Guild Wars 2

Hi, I’m from ET- Eredon Terrace NA. I would love to see if this suggestion will even mean anything. So there are 24 servers in Guild Wars. As a player from probably the lowest population server in Guild Wars. I was wondering if there would be a way to have a server merge with 2 of the lowest population servers, because ET is almost a dead server and recently a couple guilds left joining other high population servers. We really can’t do much besides hope and pray for people to come or other guilds to actually come and actually support ET..I think the smartest thing ANet can do is merge a low pop server with another low pop server and make a new name for it. I hope this can be looked at! Thank You. Please don’t flame or troll if you don’t have anything good to say. I hope a lot of low pop servers agree to this and support this topic!

Sorry I had to post here I couldn’t create a topic in suggestions area..

Marlboro.5367:

Sorry I had to post here I couldn’t create a topic in suggestions area..

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/WvW-s-server-population-inequality-solution/first#post3866327

Already one up on page 2. You’re not alone in thinking mergers are needed if these tournaments are going to be a fair fight.

No we do not need server mergers. In the light of mega-server for PvE, we need a replacement of the outdated and never very good server-concept.

And this replacement must not be red-green-blue as in EotM as this is lacking any identification, such that winning or loosing is meaningless, but something that has a strong identification!

The only thing in GW2 I see with a strong identification is Guilds, so I would only see Guild Alliane vs Guild Alliance vs Guild Alliance as the only possible future of WvW. The sooner the more likely WvW as has future.

Can’t be fair, won’t be fair, isn’t meant to be fair.

BYE!

You can all merge with Anvil Rock. Thanks!

I don’t really care about the tourny we have no chance anyways. I care for the server dying. It’s not about oh if that’s a problem move or should’ve took advantage when free transfers were free. Talking about a dying server.

This is why they should have put a limit on how many people can transfer to servers. If they put limits on how many can transfer on each server in each league, things could have been a bit better.

No. No. and No…

yes yes yes. i dont understand why people wouldnt want a merge.
guest onto a low pop server then onto a high and see where you have more fun.

I don’t know how bad it is down in the lower ranks, so don’t know if we really need merges, but need them to finally do a proper server transfer structure. There is no reason servers 13-15 should have had free transfer rates, that took away any reason to move to 22-24. Hey look same transfers rate to servers halfway up the rankings instead, gee that’s a tough choice 13 or 22 hmmmm.

No reason any of the bottom half of servers should have the same transfers cost as the top half at any time, every tier should have it’s own price, tier 1 should always be 1800(maybe even 2400 now instead), and go down in balanced increments to tier 8 which should always be 0.

Reikan.2908:

yes yes yes. i dont understand why people wouldnt want a merge.
guest onto a low pop server then onto a high and see where you have more fun.

If they would merge low pop servers, players would move to higher tiers anyway. For easy wins or season rewards.

Reikan.2908:

yes yes yes. i dont understand why people wouldnt want a merge.
guest onto a low pop server then onto a high and see where you have more fun.

I’m on a T1 server and we already have issues with queue times in wvw and overflows in pve. No thanks.

Reikan.2908:

yes yes yes. i dont understand why people wouldnt want a merge.
guest onto a low pop server then onto a high and see where you have more fun.

I have plenty of fun on my low-population server. Really. While population imbalances can sometimes make it frustratingly hard to hold things, I don’t think I’ve ever had a situation where I had nothing to do in WvW.

Why don’t I want a merge? Because many of the things those on the top-tier servers say about the play on their servers, including those who are largely happy with play at that tier, doesn’t really appeal to me. Beyond the queues and lag, I don’t want to be in an environment where beginners and uplevels are unwelcome because they are non-optimal or are taking the place of a hardcore player stuck in the queue. I like the dynamic of spotty coverage and empty spots on the map when the overall populations are reasonably balanced. I like my server’s core community of players and don’t want to see it dispersed across other servers or to become the auxiliary of some higher-population server that we’re merged with.

loquacious.2915:

I’m on a T1 server and we already have issues with queue times in wvw and overflows in pve. No thanks.

Come join us in the lower tiers. Queues are rare, overflows are rare, and skill lag is rare. Yes, there are times when there are too few people on in both WvW and PvE to get certain things done, but you aren’t going to get stuck in a queue and when you activate a skill in WvW, with occasional exceptions, your skills will go off like you expect them to. We could use some more people down near the bottom, but I don’t think forced merges is the right way to accomplish that objective.

They could merge the WvW populations of the bottom three servers into the next three servers without creating queue issues.

Server loyalty is a thing, but if it was such a big deal, then the majority if WvW players wouldn’t have left those servers already.

The players have already voted with their feet, and the game needs to move on too.

Won’t the upcoming megaserver patch solve a lot of the problems on low pop servers?

Maybe I am wrong, but that’s what I got after reading about it.

Teon.5168:

Won’t the upcoming megaserver patch solve a lot of the problems on low pop servers?

Maybe I am wrong, but that’s what I got after reading about it.

It does nothing for wvw.

if they merge servers they need to think of the new names for the combined servers…

yeh honestly there are alot of servers you could merge without making a queue. and definitelynot a queue on all 4 maps.
they dont need to make every server max population just less maps with 0 people on them

i dont see why you would care about server loyalty i understand you care about your server but working with another is just like working with any other person or guild. i dont think its healthy to imprison yourself and start thinking “im only friends with people if they are on my server”

They already did this server merger thing in a sense, before the tournament began you were given to option to voluntarily move to another server for free. Think that is far better than being forced to move to another server.

Mash the bottom tiers together, keep the middle and top tiers as they are. Give the bottom tiers something to play against that actually feels like WvW without creating the overpopulation problems of top tiers.

Some of you like bottom tier play, are you joking? You like knowing that every penny you put into upgrades will be lost as soon as you log off because you’re the last living soul online? It is fun to have to buy, build, and refresh all the seige you need while knowing that it too will disappear as soon as you log off?

WvW at the bottom tier is a great big nothing. If you happen to be online when one of the 2 guilds are, you get to take some camps, maybe a few structures before a bigger guild shows up and eats the little fish. Win 5 bags and 2 badges, then it is back to dumping your money down the drain trying to make the stuff you have sort of defensible. Not that it will matter, because there is nobody around to use that second arrow cart and the gate will be smashed before you get the ram below half.

When all of the bottom servers have the same coverage/population issues (heck, you even hear middle tiers talking about coverage), the only options are population merges or weighted scoring. If both of these options are unacceptable, then servers like ET are effectively written off. No recruitment blitz is going to convince a Daddy Warbux to stay and fund our efforts, because it only takes 10 minutes of playing on the bottom tier to realize it is a black hole for money. Who wants to grow poor playing this game?

EDIT: My friend from an upper server who will not be named once said to me ‘how do you only have XX gold after playing wvw for so many hours?’ and I had to laugh in his face. Our two experiences are like night and day.

Instead of free transfers to lower servers, why not try free transfers going out from a full server. :P

Can’t speak for everyone, but if you merge my server with another one, a lot of people will quit. We are playing here, because it’s low-population.

I really have a hard time believing anything that goes on in lower tiers outside of a few hours during NA prime, is anything but pvdoor.
I would imagine 80% of structures or maybe more, are anything but unupgraded, unsieged and unmanned… just waiting fokittenrson havoc squad to happen along, put down a regular ram and bash away at the paper door until it goes down with nobody around to do anything about it.
And you call this WvW? Is there even anyone to fight with outside of NA prime?
Seriously, those of you in this tier need to enhance your experience.
My suggestion would be to abolish the bottom 6 servers… move their populations to the remaining bottom 3. Then we’re left with 18 servers. Good for two 9-team leagues.
I can’t say I see the fun in upgrading a tower by yourself, running supply by yourself, manning siege you built by yourself waiting hours for ANYONE to wander by… and when someone does, you’re helpless to defend said structure by yourself against even just a handful of people. And if you logout, nobody is around to care or tick your siege until it fades away like nothing ever happened.
I’m maybe biased because I play in t1, but we’ve held our garrison for almost 6 days now against huge forces. Why? Because there’s lots of people on 24/7 to defend it. It’s nice knowing your efforts don’t go to waste the minute you log out. It’s nice knowing you have support from commanders and others on the map when the enemy attacks because there’s always people around 24 hours a day. It’s nice knowing that anything valuable like upgraded towers with siege don’t go to waste because there’s nobody on a map to refresh siege or defend it.

Shonie.5297:

I really have a hard time believing anything that goes on in lower tiers outside of a few hours during NA prime, is anything but pvdoor.

PvDoor happens, and I’m sure it happens quite a bit during the truly off hours (overnight and midday on weekdays) in NA, but I’ve rarely seen a case where there were no other players or no fights to be had during a fairly extended primetime. I think the real problem is that the game rewards easy victories (including PvDoor), which doesn’t give the players an incentive to find other players to fight or pick hard targets to take. The strength of structures and NPCs also don’t scale to make them a challenge.

Shonie.5297:

I would imagine 80% of structures or maybe more, are anything but unupgraded, unsieged and unmanned… just waiting fokittenrson havoc squad to happen along, put down a regular ram and bash away at the paper door until it goes down with nobody around to do anything about it.

Only if they’ve been turned to paper by an attacking zerg thanks to a large population imbalance or the server was being lazy about upgrades. As much as it might surprise you, we actually know how to upgrade sites in the bottom tiers.

Shonie.5297:

And you call this WvW? Is there even anyone to fight with outside of NA prime?

Given that I don’t play much outside of NA prime time, the only reason that would matter to me is when another team has much better coverage during off hours and ticks a lot of points on us while few people are on. Again, I think this is a problem with the scoring system and mechanics more than anything else.

Shonie.5297:

I’m maybe biased because I play in t1,

It’s generally a bad idea to try to fix a tier you don’t play in, because you won’t understand it. The same is true for suggestions like eliminating the top 3 servers and forcing all those people down into the lower population servers or making population caps even smaller.

Shonie.5297:

but we’ve held our garrison for almost 6 days now against huge forces. Why? Because there’s lots of people on 24/7 to defend it.

Yes, we’ve held our garrison for days, too, even when we were at the bottom of the rankings. We do manage to hold things overnight when the population balances aren’t too great in the match-up.

Shonie.5297:

It’s nice knowing your efforts don’t go to waste the minute you log out. It’s nice knowing you have support from commanders and others on the map when the enemy attacks because there’s always people around 24 hours a day. It’s nice knowing that anything valuable like upgraded towers with siege don’t go to waste because there’s nobody on a map to refresh siege or defend it.

The only reason that matters as much as it does is because the game doesn’t handle population imbalances that well and it gets really bad during certain times of the day. The way the top tier servers deal with it is to have enough people to queue a map or two most of the time and the queue keeps things balanced with a participant cap, but that imposes certain styles of play on people and has negative side effects (e.g., complaints about people playing non-optimal characters or mediocre players taking up a space that could be used by a hardcore player). Lowering the queue limits would do the same thing on lower tiers, which is why a lot of low-tier players suggest it, but I think that’s all just a workaround for a more fundamental problem, which is that the game needs to reward based on difficulty and some things need to scale better in WvW the way they do in PvE.

The biggest problem is that there is too much of a barrier on your moving off a low population server coupled with too little incentive for people to move onto those servers.

The smartest thing to do is to allow easy transfers to any server you want when you want. Just delay how frequently you can do that to ensure people don’t take advantage of a short term (e.g. season of WvW) scenario.

In the MMO world merging your servers is a sign of weakness, companies avoid it as long as they can.

With the new megaserver system though, it does seem like it would make a lot more sense converting the concept of a server into an allegiance and merging some of the lower pop allegiances. These could be much better managed to account for some servers being PvE heavy etc, also, allegiances could (lag allowing) potentially become shared between NA/EU servers, allowing a better time-zone spread, allowing one of the game modes oldest problems to fix itself (Nightcapping, which ANet do not want to fix, for very valid reasons).

To maintain identity certain town maps (eg new LA) could have allegiance as a massive weighting factor when placing a character in their instance.

Considering the massive population skew at the moment – even between long-term adjacently ranked servers – and the importance of population to the game mode, it seems silly not to.

I’m from TC and its really fun playing wvw on high populated server. Hopefully anet will reconsider merging lowest population server or they can merge like no. 1 and no. 24, 2 and 23, 3 and 22, 4 and 21, something like that. Or at least that was the format of the tourment. So the swiss system could have work much better with 12 teams fighting

Anet already performing a PvE merge for all servers, it is just a matter of time before they merge WvW as well.

SkyShroud.2865:

Anet already performing a PvE merge for all servers, it is just a matter of time before they merge WvW as well.

It’s not a true merge though, for pve. None of the servers are going away, no one is being moved from their home world.

Anet has said that they don’t want to do away with the individual servers for WvW, so I don’t think we’ll see merging there. At the same time, the all red vs all green vs all blue mashup in EotM doesn’t particularly work either.

I could suggest maybe adjusting the format from a 1v1v1 to a 2v2v2 world allaince type battle, but there are several concerns that would need to be addressed. Not the least of which being should gold tier worlds simply be left as they are so as not to increase their queue length, and how would leaderboards work at that point. They would no longer be accurate as they currently stand. Additionally, in a ‘team’ type battle, the different servers would still need a means of distinguishing themselves.

Without some concessions somewhere, there really isn’t a good solution to the issue posed.

Jappy.6907:

I’m from TC and its really fun playing wvw on high populated server. Hopefully anet will reconsider merging lowest population server or they can merge like no. 1 and no. 24, 2 and 23, 3 and 22, 4 and 21, something like that. Or at least that was the format of the tourment. So the swiss system could have work much better with 12 teams fighting

I’m on FC and it is really fun playing on a low populated server. I hope anet will consider splitting up all the tier 1 and 2 servers into 3 or 4 new servers. Then everyone can enjoy what I like. The balance will be far better for all the low tiers.

Ynot.8397:

I’m on FC and it is really fun playing on a low populated server. I hope anet will consider splitting up all the tier 1 and 2 servers into 3 or 4 new servers. Then everyone can enjoy what I like. The balance will be far better for all the low tiers.

+1000

I guest on Blackgate and get knocked into overflow in the hub cities.

That’s too many people.

If anet didn’t force people to load up servers by never fixing night capping, differently rewarding the same accomplishment in WvW seasons, and requiring huge zergs in pvE to beat the event timers, then there would be more server parity.

Ynot.8397:

Jappy.6907:

I’m from TC and its really fun playing wvw on high populated server. Hopefully anet will reconsider merging lowest population server or they can merge like no. 1 and no. 24, 2 and 23, 3 and 22, 4 and 21, something like that. Or at least that was the format of the tourment. So the swiss system could have work much better with 12 teams fighting

I’m on FC and it is really fun playing on a low populated server. I hope anet will consider splitting up all the tier 1 and 2 servers into 3 or 4 new servers. Then everyone can enjoy what I like. The balance will be far better for all the low tiers.

As an added bonus, we wouldn’t have to listen to those high tier players whining about queues and lag.

But, seriously, I think it’s good that there is a variety of play styles at different tiers. The main reason the top tier is balanced is that the map population limits impose it.

Imagine if ANet had a breakthrough in their code that solved the lag and the could remove the queues so every server could field as many people as they had on any map with no queues. What do you think would happen to the top tier’s balance?

Also, seriously, if I wanted the Tarnished Coast play experience, I would transfer to the Tarnished Coast server. The money to transfer isn’t what’s stopping me and there are people who do transfer down, even all the way down to Bronze League servers like FC and ET to get away from high tier play because they don’t like it.

The fix isn’t to make all WvW play like top tier play. The fix is to make play at other tiers less sensitive to population and coverage imbalances (which could mean anything from point handicapping or making hard targets more profitable to attack than weak or undefended targets to adding and scaling NPCs when a server has poor coverage) rather than have the population caps impose balance when the queues full up.

All I want is the ability to do “something” on whatever map. There are the siegerazer NPCs which are nice but usually they aren’t usable for us because we don’t have 10 available players or if we did that’s pretty much a zerg for us and we don’t need them. Some kind of NPC assistance would be nice during the outnumbered buff.

I am playing on Ferguson’s crossing and usually on during off peak so I think its normal for me to want a little more filling my WvW experience

Reikan.2908:

All I want is the ability to do “something” on whatever map. There are the siegerazer NPCs which are nice but usually they aren’t usable for us because we don’t have 10 available players or if we did that’s pretty much a zerg for us and we don’t need them. Some kind of NPC assistance would be nice during the outnumbered buff.

It would be nice if the breakout commanders would start for fewer people (like 3-5), maybe with a longer wait and the requirement that you talk to him to avid accidental activation if a small team is just hanging out nearby. Getting the mercenary camps is a way to do it on Eternal Battlegrounds. When you get the mercenaries on your side, they send a group to attack the nearest supply camps. I’ve done that solo on ET (of course I can also solo empty camps without NPC help, but the NPCs help if there are upgrades or defenders).

Sadly, in my opinion, they killed the NPC mercenaries on the Borderland maps that would do the same thing (the quaggans in the lake that was removed). They should have put the bloodlust in the outer corners where the centaurs and skirt are because almost nobody goes there except for map completion.

Reikan.2908:

I am playing on Ferguson’s crossing and usually on during off peak so I think its normal for me to want a little more filling my WvW experience

If you are having trouble finding something to do, I recommend learning how to solo camps, get mercenaries on your side, and kill Dolyaks (worth points for your server if they are headed for an enemy site). That’s all PvE stuff but it’s something to do. If you want PvP action, take it to the enemy and camp something they’ll want back. You can be quite a thorn in an opponents side if you drop some siege in a tower or camp and man it. With ballista mastery, you can hold off quite a few (the spread shot, particularly on a superior with extra mastery damage) can down opponents in one shot. ET had a havoc squad that would crack a tower but not take it to keep swords on it so they could fight enemies that came to investigate.

Basically, if the enemy servers are sparsely populated, figure out where they are or lure them to you. If you are outnumbered, you should run into enemies while you take things and kill Dolyaks and don’t be afraid to build some siege weaponry as an equalizer. Ballistas are cheap and don’t have a minimum range, so they can work well in camps (some points in mastery recommended).

If there are no enemies, take some towers and help push your server to a higher tier with points. Two people can take an empty tower.

If you are being overwhelmed, that’s the toughest problem to work around. My recommendation is hit and run attacks on Dolyaks and camps and don’t be afraid to try going deep behind enemy lines or onto their BL. Attack stuff where they don’t expect it by sneaking past where the do expect you.

GoodWithGravy.8019:

In the MMO world merging your servers is a sign of weakness, companies avoid it as long as they can.

With the new megaserver system though, it does seem like it would make a lot more sense converting the concept of a server into an allegiance and merging some of the lower pop allegiances. These could be much better managed to account for some servers being PvE heavy etc, also, allegiances could (lag allowing) potentially become shared between NA/EU servers, allowing a better time-zone spread, allowing one of the game modes oldest problems to fix itself (Nightcapping, which ANet do not want to fix, for very valid reasons).

To maintain identity certain town maps (eg new LA) could have allegiance as a massive weighting factor when placing a character in their instance.

Considering the massive population skew at the moment – even between long-term adjacently ranked servers – and the importance of population to the game mode, it seems silly not to.

My thoughts, exactly. Thus I have special +1 for you, Sir!

In the end I doubt you’ll have much success arguing for straight up server mergers, first of all because any company will be reluctant as a matter of course, but also because the people who are on those servers are entitled to the experience that those servers provide. Not everyone enjoys the high tier meta.

The only type of “merger” you can perform would be an alliance-based system. It would do pretty much the same that the megaserver system does for PvE – which is to say that you’re effectively merging maps instead of servers. If you let all players rally under three banners, all players could be given access to all maps in the global map pool (as opposed to just the four you have access to now). You could then trim the total number of maps to fit the size of the player base.

And if you want maps that cater to different experiences, as the different tiers do now, you can either add new maps or simply apply an incentive for players to gravitate towards the top of the map list (which you would probably have to do anyway).