Guild Wars 2

nirvana.8245:

munkiman.3068:

eithinan.9841:

Conner.4702:

How to say this politely. Nothing in this thread is an actual solution to the population imbalance. Nothing adresses the 24/7 nature of WvW. There are only 2 solutions and neither will be implemented. Removing the aoe cap to make the difference in population moot or redoing the entire server architecture to make a true global wvw system and not this US and EU server crap.

Anything else will do nothing, but create more queues during primetime and still not enough people during off hours or create wins by some sort of point algorithm eventhough you got trampled all week anyway.

All this talk about alliances and grouping does not take into account that people are still going to play at teh time they always do and thus it will never be a solution. The population needs to be spread over timezones not just servers to truly fix an imbalance. removing the aoe cap would be second best, as it would give people a chance, though most liekly still lose in the end.

THIS is what ive been saying.

You mine as well just offer up a suggestion of turning WvW into a game of duck duck goose. I guess if you want to alienate all of EU for things like language barriers, higher latency and rather large social differences, then this is a stellar idea. Not to mention what it would cost to just scrap the whole thing.

It might be money better spent if ANet did a huge marketing campaign in oceanics and brought more players in from there

It was called internally a while back that Oceanic has been dead for a good six months now. In T1 the playerbase during Oceanic timezone on an average weeknight is like 10% Oceanic, 45% NA doing overtime staying up till 4am and 45% SEA logging in early. I can vouch that it is the opinion of the bulk of players in T1 that the timezone isn’t going to come back to life and its slowly going to dwindle. TBH I wouldn’t be opposed to a map cap reduction during this timezone and its one of the few changes that I don’t think many, if any, would be impacted negatively by and there certainly would be some who would be positively impacted by it. It would certainly alleviate the pressure on T1 NA to stay up late to fill that coverage gap and would reduce the impact of “PvD”. But you could really only have that cap between Monday and Thursday as there is significantly larger numbers who play on Friday/Saturday/Sunday nights.

TLDR I don’t think many Oceanics will come to GW2 now, they are all playing CS:GO :p

Agreed, it might be throwing good money at bad. I was kinda just being cheeky though.

*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. *

I think you are missing a point and solution to WvW imbalances. The issues are, the outmanned teams simply can’t compete, or even slow down the enemy enough to compete. I’m not referring to the open field fight, because 1v10 in open field should go to the 10.

I’m referring to the static structures that can be the ultimate form of WvW game play balance, that would still allow each player vs player interaction to remain equal. If we allow siege/structures/npcs to gain an outmanned buff we can see great balance happen in the game.

Outmanned buff:
-NPCS: all outmanned NPCs take 50% less damage, and deal 50% more damage
-Siege: All Outmanned Siege Deals 50% more damage.
-Structures: All outmanned Gates/walls take 50% less damage.

these simple simple changes would allow the realm that is outmanned to still stand a chance in the WvW game. Not only will they be able to have a better chance of defending their structures with less numbers against greater numbers. But they can also retake stuff much faster then if they were on equal footing.

And the great thing about this.. once that realm losing the outmanned buff, it means they should have enough population to defend the structures without the buff benefit on siege.

And Balance is easily found… This solution causes many things to happen:
-1 Creates a system that would allow underpopulated teams to actually take down very upgraded objectives from an overpopulated realm much easier.
-2 Would greatly support spreading out over multi zones
-3 Would support spreading troops out over the map instead of all trying to attack/defend one objective.
-4 Supports the outmanned way in a balanced equal footing fashion without creating class imbalance.

Honestly, we needed server mergers BEFORE Season 1. It’s way past time, so no matter what other ideas you guys come up with, server mergers, at least for WvW purposes, need to happen FIRST.

testpig.5018:

*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. *

I think you are missing a point and solution to WvW imbalances. The issues are, the outmanned teams simply can’t compete, or even slow down the enemy enough to compete. I’m not referring to the open field fight, because 1v10 in open field should go to the 10.

I’m referring to the static structures that can be the ultimate form of WvW game play balance, that would still allow each player vs player interaction to remain equal. If we allow siege/structures/npcs to gain an outmanned buff we can see great balance happen in the game.

Outmanned buff:
-NPCS: all outmanned NPCs take 50% less damage, and deal 50% more damage
-Siege: All Outmanned Siege Deals 50% more damage.
-Structures: All outmanned Gates/walls take 50% less damage.

these simple simple changes would allow the realm that is outmanned to still stand a chance in the WvW game. Not only will they be able to have a better chance of defending their structures with less numbers against greater numbers. But they can also retake stuff much faster then if they were on equal footing.

And the great thing about this.. once that realm losing the outmanned buff, it means they should have enough population to defend the structures without the buff benefit on siege.

And Balance is easily found… This solution causes many things to happen:
-1 Creates a system that would allow underpopulated teams to actually take down very upgraded objectives from an overpopulated realm much easier.
-2 Would greatly support spreading out over multi zones
-3 Would support spreading troops out over the map instead of all trying to attack/defend one objective.
-4 Supports the outmanned way in a balanced equal footing fashion without creating class imbalance.

This only works if the outmanned buff takes the population of every map into consideration, otherwise you will have people blobbing up on 1 map while leaving a token force to hold things they capture on all of the other maps.

Rage The Numbers.7943:

I put my thoughts here

This is essentially merging 24 worlds into 12 and all the caveats that’s been discussed along with that.

Jim Hunter.6821:

testpig.5018:

*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. *

I think you are missing a point and solution to WvW imbalances. The issues are, the outmanned teams simply can’t compete, or even slow down the enemy enough to compete. I’m not referring to the open field fight, because 1v10 in open field should go to the 10.

I’m referring to the static structures that can be the ultimate form of WvW game play balance, that would still allow each player vs player interaction to remain equal. If we allow siege/structures/npcs to gain an outmanned buff we can see great balance happen in the game.

Outmanned buff:
-NPCS: all outmanned NPCs take 50% less damage, and deal 50% more damage
-Siege: All Outmanned Siege Deals 50% more damage.
-Structures: All outmanned Gates/walls take 50% less damage.

these simple simple changes would allow the realm that is outmanned to still stand a chance in the WvW game. Not only will they be able to have a better chance of defending their structures with less numbers against greater numbers. But they can also retake stuff much faster then if they were on equal footing.

And the great thing about this.. once that realm losing the outmanned buff, it means they should have enough population to defend the structures without the buff benefit on siege.

And Balance is easily found… This solution causes many things to happen:
-1 Creates a system that would allow underpopulated teams to actually take down very upgraded objectives from an overpopulated realm much easier.
-2 Would greatly support spreading out over multi zones
-3 Would support spreading troops out over the map instead of all trying to attack/defend one objective.
-4 Supports the outmanned way in a balanced equal footing fashion without creating class imbalance.

This only works if the outmanned buff takes the population of every map into consideration, otherwise you will have people blobbing up on 1 map while leaving a token force to hold things they capture on all of the other maps.

I’m also unsure how this would work in EB? The out-manned there would be pretty OP? I could only imagine what 50% more damage to Stone Mist would be like.

“This only works if the outmanned buff takes the population of every map into consideration, otherwise you will have people blobbing up on 1 map while leaving a token force to hold things they capture on all of the other maps.”

it should not take population of all of WvW into consideration. Because whoever is on the map when the blob comes will have the outmanned benefits. If the blob is fighting in empty maps, they will be slowed by 50% on everything. thus buying time for defenders/outmanned team to fight back.

it would work just how Outmanned currently works. if you are outmanned, you gain the benefit to your siege damage, and structure defense. The Outmanned team would be pretty good at able to keep a constant fight against objectives they currently don’t stand a chance against when population is so much against them.

How great would it be, that even being outmanned, still thinking “yea, we can still try to take stone mist, and we might actually succeed if they don’t come and zergroll us”

it would force the blob servers to spread out, instead of blob, because if they blob, all the small man teams can just run around retaking everything that isn’t defended with some ease =)

balance.

testpig.5018:

*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. *

I think you are missing a point and solution to WvW imbalances. The issues are, the outmanned teams simply can’t compete, or even slow down the enemy enough to compete. I’m not referring to the open field fight, because 1v10 in open field should go to the 10.

I’m referring to the static structures that can be the ultimate form of WvW game play balance, that would still allow each player vs player interaction to remain equal. If we allow siege/structures/npcs to gain an outmanned buff we can see great balance happen in the game.

Outmanned buff:
-NPCS: all outmanned NPCs take 50% less damage, and deal 50% more damage
-Siege: All Outmanned Siege Deals 50% more damage.
-Structures: All outmanned Gates/walls take 50% less damage.

these simple simple changes would allow the realm that is outmanned to still stand a chance in the WvW game. Not only will they be able to have a better chance of defending their structures with less numbers against greater numbers. But they can also retake stuff much faster then if they were on equal footing.

And the great thing about this.. once that realm losing the outmanned buff, it means they should have enough population to defend the structures without the buff benefit on siege.

And Balance is easily found… This solution causes many things to happen:
-1 Creates a system that would allow underpopulated teams to actually take down very upgraded objectives from an overpopulated realm much easier.
-2 Would greatly support spreading out over multi zones
-3 Would support spreading troops out over the map instead of all trying to attack/defend one objective.
-4 Supports the outmanned way in a balanced equal footing fashion without creating class imbalance.

Ya, this is just rewarding servers that don’t bother to show up with super-powers. NA populations would probably find it worthwhile to stay up late, because as soon as that “Outmanned Buff” kicks in, you can just drop 5 of your tankiest Guardians into Omega Golems and let them wander around destroying everything with their massive “+50% Damage Buff from Siege”. This wouldn’t be some “Buff to low pop servers”, it would simply become the new late-night Meta almost immediately.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Off peak can be affected by changes to the scoring system or by setting different caps for different times of the day.

You’ve just answered yourself why player capping is pointless because it does nothing as you realize you need to supplement it with a scoring system change. Then why not just get at the core of the issue: the scoring system is what needs to be changed, which was the main point of my previous post.

Make it so coverage != automatic win, and you’ll have less stacking. Player capping is actually detrimental to the game IMO. What you’ll end up getting is guilds trying to get pugs to leave because they’re “wasting” a valuable slot. And you introduce more variables that is not needed, like trying to figure out an ideal cap. Things like that will just lead to unintended consequences.

John Corpening.9847:

Yowzers that was a lot to read

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.

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

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

John

I detect a faint odour of a megaserver type system happening……or in the process of being implemented (maybe I’m just being cynical)

Dynamically allocating/re-allocating realms post tournament will help reduce the poorly populated wvw realms through merging but I don’t see how it can solve the lemming rush to first place every tournament

With respect, if the game mode didn’t so overwhelmingly favour a numbers win style game, population size wouldn’t be a complaint other than due to game performance issues

I can see this is any easy sell to management in terms of fewer servers, more efficiency etc, but I can see this ending up with a top tier alliance that stays rigid and blows through the regrouped scrubs every tournament which really isn’t much different than what we have now with the numbers discrepancy, except now you might be forced to move battle groups after getting wrecked; which is a double loss.

If such a system existed how would it handle realm growth? How would it ensure fairness and distribution of population? Would it be a hockey style draft post matchup or just dumping the remnants of a server implosion on the other competitors… I can see the potential; both good and bad but as it stands now I think there needs to be more meaningful changes to the game mode than how to stuff the bodies into a battleground before a positive change is noticed,

Tldr;

The suggested system seems to be better geared for shrinking/compressing the competitive environment rather than expanding it

“Ya, this is just rewarding servers that don’t bother to show up with super-powers.”

not rewards… supports players that are outmanned and still wants to fight

“NA populations would probably find it worthwhile to stay up late, because as soon as that “Outmanned Buff” kicks in”, you can just drop 5 of your tankiest Guardians into Omega Golems and let them wander around destroying everything with their massive “+50% Damage Buff from Siege”.

if 5 guardians are in slow moving omega when outmanned… they are still outmanned.. and thus the players with the population simply have to show up and kill these 5 slow moving omegas. i’m having a hard time understanding your point. Outmanned still means you are OUTMANNED.

testpig.5018:

How great would it be, that even being outmanned, still thinking “yea, we can still try to take stone mist, and we might actually succeed if they don’t come and zergroll us”

it would force the blob servers to spread out, instead of blob, because if they blob, all the small man teams can just run around retaking everything that isn’t defended with some ease =)

balance.

Who are the “blob servers” you’re fighting against down there in T5-6? Do they really just run 1 single blob all the time? If you’re thinking this would allow lower Tier servers to compete in T1, this won’t do it; we already leave Scouts in every important structure we take. Keeps are scouted 24/7 until we’ve secured the win on my server, so we don’t have to back-cap constantly.

testpig.5018:

“Ya, this is just rewarding servers that don’t bother to show up with super-powers.”

not rewards… supports players that are outmanned and still wants to fight

“NA populations would probably find it worthwhile to stay up late, because as soon as that “Outmanned Buff” kicks in”, you can just drop 5 of your tankiest Guardians into Omega Golems and let them wander around destroying everything with their massive “+50% Damage Buff from Siege”.

if 5 guardians are in slow moving omega when outmanned… they are still outmanned.. and thus the players with the population simply have to show up and kill these 5 slow moving omegas. i’m having a hard time understanding your point. Outmanned still means you are OUTMANNED.

They’re not so slow-moving anymore; didn’t you read the patch notes? Golems get a buff to movement speed with the first points you spend in the new Golem Mastery line, which anyone planning to use this meta would take. But even without that, 1 mesmer could move them from structure to structure in relative safety if they wanted to avoid fighting, though I’m not sure they’d need to if they’re doing +50% to anyone who gets in their way…

Otokomae.9356:

testpig.5018:

“Ya, this is just rewarding servers that don’t bother to show up with super-powers.”

not rewards… supports players that are outmanned and still wants to fight

“NA populations would probably find it worthwhile to stay up late, because as soon as that “Outmanned Buff” kicks in”, you can just drop 5 of your tankiest Guardians into Omega Golems and let them wander around destroying everything with their massive “+50% Damage Buff from Siege”.

if 5 guardians are in slow moving omega when outmanned… they are still outmanned.. and thus the players with the population simply have to show up and kill these 5 slow moving omegas. i’m having a hard time understanding your point. Outmanned still means you are OUTMANNED.

They’re not so slow-moving anymore; didn’t you read the patch notes? Golems get a buff to movement speed with the first points you spend in the new Golem Mastery line, which anyone planning to use this meta would take. But even without that, 1 mesmer could move them from structure to structure in relative safety if they wanted to avoid fighting, though I’m not sure they’d need to if they’re doing +50% to anyone who gets in their way…

Pretty much, lol. Spin to win and all. I mentioned in another thread personal buffs, like this one are a REALLY bad idea.

Otokomae.9356:

Who are the “blob servers” you’re fighting against down there in T5-6? Do they really just run 1 single blob all the time? If you’re thinking this would allow lower Tier servers to compete in T1, this won’t do it; we already leave Scouts in every important structure we take. Keeps are scouted 24/7 until we’ve secured the win on my server, so we don’t have to back-cap constantly.

you not thinking clearly, as you are from a blob server. most servers don’t care about t1…Many WvW players in the lower tiers don’t care about moving up or moving down. They care about being able to enjoy themselves in the fight they are currently in.

Outmanned players can’t really compete much in the open field against large blobs. So their best bet would be to take an objective(tower) and use it as a place to compete against the larger blobs. But with the current scope of the game, that option is nearly impossible to do against the blob servers..(even more impossible now with disable trap).

So with that, do you see how an outmanned buff that benefits siege damage output can actually help the outmanned server? Do you see how an outmanned buff that reduces damage to outmanned teams gate/walls by 50% would give the outmanned team a better chance of having a better fight, and holding off the enemy large enough to flash build 10 cats and snipe down a wall 60 seconds? That a system that helps the outmanned team would increase that timer to 120 seconds, which can open up windows for possible more defenders to arrive or for anything to allow them to fight the good fight.

Blob servers don’t have logic. because they have population. Avg servers don’t have that population.. or that coverage. We are the outmanned. We play with that icon forever on our Hero.

munkiman.3068:

Pretty much, lol. Spin to win and all. I mentioned in another thread personal buffs, like this one are a REALLY bad idea.

it’s not a personal buff.. it’s a siege buff. and again.. 5 golems when outmanned.,.. is still 5 golems when OUTMANNED. the blob has plenty of tools to kill them. Outmanned player siege will only deal 50% more damage, not take 50% less damage. Only GATES/WALLS and NPCs would take 50% less damage.
-1 Balistas.
-2 Arrow carts.
-3 more players then the outmanned team.
-4 disable trap
-5 more players then the outmanned team. etc etc

testpig.5018:

Otokomae.9356:

Who are the “blob servers” you’re fighting against down there in T5-6? Do they really just run 1 single blob all the time? If you’re thinking this would allow lower Tier servers to compete in T1, this won’t do it; we already leave Scouts in every important structure we take. Keeps are scouted 24/7 until we’ve secured the win on my server, so we don’t have to back-cap constantly.

you not thinking clearly, as you are from a blob server. most servers don’t care about t1…Many WvW players in the lower tiers don’t care about moving up or moving down. They care about being able to enjoy themselves in the fight they are currently in.

Outmanned players can’t really compete much in the open field against large blobs. So their best bet would be to take an objective(tower) and use it as a place to compete against the larger blobs. But with the current scope of the game, that option is nearly impossible to do against the blob servers..(even more impossible now with disable trap).

So with that, do you see how an outmanned buff that benefits siege damage output can actually help the outmanned server? Do you see how an outmanned buff that reduces damage to outmanned teams gate/walls by 50% would give the outmanned team a better chance of having a better fight, and holding off the enemy large enough to flash build 10 cats and snipe down a wall 60 seconds? That a system that helps the outmanned team would increase that timer to 120 seconds, which can open up windows for possible more defenders to arrive or for anything to allow them to fight the good fight.

Blob servers don’t have logic. because they have population. Avg servers don’t have that population.. or that coverage. We are the outmanned. We play with that icon forever on our Hero.

Wow, well, you’ve really had quite a turnaround in your ideas, I guess, since your days running with the blob on SoR. This is you here, right?

testpig.5018:

Your night, is someone elses day.

Night capping is not an issue. The issue is, what you do during your day to make up for it.

And now you’re saying “Give us Super-powers, so that we can walk thru walls (50% faster), and have our towers and even camps guarded by mini-bosses, and make every one our Arrow Cart attacks equal to a Thief’s Backstab.” That’s really quite a change in philosophy since you moved to Borlis Pass…

John Corpening.9847:

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.

Here’s the downside of doing that – it is really, really hard to do, and extraordinarily dangerous. The last time A.Net messed around with cross-server WvW maps, we got the endless uppie karma train that is EotM.

Getting alliances right – that is, making them reasonably competitive without breaking up existing fine network structures on servers – would be hard even in the best of situations. You, however, have a reward structure that encourages players not to play more or play harder, but to join the alliance with the most people. You want to sort players into a fair match-up, while the players actively want to resist being sorted and will continuously self-sort into an unbalanced match-up, using whatever tricks they can find to subvert your system.

I’ve worked on problems like this before. This is not a ‘put a designer on it for a couple days and send it off to QA’ kind of problem. This is a ‘bring in a handful of academic mechanism design theorists and social network analysts and expect to pay their consulting rates for a couple months’ kind of problem.

It’s not intractable, but if you screw around with this your ‘good’ outcomes accomplish essentially nothing, and your ‘bad’ outcomes burn WvW down to another karma train that no one cares about.

Proceed with caution.

I am definitely not a fan of alliances. I like seeing common faces, whether they are in my guild or not. I also like seeing common enemies and that helps with rivalries.

Also, who cares if we have 24 evenly balanced servers? Right now it works well. If you want blobs, go higher tier. If you want smaller groups, go lower tier. It works for whatever you want.

testpig.5018:

munkiman.3068:

Pretty much, lol. Spin to win and all. I mentioned in another thread personal buffs, like this one are a REALLY bad idea.

it’s not a personal buff.. it’s a siege buff. and again.. 5 golems when outmanned.,.. is still 5 golems when OUTMANNED. the blob has plenty of tools to kill them. Outmanned player siege will only deal 50% more damage, not take 50% less damage. Only GATES/WALLS and NPCs would take 50% less damage.
-1 Balistas.
-2 Arrow carts.
-3 more players then the outmanned team.
-4 disable trap
-5 more players then the outmanned team. etc etc

50% less damage from a blob that can just PvD down the doors isn’t going to stop them. What it will do however is make it harder to back cap your stuff if the blob leaves behind a couple scouts in a keep and hops to another map.

I held another servers paper hills 1v30ish for about half an hour with siege disablers. and a couple ac’s. I lost it after WvW shut down for an update and they beat me back to it. With +50% power on siege and siege disablers a small havok group could hold a keep against just about anything except a massive zerg.

Otokomae.9356:

testpig.5018:

Otokomae.9356:

Who are the “blob servers” you’re fighting against down there in T5-6? Do they really just run 1 single blob all the time? If you’re thinking this would allow lower Tier servers to compete in T1, this won’t do it; we already leave Scouts in every important structure we take. Keeps are scouted 24/7 until we’ve secured the win on my server, so we don’t have to back-cap constantly.

you not thinking clearly, as you are from a blob server. most servers don’t care about t1…Many WvW players in the lower tiers don’t care about moving up or moving down. They care about being able to enjoy themselves in the fight they are currently in.

Outmanned players can’t really compete much in the open field against large blobs. So their best bet would be to take an objective(tower) and use it as a place to compete against the larger blobs. But with the current scope of the game, that option is nearly impossible to do against the blob servers..(even more impossible now with disable trap).

So with that, do you see how an outmanned buff that benefits siege damage output can actually help the outmanned server? Do you see how an outmanned buff that reduces damage to outmanned teams gate/walls by 50% would give the outmanned team a better chance of having a better fight, and holding off the enemy large enough to flash build 10 cats and snipe down a wall 60 seconds? That a system that helps the outmanned team would increase that timer to 120 seconds, which can open up windows for possible more defenders to arrive or for anything to allow them to fight the good fight.

Blob servers don’t have logic. because they have population. Avg servers don’t have that population.. or that coverage. We are the outmanned. We play with that icon forever on our Hero.

Wow, well, you’ve really had quite a turnaround in your ideas, I guess, since your days running with the blob on SoR. This is you here, right?

testpig.5018:

Your night, is someone elses day.

Night capping is not an issue. The issue is, what you do during your day to make up for it.

And now you’re saying “Give us Super-powers, so that we can walk thru walls (50% faster), and have our towers and even camps guarded by mini-bosses, and make every one our Arrow Cart attacks equal to a Thief’s Backstab.” That’s really quite a change in philosophy since you moved to Borlis Pass…

Blobbing in SoR? we ditched the ques of SoR within the first 4 months of GW2. Can’t blob when you can’t actually get to play WvW =)

Yes, give the outmanned realm a siege buff to take down walls and gates slightly faster because those outmanned players are the ones trying to fight against a server that is blob size. So any support they can get to assist them in taking an objective without giving them an advantage to their own personal stats is a balanced benefit.

If the blob doesn’t want to take 50% more damage form an AC… lets do the math… avg AC damage is 2k per tick. so +50% of that would be…. 1k… so total damage is now 3k. yea.. breaking the bank…. how about getting out of range of the tower.

Jim Hunter.6821:

50% less damage from a blob that can just PvD down the doors isn’t going to stop them. What it will do however is make it harder to back cap your stuff if the blob leaves behind a couple scouts in a keep and hops to another map.

I held another servers paper hills 1v30ish for about half an hour with siege disablers. and a couple ac’s. I lost it after WvW shut down for an update and they beat me back to it. With +50% power on siege and siege disablers a small havok group could hold a keep against just about anything except a massive zerg.

it won’t stop them. it will give the outmanned players defending a chase to stop them/slow them down. so that they won’t have to back cap.

Yes, a small havoc group when outmanned can actually try to defend and hold an objective. And while they are outmanned they will be at a somewhat balanced fight with them using the keep and the siege to defend.

However, once the the population evens out.. then the fight evens out as well.

see how it works?

testpig.5018:

Yes, give the outmanned realm a siege buff to take down walls and gates slightly faster

Taking anything you want on the map 50% faster is not slightly faster, that incredibly fast. And then being able to hold everything you take 50% longer? This is just rewarding your server for NOT coming out to fight. If you honestly NEED this kind of buff to compete, then your server is clearly in the wrong Tier, and needs to move down anyway.

testpig.5018:

If the blob doesn’t want to take 50% more damage form an AC… lets do the math… avg AC damage is 2k per tick. so +50% of that would be…. 1k… so total damage is now 3k. yea.. breaking the bank…. how about getting out of range of the tower.

Ok, now do the rest of the math:
Superior Arrow Carts do an extra +50% damage already
Arrow Cart Mastery adds +25%, I think
Siege Might adds another +5%

Add in your “+50% Siege Buff to all Outmanned” and we’re at nearly 6k per hit with Arrow Carts, hitting up to 50 people at a time; allowing 1 person on an AC to do nearly 300,000 Damage every time he presses the “2” button! That, my friend, is giving yourself a super power.

Aridia.3042:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Off peak can be affected by changes to the scoring system or by setting different caps for different times of the day.

You’ve just answered yourself why player capping is pointless because it does nothing as you realize you need to supplement it with a scoring system change. Then why not just get at the core of the issue: the scoring system is what needs to be changed, which was the main point of my previous post.

Make it so coverage != automatic win, and you’ll have less stacking. Player capping is actually detrimental to the game IMO. What you’ll end up getting is guilds trying to get pugs to leave because they’re “wasting” a valuable slot. And you introduce more variables that is not needed, like trying to figure out an ideal cap. Things like that will just lead to unintended consequences.

Nope, the scoring system is half the issue. If they fixed the scoring system do you think ET could go against GB and stand a chance? ET simply wouldn’t have the manpower to take anything from BG. Even in small scale/roaming BG would have just about everything capped so they would send zergs to wipe out ET roamers.

Note: I picked these 2 servers because they are the 2 extreme ends of the spectrum. This is nothing against ET. In fact I’d be willing to bet an ET roamer would beat a BG roamer in a 1v1 about 90% of the time, and in anything over 30v30 BG would beat ET most the time because they are more used to zerg vs zerg.

testpig.5018:

Jim Hunter.6821:

50% less damage from a blob that can just PvD down the doors isn’t going to stop them. What it will do however is make it harder to back cap your stuff if the blob leaves behind a couple scouts in a keep and hops to another map.

I held another servers paper hills 1v30ish for about half an hour with siege disablers. and a couple ac’s. I lost it after WvW shut down for an update and they beat me back to it. With +50% power on siege and siege disablers a small havok group could hold a keep against just about anything except a massive zerg.

it won’t stop them. it will give the outmanned players defending a chase to stop them/slow them down. so that they won’t have to back cap.

Yes, a small havoc group when outmanned can actually try to defend and hold an objective. And while they are outmanned they will be at a somewhat balanced fight with them using the keep and the siege to defend.

However, once the the population evens out.. then the fight evens out as well.

see how it works?

Except this won’t even things out. It means you will need an even bigger zerg to take anything, which will just lead to more server stacking.

testpig.5018:

munkiman.3068:

Pretty much, lol. Spin to win and all. I mentioned in another thread personal buffs, like this one are a REALLY bad idea.

it’s not a personal buff.. it’s a siege buff. and again.. 5 golems when outmanned.,.. is still 5 golems when OUTMANNED. the blob has plenty of tools to kill them. Outmanned player siege will only deal 50% more damage, not take 50% less damage. Only GATES/WALLS and NPCs would take 50% less damage.
-1 Balistas.
-2 Arrow carts.
-3 more players then the outmanned team.
-4 disable trap
-5 more players then the outmanned team. etc etc

You have to be careful with conditional buffs and put them in spots where they can’t be too powerful. I think you’re example is probably in the category of OP.

I suggested buffing the defense and only when that particular objective is heavily contested with a smaller defense force, say a 30-50 PvD zerg, but i would definitely not go as far as 50%.

Since we are just brain storming anyway…

Blow up the servers as they now are, re-organise by timezones, as tightly as populations allow.

PS. Do we players have any numbers on how many total wvw players there actually are?
PPS. Do servers matter to anyone outside of wvw anyway?

Bitterblade.3028:

PPS. Do servers matter to anyone outside of wvw anyway?

Probably for some PvE/pride. SoR would go ape-kitten if the name goes away. Whenever we get a new world boss, like Tequatl 2.0, some servers will want to compete for world first’s.

A couple points:
- lets’ stop using the term “blob” in this thread when you are talking about an outmanned situation and are referencing the more numerous server. “blob” has certain connotations in army behavior, that is really not related to the issue at hand, i.e. imbalanced server populations. If we had perfect server balance you might still have blobs.

- making the outmanned buff stronger is such a weak band aid, we shouldn’t be wasting breath on it here; let’s focus on finding a solution to the overall imbalance, rather than how to work around the imbalance, e.g. alliances, map pop caps, forcibly reshuffling people and guilds, decoupling PvE servers and WvW servers, how to deal with shifting, variable population numbers, and breaking up the 24 hour cycle.

you will never be able to solve for one side having more players online then the other side. because you can’t force players to play at all times.

Population will always be an issue. one army will always have more numbers then the other army.

The logical solution to not make any player vs player interaction imbalanced is to change the static structures present in every single WvW map the variable that changes. Siege is that static structure.. Keeps/towers are that static structure. Those are the variables we can tweaks based on population to try to bring the uneven fight more in lines to an even fight.

The outmanned buff(with my concept) only makes it stronger when it comes to siege battles.

Sube Dai.8496:

GreyWraith.8394:

John Corpening.9847:

After last week’s positive discussion on siege trolls I wanted to bring up the topic of population imbalance and ideas that you have on it.
…
Thanks,
John

Given the severe imbalance in population & coverage between servers a mega-server style solution is the only thing with a chance of working. My (rough) suggestion:

1. Discard the concept of servers entirely (for WvW).
2. Every week (or whatever period you choose) assign accounts to a temporary battlegroup (or whatever you name it). The assignment only lasts for the period’s duration. Next period everybody gets re-assigned. If the assignments are done right both population and coverage could be roughly balanced between battlegroups.

How to do this and keep communities together? The same way the megaserver system does it now – by grouping friends and guildmates together in the same battlegroups as much as possible. Maybe include a guarantee that you will be assigned to the same battlegroup as your most represented guild – that way WvW guilds could be sure they would play together. Guild population limits would ensure this stays balanced despite the guarantee.

Not a perfect system certainly, but it would produce games worth playing while keeping most people grouped as they prefer most of the time.

P.S. I know you said no coverage issues, but population and coverage are two sides of the same problem. Any solution will have to address both simultaneously or it won’t be a solution.

The system has to stop people from stacking though, or we have the same problems as now.

At some point it has to say “this battlegroup is full, join one of the other two”

You misunderstand. Megaservers don’t ask you which map you want to join – you are assigned. I’m suggesting similar (involuntary) assignments based on friend/guild/activity data like what megaservers currently do, but with WvW data included.

Involuntary assignments may sound terrible but the system can be designed/tweaked to put the vast majority of people on the same side as friends they wish to play with. Practically speaking, that’s probably the best we’re going to get without allowing people to deliberately unbalance matches.

Dayra.7405:

Deli.1302:

Snorcha.7586:

- no side can have more then 20% players then the other side on the map

you can’t punish players just because they want to play but their side has more people.

You can offer them an immediate permanent transfer to any side without queue, if they refuse, you have to educate them that insisting to play on the predominate side is punished by queue.

I’d rather wait in queue to play with my friends and in a server with like minded people, than have no queue and be in a server which doesn’t share my mindset. I’m pretty sure most people will behave the same way.

If any of the plans have to do with turning WvW into EoTM/MegaServer then I will find a new game to play. I’ve been on same server since I started, have seen the best and worst of the server so far and pretty much everyone gets along pretty well. EoTM is full of backseat commanders, trash talkers, trolls and just about every server tool piled up on one map.

Since MegaServer the only community that is left is the WvW community. Before Megaserver Lion’s Arch used to be the spot to to call out for more help in WvW when it was needed. Now that’s pretty much gone and I’d rather turn off map chat in any PVE map cause most maps are full of backseat commanders, trash talkers, trolls and just about every server tool piled up on one map.

WvW is pretty much the only reason I’m still playing this game but I can tell you that since MegaServer you will rarely catch me doing any sort of PVE. World bosses don’t even exists for me anymore since MegaServer has been around.

So whatever the fix is, all I ask is don’t turn WvW into EoTM/MegaServer battles!

nirvana.8245:

Sube Dai.8496:

GreyWraith.8394:

John Corpening.9847:

After last week’s positive discussion on siege trolls I wanted to bring up the topic of population imbalance and ideas that you have on it.
…
Thanks,
John

Given the severe imbalance in population & coverage between servers a mega-server style solution is the only thing with a chance of working. My (rough) suggestion:

1. Discard the concept of servers entirely (for WvW).
2. Every week (or whatever period you choose) assign accounts to a temporary battlegroup (or whatever you name it). The assignment only lasts for the period’s duration. Next period everybody gets re-assigned. If the assignments are done right both population and coverage could be roughly balanced between battlegroups.

How to do this and keep communities together? The same way the megaserver system does it now – by grouping friends and guildmates together in the same battlegroups as much as possible. Maybe include a guarantee that you will be assigned to the same battlegroup as your most represented guild – that way WvW guilds could be sure they would play together. Guild population limits would ensure this stays balanced despite the guarantee.

Not a perfect system certainly, but it would produce games worth playing while keeping most people grouped as they prefer most of the time.

P.S. I know you said no coverage issues, but population and coverage are two sides of the same problem. Any solution will have to address both simultaneously or it won’t be a solution.

The system has to stop people from stacking though, or we have the same problems as now.

At some point it has to say “this battlegroup is full, join one of the other two”

So my battlegroup is only a temporary (weekly) assignment. I have no reason to fight for my battlegroups pride this week, because next week I will have another battlegroup. I might as well just go play in EoTM and karma train because I won’t be doing any of the duties you need to do in a competitive WvW.

1. As stated the period is subject to change
2. Just because the next period is ‘another battlegroup’ doesn’t mean you won’t be playing with the same friends & guildmates etc. Pride in overall group performance doesn’t go away.
3. Your current server has (some) different people on it this week than it did last week; people transfer. Do you take less pride in it because the group of people has changed a bit?

I’m glad that Devs are finally actually taking some time to work with guilds and play WvW. You can design a game to be played a certain way, and that is all well and good, but ultimately it is what people do with your design and the way they actually play the game that matters.

There is a simple reason why people flock to the upper-tier servers. WvW, at its core, isn’t about roaming or havoc or dueling: it is a large-scale battlefield where large groups can organize and clash with each other, and which happens to also include these other elements of play.

For the most part these people don’t care about the score. It isn’t about being able to say ‘my server can beat up your server’. Winning serves as nothing more than a way to congratulate your team for putting forward a strong effort.

What people in the top servers care about is being able to find large-scale action and fights in WvW during the times that they play.

It would seem, based upon this alone, that forming ‘Alliances’ or whatever other mundane idea to rearrange the numbers would make sense.

However, what people are missing is that x-factor in giving people the freedom of choice to fight for the side that they want. People can belly-laugh and thumb their noses at the idea of server-identity all they want, but I will still assert to you that it is one of the few strong driving forces remaining that propels WvW.

It is asinine to insist that because server transfers happen that = no such thing as server identity. If every server was a perfect utopia and every single GW2 player cared more about community than about their own self-interest then I imagine that transfers would never happen. Obviously in the real world, things work differently and kitten happens. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t still strong communities made up of individual players and guilds who enjoy a certain sense of unity.

To take a few examples, EotM may be technically ‘working’ as intended, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that people do not play it the way that was intended. Megaserver has been a boon to players who were sort of left out on their own with nothing to do, but a detriment to many who already had a good thing going.

If you just stick a spoon in the WvW system and give it a rough mix to try and balance the numbers, then you may as well stick a fork in it too . . . because the game will simply be done, over, kaput . . . the ghostly realm where the occasional curious roamer takes a tour of the place where all the guilds used to march.

So, solutions:

1) WvW needs better rewards. Currently personal rewards for WvW are the worst out of all the possible game modes. And you wonder why more people don’t try it out.

2) More incentive for servers to get into 2vs1 situations (when necessary). If there is a good 3-way match going on where anyone could turn out the winner, then we don’t want to interfere with that. However, in cases of a complete blow-out match, there should be clear incentives that put the other two servers in a situation to team up on the leader.

3) Outside of that, I dunno. Perhaps we could extend this idea to the point where if lower population servers can’t keep up their populations to the point of playing a decent match and the upper tiers are stacked, then maybe we have a match where we have something like Server A vs Server B vs Server (C and D) playing on the same side.

Regardless, the main point to take home from all this is that one of the crutches supporting WvW right now is the fact that no other game out there currently offers the same sort of server vs server vs server format that Guild Wars 2 has. If you take that away, then it becomes just another game in a sea of games.

I stay with servers merge. It’s the easiest, fastest and “doablest” option.

Merge servers according to their ranks and rename the new server to a variation of the two merged servers.

TC + ET = Eredon Cost
BG + FC = Blackgate Crossing
JQ + SF = Sorrow’s Quarry

And so on.

I would love to see the server system gone and replaced by an alliance system, but that is unrealistic.

I’m curious what the T1 servers consider a large scale fight since a lot of people said they are worried they will lose large scale battles. To me anything over 30v30 qualifies as large scale.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Aridia.3042:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Off peak can be affected by changes to the scoring system or by setting different caps for different times of the day.

You’ve just answered yourself why player capping is pointless because it does nothing as you realize you need to supplement it with a scoring system change. Then why not just get at the core of the issue: the scoring system is what needs to be changed, which was the main point of my previous post.

Make it so coverage != automatic win, and you’ll have less stacking. Player capping is actually detrimental to the game IMO. What you’ll end up getting is guilds trying to get pugs to leave because they’re “wasting” a valuable slot. And you introduce more variables that is not needed, like trying to figure out an ideal cap. Things like that will just lead to unintended consequences.

Nope, the scoring system is half the issue. If they fixed the scoring system do you think ET could go against GB and stand a chance? ET simply wouldn’t have the manpower to take anything from BG. Even in small scale/roaming BG would have just about everything capped so they would send zergs to wipe out ET roamers.

Note: I picked these 2 servers because they are the 2 extreme ends of the spectrum. This is nothing against ET. In fact I’d be willing to bet an ET roamer would beat a BG roamer in a 1v1 about 90% of the time, and in anything over 30v30 BG would beat ET most the time because they are more used to zerg vs zerg.

Go back and reread my post.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance/page/15#post4446379

Jim Hunter.6821:

I’m curious what the T1 servers consider a large scale fight since a lot of people said they are worried they will lose large scale battles. To me anything over 30v30 qualifies as large scale.

We often get 20v40 fights on reset. I haven’t played in awhile though (like a month). I’d consider that large scale though.

Jim Hunter.6821:

I’m curious what the T1 servers consider a large scale fight since a lot of people said they are worried they will lose large scale battles. To me anything over 30v30 qualifies as large scale.

30v30 would be medium scale in T1. Truely large scale would be 60+ vs 60+ vs 60+ in a single area. kitten good fights those

Reverence.6915:

Jim Hunter.6821:

I’m curious what the T1 servers consider a large scale fight since a lot of people said they are worried they will lose large scale battles. To me anything over 30v30 qualifies as large scale.

30v30 would be medium scale in T1. Truely large scale would be 60+ vs 60+ vs 60+ in a single area. kitten good fights those

I actually love that you can “feel” battles coming on t1. There’s something fun about “ohh dang, the lag… TC/JQ(or even SoS) are both here somewhere nearby”

Jim Hunter.6821:

I’m curious what the T1 servers consider a large scale fight since a lot of people said they are worried they will lose large scale battles. To me anything over 30v30 qualifies as large scale.

Here’s a pretty average night for my Guild in WvW, T1:
http://youtu.be/VZKte8RH3gg

You don’t really see more than 100 people total involved in a fight very often, and when that does happen, it’s either in Stonemist or someone’s Garrison. Now that you can’t Banner-Rez the Lord anymore, however, the massive 3-way battles (that sometimes pulled in numbers around 120+ from all 3 servers total) don’t happen as often, simply because the battles don’t last nearly as long as they used to. In open field, 30v30 would generally be a starting point for the larger guilds.

Otokomae.9356:

You don’t really see more than 100 people total involved in a fight very often, and when that does happen, it’s either in Stonemist or someone’s Garrison. Now that you can’t Banner-Rez the Lord anymore, however, the massive 3-way battles (that sometimes pulled in numbers around 120+ from all 3 servers total) don’t happen as often, simply because the battles don’t last nearly as long as they used to. In open field, 30v30 would generally be a starting point for the larger guilds.

That is the sucky thing (to me anyway) about them taking out the Guild Lord bannering mechanic. It has that ‘king of the hill’ sort of mechanic to it, with all three sides trying to battle it out on the same spot for superiority. That was fun.

Now it is mostly just cap and move on.

Karuna.1357:

Otokomae.9356:

You don’t really see more than 100 people total involved in a fight very often, and when that does happen, it’s either in Stonemist or someone’s Garrison. Now that you can’t Banner-Rez the Lord anymore, however, the massive 3-way battles (that sometimes pulled in numbers around 120+ from all 3 servers total) don’t happen as often, simply because the battles don’t last nearly as long as they used to. In open field, 30v30 would generally be a starting point for the larger guilds.

That is the sucky thing (to me anyway) about them taking out the Guild Lord bannering mechanic. It has that ‘king of the hill’ sort of mechanic to it, with all three sides trying to battle it out on the same spot for superiority. That was fun.

Now it is mostly just cap and move on.

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.

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.

But, there is a few more points to consider :

• Alliance have to be dynamic : Static alliances are bound to fail.
• Competition is healthy : We need more than 3 worlds total and we need some sort of ranking.
• Overflow kill competition : See EotM karma train.
• Upgrades bring competition : See EotM karma train.

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.

• Player can create an alliance.
• Player can be in only 1 alliance at a time (+ their 5 normal guilds)
• Alliance can have rank and leaders that administer them
• Alliance chat that can be seen by everyone in the alliance no matter where they are
• Alliance are limited to 3000 members (this is to make it impossible to all stack in the same one)
• Alliance have a name
• Players in an alliance are guaranteed to be together in the week match up.
• A player is not required to be in an alliance.

Introducing the concept of coalition

A coalition is a group of alliances. Think of coalition like the current server. Coalition are the replacement for server.

• New coalition are formed every week
• Coalition fight against each other during the week in group of 3 (that we call a match up)
• Each coalition in a same match up have roughly the same level of player activity. Players and alliances are put in coalition in a way that make things as fair as possible.

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.

New ranking system

It would be nice to have a new ranking system for the alliance. Maybe based on your victory ratio. If whenever an alliance is in a coalition, that coalition win the match, maybe it’s because that alliance is VERY good.

It would be nice to find a way to calculate the strength of each alliance, but we should probably do that discussion in another thread.

TLDR

Alliance = Group of players that want to play together
Coalition = Group of alliances and/or players that are put together for a week.
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

GreyWraith.8394:

nirvana.8245:

Sube Dai.8496:

GreyWraith.8394:

John Corpening.9847:

After last week’s positive discussion on siege trolls I wanted to bring up the topic of population imbalance and ideas that you have on it.
…
Thanks,
John

Given the severe imbalance in population & coverage between servers a mega-server style solution is the only thing with a chance of working. My (rough) suggestion:

1. Discard the concept of servers entirely (for WvW).
2. Every week (or whatever period you choose) assign accounts to a temporary battlegroup (or whatever you name it). The assignment only lasts for the period’s duration. Next period everybody gets re-assigned. If the assignments are done right both population and coverage could be roughly balanced between battlegroups.

How to do this and keep communities together? The same way the megaserver system does it now – by grouping friends and guildmates together in the same battlegroups as much as possible. Maybe include a guarantee that you will be assigned to the same battlegroup as your most represented guild – that way WvW guilds could be sure they would play together. Guild population limits would ensure this stays balanced despite the guarantee.

Not a perfect system certainly, but it would produce games worth playing while keeping most people grouped as they prefer most of the time.

P.S. I know you said no coverage issues, but population and coverage are two sides of the same problem. Any solution will have to address both simultaneously or it won’t be a solution.

The system has to stop people from stacking though, or we have the same problems as now.

At some point it has to say “this battlegroup is full, join one of the other two”

So my battlegroup is only a temporary (weekly) assignment. I have no reason to fight for my battlegroups pride this week, because next week I will have another battlegroup. I might as well just go play in EoTM and karma train because I won’t be doing any of the duties you need to do in a competitive WvW.

1. As stated the period is subject to change
2. Just because the next period is ‘another battlegroup’ doesn’t mean you won’t be playing with the same friends & guildmates etc. Pride in overall group performance doesn’t go away.
3. Your current server has (some) different people on it this week than it did last week; people transfer. Do you take less pride in it because the group of people has changed a bit?

I haven’t seen a single player this week that I haven’t seen before. Even though Ive only played around 25-30 hours this week. I don’t think you understand. Why would I want to build on something that is temporary. I have spent the last two years building on something that is permanent. If I knew it wasn’t going to permanent, I wouldn’t bother. I might as well be in EoTM.

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?

What about the matchmaking? Will the guild size/raid size be considered while match-making? I would totally love a matchup against alliance/groups of alliances with similar guild sizes and raid sizes and mixed “pug” groups, but I would totally dislike a matchup against guilds with 500+ members with blobs of 60+ in each borderland… even if I had many small guilds helping.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance/page/15#post4446396

Otokomae.9356:

Um, it actually sounds to me like no one gets ANY of these things in this system; if we’re all sharing maps with 8 other servers, even if they do a good job of grouping people together with their own servers, you’re still likely to see T1 zergs forming up in T8 anytime there’s a que higher than 10, and those players are just going to karma train unless the T8 (or whatever map the higher Tier servers go to while in que) players are able to up a serious resistance, since most player’s won’t be able to take the score seriously, if their PPT is tired to 8 other servers (or Teams, or Alliance, or whatever word you want to use here). Any lower Tier maps that start to take on players from other Tiers who are waiting in que are just going to watch their maps get turned into EotM 2.0.

This suggestion actually sounds WORSE than using the EotM grouping system, imo.

munkiman.3068:

I tend to think this is how John kinda envisioned it work too, in his post. But, it’s pretty much how EotM works now (in the “win”). I don’t know that i would have it so new players could only be randomly tossed on to a server though (maybe a “pick a server for me” button).

The one big caveat to this is organization/communication when a group from one server plays on anothers. There are also some pretty big rivalries in WvW already, which would make something like this really chaotic and at times, pretty toxic.

After 2+ years of players settling in to their server communities, this might ultimately do more harm than good, IMO. I also don’t think this would address scoring and coverage issues. I’d hate to just assume people would happily move around to help other servers in their alliances all that much. There’s definitely something to doing well in your own community, that mashing a win into an alliance system really takes away from. It might be better a while down the road, but it could be really bad (like continuing to lose players), which would basically force us to see merges.

I’d rather see changes that impact the mode itself, to bring in/back more players in general. One thing i would seriously consider is incorporating EotM into WvW or seriously nerfing the rewards from it. I really think it takes players that would normally play WvW out.

My theory is that: Yes, overflow from over stacked WvW servers will transfer to lower ranked matches. However, this is a good thing and the key is that all 3 alliances are able to do this. This means that say [Alliance A] [Tier 1] match has a total 100 player queue across all [Tier 1] match maps. For sake of argument lets say all 100 Qd players belong to the same guild and they decide to all move down to the [Tier 8] match hoping to PvD some easy points. Assuming that [Alliance B] and [Alliance C] also have a similar amount of people Qd up in the [Tier 1] match (which should be the case if WvW populations are initially divided up fairly), it would be very smart for them to counter or preempt [Alliance A]’s strategy by also sending players to lower tier matches. Real time monitoring of all matches like http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/ and good communication between guild alliances, such as (at the very least) an alliance chat channel in game, would be essential for this to work.

As for the scoring and incentive to help other matches than your own, there would have to be a paradigm shift in order to avoid being EotM 2.0. Basically each match would contribute to an overall alliance score and the highest scoring alliance would win the week. In the event of a tie winner would be decided by comparing total points of all matches.

• Winning a match (for example: [Tier 1] match) = 1 point to the alliance <— this is like a battle

• Most matches won (for example: winning tier 1 to tier 5 matches gives that alliance 5 out of 8 possible points) = That alliance wins the week <— this is like winning a war

As for rivalries and toxicity I think it is over exaggerated. There are ex-SOR guilds on BG and ex-BG guilds on JQ now among other unexpected combinations that have ultimately meshed well because at the core they all love playing WvW. The forum warriors are a small very vocal minority.

I do think that EotM PvE farming heroes are a real problem that have most likely already done irreparable damage to WvW. I don’t see Anet rewarding high WvW ranks or badges with prestige or anything seeing how dedicated EotM players have made ranks and badges cheap and honestly not indicative of dedication to real WvW. It all reminds me too much of PvP ranks and the skyhammer farmers. But this is a different topic for another thread.

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.

Let me explore a basic observation a bit:

maximal zerg-size does not depend on how many people are in a match, but on how many fit on a single map

So if you have maps of different capacity (say 30, 60, 90 per team) in the same match you make sure that you have a place for small-scale, a place for mid-scale and a place for large-scale fights within the same match!

So if we have teams/coalition consisting of alliances originating from different tiers, it would be very nice if we would have maps of different capacity in a single match, such that each alliance can choose a map of its preferred play-style, e.g. a T7-alliance plays BLs-30, and a T1-alliance plays BLs-90.

The fewer matches we have, i.e. the more alliances form a team/coalition the more maps can be filled by a coalition, e.g. if we have only one match were all the alliances are grouped into 3 teams/coalitions the more (variant) maps we can have in the match, e.g. 15 maps in a single match: 3 BLs-30 + 3 BLs-60 + 3 BLs-90 + EB-50 + EB-100 + EB-150+ EotM-50 + EotM-100 + EotM-150 such a match would offer 1140 total capacity per team, i.e. around 3 times as much as a current match, still each alliance could find a map where it’s preferred play-style can be played. And on which it can compete, even if larger enemy alliance attacks it there.

P.S.: @Sir Arthur (below): A map-150 can be interpreted as a very rich provincem, where foraging supply is easy, and therefore army-size is larger, A map-30 is a very poor or inhospitable province, where foraging is difficult and army size therefore very limited Would be beautiful if map-textures could show that

PPS: instead of fixed map caps: define regions on the map, they have a foraging capacity, the more people are in it and they longer you are in it while it is over-filled the more agony (like in fractal) you (everyone depending on the time he is in) suffer.