Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen quite a few suggestions to limit the population caps on the WvW maps. While I agree that this could solve some of the population imbalances between servers, I don’t like that it’s not scalable.

My suggestion is that every map’s population cap will instead be based on the average number of players playing on that map per server. At the end of every tick, a new average is computed and set as the new cap. This way each map’s cap scales up and down based on the number of people playing at the time. It also keeps larger servers from completely outnumbering every other server, while still giving them a slight advantage.

Example:

Red Borderlands starts the matchup with a 50 player cap for each server. Red server brings a full 50 people into the map to play. Blue server brings in 40 people, and Green server brings in 30 people. After the next tick, the new cap is computed at 40. People already in the map of course don’t get booted, but this puts a queue on both Red and Blue servers, while Green still has room for 10 more people. If every server is always bringing in enough people to queue, then nothing changes.

Of course, there would still have to be some minimum and maximum numbers set so that maps don’t become completely unpopulated. There would also have to be some way to increase the caps during peak hours. In these cases, I suggest the cap increases by +5 per tick as long as at least two servers are queued and the average remains the same or higher than the last tick.

I know quite a few people are opposed to introducing any kind of stricter population caps, but I believe this might strike a nice balance. Let me know what you guy think.

Coldin.2840:

My suggestion is that every map’s population cap will instead be based on the average number of players playing on that map per server. At the end of every tick, a new average is computed and set as the new cap. This way each map’s cap scales up and down based on the number of people playing at the time. It also keeps larger servers from completely outnumbering every other server, while still giving them a slight advantage.

Of course, there would still have to be some minimum and maximum numbers set so that maps don’t become completely unpopulated. There would also have to be some way to increase the caps during peak hours. In these cases, I suggest the cap increases by +5 per tick as long as at least two servers are queued and the average remains the same or higher than the last tick.

Coming from a low WvW population server (Ehmry Bay), your idea intrigues me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. +1

However, there’s the other side of the coin: what about servers with a wvw-heavy population who have built a community up that wouldn’t be able to play together under your system except on EotM?

There actually might be something to this, as long as, people don’t get booted from the map, which in itself, can put an anchor on the idea as it seems to be the only way to keep the numbers even.

If it start out at 50, then the next tick reduces it to 40, but 50 people still remain in the battle, it still really isn’t fair, especially if suddenly green drops to 10 people and the new cap becomes what 33 I guess? I don’t see how 50 on 10 changes anything, but then again, how can we justify booting 17 people out of the battle, especially if they waited in a ridiculous que..

This brings me to another idea

Now suppose if people got redistributed throughout the maps (using the OP’s idea). This may get confusing, but suppose EB started out at 100vs100vs100. 30 Red’s move to Red BL and another 20 decide to call it a night bringing red’s total down to 50. Green takes 30 of their people and moves them over to say Red’s BL as well, bringing them to 70.

Now if we take the average of the 3 we’d have 60. So using the OP’s idea as the PPT tick to average out the cap, 40 of the Blue’s would then be booted out of EB and re-distributed on other BL’s to even out the numbers as close as possible. Green also loses 10 from EB as well and gets redistributed..

Hmm.. might just work. The only resistance you’d have is guilds wanting to field large groups; however, that can be solved by moving to a lower tier, which by the way is free at the moment so there really isn’t any excuse.

It might just work.

Edit: Aside from reset night, playing in T1, you rarely ever see all 4 maps full at once, so there is room to redistribute players.

This would get a giant down vote by most players I would think. Massive amounts of players wouldn’t be able to enter a map simply because a server cannot field a force during that time.

A server ahead on points could stop logging into WvW for an easy victory.

Straegen.2938:

This would get a giant down vote by most players I would think. Massive amounts of players wouldn’t be able to enter a map simply because a server cannot field a force during that time.

A server ahead on points could stop logging into WvW for an easy victory.

This too would be an issue. But using my idea, redistributing players throughout the maps to even the numbers out as close as possible would be the first priority, after that, map numbers would rack up.

Basically if Red built up 100,000 point lead then only had 10 people per map while the other 2 colors had say 70 on the other maps, 10 players would be removed from the other colors to at least even out the 10 per map.. after that, the numbers climb, and could get to 100vs100vs10. If however, more people log into Red, then the numbers redistribute to even out maps again.

You’re going to end up with some very weird and fairly abusable behavior here (like map hopping before the tick or flat out logging off to influence the math), especially in cases where there are only two active servers on a map. The winning side potentially has incentive to not play the game – or rather, to play it as little as possible by “working the averages” to keep numbers minimal. Attacking an opponent that locks down the map to maintain status quo can become difficult, especially in the case of heavily fortified structures that often need more attackers to flip than defenders to hold.

You could probably get away with introducing some limited weights to the system in order to avoid the worst population imbalances, but that’s about the extent of it.

It’s funny that you don’t see any of these type of ideas coming from T1 players…

loquacious.2915:

It’s funny that you don’t see any of these type of ideas coming from T1 players…

Incorrect, I am a T1 player

I personally think the way the OP listed the idea would not work, but my variation of it would and it would drastically help T1 keep the numbers even. You won’t have situations of 60vs20 unless a server has very little people logging onto WvW to begin with, then the outnumbered situations will climb.

Assuming those running the same guild tag are accounted for in the system so they are kept together as much as they could, it should work. Even in T1, I rarely see a zerg with more than 20 guildies running together at once.

Then if Anet creates an actual GvG arena where it’s possible for 100 guild members to run together at once, I don’t see why WvW can’t be made to keep the numbers as even as possible.

Just have 3 servers. Maps would always be full, so would be balanced. Nice healthy queues too so they’d be a good number ready to take over when you rage quit.

I certainly would not want to be moved un-voluntarily, even if I was outnumbered.

People need the freedom to move where they want.

Even if a server was able to constantly support a fully queued map, this actually wouldn’t be a problem for the system. If the max players allowed on the server was lower than the current number, numbers would eventually diminish through various logouts, map switches and disconnects. It wouldn’t be a quick diminish, but then it’s not supposed to either. The idea here is that it would slowly balance out populations while still leaving some margin for change.

As for servers trying to exploit the system, at best they’d just be able to lower the cap enough that they could fill the server with their group. However, this would not serve them well as the average population would still keep them below or equal to whatever the most populous server is currently on the map.

Coldin.2840:

As for servers trying to exploit the system, at best they’d just be able to lower the cap enough that they could fill the server with their group. However, this would not serve them well as the average population would still keep them below or equal to whatever the most populous server is currently on the map.

A server can lower the cap to whatever the minimum player limit is, and keep it there. This then prevents the attacking server from bringing more than that amount of players onto the map as well. Since it takes a certain amount of players to have a chance of flipping heavily fortified structures, you would need to set the minimum player limit high enough that this has a realistic chance of happening – plus a little extra “breathing room” to account for players who do not wish to follow the group.

That’s the lesser problem. The bigger problem is players being actively discouraged from staying on a borderland if their side wishes to maintain the status quo. If you’ve read their posts on the subject, you’ll know that A.Net’s standing philosophy is that any extra player should only be a positive contribution, which is a sentiment I happen to agree with. Any situation where having fewer players on the map is an advantage promotes the opposite. If for no other reason, your idea is going to be a tough sell because of that.