Guild Wars 2

Here is a reasonably simple suggestion with potentially interesting consequences: for the duration of a match, instead of making a server face the same two opponents on four different maps, make it face different servers on each map. I call this the “total war” variant of WvW.

Consequence #1: There is a natural limiter to side effects of highly unequal matches. If a bandwagon server is stomping everything on one map, people on less populated servers may opt to stay away from that map and still have three other maps to play. Even if the bandwagon server still sees four maps to stomp, the adverse effects are mitigated through spreading them among a larger number of opponents.

Consequence #2: Because of the above, match criteria can be significantly relaxed, resulting to a greater variety of both real and potential opponents. Even more importantly, people can choose the expected level of play without having to switch servers, just by switching maps.

Consequence #3: Because of the greater variety, the concept of match-wide 2-vs-1 is eliminated. A map specific 2-vs-1 is still completely possible should two servers want to keep a third out of “their” playground.

Consequence #4: This also greatly evens out the effects of coverage gaps — a single server cannot PvD the whole place in one go, since even if one or two opponent servers are taking shut-eye, that’s just one map. Servers on other maps are most likely eager to fight.

Side suggestion: When seeding opponents, the rating of a server should be undervalued for their own BL, taken as such for EBG and overvalued for opposition BLs. This way, servers are more likely to have a tangible home advantage on their own BLs, and an uphill battle on hostile BLs.

In this scenario, there wouldn’t be match-specific winners or losers, because in essence there would be just one huge free-for-all match. However, rating could be calculated the same way it is done now, just by considering each map a separate match.

This is a interesting idea.

All I really see this doing is causing a bunch of server hopping. Right now we are pretty stable. T1 servers are blobbing, T2 are GvG type guilds, T3 is relaxed but still dedicated and everything else is just really casual.

The thing we really need is a fix to coverage or scoring which I heard is being looked into.

Agree this is worth looking into.

I came to think about another interesting modification that could be implemented in a system described above. At the moment matches are one week long, which has both up and downsides. A reasonably long timeframe allows for long term strategic play that just isn’t present in flash matches. On the other hand, badly unbalances matches just drag on way longer than reasonable.

If the total war system is implemented, then it’s possible to have the best of both worlds by rotating each map on a different schedule! Say, on Monday all green BL matchups are shuffled. Then, on Wednesday all blue BLs are shuffled. Red BLs on Friday. EBG on Sunday. Then green BLs again on Tuesday. Any individual map exists for 8 days (vs. 7 of the current system), retaining the strategic aspects. However, there is a new matchup every second day, providing more variety and limiting the effects of particularly uneven matches.

I still think that the suggested system would be significantly more interesting than the one we have now.

I would like a mega server tournament all the Blue, Green, and Red servers fight it out like how the EOTM is. This would or should solve many of the sever coverage gaps.

While the idea sounds interesting it brings some consequences:
- Strategy becomes complicated: Now you have 2 servers to fight. With the new system you get the problem that there are servers battles to be fight. But these servers have also server to fight which you have to bring in account and those servers have servers to fight. So to make a good strategy you have to bring every ‘match-ups’ in account which is in EU 54 matches. (good luck with that)
-Victories become more RNG: If two equally strong servers are fighting can the victory be decided not by their skills but their other oponents. If one of the servers has easier they can place more man on their equally strong opponent giving them the victory.
-Quadruple-teaming becomes possible: With four servers as opponents one it becomes possible that they all decide to gank their common opponent. Not fun.
-Calculating fair match-ups become more complicated: 54 in EU ‘match-ups’ which all influence each other. Try balancing that.