what problem? I’m sure many low tier players like myself are happy with the way things are on the server of our choice. Why can’t we be left alone? Why should upper tier players trample over our wishes in a vain attempt to temporarily solve their coverage problems?

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Posted by: Otokomae.9356

Otokomae.9356

Can’t be bothered individually quoting all the people who made incorrect assumptions about what things are like in the lower tiers..

First of all, not all lower tier servers are poorly organised, or lack TeamSpeak, etc… I may not be able to speak for all servers as I have been on Ehmry Bay from day one, Ehmry Bay has TeamSpeak, and people do get organised. Yes, we are small, we have less people, and I’m ok with that. Historically, Ehmry Bay has never done much recruiting, not because we’re “unorganised” but because many of us feel that if people want to join us, great. If not, then whatever, server-hoppers should join a server that suits them. Small and organised, just the way I like it

Ghost town? As an oceanic, yes it tends to be quiet during the times I play, but there are always a dedicated group of players online at any given time, and when we band together, we can flip and defend objectives and still have fun. Or we spread out and solo roam, whatever tickles our fancy. I would much rather play with a small group of like-minded people than a horde that doesn’t give a toss about server pride.

So many ignorant posters proudly proclaim that merging servers is THE solution! But to what problem? I’m sure many low tier players like myself are happy with the way things are on the server of our choice. Why can’t we be left alone? Why should upper tier players trample over our wishes in a vain attempt to temporarily solve their coverage problems?

So, you’re saying that THERE IS NO PROBLEM WITH POPULATION IMBALANCE in your Tier? Awesome, that’s 1 less server for Anet to worry about! Leave EBay alone Anet, they’re doing just fine (^_^).

Bakuon/Bakuon Thief [MAS]/ ex-[ATac]

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Posted by: Otokomae.9356

Otokomae.9356

To solve the problem of this imbalance we need to buff the server that are outnumbered. This buff should be enough for 1 guy to take a camp with no upgrades!

Honestly, is there anyone in WvW who can’t already do this WITHOUT a buff? I regularly flip 2 camps per tick solo, upgraded or not, on any 1 of 4 different classes that I use. This is asking for a buff that makes players… average? Or gives really bad players the ability to solo-flip a camp without needing to get any better at the game? I’m not sure I get it.

or to take on a 2 vs 1 assuming the 2 guys make mistakes in their rotations etc. because currently there is NO chance for anyone to win in a 2 vs 1 situation assuming all things are relatively equal (build, class, trait, player skill)

It’s SO RARE that these things are completely balanced in a 2v1 situation, especially the “player skill” part. But it just sounds like you’re asking for a buff that makes a few players one 1 server “super-powered”, allowing bad players to easily 1v1 good players, and even take on 2v1’s without needing to gain any sort of skill or without ever needing to learn how to handle a 2v1.

Many players are in favor of a some sort of “Outmanned Buff” that would handicap the worst server in a matchup for some sort of PPT protection during their off-hours, but almost across the board, players are AGAINST any Buff that would affect small group play, particularly 1v1 thru 5v5 sized skirmishes. Making individual players “Super-powered” thru the Outmanned Buff is generally just a terrible idea.

Bakuon/Bakuon Thief [MAS]/ ex-[ATac]

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Posted by: John Corpening.9847

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John Corpening.9847

Associate Game Director

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Yowzers that was a lot to read! You guys have been busy. I dropped that line that I needed to get caught up and then the size of this thread more than doubled! I’ll apologize in advance for not calling out who some of the ideas in this post are coming from but there were too many posts to keep it all straight.

There are a number of great ideas circulating attacking the problem from different angles and with varying levels of magnitude of change. One note though, I really feel that scoring is a separate issue that needs to be addressed on it’s own. We will discuss that one after we wrap this one up. Even if we were to overhaul the scoring system population imbalance will still be an issue.

From reading through this thread I think we can agree on the following goals:

  • 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.

There were a number of other goals but I think those are the two big ones. I’m going to combine a number of your ideas to attempt to address this problem with a proposal and see what you guys think.

First off, as many of you have pointed out, it will be impossible to create equal populations without moving people around. As several others have pointed out we don’t want to break apart communities. This has been a really tough one for all of us. I know all about server pride. At the risk of having people scream “MATCH THREAD” and red card me off the forums, I’ll let you know that I have been known to pipe up in meetings with “SBI TILL I DIE” because it’s where I play with my friends and family members. So I’ve had the same reaction that many of you had when merges have come up in discussion. Through Adopt-A-Dev I’m now repping the DR crowd and I’ve learned that these guys on DR don’t all have three heads and eat puppies (unless they are really cool) and while it did feel a little dirty to fight SBI last week it was still great fun.

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.

A few of you noted that things will always be changing over time so the system would have to be dynamic. There are a couple of ways of addressing this discussed in this thread. An idea that would be a small incremental change to how the game plays would be to create a new set of worlds then fill them up with our Alliances of guilds and players that are guaranteed to always play together. This would happen at regular intervals, the intervals were all over the map as were the size of the worlds in this thread so I will propose this cadence:

  • Off Season
  • Tournament
  • Restructure
    • Create new Worlds
    • Redistribute Alliances

This cycle would take a few months given the cadence of tournaments we have had which is about the time that we would want to rebalance populations. After the restructure, players could transfer like they do now if they so desired.

Alliances would provide continuity for the community. I see the server pride of today becoming Alliance pride because of that continuity. But I also see the off season as a time for the newly formed world of alliances to develop their own identity as they head into the tournament. Keep in mind that if an alliance was big enough to fill a world that mapping becomes one to one. If that became the case maybe the world could just take the alliance name. It’s interesting because that time together gives everyone involved a chance to see if they all want to ally together to truly solidify into a world. If not, you are still playing with your community for the glory of your alliance in the next restructure. But your community would be playing with other communities new to you and maybe this new bunch is a better fit for you and an opportunity for your alliance to grow.

The pieces for this idea comes from a number of posts in this thread. There are also some thoughts in there from some discussions I’ve had with several guild leaders. I just glommed it all together into something that I think could be a workable solution. I do want to emphasize though that this is all brainstorming

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

John

Solution to fix the population imbalance

in WvW

Posted by: Torsailr.8456

Torsailr.8456

This would happen at regular intervals, the intervals were all over the map as were the size of the worlds in this thread so I will propose this cadence:

  • Off Season
  • Tournament
  • Restructure
    • Create new Worlds
    • Redistribute Alliances

This cycle would take a few months given the cadence of tournaments we have had which is about the time that we would want to rebalance populations. After the restructure, players could transfer like they do now if they so desired.

I think this might be over complicating it. The key is having dynamic databases that update with alliance membership numbers.

The way I see it is if Alliances are a collection of individuals/guilds then they have control over their own numbers. If the alliance membership size is kept in a database it can be updated either dynamically as the alliance changes or as a call each week. Each week when it comes time to create matchups you group the alliances into tiers based on population then refine it based on previous scores/leaderboards (if none treat as 0).

This allows match ups to be made independent of what is happening in the alliance and allows the match ups to always be current with membership levels. If an alliance drops 200 members in a week then they’ll be matched against someone with a similar number of members the following week. It would prevent a situation where someone gets railroaded by higher numbers.

It may be possible for people to try to game the system by not having many people in the alliance and then joining up after a match up is set. I think a few smaller alliances might try this but enough of the regular players would find this idea abhorrent and wouldn’t bother trying. We want meaningful matches, not new ways to game the system and cheat. But no system is 100% cheat proof. I think the community would self police itself in this regard and if it proves to be a re-occurring problem with some then a GM could hand out suspensions if necessary.

It may be necessary to freeze placements in the tiers for a Tournament. But I think there might be a few unconsidered variables there to make a decision like that now. Personally I think after 6-9 months of alliances things would be fairly stable and the increased number of alliances over servers would allow for a more robust round robin tournaments making freezes unnecessary.

Solution to fix the population imbalance

in WvW

Posted by: Reverence.6915

Reverence.6915

With alliances, what about players with no guilds but actively participate in their server’s WvW efforts? New to WvW and have no direction on which alliance to pick?

Alliances may sound nice in theory, but I think it’ll only put up barriers to people getting into WvW, as it may forcefully separate friends due to alliance population limits. As an example, if this were to be implemented today, the majority of Blackgate would choose to move as one. Would an alliance fit that many people? or would the population cap be a lot lower and force people who’ve played together for 2 years give or take (majority of Blackgate’s guilds) to split up?

Expac sucks for WvW players. Asura master race
Beastgate | Faerie Law
Currently residing on SBI

Solution to fix the population imbalance

in WvW

Posted by: dtzy.5901

dtzy.5901

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.

This would happen at regular intervals, the intervals were all over the map as were the size of the worlds in this thread so I will propose this cadence:

  • Off Season
  • Tournament
  • Restructure
    • Create new Worlds
    • Redistribute Alliances

This cycle would take a few months given the cadence of tournaments we have had which is about the time that we would want to rebalance populations. After the restructure, players could transfer like they do now if they so desired.

Alliances would provide continuity for the community. I see the server pride of today becoming Alliance pride because of that continuity. But I also see the off season as a time for the newly formed world of alliances to develop their own identity as they head into the tournament. Keep in mind that if an alliance was big enough to fill a world that mapping becomes one to one. If that became the case maybe the world could just take the alliance name. It’s interesting because that time together gives everyone involved a chance to see if they all want to ally together to truly solidify into a world. If not, you are still playing with your community for the glory of your alliance in the next restructure. But your community would be playing with other communities new to you and maybe this new bunch is a better fit for you and an opportunity for your alliance to grow.

The pieces for this idea comes from a number of posts in this thread. There are also some thoughts in there from some discussions I’ve had with several guild leaders. I just glommed it all together into something that I think could be a workable solution. I do want to emphasize though that this is all brainstorming

What i understand from the alliance idea is that server groups in wvw will be replaced by the alliance system?

So for example, BG world is filled up by bg alliance + x alliance will be up against JQ and TC worlds with alliances in those worlds?

And the assingment of those alliances in different worlds will depend on the size of the alliance/s per world?

BG~

(edited by dtzy.5901)