Guild Wars 2

The current scores are a clear indication that something is fundamentally wrong (http://mos.millenium.org/matchups) with WvW – not only in the EU, not only in the US, but in both regions. A solution has to be found before it completely spins out of control and no-one will join WvW anymore.

An Analysis of the Various Tiers
Tier 1 EU: Yes, Vizunah Square is still nr. 1, but they will not be able to keep it up for a very long time. There is, eventually, no competing against the huge American horde that is called RUIN.
Tier 2 EU: Elona Reach is the clear winner: no-one will even come close. Fortunately, this is not because of non-Europeans but because of pure skill and dedication (real-life sacrifice, even). Still, it’s nightcapping paradise.
Tier 3 EU: Surprisingly perhaps the most balanced tier of all European tiers.
Tier 4 EU: The Spanish server will undoubtedly win due to probably South American nightcapping influences.
Tier 5 EU: There seems to be little to no competition. The gap between nr. 1 on the one hand and nrs. 2 and 3 on the other hand is huge.
Tier 6 EU: There still is a little bit of competition between nr. 1 and nr. 2.
Tier 7 EU: Same as Tier 5.
Tier 8 EU: Two servers are still competing.
Tier 9 EU: Looking at the score, there is probably only one WvW server active in this tier…

Tier 1 US: Seems to be a nicely balanced and fun tier. All servers could (purely in theory) still win.
Tier 2 US: Sea of Sorrows against… erh… no-one? Insane imbalance.
Tier 3 US: Basically the same as Tier 2, but now it’s Sanctum of Rall that completely dominates.
Tier 4 US: No real competition here.
Tier 5 US: Ridiculous imbalance.
Tier 6 US: No real competition here either.
Tier 7 US: All servers seem to be doing all right.
Tier 8 US: Devona’s Rest will clearly win this tier.

Now, out of a total of 17 tiers, there only seems to be a handful of Tiers where there is still a bit of competition. I realise that the competition element is perhaps not the most important element for every single human being, but one has to realise that for the majority of the players it probably is, especially since it’s linked to other essential aspects of computer gaming.

Nightcapping
Nightcapping creates such an insane imbalance that it’s no longer any fun to play on certain servers. I’ve experienced the nightcapping drama myself (week after week after week) and I can assure you that it is not fun to play if you are completely outnumbered and if you don’t even have one single keep for several hours. In such a situation, more and more people are leaving WvW.

However, nightcapping will never be eliminated from the game by ArenaNet. Is that a bad decision? Perhaps not. Because nightcapping is ‘allowed’, other solutions have to be found because WvW is 24/7 (but it currently is a few hours of WvW and many hours of PvD). After reading Same.4687’s post in another thread (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/WvW-T1-will-only-be-english-speaking-servers), I have come to the conclusion that his solution is probably the best.

END OF PART 1

PART 2

The Underlying Problem
It is safe to conclude that separating US and EU doesn’t work. The US servers are dominated (in essence) by Oceanic and Asian players and the EU servers will (from now on) be dominated by at least one huge American guild. The current situation is an excellent example of the so-called snowball effect. The problem is, as one can clearly see by analysing the data of all tiers, that this snowball is now rapidly turning into a huge avalanche. Consequence would be that WvW becomes a lonely, barren place. I will repeat this again (probably ad nauseam): people don’t want to play WvW if it is not fun! This is not rocket science and was already discussed several times in the WvW forums. One only has to look at the thread about the Desolation/Far Shiverpeaks/Kodash match-up.

ArenaNet now decided to put a 7 day cooldown on servers transfers. In my opinion, even a 7 day cooldown on server transfers is unlikely to solve the current issue.

The Solution
The solution to the entire problem is rather simple and straightforward. What has to be done is ‘re-creating WvW’. That means new servers without regional indications and without language restrictions. I’ve read somewhere that all servers are based in the US anyway (!) so ping will not be an issue. Moreover, various people have already switched region and they also report that there are no (significant) issues. After creating new, fully international servers, transfers should be limited to once per month (if not more).

To facilitate the entire process, ArenaNet could put a clear deadline (December 1st would work), reveal the new server names, make separate forum sections for all those new servers and let the players sort it out.
Is there no alternative? Well, an alternative would be to merge all existing servers, so one US server gets merged with one EU server. The issue with this, however, is that there are more EU servers than there are US servers. Another potential solution would be region-locking. I guess this requires little to no explanation. I do want to note that an Asian/Oceanic tier is then a necessity.

The French, Germans and Spanish
But hey, what about those poor Germans, Spanish and French players? Well, German, Spanish and French players can just communicate with each other, coordinate and find a suitable server by themselves. It really is not that difficult! To give an example: one only has to look at the huge amount of Russians (quite a few don’t speak English either): these Russian players also coordinated and subsequently created vast Russian populations on certain servers. Why wouldn’t the Germans, Spanish and French players be able to do so as well? Hell, the Russians are even ‘internationalising’ some of their guilds!

It is, as Same.4687 states in his post, perhaps an “outrageous solution” but I think it is in the end the only viable solution.

Oh, and ArenaNet, please fix culling as soon as possible!

I like your analysis but I cannot agree with your view on the French, Germans and Spanish community unfortunately.
I won’t go into details. I explained it in various other threads.

You seem far too focused on total score.

@Nut.4713

Even though I myself don’t care so much about the total score, I know quite a few others do. In addition to this, one has to realise that the total score is a combination of all the partial scores.

It would be insane to deny that there are huge balance issues.

Nut.4713:

You seem far too focused on total score.

That’s how you win. That’s how arena.net presents the information.

If the total score is not important, it shouldn’t be the very first thing players see when they open the WvW tab.

I will add that the cascade of absolute blow outs (one server winning by 400k points) has persisted, across all tiers, for the last month. Typically the very top tier is competitive and the very bottom tier is competitive and everything else is absurdly imbalanced.

Part of this is transfers. A bigger part are the snowball orb mechanics, the snowball upgrade mechanics, and nightcapping.

There’s no reason that points gained in the face of zero opposition should be worth as much as points gained when you have to fight the whole enemy server. Arena.net has stated they want all players time to be worth the same amount: well right now, the time of people who can cap stuff in off hours is worth far far more.

Additionally, giving the winners the orb bonus is a terrible idea.

I see why you want to give guilds the option of upgrading and such, but upgrades just tilt the playing field even further in the direction of the team who is already winning. The winners will have upgrades, the losing team(s) won’t.

Additionally the fighting for 2nd mechanic basically forces the two weaker realms to tear into each other instead of the leader. You need to get way more points taking a tower from the leader than from the 3rd place server.

Arena.net also needs to give players a reason to come out and wuvwuv even if their server cannot win. Right now there is no reason to, in the minds of most players, so as soon as it looks like the match is going to be won by another server, 80% of people stop showing up and the match is effectively over – a day or two into the matchup.

DAOC has realm ranks. Arena.net needs something.

Speaking solely from the US server as I have not been paying attention to the EU side.
First off the matchups are alot better this week then last.

And I will point out yet again. There is no issue with the system and rankings
The issue is transfers.
The system is in place to rank servers based on performance and it does just that.
But at any point in time at all any server any week can explode with new guilds and people
That effect causes server to be over ranked and under ranked
There will never be a ranking system that will be able to account for population shifts. A server is ranked on its performance that week and it moves accordingly
Problem is guilds and people move way too much and therefore the system can’t work

HoD and ET were 2 perfect examples on the US side. These were both T1 servers and good ones now they are falling tiers every week because of this. HoD especially because they were ranked 1 for 3 weeks are very slowly receding even though they are getting blown out.

Plain and simple the 7 days will still not stabilize servers. You will need 30 days as it should be anyway
If you have no movement and you allow the system 3 weeks the 4th week will be very competitive across all tiers
Without a stabilize pop per server the system will never be able to work

The simple solution here is to create 3 region NA EU and OC, I don’t deny the skill of Desolation US/BRA players but this is not going anywhere, Anet must take a solid decision and fast enough.
A 2 weeks limit for server transfer should be the minimum to me.

@ OP
You are out of the loop my friend.
As of next week, theres going to be 6 servers all equally capable of winning Tier 1 in NA.
You mentioned SoS winning by a landslide, this is because IoJ guilds are for the vast majority PvX guilds, and have been taking in the Halloween Events. Sure this doesnt take too long, but obviously some would rather farm it this week, and others looked at the score and thought… ok week off.

We know IoJ are capable of being at the top as they proved lasy week being within 1000 points of the leaders until Halloween hit, i expect them to be back in force next reset. Blackgate are showing their newfound strength with their bandwaggoners, and also Sanctum of Rall with their transfers are showing that they deserve to be up here too by walking their game, and losing a very tight final day game last week to SoS.

This gives basically, SBI, BG, JQ, IoJ, SoS, and SoR. All capable of beating each other.

Thats healthy competition my friend, as long as the 7th place onwards doesnt have a constant dominant winner, i cant see these 6 moving.

Psy.6153:

@ OP
You are out of the loop my friend.
As of next week, theres going to be 6 servers all equally capable of winning Tier 1 in NA.
You mentioned SoS winning by a landslide, this is because IoJ guilds are for the vast majority PvX guilds, and have been taking in the Halloween Events. Sure this doesnt take too long, but obviously some would rather farm it this week, and others looked at the score and thought… ok week off.

We know IoJ are capable of being at the top as they proved lasy week being within 1000 points of the leaders until Halloween hit, i expect them to be back in force next reset. Blackgate are showing their newfound strength with their bandwaggoners, and also Sanctum of Rall with their transfers are showing that they deserve to be up here too by walking their game, and losing a very tight final day game last week to SoS.

This gives basically, SBI, BG, JQ, IoJ, SoS, and SoR. All capable of beating each other.

Thats healthy competition my friend, as long as the 7th place onwards doesnt have a constant dominant winner, i cant see these 6 moving.

All due respect here IoJ, SoS, SoR, and as of right now BG hasnt beaten any T1 servers. SoS and SoR havent even seen t1 and IoJ was there for a cup of coffee.
I think SoS is a t1 server but remember its not PvD overnight in T1
We’ll see. JQ is also declining. 3 weeks ago it was at peak, and 3 weeks ago they would be blowing out sbi and bg but they arent the same. Lost last week and in 3rd this week, that server is going to have more flux yet as well
I would like to see 6 servers all t1 viable, but idk if we really have that yet

@Psy.6153
Perhaps you failed to realise that Guild Wars 2 is not just played in NA. I guess it is YOU who is out of the loop. Moreover, only six viable servers out of a possible 3 × 8 is not ‘balanced’. Denying that there are huge issues is ludicrous.

@mangarrage.1062
The problem, in my opinion, is not just transfers. Or do you think some of the European servers can compete with Desolation? Do you think the US servers that do not have Asian/Oceanic players can compete?

Alasseon.3958:

@mangarrage.1062
The problem, in my opinion, is not just transfers. Or do you think some of the European servers can compete with Desolation?

Blacktide nearly did, without US presence
What made Desolation win in the end was not the Americans, but their hurried, but well done, push to organise the server to counter our daytime presence.
Not sure if we still can though, now Desolation probably got more people than during our matchup thanks to bandwagoners, and have gotten more organised and better due to experiences in T2 and now T1. (We fought them in T3, just after RUIN got in)
Was an awesome week, that

But I agree there should have been no split between regions on release.

The problem with nightcapping isn’t with nightcapping. I don’t expect arenanet to tell someone they can’t play their game. The problem is that the current scoring system favors what time you play during the day. If one server’s peak hours are from 3-6 and anothers are from 6-9, and they play an even amount of time then they should be roughly evenly matched. But in this scenario the team that plays from 6-9 gets nearly 21 hours to hold positions uncontested while the other realm gets three. The issue is how the game scores. I saw another post on here about changing the scoring to reward more points if you capture something that hasn’t been flipped in a long time which would seriously help this issue.

Genev.2450:

Alasseon.3958:

@mangarrage.1062
The problem, in my opinion, is not just transfers. Or do you think some of the European servers can compete with Desolation?

Blacktide nearly did, without US presence
What made Desolation win in the end was not the Americans, but their hurried, but well done, push to organise the server to counter our daytime presence.
Not sure if we still can though, now Desolation probably got more people than during our matchup thanks to bandwagoners, and have gotten more organised and better due to experiences in T2 and now T1. (We fought them in T3, just after RUIN got in)
Was an awesome week, that

But I agree there should have been no split between regions on release.

Let’s be honest, that was not a standard situation on Blacktide. Your server currently can’t even compete with Elona’s Reach. People on European servers have to make huge sacrifices in real life to keep up with the RUIN zerg and I am fairly sure that Blacktide can’t keep that up for more than one or two subsequent weeks.

This thread is not for discussing Desolation tactics or how they won, however. For that we have plenty of other (locked) threads!

RaCast.6510:

The problem with nightcapping isn’t with nightcapping. I don’t expect arenanet to tell someone they can’t play their game. The problem is that the current scoring system favors what time you play during the day. If one server’s peak hours are from 3-6 and anothers are from 6-9, and they play an even amount of time then they should be roughly evenly matched. But in this scenario the team that plays from 6-9 gets nearly 21 hours to hold positions uncontested while the other realm gets three. The issue is how the game scores. I saw another post on here about changing the scoring to reward more points if you capture something that hasn’t been flipped in a long time which would seriously help this issue.

So that is why I came up with the solution to get rid of EU/US servers, to get rid of language restrictions and make new, fully international servers.

Just giving an example, and morning pushes by the Russians has been a standard tactics on Blacktide for weeks, just as other servers have consistent organised night shifts which they do very well in.

Either way, i still do realise/accept/agree that there’s a problem, this problem being that a 24/7 game shouldnt have region splits.

Also, about the servers, I’ve been told it’s jsut the WvW servers which are all located in the US, with the EU ones being in Austin, Texas, and the NA ones being… somewhere on the west coast
Afaik, the “proper” EU servers are located in Frankfurt, Germany.

Alasseon.3958:

@Psy.6153
Perhaps you failed to realise that Guild Wars 2 is not just played in NA. I guess it is YOU who is out of the loop. Moreover, only six viable servers out of a possible 3 × 8 is not ‘balanced’. Denying that there are huge issues is ludicrous.

@mangarrage.1062
The problem, in my opinion, is not just transfers. Or do you think some of the European servers can compete with Desolation? Do you think the US servers that do not have Asian/Oceanic players can compete?

I don’t know EU servers although I do know Ruin went over there and to answer your question no, they cannot. Any server w/o 24/7 coverage or close simply cannot compete and we’ve known this for over a month now.

I do not have the answer unfortunatley. There were 2 things they couldve done at launch
The smartest would’ve been to have no desination on servers at all, no EU, no NA, no french no german etc and see how that wouldve worked out
The second is since they made the server segregated they should have IP locked, which they would have gotten cascades of tears from everyone and their mother, but WvW would’ve been better then it is now.
At this point I honestly don’t know, the longer a bad system stays alive, the harder it is to get rid of.
I want what most people want, an even game win or lose, ranking or no ranking, just something I can be engaged with for 7 days. There has never been a week where I have played everyday for a length of time and I want to

To the OP your analysis is simplistic without any real research. The Tier 4 US score is not actually a reflection of the level of competitiion which has been very good. Its been one of the more enjoyable weeks of WvW for the severs involved.

Out of loop ?
You mean USA guilds having not only USA timezone’s but also Australlia / Europe / Asian timnezone’s

You mentioned Vizunah who has Canadians playing ( flat our deny from their side that offcourse)
But oh oh oh do we cry when 1 or 2 EU server gets more off peak players, all hell break lose.

Golden tip:

Recruit more off peak guilds / players
USA does it and now EU does it.

WvW is fine as it is, 1st November 1 week transfer in effect.
It takes time to balance it all out.

But pls stop bashing Desolation for having 1 USA guild with 60 players in Europe.

Yeah 60 maximum, I don’t understand why people are complaining.

I think they’re only 10 but since they can do 1vs10 against french, people think they’re atleast 100 RUIN.

Only saw 2 of them personally.

ladyfabulous.1403:

Only saw 2 of them personally.

Nah it was just one mesmer.

i saw someone’s pet with the name Ruin, i think it snowballed from there

Case closed then.

@Alasseon.3958 The only thing I’d personally like is there to be no separate brackets, merge the EU and US brackets together and we’d have no complaints about it since all the WvW servers are in the US anyways. That way everyone is on an even playing field.

@Genev.2450 Desolation has still great respect for Blacktide, they are the epitome of Gentlemen and Scholars. So get your butts up to tier 1!

Ps. Love the above conversation lol. I smell a photoshop idea coming on.

T3 is far from balanced. Riverside score most of their points offpeak/nighttime when SFR are unable to field anyone.