Guild Wars 2

I know we’ve seen plenty of ideas already but I wanted to offer another. It’s not without its faults but it could be fairly easy to implement and might solve a few problems. Sorry this is such a long post but I’ve tried to address all the problems I could think of as well as the benefits, so hopefully it’s comprehensive. I’m sure people will tell me if I’ve missed something

The idea is to pair tiers to give the opportunity for populations to mix and to bring a little more variety into match ups.
I’ve based this idea on NA because it has 8 tiers. I’m sure there’s a way to make it work for EU too but haven’t finished thinking that through yet.

I suggest pairing T1 with T5, T2 with T6, T3 with T7 and T4 with T8.
Each match up still has 3 teams (red blue green) just as it is but, crucially, players from the same colour can play on either tiers BL maps.
I chose these pairings because it seemed fairer than putting T1 with T8 etc. While this would possibly give more even total population numbers the difference between servers might be too much to make this enjoyable. Pairing the servers the way I have puts the lower top tiers with the lower bottom tiers, with hopefully less disparity in game play.
Pairing tiers and not servers like this allows for some variation even if the servers in the two tiers remain the same each week.

Potential problems:

• Big server A (say T2 green) will stomp all over little server E (say T6 red) in their home map.
  Possibly. But server A is still facing servers B and C from T2 and if they are off stomping a little server map who is in their T2 BL? And who is holding EB for them? Either you keep as one big force and leave one map open and undefended, or you split your force across more than one map. Have your opponents done the same? One big zerg would be hard to beat but several smaller groups can cap more stuff in a given time and all the while the players from the lower tier server are scouting and roaming and capping stuff too… One big zerg may be unbeatable in a fight but may not be the highest scoring solution.

• The idea is too complex for players to grasp – too many maps to choose from.
  It would take time to get used to but it’s not more complex than picking which map to go to now really. It would be helpful if you could see the approximate population of your team on each map though so you can choose whether to go to the map with most players on or whether to roam quietly on your own.

• There aren’t enough players to fill the current maps so it’s plain stupid to allow them access to more!
  Actually what this idea should do is give a bit more variety and choice. At peak times like reset high tier players don’t need to queue for a BL map. At these times low tier players can in effect join a higher tier game if they want without the need to transfer. At low population times the low number of players from both paired servers can access and play on the same map so you could get twice the current population if people want to do this. There should be more total players on for a given colour and so more support should be available at any given time, simply because two server populations are available. I’m not trying to say that each map will have a higher population – I doubt this would happen but there would be more players available to attack or defend any single map.

• It will make night capping worse.
  Leaving aside that “night capping” is the wrong term for population time imbalance, there will be more available players for any given colour at any given game time simply because the available population is the sum of two servers. Often the reason that scores become widely imbalanced is because there is supposedly no one on to cap stuff back. The chances of no one being on at all for a given colour would be less, although what these players choose to do in their game time is up to them of course.

• Scoring would be a problem.
  This is the area I’ve had least success at resolving. One possibility is to simply add the two green instance scores together and use that as the score for each green server (same with the other colours). Taking an average score could result in the higher tier server feeling it is carrying the lower tier one too much. I’ wonder if some form of player participation scoring that would scale scores for each server might be better (sort of percentage participation per active WvW population member but this could get complex quite quickly). The scoring is an area that needs work, but I’ll go with total score across both maps just to get the idea and discussion going. I know it would affect glicko scores a lot more for the lower tier servers but glicko needs a shake up anyway IMHO.

Good things about paired tier matches:

• There would be more possible match combinations within a tier pair so even if you stayed in the same tier you could face 6 different matches from the same pool of players.

• Higher tier players can enjoy the chance to play in smaller group situations and lower tier players can experience playing with and against higher tier guilds without having to transfer servers.

• Server identity is retained, guilds are unaffected, and there is a bigger pool of players available so populations can choose to be more focused or more spread depending on what players want.

Overall the idea would bring what I believe should be a positive opportunity for more variety in matches and play with minimal change to the basics of WvW. The biggest question may be whether the Devs could code the map choices.

There is no reason why not to do this. The former argument was that combining servers would ruin the sense of community and absolutely kill server pride and the whole drive that made people play wvsw so seriously even in lieu of rewards or recognition.

There is hardly an identity left on my bl. We keep getting guilds who choose to move to it. Nobody seems loyal at all anymore, and those that are have been displaced by the migration policies of rowdy immigrants who care not for anything but their own guild.

One of the core problems with Server vs Server game mode instead of Guild vs Guild is that players communicate in different ways. Pairing up servers and taking their choice out this only increases that more and makes it even more unplayable.
They really should abolish current servers, create less servers for players to choose from, but most important, they need to create voice com servers and non voice com servers, and this would benefit both types of players. If you join a voice com server, you should be required to use voice coms in WvW and if you join a non voice com server, you would be required to text in game instead. This allows for both styles of play ( which are completely different) to communicate well and no one is missing calls. Players on voice coms are playing an entirely different game than players texting and it will help everyone on the server to be playing the same way.

THEN making less servers still means there would be Queues for EBG right? Not if when all 3 servers in the matchup all reach a certain number in Queue another temporary EBG map comes into gameplay for a limited time during peak hours that players can play on immediately that counts just the same as the current EBG. It is just only a temporary map and teams can score additional points during the peak hours since they have more players on all servers. For example, if a new EBG came into play every time all 3 servers reached 15 Queue and lasted for say 4-6 hours, when time was up players would be kicked off the map and it would disappear, but they would know it was coming since there would be timer on the map letting them know.

The problems with matching up servers with other servers against their choice means it will increase the weight put on the current guilds that are carrying the servers and not only would they have to carry their own server now, but they would have to carry a lower tier server that didn’t earn their position to be on the same team. If the objective is to get all of the guilds who are carrying their servers as it is to mass quit putting more straw on the camel’s backs, that is exactly what would happen.

In addition, Many players would be wanting refunds. Many paid to transfer away from players who were preventing them from enjoying the game and if they are forced back on the same team with them due to changing the game after they already paid their $ to get away from toxic players, they will be rightfully angry. I think players choice of who they play with and where they play is important to keep a good quality PvP mode and should not be removed from the equation.

They can solve this without removing players choice and allow for servers to be organized determining in advance where they will play. As it works currently servers have meetings prior to reset with all of the servers guilds and decide where they will play and what time so that they know who will be working with who on each map and guilds can work together and make strategies, plan builds and party compostition to implement that week. Mashing them up randomly removes that layer of strategy and organization dumbing down the game mode making it just a bunch of unorganized players not communicating well running around doing whatever and not actual challenging, strategic, fun PvP action packed game play that they were receiving prior. Dumbing down the level of gameplay is a deal breaker for many who worked hard with their server and guilds to get it organized in the first place.

What is the practical difference between this idea and simply removing half the tiers, merging those servers into the higher tiers?

Really its just halfway there to megaserver style matchup. Might as well go all the way at this point.

Thanks for the comments.

This idea is definitely not about merging servers. Think of it as more like twinning towns.
Pairing the tiers does not join any servers together but it would make them temporary team allies and give players the choice to play on either tiers maps. The servers stay the same, with the same population and guilds, and no one is forced to go anywhere and definitely no one is forced to join another server.
This is fundamentally different to removing half the servers and merging the populations, and I don’t think it’s been suggested before.

The idea is simple enough. Pairing tiers together allows players from the same colour to play as that colour on any of the maps for either tier. Note that if, for example, T3 and T7 are paired as suggested and the players on both tiers decide to stay in their home tier maps for the whole match then you’d see no difference to what we have now. On the other hand, if players from one tier decide to assist their twinned team mates then they would be able to do so. The idea is to offer more player choice not restrict it.

Since top-half server A could be twinned with lower-half server D or E or F in any given week there would be more possible combinations available and hence more variety in matches.

Comms between servers could be an area of difficulty I agree. However there would be no comms impact within either server for their own guilds and play. It would be possible to use existing map chat or Team chat (or squad chat) for typed comms. While this is not ideal in a fast moving situation it is the reality faced by many pugmanders and I suspect that pugmanders may be the most likely players to try working with groups from a different tier anyway.

For WvW guilds there is no more “carrying a server” than they already experience. There would be no requirement for any guild to play to support their allied server, and if they didn’t they would still gain the same score from their efforts in their home map that they would have achieved without this idea.
Of course, if they did lend a bit of support to their colour ally then the overall score for their colour may well be higher, to the benefit of both servers.

Finally this idea is no more about random matches than the existing system is. If players were really concerned about knowing what matches they are going to face in advance then it would be possible for Anet to decide to run the sequence of permutations (ie all 6 combinations) within the tier pairing before checking glicko to see if any servers need to be allocated to different tiers. Personally I’d rather stick with a weekly or two weekly glicko check but I’d be just as happy to go with what the community wants.

I’m not sure what the effect would be on the glicko scores of the servers in each pairing. Glicko would increase faster since it comes from the total of two maps for each server. I haven’t tried to predict what is likely to happen but I’m sure it could be done from the historical server scores. And if there’s a chance that this idea could lead to breaking up some of the stale situations several players have been complaining about, all the better.