Guild Wars 2

For months now, the SF and DH server groups on T4 have been so woefully underpopulated that they are perpetually blobbed by whoever the third server group is. The WvW game in T4 isn’t even remotely competitive.

I would like to request a response from Anet regarding what the next steps are for fixing this problem and a general timeline for when those steps will be taken.

Next Step: Relink
Timeline: Next Friday

Step after next: Large numbers of players transfer to the smaller linked servers in T1/T2 for only 500 gems and the population train wreck continues.

Timeline: Next Saturday

Well played Anet.

Just thought I would remind us all that WE the “community” voted for linking. We created this mess and knew what we were asking for when it was voted in. A small number of us warned and warned about the long term issues but were ignored.

I won’t pin this on ANet. We have only ourselves to blame. This just proves that even when we are given what we want we still complain.

The way to fix the tiers for now is to relink and monitor the matchup. If all are balanced then we are good, if they aren’t, then relink again and again every other week until it is as close as we can get and then leave it be.

The alternative is to accept that population balance is one thing, but skill balance is another. I can have 50v50 or 20v20, and still have one side totally decimate the other. At that point what am I to do? The population is equal but skill level is borked! In the past guilds would migrate to tiers where they fought those of equal skill level. With links that is far far more difficult so we are getting an issue with skill balance that cant be corrected by the player base anymore.

This problem is very complex and will take more than just shuffling servers around. My best advice in this alternative is to merge populations so at least each tier has some activity based on high medium and low population and let that stabilize. Then allow the player base to correct the rest on our own. If we refuse to do that then its our own fault for throwing the sand out of the sandbox and destroying what we love. We can’t always point the finger at the Devs. They create the world, but we bring it to life.

Population refused to balance itself in the past. Why would them do it now? Doing hard merges will just recreate the stale enviroment we had prior the links.

The Links are bad? Honestly, no. They made WvW much more lively than it was to least for 12, maybe 18 servers (Not even counting EU). The server shuffling after two months also bring some varierity to this extreme stale gamemode, somenthing that many servers haven’t seen IN YEARS.
The issue still lies on glicko not allowing servers to move around faster when they clearly do not belong to a tier. The quadserver fiasco could have been averted if CD had moved before everyone on DH and SF said “kitten this kitten” and left the server or quit the game entirely. Will a rating reset solve the population imbalance? Clearly not. But at least it will break the staleness of the gamemode and people won’t feel like “oh kitten , this boring matchup again” and just stop playing.

Its possible that there is just no combination of servers that will allow all tiers to have good matches. Given the state of NA there definitely isn’t any combo of servers that will allow all servers to be able to play each other.

Maybe the best they can do is to have T4 be a “small pop” tier and never interact with the higher tiers. Edit: Yea this is a bad idea. Of course that also locks T3 because they can’t compete with T2.

So what’s going to happen? In NA:

• We have to assume that DB, BG, maybe TC will not be linked.
• MagDR seems to be in a good place.
• Maybe add another server to FASoR?
• SoSNsP, SBIHoD, and Yaks are all pretty even.
• 4-Headed Hydra will be broken up.

Or try to create two groupings. T1 & T2 interact. T3 &T4 interact.

• Remove IoJ from DB and put them somewhere in the T3/T4 grouping.
• Rearrange the rest of the current T3 & T4 servers into as equal as possible linkings so that all 6 linking groups can fight each other reasonably well. (This would be awesome, as I write this I sure wish this could happen. A grouping of 6 linkings fairly balanced so that there could be match variety every week!).

Jeknar.6184:

Population refused to balance itself in the past. Why would them do it now? Doing hard merges will just recreate the stale enviroment we had prior the links.

The Links are bad? Honestly, no. They made WvW much more lively than it was to least for 12, maybe 18 servers (Not even counting EU). The server shuffling after two months also bring some varierity to this extreme stale gamemode, somenthing that many servers haven’t seen IN YEARS.
The issue still lies on glicko not allowing servers to move around faster when they clearly do not belong to a tier. The quadserver fiasco could have been averted if CD had moved before everyone on DH and SF said “kitten this kitten” and left the server or quit the game entirely. Will a rating reset solve the population imbalance? Clearly not. But at least it will break the staleness of the gamemode and people won’t feel like “oh kitten , this boring matchup again” and just stop playing.

^So very much this.

Jeknar.6184:

Population refused to balance itself in the past. Why would them do it now? Doing hard merges will just recreate the stale enviroment we had prior the links.

The Links are bad? Honestly, no. They made WvW much more lively than it was to least for 12, maybe 18 servers (Not even counting EU). The server shuffling after two months also bring some varierity to this extreme stale gamemode, somenthing that many servers haven’t seen IN YEARS.
The issue still lies on glicko not allowing servers to move around faster when they clearly do not belong to a tier. The quadserver fiasco could have been averted if CD had moved before everyone on DH and SF said “kitten this kitten” and left the server or quit the game entirely. Will a rating reset solve the population imbalance? Clearly not. But at least it will break the staleness of the gamemode and people won’t feel like “oh kitten , this boring matchup again” and just stop playing.

We can agree to disagree. Linking to me removed server community in favor of personal community, damaged overall teamwork, and divided more than it brought together. It has also brought uncertainty and removed a lot of player choice in having a stable and fun gaming environment. You may be in small pop one week then in massive t1 blobs the next. In a game people will choose the style they enjoy and try to stay with that.

I submit that even if glicko had moved CD away from you earlier, DH would have landed with another server just as bad and the same would have occurred, anyway. Just like your situation with SBI. Glicko can’t do its job without decent links established already. If we MUST keep links, the least we can do is really focus on relinking again in a fast frequency until we find a sweet spot, THEN let the rotations and changing begin with an occasional reassessment. That part we can agree on, I hope

Yak’s Bend player here — We have consistently been running havok groups against you, out rotating, and straight up winning 20v30 fights. The LGBT guild was camping spawn for a long time against YB, and we pushed out with 5 people against their 15+.

At some point, you also need to understand that since you weren’t in T1 maybe your population isn’t that skilled and it’s not all getting out zerged. Because honestly if you are losing to a 60 man blob with your 40 people, the solution is to run havok groups and back cap across multiple maps. Just saying.

Havok, 20v30 and 60man blob in the same phrase. Sounds lika a True T1 player.

And honestly, I find very hard to belive YB is winning anything with less people when my server always have outnumbered buff when YB have a group in the map. Maybe it’s SF who is losing when they actually have people, but surely it isn’t DH simply because DH no longer have people.

Also, backcapping is boring af. You think people like being able to only PvE on wvw? They just go do actual PvE instead which is much more profitable.

Jeknar.6184:

Also, backcapping is boring af. You think people like being able to only PvE on wvw?

So much this

Reh.5986:

Jeknar.6184:

Also, backcapping is boring af. You think people like being able to only PvE on wvw?

So much this

Sadly that all wvw has to offer ._.

Right. I agree that back capping is boring. Everyone wants fights and I believe the burden is on ArenaNet to make that happen. To be clear: I believe that is happening. They have said that they are gathering data before releasing fixes for WvW. So hopefully it’s on their upcoming radar.

I was more just saying, as a YB player, I did not see many instances where we were winning because of numbers. There were certainly nights later in the week where it seemed the other servers gave up. But especially early on we were giving people the business.

JediSange.1645:

Right. I agree that back capping is boring. Everyone wants fights and I believe the burden is on ArenaNet to make that happen. To be clear: I believe that is happening. They have said that they are gathering data before releasing fixes for WvW. So hopefully it’s on their upcoming radar.

I was more just saying, as a YB player, I did not see many instances where we were winning because of numbers. There were certainly nights later in the week where it seemed the other servers gave up. But especially early on we were giving people the business.

From my experience playing against YB in T3, you at least had a lot of roamers and small groups running around. Every server has to blob up sometimes as it’s the only real way to counter blobbing. Having a good mix, though, is what makes wvw more fun.

Some servers are all about getting everyone on tag and rolling across the map with superior numbers. So boring…and the other servers are left to back cap if they don’t have enough to defend. No fights then. Turns everything into one big eotm ktrain.

Much of it is the fault of the way the system works and much of it is bandwagoning.

Reh.5986:

Every server has to blob up sometimes as it’s the only real way to counter blobbing. Having a good mix, though, is what makes wvw more fun.

…

Much of it is the fault of the way the system works and much of it is bandwagoning.

I categorically disagree with the counter blobbing. The way you beat servers that only know how to blob is to outrotate them with havok groups. That group has so little mobility compared to smaller forces that can behave independently.

However, I agree that back capping is insanely boring, and it is pretty similar to an EOTM train. It is most certainly a systemic issue.

I think the biggest problem and question right now is Anet’s strategy for creating the links.

Are they trying to balance servers according to their tiers?
Do they plan to stay on this course?
Or are there plans to have a more general balance for all servers in the future?
Do they plan on keeping tiers separate with population and glicko walls?
Or do they want to bring servers closer together in the tiers next to them?

Are we the players happy with their “current strategy” for creating links according to their tiers? Would we prefer a different strategy? Such as creating balance between two tiers, t1 and t2 close to each other, t3 and t4 close to each other, maybe even make those tier pairings separate like a national and american league in baseball.

Most of the links are on the bottom tier right now, maybe they need to be more in the mid tiers instead? so leaving t1 as is with no links, using t4 as the low population tier good for roaming and small groups with no links or maybe just 1, using t2 and t3 as the rotating mid tier that has all the links, to go back to the old gold/silver/bronze ranks. Should link servers get some time as host servers?

Do we want them to eventually try and create population balance between all 12 servers/links? This requires a lot more time as they need the top servers to drop players for the rest of the servers to be able to reach them in population size even with links, or they can sort of expedite this process by folding t4 into t3.

The other problem is we have is many different players who are comfortable playing with different amounts of players. A lot like to blob, a lot like to zerg, some like to havoc, some like to roam. Not everyone cares for complete balance between all servers (it’s one of my dreams for wvw), frankly that will never happen without a complete reset of wvw and heavy restrictions, to make sure that balance can be maintained while players populate the servers.

Players moving are doing so to find the right amount of players for them to play with in their time zones. Players coming in here to complain about populations are doing so because they don’t want to move to find the right situation for themselves, they want anet to step in and balance the population around them according to their comfort levels, because of friends guild or server loyalty. In part that is Anet’s fault for doing poor links, such as the 4 linked monster in t4, or the old t8 servers shoved to t1 in the first links, which forced players into an uncomfortable situation.

People need to accept that players will move to find better situations for themselves, a guild that wants to fight will have more opportunities to do so in t1 than they would in t4. A havoc team that wants to take objectives without getting a blob on their heads will have more opportunity to do so in the lower tiers.

Players that seek a complete balance between between all servers, need to accept that it will never happen both because of rules in place my anet and by the players who are just seeking their own enjoyment in the game.

I think both the developer and player need to figure things out and get on the same page for links.

I agree with a lot of what you say. I think it’s a really level-headed outlook and would be interested to know more of what ArenaNet is planning. My assumption right now is they’re collecting a lot of data with the server pairing. For now, I remain patient and hopeful.

Xenesis.6389:

People need to accept that players will move to find better situations for themselves, a guild that wants to fight will have more opportunities to do so in t1 than they would in t4.

I would disagree with this — kind of. This week we were reliably beating larger groups because we can outplay people at T4. If your guild is good, you can win fights in T4 a lot easier than in T1. Even if you’re getting “zerged on”, a smaller, competent team will do better. So much of what I see in T1 is back capping. Yes, there are havok fights as well — But mostly back capping and a blob full of actual builds so it’s harder to zerg bust or for smaller groups to shine.

Xenesis.6389:

I think both the developer and player need to figure things out and get on the same page for links.

Nail. Head. Agreed.

JediSange.1645:

Reh.5986:

Every server has to blob up sometimes as it’s the only real way to counter blobbing. Having a good mix, though, is what makes wvw more fun.

…

Much of it is the fault of the way the system works and much of it is bandwagoning.

I categorically disagree with the counter blobbing. The way you beat servers that only know how to blob is to outrotate them with havok groups. That group has so little mobility compared to smaller forces that can behave independently.

However, I agree that back capping is insanely boring, and it is pretty similar to an EOTM train. It is most certainly a systemic issue.

Yeah I can kind of agree with that…except back capping isn’t my idea of havoc or fun. If I’m free capping a tower for anything less than trolling to draw fights I don’t feel like I’m WvWing anymore.

And servers that run in blob only mode will never give you a real fight unless you have a blob to fight with. Other than that it’s all back capping, siege humping and wrecking zerglings that squirrel.

the dev cannot avoid this much longer. the dev has to decide to blow up the servers or keep going on this declining path.

JediSange.1645:

Xenesis.6389:

People need to accept that players will move to find better situations for themselves, a guild that wants to fight will have more opportunities to do so in t1 than they would in t4.

I would disagree with this — kind of. This week we were reliably beating larger groups because we can outplay people at T4. If your guild is good, you can win fights in T4 a lot easier than in T1. Even if you’re getting “zerged on”, a smaller, competent team will do better. So much of what I see in T1 is back capping. Yes, there are havok fights as well — But mostly back capping and a blob full of actual builds so it’s harder to zerg bust or for smaller groups to shine.

I don’t disagree that you can beat bigger groups with smaller groups in t4. It’s about the amount of opportunities to face those groups, it’s better in higher tiers. The two zerg busting guilds we had on Ehmry got bored after the first links because they just couldn’t find groups to fight, they had to move.

JediSange.1645:

I agree with a lot of what you say. I think it’s a really level-headed outlook and would be interested to know more of what ArenaNet is planning. My assumption right now is they’re collecting a lot of data with the server pairing. For now, I remain patient and hopeful.

Xenesis.6389:

People need to accept that players will move to find better situations for themselves, a guild that wants to fight will have more opportunities to do so in t1 than they would in t4.

I would disagree with this — kind of. This week we were reliably beating larger groups because we can outplay people at T4. If your guild is good, you can win fights in T4 a lot easier than in T1. Even if you’re getting “zerged on”, a smaller, competent team will do better. So much of what I see in T1 is back capping. Yes, there are havok fights as well — But mostly back capping and a blob full of actual builds so it’s harder to zerg bust or for smaller groups to shine.

Xenesis.6389:

I think both the developer and player need to figure things out and get on the same page for links.

Nail. Head. Agreed.

In t4 YB is running much bigger than sf/dh . YB havoc groups are literally bigger than t4 zergs. Any guild group should be able to farm bigger pug group/pve group. Its not a server or tier , or skill issue. Its population. YB has far more wvw pop than t4 servers.
I am not counting random pve rangers/ ebg zerglings. They need to fix both pop and ocx/sea pop if they want t3/t4 to compete with t2.

Ironically my guild found more even numbered guild V guild fights in T4 than in any other tier. It felt like the culture down there was a lot of small guilds wanting to go out for a raid night and that lead to lots of 10v10 or 15v15 fights. It was awesome and we loved it.

Each time we are bumped up the culture changes as higher means more people which means guilds adapted to run bigger to compensate. The guild groups are then groups of 20 or 30 and often run with a partner guild as backup. That leaves the smaller group scrambling to grow to be competitive and you’re forced to try and find a partner guild of your own.

This inevitably leads to a blob fight. Personally I had far far more fun and varied action in T4 NA than any other tier. Period.

This is why I wonder if the issue is less on populations and more on cultures and timezones.

JediSange.1645:

Yak’s Bend player here — We have consistently been running havok groups against you, out rotating, and straight up winning 20v30 fights. The LGBT guild was camping spawn for a long time against YB, and we pushed out with 5 people against their 15+.

At some point, you also need to understand that since you weren’t in T1 maybe your population isn’t that skilled and it’s not all getting out zerged. Because honestly if you are losing to a 60 man blob with your 40 people, the solution is to run havok groups and back cap across multiple maps. Just saying.

Realize too that with my server group at least (SF, GoM, FC), there is almost no cross-server coordination on comms. At best, people are mostly running on their own guild TS servers or sometimes on the community TS for their own individual server. I saw a lot more effort in the first round of linkings that we had a couple months ago to get everyone on the same comm channel on each map when following a commander…now with 3 servers on one team, it seems that level of coordination has gone by the wayside. When I’m online anymore, I never see those kind of callouts to join TS from commanders, commands are just relayed via map chat, which can help set up an attack or defense but does not allow for real-time control over the flow and the focus of a battle. I’m sure YB, with larger guilds and one established server-wide TS, has the advantage there as well.

Havoc groups definitely have a better time in t4, which is why my guild had moved there a year ago. So the question is, do players in t4 want it that way?, should anet move a couple of the link servers to t3 instead? Perhaps keep the old t7 t8 servers in current t4 and move the old mid tiers to t3?

So speaking of links, I just noticed that wow has been doing it to their realms since 2013, here’s how they go about it.

They have realms permanently linked 2-5 servers.
When you see a person’s name it’s their name, title, guild name, followed by (*) for their realm name, if you hover your mouse over them you see their full realm name in the tooltips.
When they’re in chat you see the realm name next to their name, you don’t for those of your own realm.
You can do everything cross server as if it’s one big server, party, raid, guilds etc.

Obviously easier for wow to do this since everything in regards to pvp is instanced (arena and battlegrounds), and phased (like megaserver except they can phase content to your levels too). They’re currently running open world events that phase mobs difficulty to your own level while having like 100 people of different levels around you, the upcoming expansion also phases stuff to your level so you can do the new zones in any order.

Anyways it’s neat to see where they have taken their phasing and linking technology, hopefully anet plans on upgrading theirs especially to wvw side of things. When we talk about links and hard merges, permenant links is another option to take. Obviously they will need to do some work so that the identity of linked servers are not completely lost, or try and shift “server pride” to an “alliance pride”. Yesterday I was for Dragonbrand! today I’m for Eotm Green! j/k XD

Ok first up, Please do not turn threads into matchup threads, they get very quickly locked.

Next.

IMHO, many well meaning posters suggest what their enemy can do to be “competitive”. It is not up to the enemy to match your playstyles.

In a PvP enabled zone you only control the actions of yourself.

If YOU , yes YOU, suck all the fun out of it for your enemy, they will stop playing. Pv Nobody is not as fun for many as PvP. If you are in fact winning 20 vs 50, maybe field 12.

If you are in fact more organised, charge in recklessly now and then. If the enemy wins even once a night the chances of them logging in tomorrow increases.

Maybe Run uplevel minion master nights, maybe field 30 pistol engis and let the comms take a break. Maybe do not use meta builds now and then, whatever you can stomach that keeps players in the game helps the game.

DO WHATEVER you can to keep the game fun. If you just grind the enemy into the dirt, I would expect them to just pve for the 4 weeks it will take to shake loose even more guilds and players from the game.

good luck, try to enjoy the game and allow your enemy to do so if you can. There is a lot players can yet do to save what was once a terrific game mode.

xzzx.7408:

For months now, the SF and DH server groups on T4 have been so woefully underpopulated that they are perpetually blobbed by whoever the third server group is. The WvW game in T4 isn’t even remotely competitive.

I would like to request a response from Anet regarding what the next steps are for fixing this problem and a general timeline for when those steps will be taken.

When Anet can figure out that they messed up at the Megaserver and then never took into account how many active WvW’ers there are per server, that’s two very big mistakes that have just about destroyed WvW.

We asked for linking – but not one of us who suggested it said to leave the linked servers alone for weeks or months on end without readjusting.

Active WvW players should be counted – not the whole population of any specific server and linking for months without any movement up or down are the two things that can and will save WvW – otherwise it’s just going to be one big pain for all concerned – even the servers who win.

What?

Winning doesn’t mean good fights, it just means boredom on one or two sides and massive frustration and disaffections on one or two servers.

Bad all the way around.

elkirin.8534:

IMHO, many well meaning posters suggest what their enemy can do to be “competitive”. It is not up to the enemy to match your playstyles.

In a PvP enabled zone you only control the actions of yourself.

If YOU , yes YOU, suck all the fun out of it for your enemy, they will stop playing. Pv Nobody is not as fun for many as PvP. If you are in fact winning 20 vs 50, maybe field 12.

If you are in fact more organised, charge in recklessly now and then. If the enemy wins even once a night the chances of them logging in tomorrow increases.

Maybe Run uplevel minion master nights, maybe field 30 pistol engis and let the comms take a break. Maybe do not use meta builds now and then, whatever you can stomach that keeps players in the game helps the game.

DO WHATEVER you can to keep the game fun. If you just grind the enemy into the dirt, I would expect them to just pve for the 4 weeks it will take to shake loose even more guilds and players from the game.

good luck, try to enjoy the game and allow your enemy to do so if you can. There is a lot players can yet do to save what was once a terrific game mode.

This is a great point! And something where the players seem to do the complete opposite.

People are always saying that we need to demoralize our opponents. And I was always like, What? Why would you do that? Then there’s going to be no one to fight.

I criticize Anet as much as anyone but the players have to take some responsibility for things too. And this is a perfect example. All those years of trying to demoralize your opponent. Well guess what? It worked.

The average gaming player is selfish and cares only about “winning”. He won’t “lose” on purpose to help keep competition. All he want is win at all costs. However, WvW isn’t a MOBA or a FPS where you will see new oponenets after a few minutes. You’re stuck against the same team for a week, maybe for several. Demoralizing the oposition to the point they won’t even play won’t make it fun for anyone.

Demoralizing your opponent isn’t fun. Owning everything is, frankly, boring.

For a t3 server that drops to t4 right now, however, the only option they have is to try to avoid losing glicko. And once you drop down, if you don’t blow the score out of the water, you bleed glicko, and get stuck.

So it’s an awful place to be stuck – be nice, and lose a ton of glicko, or try to claw your way back out.

Wvw needs our honored enemies to work. It’s fun when the fights are fairly evenly matched, and all sides feel like they have a chance.

Roflstomping is not fun.

elkirin.8534:

Ok first up, Please do not turn threads into matchup threads, they get very quickly locked.

Next.

IMHO, many well meaning posters suggest what their enemy can do to be “competitive”. It is not up to the enemy to match your playstyles.

In a PvP enabled zone you only control the actions of yourself.

If YOU , yes YOU, suck all the fun out of it for your enemy, they will stop playing. Pv Nobody is not as fun for many as PvP. If you are in fact winning 20 vs 50, maybe field 12.

If you are in fact more organised, charge in recklessly now and then. If the enemy wins even once a night the chances of them logging in tomorrow increases.

Maybe Run uplevel minion master nights, maybe field 30 pistol engis and let the comms take a break. Maybe do not use meta builds now and then, whatever you can stomach that keeps players in the game helps the game.

DO WHATEVER you can to keep the game fun. If you just grind the enemy into the dirt, I would expect them to just pve for the 4 weeks it will take to shake loose even more guilds and players from the game.

good luck, try to enjoy the game and allow your enemy to do so if you can. There is a lot players can yet do to save what was once a terrific game mode.

SO VERY MUCH THIS. Yesterday afternoon I did MAP COMPLETION (a little part of my soul shriveled up and died). Last night looked into WvW and then logged off and told myself that I was quitting the game. There’s no point. It’s not fun. It’s miserable. I get the glicko thing, but you know Anet isn’t getting their numbers from this week anyway (if they used current numbers for their linking, DH and EB would never have been put together).

I challenge the tryhard server to take this person’s advice the rest of this week. It’s only a few days. See if you can crack a smile on those serious faces of yours. Find out what this “fun” thing is all about. Do something ridiculous. Raid naked. SOMETHING. There’s a chance you might even like it.