Guild Wars 2

Wondering why the winning server in WvW seems to break out a massive lead and the other two servers are often quite close together way down? It’s the “self balancing system” (developer’s pre-launch term).

This self balancing system of the 3 teams in WvW works like this:

• A brief period of jostling occurs during the first hours of WvW post-reset until a leader emerges through luck, organisation or numerical advantage.
• #1 attacks #2 because they are the nearest threat.
• #3 attacks #2 because they are the next placed team and they want to move up a place.
• #2 dies until they become #3.
• All the while #1 gathers orbs, siege, supply and an unassailable lead.
• Repeat with new #2 and #3 placed teams.

If the winner is generally determined so early on, why do matches need to run for one week? Fast, furious, less demoralising (for the losers) and less boring (for the winner) matches would be more enjoyable for everyone?

Grumpdogg.6910:

If the winner is generally determined so early on, why do matches need to run for one week? Fast, furious, less demoralising (for the losers) and less boring (for the winner) matches would be more enjoyable for everyone?

Yes, they should last for like 3-4 days max and after server transfer you should get debuff whith you can’t join WvW for 3-4 days.

This is a common issue in any 3-player situation. Personally, I’m a HUGE board gamer and I refuse 3 player games for the same reason. It’s predictable….

I was personally excited with the idea of taking a keep and holding it for a week, but at the current rate of turn-overs and playing experience now…. I have to agree…. shorter resets would be better.

The hell when we have 24h restets before it was more fun and we don’t got soo much server hoppers like right now, just sayn.

Coming from a server that is currently in position #2, I saw this weeks match play out exactly as described in this post.

We started in position #3 and moved to #2 as #1 and us started pounding on the old #2. Time and time again I wanted to make a temporary alliance between the two losing servers and go and pummel #1 into the ground… but a concerted effort like that falls apart so quickly without any form of communication between the servers.

On the flip side, if we had communication between the servers that could be easily abused, so I don’t know what the fix is. I prefer the longevity and sense of permanence that the longer matches give, but I would like to see the games more balanced.

All that being said, it is possible that the entire problem here is not the self-balancing system but rather that the teams are not yet matched perfectly (which we know is true), and so this might work itself out anyway with time in most cases.

When you get even partially fair match then longevity its fun but when you get stomped by one server which happens more often than first option, loong matches are not fun at all.

Everyone just server hops once their server starts losing and then ontop of that you get 3 orb bonuses which are ridiculous and then barely anyone is doing wvw on the losing side so it turns into 1 server dominating 80% of the map

It’s nice to see people talking more and more about this.

People have been simplifying the issue through ‘free transfer’ and ‘night capping’ statements. I’m sure they play their part but its more a symptom rather than the actual problem.

These issues were raised during the BWE but the dry answer was ‘collect data, servers will balance’.

I’ve long maintained that their need to be systems in place to help balance the 3 teams in such a way that it keeps things close. The reason being:
‘WvW is designed to accommodate players that would not normally participate in PvP’.
With that in mind it should be impossible for 1 server to dominate a map 100% and the fact it’s just not fun, for anyone.

The reality is now the game has launched and attempting to implement anything is just so much harder.

So getting back to the OP, yes, make matches shorter, 3 days. Looking at the current system now, going to 2 weeks (which is what has always been intended) is just ridiculous.

I can only say IF we go to 2 week battles with WvWvW in this state it will be nail to the WvWvW coffin for GW2 and i really don’t want to see that because i love this game

If we would get all servers balanced to each other ( which is not possible ) then we can start 2 week or longer battles, now 1 week matchups arent fun.

There is no reason at all for 2 week at this point. We really have had 2 weeks really with their matchup system. The matchup system although even with tons of data isnt perfect, it will make week long and 2 week long matches viable. Right now because of the small data size in week 2 some servers jumped too much and some servers dropped too far. It should be better next week I would think and going forward

As far as the self balancing system I didnt see that either week.
week one we dominated but we took 3 off the map before 2 then dealt with 2 when we needed to. This week 2 attacked 3 and 1 and 3 attacked 2 and 1 and thats how it should be

SoPP.7034:

With that in mind it should be impossible for 1 server to dominate a map 100% and the fact it’s just not fun, for anyone.

I am glad to see more people bring this point up. There are too many WvW threads that just degrade into arguments about time zones, lack of organization, etc. My main gripe isn’t that more organized servers or more populated servers are winning. It’s that it’s just plain boring when it’s a lopsided victory. There is nothing left to do.

I feel like there needs to be some sort of upkeep for each point that’s being held, or that the points closest to the spawn need to be more difficult to take over by opposing teams. Some people will argue that there already is upkeep since you have to build/reinforce points that you hold, but the fact that a server can hold onto 80%+ of a map pretty much shows that there isn’t enough upkeep.

Our server is currently holding into everything aside from the two towers outside of our opponents’ borderlands spawn point. Those are the only real points where there is any sort of battle going on, and it’s gotten to the point where players on our team intentionally let the towers be taken over just so we can have something to do.

I made a suggestion on another thread about having more small objectives spread out around a server’s spawn point. These objectives could be something like home server siege NPCs that could be enabled (or disabled) and that auto-attack the nearest tower.

This wouldn’t suddenly turn a losing team into a winning team, but would give the losing (and probably smaller) team something reasonable to do. Which, in turn, would give the winning team something to do other than sitting in a keep/tower and waiting for the next spawn of attackers.

I vote for 3 day or 4 day WvWvW

At the end of a week the victor usually has a very large amount of the entire world map. After 2 weeks people will just stop playing WvW altogether (winner and losers).

I think 3 day length would be ideal, and 4 would be maximum. With 3 day tournaments you will get 121 rounds per year, almost 122.

This will do positive things for people playing WvW
1. It keeps things fresh for people who like the constant battle on all 4 maps
2. It will cut down on hurt feelings and poor morale on the losing sides
3. Winning servers will just win more
4. More data can be gained by ArenaNet
5. More people will be attracted to WvW since it’s always changing and doesn’t turn stale.

The neutral force theory:

There is a reason I prefer to play with a neutral force in most board games. I do it to give my opponent help. I let them decide how the neutral force will act, so they can scheme a way that it be to their advantage. No one wants to play with the neutral force after playing through once. Why? Because they see how it can be used against them too. What people tell me is that they struggle too much with their own strategy to be good enough with the neutral force. It still helps them, though they might not see.

The benefit to having a neutral (npc) force in a game is to buffer weaker opponents. An expanding npc force is a nuisance. Attacks on guards weaken positions. Attacks on Dolyaks ruin supplies. Attacks on camps or siege on keeps require extra resources to defend against. A neutral force on each map punishes anyone that spreads too thin. A properly active neutral force hurts any opponent that zergs or turtles. An idle neutral force slows advance.

I would really like for an Anet person to respond to this. This is literally exactly whats happening. People predicted that the bottom 2 would attack the top server but why would you when you can just keep the bottom server down. Ending up in 2nd place is better then 3rd.

POST ABOUT EXPERIENCES WITH A NON-SELF BALANCING SYSTEM AND SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO FIX IT.
Before I post a response I feel I should mention I play on Yaks Bend. Week one we had an insane lead and the maps were queue’d. This second week we’ve been on the losing side, not exactly being stomped but every morning we usually only have 1-2 keeps and a handful of towers with Blackgate controlling most of the field.

Every morning most of the towers and the nearby keep are upgraded partially/fully. Having to retake these is very hard given our lack of supply, we usually have the outmanned buff, and its very easy for enemy players to just run in and then aoe from the relative safety of the walls.

This is compounded with the fact the defenders inside the point have +150 to all stats and 15% more health then normal.

-SUPPLY Depots are anything BUT an area of supply. I would like to see faster generation or a higher base value for these points. You can raise the supply needed for upgrading as well but spending 100 supply on rams and arrow carts to take a defended tower then having none left at the depot to set up siege to defend the point results in the more populated server simply retaking it.

-OUTMANNED BUFF; Right now the buff is ridiculous. Granted it may not be designed as an incentive to play or to balance the game but consider this situation which is fairly common. Your against a larger force, who has better buffs, and more then likely a stronger position tactically. How are you supposed to KILL one of them in order to benefit from these buffs?
More often in WvW they just back off and heal, the only time to get a solid kill is to close the gap but with the difference in numbers between the groups its a tall order.

-TOWER/KEEP GATES. I’m not referring to doors, I love doors. A few rams or some such and they fall, and the siege up top is ok and great in a balanced fight. What I hate is how easy it is for 1-2 defenders to blink/shadowstep/or just dodge roll past all the attackers and get inside. Its more enraging then trying to move your pug zerg an inch.
I realize its important to get in a point to defend it but at the same time its nigh impossible to keep people OUT of a keep short of a dozen guardians rotating the push back bubbles. What I’d like to see is a 1-2 sec delay of having to stand next to the door before you get teleported in.
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I feel these changes would give a big help to teams trying to regain a foothold in maps while still keeping WvW overall enjoyable and fair. Another idea was to limit the amount of upgrades you could do in enemy territory (like no cannons/mortars) which would make a server who DID hold a point for X amount of time that much more impressive.

There’s nothing really wrong with the system in my opinion. The two weaker servers are supposed to team up against the stronger server. It’s the game meta, but not enough people realize it yet. Flipping the match faster would still have you losing just as much, but in a faster time period. If they upped the point tally rate to keep up with the potential points during a round (thereby giving you the same bonuses but over 4 days instead of 2 weeks) you’d still lose just as bad every time.

Till weak servers realize they’re supposed to go after the guy with the biggest piece of the pie chart, they’re just going to keep shooting themselves in the foot and asking anet for “fixes”.

It’s a three way match because you’re supposed to team up against the strongest guy.

Rather than asking for changes that won’t do anything (as I said, you’ll lose just as badly, just in a shorter timespan). I suggest you learn the WvW meta and try and spread it to the rest of your server.

I vote for a 3 day WvW. Two matches a week. On the 7th day, no WvW. This gives the 7th day, for servers to reorganize and get money back up to purchase more siege and do repairs.

I also think, just because it has ended up this way, they need to make the top 4 servers ALL duke it out. instead of 3 way, make it a foursome people the top 4. Yes, new maps would have to be created and some content added. But it would make it more fair, because currently, it is NOT fair

WvW is definitely flawed atm. I play Fort Aspenwood, and we’re currently ranked 2nd, under the Isle of Janthir (or something), who are wiping the floor with us so hard it’s not even funny. They literally own 100% of the Battlegrounds, 50% of our Borderlands, and most of the other two maps (at least they did yesterday, haven’t checked today).

The problem here is the fact that people can hop servers free of charge. Even if it’s on a one day cooldown, how does that help to balance WvW at all? It doesn’t. Last rotation, we were in first, owning most of the map, all of the orbs, etc. New rotation hits, we start losing by a small margin, most of our WvWers hop servers so they can win, and we end up getting destroyed.

The server hop system is extremely flawed, people should not be able to hop over to the winning server whenever they want, and there be no side effects. This creates a massively imbalanced WvW scene, and it’s not fun at all. Some people will see this and say, “Well quit crying and hop if you want to win”, but there’s two things with this. 1) I have a guild and friends I play with on a daily basis, I’m not going to hop servers just to roflstomp my HOME server, and 2) One server having way more people and dominating the entire WvW game isn’t fun at all. There’s no fights, no resistance, no fun. I get that people love to win, I do too. But it isn’t fun completely shutting the other teams out, because then they lose interest in the game, and stop playing. When I play WvW, I want to fight massive amounts of people, defending key places, taking over places from other servers, etc etc. I don’t want to be trapped in my home base (or whatever the place is called), and I can’t even walk out without getting piled by 20 people. And fighting back isn’t even an option, most of our server isn’t even playing because of the massive player imbalance.

That’s enough complaining for now, time for my suggestion:

I suggest 3-4D WvW rotations, no more of this week long stuff (and god forbid two weeks, I can’t even imagine). I also suggest that anyone who server hops is locked out of WvW for the duration of that rotation, and if anyone hops on the last day of the current rotation, they are locked out all the same. This will prevent player imbalance in WvW, as people won’t be able to bail ship and join the winning team, and after a few rotations, the teams will be more balances, as people start finding homes instead of being roamers.

I don’t think player limitations should be put on the WvW games, that’ll only make things worse. Limiting the server hopping will help tremendously with balancing WvW, I can’t believe that they haven’t thought of people hopping to the winning servers, and have done nothing to prevent it already.

The FA v IoJ v SoS match was reasonably close until about a day ago. I think IoJ managed to open up a decent lead and then the fair-weather players abandoned the other 2 servers. Even if transfers are disabled this will still happen (people will just stop playing instead of transferring).

Imo, there is only first place and not first place and if I am 2nd or 3rd I would rather spend my week forcing first place into a hole by combining the efforts of 2nd and 3rd place folks. I could care less what the points are, when you have a very dominate server WvW is simply not fun for either of the other two sides, better to have fun and ignore the points. Do you actually win something for second place? Some crummy blues maybe, seems to be the general reward for everything in this game.

Hopefully folks will learn this, specially as match-ups become more standard and leadership becomes established on servers.

As an example… eventually #5 and #6 servers will get tired of being beaten by #4. They will come to terms with each other, and begin punishing #4 for the entire match.

When that starts to happen, server matches will shuffle up a bit because #5 might end up fighting with #1 and #2, with their time tested tactic of alliance against the big-dog.

I imagine this could happen all the way down the rank charts.

Reve.3578:

I would really like for an Anet person to respond to this. This is literally exactly whats happening. People predicted that the bottom 2 would attack the top server but why would you when you can just keep the bottom server down. Ending up in 2nd place is better then 3rd.

Why? Why is ending 2nd place better then 3rd?

Coming in second after spending a week being base camped by a dominate server was rewarding in what way?

Coming in 3rd after teaming up with the team that came in 2nd to push the dominate server back and at least make a fight of it, seems like a better way to spend the week.

Placing is a meaningless reward, enjoyment of WvW however is why we are all playing and thus the only important reward.

Niim.9260:

Reve.3578:

I would really like for an Anet person to respond to this. This is literally exactly whats happening. People predicted that the bottom 2 would attack the top server but why would you when you can just keep the bottom server down. Ending up in 2nd place is better then 3rd.

Why? Why is ending 2nd place better then 3rd?

Coming in second after spending a week being base camped by a dominate server was rewarding in what way?

Coming in 3rd after teaming up with the team that came in 2nd to push the dominate server back and at least make a fight of it, seems like a better way to spend the week.

Placing is a meaningless reward, enjoyment of WvW however is why we are all playing and thus the only important reward.

If I played against the same 2 guys a lot, and I always got 3rd… I have a couple options.

1) I can go balls-to-the-wall after #2 and hope to displace him.
2) I can call an unofficial truce with #2, and together beat #1 down to #3, thus moving up to 2nd.

Right now most servers are going with the first option. I think eventually, a lot of people will begin seeing the second option as viable and attractive.

If the expected behavior of the a 3-way battle is to have the 2 lesser teams eventually teaming up against the winning team, why not modify WvW to encourage it? When a team controls X% of the map and/or has an N-point lead, the two lesser teams are no longer hostile (ie. cant attack each other) and they share alerts when either of them are being attacked. Maybe there should be bonuses to helping each other out.

@Hagrid, I agree with your suggestion. I’d like to add that to resolve a lot of the off peak hour capping/“Night caps”. There should be some diminishing returns on how the points are gained. Home turf cap areas hold their base value, with forgien cap points losing their point value by a % over a set time.

This would let dominating servers not pull so far ahead from night caps, and also devalue camping an entire map. Which in turn would give incentives to just let areas be returned to home teams once the bonus value has reached it’s lowest return rate.

I’ll just throw in HoD as the shinning extreme of off peak point gains over a long duration. It becomes harder in the mid to late game to even be bothered for other teams to recover.

The server that is more organized, has more players around the clock and works together will usually win. That’s what has worked for our server. If you want to be the best you have to be dedicated and have 24 hour coverage, period.

PS. Arenanet have responded before, 24 hours battles are expected. This game is not supposed to just cater to NA prime time players, sorry.

Suddle D.9412:

The server that is more organized, has more players around the clock and works together will usually win. That’s what has worked for our server. If you want to be the best you have to be dedicated and have 24 hour coverage, period.

I have no problem with this. I even agree with you. I have no problem losing to a more organized team.

But are you really going to tell me the current state of lopsided victories is fun? There is the competitive aspect of WvW and there’s also the fun aspect of it… for the vast majority (of which I assume are casual players) it is currently not fun for anyone when one team dominates the entire map. We are not asking for handicaps so that losing teams become winning teams. We’re asking for ways to make the game more fun.

Potential solution: place a lead cap in the game. Make it impossible for the first placed team to develop a lead of greater than some arbitrary amount of points. Something like 5000 pr so, so it can be a small buffer, but not one that is completely insurmountable that the other two teams have no chance of catching up.

This can still favor a clearly dominant server, but it will also bolster hope in the other teams and allow them the potential of swinging the battle in their favor. And it is not a large enough buffer that the winning team can just sit back and kitten themselves while they coast to victory.

Keeps tension, keeps excitement, adds a level of unpredictability.
Can anyone see a negative to this suggestion? I’m certainly open to accepting criticism.

Edited for grammar. Apparently auto-correct never successfully completed basic English.

“Night capping” is an issue for some servers and shouldn’t be dismissed as whining. When one server has a large number of US players and a large number of Australian players it becomes a lop-sided fight for servers that have less players during one of those time zones. I’m an Australian playing on a server that is mostly American, and when I go out during Australian peak-times we are sometimes horrendously outnumbered.

How about limiting the percentage of a map that can be controlled by a single server?

For every location captured that takes the dominant server over 50%, the other two servers get a certain number of NPC defenders to their remaining locations. What those defenders are could be random, so that you never know how many of what you’re going to be facing. There might be 50 cannon fodder or 10 champions. This would make it increasingly difficult to capture new locations.

Once the dominant server controls more than 75% of a map, the other two servers get offensive NPCs that attack locations nearest the spawn point, perhaps these offensive NPCs could also follow Commanders and attack marked targets. This makes it increasingly difficult to hold locations.

This would make things more interesting for everyone because the dominant server isn’t left with nothing to do but camp spawn points, while the other two servers have a chance to claw back what they have lost. It also means that captured locations need to be defended.

This is exactly what happens in EU in the top tier
Vizunah-Far shiverpeaks-Riverside

Vizunah atacks FS becouse their the biggest threat and they have beaten them before.
Riverside attacks FS becouse they know they cant beat Vizunah

The Viz and River Borderkeeps never gets attacked during the day, only when Viz nightcaps.
Both borderkeeps on FS side gets attacked constantly including the supply camps, so FS have to run back and forth between those two places the whole day.

If Viz holds SM, River wont attack it, their not their target. If FS holds SM, both sides attack.

If FS attack green borderkeeps, River attacks blue borderkeeps.
If FS attacks River borderkeeps, Viz attacks Blue borderkeeps.

Resulting in 240k for Viz, 140k for FS and 140k for River. Alot of that coming from Viz nightcapping but also from FS constantly having to fight 2v1.

I also think that Blue side is easier to attack, more open space and easier to get to keeps/camps without obstacles.

I just love reading this post <.<

As others have said, the two weaker servers are supposed to gang up on the stronger server. It’s practically impossible to keep the lead when you’re 1v2, which balances the score. The fact that the third-place team often attacks the second-place team is a player problem not a game problem.

They need to change the way the system works in order to change the incentives to favor a better set of player behavior.

How to limit total dominance and runaway games?

-Diminishing returns: The longer a resource is continuously capped by a single server, the less points they recieve for it. This will reduce the runaway effect.
-Capture Bonus: Give a bonus for capturing a resource that has been held for a long duration with the bonus increasing as the duration of the capture increases.

These two effects combined would encourage people to take objectives, and more importantly would incentivise the 2nd and 3rd place teams to attack the 1st place team rather than destroy each other. In this way it becomes a king of the hill scenario, where people struggle to stay on top, and are constantly ousted by the other 2 servers, with whomever is able to stay atop for the longest being the winner.

Also, change the way orbs work. Once you have 3 orbs, it is almost impossible to take them away from you, when you look at it, it seems rather silly. Already winning handily? Here have this buff so you can mercilessly crush the people you were already stomping, depriving them of any real hope. How about instead of giving bonuses to player stats orbs give a +2%, +4% +6% bonus to points at the end of each 15 minute tally?

Sky.9347:

Niim.9260:

Reve.3578:

I would really like for an Anet person to respond to this. This is literally exactly whats happening. People predicted that the bottom 2 would attack the top server but why would you when you can just keep the bottom server down. Ending up in 2nd place is better then 3rd.

Why? Why is ending 2nd place better then 3rd?

Coming in second after spending a week being base camped by a dominate server was rewarding in what way?

Coming in 3rd after teaming up with the team that came in 2nd to push the dominate server back and at least make a fight of it, seems like a better way to spend the week.

Placing is a meaningless reward, enjoyment of WvW however is why we are all playing and thus the only important reward.

If I played against the same 2 guys a lot, and I always got 3rd… I have a couple options.

1) I can go balls-to-the-wall after #2 and hope to displace him.
2) I can call an unofficial truce with #2, and together beat #1 down to #3, thus moving up to 2nd.

Right now most servers are going with the first option. I think eventually, a lot of people will begin seeing the second option as viable and attractive.

The problem is that #2 will never be viable and attractive because all it will do is guarantee you a third place finish. Why? Let us assume that you are #3, and you are somehow able to establish a truce with the #2 server even though you have no ability to directly communicate with each other. You have only two realistic outcomes.

1. You and #2 attack #1. #1 will continue attacking you as the weaker of the two, keeping you in number #3 while #2 moves up to #1, and now you have to make the same truce with the old #1 to fight the new one, leaving you no better off than you were before.
2. You and #2 attack #1. #1 gets driven to #3 and you move up to #2. Now, you are a threat to the new #1, so they attack you, and in the meantime, the old #1 wants to move back up to #1, and going through you is easier than going after the new #1, again, leaving you no better off than you were before.

Seeing this play out again in 5 of the 8 NA matchups this week just ending.

Or just make it WvWvWvW. A 4 server match could prove interesting. With an even number there isn’t a ‘position 2’ as there is currently, as there is no middle rank. Yes what’s described will still happen but to a lesser extent.